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<blockquote data-quote="Wulf Ratbane" data-source="post: 4611261" data-attributes="member: 94">I've been doing some heavy permutations/probability number crunching over the break, and I wanted to run something past the folks here.Playing around with possible speed fixes for iterative attacks, I've found something that works pretty good for me personally:<ul>
<li data-xf-list-type="ul">At 6th level, you get a 2nd attack, but both attacks suffer a -2 penalty (-2/-2 instead of 0/-5).</li>
<li data-xf-list-type="ul">At 11th level, the penalty drops to -1/-1 (instead of 0/-5/-10).</li>
<li data-xf-list-type="ul">At 16th level, the penalty drops to -0/-0 (instead of 0/-5/-10/-20).</li>
</ul>But there is just no way around one peculiarity of the 3rd and 4th iterative attacks, to wit:Against creatures that you have almost no hope of hitting (natural 18 or better on your first attack, and natural 20's thereafter); and against creatures that you almost can't miss (needing &quot;less than a natural 2&quot; on your first attack, with a great chance of success on even your 3rd and 4th attacks), your expected damage will drop off.So the core poll question is this: If your expected damage over the range of 80-90% of all creatures you will encounter will INCREASE by 5 to 20%, would you be willing to lose your 3rd and 4th attack, and accept a DECREASE against the &quot;edge case&quot; creatures (very high AC or very low AC)?EDIT: I want to clarify that. At -1/-1, your expected damage against most creatures you will encounter is BETTER than three attacks at 0/-5/-10; and at -0/-0, your expected damage against most creatures you will encounter is BETTER than four attacks at 0/-5/-10/-15.There are other emergent benefits to this proposal (levelling the expected damage output non-fighter classes, reducing the necessity of AC-pumping for PCs, etc.) but I am primarily concerned with how this fix strikes the primary fighting classes.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="Wulf Ratbane, post: 4611261, member: 94"] I've been doing some heavy permutations/probability number crunching over the break, and I wanted to run something past the folks here. Playing around with possible speed fixes for iterative attacks, I've found something that works pretty good for me personally: [LIST] [*]At 6th level, you get a 2nd attack, but both attacks suffer a -2 penalty (-2/-2 instead of 0/-5). [*]At 11th level, the penalty drops to -1/-1 (instead of 0/-5/-10). [*]At 16th level, the penalty drops to -0/-0 (instead of 0/-5/-10/-20). [/LIST] But there is just no way around one peculiarity of the 3rd and 4th iterative attacks, to wit: Against creatures that you have almost no hope of hitting (natural 18 or better on your first attack, and natural 20's thereafter); and against creatures that you almost can't miss (needing "less than a natural 2" on your first attack, with a great chance of success on even your 3rd and 4th attacks), your expected damage will drop off. So the core poll question is this: If your expected damage over the range of 80-90% of all creatures you will encounter will INCREASE by 5 to 20%, would you be willing to lose your 3rd and 4th attack, and accept a DECREASE against the "edge case" creatures (very high AC or very low AC)? EDIT: I want to clarify that. At -1/-1, your expected damage against most creatures you will encounter is BETTER than three attacks at 0/-5/-10; and at -0/-0, your expected damage against most creatures you will encounter is BETTER than four attacks at 0/-5/-10/-15. There are other emergent benefits to this proposal (levelling the expected damage output non-fighter classes, reducing the necessity of AC-pumping for PCs, etc.) but I am primarily concerned with how this fix strikes the primary fighting classes. [/QUOTE]

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