UngeheuerLich
Legend
Blasphemy
D&D General Lies, Darn Lies, and Statistics: Why DPR Isn't the Stat to Rule them All
- Thread starter Snarf Zagyg
- Start date
Well, if it's a blast for you, it's blasphemy, too!
ezo
Hero
CleverNickName
Limit Break Dancing (He/They)
All I can say about DPR as a design consideration:
One of my players is all about damage per round. He plays a rogue, he uses a rapier, he lobbied hard for a certain feat in Tasha's, the whole nine yards. He is an optimization fiend, he's read every optimization guide on the 'net, and he's intensely focused on dealing as much damage as quickly as possible...
...and he's the most frustrated, unhappy, and confrontational player you've ever seen. He's never satisfied with any attack roll that isn't a crit (and curses loudly if he ever misses), he's never happy if his damage rolls are below average, he hates it if he's not first in initiative, and he visibly sulks if someone else's character ever deals more damage than his. Sometimes it's so bad that I wonder if he's having any fun at all.
It's a data point of one player..hardly enough to condemn the whole concept... but it's made a heck of an impression on me. I'd rather focus on anything else for my characters.
One of my players is all about damage per round. He plays a rogue, he uses a rapier, he lobbied hard for a certain feat in Tasha's, the whole nine yards. He is an optimization fiend, he's read every optimization guide on the 'net, and he's intensely focused on dealing as much damage as quickly as possible...
...and he's the most frustrated, unhappy, and confrontational player you've ever seen. He's never satisfied with any attack roll that isn't a crit (and curses loudly if he ever misses), he's never happy if his damage rolls are below average, he hates it if he's not first in initiative, and he visibly sulks if someone else's character ever deals more damage than his. Sometimes it's so bad that I wonder if he's having any fun at all.
It's a data point of one player..hardly enough to condemn the whole concept... but it's made a heck of an impression on me. I'd rather focus on anything else for my characters.
Last edited:
MichaelSomething
Legend
Sounds like you need to give him a +3 rapier, asap! If you're worried about it making him overpowered, just give it the quality, "all attacks with this weapon draw attacks of opportunity" (or maybe have the weapon have a -4 Con mod) to make it balanced. I'm sure your player will love his new weapon and never regret using it!
CleverNickName
Limit Break Dancing (He/They)
lol
One time, a bunch of NPC cultists cast blur on themselves and from the way he reacted, you would have thought I had committed a felony. Seriously he still gripes about it years later, as if it were some great miscarriage of justice.
Mistwell
Crusty Old Meatwad
I always liked the Battier effect. I recall a good article titled something like "The No Stats All-Star" about him.
In response of course basketball nerds made stats to capture the Battier effect. Advanced stats have come a long way. We no have things like Box Plus/Minus, measuring what happens in a game when you're on the floor vs when you're off the floor. And Value Over Replacement Player (VORP), Player Efficiency Rating (PER), Win Shares, and things like that.
You could capture some numerical data surrounding causing a foe to miss their turn, causing a foe to only be able to make one attack instead of multiattack like from a slow effect, causing them to have much increased chance of not hitting someone like from mirror image, and a variety of other values. You could probably capture many factors in a single stat by looking at the same fight over and over again, with a caster casting control spells and without a caster casting a set of spells.
tomedunn
Explorer
Not to undercut your point too much, because I do think DPR can be useful for comparing class features, but I'd like to offer up an example of where even this can go wrong, using Great Weapon Master vs a +2 to Strength as an example
Let's say we have a PC with 30 hit points, who wields a standard greatsword (2d6) with +3 Strength modifier and a +5 to hit, and for some reason they only have 13 AC. They're about to face a monster who also has 30 hit points, wields a standard battleaxe (1d8) with a +4 Strength modifier and a +6 to hit, and who also has only 13 AC for some reason. For simplicity, lets assume the monster goes second in the initiative order.
If we calculate the average damage for each, the PC deals 6.85 DPR against monster, and the monster deals 6.175 DPR to the PC. If we run the numbers based on just that, we find the PC has a 66% chance of winning.
Now, lets look at the case where the PC has the option to take either a +2 to their Strength score or a feat that gives them a power attack for -5 to hit and +10 to damage (think Great Weapon Master but without the bonus action attack on crits).
If the PC takes the +2 to Strength, their Strength modifier goes to +4 and their attack bonus goes to +6, and their average DPR increases to 8.05. And, if they take the power attack feature, their attack bonus goes to +0 and their damage modifier increases to +13, giving them an average DPR of 8.35.
Clearly, 8.35 DPR from the power attack is higher than 8.05 DPR from the Strength increase, so that must be the better choice. Right?
Well, no.
If we run the numbers on the encounter again, their chance of winning with the power attack is 71%. That's a nice improvement over their initial chance of winning of 66%, but how does it compare to the +2 Strength option? Turns out, its 6% lower. Running the numbers on the +2 Strength build results in a chance to win of 77%!
It's not just better, it's quite a bit better. How is that possible?
The reason is pretty simple. While the average is slightly higher for the power attack over the Strength improvement, the standard deviation is significantly worse (10.5 compared to 5.9 for the Strength improvement). In other words, the results are more variable for the PC who took the power attack option. When the inputs for an encounter are more variable, unlikely outcomes become more likely. And, since this encounter already favored the PC, that means the odds of the monster winning were bound to increase.
DPR can be useful, but it can sometimes be misleading. Similarly, average outcomes can be useful, but they also can sometimes be misleading, especially when large differences in variability are concerned. Control spells are great, but they often carry with them high levels of variability that needs to be accounted for.
Sword of Spirit
Legend
I find DPR is useful because it is simple to derived and compare. Most of the other important factors are not, so you have to go on your gut. Therefore I tend to determine DPR and use my gut to figure out how it works for the rest.
Real example. I've used projected DPR of the PCs in our main campaign up to level 20 to see how the balance should play out for the custom warrior-mage class I made, as well as to see how inter-party balance matches up with what we would tend to expect.
Since the warlock uses hex, and there is a battle master, I had to calculate not just at-will DPR, but almost at-will DPR including those factors.
The results indicated that the fighter and the swashbuckler rogue are pretty close for average DPR. The rogue wields an artifact rapier, and I did not adjust the fighter's stats for potential future better weapons, because that is unpredictable.
Since the rogue has an artifact (it was their PC's special thing, and each PC gets one) their DPR being really high is fine. The Battle Master gets all the rider effects from superior dice, so the balance between the party's big DPR hitters feels right.
Next up for DPR is the blade pact warlock. He's behind, but not by much. Since he has all that spellcasting, but used his class and feat resources to increase his melee presence, that also feels like the right spot for him in the party.
Next in line for DPR is the warrior-mage (imagine a Bladesinger with slightly less wizard sauce and slightly more fighter sauce for a rough idea). Depending on the party level, he is anywhere from fairly close to quite a bit behind the blade lock in DPR. However since he relies on green-flame blade (and War Magic, like Eldritch Knight, but with only 2 attacks even at high level), another important metric of comparison for him is multi-target DPR. In other words, if we assume a character can consistently attack 2 adjacent targets, how does his DPR rank? Well, it turns out, depending on the party level, it ranks anywhere from the 1st to maybe 3rd, but erring high. Since 2 adjacent foes happens frequently but not constantly, and his wizard spellasting is more flexible than the warlock's (especially outside combat), that also feels like about the right spot for him to be at in the party (and implies that I didn't botch the class design).
Finally comes the Lore bard, and his DPR (even with eldritch blast from Spell Sniper) is consistently far below everyone else. This also makes sense, because a bard would have to pick a different subclass and really build for it to be decent in that tier, and he went for skills and utility. And he's really good for skills and utility, in addition to being the party's healer and having all the party support elements bards are known for, and the ability to eventually snag any 8 spells in the game (and they will include fireball and wish). So while it wouldn't break party balance if his DPR was a little better, it should still be in last place, so the balance is right there too.
So there us a real life example of how I feel knowing DPR is useful, and how to interpret it along with other less easily quantifiable character balance considerations.
Real example. I've used projected DPR of the PCs in our main campaign up to level 20 to see how the balance should play out for the custom warrior-mage class I made, as well as to see how inter-party balance matches up with what we would tend to expect.
Since the warlock uses hex, and there is a battle master, I had to calculate not just at-will DPR, but almost at-will DPR including those factors.
The results indicated that the fighter and the swashbuckler rogue are pretty close for average DPR. The rogue wields an artifact rapier, and I did not adjust the fighter's stats for potential future better weapons, because that is unpredictable.
Since the rogue has an artifact (it was their PC's special thing, and each PC gets one) their DPR being really high is fine. The Battle Master gets all the rider effects from superior dice, so the balance between the party's big DPR hitters feels right.
Next up for DPR is the blade pact warlock. He's behind, but not by much. Since he has all that spellcasting, but used his class and feat resources to increase his melee presence, that also feels like the right spot for him in the party.
Next in line for DPR is the warrior-mage (imagine a Bladesinger with slightly less wizard sauce and slightly more fighter sauce for a rough idea). Depending on the party level, he is anywhere from fairly close to quite a bit behind the blade lock in DPR. However since he relies on green-flame blade (and War Magic, like Eldritch Knight, but with only 2 attacks even at high level), another important metric of comparison for him is multi-target DPR. In other words, if we assume a character can consistently attack 2 adjacent targets, how does his DPR rank? Well, it turns out, depending on the party level, it ranks anywhere from the 1st to maybe 3rd, but erring high. Since 2 adjacent foes happens frequently but not constantly, and his wizard spellasting is more flexible than the warlock's (especially outside combat), that also feels like about the right spot for him to be at in the party (and implies that I didn't botch the class design).
Finally comes the Lore bard, and his DPR (even with eldritch blast from Spell Sniper) is consistently far below everyone else. This also makes sense, because a bard would have to pick a different subclass and really build for it to be decent in that tier, and he went for skills and utility. And he's really good for skills and utility, in addition to being the party's healer and having all the party support elements bards are known for, and the ability to eventually snag any 8 spells in the game (and they will include fireball and wish). So while it wouldn't break party balance if his DPR was a little better, it should still be in last place, so the balance is right there too.
So there us a real life example of how I feel knowing DPR is useful, and how to interpret it along with other less easily quantifiable character balance considerations.
EzekielRaiden
Follower of the Way
I don't really think anyone has ever thought DPR was the only valid or useful metric.
Its benefits are that it is basic and universal. Everyone contributes to combat. Combat is the majority of challenging activities characters engage in across the breadth of D&D stuff (after all, the 5.0 rules for getting XP from non-combat stuff are literally "You can do that if you want! Just pretend it's a combat and decide how much XP the combat would be worth." I will never pass up on an opportunity to dunk on this terribad section of the 5.0 DMG.) At least one class, Fighter, was expressly designed to be "the best" at combat, something the designers explicitly referred to more than once, e.g. if Fighter is a 10/10 in combat and a 2/10 in everything else, Wizard might be 5/10 Combat or whatever.
This creates one particularly important useful comparison point: Fighters are, explicitly, supposed to be the best at combat, so if we compare their combat contributions to the combat contributions of other classes, we should see them come out on top.
They don't.
That's the key point behind using DPR. The things we've been told, the things the designers have emphasized over and over across dozens of media showings and podcasts etc. are simply not reflected in the basal combat prowess of the Fighter class. It is, in fact, quite easy to build a Wizard while ignoring subclass that is superior to a Fighter that has a subclass in terms of how much damage output the Wizard can produce. Due to the general pointlessness of in-combat healing that isn't whack-a-mole (a very sad game design choice 5.0 went for, which 5.5e seems to be shifting away from ever-so-slightly), the only other possible contribution to combat is granting others Advantage and handing out buffs. Most Fighters do not have the ability to hand out buffs meaningfully, and several other classes are strictly better at getting enemies to grant Advantage to allies. (I would know, I have a Wolf Totem Barbarian in my Monday game; she's a beast, no pun intended, and that Wolf Totem advantage on melee attacks has saved our bacon at least once.)
DPR is not, at all, the end-all, be-all of discussing gameplay balance or design. Anyone who says otherwise is lying to someone (either themselves or you). Instead, it keeps getting harped upon because even within the bounds of its applicability, it points to a serious game design issue. Fighters are 20 meters behind the starting line before the race even begins, and the only way they catch up is if they're specifically given favorable conditions (few long rests, many short rests, many combat rounds per day, combats which play to their strengths, combats which actively mess with casters and don't actively mess with melee physical attackers, etc.) and/or we assume knowingly inefficient/wasteful play on the part of more powerful classes.
If Fighter can't even get a clear win with DPR, trotting out "well conditions could be more favorable to them some of the time!" is conceding the point: Fighter needs favorable conditions. Other classes are balanced by being forced to deal with unfavorable conditions. Such a difference should not be baked into the game's rules. Either Fighters shouldn't need favorable conditions to stand on their own, or other classes should not be balanced with the expectation that the DM is holding them back.
Its benefits are that it is basic and universal. Everyone contributes to combat. Combat is the majority of challenging activities characters engage in across the breadth of D&D stuff (after all, the 5.0 rules for getting XP from non-combat stuff are literally "You can do that if you want! Just pretend it's a combat and decide how much XP the combat would be worth." I will never pass up on an opportunity to dunk on this terribad section of the 5.0 DMG.) At least one class, Fighter, was expressly designed to be "the best" at combat, something the designers explicitly referred to more than once, e.g. if Fighter is a 10/10 in combat and a 2/10 in everything else, Wizard might be 5/10 Combat or whatever.
This creates one particularly important useful comparison point: Fighters are, explicitly, supposed to be the best at combat, so if we compare their combat contributions to the combat contributions of other classes, we should see them come out on top.
They don't.
That's the key point behind using DPR. The things we've been told, the things the designers have emphasized over and over across dozens of media showings and podcasts etc. are simply not reflected in the basal combat prowess of the Fighter class. It is, in fact, quite easy to build a Wizard while ignoring subclass that is superior to a Fighter that has a subclass in terms of how much damage output the Wizard can produce. Due to the general pointlessness of in-combat healing that isn't whack-a-mole (a very sad game design choice 5.0 went for, which 5.5e seems to be shifting away from ever-so-slightly), the only other possible contribution to combat is granting others Advantage and handing out buffs. Most Fighters do not have the ability to hand out buffs meaningfully, and several other classes are strictly better at getting enemies to grant Advantage to allies. (I would know, I have a Wolf Totem Barbarian in my Monday game; she's a beast, no pun intended, and that Wolf Totem advantage on melee attacks has saved our bacon at least once.)
DPR is not, at all, the end-all, be-all of discussing gameplay balance or design. Anyone who says otherwise is lying to someone (either themselves or you). Instead, it keeps getting harped upon because even within the bounds of its applicability, it points to a serious game design issue. Fighters are 20 meters behind the starting line before the race even begins, and the only way they catch up is if they're specifically given favorable conditions (few long rests, many short rests, many combat rounds per day, combats which play to their strengths, combats which actively mess with casters and don't actively mess with melee physical attackers, etc.) and/or we assume knowingly inefficient/wasteful play on the part of more powerful classes.
If Fighter can't even get a clear win with DPR, trotting out "well conditions could be more favorable to them some of the time!" is conceding the point: Fighter needs favorable conditions. Other classes are balanced by being forced to deal with unfavorable conditions. Such a difference should not be baked into the game's rules. Either Fighters shouldn't need favorable conditions to stand on their own, or other classes should not be balanced with the expectation that the DM is holding them back.
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