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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Kraydak" data-source="post: 4279160" data-attributes="member: 12306">A decent number of Fighter dailies have the Reliable tag: not expended on a miss.  WotC seems to be roughly (and I mean that "roughly") equating Reliable power-wise with 1/2 damage on miss.  Is this justified?  The answer is: Reliable is slightly worse than 1/2D on miss, in general.The math comparison between reliable and 1/2D turns out to be fairly simple.  As a toy problem, imagine three abilities, a Daily Reliable one that deals D damage on a hit, a Daily 1/2 damage on miss ability that also deals D damage on a hit, and an at-will ability (used after the daily is expended) that deals A damage on a hit.  We will assume that none of these abilities use different attack numbers/defenses, that the probability of a hit is h (and that of a miss is m=1-h).The trick is to realize that calculating the average damage for a certain number of rounds amounts to summing over all possible to-hit roll sequences (with average damage).  If we feed the same attack roll sequence to both Daily abilities, we can see that:A) if the first attack is a hit, both abilities have the same result.B) if the first attack is a miss, then everything AFTER the first hit is the same (both abilities leave you using at-wills)Then we can see that if, over a sequence of N attacks, every attack is a miss, the 1/2D ability does D/2 extra damage over the Reliable one.  This has a probability of occuring of m^N=(1-h)^N and thus increases the damage output of the 1/2D attack over the reliable one by:m^N*(D/2).If, instead, over a sequence of N attacks, the first one misses AND there is at least one hit, then, from the first attack up to and including the first hit, the 1/2D ability does D/2 (first swing)+A damage while the Reliable one does D damage.  This has a probability of occuring of m*(1-m^(N-1)) and leads to the Reliable ability doing:m*(1-m^(N-1))*(D/2-A) damage over the 1/2D one.So, the first thing to notice is that if D<=2A, reliable is always worse that 1/2D on miss.  Very, very roughly, D=2A throughout a fighter's career.  The second thing to notice is that if D>2A, then a long enough fight will have Reliable being better than 1/2D on miss.  Note that if D is only slightly greater than 2A, this fight length may well be long enough to not matter.Reaping Strike.  As an at-will ability, Reaping Strike is very nice.  In the above toy model, we assumed that the at-will ability only does damage on a hit.  If the fighter in question has Reaping Strike, he gets to add (average number of misses before the first hit for a fight of length N rounds-1)*(Str or Str/2) damage to A for purposes of weighing Reliable vs. 1/2D on miss.  This very rapidly swings things against Reliable.Debuffs/Effects: a potential advantage of Reliable is that is means you *will* eventually land your status effect.  On the other hand, most 1/2D on miss abilities w/status effects land a reduced status effect on a miss.  Then you need to weigh the benefits of a status effect *now* vs a better one later AND the possibility of the at-will landing status effects of its own (Tide of Iron is the only significant one here, although Lasting Frost+Frost weapon could also count).</blockquote>

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