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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Yair" data-source="post: 3564147" data-attributes="member: 10913">My own calculations indicate a difference of as much as 100 hp and more between the average for a single strike and the average for iterative attacks at level 20. The amount varies wildly with the amount of damage dealt in one blow and the opponent's AC; a dagger wielding PC warrior going against a high-AC opponent may gain less than 60 hp damage due to iterative attacks.The effect of iterative attacks is, really, to multiply the usual attack's damage by some amount, that depends on how difficult the target is to hit (up to x4 if all iterative attacks hit). With AC=13+CR, the multiplier seems to be approximately x1.5 at level 6, x2 at level 11, x3 at level 16.   Imposing such a multiplier will skewer results when facing enemies of different AC - inflicting too much damage on opponents with higher AC and too little on opponents with lower AC. Considering the Full Attack's role as a weapon to chase off big bads from the fighter's vicinity, this is probably the wrong way to balance it. I'd think lowering it to x2.5 at level 16 might work better to not chase off the big bads too much. [An even more gradual progression (x1.5 at level 6, x 2.0 at level 12, x2.25 at level 16) is actually more fitting to my calculations.]The Full Attack's role in wiping out mooks (of low AC) is better handled differently, by spreading damage across several blows.Since iterative attacks essentially multiply the usual weapon damage, the effect of iterative attacks in terms of hp is dependant on the weapon's usual damage. A Str 31 Fighter wielding a +5 Greatsword does damage on a succesfull attack that is very different from a Str 9 fighter wielding a non-magical dagger; no single formula (+BAB, doubling the base weapon damage, and so on) can hope to reasonably cope with all this variety. If the usual weapon damage is not multiplied, the only other path is to decide arbitrarily on some bonus damage that represents a "typical" Full Attack and recognize that this will discourage the use of heavy-damage weapons. For a longsword, this seems to be +6 dmg at level 6, +14 at level 11, +37 at level 16, up to +43 to 57 at level 20; this can be approximated fairly well by the easier +5 at level 6, +15 at level 11, and +30 at level 16. [This is slightly too high for a high-AC opponent. It is far short of a Greatsword's bonuses.]EDIT: I uploaded the excel sheet I did the calculations with; while I'm sure the attack-probability math is wrong, I don't think it substantially changes the results.EDIT 2:Changed the number crunching (and spreadsheet) to be more accurate, but the bottom line is still much the same. I recommend multiplying the attacks' damage (not just the base weapon's damage) by 1.5 at level 6, 2 at level 11, and 3 at level 16. This won't be perfect, but it comes very close to making the average damage per round equivalent to a full attack.[code]Average Damage per Round*Level / ST     V1    V2    V3    My1       8.52   [B]8.52[/B]  9.17  9.17  [B]8.52[/B]6       29.5   23.63 22.75 23.63 [B]26.25[/B]11      48.99  36.45 33.49 40.39 [B]45.31[/B]16      99.98  56.94 51.47 71.18 [B]101.84[/B]20      143.45 64.61 63.51 83.22 [B]124.83[/B]For fighter wielding greatsword; see assumptions in spreadsheet. ST is standard/core, V1 multiplies base weapon damage, V2 adds BAB to damage, V2 adds BAB with iterative to damage, My multiplies damage by 1.5, 2, or 3 (at levels 6,11,16).[/code]As can be seen adding BAB to damage falls very short at high levels (dealing less than half the core-rules damage at level 20).</blockquote>

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