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Character Builds & Optimization
No Prebuff - Round 1 - Damage Rankings
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<blockquote data-quote="borg286" data-source="post: 7993163" data-attributes="member: 68679"><p>I agree that Damage Now > Damage later, but having no arena for the rest of the day's attacks closes you and followers of this thread from these "many players" Just as players that have 8 encounters per day with 3 short rests may be in a minority due to the large variation from table to table, this equally extends to 1 encounter days. The thing you have going for you is that everybody has a first round of the day with varying degrees of risk on the character's health. This may well be the largest minority you can safely determine standards for. On the other hand there have been plenty of threads polling people for the number of rounds they have. Have you considered extending the time limits to be the average from that poll? Candidates would need to provide what they do for the remaining rounds. You would then have 2 lists: round 1 kings, and 5 round average kings. I'd wager to say that you'll get quite different orderings. This increases tedium for you and authors of builds, but provides readers with information that is more applicable to them.</p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p>Fighters, and Variant Humans, don't contribute much to usefulness outside of their niche (fighters get 1 skill outside the optimal Perception, Human's extra feat is almost always used for their 1 trick w/o concern for usefulness past their target level). This puts tons of pressure on their background to carry the load of use outside combat. Thankfully fighter's Archetype means they'll be useful for each encounter but not as much if they are using a weak weapon.</p><p></p><p>Guided Strike is literally 2x per day. War Preist makes him MAD (Str, Con, Wis) so the extra attacks mean 2-3 extra single attacks per day. These become worthless at higher levels.</p><p>Lucky Smiting Paladin blows spells and dice in round 1. Due to using Short Swords his damage drops off after expending his slots on smites.</p><p>Catapult Wizard has epitomized glass cannon. Thankfully wizard spellbook makes him less of a 1 trick pony, but he can pull this off only once then has to wait till he's in a city to buy some more acid.</p><p>Magic Initiate (Magic Missile), that is what I call overfitting for level 2.</p><p>I could go on.</p><p>It comes with the terrain of Damage Kings that you'll get glass cannons as the monsters they fight are a block of tofu. The fact that it doesn't have HP means you'll get candidates that frequently do overkill damage. KPR does a little bit to help people see that "he'd dead jim" when the KPR > 1. But as you pointed out, the variance in 5e means that the party could face a higher CR rating, but just fewer total monsters. Thus there is a place for these glass cannons.</p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p>From the looks of it, you've got as many candidates as I had when I was about 10% through the span of the DPR King Candidates lifetime. I didn't have that many things that DMs would call cheese at that milestone. The Sorlock being similar to the frost cheese in 4e as both were in the PHB from the start, which optimizes for the opposite of the 1 encounter day. Biasing towards this end and accounting for more than 1 target you'd see more of these builds instead.</p><p>In case this grows as large as mine did, I bet you'll see more arguments about the fine points with no good consensus. On the other hand tweets from the devs seem to quiet people down, which I didn't have when working with the DPR Kings.</p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p>Then please be clear about this in your first post. It would be nice if you had a FAQ where you state why you're not accounting for area damage, multiple rounds, multiple short rests, encounter 2, HP, secondary enemy proximity to the first and so forth. Area damage is just one thing that abides by the rules you posted yet I don't see any build that shoots for area damage arguing that there is bound to be 3 enemies somewhere on the map that a burning hands would capture. It doesn't matter if I have to wade through 5 opportunity attacks to get there, this is about the damage, and the rules don't distinguish between the first and secondary targets, therefore I add their damage up.</p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p>I agree that accounting for Lucky, and "if you miss then" is beyond the scope of a beginner's guide. At least a note that lets people know that DPR accounts for to-hit chance by multiplying the chance to hit by the average damage on a hit. You're probably right that most people would intuitivly understand this, but I've seen enough people fall into the trap of average damage = DPR = expected damage. I've seen aDPR but don't know if it is universally understood to take hit chance into account. Your rules imply but could do with a few more words to be explicit.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="borg286, post: 7993163, member: 68679"] I agree that Damage Now > Damage later, but having no arena for the rest of the day's attacks closes you and followers of this thread from these "many players" Just as players that have 8 encounters per day with 3 short rests may be in a minority due to the large variation from table to table, this equally extends to 1 encounter days. The thing you have going for you is that everybody has a first round of the day with varying degrees of risk on the character's health. This may well be the largest minority you can safely determine standards for. On the other hand there have been plenty of threads polling people for the number of rounds they have. Have you considered extending the time limits to be the average from that poll? Candidates would need to provide what they do for the remaining rounds. You would then have 2 lists: round 1 kings, and 5 round average kings. I'd wager to say that you'll get quite different orderings. This increases tedium for you and authors of builds, but provides readers with information that is more applicable to them. Fighters, and Variant Humans, don't contribute much to usefulness outside of their niche (fighters get 1 skill outside the optimal Perception, Human's extra feat is almost always used for their 1 trick w/o concern for usefulness past their target level). This puts tons of pressure on their background to carry the load of use outside combat. Thankfully fighter's Archetype means they'll be useful for each encounter but not as much if they are using a weak weapon. Guided Strike is literally 2x per day. War Preist makes him MAD (Str, Con, Wis) so the extra attacks mean 2-3 extra single attacks per day. These become worthless at higher levels. Lucky Smiting Paladin blows spells and dice in round 1. Due to using Short Swords his damage drops off after expending his slots on smites. Catapult Wizard has epitomized glass cannon. Thankfully wizard spellbook makes him less of a 1 trick pony, but he can pull this off only once then has to wait till he's in a city to buy some more acid. Magic Initiate (Magic Missile), that is what I call overfitting for level 2. I could go on. It comes with the terrain of Damage Kings that you'll get glass cannons as the monsters they fight are a block of tofu. The fact that it doesn't have HP means you'll get candidates that frequently do overkill damage. KPR does a little bit to help people see that "he'd dead jim" when the KPR > 1. But as you pointed out, the variance in 5e means that the party could face a higher CR rating, but just fewer total monsters. Thus there is a place for these glass cannons. From the looks of it, you've got as many candidates as I had when I was about 10% through the span of the DPR King Candidates lifetime. I didn't have that many things that DMs would call cheese at that milestone. The Sorlock being similar to the frost cheese in 4e as both were in the PHB from the start, which optimizes for the opposite of the 1 encounter day. Biasing towards this end and accounting for more than 1 target you'd see more of these builds instead. In case this grows as large as mine did, I bet you'll see more arguments about the fine points with no good consensus. On the other hand tweets from the devs seem to quiet people down, which I didn't have when working with the DPR Kings. Then please be clear about this in your first post. It would be nice if you had a FAQ where you state why you're not accounting for area damage, multiple rounds, multiple short rests, encounter 2, HP, secondary enemy proximity to the first and so forth. Area damage is just one thing that abides by the rules you posted yet I don't see any build that shoots for area damage arguing that there is bound to be 3 enemies somewhere on the map that a burning hands would capture. It doesn't matter if I have to wade through 5 opportunity attacks to get there, this is about the damage, and the rules don't distinguish between the first and secondary targets, therefore I add their damage up. I agree that accounting for Lucky, and "if you miss then" is beyond the scope of a beginner's guide. At least a note that lets people know that DPR accounts for to-hit chance by multiplying the chance to hit by the average damage on a hit. You're probably right that most people would intuitivly understand this, but I've seen enough people fall into the trap of average damage = DPR = expected damage. I've seen aDPR but don't know if it is universally understood to take hit chance into account. Your rules imply but could do with a few more words to be explicit. [/QUOTE]
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