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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Ridley's Cohort" data-source="post: 3335818" data-attributes="member: 545">Yup.Average damage does not always compare directly to average damage when the characters are in the hands of skilled tacticians.The effect you analyzed becomes extreme when you add in Cleave.  (Impressive analysis, BTW.)In the 1st session I played D&D 3.0, we ran into Zombies.  To our surprise, they were not going down with one hit as expected.  In fact, the PA/Cleave Fighter with a Great Axe could only kill a Zombie with a single blow if he rolled above average.In that situation, a 1st-2nd level PC should just go for max Power Attack.  His average damage against the primary target may well drop slightly, but the tactical bonanza of removing 1 or 2 full health Zombies in a single attack is extremely sweet, even at the cost of missing outright.Heck, max Power Attack made sense even if it were one lone Zombie where cleave is not a factor.  A Zombie with 1 HP is for all practical purposes a Zombie that is a 50% HP -- a Zombie that survives one hit is almost never going to survive a second.The other half of the story is that TWF specialist should not try and compete with the heavy offensive fighters in the average damage department.  A better approach is to maximize the number of enemies dropped versus number of attacks received.  Tempt the enemy into to giving you full attacks.  A TWf specialist standing next to multiple weak enemies can easily be as effective or more effective that a Great Cleave specialist, in spite of a disadvantage in average damage.  Cleave and Great Cleave do not yield any bounty if you happen to miss the first attack.  A TWF specialist has a hedge against runs of bad luck.  As the DMG says, removing luck tends to favor PCs while tempting the luck of the dice eventually yields dead PCs.For example: A Cleave fighter might have a 25% of killing one weak foe plus a 25% change of killing two weak foes.  (~50% chance of hitting killing the first one, then a ~50% of killing a second.)  Average kills = 0.75.  The TWF specialist has two chances and therefore a 50% chance of killing only one weak foe plus a 25% chance of killing two.  Average kills = 1.00Who is the better fighter?Furthermore, the TWF can take a 5' step in the middle of his full iterative attack.  Unless the Cleave fighter has reach, many cleaves do not materialize for lack of a target in the immediate vicinity.So I tend to laugh about comparisions between fighting styles that focus solely on average damage.  Different fighting style demand different tactics to gain the full benefits.  If you are obsessing about quantitative damage and not seeing the particular qualitative advantages available, then you still have a lot to learn about tactics.</blockquote>

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