D&D 5E (2024) Ranged Builds Thread

[mellored]

It's meaningless damage if it means your ally did less because of it and no enemies would have otherwise done more.

not if your ally gets to save resources.

No idea what this means. I'm asking how do you count having extra turns here if you end up in initiative between the 2 enemies? You might kill one earlier, but you won't the other. Is that +1/2 a turn when that happens or something else?

If you have 2 enemies with 50hp, you need to deal 100 damage.
If you have 1 enemy with 100HP, you need to deal 100 damage.
Same damage delt.

It does change damage the party took.

Okay, then going first isn't extra DPR so it adds 0 to the calcs.

why wouldn't it?

 

[FrogReaver]

Here's what I think the proper way to handle initiative would in terms of DPR would be.

Consider the observation that a party doing double DPR halves the number of enemy turns. That is enemy turns and DPR are inversely proportional. So if we can determine the expected difference in enemy turns for differences in initiative we can then use that inverse relationship to determine the impact on party dpr. Then if we take our share of party DPR we can compute how much that's raising our DPR (percentage based). That would give us a DPR multiplier we can apply based on initiative.

That said, this metric may not be very stable over different party and enemy compositions and initiatives, but it might be enough to get an estimated rule of thumb when calculated out.

We also have a ceiling so if we get values above that we'd know we've done something wrong.

One downside here is that we have to make assumptions about the party initiatives, and party DPR, making it much more assumption driven than normal DPR which just depends on monster AC.

 

[FrogReaver]

If you have 2 enemies with 50hp, you need to deal 100 damage.
If you have 1 enemy with 100HP, you need to deal 100 damage.
Same damage delt.

yes, and?

It does change damage the party took.

Which is the basis for what makes DPR such a useful metric.

why wouldn't it?

DPR measures your damage per round. Getting extra damage along with an extra round means your DPR remains unchanged.

 

[mellored]

One downside here is that we have to make assumptions about the party initiatives, and party DPR, making it much more assumption driven than normal DPR which just depends on monster AC.

Your comparing ranged fighter to ranged fighter. That eliminates a lot of variables.

But yes, you will need to make assumptions to get anywhere. Can't figure out the chance of having Alert and handing your winning initiative to the wizard a percentage of the time that enemies are in fireball formation vs them spreading out... goes well out of hand.

For a quick sanity test, lets say advantage lets you go first 40% more often, and that gives you a 50% chance of it being a useful "extra turn"
= 20% more damage.

 

[mellored]

DPR measures your damage per round. Getting extra damage along with an extra round means your DPR remains unchanged.

then battlemaster dice are not helping either. Since that's extra damage over a limited number of rounds.

 

[FrogReaver]

Your comparing ranged fighter to ranged fighter. That eliminates a lot of variables.

Not for the method I just proposed.

But yes, you will need to make assumptions to get anywhere.

The complaint isn't that I'm making assumptions, it's that the assumptions i'm having to make are far from universal and not very consisent.

For a quick sanity test, lets say advantage lets you go first 40% more often, and that gives you a 50% chance of it being a useful "extra turn"
= 20% more damage.

Well no, you going first isn't enough to actually get an extra turn. You could have went 4th and still had the same number of turns, or even last. That's a major part of my point. Then also, having a true extra round in a 4 round encounter is only 25% more damage. So based on your method above you should get 5% more damage or something like that. (And that's for what IMO are very inflated numbers in your example).

 

[FrogReaver]

then battlemaster dice are not helping either. Since that's extra damage over a limited number of rounds.

This makes no sense.

Battlemaster dice only add damage, not extra rounds.

 

[FrogReaver]

I think the key take away is, winning initiative isn't actually an extra turn compared to not winning it. In the 1v1 scenario you could say it's essentially equivalent to an extra turn, but as soon as you move to a 4PC vs 5enemy encounter it's nowhere close to that.

 

[mellored]

Well no, you going first isn't enough to actually get an extra turn. You could have went 4th and still had the same number of turns, or even last. That's a major part of my point.

That's why I multiplied it by 50%.

40% chance to go first.
50% chance it makes a difference.
= 20%

Feel free to figure out your own %, that's just rough ballpark.

It's not going to be doing 2x damage or anything like that.

 

[FrogReaver]

That's why I multiplied it by 50%.

40% chance to go first.
50% chance it makes a difference.
= 20%

Feel free to figure out your own %, that's just rough ballpark.

It's not going to be doing 2x damage or anything like that.

You've forgotten maybe the most important step. This needs multiplied by the damage increase of you getting an extra round (assuming it's an actual extra round which i'm not on board with but since you view it that way then it needs accounted for that way). In a 4 round encounter an extra round would be +25% damage, right?

So take your 20% and multiply by 25% = 5%.