Menu
News
All News
Dungeons & Dragons
Level Up: Advanced 5th Edition
Pathfinder
Starfinder
Warhammer
2d20 System
Year Zero Engine
Industry News
Reviews
Dragon Reflections
White Dwarf Reflections
Columns
Weekly Digests
Weekly News Digest
Freebies, Sales & Bundles
RPG Print News
RPG Crowdfunding News
Game Content
ENterplanetary DimENsions
Mythological Figures
Opinion
Worlds of Design
Peregrine's Nest
RPG Evolution
Other Columns
From the Freelancing Frontline
Monster ENcyclopedia
WotC/TSR Alumni Look Back
4 Hours w/RSD (Ryan Dancey)
The Road to 3E (Jonathan Tweet)
Greenwood's Realms (Ed Greenwood)
Drawmij's TSR (Jim Ward)
Community
Forums & Topics
Forum List
Latest Posts
Forum list
*Dungeons & Dragons
Level Up: Advanced 5th Edition
D&D Older Editions, OSR, & D&D Variants
*TTRPGs General
*Pathfinder & Starfinder
EN Publishing
*Geek Talk & Media
Search forums
Chat/Discord
Resources
Wiki
Pages
Latest activity
Media
New media
New comments
Search media
Downloads
Latest reviews
Search resources
EN Publishing
Store
EN5ider
Adventures in ZEITGEIST
Awfully Cheerful Engine
What's OLD is NEW
Judge Dredd & The Worlds Of 2000AD
War of the Burning Sky
Level Up: Advanced 5E
Events & Releases
Upcoming Events
Private Events
Featured Events
Socials!
EN Publishing
Twitter
BlueSky
Facebook
Instagram
EN World
BlueSky
YouTube
Facebook
Twitter
Twitch
Podcast
Features
Top 5 RPGs Compiled Charts 2004-Present
Adventure Game Industry Market Research Summary (RPGs) V1.0
Ryan Dancey: Acquiring TSR
Q&A With Gary Gygax
D&D Rules FAQs
TSR, WotC, & Paizo: A Comparative History
D&D Pronunciation Guide
Million Dollar TTRPG Kickstarters
Tabletop RPG Podcast Hall of Fame
Eric Noah's Unofficial D&D 3rd Edition News
D&D in the Mainstream
D&D & RPG History
About Morrus
Log in
Register
What's new
Search
Search
Search titles only
By:
Forums & Topics
Forum List
Latest Posts
Forum list
*Dungeons & Dragons
Level Up: Advanced 5th Edition
D&D Older Editions, OSR, & D&D Variants
*TTRPGs General
*Pathfinder & Starfinder
EN Publishing
*Geek Talk & Media
Search forums
Chat/Discord
Menu
Log in
Register
Install the app
Install
Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.
Community
General Tabletop Discussion
*Dungeons & Dragons
Reducing incoming damage: +1 =/= +5%
JavaScript is disabled. For a better experience, please enable JavaScript in your browser before proceeding.
You are using an out of date browser. It may not display this or other websites correctly.
You should upgrade or use an
alternative browser
.
Reply to thread
Message
<blockquote data-quote="Staffan" data-source="post: 8472498" data-attributes="member: 907"><p>I recall that in the early days of World of Warcraft, the concept of "effective health" for tanks was floating around. Basically, the idea was that if you had 1,000 health and 50% damage reduction, your effective health was 2,000 (1,000/50%).</p><p></p><p>Using the same metric but with the more stochastic way armor works in D&D, we can see that a 12th level fighter with Con 14 will have 100 hp (assuming fixed hp). Looking over the first page of results when searching D&D Beyond for CR 12 creatures (yes, I know 5e is unlike 3e and Pathfinder in that it doesn't assume fights against roughly "on-par" creatures, but it's helpful to get a baseline) shows that most have an attack bonus of +7 to +9 with occasional outliers, so I'm going to simplify to +8. If the fighter has full plate, that's an AC of 18, meaning the monsters hit on 10+ and miss on 9-, which means the fighter only takes 55% of incoming damage. So the fighter has an effective health of 100/0.55 = 182 hp.</p><p></p><p>Adding a +2 AC bonus (e.g. a shield) to the fighter lowers that to 45%, so they now have 222 effective hp, a 22% increase. Adding a second +2 bonus (e.g. <em>shield of faith</em>) lowers it even more to 35%, for 286 effective hp, which is a 57% increase over the baseline or a 29% increase over a single +2 bonus.</p><p></p><p>This is of course a simplification. For one thing, I've ignored crits, because the extra damage from one varies in 5e. I've also ignored damage that bypass AC, which is fairly common. But it shows a tendency that boosting AC has accelerating returns (or whatever the opposite of diminishing returns is).</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Staffan, post: 8472498, member: 907"] I recall that in the early days of World of Warcraft, the concept of "effective health" for tanks was floating around. Basically, the idea was that if you had 1,000 health and 50% damage reduction, your effective health was 2,000 (1,000/50%). Using the same metric but with the more stochastic way armor works in D&D, we can see that a 12th level fighter with Con 14 will have 100 hp (assuming fixed hp). Looking over the first page of results when searching D&D Beyond for CR 12 creatures (yes, I know 5e is unlike 3e and Pathfinder in that it doesn't assume fights against roughly "on-par" creatures, but it's helpful to get a baseline) shows that most have an attack bonus of +7 to +9 with occasional outliers, so I'm going to simplify to +8. If the fighter has full plate, that's an AC of 18, meaning the monsters hit on 10+ and miss on 9-, which means the fighter only takes 55% of incoming damage. So the fighter has an effective health of 100/0.55 = 182 hp. Adding a +2 AC bonus (e.g. a shield) to the fighter lowers that to 45%, so they now have 222 effective hp, a 22% increase. Adding a second +2 bonus (e.g. [I]shield of faith[/I]) lowers it even more to 35%, for 286 effective hp, which is a 57% increase over the baseline or a 29% increase over a single +2 bonus. This is of course a simplification. For one thing, I've ignored crits, because the extra damage from one varies in 5e. I've also ignored damage that bypass AC, which is fairly common. But it shows a tendency that boosting AC has accelerating returns (or whatever the opposite of diminishing returns is). [/QUOTE]
Insert quotes…
Verification
Post reply
Community
General Tabletop Discussion
*Dungeons & Dragons
Reducing incoming damage: +1 =/= +5%
Top