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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Cyber-Dave" data-source="post: 6935162" data-attributes="member: 82132">This week, we travelled south of the slaver's fort and set up camp on the trail between that fort and Zhentil Keep. The idea is to ambush a few caravans heading south with slaves to weaken the fort's population before attacking the fort directly. While there, we found a campsite that appears to be a regular stopping point for the slavers. We then saw a group of about 15 humans make camp there. Some stealth, disguise, and deception allowed us to discover that these humans do not work for the same slaver, though they are still (in some ambiguous way) affiliated with Zhentil Keep. We took a group vote and decided to let them go unmolested (as our current goal is to rid the region of the specific group centred in the fort, and we didn't want to waste the resources on a fight that would not necessarily aid with that goal). Unfortunately, the group had a few trolls hot on their heals. We tried to hide from the trolls, but a few bad stealth checks gave us away, and we got stuck taking them on. After killing 2 trolls, 1 ran away, and we went back to camping out on the trail (without further incident this session). Observations of Note:I am now level 4. Even with crossbow expert and a total of 3 attacks a round (1 beast, 1 hand crossbow, 2nd bonus action hand crossbow) the game is staying balanced. Our human archer (with crossbow expert, sharpshooter, and a heavy crossbow) probably dealt the most damage this session (using all of his superiority dice). I would say that he was the MVP of damage this week. I started the fight dealing very decent damage, but then my wolf went down, and my overall damage over the course of the encounter was much lower than what he put out (I went 2 rounds without making a single attack, and he managed to deal as much with some single hits as all my damage for that round put together). Our druid/monk and I probably dealt about the same total damage this week. Our barbarian's ability to soak damage and our cleric's healing kept our group alive. I don't think we would have survived without either of them. Our cleric was having trouble manoeuvring around the battlefield as an encumbered gnome, and so had trouble splitting her healing between players. I wanted to try and get her mounted on my wolf, after my wolf went down once, to improve her manoeuvrability, but I was too late, and the idea didn't bear much fruit (the injured barbarian ran to our healer instead of waiting for the healer to make it to him). Our wizard's contribution was a little more subtle, but it was equally valuable. He was the only character with access to fire damage. All in all, in practice, I am pleased with how the class is playing. It feels neither too weak nor too strong.P.S. A little note on damage calculations in practice:I figured someone might want some more detailed input into how a character with a heavy crossbow and one attack managed to put out as much damage as the beastmaster with 1 beast attack and 2 light crossbow attacks. I think the trolls had an AC of 15, 17 when they had light cover from being in melee combat. The ranger ignores cover, so he always hit them on 15+. I didn't, and missed a few attacks with a 15/16. Statistically speaking, I only had a 30% of hitting with both my attacks. On the other hand, I had a 79% of hitting with at least 1 attack. Virtually every round when I attacked, I hit once for 1d6+3 damage (or 6 damage). My wolf had a 79% of hitting with each attack (pack tactics, and he only ganged up on trolls that were already being attacked by another character in melee). I had a 24% of hitting with everything I had (never happened this session, at least to my recollection), a 95% of hitting with something at least once (which I always did on any round I attacked, but I was forced to do something other than attack for 2 rounds), and a 63% of hitting with 1 wolf bite and 1 arrow (which usually, though not always, happened when I attacked). So, my average damage in practice was usually about (2d4+5)+(1d6+3)=16. However, my wolf dropped midway through the fight, and even after some healing he was in too rough a shape for me to risk throwing him back in the fray (as I do not own enough gold to resurrect him right now). So, midway through the fight, my average damage in practice dropped to about 1d6+3=6. That means that I spent 1/2 the fight dealing an average of about 16 damage per round in practice, 1/2 the fight dealing an average of about 6 damage per round in practice, and 2 rounds dealing nothing. He was attacking with a flat 65% of dealing all his damage in one hit. He rolled well and got a critical at least once. In fact, once, he rolled a sharpshooter attack with advantage and scored a critical hit. (He had a 65% of hitting with a sharpshooter attack when attacking with advantage.) When he hit, he was dealing 1d10+3 damage, 1d10+13 if he made a sharpshooter attack, and was frequently dealing 1d10+1D8+3/13. So, his average damage on a hit was 13/23. Obviously, when he scored the critical, he used a superiority die to gain +2d8 damage (at the cost of only one die). (It also helped that his attacks frequently gave the group nice extra tactical benefits--like the ability to move away from the hit troll without provoking an opportunity attack, but I digress.) He did, however, miss 1 sharpshooter attack (when he attacked without advantage). So, he dealt the most damage in one single hit when he scored a critical hit and rolled 2d10+2d8+13 damage (though he did roll a lot of low numbers on the damage roll and didn't, as a result, deal nearly as much as that attack could have), he was dealing about 13 damage every single round he hit, and he never stopped attacking even once (though he did miss at least once).Our respective theoretical average damage outputs would look like this: My character:With wolf ((0.7*10)+(0.0975*15))+((0.5*6.5)+(0.05*10))+((0.5*6.5)+(0.05*10))=15.9625 Without wolf ((0.5*6.5)+(0.05*10))+((0.5*6.5)+(0.05*10))=7.5His Character:Without Superiority Die (0.6*8.5)+(0.05*14)=5.8He added a superiority die whenever he hit, which statistically gave him (0.6*4.5)+(0.05*9)=3.15 damage per round for a total average damage of 8.95 damage per roundMaking a sharpshooter attack with advantage (and spending a superiority die on a hit) (0.5425*23)+(0.0975*34)=15.7925Making a sharpshooter attack without (and spending a superiority die on a hit) (0.35*23)+(0.05*34)=9.75So, when we combine those numbers with actual events, the theoretical average damage we should have expected to see over the course of the entire fight, given the actual events that occurred, and assuming a 6 round fight (which is what I estimate our combat actually lasted), would look like this:Me: 15.9625+15.9625+7.5+7.5+0+0=46.925Archer: 15.7925+9.75+8.95+8.95+8.95+8.95=61.3425Note that, theoretically speaking, he would have dealt more damage if he had used sharpshooter every round. That, however, felt like too much of a gamble considering what we were up against. So yea, as I was saying, our damage outputs felt balanced, and it seems a theoretical analysis of the math behind our encounter makes my subjective impression mathematically valid.</blockquote>

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