Scythe Wielder - Feats

[Shard O'Glase]

On a metagame level I can't fathom going scythe, sunder sucks way too much for me to use a wood weapon in mellee. If I'm DMing I never use sunder so my players can feel free to go for it.

I think scythe is all about the cool factor of it being a scythe. And yes the crit is cool but as like a fighter-barbarian like my last character I wouldn't of gone improved crit, just didn't have enough feats. My game plan ran out at 12th level though so I may have picked it up at 15th can't say for sure.

If I had stayed fighter my game plan would of ran out much earlier like at 8th level, so I may have picked it up at 9th. I definetly would of picked it up if power crit ws in the game I was playing, but we just used the PH for feats.

Personlly though I think you gain mroe use out of a focussed fighter till 6ish level, and then switch into ranged feats for a bit. All you really need is point blank, rapid, and maybe precise shot though once melle happens you'll likely be there its not essential. Then I round out my prefered style form there on.

 

[Dreeble]

Small sidetrack

Heya:

This is hopefully only a very small sidetrack. I'm curious as to how people determine average weapon damage when taking into account criticals.

I understand people (Spikey, for example) have their own average damage calculators, but I wrote my own anyway. I was mostly curious to see how 3.0 Power Attack compared to 3.5. For those interested it seemed like, except for the extremes, Power Attack in 3.0 either is bad, or never use more than 2 points. For 3.5, it seemed like people should _always_ use a point or two of PA, and sometimes up to 5 or so.

Anway, average damage is hit chance * average damage. If I take into account criticals, is that hit chance * average damage + (threat range or hit chance, whichever is lower) * average damage * critical multiplier?

Thanks much,
Dreeble

 

[gordonknox]

That build is actually pretty common. Many scythe wielders head towards Weapon Master... another +2 to your 18-20 crit range with Imp Crit and a keen scythe is fun.

Weapon master, from Sword and Fist?

gk

 

[Shard O'Glase]

yup, and I think OA had a varient.

 

[Mike Sullivan]

Re: Small sidetrack

Heya:

This is hopefully only a very small sidetrack. I'm curious as to how people determine average weapon damage when taking into account criticals.

Heya, Dreeble.

Actually, I generally just use this as a shortcut for determining critical damage (I'll explain why afterwards):

If crit range/multiplier is:

20/x2 then multiply damage by 1.05
20/x3 or 19-20/x2 then multiply damage by 1.10
20/x4 or 18-20/x2 then multiply damage by 1.15
19-20/x3 or 17-20/x2 then multiply damage by 1.20
18-20/x3, 19-20/x4, or 15-20/x2 then multiply damage by 1.30
18-20/x4 or 12-20/x2 then multiply damage by 1.45

(Basically, a martial weapon like a longsword or battle axe gets a 10% bonus for criticals, "special" weapons like a pick or rapier get a 15% bonus, "bad" weapons like monk weapons or most simple weapons get a 5% bonus. Double or triple the bonus for Keen and improved critical as necessary.)

Okay, so how does that work?

A critical hit is determined by two D20 rolls -- one of them is within your critical threshold, and the other is within your to-hit threshhold.

The chance of rolling into your critical threshhold is set -- if your threshold is 20, then it's 5%, if it's 19-20, it's 10%, etc.

As you probably know, the odds of succeeding in two unrelated things (like two die rolls) are the odds of each event multiplied by each other.

Obviously, your chance of rolling high enough to hit is the same as your chance to hit. And the chance to roll your threshold is noted above. So, for example, if you have a 19-20 threshhold, obviously your chance of succesfully critting is 10% of your chance to hit.

So, taking that case above, 90% of the time, you do a normal hit, and 10% of the time, you do a critical hit. Let's assume that your critical multiplier is x2. That means, if d is your damage, that your total expected damage can be written as:

.9d + .1*2d

Right? (90% of the time, you do normal damage, 10% of the time, you do twice normal damage).

Expanding that out, we see that it goes like this:

.9 + .2d

1.1d

So multiply normal damage by 1.1, and you'll get your damage taking into account critical hits.

Similarly, what if you have a 20/x3 crit?

.95d + .05 * 3d
.95d + .15d
1.1d

Etc.

So that's how I derived all of the above numbers. The only thing you have to watch out for is this: If your to-hit roll is bad enough that you don't hit on some part of your critical threshold (for example, you have a 12-20/x2 thresh, and you hit on a 14+), then your threshold effectively "shrinks" (to 14-20/x2, in our example). Then, you can't just use the normal figures above, you have to recalculate. In this case, it'd be:

.65d + .35 * 2d
.65d + .7d
1.35d

Is that relatively clear?

 

[Dreeble]

Crystal

Heya:

Yep, and thanks. Very clear. Factoring in criticals really changes when it's optimum to use power attack. Also, I'm not too impressed with Scythes now, I think.

Take care,
Dreeble

 

[Mike Sullivan]

Re: Crystal

Heya:

Yep, and thanks. Very clear. Factoring in criticals really changes when it's optimum to use power attack. Also, I'm not too impressed with Scythes now, I think.

I ran the numbers on scythes at one point. They're better than greatswords (in terms of expected damage against creatures susceptible to criticals) once you've got a +12 or higher bonus to damage, including all sources, assuming both the greatsword and the scythe are keen and you have improved critical.

...And you have to get significantly above +12 to damage before the difference is terribly noticeable.

Yeah, I'm not too impressed with them either. But they look cool!

 

[Shard O'Glase]

yeah the difference between 2d4 and 2d6 is signifigant, but ave damage is 5 to 7. 2 points a hit is hard to make up with a slightly better crit. Same deal I suppose with the flachion, though that is my favortie weapon.

I think they should of been 1d10 instead of 2d4, but It's been way too long since I took statistics for me to attempt to figure it out.

 

[Dreeble]

Numbers to plug in?

Heya:

With all the discussion on 3.5 Power Attack going around, I've become really curious about this stuff. Mike, could you give me some numbers to plug in, since I'm just not seeing Scythes being worthwhile _at all_ (well, relative to Great Swords at least).

Thanks,
Dreeble

 

[Mike Sullivan]

Sure.

So, we're looking at the damage of great swords versus the damage of scythes: 2d6 19-20/x2 vs 2d4 20/x4.

Basically, then, what we're interested in is this inequality

Let's take 2d4 to be the same as "5" and 2d6 to be the same as "7."

First, let's check out the case where we've got a Keen scythe and a Keen greatsword, and improved criticals in each one.

In that case, what we're interested in is this inequality (note that chance to hit is the same for each weapon, so we abstract that out of our discussion entirely).

(5 + x) * 1.45 > (7 + x) * 1.3

(In other words, what is the damage bonus x such that the scythe's total average damage is higher than the greatsword's total expected damage?)

Answer:

7.25 + 1.45x > 9.1 + 1.3x
.15x > 1.85
x > 12.33333...

So, if your damage bonus is 13 or higher, in this case, it's slightly better to use a scythe.

Now, what if we don't have the keen enchantment available?

In that case, we're looking at:

(5 + y) * 1.3 > (7 + y) * 1.2
6.5 + 1.3y > 8.4 + 1.2y
.1 y > 1.9
y > 19

So if your damage bonus (note: not expected damage, but damage bonus is 20 or higher, it's better to use a non-keen scythe (if you have improved critical) than a non-keen greatsword).

Is that what you wanted, or did you want something that's Power-Attack related? Power Attack is kind of a difficult comparison to make, since it relates a lot of the AC of the opponent. Broadly speaking, Power Attack is better for the scythe than for the greatsword -- because PA bonus damage is before-criticals, it's really multiplied by the critical multiplier. So, when you trade in one point of attack, you don't really get +2 to damage with the greatsword, you get +2.4. And for the scythe, you trade in one point of attack for +2.9 damage.

I'm not really sure how to put that in formal mathematics terms. Also, whenever I attempt to do so, the critical multiplier keeps cancelling out, which would imply that there isn't an advantage in Power Attack to having a scythe. So somewhere I'm making an error, but I can't figure out where. I'll keep chugging at it.

Did I mention I'm a computer scientist? Why the hell am I doing all this by concrete analysis? I should just run a brute force calculation.