D&D 5E The impact of ASIs

[CreamCloud0]

A half-feat is an effect with a +1 to an attribute?

That was my understanding yes, because you’re still getting half your ASI increase you’ve only spent ‘half a feat’

 

[DND_Reborn]

So...you want 5e to offer a half-level (or larger) bonus, and you want to go back to ASIs being separate from ability scores, so people can advance their ability scores and also have feats.

Maybe it was just my long day at work, but what you are saying here seems to not have much to do with what I am doing there...

Why not just play 4e? I'm absolutely serious here. 4e offers exactly that (a half-level bonus), a clean ASI schedule (which you could easily add a "please do downtime to justify what you spend them on" house rule), and feats that can be relatively chunky and don't compete for the same schedule as ASIs.

People keep saying stuff like this, and there are lots of reasons not to...

1. I don't own any of it.
2. From what I've seen of it, there is a lot of it I would probably not like.
3. I don't really want to take the time to learn a new system which I don't think will enjoy.

 

[Minigiant]

They aren't important in 5e. People are just conditioned from 3e and 4e to grub for that +1 and they can't get out of the mindset that the +s are necessary and meaningful.

Yes and No.

+1s aren't important... unless you use them all the time. The issue is 5e is so simplified for ease and speed that you end up doing the same roll over and over to the point that the +1 cumulates so much it matters. So widening your range loses overspecialization.

Also DMs and written adventures dont spread over the targets and challenge types enough.

That's why instead of ASI and Feats, PCs should upgrade the features of their classes and races.

"But that's too much math"

Line by the simple, die by the simple.

 

[Neonchameleon]

Great Weapon Master is an odd duck. Mathematically speaking, it doesn't seem particularly worth it.

I mean, let's look at a Fighter with a +5 to hit vs. AC 12. He only misses 30% of the time. If his average damage is 10, that's 7 per turn on average.

Throw in GWM, and now he misses 55% of the time. Even though his average damage is now 20, because of that miss chance, his damage per turn only goes up to 9.

Which is significant. But the key you are missing is synergy. Let's say instead of a fighter I have a barbarian who uses Reckless Assault for advantage. Without GWM he misses 9% of the time for an average of 9.1 damage. With GWM he misses 81/400 of the time for an average of 15.95 damage (not counting crits I'm either case). And then there's often the extra attack bonus action.

Now let's use a worked example and assume that we're fighting orcs in leather not studded leather armour (to keep the math). AC12, 15 hp, and one attack

• The non-GWM character with advantage hits 91% of the time - but does 15 damage in a hit let's say 10% of the time including crits. This means that it's taking an average of two rounds to kill an orc.
• The GWM character only hits 80% of the time - but it's impossible for them to do 14 or less damage on a hit (Str 16 = +3, 2d6 min = 2, GWM = +10, total = +15). So if they hit they kill. And that triggers the bonus action attack. So 80% chance of killing the first orc and 64% chance of killing the second.

So our unfeated character with advantage is killing an average of 0.5 orcs per round. Our GWM character with advantage is killing an average of 1.44 orcs per round or almost three times as many.

Numbers slightly cherry picked but I've run a horde of orcs a couple of times.

On its own GWM is fine. Mix it with a source of Advantage or another accuracy buff (like the battlemaster's Precision Strike maneuver) against a low AC foe and you can have a blender.

 

[Minigiant]

On its own GWM is fine. Mix it with a source of Advantage or another accuracy buff (like the battlemaster's Precision Strike maneuver) against a low AC foe and you can have a blender.

Yup.

Also the low AC High HP damage sponges of 5e's monsters allows any accuracy buff to be a massive multiplier of damage buffs.

 

[James Gasik]

Yeah, but mathematically, you're unlikely to really get 10 extra damage per round, is all I'm saying. But since when you do hit, it feels amazing, and as you don't really miss all that often thanks to bounded accuracy, those misses kind of get lost in the shuffle. Might be some bias going on there, I don't know.

But math on paper is only half the story, I agree. After all, piling on resources to negate the -25% hit chance for a guy with GWM is a better use than piling on those same resources to increase hit by 25% for someone who doesn't have GWM or some similar source of large burst damage, like maybe a Paladin or Rogue.

I can't argue with results, and even if you work out the math and show GWM only adds a few points per hit, to the players and DM's who see it in action, it sure seems a lot more effective when some guy is tossing 2d6+15 damage around multiple times a turn.

 

[Maxperson]

Yes and No.

+1s aren't important... unless you use them all the time. The issue is 5e is so simplified for ease and speed that you end up doing the same roll over and over to the point that the +1 cumulates so much it matters. So widening your range loses overspecialization.

Also DMs and written adventures dont spread over the targets and challenge types enough.

That's why instead of ASI and Feats, PCs should upgrade the features of their classes and races.

"But that's too much math"

Line by the simple, die by the simple.

I also think that even though the written adventures have lots of DCs set for things, you don't have to roll for all of them. The written adventure cannot account for what the PCs will try, and since you only roll when the outcome is in doubt, there should be many instances where those rolls are not called for. DMs often call for too many rolls, especially when they see a DC and just default to it rather than consider the game play before calling for a roll.

 

[James Gasik]

That reminds me of my experience with Amber, when I realized that players seem to like rolling dice for everything!

 

[Campbell]

Yeah, but mathematically, you're unlikely to really get 10 extra damage per round, is all I'm saying. But since when you do hit, it feels amazing, and as you don't really miss all that often thanks to bounded accuracy, those misses kind of get lost in the shuffle. Might be some bias going on there, I don't know.

But math on paper is only half the story, I agree. After all, piling on resources to negate the -25% hit chance for a guy with GWM is a better use than piling on those same resources to increase hit by 25% for someone who doesn't have GWM or some similar source of large burst damage, like maybe a Paladin or Rogue.

I can't argue with results, and even if you work out the math and show GWM only adds a few points per hit, to the players and DM's who see it in action, it sure seems a lot more effective when some guy is tossing 2d6+15 damage around multiple times a turn.

I would generally only use it on my Psiwarrior when I had advantage which was fairly often with the knockdown. Nothing like those action surge turns with Advantage plus the extra damage from GWM. Getting 7 attacks in one turn is fun!

 

[Maxperson]

That reminds me of my experience with Amber, when I realized that players seem to like rolling dice for everything!

I do like to roll dice, but not for everything. I want to feel like I'm the one playing the game, not my dice.