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General Tabletop Discussion
*Dungeons & Dragons
The impact of overkill damage
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<blockquote data-quote="FrogReaver" data-source="post: 8054753" data-attributes="member: 6795602"><p>In general, increasing damage increases the likelihood that an enemy dies in fewer rounds. In general, increasing damage increases the amount of overkill damage. *Note, there are a few ways to increase DPR without increasing overkill damage (Increases to accuracy or increases to number of attacks). Neither of those methods though actually increase overkill damage though. So the only scenario worth examining is one where your DPR increase is due to an increase in damage. </p><p></p><p>So let's look at the case of 1 hp enemies. Overkill matters in that scenario and higher damage characters will do more of it. In fact this scenario can be generalized to a case of enemies that you are guaranteed to kill in 1 hit. In any scenario where that happens then overkill matters. In scenarios where that isn't the case then increasing damage increases the chance you kill the enemy in fewer rounds. </p><p></p><p>This is why my conclusion has consistently been that normal assumptions about overkill damage being a mitigating factor for high damage characters is misleading. Under normal situations you fight enemies that take more than 1 hit to kill. Having a higher damage increases the chances you kill the enemy faster. Doing more damage isn't about assigning every point of damage to an enemy, it's about having those enemies you target die faster. Also worth noting is that this view requires one to move away from averages and instead view things through the lens of damage distributions - which makes for a more accurate view.</p><p></p><p>This isn't to say there aren't minor differences in same DPR distributions when facing enemies that take more than 1 hit to kill. There are. It's just that when really evaluating higher damage and higher overkill setups against the most common enemies, what we find is that the higher damages benefits aren't mitigated as much as looking at average overkill damage would seem to indicate when we look at the damage distribution and the average round to kill information.</p><p></p><p>Which essentially means that in all but the most rare or carefully constructed scenarios that overkill damage doesn't actually mitigate higher damage setups. Whatever negative impact of overkill damage exists, it never actually outstrips the value of a higher damage attack (at least under realistic parameters).</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="FrogReaver, post: 8054753, member: 6795602"] In general, increasing damage increases the likelihood that an enemy dies in fewer rounds. In general, increasing damage increases the amount of overkill damage. *Note, there are a few ways to increase DPR without increasing overkill damage (Increases to accuracy or increases to number of attacks). Neither of those methods though actually increase overkill damage though. So the only scenario worth examining is one where your DPR increase is due to an increase in damage. So let's look at the case of 1 hp enemies. Overkill matters in that scenario and higher damage characters will do more of it. In fact this scenario can be generalized to a case of enemies that you are guaranteed to kill in 1 hit. In any scenario where that happens then overkill matters. In scenarios where that isn't the case then increasing damage increases the chance you kill the enemy in fewer rounds. This is why my conclusion has consistently been that normal assumptions about overkill damage being a mitigating factor for high damage characters is misleading. Under normal situations you fight enemies that take more than 1 hit to kill. Having a higher damage increases the chances you kill the enemy faster. Doing more damage isn't about assigning every point of damage to an enemy, it's about having those enemies you target die faster. Also worth noting is that this view requires one to move away from averages and instead view things through the lens of damage distributions - which makes for a more accurate view. This isn't to say there aren't minor differences in same DPR distributions when facing enemies that take more than 1 hit to kill. There are. It's just that when really evaluating higher damage and higher overkill setups against the most common enemies, what we find is that the higher damages benefits aren't mitigated as much as looking at average overkill damage would seem to indicate when we look at the damage distribution and the average round to kill information. Which essentially means that in all but the most rare or carefully constructed scenarios that overkill damage doesn't actually mitigate higher damage setups. Whatever negative impact of overkill damage exists, it never actually outstrips the value of a higher damage attack (at least under realistic parameters). [/QUOTE]
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