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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Ovinomancer" data-source="post: 8059260" data-attributes="member: 16814">Here's a look at this issue.  First, let's quantify what overkill damage is.  Here's the assumption set:Assumption 1:  we only care about overkill damage when the attack reduces the target to 0 hp.Assumption 2:  we will be treating this an an infinite trial set and using average damages.Given A1&2 above, defining overkill average damage (OAD) for a given attack is pretty easy.  Due to A1, we're only looking at cases where the hp of the target is between 1 and X, where X is the average damage of the attack (you can add hit percentage multipliers, doesn't matter, we're looking at the average case).  Given this, you can list out the options from 1 to X, and subtract that from X to find out what the overkill for that attack was.  If you add all of those overkill damages up (which range from 0 to X-1), and average them, you'll get average OAD.  Or, for a quicker way, just use (X-1)/2.Great!  Now we know the average overkill damage and can... well, what can we do with this number?  Not much, by itself, because we haven't established how often A1 actually occurs.  The frequency of A1 will majorly affect the impact of OAD.  If you score the final blow with X 1 out of 3 attacks, then the impact of OAD will be reduced to OAD/3.  This makes the impact X - (OAD/3).  The general form of this is X - (OAD/f) = X', where f is the frequency, on average, of killing blows per attack, and X' represents the effective average damage of the attack.You can use this to compare different attack schemes by computing the X' for two different attacks and comparing them.  You can even set up differing hit percentages while doing so, to see what the impacts are.  This is very helpful for things like SS and GWM.  You'll have to guestimate f, though, as there's no way to determine a good rate for that.  Party play can be captured using f as well.To look at the GWM case, it's pretty interesting using this approach.  GWM, when used for damage boosting, impacts X by increasing it by 10 but also decreasing it by the changed hit percentage.  If you assume a base hit percentage of 85% (well within the recommend range for using GWM), the GWM hit percent is 60%.  Let's set dmg(normal) to 2d6+4, a greatsword with 18 STR, which averages to 11 and makes dmg(GWM) 21.I plugged this into a spreadsheet to calculate.  If you assume that the normal greatsword user is killing once every three attacks and the GMW user is killing once every two attacks (seems fair), the OAD reduction in X' is such that the delta between them is reduces from a non-overkill of 3.25 DPR to 1.74 DPR.  <table style='width: 100%'><tr><td></td><td></td><td></td><td></td><td></td><td></td><td></td></tr><tr><td>Data type</td><td>variable</td><td>value</td><td> </td><td>differences</td><td></td><td></td></tr><tr><td>Input</td><td>dmg(1)</td><td>11 </td><td></td><td>dmg diff</td><td></td><td></td></tr><tr><td>Input</td><td>dmg(2)</td><td>21 </td><td></td><td>10 </td><td></td><td></td></tr><tr><td>Input</td><td>hit(1)</td><td>0.85 </td><td></td><td>hit% diff</td><td></td><td></td></tr><tr><td>Input</td><td>hit(2)</td><td>0.6 </td><td></td><td>0.25 </td><td></td><td></td></tr><tr><td>Calculated</td><td>X(1)</td><td>9.35 </td><td></td><td>DPR diff</td><td></td><td></td></tr><tr><td>Calculated</td><td>X(2)</td><td>12.6 </td><td></td><td>3.25 </td><td></td><td></td></tr><tr><td>Calculated</td><td>OAD(1)</td><td>4.175 </td><td></td><td>OAD diff</td><td></td><td></td></tr><tr><td>Calculated</td><td>OAD(2)</td><td>5.8 </td><td></td><td>1.625 </td><td></td><td></td></tr><tr><td></td><td></td><td></td><td></td><td></td><td></td><td></td></tr><tr><td></td><td>f</td><td>2 </td><td>3 </td><td>4 </td><td>5 </td><td>6 </td></tr><tr><td>Calculated</td><td>X'(1)</td><td>7.2625 </td><td>7.95833333 </td><td>8.30625 </td><td>8.515 </td><td>8.654167 </td></tr><tr><td>Calculated</td><td>X'(2)</td><td>9.7 </td><td>10.6666667 </td><td>11.15 </td><td>11.44 </td><td>11.63333 </td></tr><tr><td>Calculated</td><td>difference</td><td>2.4375 </td><td>2.70833333 </td><td>2.84375 </td><td>2.925 </td><td>2.979167 </td></tr></table>It would appear that overkill does make a difference.  Even assuming f of 4 for both, the delta is 2.84 from 3.25, a difference of .6 which is substantial in these kinds of arguments.It's all a bit silly, but I like the thinking challenge.</blockquote>

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