Reply to thread

Message

<blockquote data-quote="Dausuul" data-source="post: 7617478" data-attributes="member: 58197">Yeah, it blows the whole argument out of the water. If you compare two PCs with exactly the same amount of overkill, of course your analysis will find that overkill is not a factor. If we're going to use silly white-room examples, why not have the PCs deal 5 and 10 damage instead of 4 and 8? Suddenly PC #2 has an 84% chance of killing a monster on the first round, and a 36% chance of killing a second monster, while PC #1 has a 60% chance of killing one and a 0% chance of killing a second. Thus, we can &quot;prove&quot; that overkill is THE dominant factor in combat, with just a small change to our rectally generated values.In actual play, I have found that overkill is a minor factor, but not for the reason OP claims. Monsters usually have a lot more than 4-5 hit points, and PCs tend to use their big guns - fireballs, assassinate attacks, et cetera - early in the fight when the monsters are at or near full hit points. As a result, the vast majority of damage goes to the monsters' hit points and very little is wasted. The only time I see a lot of overkill damage is when the wizard catches a lot of low-level monsters in a fireball, and in that scenario, the fireball is still generating good value because it hit so many targets.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="Dausuul, post: 7617478, member: 58197"] Yeah, it blows the whole argument out of the water. If you compare two PCs with exactly the same amount of overkill, of course your analysis will find that overkill is not a factor. If we're going to use silly white-room examples, why not have the PCs deal 5 and 10 damage instead of 4 and 8? Suddenly PC #2 has an 84% chance of killing a monster on the first round, and a 36% chance of killing a second monster, while PC #1 has a 60% chance of killing one and a 0% chance of killing a second. Thus, we can "prove" that overkill is THE dominant factor in combat, with just a small change to our rectally generated values. In actual play, I have found that overkill is a minor factor, but not for the reason OP claims. Monsters usually have a lot more than 4-5 hit points, and PCs tend to use their big guns - [I]fireballs[/I], assassinate attacks, et cetera - early in the fight when the monsters are at or near full hit points. As a result, the vast majority of damage goes to the monsters' hit points and very little is wasted. The only time I see a lot of overkill damage is when the wizard catches a lot of low-level monsters in a [I]fireball[/I], and in that scenario, the [I]fireball[/I] is still generating good value because it hit so many targets. [/QUOTE]

Verification