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<blockquote data-quote="Celebrim" data-source="post: 7618171" data-attributes="member: 4937">I haven't the foggiest clue why the argument in this thread is meaningful, but you seem to be well on top of it.Conversely, we could have a single foe that dies after 5 units of damage, but reduces the damage from each attack by 1.&nbsp;&nbsp; Now Smough kills the target in a single blow, while Orenstein doesn't kill the target until the third round.There seems to me to be way too many hypotheticals to do any sort of universal analysis and then claim hitting more often is better than hitting hard.&nbsp;&nbsp; For example, in 3e at least there was a surprise round where only a single attack could be made.&nbsp;&nbsp; This greatly favored hard hitting over rapid hitting if surprise was achieved, because any sort of 'first strike' scenario always favors hitting hard.Similarly, to do a real analysis you have to start factoring in chances to hit, and similar issues come up with chance to hit.&nbsp; DPS by itself is derived from a formula like: DPS = &lt;chance to hit&gt; * &lt;average damage&gt;.&nbsp;&nbsp; But that formula if applied naively treats (0.1 * 95) as the same as (0.95 * 10) and the same as (0.01 * 950).&nbsp;&nbsp; In practice, those are going to produce very different chances that you've killed a foe by round N, depending on how much damage that the creature can absorb and random chance.&nbsp;&nbsp; All of which should give people pause before attempting to prove something based on DPS.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="Celebrim, post: 7618171, member: 4937"] I haven't the foggiest clue why the argument in this thread is meaningful, but you seem to be well on top of it. Conversely, we could have a single foe that dies after 5 units of damage, but reduces the damage from each attack by 1. Now Smough kills the target in a single blow, while Orenstein doesn't kill the target until the third round. There seems to me to be way too many hypotheticals to do any sort of universal analysis and then claim hitting more often is better than hitting hard. For example, in 3e at least there was a surprise round where only a single attack could be made. This greatly favored hard hitting over rapid hitting if surprise was achieved, because any sort of 'first strike' scenario always favors hitting hard. Similarly, to do a real analysis you have to start factoring in chances to hit, and similar issues come up with chance to hit. DPS by itself is derived from a formula like: DPS = <chance to hit> * <average damage>. But that formula if applied naively treats (0.1 * 95) as the same as (0.95 * 10) and the same as (0.01 * 950). In practice, those are going to produce very different chances that you've killed a foe by round N, depending on how much damage that the creature can absorb and random chance. All of which should give people pause before attempting to prove something based on DPS. [/QUOTE]

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