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Message: <blockquote data-quote="NotAYakk" data-source="post: 9877468" data-attributes="member: 72555">Yep: if you have a 50:50 chance of hitting, you'll have fights where you hit 0 times if you fight often enough.With 2 attacks per round and 3 rounds of combat, that happens 1/64 fights.  With 5 PCs, it happens to someone on average every 13 fights.Make a foe with a higher AC - a 40% chance of hitting and it happens every 4 or so fights.With a 60% chance of hitting it is down to 1 in 50 fights over the 5 PCs.Now, everyone can just optimize to-hit and the DM can avoid using high AC foes and the "problem" goes away.   To-hit optimization has always been undervalued (cost-wise) in D&D for however long I've played it.  So if you are doing charop, and your DM doesn't just inflate monster AC to compensate, you could easily almost never experience this problem.Me, I'd rather players not be "forced" to to-hit optimize and DMs be more free to use a variety of monster ACs without this disheartening problem happening - the "noop" character who does nothing in a fight.(And doing nothing for 2/3 rounds is also pretty disheartening; the odds of that are higher.  With a 40% hit chance and 2 attacks per round, 36% of rounds are noops 64% have at least one hit, so .36^2 * .64 * 3 choose 2 is about 25% of fights you wiffing 2/3 of the rounds.  And with a party of 5, someone is a wiff-master every fight.  Even at 60% hit chance, 1 in 3 fights have someone wiffing on most of their turns.)All of this is very sensitive to character optimization and monster choice by the DM.  The 40% to 60% case is the difference of a mere +2 to hit and +2 to AC.  More common magic weapons (+1), PCs with optimzied stats (+1), and a DM tendency to use lower AC monsters (-2) can turn one table into the other.Spellcasters who don't get 2 chances to attack per round (1 spell cast) feel this worse, which is why I think most people hate the "spell that does nothing if the target saves".  AOE debuffs that have more than 1 chance to land, spells with partial effects on a miss, or spells that impose more than 1 save (rare in 5e), are valued out of proportion in order to avoid "wiff" turns.  And why save DC items are so valued....I'm trying to address this on the PC mechanics wise so I don't have to, as a DM, avoid high AC foes if it is thematic.  You can treat a giant golem covered in metal as a mere 18 AC with a boatload of HP and resistance to BPS instead of giving it 24 AC.</blockquote>

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