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Message: <blockquote data-quote="James Gasik" data-source="post: 8609646" data-attributes="member: 6877472">It does show performance over time.  How many attack rolls are you going to make before you get an opportunity to raise an ability score by 1 to achieve parity, if one guy has a 15 and another has a 16?  How many misses turn into hits, how many times will that extra point per hit matter?I think there is a huge impact, but because we look at smaller sample sizes, it's easy to dismiss it.  Let's look at a swingier mechanic.How much faster are combats where the party has Bless active than when they don't have it?  How many resources are saved by the party because of the presence of Bless?I'm going to just pull a number out of a hat.  Let's say that we have a four man party.  Fighty Mc Fighter attacks with a sword almost every turn, to the point that the turns he doesn't are such a small sample size that we can ignore it for this demonstration.  He hits typical foes on a 11.Sneaky Mc Sneakerson attacks with his shortbow almost every turn, same difference.  We'll say he also hits his typical foes on an 11.Healer Mc Healbot is more complicated, since she has spells and Channel Divinity she can use.  Let's say she makes attack rolls 75% of the time, and due to needing a high Wisdom on top of "fighty stats", she hits typical foes on an 12.Wizzy Mc Magicgal is even more complicated.  But let's say she's frugal about her magic and likes to use firebolt a lot.  So 75% of the time she's blasting things needing an 11 to hit.Let's assume an in-game day requires 20 rounds of combat.  We'll assume half of those combats, Healer Mc Healbot casts her Bless spell.So, during those 10 rounds, Fighty hits his opponents on a 8.5 instead of an 11, or, 5 rounds he needs an 8, and 5 rounds he needs a 9.  I'm not a math guy, but let's call that a 12.5 % boost in effectiveness when Bless is active (or 6.25% for the day).  Sneaky gets the same benefit.  We're up to 25%, or 12.5%.if the other two roll only 3 out of 4 combats, we get another 9.375%.  Adding up these numbers, we see that the party was, overall, nearly 22% more effective today because of Bless spells cast in half the combats. This doesn't take into account higher level abilities like Action Surge or Extra Attack, or other die rolls one might make due to saving throws or opportunity attacks (or even a granted attack if Fighty is a Battlemaster).See?  Useful data!  You need a larger sample size to see the difference between 15 and 16 Strength, but remember, Strength applies to two die rolls, not one, attack and damage.  The benefit may seem small, but in aggregate, it's definitely present.</blockquote>

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