D&D General Why DPR Sucks: Discussing Whiteroom Theorycrafting

[Ruin Explorer]

Well, yeah, it’s entirely situation dependent. If you have melee-only enemies, a third level spell would be, IMO, a good (if boring) resource tradeoff to avoiding HP loss and having to use other resources. If it’s a different kind of enemy,you’d use a different resources. At the end of the day, combat is how you use your resources to get the other guy to 0 hp before he does the same to you.

Sure, I guess my issue with fly-n-plink specifically is that Fly hits one PC and doesn't offer that much benefit in most scenarios. It's the sort of spell which would be hilarious in a computer game, with predictable AI and enemies who definitely couldn't attack you, but in actual D&D, with intelligent enemies, run by a DM, it's much less likely to be viable. You can get one PC airborne, but even animals will likely scatter and either hide or flee (animals understand predators that come from above), and intelligent enemies will take countermeasures, which could be anything from running for cover to throwing rocks or even tricking you into some sort of foolishness. You're unlikely to get more than a couple of rounds of attacks unless they're on a big empty plain with nowhere to hide/seek cover. And it's only one PC at 3rd (+1 per extra spell level), so either the rest of the party has to fight as normal, and you're just avoiding/lowering damage on one PC, or they have to sit it out, meaning the enemies likely escape (quite possibly to return later). Sorry to go on about this - I've played a flying PC recently and I've seen that this sort of thing is a lot less effective than one might wish (it's another story if the entire party is swooping in on griffons, of course).

Whereas hitting the same enemies with a Fireball (or similar) and just charging in and fighting them normally is likely to cost only limited HP, which are fairly easy to regain for most parties, given HD usage on Short Rests and so on.

It's the sort of false economy I'm discussing, actually. If the PCs never need to use HD, for example, because you expend a lot of spell slots doing elaborate and fragile stunts like fly-n-plink, that's actually kind of a waste, or at least isn't helping all that much. Ideally you balance usage of all the resources the party has. It's rarely possible to do it perfectly, but often possible to do it well - for example, in the group where I play a Druid, I don't roll out the healing spells just because people take damage - we use HD first (until approaching the 50% HD cap regained on Long Rest), unless it's vital to keep someone up (or get them up).

I think this illustrates another issue though, which is that in certain situations, peculiar corner-case solutions will be valid (as with True Strike and Plane Shift - it's not ideal but it's no worse than getting someone else to use Help with their Action). With a single physically-large (i.e. preferably H or bigger) enemy, of beast-level intellect, in relatively open terrain (plains, rocky hills), but who is extremely dangerous in melee and is tough, and who has relatively low move speed (preferably 30' or less - at 40' or more he's going to force you to use a lot of Actions to Dash instead of attack, and at 60' he'll outrange you quickly unless terrain prevents it), that could be really optimal - so long as you can kill him in under 10 minutes (which to be fair, if he can't outrange you, you almost certainly can).

 

[Dausuul]

Why the hate on dpr? I would bet that even the OP does some quick damage calculations is his or head when rolling a character. And the calculation has to be in a white room because otherwise there would be too messy. If you hate dpr then disregard it.

It isn't about hating DPR, it's about recognizing its limitations.

Many characters rely heavily on being able to take away enemy hit points via direct damage. If that is your plan, then DPR is highly relevant to you, and if you estimate your DPR and find it's on the low side, you may want to rethink your plan.

But people reach for DPR to answer questions it has no business answering. DPR is a decent metric (though still not the be-all, end-all) to evaluate the combat effectiveness of a great weapon fighter; it's a terrible metric to evaluate the combat effectiveness of a bard, who relies on control and debuffs to win battles. Most folks are not so far gone as to try using DPR for bards, but there were a lot of people insisting on it as the only relevant data for monks, when monks supplement their modest damage with debuffs and control.

The retort I sometimes see is "Well, DPR is the only valid statistic we've got!" This may be true but is irrelevant. If you have a hammer, and your goal is to cut some boards, the hammer does not become able to do the work of a saw just because you haven't got a saw.

 

[MwaO]

Okay, the title? A little obnoxious and clickbait-y right?

That's my homage to this thread wherein it was "proven" that Monks, um, "suck":

Yup, all of this.

Another good example from baseball is actually defensive play instead of offensive. As mentioned, baseball is a series of one on one events. Ball goes to point X, fielder in the area tries to stop it, do they succeed or not? Golden Gloves are typically given to the player considered the best defensive fielder of that year in baseball by managers and coaches.

And then we have Derek Jeter, a former shortstop of the Yankees, winner of five Golden Gloves, or 25% of the time. In his 5th win(2010), he had the best fielding percentage in baseball, 0.989 — so on nearly 99% of plays where he fielded the ball, he was successful at not making a mistake. Fantastic, right, why wouldn't he be the best defensive player? How could professional managers and coaches be wrong?

Two big statistical problems:
Range — range is a statistic that measures how many plays and assists a given player makes each game. His was typically the worst at his position in baseball — yes, he didn't make many mistakes fielding the ball, but at the same time he didn't make as many plays as other shortstops. His Range Runs were the 2nd worst in 2010.

UZR — UZR is a statistical measurement of how often a ball goes to point X using video evidence and how often a player makes it to that spot and then successfully makes the play. If the player doesn't make it to a play that typically gets stopped by the average player, they get penalized. Jeter was the 3rd worst American League Shortstop by this measurement for the year.

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In other words, Jeter wouldn't try to make plays that the average shortstop in the league would try to make — and a consequence of doing that was usually allowing a base hit to happen rather than potentially make an error. And because of that, cost the Yankees more runs by quite a bit than an average shortstop. During his career, he was easily probably the worst defensive shortstop in baseball, yet he won 5 awards for being the best.

And I think there are some similar things going on here with how Monk's DPR is being compared to say a Rogue's DPR — a Rogue needs help to create Sneak Attack — they have to pick a target that an ally is adjacent to or have some way of creating advantage. And if that's not possible and there's an archer or caster away from the frontlines, they have to wait until someone else on the team engages them. And if they're melee, well, that's two PCs bunched up, good for potential bursting. Whereas the Monk can move up to say an archer and at the very least, force them to stop easily choosing to shoot the party casters and simultaneously still get their full DPR.

And this is ignoring how stunned and/or pushing targets into burst formation for the casters can really set up some significant DPR by the other PCs in the party.

 

[Wasteland Knight]

White room/whiteboard analysis of classes based on “DPS” is basically bunk.

In certain situations it might be a useful in limited scope, but in actual play the usefulness and effectiveness of a character build is more than just some arbitrary “DPS”.

Thousands upon thousands of forum posts on DPS could be tossed in the garbage and the hobby would be better off for it.

 

[Wiseblood]

@MwaO In other, other words Derek Jeter was metagaming.

 

[MwaO]

@MwaO In other, other words Derek Jeter was metagaming.

Yup and fast-talking the GM* too!
*In baseball, GM = General Manager, and he got paid a lot of money to be a good offensive shortstop, bad defensive one.