D&D 5E Why everyone think that Battlemaster is better than Samurai?

[Ovinomancer]

Advantage may be more effective on a single roll, but precision attack will have more effect over the course of an adventuring day. Because the results of a single roll is a small part of the comparison. Because their triggering conditions and frequency of use are so different.

Three rounds of advantage per day, picked before starting any attacks, blocking any bonus action attacks, will have the advantage change a miss to a hit a lot less times then up to four times per short rest (up to 12 times per day?) add in a die only when it can make a difference - not wasted on a roll that would likely hit, or on a roll that still (likely) won't hit.

With a 65% chance to hit, advantage has a 22.75% chance to turn a miss into a hit. (Turning a hit into a hit is no change.) With two attacks per round, so with six attacks over three rounds we can expect 1.365 misses turned into hit. Since it's a bonus action we can't add in bonus action attacks to increase that.

(I had Wolfram Alpha do the math: 6 trials at 22.75% probability of success - Wolfram|Alpha)

With precision attack, assuming we have a good idea of the AC needed, we don't have to waste any on hits. We only have to worry about the 1-7 results that would be a miss.

If we apply them only to 7s, all 12 are good - but that would take ~240 attacks to have enough. With 3-4 rounds * 6 encounters * 2 attacks per round we're looking at say 36-48 attacks a day, so let's aim for more. Heck, let's add it to 2+. That needs roughly 40 attacks to use up all 12.

So the chances are 100% to switch a miss to a hit on a 7, 83.33% (6), 66.67% (5), 50% (4), 33.33% (3), and 16.67% (2), which averages out a 50% chance of success assuming an even distribution of failed numbers (a natural 2 is just as likely as a natural 6).

12 trails at a 50% chance is 6 expected successed. (Wolfram Alpha again: 12 trials at 50% probability of success - Wolfram|Alpha)

Right, so the error in your conception here is that you’re comparing the total odds of a miss that’s turned into a hit for advantage to the raw miss conversion rate for precision while neglecting the odds of a miss to begin with. This greatly skews your comparison because you’re comparing at different points.

To do apples to apples, you need to compare the advantage miss conversion rate of 65% to the 51.6% of precision (at the 65% hit rate point). OR, you need to compare the miss and convert rate. For advantage, you identified this correctly as 35% x 65% or 22.75%.

For precision, you need to do a bit more work. For a hit chance of 65%, you need to roll an 8 or better to succeed. The d8 covers 40% of the outcomes, but 1 cannot be converted, so we need to exclude the chance a 1 is converted. That leaves 2-7. Each of these rolls comes up 5% of the time, so we need to multiple the chance of conversation at a given number 2-7 by the odds that number is rolled. For 7, conversion is 100% times 5% chance of occurrence, or 5% conversion rate. For 6, conversion is 87.5% times 5% occurrence for 4.375% conversion rate. And so on. This sums to a total conversion rate for precision at 65% chance to hit of 20.6%. Advantage is better.

So we can see that the number of uses plus the triggering conditions make Precision much more effective than Fighting Spirit when first taken. Both scale, Fighting Spirit with more Extra Attack, Precision Attack with more dice and larger dice. I think the bonus gets skewed even more in favor of Precision later on. Again, the limit on which misses to attempt to turn was based on number of attacks - more attacks mean more potential misses, so you can be more discerning on when to tirgger them because you still expect to use all of them. Since you'd be cutting out the lowest chance, the miss-to-hit change for any particular attack would grow, so you'd end up with more successes in the end.

That can also be realized with a bonus action attack, such as from Polearm Master or Great Weapon Mastery's crit - while advantage would give more crits, you have no bonus actions to take advantage of those since it was used to trigger Fighting Spirit.

And, this is assuming just trying to outdo Advantage in terms of attacks hitting. Being more selective on where to use Precision will up the chance of turning that miss into a hit so there's not a great loss in conversions, but will leave more superiority dice for other uses, such as Riposte.

I said above that efficiency of precision is likely better, and you’ve noted a few other things that make precision attractive in action economy. That’s good. However, the point I made was narrow – that advantage is better than precision for conversion except in some situations unlikely to occur (specifically hit chances at or below 30%). This remains true – advantage is mathematically better than precision at converting misses. That was the extent of my argument, and I stand by it.

 

[Blue]

Right, so the error in your conception here is that you’re comparing the total odds of a miss that’s turned into a hit for advantage to the raw miss conversion rate for precision while neglecting the odds of a miss to begin with. This greatly skews your comparison because you’re comparing at different points.

Nope, I'm not. Or reather, I am working them differently because the triggering conditions differ. I'm using the right calculations for each.

Fighting Spirit kicks off before the attacks. You need to look at the conversion rate for all attacks. Precision kicks off after you see the roll, you only need to work out the conversion rate for misses. Now, if you have no idea what you need to hit, precision becomes more of a crap shoot, but with multiple people and multiple attacks you'll quickly narrow in on the right AC.

 

[Ovinomancer]

Nope, I'm not. Or reather, I am working them differently because the triggering conditions differ. I'm using the right calculations for each.

Fighting Spirit kicks off before the attacks. You need to look at the conversion rate for all attacks. Precision kicks off after you see the roll, you only need to work out the conversion rate for misses. Now, if you have no idea what you need to hit, precision becomes more of a crap shoot, but with multiple people and multiple attacks you'll quickly narrow in on the right AC.

The trigger doesn't matter to the math. If you're using precision to correct a miss, then you're in the same condition set as using advantage to prevent a miss -- rolling dice. Once you do that, you have to make the comparison the same, and that comparison is not the adjusted overall hit rate for advantage to just the miss conversion rate of precision.

Let's check the following -- a single round where two attacks are made. Let's assume that the hit chance is 65%.

The advantage case will have a total success rate of 65% + 22.75% or 87.25% chance that each attack is a hit. Yay!

The precision case is slightly more complicated, but what we want to get to, for comparison sake, is the same total success rate. To start with, we take the base 65% hit rate. To add to that, we need to figure out what the conversion rate of a miss to hit is using precision. You've done some of this work. The rest is figuring out what chances actually exist. So, as I said above, we miss on a 1-7. We can toss out 1's -- they always miss. That leaves 2-7. There's a 5% chance for each to have occurred on a roll, but different odds of successful conversion for each, so we can't take averages (like the 51.6% you calculated above) and spread it out -- the distribution is not even. That means the following:

7 -- 100% converts, 5% of the time, so overall 5% conversion rate.
6 -- 87.5% converts, 5% of the time, so overall 4.375% conversion rate.
5 -- 75% converts, 5% of the time, so overall 3.75% conversion rate.
4 -- 62.5% converts, 5% of the time, so overall 3.125% conversion rate.
3 -- 50% converts, 5% of the time, so overall 2.5% conversion rate.
2 -- 37.5% converts, 5% of the time, so overall 1.875% conversion rate.

This totals to a combined 20.625% conversion rate of misses into success. Since this already takes into account the die roll probabilities like the base hit chance, it can be added to get the total success rate. That rate is 65% + 20.625% or 85.625% total success rate. It's lower than advantage, even when precision is chosen to be used only when a miss occurs.

This means, over two attack, the odds of no successful attack, 1 successful attack, and two successful attacks are:

For advantage: all misses -- 1.6% 1 hit -- 22.2% 2 hits -- 76.1%

For precision: all misses -- 2.1% 1 hit -- 24.6% 2 hits -- 73.3%

So, on the narrow point that advantage is superior to precision mathematically for total success rate, yes, you have a conception issue and I stand by both my math and point.

On the matter of precision being efficient, or enabling better action economy, sure, have fun, good arguments, don't disagree. I engaged on the point that the math favors precision -- it does not. End of point.

 

[Blue]

On the matter of precision being efficient, or enabling better action economy, sure, have fun, good arguments, don't disagree. I engaged on the point that the math favors precision -- it does not. End of point.

I see where you were going now. For any specific roll, advantage a greater chance of conversion than d8 precision. Agree with you.

In the context of Samurai vs. Batlemaster, that's where the efficiency and uses of Precision come in, but that's a different story.

 

[Torquar]

Sure you can. Cast shillelagh on a staff. Take a level of monk. Use an elven double bladed scimitar with it's associated feat. Take two levels hexblade warlock (pact of the blade). Three levels of Battle Smith.

Neither the Quarterstaff nor the Double Scimitar have the Heavy trait.

 

[delph]

Did you see new UA about Classes? Nice stuff there. You can take manouver instead fightingt style on 1st level. And they add some nice manouvers And Fighting styles.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

Neither the Quarterstaff nor the Double Scimitar have the Heavy trait.

Ah, true, I was thinking 2H was sufficient to qualify for GWM. Still pact of the blade + Hexblade works. I think we need to wait and see the final version of Battle Smith.

 

[Undrave]

Did you see new UA about Classes? Nice stuff there. You can take manouver instead fightingt style on 1st level. And they add some nice manouvers And Fighting styles.

Including some nice skill based ones that makes Battlemaster better out of combat!

 

[Ashrym]

Including some nice skill based ones that makes Battlemaster better out of combat!

This is probably just personal preference, but I would rather have out of combat options as part of subclass abilities as opposed to giving more skill bonus in the battlemaster maneuvers.

I like adding them in place of fighting styles more too.