I have read a lot about how barbs should use a greataxe because of it's 1d12 damage die and how well it stacks with brutal critical. What I want to know is, is a greataxe better than a greatsword with Great Weapon Fighting? I ask because I have no idea what formula to use to test this theory.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Do you dance with the devil in the pale moonlight?
Getting to reroll 1s and 2s, GWF would be best with the 2d6, of the standard weapons. Each d6 with GWF adds .66 damage, so an average of 3.5 before, becomes 4.16 with GWF. But that's only a single d6, so with two of them with a greatsword or maul, you get 2 x 4.16 or roughly 8.33 damage i.e. an increase of 1.33 damage. A d12 increases by .83. So the average damage of 6.5, becomes 7.33 average damage.
As you noted, there is an argument for half orcs and barbarians (particularly half orc barbarians) using the 1d12 over 2d6, since you only get one extra damage die for Savage Attacks and Brutal Critical (so 1d12 vs 1d6 extra). Really, it's a question of what you like. The 2d12 has a much lower chance of doing 12 damage, but also a much lower chance of doing only 2 damage, than 1d12 statistically. What you will get with 2d6 is a high chance of doing mid range damage, 6, 7 an 8 damage (particularly 7), but few highs and lows. 1d12 can give you those power hits, but also maybe some low rolls. With d12, everything has an equal chance of happening.
As for criticals for comparing the weapons for normal hits and critical hits:
2d6: Average Damage = 7
2d6: Average Critical Damage = 14
2d6: Average Critical Damage with Savage Attacks =17.5
1d12: Average Damage = 6.5
1d12: Average Critical Damage = 13
1d12: Average Critical Damage with Savage Attacks: 19.5
There's not a whole lot of difference between them. For the 1d12 the standard deviation will be higher, which means your damage rolls will have more highs and lows but the averages will be and shown. Rolling 2d6 your roles will more often be closer to the average.
As for criticals for comparing the weapons for normal hits and critical hits:
2d6: Average Damage = 7
2d6: Average Critical Damage = 14
2d6: Average Critical Damage with Savage Attacks =17.5
1d12: Average Damage = 6.5
1d12: Average Critical Damage = 13
1d12: Average Critical Damage with Savage Attacks: 19.5
There's not a whole lot of difference between them. For the 1d12 the standard deviation will be higher, which means your damage rolls will have more highs and lows but the averages will be and shown. Rolling 2d6 your roles will more often be closer to the average.
There is both multi-classing and Fighting Initiate feat. So barbarians can get a fighting style, just not from the base class. I would argue that a half orc barbarian with a 3 level dip into champion fighter, is a great way to go, for multiple reasons, including a fighting style.
In general, trying to optimize crits at the expense of your non-crit attacks is a losing strategy.
A greatsword deals slightly more damage overall than a greataxe, since the extra damage it does on normal hits outweighs the extra damage the greataxe has on crits. If you have Savage Attacks, Brutal Critical and advantage greataxe becomes slightly better, but only if you don't have GWF style. A greatsword with GWF still outperforms a greataxe even for a 13th level Half-Orc rolling 3 extra dice (Savage Attacks + Brutal Critical 2).
Champion's a trap choice. Improved Critical alone isn't worth derailing your Barbarian progression for 3 levels, and even if you wanted 3 Fighter levels anyways for the fighting style and Action Surge, you're almost always better off going Battle Master and either using maneuvers that help the whole party, or doubling those d8 superiority dice on crits.
In general, trying to optimize crits at the expense of your non-crit attacks is a losing strategy.
A greatsword deals slightly more damage overall than a greataxe, since the extra damage it does on normal hits outweighs the extra damage the greataxe has on crits. If you have Savage Attacks, Brutal Critical and advantage greataxe becomes slightly better, but only if you don't have GWF style. A greatsword with GWF still outperforms a greataxe even for a 13th level Half-Orc rolling 3 extra dice (Savage Attacks + Brutal Critical 2).
Champion's a trap choice. Improved Critical alone isn't worth derailing your Barbarian progression for 3 levels, and even if you wanted 3 Fighter levels anyways for the fighting style and Action Surge, you're almost always better off going Battle Master and either using maneuvers that help the whole party, or doubling those d8 superiority dice on crits.
Aye. This can't be said enough. Both brutal critical and the champion's increased crit range are under preforming features even stacked together.
If someone wants a simple fighter sublcass to dip into from a barbarian the samurai or cavalier are much better options.
Reckless Attacks advantage, combined with expanded crit range already to 10% (19-20), put the crit chance of any attack to just under 20%. Add in something like Polearm Master with it's reverse weapon attack (your 3rd attack) and the chance that one of those attacks will crit, goes to 47%.
Throw in a half orc's racial Savage Attacks (which also is only one extra die roll) together with Brutal Critical (one extra die roll) and you have something.
A 3 level dip into samurai is highly dubious for a barbarian imo. At 3rd level, a samurai gets...Fighting Spirit, which would give a barbarian who already has advantage on demand, with Reckless Attacks, the ability to...give themselves advantage on weapon attack rolls for ONE TURN three times a day. So, a nearly useless extra ability and unworthy of a 3 level dip for a barbarian. There are multiple fighter subclasses, that would be better than this dip. Outside of being a fighter, the samurai gives very little to the barbarian. Unless, of course, you think your barbarian needs proficiency in performance. In which case, knock yourself out! ;)
Reckless Attacks advantage, combined with expanded crit range already to 10% (19-20), put the crit chance of any attack to just under 20%. Add in something like Polearm Master with it's reverse weapon attack (your 3rd attack) and the chance that one of those attacks will crit, goes to 47%. Throw in a half orc's racial Savage Attacks (which also is only one extra die roll) together with Brutal Critical (one extra die roll) and you have something.
That's all well and good but:
Let's be real, the crits on the d4 attack are pretty insignificant compared to your normal crits and the normal damage of 1d4 + STR + Rage.
All of these benefits would apply to any other Fighter subclass more than half as often as they'd apply for a Champion.
GWM would be much stronger than Polearm Master in this situation given that advantage makes the -5/+10 tradeoff a net gain, and you've got a decent chance of scoring a bonus greatsword attacks that averages 8.3333 damage (+ modifiers) instead of 2.5.
And yeah, Samurai's mostly redundant for a Barbarian, but a Battle Master could:
use Brace or Riposte to score additional hits (with +1d8 damage) as a reaction, even with a greatsword
use Quick Toss to get free bonus action handaxe attacks (with +1d8 damage) on turns where the GWM bonus attack doesn't kick in
use Precision Attack to turn misses into hits
combine Trip Attack and Grappling Strike to grapple + shove prone without giving up any attacks, and give other party members advantage too
or simply fish for nat 20s to double those d8 Superiority Dice while still getting the useful side effects.
Or you could go Cavalier and put enemies into a no-win situation with Unwavering Mark; they either attack you and have their damage halved by Rage, or they attack someone else with disadvantage and get punished for it with an extra powerful bonus attack if they do hit.
Or you could go Rune Knight and use Giant's Might to grapple Huge creatures and get an extra 1d6 on one weapon attack per turn, plus Fire Rune to inflict another 2d6 and potentially restrain the target.
Like I said, chasing big numbers on a minority of your hits at the expense of the majority of your hits is a bad idea. You're giving up an awful lot of flexibility and will probably still do less damage overall than if you'd picked one of the other subclasses. I get that crits are exciting and feel good, but Improved Critical on its own simply doesn't do enough to make up for all the other things you're giving up, and Brutal Critical doesn't even come into play until Barbarian 9, so we're talking about a build that has to wait until 12th level to kinda sorta start doing what it's supposed to do? And if you're going into super high levels you're also losing an ASI unless you go up to Fighter 4. But that costs you the last Brutal Critical and your 6th rage, and either way you've lost Indomitable Might, unlimited rages and one of the best capstone abilities in the game (so that's like losing 4 more ASIs);
Reckless Attacks advantage, combined with expanded crit range already to 10% (19-20), put the crit chance of any attack to just under 20%. Add in something like Polearm Master with it's reverse weapon attack (your 3rd attack) and the chance that one of those attacks will crit, goes to 47%. Throw in a half orc's racial Savage Attacks (which also is only one extra die roll) together with Brutal Critical (one extra die roll) and you have something.
That's all well and good but:
Let's be real, the crits on the d4 attack are pretty insignificant compared to your normal crits and the normal damage of 1d4 + STR + Rage.
All of these benefits would apply to any other Fighter subclass more than half as often as they'd apply for a Champion.
GWM would be much stronger than Polearm Master in this situation given that advantage makes the -5/+10 tradeoff a net gain, and you've got a decent chance of scoring a bonus greatsword attacks that averages 8.3333 damage (+ modifiers) instead of 2.5.
You can take both PAM and GWM. They really do work well together. And if you have GWM, that bonus action attack will be for 1d10, instead of 1d4. And my reverse weapon attacks are for 1d4 + STR + Rage +magic weapon +10 GWM. I think you are underestimating the consistency of that reverse weapon attack and damage. PAM opportunity attack when something approaches you, gives yet another attack. You are constantly rolling attacks with this build. Throw in Sentinel and you are pretty much constantly getting to roll an attack.
You can take both PAM and GWM. They really do work well together...Throw in Sentinel and you are pretty much constantly getting to roll an attack.
Ok, but when? Feats aren't free. Barbarian doesn't get extra ASIs, you're already proposing a 3 level detour into Fighter (which means your next ASI is delayed 3 levels), and you're passing up a 1st level feat by going Half-Orc for Savage Attacks. You won't have both plus Improved Critical until 11th level. If you'd gone Variant Human or a custom lineage you could've picked PAM at 1st when it gives the biggest boost, then GWM at 4th right after picking up Reckless Attack. You'd be doing way more damage right from the start and you'd be increasing your STR four levels sooner. Having +5% chance to hit and +1 damage on all your attacks beats rolling one more die (which averages at most 6.5 damage) on less than 10% of your hits, not to mention GWM gets better the higher your hit chance is.
Throwing in Sentinel too is just digging yourself into a deeper hole. Just go Battle Master instead of Champion and use Brace or Riposte if you want the reaction attacks that badly. You'll keep yet another ASI and you won't have to wait until 15th level. Or even go Cavalier and skip PAM since GWM plus Unwavering Mark give you plenty of opportunities for a bonus attack and greatswords hit harder. Or skip GWM and use PAM with a one-handed spear and Dueling fighting style so you're getting almost as much damage as a halberd on normal hits, +2 damage on the bonus attack, and you can keep your shield.
You simply can't score enough crits to justify all the damage you're losing elsewhere.
You can take both PAM and GWM. They really do work well together...Throw in Sentinel and you are pretty much constantly getting to roll an attack.
Ok, but when? Feats aren't free. Barbarian doesn't get extra ASIs, you're already proposing a 3 level detour into Fighter (which means your next ASI is delayed 3 levels), and you're passing up a 1st level feat by going Half-Orc for Savage Attacks. You won't have both plus Improved Critical until 11th level. If you'd gone Variant Human or a custom lineage you could've picked PAM at 1st when it gives the biggest boost, then GWM at 4th right after picking up Reckless Attack. You'd be doing way more damage right from the start and you'd be increasing your STR four levels sooner. Having +5% chance to hit and +1 damage on all your attacks beats rolling one more die (which averages at most 6.5 damage) on less than 10% of your hits, not to mention GWM gets better the higher your hit chance is.
Throwing in Sentinel too is just digging yourself into a deeper hole. Just go Battle Master instead of Champion and use Brace or Riposte if you want the reaction attacks that badly. You'll keep yet another ASI and you won't have to wait until 15th level. Or even go Cavalier and skip PAM since GWM plus Unwavering Mark give you plenty of opportunities for a bonus attack and greatswords hit harder. Or skip GWM and use PAM with a one-handed spear and Dueling fighting style so you're getting almost as much damage as a halberd on normal hits, +2 damage on the bonus attack, and you can keep your shield.
You simply can't score enough crits to justify all the damage you're losing elsewhere.
Worth repeating again....
When players start theory crafting, "But if you take this race, with these feats, and multiclass it with...." to make a subclass competitive - it's a bad subclass.
You can take both PAM and GWM. They really do work well together...Throw in Sentinel and you are pretty much constantly getting to roll an attack.
Ok, but when? Feats aren't free. Barbarian doesn't get extra ASIs, you're already proposing a 3 level detour into Fighter (which means your next ASI is delayed 3 levels), and you're passing up a 1st level feat by going Half-Orc for Savage Attacks. You won't have both plus Improved Critical until 11th level. If you'd gone Variant Human or a custom lineage you could've picked PAM at 1st when it gives the biggest boost, then GWM at 4th right after picking up Reckless Attack. You'd be doing way more damage right from the start and you'd be increasing your STR four levels sooner. Having +5% chance to hit and +1 damage on all your attacks beats rolling one more die (which averages at most 6.5 damage) on less than 10% of your hits, not to mention GWM gets better the higher your hit chance is.
Throwing in Sentinel too is just digging yourself into a deeper hole. Just go Battle Master instead of Champion and use Brace or Riposte if you want the reaction attacks that badly. You'll keep yet another ASI and you won't have to wait until 15th level. Or even go Cavalier and skip PAM since GWM plus Unwavering Mark give you plenty of opportunities for a bonus attack and greatswords hit harder. Or skip GWM and use PAM with a one-handed spear and Dueling fighting style so you're getting almost as much damage as a halberd on normal hits, +2 damage on the bonus attack, and you can keep your shield.
You simply can't score enough crits to justify all the damage you're losing elsewhere.
Worth repeating again....
When players start theory crafting, "But if you take this race, with these feats, and multiclass it with...." to make a subclass competitive - it's a bad subclass.
it's not necessarily a bad subclass. it's just not working as advertised. There are good subclasses that people do these kinds of things with to try and improve how good they are or how bad something else is, that don't necessarily work. it doesn't mean the subclass is bad because it didnt' work as stated in that scenario.
Also things that rely on luck are not necessarily inherently bad unless your trying to go for something that doesn't have the potential to deviate as much to make it easier to quantify. And thta's the reality of Criticals. They are heavily reliant on luck. They are every bit a your mileage may vary kind of thing that is different from person to person that we can only try to average things out through. But if the Crit can happen often enough for a particular person and overcome the 16 average damage per rest of the battle master. Then relying on that luck becomes worth it. A Crit based build driven by luck in the hands of some one like Tallesin who has gotten an inordinate number of critical successes is going to seem a lot more viable than it would if say... Will Wheaton were trying to play that same build. Purely Statistically speaking in just a white room fashion. A Crit focused build can make the same numbers as something like the battle master. But the actual play experience might not be quite the same, or at least perceptually seem the same.
Because Statistically speaking. However you roll the d12's. As long as your getting them in the same time frame. Your getting the same types of results.
And Statistically speaking. The reality is that when you Crit twice as often, And your Set up to roll 4d12's every time you crit. Over the Average space of 20 attacks should you truely be that mathematical anomaly of actually being truely average. It's the same as Rolling 2d12 for a single crit and then having 6d12 that you can choose when to roll them during combat. But one is going to have the Perception of Doing a whole lot more. While the Other is going to have the perception of occasionally doing much bigger hits. And which one is going to be more appealing to you is based upon your own perceptive preference. Feeling like you have more control or wanting to see bigger numbers.
The fact that you feel like you have more control over when you deal damage and your not just relying on luck during that same period is going to be undeniably more perceptually appealing to some people. Because they have that sense that they are doing something and it's not just the dice. Many players have this neurotic bipolar love-hate relationship with dice and the luck in rolling them. This exists to the point that you can watch plenty of gamers, specially table top gamers with real dice, Do everything they can white room to limit the variability of the dice with all kinds of claims of statistics and stuff and then when it comes to their actual dice have superstitious rituals about which ones to use that completely fly in the face of any statistics and logic and dive head long into unknown probability to try and get good rolls.
I don't call it bad because it's luck-based. I call it bad because what it contributes is insignificant compared to all the other options and doesn't really excel at anything except niche crit-based builds that still fall short of the alternatives.
But if the Crit can happen often enough for a particular person and overcome the 16 average damage per rest of the battle master. Then relying on that luck becomes worth it. A Crit based build driven by luck in the hands of some one like Tallesin who has gotten an inordinate number of critical successes is going to seem a lot more viable than it would if say... Will Wheaton were trying to play that same build.
No one has ever beaten the Law of Large Numbers; there's a reason casinos and lotteries are still in business. Play long enough and whatever luck you imagine you have will regress back to the mean.
I don't call it bad because it's luck-based. I call it bad because what it contributes is insignificant compared to all the other options and doesn't really excel at anything except niche crit-based builds that still fall short of the alternatives.
But if the Crit can happen often enough for a particular person and overcome the 16 average damage per rest of the battle master. Then relying on that luck becomes worth it. A Crit based build driven by luck in the hands of some one like Tallesin who has gotten an inordinate number of critical successes is going to seem a lot more viable than it would if say... Will Wheaton were trying to play that same build.
No one has ever beaten the Law of Large Numbers; there's a reason casinos and lotteries are still in business. Play long enough and whatever luck you imagine you have will regress back to the mean.
No. Casino's and Lotteries are still in business because the games are at least partially rigged. It's not just the average mean. They know for a fact that some people will get away with more money than they lose. They are set up so that more people lose more money than they win and they let the "lucky ones" win and even win big because they are the minority group.
It's a matter of acceptable losses that also work as advertising to draw others in with the hopes of being those lucky few despite the fact that the odds are actually stacked against the average person. Usually by an average of about 20% when it comes to the Casino business though the more unscrupulous Casino's it's even higher. I don't remember what it is for Lotteries. But this is the reality. This is why there is a long standing saying of "the House Always Wins" Because it's not even odds to start with.
But this is the reality. This is why there is a long standing saying of "the House Always Wins" Because it's not even odds to start with.
That's my whole point, dude. There's no amount of luck or superstition that'll overcome the reality of those odds. The rules of probability work, and that's why arguments like "if someone's really lucky, Champion can be a great subclass" don't fly. In the long run it's all about the odds.
I have read a lot about how barbs should use a greataxe because of it's 1d12 damage die and how well it stacks with brutal critical. What I want to know is, is a greataxe better than a greatsword with Great Weapon Fighting? I ask because I have no idea what formula to use to test this theory.
Do you dance with the devil in the pale moonlight?
Getting to reroll 1s and 2s, GWF would be best with the 2d6, of the standard weapons. Each d6 with GWF adds .66 damage, so an average of 3.5 before, becomes 4.16 with GWF. But that's only a single d6, so with two of them with a greatsword or maul, you get 2 x 4.16 or roughly 8.33 damage i.e. an increase of 1.33 damage. A d12 increases by .83. So the average damage of 6.5, becomes 7.33 average damage.
As you noted, there is an argument for half orcs and barbarians (particularly half orc barbarians) using the 1d12 over 2d6, since you only get one extra damage die for Savage Attacks and Brutal Critical (so 1d12 vs 1d6 extra). Really, it's a question of what you like. The 2d12 has a much lower chance of doing 12 damage, but also a much lower chance of doing only 2 damage, than 1d12 statistically. What you will get with 2d6 is a high chance of doing mid range damage, 6, 7 an 8 damage (particularly 7), but few highs and lows. 1d12 can give you those power hits, but also maybe some low rolls. With d12, everything has an equal chance of happening.
Barbarians don't get a fighting style.
As for criticals for comparing the weapons for normal hits and critical hits:
2d6: Average Damage = 7
2d6: Average Critical Damage = 14
2d6: Average Critical Damage with Savage Attacks =17.5
1d12: Average Damage = 6.5
1d12: Average Critical Damage = 13
1d12: Average Critical Damage with Savage Attacks: 19.5
There's not a whole lot of difference between them. For the 1d12 the standard deviation will be higher, which means your damage rolls will have more highs and lows but the averages will be and shown. Rolling 2d6 your roles will more often be closer to the average.
There is both multi-classing and Fighting Initiate feat. So barbarians can get a fighting style, just not from the base class. I would argue that a half orc barbarian with a 3 level dip into champion fighter, is a great way to go, for multiple reasons, including a fighting style.
In general, trying to optimize crits at the expense of your non-crit attacks is a losing strategy.
A greatsword deals slightly more damage overall than a greataxe, since the extra damage it does on normal hits outweighs the extra damage the greataxe has on crits. If you have Savage Attacks, Brutal Critical and advantage greataxe becomes slightly better, but only if you don't have GWF style. A greatsword with GWF still outperforms a greataxe even for a 13th level Half-Orc rolling 3 extra dice (Savage Attacks + Brutal Critical 2).
Champion's a trap choice. Improved Critical alone isn't worth derailing your Barbarian progression for 3 levels, and even if you wanted 3 Fighter levels anyways for the fighting style and Action Surge, you're almost always better off going Battle Master and either using maneuvers that help the whole party, or doubling those d8 superiority dice on crits.
I have a spreadsheet where I compare the average damage of various builds (with some caveats; it doesn't account for things like opportunity attacks or limited use abilities). I added a bunch of level 1, 9 and 13 Barbarian builds with greatsword and greataxe if anyone wants to take a look.
The Forum Infestation (TM)
Reckless Attacks advantage, combined with expanded crit range already to 10% (19-20), put the crit chance of any attack to just under 20%. Add in something like Polearm Master with it's reverse weapon attack (your 3rd attack) and the chance that one of those attacks will crit, goes to 47%.
Throw in a half orc's racial Savage Attacks (which also is only one extra die roll) together with Brutal Critical (one extra die roll) and you have something.
A 3 level dip into samurai is highly dubious for a barbarian imo. At 3rd level, a samurai gets...Fighting Spirit, which would give a barbarian who already has advantage on demand, with Reckless Attacks, the ability to...give themselves advantage on weapon attack rolls for ONE TURN three times a day. So, a nearly useless extra ability and unworthy of a 3 level dip for a barbarian. There are multiple fighter subclasses, that would be better than this dip. Outside of being a fighter, the samurai gives very little to the barbarian. Unless, of course, you think your barbarian needs proficiency in performance. In which case, knock yourself out! ;)
That's all well and good but:
And yeah, Samurai's mostly redundant for a Barbarian, but a Battle Master could:
Or you could go Cavalier and put enemies into a no-win situation with Unwavering Mark; they either attack you and have their damage halved by Rage, or they attack someone else with disadvantage and get punished for it with an extra powerful bonus attack if they do hit.
Or you could go Rune Knight and use Giant's Might to grapple Huge creatures and get an extra 1d6 on one weapon attack per turn, plus Fire Rune to inflict another 2d6 and potentially restrain the target.
Like I said, chasing big numbers on a minority of your hits at the expense of the majority of your hits is a bad idea. You're giving up an awful lot of flexibility and will probably still do less damage overall than if you'd picked one of the other subclasses. I get that crits are exciting and feel good, but Improved Critical on its own simply doesn't do enough to make up for all the other things you're giving up, and Brutal Critical doesn't even come into play until Barbarian 9, so we're talking about a build that has to wait until 12th level to kinda sorta start doing what it's supposed to do? And if you're going into super high levels you're also losing an ASI unless you go up to Fighter 4. But that costs you the last Brutal Critical and your 6th rage, and either way you've lost Indomitable Might, unlimited rages and one of the best capstone abilities in the game (so that's like losing 4 more ASIs);
The Forum Infestation (TM)
You can take both PAM and GWM. They really do work well together. And if you have GWM, that bonus action attack will be for 1d10, instead of 1d4. And my reverse weapon attacks are for 1d4 + STR + Rage +magic weapon +10 GWM. I think you are underestimating the consistency of that reverse weapon attack and damage. PAM opportunity attack when something approaches you, gives yet another attack. You are constantly rolling attacks with this build. Throw in Sentinel and you are pretty much constantly getting to roll an attack.
Ok, but when? Feats aren't free. Barbarian doesn't get extra ASIs, you're already proposing a 3 level detour into Fighter (which means your next ASI is delayed 3 levels), and you're passing up a 1st level feat by going Half-Orc for Savage Attacks. You won't have both plus Improved Critical until 11th level. If you'd gone Variant Human or a custom lineage you could've picked PAM at 1st when it gives the biggest boost, then GWM at 4th right after picking up Reckless Attack. You'd be doing way more damage right from the start and you'd be increasing your STR four levels sooner. Having +5% chance to hit and +1 damage on all your attacks beats rolling one more die (which averages at most 6.5 damage) on less than 10% of your hits, not to mention GWM gets better the higher your hit chance is.
Throwing in Sentinel too is just digging yourself into a deeper hole. Just go Battle Master instead of Champion and use Brace or Riposte if you want the reaction attacks that badly. You'll keep yet another ASI and you won't have to wait until 15th level. Or even go Cavalier and skip PAM since GWM plus Unwavering Mark give you plenty of opportunities for a bonus attack and greatswords hit harder. Or skip GWM and use PAM with a one-handed spear and Dueling fighting style so you're getting almost as much damage as a halberd on normal hits, +2 damage on the bonus attack, and you can keep your shield.
You simply can't score enough crits to justify all the damage you're losing elsewhere.
The Forum Infestation (TM)
Worth repeating again....
When players start theory crafting, "But if you take this race, with these feats, and multiclass it with...." to make a subclass competitive - it's a bad subclass.
it's not necessarily a bad subclass. it's just not working as advertised. There are good subclasses that people do these kinds of things with to try and improve how good they are or how bad something else is, that don't necessarily work. it doesn't mean the subclass is bad because it didnt' work as stated in that scenario.
Also things that rely on luck are not necessarily inherently bad unless your trying to go for something that doesn't have the potential to deviate as much to make it easier to quantify. And thta's the reality of Criticals. They are heavily reliant on luck. They are every bit a your mileage may vary kind of thing that is different from person to person that we can only try to average things out through. But if the Crit can happen often enough for a particular person and overcome the 16 average damage per rest of the battle master. Then relying on that luck becomes worth it. A Crit based build driven by luck in the hands of some one like Tallesin who has gotten an inordinate number of critical successes is going to seem a lot more viable than it would if say... Will Wheaton were trying to play that same build. Purely Statistically speaking in just a white room fashion. A Crit focused build can make the same numbers as something like the battle master. But the actual play experience might not be quite the same, or at least perceptually seem the same.
Because Statistically speaking. However you roll the d12's. As long as your getting them in the same time frame. Your getting the same types of results.
And Statistically speaking. The reality is that when you Crit twice as often, And your Set up to roll 4d12's every time you crit. Over the Average space of 20 attacks should you truely be that mathematical anomaly of actually being truely average. It's the same as Rolling 2d12 for a single crit and then having 6d12 that you can choose when to roll them during combat. But one is going to have the Perception of Doing a whole lot more. While the Other is going to have the perception of occasionally doing much bigger hits. And which one is going to be more appealing to you is based upon your own perceptive preference. Feeling like you have more control or wanting to see bigger numbers.
The fact that you feel like you have more control over when you deal damage and your not just relying on luck during that same period is going to be undeniably more perceptually appealing to some people. Because they have that sense that they are doing something and it's not just the dice. Many players have this neurotic bipolar love-hate relationship with dice and the luck in rolling them. This exists to the point that you can watch plenty of gamers, specially table top gamers with real dice, Do everything they can white room to limit the variability of the dice with all kinds of claims of statistics and stuff and then when it comes to their actual dice have superstitious rituals about which ones to use that completely fly in the face of any statistics and logic and dive head long into unknown probability to try and get good rolls.
I don't call it bad because it's luck-based. I call it bad because what it contributes is insignificant compared to all the other options and doesn't really excel at anything except niche crit-based builds that still fall short of the alternatives.
No one has ever beaten the Law of Large Numbers; there's a reason casinos and lotteries are still in business. Play long enough and whatever luck you imagine you have will regress back to the mean.
The Forum Infestation (TM)
No. Casino's and Lotteries are still in business because the games are at least partially rigged. It's not just the average mean. They know for a fact that some people will get away with more money than they lose. They are set up so that more people lose more money than they win and they let the "lucky ones" win and even win big because they are the minority group.
It's a matter of acceptable losses that also work as advertising to draw others in with the hopes of being those lucky few despite the fact that the odds are actually stacked against the average person. Usually by an average of about 20% when it comes to the Casino business though the more unscrupulous Casino's it's even higher. I don't remember what it is for Lotteries. But this is the reality. This is why there is a long standing saying of "the House Always Wins" Because it's not even odds to start with.
That's my whole point, dude. There's no amount of luck or superstition that'll overcome the reality of those odds. The rules of probability work, and that's why arguments like "if someone's really lucky, Champion can be a great subclass" don't fly. In the long run it's all about the odds.
The Forum Infestation (TM)