Some Barbarians also have or find ways to make more than 2 attacks. For all the flack that the Berserker barbarian gets that is one way to add a third attack and it is consistent while you use the frenzied rage feature. GWM is another but it's far less consistent because it relies on making Critical hits which the Barbarian is somewhat suited to fish for with reckless attack but that still has issues.
This can up the Barbarian's damage by a lot when they do apply which puts them in line or above the sustainable damage of something like the Rogue or Fighter as well. As can some subclass features which isn't taken into account for either by this basic math. Though I understand why it wasn't.
Level 20 Fighter, 20 str compared to level 20 barb with 24str and raging with reckless attack, but I'll show math without them as well. Both using a greataxe and attacking a target with 20 AC. 200 rounds of attacks (just because the math is easier and it's supposed to show the difference). d12 average dmg = 6.5.
The Fighter has +11 to hit and deals 1d12+5 damage. He makes 4 attack/round = 800 attacks. He hits on 9+ = 480 hits of which 440 are normal hits (440 d12+2200) and 40 are crits (80 d12 + 200). This gives him 520d12+2400 = 5780 average damage on 200 rounds with this setup.
The Barbarian has +13 to hit and deals 1d12+7 damage, +4 extra while raging and an extra 3d12 (for a total of 5, instead of 2) on a crit. She has 2 attacks/round = 400 attacks. She hits on rolls of 7+ = 280 hits, of which 260 are normal hits (260d12+1820) and 20 are crits (100d12+140). This gives her 360 d12 +1960 = 4300 average damage on 200 rounds. This is without rage and/or reckless attack. Less than the fighter but that was expected since it attacks twice as much.
With Rage this would simply be the 280 hits x 4 extra damage (not total, just extra) = 1120 extra damage, for 5390 average damage. Now, this is not far behind.
Using Reckless attack however she would have 364 hits, out of which 39 would be critical hits (and 325 regular hits). This would mean (without rage) 325d12 + 2275 damage from the normal hits and 195 d12+273 from the crits for 520 d12+ 2548 = 5928 average damage.
Using BOTH she would be doing an average damage of 7384 (1456 extra from rage)!
Now, the questions that might arrive could be why the barbarian can have rage and reckless attack when the fighter can't get other options? The answer of course is partly because the barbarian can use reckless attack all the time, from early on, which means it's fair to take into account. Sure, the fighter might be able to get advantage at times from other sources, many times even if using flanking... But then it starts to go into areas that simply can't be compared and since the barbarian CAN get advantage in even the worst situations, alone and surrounded and all that, it's worth considering. As for rage, of course in early levels they can't rage 200 rounds in a day, but you could use it as an idea of how much damage they could do with 10 rounds of combat each day for 20 days. The reason I used 200 rounds was to bring the barbarian attacks up to 400 since that would make it easier to compare and count with advantage. More importantly though, this also takes into account that they are level 20 which means the barbarian gets the +4 strength, which puts it at 24 which is kinda cheating. At level 19 or lower they would both be at 20 Strength and the barbarian would miss another 20 attacks, which would put the average damage at 350 less, but the Fighter would lose a whole attack which would be much worse in this case, but just putting the AC at 15 would change a lot as well. Weapon styles are a thing as well and the fighter has lots of options to pick them while the barbarian would have more issues getting them, but since involving all that would mean you have to compare many different weapons and situations, this was simply an easy way to show how good the barbarian actually is. Especially against higher AC targets.
One of the most important things this shows us, in my opinion, is how great advantage is really, especially in combinations like the barbarian which can deal a lot of extra damage when it hits. Just adding GWM into this calculation would make a huge difference and many other combinations as well. Anyways, that's enough math for now ;)
I think to be fair to the Fighter you have to give them a Great-Sword as opposed to the Greataxe because they do not care about brutal criticals. Also you should at least give them the Great Weapon Fighting Style. This is only fair since the Barb is getting Reckless and Rage. This should slightly bump up the Fighter's average damage since they roll 2d6 instead of 1d12 and they get to reroll 1s and maybe 2s. The Barb should still win average damage quite comfortably but just wanted to give the Fighter a little more love lol.
I think to be fair to the Fighter you have to give them a Great-Sword as opposed to the Greataxe because they do not care about brutal criticals. Also you should at least give them the Great Weapon Fighting Style. This is only fair since the Barb is getting Reckless and Rage. This should slightly bump up the Fighter's average damage since they roll 2d6 instead of 1d12 and they get to reroll 1s and maybe 2s. The Barb should still win average damage quite comfortably but just wanted to give the Fighter a little more love lol.
Depends on the fighter. A crit fishing Champion half-orc might prefer the greataxe because they get to roll 19 (3d12) instead of 17 (5d6) on a crit. But the mean damage for the far more consistent greatsword or maul might even the two out. Those weapons also see a bigger damage increase from the likes of GW fighting style because 1s and 2s are more likely to happen.
I think to be fair to the Fighter you have to give them a Great-Sword as opposed to the Greataxe because they do not care about brutal criticals. Also you should at least give them the Great Weapon Fighting Style. This is only fair since the Barb is getting Reckless and Rage. This should slightly bump up the Fighter's average damage since they roll 2d6 instead of 1d12 and they get to reroll 1s and maybe 2s. The Barb should still win average damage quite comfortably but just wanted to give the Fighter a little more love lol.
Yeah, the point wasn't to even out the situation since it's not a pvp battle or anything, and while I believe a fighter like this would most likely have that weaponstyle, then you could also argue that the barbarian might do the same.. and one or both could get great weapon master as well. On the other hand if we did this, we would have to compare with a sword and shield dueling build as well, that +2 damage counts for something when you have 4 attacks. But then again, dual wielding... :p Also since many people seem to roll stats it wouldn't be too hard to imagine starting with 18-20 Strength and then all ASI's could go towards feats like GWM and the one that gives you a weaponstyle, which would give the barbarian the same style and suddenly there was no point in adding it to the fighter. And with subclasses added it's suddenly really complicated because while of course a champion (especially a half-orc one) would get many more crits, and would be fitting to this kind of fight (18-20 crit, 3d12 on crit instead of just 2) we would have to compare it to perhaps the berserker who gets a bonus action attack as well... And suddenly it's subclasses vs subclasses instead of a "base" comparison.
Also this doesn't mean the fighter is worse than the barbarian even, they have action surges as well, second wind and would be able to take heavy armor, or even use a dex fighter which would be much better at ranged combat, starting out and dealing damage before you end up in the actual melee. There's lots of variations. And of course reckless attack also means anything that survives also attacks you at advantage, though in a rage you also have resistance so it might even out a bit anyways... But the point is, it goes both ways.
Which is why I didn't add anything like this, because the point was just to show what rage does, what reckless attack does and how the combination works raw without additions, compared to a fighter without additions.
Just for the record though, a great sword for the fighter would have added 260 damage to a total of 6040 damage, still way less than the barbarian. But as I mentioned the point was to show the difference with the same weapons. Obviously in 200 rounds the fighter is likely to get advantage once or twice I'd hope ;D
And this was made against an AC of 20, relatively high which gives the fighter about 60% hit chance for the fighter, while the barbarian is at 70%, so lowering the AC to 15 would mean the barbarian only miss on 1's and the fighter on 1-4 (80% chance to hit). Throw in GWM and more hits become really ugly fast. And weapons that add an extra die on a hit, making it 2d8 instead of 1d8 would of course make a huge difference when you start hitting 4 times instead of 2, so fighters are still good. Don't worry ;)
Just for the record though, a great sword for the fighter would have added 260 damage to a total of 6040 damage, still way less than the barbarian. But as I mentioned the point was to show the difference with the same weapons. Obviously in 200 rounds the fighter is likely to get advantage once or twice I'd hope ;D
And this was made against an AC of 20, relatively high which gives the fighter about 60% hit chance for the fighter, while the barbarian is at 70%, so lowering the AC to 15 would mean the barbarian only miss on 1's and the fighter on 1-4 (80% chance to hit). Throw in GWM and more hits become really ugly fast. And weapons that add an extra die on a hit, making it 2d8 instead of 1d8 would of course make a huge difference when you start hitting 4 times instead of 2, so fighters are still good. Don't worry ;)
And if the fighter is critting on an 18+ instead of just 20?
I don't think we want to start factoring in feats or subclasses. If we do the numbers are gonna get confusing real fast lol. I merely wanted the Great-sword to be used with Great weapon fighting because every baseline fighter would have access to a Fighting style at lvl 1 and it would make more sense for them to use a 2d6 weapon as oppose to a 1d12 weapon because they did not have access to Brutal Critical. Anyway I am in total agreement that even with those additions the Barbs average damage still blows the Fighter out of the water.
I don't think we want to start factoring in feats or subclasses. If we do the numbers are gonna get confusing real fast lol. I merely wanted the Great-sword to be used with Great weapon fighting because every baseline fighter would have access to a Fighting style at lvl 1 and it would make more sense for them to use a 2d6 weapon as oppose to a 1d12 weapon because they did not have access to Brutal Critical. Anyway I am in total agreement that even with those additions the Barbs average damage still blows the Fighter out of the water.
One thing you didn't factor in. Which admittedly may be hard is Action Surge. But just how much Action surge depends a lot on things like the rounds per day going on. If your doing 10 rounds of combat for 20 days. Having 2 of those 10 rounds being basically double damage is going to be a lot more than even something like 20 rounds over 10 days with only 2 of those being effectively doubled by Action Surge.
I won't even ask about if you tried to factor in the bonus action attack from GWM because there are variables that are unanswerable in a basic white room setting as to how often that effect actually triggers. though it's likely in the Barbarians favor.
Just for the record though, a great sword for the fighter would have added 260 damage to a total of 6040 damage, still way less than the barbarian. But as I mentioned the point was to show the difference with the same weapons. Obviously in 200 rounds the fighter is likely to get advantage once or twice I'd hope ;D
And this was made against an AC of 20, relatively high which gives the fighter about 60% hit chance for the fighter, while the barbarian is at 70%, so lowering the AC to 15 would mean the barbarian only miss on 1's and the fighter on 1-4 (80% chance to hit). Throw in GWM and more hits become really ugly fast. And weapons that add an extra die on a hit, making it 2d8 instead of 1d8 would of course make a huge difference when you start hitting 4 times instead of 2, so fighters are still good. Don't worry ;)
And if the fighter is critting on an 18+ instead of just 20?
While I didn't use any subclasses for a reason, the champions crit is pretty easy to calculate since the 18 and 19 are already hits in the previous calculation each extra crit would add another d12 of damage, average 6.5 damage. (A regular hit is 1d12+5, a crit is 2d12+5. Since they are already counted as hits, the first d12+5 is already accounted for). So, another 80 crits = 80 d12 extra damage = 520 more damage on average or 6300 damage. Even using a greatsword AND 18-20 crit would only increase this by 0.5/d12 (as d12 average is 6.5 and 2d6 average is 7)... So this would increase the average damage by 300 to a total of 6600 average damage.
But, "just" using a weapon, or perhaps magic initiate to get the hex spell, that did an extra d6 damage would add 3.5 average damage/hit and 7/crit, would add 1820 for non-champion fighter or 2100 damage for a champion with 18-20 crit range, while for the barbarian that extra d6 damage would "only" add 1410.5 average damage. So, as you can see, the real value of the fighter (in terms of raw basic damage) comes from the many extra hits they get compared to the barbarian.
In the same way, a bonus of +1 to hit, or a lower AC by 1 (19 AC instead) would increase the number of hits by 1 for each 20 attacks... Which in my calculations would mean 20 more hits for the barbarian (290 more average damage) but 40 more for the fighter (500 more average damage).
Lowering the AC to 15 instead (without +1 or better weapons) would mean another 5/20 hits, for a 100 more hits for the barbarian, but 200 more hits for the fighter, while not increasing the amount of crits (since the average rolled 20's doesn't change by lowering AC, just the number of hits actually doing damage). Suddenly the increase of damage is 1350 for the barbarian but 2300 for the fighter...
These calculations are quick headcounts with children playing loudly around me so not 100% sure it's correct ;) But the point is that the fighter will benefit more the lower the AC is, since they get more hits that deal damage. The average damage is 11.5/hit(6.5 for d12 and 5 from Str) for the fighter and 13.5 (6.5 +7) for the barbarian, but since the fighter has twice the attacks of the barbarian they will gain more and more the lower the AC is. In addition a +1 weapon would mean not only twice the attacks that hit but also the extra, if little, +1 damage on twice the hits... And anything that added an extra dice of damage would increase the damage output for the fighter a lot more than for the barbarian.
In short, the fighter will catch up faster against lower AC and will get more out of magic weapons than the barbarian because of the increased number of hits.
I don't think we want to start factoring in feats or subclasses. If we do the numbers are gonna get confusing real fast lol. I merely wanted the Great-sword to be used with Great weapon fighting because every baseline fighter would have access to a Fighting style at lvl 1 and it would make more sense for them to use a 2d6 weapon as oppose to a 1d12 weapon because they did not have access to Brutal Critical. Anyway I am in total agreement that even with those additions the Barbs average damage still blows the Fighter out of the water.
One thing you didn't factor in. Which admittedly may be hard is Action Surge. But just how much Action surge depends a lot on things like the rounds per day going on. If your doing 10 rounds of combat for 20 days. Having 2 of those 10 rounds being basically double damage is going to be a lot more than even something like 20 rounds over 10 days with only 2 of those being effectively doubled by Action Surge.
I won't even ask about if you tried to factor in the bonus action attack from GWM because there are variables that are unanswerable in a basic white room setting as to how often that effect actually triggers. though it's likely in the Barbarians favor.
Like I said I didn't include these things because they aren't relevant for what I did math on. No subclass, because with just 3 subclasses each there would have to be 9 different calculations to compare each against the other. With 6 each it would be 36 calculations. It's also highly irrelevant because the calculations show a kind of base damage, which means you can get an idea of what will be extra useful for the fighter vs the barbarian (IE, like I just showed in the last post, fighter benefits more for each lowered AC of the target meaning it will catch up faster and faster the lower the AC is, in addition they benefit more from magic items and effects that add extra damage on each hit (not once/turn since that would be the same for both).
I didn't factor in GWM because it's highly irrelevant to show what the BASE ability is, since while obviously a fighter with great weapons would most likely use it, it's just as likely that a barbarian using great weapons would also get it and then suddenly we have a whole other focus, namely who benefits more of GWM, fighter or barbarian. That's a whole other thread. But just because you brought it up I'd like to make a short note of how, as I just said, the fighter benefits more the lower AC they have, they would also lose more by making the AC higher... So, using GWM to deal more damage would more likely benefit the barbarian more in this case. As for the extra bonus attacks from GWM, it's either on a crit, which wouldn't make that much difference considering the fighter average 40 crits out of 800 attacks, while the barbarian averages 39 crits out of the 400 attacks. So on average the fighter deals one more crit in 200 rounds. Obviously the champion crits more, but that's a subclass and once again... Not the point. The other way to get bonus attacks is from downing an enemy and this is honestly just not possible to calculate in a valuable way. It clearly depends on what enemies you face and if you can put them to 0 hp in one round, which depends on so many different factors it's just irrelevant. Especially since it's likely that a barbarian could also take the feat and basically gain the same benefits, or more.
Action surge is also irrelevant, because these calculations aren't made to see who's the best vs the other or anything, just to show what the base is. Clearly a barbarian would benefit more from an action surge, but they don't have it so it doesn't matter. Does the fighter deal more damage with an action surge? Yes. How much more? Impossible to calculate in a useful relevant way. What we can use the calculations for is this: Since action surge would increase the fighters average damage, this class ability means that fighters benefit more from short rests than the barbarian! Since each short rest would mean they get an extra action surge and would catch up better. Now we know! I mean the optimal way to run a fighter (for pure damage) would be 1 round of combat/short rest. This way they would go way beyond what any barbarian can do. Still not relevant to the calculations ;)
I don't think we want to start factoring in feats or subclasses. If we do the numbers are gonna get confusing real fast lol. I merely wanted the Great-sword to be used with Great weapon fighting because every baseline fighter would have access to a Fighting style at lvl 1 and it would make more sense for them to use a 2d6 weapon as oppose to a 1d12 weapon because they did not have access to Brutal Critical. Anyway I am in total agreement that even with those additions the Barbs average damage still blows the Fighter out of the water.
One thing you didn't factor in. Which admittedly may be hard is Action Surge. But just how much Action surge depends a lot on things like the rounds per day going on. If your doing 10 rounds of combat for 20 days. Having 2 of those 10 rounds being basically double damage is going to be a lot more than even something like 20 rounds over 10 days with only 2 of those being effectively doubled by Action Surge.
I won't even ask about if you tried to factor in the bonus action attack from GWM because there are variables that are unanswerable in a basic white room setting as to how often that effect actually triggers. though it's likely in the Barbarians favor.
Like I said I didn't include these things because they aren't relevant for what I did math on. No subclass, because with just 3 subclasses each there would have to be 9 different calculations to compare each against the other. With 6 each it would be 36 calculations. It's also highly irrelevant because the calculations show a kind of base damage, which means you can get an idea of what will be extra useful for the fighter vs the barbarian (IE, like I just showed in the last post, fighter benefits more for each lowered AC of the target meaning it will catch up faster and faster the lower the AC is, in addition they benefit more from magic items and effects that add extra damage on each hit (not once/turn since that would be the same for both).
I didn't factor in GWM because it's highly irrelevant to show what the BASE ability is, since while obviously a fighter with great weapons would most likely use it, it's just as likely that a barbarian using great weapons would also get it and then suddenly we have a whole other focus, namely who benefits more of GWM, fighter or barbarian. That's a whole other thread. But just because you brought it up I'd like to make a short note of how, as I just said, the fighter benefits more the lower AC they have, they would also lose more by making the AC higher... So, using GWM to deal more damage would more likely benefit the barbarian more in this case. As for the extra bonus attacks from GWM, it's either on a crit, which wouldn't make that much difference considering the fighter average 40 crits out of 800 attacks, while the barbarian averages 39 crits out of the 400 attacks. So on average the fighter deals one more crit in 200 rounds. Obviously the champion crits more, but that's a subclass and once again... Not the point. The other way to get bonus attacks is from downing an enemy and this is honestly just not possible to calculate in a valuable way. It clearly depends on what enemies you face and if you can put them to 0 hp in one round, which depends on so many different factors it's just irrelevant. Especially since it's likely that a barbarian could also take the feat and basically gain the same benefits, or more.
Action surge is also irrelevant, because these calculations aren't made to see who's the best vs the other or anything, just to show what the base is. Clearly a barbarian would benefit more from an action surge, but they don't have it so it doesn't matter. Does the fighter deal more damage with an action surge? Yes. How much more? Impossible to calculate in a useful relevant way. What we can use the calculations for is this: Since action surge would increase the fighters average damage, this class ability means that fighters benefit more from short rests than the barbarian! Since each short rest would mean they get an extra action surge and would catch up better. Now we know! I mean the optimal way to run a fighter (for pure damage) would be 1 round of combat/short rest. This way they would go way beyond what any barbarian can do. Still not relevant to the calculations ;)
Except that it's not irrelevant. It's a bit too much to ask you to add in. But it's relevance is actually very important because these are key base features of any Fighter that can be used by them as appropriate to them. You allowed Rage on the Barbarian because you found it integral to them and how they dealt their damage, particularly over long periods. That same reasoning is exactly why Action Surge and the Bonus from GWM is important because those are factors that are a part of things regardless of Subclasses or any other outside factors beyond the basic key feature requirments you used for something like Rage or the Feat that is being compared when used by both of those basic classes in conjunction with certain weapons and key features.
I never myself entered Subclasses into the issue. Nor did I ask for it. But your attempt to say that these things don't actually matter for the issue is objectively and factually incorrect when you want to compare the two on such a long term damage level. And the only valid reason like I said is that it's hard to actually quantify the full value of them to get their full impact. The attitude that these two things don't matter when they are either Integral to one of the two classes or to the Feat that you are partly discussing itself actually creates an unfair bias in your approach that does actually need mentioning even if it can't be properly rectified mathematically for proper comparison because the Details are too many to accurately work out on a general level.
Also. Barbarians do not actually gain more benefit from Action Surge than the fighter does. In fact no class is able to take advantage of it to the extent that a max level fighter is capable doing. So your attempt to say that it doesn't matter because if the Barbarian had it it would help them more is actually objectively incorrect as well. Because the Truth of it is that it's power is contained solely in the amount of attacks it can add in which is actually much greater for the Fighter than the Barbarian. That's not to say that the Barbarian wouldn't get some use out of it. But turning 2 attacks into 4 is nothing compared to turning 4 attacks into 8 and the dramatic increase in static damage alone that creates. Particularly over a long period of time.
I don't think we want to start factoring in feats or subclasses. If we do the numbers are gonna get confusing real fast lol. I merely wanted the Great-sword to be used with Great weapon fighting because every baseline fighter would have access to a Fighting style at lvl 1 and it would make more sense for them to use a 2d6 weapon as oppose to a 1d12 weapon because they did not have access to Brutal Critical. Anyway I am in total agreement that even with those additions the Barbs average damage still blows the Fighter out of the water.
One thing you didn't factor in. Which admittedly may be hard is Action Surge. But just how much Action surge depends a lot on things like the rounds per day going on. If your doing 10 rounds of combat for 20 days. Having 2 of those 10 rounds being basically double damage is going to be a lot more than even something like 20 rounds over 10 days with only 2 of those being effectively doubled by Action Surge.
I won't even ask about if you tried to factor in the bonus action attack from GWM because there are variables that are unanswerable in a basic white room setting as to how often that effect actually triggers. though it's likely in the Barbarians favor.
Like I said I didn't include these things because they aren't relevant for what I did math on. No subclass, because with just 3 subclasses each there would have to be 9 different calculations to compare each against the other. With 6 each it would be 36 calculations. It's also highly irrelevant because the calculations show a kind of base damage, which means you can get an idea of what will be extra useful for the fighter vs the barbarian (IE, like I just showed in the last post, fighter benefits more for each lowered AC of the target meaning it will catch up faster and faster the lower the AC is, in addition they benefit more from magic items and effects that add extra damage on each hit (not once/turn since that would be the same for both).
I didn't factor in GWM because it's highly irrelevant to show what the BASE ability is, since while obviously a fighter with great weapons would most likely use it, it's just as likely that a barbarian using great weapons would also get it and then suddenly we have a whole other focus, namely who benefits more of GWM, fighter or barbarian. That's a whole other thread. But just because you brought it up I'd like to make a short note of how, as I just said, the fighter benefits more the lower AC they have, they would also lose more by making the AC higher... So, using GWM to deal more damage would more likely benefit the barbarian more in this case. As for the extra bonus attacks from GWM, it's either on a crit, which wouldn't make that much difference considering the fighter average 40 crits out of 800 attacks, while the barbarian averages 39 crits out of the 400 attacks. So on average the fighter deals one more crit in 200 rounds. Obviously the champion crits more, but that's a subclass and once again... Not the point. The other way to get bonus attacks is from downing an enemy and this is honestly just not possible to calculate in a valuable way. It clearly depends on what enemies you face and if you can put them to 0 hp in one round, which depends on so many different factors it's just irrelevant. Especially since it's likely that a barbarian could also take the feat and basically gain the same benefits, or more.
Action surge is also irrelevant, because these calculations aren't made to see who's the best vs the other or anything, just to show what the base is. Clearly a barbarian would benefit more from an action surge, but they don't have it so it doesn't matter. Does the fighter deal more damage with an action surge? Yes. How much more? Impossible to calculate in a useful relevant way. What we can use the calculations for is this: Since action surge would increase the fighters average damage, this class ability means that fighters benefit more from short rests than the barbarian! Since each short rest would mean they get an extra action surge and would catch up better. Now we know! I mean the optimal way to run a fighter (for pure damage) would be 1 round of combat/short rest. This way they would go way beyond what any barbarian can do. Still not relevant to the calculations ;)
Except that it's not irrelevant. It's a bit too much to ask you to add in. But it's relevance is actually very important because these are key base features of any Fighter that can be used by them as appropriate to them. You allowed Rage on the Barbarian because you found it integral to them and how they dealt their damage, particularly over long periods. That same reasoning is exactly why Action Surge and the Bonus from GWM is important because those are factors that are a part of things regardless of Subclasses or any other outside factors beyond the basic key feature requirments you used for something like Rage or the Feat that is being compared when used by both of those basic classes in conjunction with certain weapons and key features.
I never myself entered Subclasses into the issue. Nor did I ask for it. But your attempt to say that these things don't actually matter for the issue is objectively and factually incorrect when you want to compare the two on such a long term damage level. And the only valid reason like I said is that it's hard to actually quantify the full value of them to get their full impact. The attitude that these two things don't matter when they are either Integral to one of the two classes or to the Feat that you are partly discussing itself actually creates an unfair bias in your approach that does actually need mentioning even if it can't be properly rectified mathematically for proper comparison because the Details are too many to accurately work out on a general level.
Also. Barbarians do not actually gain more benefit from Action Surge than the fighter does. In fact no class is able to take advantage of it to the extent that a max level fighter is capable doing. So your attempt to say that it doesn't matter because if the Barbarian had it it would help them more is actually objectively incorrect as well. Because the Truth of it is that it's power is contained solely in the amount of attacks it can add in which is actually much greater for the Fighter than the Barbarian. That's not to say that the Barbarian wouldn't get some use out of it. But turning 2 attacks into 4 is nothing compared to turning 4 attacks into 8 and the dramatic increase in static damage alone that creates. Particularly over a long period of time.
You have completely missed the whole point of my post.
Not sure where to start but... On action surge, what I meant was that if lets say a barbarian deals more damage with 2 attacks than a fighter does with 4 attacks, this means that the barbarian will still do more damage with 4 attacks than a fighter with 8. Sure it would depend on how much more the barbarian did but since the barbarian CAN'T have action surge and still be level 20 barbarian, the comparison is useless because this is NOT a class vs class comparison of best class ever. Which is what you seem to think I meant.
The bonus from GWM is INCREDIBLY irrelevant, because the barbarian could also take it. Since both can use it, the question wouldn't be "how much base damage does these two classes deal" but instead "who benefits more from GWM, Fighter OR barbarian?". Also, since there is no good way to implement this because of enemies having different hp and so on, it's just not worth doing. We all understand that GWM is a good feat to have if you use a great weapon. We all know bonus attacks are good. There's nothing more we need to know, unless you want to answer the question of who benefits the most. I'd be interested to find out but the calculations would be so horrible that I'm not going to, since it's still irrelevant for my post.
As for the last thing you mention, the level 20 barbarian can RAGE UNLIMITED TIMES A DAY = this is relevant. Even so, I did calculations WITH and WITHOUT it. So you can compare it yourself if you wanted, but since it IS an option for them to do ALL DAY LONG. Reckless Attack is ALSO UNLIMITED = Relevant. This is ALWAYS an option, they can ALWAYS get advantage like this. It's much more relevant than doing some calculations with action surge which just is guesswork. We don't know how many action surges will be made during a day so it's irrelevant. Obviously, and I said this too, the more action surges the fighter can make the better he will be. No one argued that. It's obvious. But it's also irrelevant because it would put dumb limitations and make the whole idea useless. Now, I mentioned this before already and said that the fighter, in 200 turns would more than likely be able to get advantage on a few hits which of course would increase the damage output. NO ONE is arguing that.
My calculations are NOT made to be a Fighter VS barbarian, who is the best ever. Doing this we would have to actually use subclasses because otherwise the question isn't useful, since even if base figher would be worse than base barbarian, if the subclasses were 4 times better than all barbarian subclasses the fighter would still be better in all ways right? But these calculations isn't a competition, it's just FACT of how much damage they deal on average over 200 turns against an AC of 20. The barbarian would deal a whole lot more if it used reckless attack and rage, and I also listed the damages without them just to compare. NOWHERE did I complain about the fighter being a worse class.
The point of the calculations is ONE thing, to show what base damage they deal with their base abilities that they can use all the time, ie extra attack, rage, reckless attack.
What this allows us to do, which seems to be the highest missable point here, is get an understanding of what things they both benefit from. Like in the example where I mention how the fighter actually gains more average damage from a +1 sword than the barbarian would. And how the fighter would get much more out of a +1d6 damage modifier than the barbarian. And how, the lower the AC of the opponent gets the more the fighter will shine. THAT'S the point, this is just math, not PVP.
So, with these calculations we can understand how they both work. Now, with this base understanding we could better understand which subclasses would work well, which spells would work well and so on.
It's NOT, I say it again, PVP. It's NOT a competition of who is the best damage dealer.
I don't think we want to start factoring in feats or subclasses. If we do the numbers are gonna get confusing real fast lol. I merely wanted the Great-sword to be used with Great weapon fighting because every baseline fighter would have access to a Fighting style at lvl 1 and it would make more sense for them to use a 2d6 weapon as oppose to a 1d12 weapon because they did not have access to Brutal Critical. Anyway I am in total agreement that even with those additions the Barbs average damage still blows the Fighter out of the water.
One thing you didn't factor in. Which admittedly may be hard is Action Surge. But just how much Action surge depends a lot on things like the rounds per day going on. If your doing 10 rounds of combat for 20 days. Having 2 of those 10 rounds being basically double damage is going to be a lot more than even something like 20 rounds over 10 days with only 2 of those being effectively doubled by Action Surge.
I won't even ask about if you tried to factor in the bonus action attack from GWM because there are variables that are unanswerable in a basic white room setting as to how often that effect actually triggers. though it's likely in the Barbarians favor.
Like I said I didn't include these things because they aren't relevant for what I did math on. No subclass, because with just 3 subclasses each there would have to be 9 different calculations to compare each against the other. With 6 each it would be 36 calculations. It's also highly irrelevant because the calculations show a kind of base damage, which means you can get an idea of what will be extra useful for the fighter vs the barbarian (IE, like I just showed in the last post, fighter benefits more for each lowered AC of the target meaning it will catch up faster and faster the lower the AC is, in addition they benefit more from magic items and effects that add extra damage on each hit (not once/turn since that would be the same for both).
I didn't factor in GWM because it's highly irrelevant to show what the BASE ability is, since while obviously a fighter with great weapons would most likely use it, it's just as likely that a barbarian using great weapons would also get it and then suddenly we have a whole other focus, namely who benefits more of GWM, fighter or barbarian. That's a whole other thread. But just because you brought it up I'd like to make a short note of how, as I just said, the fighter benefits more the lower AC they have, they would also lose more by making the AC higher... So, using GWM to deal more damage would more likely benefit the barbarian more in this case. As for the extra bonus attacks from GWM, it's either on a crit, which wouldn't make that much difference considering the fighter average 40 crits out of 800 attacks, while the barbarian averages 39 crits out of the 400 attacks. So on average the fighter deals one more crit in 200 rounds. Obviously the champion crits more, but that's a subclass and once again... Not the point. The other way to get bonus attacks is from downing an enemy and this is honestly just not possible to calculate in a valuable way. It clearly depends on what enemies you face and if you can put them to 0 hp in one round, which depends on so many different factors it's just irrelevant. Especially since it's likely that a barbarian could also take the feat and basically gain the same benefits, or more.
Action surge is also irrelevant, because these calculations aren't made to see who's the best vs the other or anything, just to show what the base is. Clearly a barbarian would benefit more from an action surge, but they don't have it so it doesn't matter. Does the fighter deal more damage with an action surge? Yes. How much more? Impossible to calculate in a useful relevant way. What we can use the calculations for is this: Since action surge would increase the fighters average damage, this class ability means that fighters benefit more from short rests than the barbarian! Since each short rest would mean they get an extra action surge and would catch up better. Now we know! I mean the optimal way to run a fighter (for pure damage) would be 1 round of combat/short rest. This way they would go way beyond what any barbarian can do. Still not relevant to the calculations ;)
Except that it's not irrelevant. It's a bit too much to ask you to add in. But it's relevance is actually very important because these are key base features of any Fighter that can be used by them as appropriate to them. You allowed Rage on the Barbarian because you found it integral to them and how they dealt their damage, particularly over long periods. That same reasoning is exactly why Action Surge and the Bonus from GWM is important because those are factors that are a part of things regardless of Subclasses or any other outside factors beyond the basic key feature requirments you used for something like Rage or the Feat that is being compared when used by both of those basic classes in conjunction with certain weapons and key features.
I never myself entered Subclasses into the issue. Nor did I ask for it. But your attempt to say that these things don't actually matter for the issue is objectively and factually incorrect when you want to compare the two on such a long term damage level. And the only valid reason like I said is that it's hard to actually quantify the full value of them to get their full impact. The attitude that these two things don't matter when they are either Integral to one of the two classes or to the Feat that you are partly discussing itself actually creates an unfair bias in your approach that does actually need mentioning even if it can't be properly rectified mathematically for proper comparison because the Details are too many to accurately work out on a general level.
Also. Barbarians do not actually gain more benefit from Action Surge than the fighter does. In fact no class is able to take advantage of it to the extent that a max level fighter is capable doing. So your attempt to say that it doesn't matter because if the Barbarian had it it would help them more is actually objectively incorrect as well. Because the Truth of it is that it's power is contained solely in the amount of attacks it can add in which is actually much greater for the Fighter than the Barbarian. That's not to say that the Barbarian wouldn't get some use out of it. But turning 2 attacks into 4 is nothing compared to turning 4 attacks into 8 and the dramatic increase in static damage alone that creates. Particularly over a long period of time.
You have completely missed the whole point of my post.
Not sure where to start but... On action surge, what I meant was that if lets say a barbarian deals more damage with 2 attacks than a fighter does with 4 attacks, this means that the barbarian will still do more damage with 4 attacks than a fighter with 8. Sure it would depend on how much more the barbarian did but since the barbarian CAN'T have action surge and still be level 20 barbarian, the comparison is useless because this is NOT a class vs class comparison of best class ever. Which is what you seem to think I meant.
The bonus from GWM is INCREDIBLY irrelevant, because the barbarian could also take it. Since both can use it, the question wouldn't be "how much base damage does these two classes deal" but instead "who benefits more from GWM, Fighter OR barbarian?". Also, since there is no good way to implement this because of enemies having different hp and so on, it's just not worth doing. We all understand that GWM is a good feat to have if you use a great weapon. We all know bonus attacks are good. There's nothing more we need to know, unless you want to answer the question of who benefits the most. I'd be interested to find out but the calculations would be so horrible that I'm not going to, since it's still irrelevant for my post.
As for the last thing you mention, the level 20 barbarian can RAGE UNLIMITED TIMES A DAY = this is relevant. Even so, I did calculations WITH and WITHOUT it. So you can compare it yourself if you wanted, but since it IS an option for them to do ALL DAY LONG. Reckless Attack is ALSO UNLIMITED = Relevant. This is ALWAYS an option, they can ALWAYS get advantage like this. It's much more relevant than doing some calculations with action surge which just is guesswork. We don't know how many action surges will be made during a day so it's irrelevant. Obviously, and I said this too, the more action surges the fighter can make the better he will be. No one argued that. It's obvious. But it's also irrelevant because it would put dumb limitations and make the whole idea useless. Now, I mentioned this before already and said that the fighter, in 200 turns would more than likely be able to get advantage on a few hits which of course would increase the damage output. NO ONE is arguing that.
My calculations are NOT made to be a Fighter VS barbarian, who is the best ever. Doing this we would have to actually use subclasses because otherwise the question isn't useful, since even if base figher would be worse than base barbarian, if the subclasses were 4 times better than all barbarian subclasses the fighter would still be better in all ways right? But these calculations isn't a competition, it's just FACT of how much damage they deal on average over 200 turns against an AC of 20. The barbarian would deal a whole lot more if it used reckless attack and rage, and I also listed the damages without them just to compare. NOWHERE did I complain about the fighter being a worse class.
The point of the calculations is ONE thing, to show what base damage they deal with their base abilities that they can use all the time, ie extra attack, rage, reckless attack.
What this allows us to do, which seems to be the highest missable point here, is get an understanding of what things they both benefit from. Like in the example where I mention how the fighter actually gains more average damage from a +1 sword than the barbarian would. And how the fighter would get much more out of a +1d6 damage modifier than the barbarian. And how, the lower the AC of the opponent gets the more the fighter will shine. THAT'S the point, this is just math, not PVP.
So, with these calculations we can understand how they both work. Now, with this base understanding we could better understand which subclasses would work well, which spells would work well and so on.
It's NOT, I say it again, PVP. It's NOT a competition of who is the best damage dealer.
Here is your problem with all of this despite your long paragraphs. First of all. The greater number of Criticals is actually a big factor in the damage that is dealt despite the fact that they can both take it first of all. Which changes their damage by alot. Second of all.
The Barbarian does not have Action Surge so regardless of what buff it would get from it. The Fighter does get it. So it is relevant to the damage that the fighter does regardless of how the Barbarian might make use of it if it only could. On top of that the increased number of criticals that the Fighter Got would Further increase the issue of the extra attacks gained from Criticals thanks to GWM which would further alter the damage that the Fighter does.
So no. Despite your protests neither are actually as irrelevant as you want to make them. For one because They get different amounts of use out of them and for two. One of them is the difference in the effectiveness and battle prowess of one of the classes compared to another as a key component of that class.
So in short. I didn't understand wrong. My points are still valid. The comparisons are not equal.
I don't think we want to start factoring in feats or subclasses. If we do the numbers are gonna get confusing real fast lol. I merely wanted the Great-sword to be used with Great weapon fighting because every baseline fighter would have access to a Fighting style at lvl 1 and it would make more sense for them to use a 2d6 weapon as oppose to a 1d12 weapon because they did not have access to Brutal Critical. Anyway I am in total agreement that even with those additions the Barbs average damage still blows the Fighter out of the water.
One thing you didn't factor in. Which admittedly may be hard is Action Surge. But just how much Action surge depends a lot on things like the rounds per day going on. If your doing 10 rounds of combat for 20 days. Having 2 of those 10 rounds being basically double damage is going to be a lot more than even something like 20 rounds over 10 days with only 2 of those being effectively doubled by Action Surge.
I won't even ask about if you tried to factor in the bonus action attack from GWM because there are variables that are unanswerable in a basic white room setting as to how often that effect actually triggers. though it's likely in the Barbarians favor.
Like I said I didn't include these things because they aren't relevant for what I did math on. No subclass, because with just 3 subclasses each there would have to be 9 different calculations to compare each against the other. With 6 each it would be 36 calculations. It's also highly irrelevant because the calculations show a kind of base damage, which means you can get an idea of what will be extra useful for the fighter vs the barbarian (IE, like I just showed in the last post, fighter benefits more for each lowered AC of the target meaning it will catch up faster and faster the lower the AC is, in addition they benefit more from magic items and effects that add extra damage on each hit (not once/turn since that would be the same for both).
I didn't factor in GWM because it's highly irrelevant to show what the BASE ability is, since while obviously a fighter with great weapons would most likely use it, it's just as likely that a barbarian using great weapons would also get it and then suddenly we have a whole other focus, namely who benefits more of GWM, fighter or barbarian. That's a whole other thread. But just because you brought it up I'd like to make a short note of how, as I just said, the fighter benefits more the lower AC they have, they would also lose more by making the AC higher... So, using GWM to deal more damage would more likely benefit the barbarian more in this case. As for the extra bonus attacks from GWM, it's either on a crit, which wouldn't make that much difference considering the fighter average 40 crits out of 800 attacks, while the barbarian averages 39 crits out of the 400 attacks. So on average the fighter deals one more crit in 200 rounds. Obviously the champion crits more, but that's a subclass and once again... Not the point. The other way to get bonus attacks is from downing an enemy and this is honestly just not possible to calculate in a valuable way. It clearly depends on what enemies you face and if you can put them to 0 hp in one round, which depends on so many different factors it's just irrelevant. Especially since it's likely that a barbarian could also take the feat and basically gain the same benefits, or more.
Action surge is also irrelevant, because these calculations aren't made to see who's the best vs the other or anything, just to show what the base is. Clearly a barbarian would benefit more from an action surge, but they don't have it so it doesn't matter. Does the fighter deal more damage with an action surge? Yes. How much more? Impossible to calculate in a useful relevant way. What we can use the calculations for is this: Since action surge would increase the fighters average damage, this class ability means that fighters benefit more from short rests than the barbarian! Since each short rest would mean they get an extra action surge and would catch up better. Now we know! I mean the optimal way to run a fighter (for pure damage) would be 1 round of combat/short rest. This way they would go way beyond what any barbarian can do. Still not relevant to the calculations ;)
Except that it's not irrelevant. It's a bit too much to ask you to add in. But it's relevance is actually very important because these are key base features of any Fighter that can be used by them as appropriate to them. You allowed Rage on the Barbarian because you found it integral to them and how they dealt their damage, particularly over long periods. That same reasoning is exactly why Action Surge and the Bonus from GWM is important because those are factors that are a part of things regardless of Subclasses or any other outside factors beyond the basic key feature requirments you used for something like Rage or the Feat that is being compared when used by both of those basic classes in conjunction with certain weapons and key features.
I never myself entered Subclasses into the issue. Nor did I ask for it. But your attempt to say that these things don't actually matter for the issue is objectively and factually incorrect when you want to compare the two on such a long term damage level. And the only valid reason like I said is that it's hard to actually quantify the full value of them to get their full impact. The attitude that these two things don't matter when they are either Integral to one of the two classes or to the Feat that you are partly discussing itself actually creates an unfair bias in your approach that does actually need mentioning even if it can't be properly rectified mathematically for proper comparison because the Details are too many to accurately work out on a general level.
Also. Barbarians do not actually gain more benefit from Action Surge than the fighter does. In fact no class is able to take advantage of it to the extent that a max level fighter is capable doing. So your attempt to say that it doesn't matter because if the Barbarian had it it would help them more is actually objectively incorrect as well. Because the Truth of it is that it's power is contained solely in the amount of attacks it can add in which is actually much greater for the Fighter than the Barbarian. That's not to say that the Barbarian wouldn't get some use out of it. But turning 2 attacks into 4 is nothing compared to turning 4 attacks into 8 and the dramatic increase in static damage alone that creates. Particularly over a long period of time.
You have completely missed the whole point of my post.
Not sure where to start but... On action surge, what I meant was that if lets say a barbarian deals more damage with 2 attacks than a fighter does with 4 attacks, this means that the barbarian will still do more damage with 4 attacks than a fighter with 8. Sure it would depend on how much more the barbarian did but since the barbarian CAN'T have action surge and still be level 20 barbarian, the comparison is useless because this is NOT a class vs class comparison of best class ever. Which is what you seem to think I meant.
The bonus from GWM is INCREDIBLY irrelevant, because the barbarian could also take it. Since both can use it, the question wouldn't be "how much base damage does these two classes deal" but instead "who benefits more from GWM, Fighter OR barbarian?". Also, since there is no good way to implement this because of enemies having different hp and so on, it's just not worth doing. We all understand that GWM is a good feat to have if you use a great weapon. We all know bonus attacks are good. There's nothing more we need to know, unless you want to answer the question of who benefits the most. I'd be interested to find out but the calculations would be so horrible that I'm not going to, since it's still irrelevant for my post.
As for the last thing you mention, the level 20 barbarian can RAGE UNLIMITED TIMES A DAY = this is relevant. Even so, I did calculations WITH and WITHOUT it. So you can compare it yourself if you wanted, but since it IS an option for them to do ALL DAY LONG. Reckless Attack is ALSO UNLIMITED = Relevant. This is ALWAYS an option, they can ALWAYS get advantage like this. It's much more relevant than doing some calculations with action surge which just is guesswork. We don't know how many action surges will be made during a day so it's irrelevant. Obviously, and I said this too, the more action surges the fighter can make the better he will be. No one argued that. It's obvious. But it's also irrelevant because it would put dumb limitations and make the whole idea useless. Now, I mentioned this before already and said that the fighter, in 200 turns would more than likely be able to get advantage on a few hits which of course would increase the damage output. NO ONE is arguing that.
My calculations are NOT made to be a Fighter VS barbarian, who is the best ever. Doing this we would have to actually use subclasses because otherwise the question isn't useful, since even if base figher would be worse than base barbarian, if the subclasses were 4 times better than all barbarian subclasses the fighter would still be better in all ways right? But these calculations isn't a competition, it's just FACT of how much damage they deal on average over 200 turns against an AC of 20. The barbarian would deal a whole lot more if it used reckless attack and rage, and I also listed the damages without them just to compare. NOWHERE did I complain about the fighter being a worse class.
The point of the calculations is ONE thing, to show what base damage they deal with their base abilities that they can use all the time, ie extra attack, rage, reckless attack.
What this allows us to do, which seems to be the highest missable point here, is get an understanding of what things they both benefit from. Like in the example where I mention how the fighter actually gains more average damage from a +1 sword than the barbarian would. And how the fighter would get much more out of a +1d6 damage modifier than the barbarian. And how, the lower the AC of the opponent gets the more the fighter will shine. THAT'S the point, this is just math, not PVP.
So, with these calculations we can understand how they both work. Now, with this base understanding we could better understand which subclasses would work well, which spells would work well and so on.
It's NOT, I say it again, PVP. It's NOT a competition of who is the best damage dealer.
Here is your problem with all of this despite your long paragraphs. First of all. The greater number of Criticals is actually a big factor in the damage that is dealt despite the fact that they can both take it first of all. Which changes their damage by alot. Second of all.
The Barbarian does not have Action Surge so regardless of what buff it would get from it. The Fighter does get it. So it is relevant to the damage that the fighter does regardless of how the Barbarian might make use of it if it only could. On top of that the increased number of criticals that the Fighter Got would Further increase the issue of the extra attacks gained from Criticals thanks to GWM which would further alter the damage that the Fighter does.
So no. Despite your protests neither are actually as irrelevant as you want to make them. For one because They get different amounts of use out of them and for two. One of them is the difference in the effectiveness and battle prowess of one of the classes compared to another as a key component of that class.
So in short. I didn't understand wrong. My points are still valid. The comparisons are not equal.
Sorry mate, think what you want but you didn't understand it. Now, just to be clear I'm not trying to yell or am angry or anything I'm just trying to show the emphasis of my points. It might have come of wrong and that's on me. I'm full on covid-mode here so my brain isn't at 100% capacity :)
Anyways, you're still talking about comparing fighter vsbarbarian but it's not supposed to be a VERSUS thing. It's just to show the bases. Think of it more like if you would compare let's say greataxe with greatsword damage (just the weapons). Then you could see that they both have 12 as maximum damage, however the greatsword has a minimum damage of 2 instead of 1 + an average damage of 7 instead of 6.5 for the greatsword. So, looking only on these numbers we could see that the greatsword is marginally better for both regular criticals and regular hits. If you however consider the abilities of the half-orc and things like the barbarians crit we can still see that they could probably benefit more of a greataxe in this case, because their abilities just add one extra die and a d12 is better than a d6.
As far action surge and the barbarian.. My comment on action surge on the barbarian was meant to be a "if both barbarian and the fighter (or like if you houseruled every class had action surge) had access to it, the barbarian would benefit more from it since by then the barbarian would also gain just as much from it. But since they don't, there's no point in talking about it from that specific point, that the barbarian has it. As it is now they would have to multiclass to get it and obviously that is a weird comparison to make in this scenario. In addition you would lose out on +4 STR capstone so...
Action surge on the fighter though, since it's not available all the time it's irrelevant because then you aren't doing a general calculation but instead you're doing a very specific situation and frankly it's not needed because like I said it's clear that the more action surges they can do, the better for them. This we all know. This is on the same level as the advantage situation, I did calculations for the barbarian with and without advantage because they ALWAYS have access to advantage. The fighter doesn't. This doesn't mean they won't ever get advantage and I did bring it up, but doing calculations for a fighter always having advantage would also be weird because no matter how hard they try they wouldn't be able to always get it.
If you look at the numbers you can see how the barbarian compares without advantage and how much better it becomes with advantage, this also gives us an idea of how good advantage actually is. It DOES even the scores for the fighter and the barbarian, and it SHOULD. They are both martial classes and if one was superiour in all ways, it would be really weird and bad game design.
As for criticals with action surge, as you can see if you look at the numbers, the barbarian has 39 criticals and the fighter 40. If you wanted to specify a situation you could for instance look at those numbers and say:
let's say there's 20 rounds of combat without rests, the fighter would then have 20 action surges (since they get 2/rest later). 20 action surges means the fighter gets 80 more attacks. This means that against ac 20 they would get 44 extra hits and 4 extra crits. Then add that damage and yay, now you can compare the damage if the fighter had the possibility to rest 10 betwen every 20 rounds of combat. Now, this would have put the fighter at 26 more damage from criticals, not that much really... On the other hand the extra hits would have added 506 damage, so while I agree they would do extra damage it's not from the criticals.
This is still not relevant to my calculations because it adds nothing to them, my calculations on the other hand add the base for this specific calculation. That's the point I'm trying to make.
As for GWM, once again, it doesn't add anything to my calculations because the point of them isn't to compare fighter versus barbarian, or who benefits more from GWM. My calculations could be used to make such a comparison though. But the point is, not everyone will automatically take GWM just because they use a greatweapon. Now, I'm not saying it's not a good option but it's still just an option. If I had used GWM in my calculations, they would have been pretty much useless for a fighter who didn't take this feat because it's much more complicated to start subtracting options than just adding them.
Now however, since the calculations are without GWM, it's easy to simply add an extra attack and see the outcome. Right now it's 40 criticals so that's another 40 attacks, which is another 2 criticals (which wouldn't add a extra attack) and 22 hits. Simply add the extra damage and it's done.
However note that GWM also adds an extra attack when you down an enemy so if you fought goblins and killed one each turn you'd have 1 extra attack each turn. Now, since my calculations are without GWM we could easily make a new calculation just for fun of how much extra fun a fighter with GWM would have against a bunch of goblins, almost an extra attack each turn on average. IF however I had already accounted for criticals adding extra attacks, from GWM, these calculations would be very off.
Also, once again, it's NOT a versus thing. Unless you stop treating it like a versus thing you won't understand it. By not adding GWM or action surge, we CAN use these calculations to look at more specific situations. Like, even the example up there with 20 rounds of combat without a rest is probably far of a normal average battle, so even that is kinda irrelevant unless you're trying to look at how much damage the fighter would do with action surges and a rest every 20 rounds. If I had used this in the calculations they'd be bad.
Just to show how the calculations could have looked for the fighter the ways that have been brought up.
Now we give the fighter a greatsword, GWM and action surge. (I'm skipping weapon style because my brain isn't working). I'm also leaving out other valid assumptions like downing an enemy every 4 hits or having advantage on every 3rd hit or similar things. I'm only mentioning this because I want you to imagine what it would have looked like then.
The Fighter has +11 to hit and deals 2d6+5 damage. He makes 4 attack/round and has action surge twice/rest, get's bonus attacks on crits and when you down an enemy. Since the goal is 200 rounds we'll use 10 rounds of combat as an average battle lenght and they would start out rested (ie having action surges). He hits on a 9+ = 602,4 hits out of which 554,4 are normal hits (1108.8 d6 + 2772) and 48 are crits (192 d6 + 240). Bonus attacks are included for a total of 1300.8 d6 + 3012 damage for a total of 7564.8 average damage.
VS
The Fighter has +11 to hit and deals 1d12+5 damage. He makes 4 attack/round = 800 attacks. He hits on 9+ = 480 hits of which 440 are normal hits (440 d12+2200) and 40 are crits (80 d12 + 200). This gives him 520d12+2400 = 5780 average damage on 200 rounds with this setup.
Now, which would you rather use as a base if you wanted to see how well the fighter did with a bow instead? Or a longsword? And what if our average fights are 15 rounds, or 5? In the first example I'd have to re-calculate how many hits are made and added, then re-calculate again if using archery weapon style, then recalculate the damage.. And possibly re-calculate the average combat length since the amount of action surges would be off. Since crits add extra attacks you would have to take this into consideration for how many action surges are made so most likely you'd have to do a "action surge reset".
In the second example, you swap out the damage (1d12 = 6.5 average, 1d8 = 4.5 average damage = you'd just remove 2 damage from each hit) and add a number of hits according to archery style if you want to use this (since it's a +2 modifier it adds 2 hits/20 attacks, the rest are already calculated). No subtracting hits or things like this beforehand needed.
As for the reason of using a great axe on both fighter and barbarian it's because if you want a cleaner comparison you use as many similar things that are reliable (ie, reckless attack isn't a 1 use thing, it's an option for ALL attacks = reliable). By using great axe for both we can see the numbers when both have the same gear, which gives a better visual than if they have different weapons. A wizard using a ballista to make an attack probably deals more damage than a rogue despite both having just 1 attack. When you go to extremes it might sound silly but the general idea is the same, if you use the same weapon you get a better visual of what they actually do.
As for my previous calculations, I could have done the same calculations with greatswords instead and it would have been just as "fair" and give a good visual, I just used a great axe because it's a barbarian thread about brutal critical originally and the brutal critical benefits more from great axe than greatsword.
Anyways the calculations, once again, are made with a simple (simpler?) basics so you could more easily swap out something and see how much it would improve if you wanted to. Also considering feats are optional even if most people probably allow them, that's another good reason to not use it for the base calculations.
Just to show how the calculations could have looked for the fighter the ways that have been brought up.
Now we give the fighter a greatsword, GWM and action surge. (I'm skipping weapon style because my brain isn't working). I'm also leaving out other valid assumptions like downing an enemy every 4 hits or having advantage on every 3rd hit or similar things. I'm only mentioning this because I want you to imagine what it would have looked like then.
The Fighter has +11 to hit and deals 2d6+5 damage. He makes 4 attack/round and has action surge twice/rest, get's bonus attacks on crits and when you down an enemy. Since the goal is 200 rounds we'll use 10 rounds of combat as an average battle lenght and they would start out rested (ie having action surges). He hits on a 9+ = 602,4 hits out of which 554,4 are normal hits (1108.8 d6 + 2772) and 48 are crits (192 d6 + 240). Bonus attacks are included for a total of 1300.8 d6 + 3012 damage for a total of 7564.8 average damage.
VS
The Fighter has +11 to hit and deals 1d12+5 damage. He makes 4 attack/round = 800 attacks. He hits on 9+ = 480 hits of which 440 are normal hits (440 d12+2200) and 40 are crits (80 d12 + 200). This gives him 520d12+2400 = 5780 average damage on 200 rounds with this setup.
Now, which would you rather use as a base if you wanted to see how well the fighter did with a bow instead? Or a longsword? And what if our average fights are 15 rounds, or 5? In the first example I'd have to re-calculate how many hits are made and added, then re-calculate again if using archery weapon style, then recalculate the damage.. And possibly re-calculate the average combat length since the amount of action surges would be off. Since crits add extra attacks you would have to take this into consideration for how many action surges are made so most likely you'd have to do a "action surge reset".
In the second example, you swap out the damage (1d12 = 6.5 average, 1d8 = 4.5 average damage = you'd just remove 2 damage from each hit) and add a number of hits according to archery style if you want to use this (since it's a +2 modifier it adds 2 hits/20 attacks, the rest are already calculated). No subtracting hits or things like this beforehand needed.
As for the reason of using a great axe on both fighter and barbarian it's because if you want a cleaner comparison you use as many similar things that are reliable (ie, reckless attack isn't a 1 use thing, it's an option for ALL attacks = reliable). By using great axe for both we can see the numbers when both have the same gear, which gives a better visual than if they have different weapons. A wizard using a ballista to make an attack probably deals more damage than a rogue despite both having just 1 attack. When you go to extremes it might sound silly but the general idea is the same, if you use the same weapon you get a better visual of what they actually do.
As for my previous calculations, I could have done the same calculations with greatswords instead and it would have been just as "fair" and give a good visual, I just used a great axe because it's a barbarian thread about brutal critical originally and the brutal critical benefits more from great axe than greatsword.
Anyways the calculations, once again, are made with a simple (simpler?) basics so you could more easily swap out something and see how much it would improve if you wanted to. Also considering feats are optional even if most people probably allow them, that's another good reason to not use it for the base calculations.
This is why I didn't argue for Sub Classes or Fighting STyles. They are far too variable. They are goign to be potentially different even on characters that are otherwise the same. Two Fighters using the Great Weapon Fighting style could play very different because one is a Battle Master and One is a Champion or a Samurai. On the Other Hand Two Champions can also play very differently if one has Great Weapon Fighting Style and one has Archery style instead.
So I was never worried about those. I only asked about a couple details that were fairly universal. The bonus action attack of GWM. Despite the fact that both the Fighter and the Barbarian have it. Because of the greater number of crits potentially and a basically incalculable number of killing blows. I can understand that one being too much to calculate but just wondered what thought you put into them or if you'd thought of a way to kind of simulate those variables a bit.
For Action Surge it's something that is universal to all Fighters and all Fighters are pretty much going to use it much like Barbarians are going to use their Rage. But it's exact usefulness is rather Variable based upon how their day goes and the rests and the amount they actually manage to attack. But i was wondering what if any thought you put into them in your calculations because they are important base numbers. And It just happens that they affect the base numbers potentially in favor of the fighter more than the Barbarian and it was the Fighter that seemed to be lagging behind a bit in your calculations, so I wondered what you considered representative of those important disparities when talking about just how much damage they both do since you did factor in to some extent an average idea of the crits for both of them. So even if you hadn't calculated the GWM thing. Which still could be important. If I'm wanting to have an idea about how my fighter is going to do in comparison to that Barbarian. I absolutely am going to want to know the difference this has on the character as best that I'm able. Because this is going to be a core thing I am doing as a fighter regardless of if I'm an Archer, I'm a GWM, or I'm even going Sword and Board and defensive fighting styles and playing a tank. It's always an important factor in the output of the damage, or potentially other areas, of my character.
Well, as you could see from the original numbers, despite the fighter having twice the number of attacks they only do 1 more critical hit, 40 vs 39. (without action surge). This means that on average, the bonus attack from a crit is 40 for the fighter and 39 for the barbarian. As for bonus attacks from downing an enemy it's going to depend on what enemies they face and would come down to who can on average at least put down one or more enemies each turn... In general, since the barbarian can reliably guarantee advantage, the other ability of the GWM will benefit the barbarian more since even against an AC of 20 the barbarian would reliably get a lot of hits in with the +10 damage, while the fighter would have some issues using this all the time unless they had a way to get advantage as well... So it would depend a lot on the situation really. The lower the AC though, the more the fighter could use it more reliably and still deal a whole lot of damage.
As for action surge vs rage, yes, in a way they will.. But not really. A barbarian can use, since this is a level 20 comparison, rage unlimited times a day, rest or no rest. The fighters action surge can at most be used twice at this level, for each rest. Which means that while we can presume they will use all action surges each rest, we have no way of measuring how many rests are made since this would just be a made up number. There are suggestions but that's it, just suggestions. Since I did the calculations at 200 rounds, it would also depend a lot of how long each battle would be. If we have 2 battles of 100 rounds, they could clearly at most use 4 action surges since they'd have 2 before the first and possibly 2 before the 2nd. This is a highly unlikely scenario though. On the other hand, maybe they have a 1 shot marathon with 1 round of battle each day, maybe like some kind of olympics or something, then they would have 200 action surges. This is why I mean it doesn't matter for the calculations made, since there is no official "every day you take 4 short rests" and "a combat is only 15 rounds" kinda rules. If that had been the case, it would have been fairly easy to see how many action surges the fighter would get each day.
Rage on the other hand has no limitations at this level, 200 rounds in a day? can still rage all day.
In general, what I figured out from the calculations is basically that the higher the AC the more the barbarian would benefit really, because for the barbarians the critical hits play a bigger and bigger role. Since the ability to constantly get advantage also gives an increased chance of a crit (like the 800 attacks of a fighter without advantage gives 40 crits and 400 attacks of the barbarian gives 39 crits)... With lower AC, the fighters higher number of hits means they will quickly catch up and then surpass the barbarian. At the same time, positioning and such also becomes important for the fighter because having advantage will almost double the amount of crits and increase the number of hits.
On average, I think they even out pretty well but long term I actually think the fighter will be much better, especially considering things like magic weapons. A flametounge for instance would be so much better on a fighter, adding 3640 average damage compared to 2821 on a barbarian. And remember this is still without advantage or action surges.
Against an AC of 15 the fighter would hit 680 out of its 800 attacks instead of 480, while the barbarian would only get another extra 35 hits.. basically the barbarian would only miss if rolling double 1's with reckless attack, but since advantage gives the barbarian so many of its hits already its almost no change. Just for damage numbers the fighter would add 2300 average damage against an AC of 15 vs 472,5 for the barbarian.
Against an AC of 15 the barbarian, using reckless attack, rage and a flame tounge would do 10922,5 damage on average while the fighter would be doing 13144. Throw in some action surges and advantage and you can see how much better the fighter becomes.
As for actually factoring in what the action surge is doing it's fairly easy, unless you start factoring advantage and such... But basically since on average you will roll each number once for each 20 rolls, so in 20 rolls you will have the span of 1-20.. On average that is, we all know dice are fickle beings... But over a million rolls or something you'd roll more or less each number the same amount of times. So what you do is, look at what number is required to hit, in this case with a +11 to hit against an AC of 20, this means a roll of 9 or higher is a hit.
so in 20 rolls, 8 rolls are misses (1-8), 11 are hits (9-19) and 1 is a crit (20). An action surge gives you 4 extra attacks, so with 5 extra action surges (5x4=20 attacks) you would average 8 misses, 11 hits and a crit. And by looking at what weapon you're using, in this case a great axe, you can calculate extra damage from this. The crit is 2d12+5 (18), the hits are 11d12+55 (71,5+55=126,5).. So 144,5 average damage on 5 action surges. Divide by 5 and you get 28,9 extra damage/action surge.
By changing AC you can figure out how many extra hits you would get as well and by instead changing a weapon you could just change the average damage instead, like a d8 would be 4.5 instead of 6.5 from the great axe. A greatsword would be 7 instead of 6.5 and so on. It's really only the advantage calculations that are messy :)
Still fevered brain from covid here so calculations might be off today too, but think they're about right.
Well, as you could see from the original numbers, despite the fighter having twice the number of attacks they only do 1 more critical hit, 40 vs 39. (without action surge). This means that on average, the bonus attack from a crit is 40 for the fighter and 39 for the barbarian. As for bonus attacks from downing an enemy it's going to depend on what enemies they face and would come down to who can on average at least put down one or more enemies each turn... In general, since the barbarian can reliably guarantee advantage, the other ability of the GWM will benefit the barbarian more since even against an AC of 20 the barbarian would reliably get a lot of hits in with the +10 damage, while the fighter would have some issues using this all the time unless they had a way to get advantage as well... So it would depend a lot on the situation really. The lower the AC though, the more the fighter could use it more reliably and still deal a whole lot of damage.
As for action surge vs rage, yes, in a way they will.. But not really. A barbarian can use, since this is a level 20 comparison, rage unlimited times a day, rest or no rest. The fighters action surge can at most be used twice at this level, for each rest. Which means that while we can presume they will use all action surges each rest, we have no way of measuring how many rests are made since this would just be a made up number. There are suggestions but that's it, just suggestions. Since I did the calculations at 200 rounds, it would also depend a lot of how long each battle would be. If we have 2 battles of 100 rounds, they could clearly at most use 4 action surges since they'd have 2 before the first and possibly 2 before the 2nd. This is a highly unlikely scenario though. On the other hand, maybe they have a 1 shot marathon with 1 round of battle each day, maybe like some kind of olympics or something, then they would have 200 action surges. This is why I mean it doesn't matter for the calculations made, since there is no official "every day you take 4 short rests" and "a combat is only 15 rounds" kinda rules. If that had been the case, it would have been fairly easy to see how many action surges the fighter would get each day.
Rage on the other hand has no limitations at this level, 200 rounds in a day? can still rage all day.
In general, what I figured out from the calculations is basically that the higher the AC the more the barbarian would benefit really, because for the barbarians the critical hits play a bigger and bigger role. Since the ability to constantly get advantage also gives an increased chance of a crit (like the 800 attacks of a fighter without advantage gives 40 crits and 400 attacks of the barbarian gives 39 crits)... With lower AC, the fighters higher number of hits means they will quickly catch up and then surpass the barbarian. At the same time, positioning and such also becomes important for the fighter because having advantage will almost double the amount of crits and increase the number of hits.
On average, I think they even out pretty well but long term I actually think the fighter will be much better, especially considering things like magic weapons. A flametounge for instance would be so much better on a fighter, adding 3640 average damage compared to 2821 on a barbarian. And remember this is still without advantage or action surges.
Against an AC of 15 the fighter would hit 680 out of its 800 attacks instead of 480, while the barbarian would only get another extra 35 hits.. basically the barbarian would only miss if rolling double 1's with reckless attack, but since advantage gives the barbarian so many of its hits already its almost no change. Just for damage numbers the fighter would add 2300 average damage against an AC of 15 vs 472,5 for the barbarian.
Against an AC of 15 the barbarian, using reckless attack, rage and a flame tounge would do 10922,5 damage on average while the fighter would be doing 13144. Throw in some action surges and advantage and you can see how much better the fighter becomes.
As for actually factoring in what the action surge is doing it's fairly easy, unless you start factoring advantage and such... But basically since on average you will roll each number once for each 20 rolls, so in 20 rolls you will have the span of 1-20.. On average that is, we all know dice are fickle beings... But over a million rolls or something you'd roll more or less each number the same amount of times. So what you do is, look at what number is required to hit, in this case with a +11 to hit against an AC of 20, this means a roll of 9 or higher is a hit.
so in 20 rolls, 8 rolls are misses (1-8), 11 are hits (9-19) and 1 is a crit (20). An action surge gives you 4 extra attacks, so with 5 extra action surges (5x4=20 attacks) you would average 8 misses, 11 hits and a crit. And by looking at what weapon you're using, in this case a great axe, you can calculate extra damage from this. The crit is 2d12+5 (18), the hits are 11d12+55 (71,5+55=126,5).. So 144,5 average damage on 5 action surges. Divide by 5 and you get 28,9 extra damage/action surge.
By changing AC you can figure out how many extra hits you would get as well and by instead changing a weapon you could just change the average damage instead, like a d8 would be 4.5 instead of 6.5 from the great axe. A greatsword would be 7 instead of 6.5 and so on. It's really only the advantage calculations that are messy :)
Still fevered brain from covid here so calculations might be off today too, but think they're about right.
i'm not nit picking all of the math down to the finest detail. We're really only getting a ballpark range here. But you talk about how we have guidelines... not set rules which would make it easy but guidelines. And I think those guidelines are useful for giving us at least some idea of what to expect even if it's not always realistic or practical. But we can adjust based upon how games are personally playing for us to get some idea.
For example the recommended is 2 short rests and two combats in between each of those rests. Giving us an idea of 6 Action Surges a day... Now the numbers are going to change based upon if your getting 5 turn combats or 10 turn combats just as two examples... But this gives us an idea based upon numbers like this that we can fall back to giving us a mental idea of say 30 or 60 rounds of combat in a day respectively as just an average, Since these numbers are all averages anyway. 30 rounds a day is going to be basically just short of 7 days (6 and 2/3 technically) to reach 200 rounds by that. While 60 rounds of combat on average a day we're looking at more like 3 days (3 and 1/3 technically) Telling us that it would be 40 and 20 Action Surges respectively. This means that we have 160 and 80 extra attacks respectively.
if we use the numbers that you gave here for 20 attacks and apply them roughly to these numbers (i'm not up for doing it perfectly and for that I apologize). 140 attacks would be 80 misses, 88 attacks, and 8 crits just extrapolated from your rough numbers so if I've done the math correctly from this rough estimate number This gets us something like 1012 damage roughly from the normal attacks and another 144 from the Crits for a total of roughly 1156 damage.
On the other hand the 80 extra attacks is more like 40 misses, 44 regular hits, and 4 crits. Giving us more along the lines of 506 damage for regular attacks and 72 on the crits. For a total of 578.
When we go back to your original post comparing the base damage we know that without action surge going on you listed the fighter over 200 rounds doing 5780 damage on average We end up looking at a total of 6936 average damage over 200 rounds in the 5 round combats under book suggested terms of 2 short rests and 2 combats between each rest that is listed in the book. And 6358 average damage over 10 round combats under the same conditions.
These are numbers we can look at and compare to the Barbarian that you have listed at 5390 average damage from just rage, 5928 from Reckless Attack, and 7384 using both abilities together over all 200 attacks.
Now I admitted that there are some variables that make things hard to calculate. But these are just numbers mostly based off of book suggested with just a couple of easy to calculate variables for simplicity just to show some comparable numbers when you explain the caveats of how you reached those numbers. It also shows just how powerful Action Surge can get the more often that it can be used and how much it can actually change things the more optimal the circumstances become for it's usage throughout regular play such as a bunch of relatively short encounters with mostly one or two combats a day over many days and/or the ability to rest often versus not getting to rest as much.
I think this has kinda gone off topic. Understandable, because the OP started with "is that all the barbarian gets, that sucks"... That's always going to start an argument no matter which class.
As much as all the calculations can be helpful (and fun), I think what it all comes down to is that the barbarian doesn't suck, although it's abilities are different to other classes so they will shine in different situations.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
To post a comment, please login or register a new account.
Some Barbarians also have or find ways to make more than 2 attacks. For all the flack that the Berserker barbarian gets that is one way to add a third attack and it is consistent while you use the frenzied rage feature. GWM is another but it's far less consistent because it relies on making Critical hits which the Barbarian is somewhat suited to fish for with reckless attack but that still has issues.
This can up the Barbarian's damage by a lot when they do apply which puts them in line or above the sustainable damage of something like the Rogue or Fighter as well. As can some subclass features which isn't taken into account for either by this basic math. Though I understand why it wasn't.
I did some maths, cuz I have a problem... ;)
Level 20 Fighter, 20 str compared to level 20 barb with 24str and raging with reckless attack, but I'll show math without them as well. Both using a greataxe and attacking a target with 20 AC. 200 rounds of attacks (just because the math is easier and it's supposed to show the difference). d12 average dmg = 6.5.
The Fighter has +11 to hit and deals 1d12+5 damage. He makes 4 attack/round = 800 attacks. He hits on 9+ = 480 hits of which 440 are normal hits (440 d12+2200) and 40 are crits (80 d12 + 200). This gives him 520d12+2400 = 5780 average damage on 200 rounds with this setup.
The Barbarian has +13 to hit and deals 1d12+7 damage, +4 extra while raging and an extra 3d12 (for a total of 5, instead of 2) on a crit. She has 2 attacks/round = 400 attacks. She hits on rolls of 7+ = 280 hits, of which 260 are normal hits (260d12+1820) and 20 are crits (100d12+140). This gives her 360 d12 +1960 = 4300 average damage on 200 rounds. This is without rage and/or reckless attack. Less than the fighter but that was expected since it attacks twice as much.
With Rage this would simply be the 280 hits x 4 extra damage (not total, just extra) = 1120 extra damage, for 5390 average damage. Now, this is not far behind.
Using Reckless attack however she would have 364 hits, out of which 39 would be critical hits (and 325 regular hits). This would mean (without rage) 325d12 + 2275 damage from the normal hits and 195 d12+273 from the crits for 520 d12+ 2548 = 5928 average damage.
Using BOTH she would be doing an average damage of 7384 (1456 extra from rage)!
Now, the questions that might arrive could be why the barbarian can have rage and reckless attack when the fighter can't get other options? The answer of course is partly because the barbarian can use reckless attack all the time, from early on, which means it's fair to take into account. Sure, the fighter might be able to get advantage at times from other sources, many times even if using flanking... But then it starts to go into areas that simply can't be compared and since the barbarian CAN get advantage in even the worst situations, alone and surrounded and all that, it's worth considering.
As for rage, of course in early levels they can't rage 200 rounds in a day, but you could use it as an idea of how much damage they could do with 10 rounds of combat each day for 20 days. The reason I used 200 rounds was to bring the barbarian attacks up to 400 since that would make it easier to compare and count with advantage.
More importantly though, this also takes into account that they are level 20 which means the barbarian gets the +4 strength, which puts it at 24 which is kinda cheating. At level 19 or lower they would both be at 20 Strength and the barbarian would miss another 20 attacks, which would put the average damage at 350 less, but the Fighter would lose a whole attack which would be much worse in this case, but just putting the AC at 15 would change a lot as well.
Weapon styles are a thing as well and the fighter has lots of options to pick them while the barbarian would have more issues getting them, but since involving all that would mean you have to compare many different weapons and situations, this was simply an easy way to show how good the barbarian actually is. Especially against higher AC targets.
One of the most important things this shows us, in my opinion, is how great advantage is really, especially in combinations like the barbarian which can deal a lot of extra damage when it hits. Just adding GWM into this calculation would make a huge difference and many other combinations as well. Anyways, that's enough math for now ;)
Tldr; The barbarian deals a lot of damage.
I think to be fair to the Fighter you have to give them a Great-Sword as opposed to the Greataxe because they do not care about brutal criticals. Also you should at least give them the Great Weapon Fighting Style. This is only fair since the Barb is getting Reckless and Rage. This should slightly bump up the Fighter's average damage since they roll 2d6 instead of 1d12 and they get to reroll 1s and maybe 2s. The Barb should still win average damage quite comfortably but just wanted to give the Fighter a little more love lol.
Depends on the fighter. A crit fishing Champion half-orc might prefer the greataxe because they get to roll 19 (3d12) instead of 17 (5d6) on a crit. But the mean damage for the far more consistent greatsword or maul might even the two out. Those weapons also see a bigger damage increase from the likes of GW fighting style because 1s and 2s are more likely to happen.
Yeah, the point wasn't to even out the situation since it's not a pvp battle or anything, and while I believe a fighter like this would most likely have that weaponstyle, then you could also argue that the barbarian might do the same.. and one or both could get great weapon master as well. On the other hand if we did this, we would have to compare with a sword and shield dueling build as well, that +2 damage counts for something when you have 4 attacks. But then again, dual wielding... :p
Also since many people seem to roll stats it wouldn't be too hard to imagine starting with 18-20 Strength and then all ASI's could go towards feats like GWM and the one that gives you a weaponstyle, which would give the barbarian the same style and suddenly there was no point in adding it to the fighter.
And with subclasses added it's suddenly really complicated because while of course a champion (especially a half-orc one) would get many more crits, and would be fitting to this kind of fight (18-20 crit, 3d12 on crit instead of just 2) we would have to compare it to perhaps the berserker who gets a bonus action attack as well... And suddenly it's subclasses vs subclasses instead of a "base" comparison.
Also this doesn't mean the fighter is worse than the barbarian even, they have action surges as well, second wind and would be able to take heavy armor, or even use a dex fighter which would be much better at ranged combat, starting out and dealing damage before you end up in the actual melee. There's lots of variations. And of course reckless attack also means anything that survives also attacks you at advantage, though in a rage you also have resistance so it might even out a bit anyways... But the point is, it goes both ways.
Which is why I didn't add anything like this, because the point was just to show what rage does, what reckless attack does and how the combination works raw without additions, compared to a fighter without additions.
Just for the record though, a great sword for the fighter would have added 260 damage to a total of 6040 damage, still way less than the barbarian. But as I mentioned the point was to show the difference with the same weapons. Obviously in 200 rounds the fighter is likely to get advantage once or twice I'd hope ;D
And this was made against an AC of 20, relatively high which gives the fighter about 60% hit chance for the fighter, while the barbarian is at 70%, so lowering the AC to 15 would mean the barbarian only miss on 1's and the fighter on 1-4 (80% chance to hit). Throw in GWM and more hits become really ugly fast. And weapons that add an extra die on a hit, making it 2d8 instead of 1d8 would of course make a huge difference when you start hitting 4 times instead of 2, so fighters are still good. Don't worry ;)
And if the fighter is critting on an 18+ instead of just 20?
I don't think we want to start factoring in feats or subclasses. If we do the numbers are gonna get confusing real fast lol. I merely wanted the Great-sword to be used with Great weapon fighting because every baseline fighter would have access to a Fighting style at lvl 1 and it would make more sense for them to use a 2d6 weapon as oppose to a 1d12 weapon because they did not have access to Brutal Critical. Anyway I am in total agreement that even with those additions the Barbs average damage still blows the Fighter out of the water.
One thing you didn't factor in. Which admittedly may be hard is Action Surge. But just how much Action surge depends a lot on things like the rounds per day going on. If your doing 10 rounds of combat for 20 days. Having 2 of those 10 rounds being basically double damage is going to be a lot more than even something like 20 rounds over 10 days with only 2 of those being effectively doubled by Action Surge.
I won't even ask about if you tried to factor in the bonus action attack from GWM because there are variables that are unanswerable in a basic white room setting as to how often that effect actually triggers. though it's likely in the Barbarians favor.
While I didn't use any subclasses for a reason, the champions crit is pretty easy to calculate since the 18 and 19 are already hits in the previous calculation each extra crit would add another d12 of damage, average 6.5 damage. (A regular hit is 1d12+5, a crit is 2d12+5. Since they are already counted as hits, the first d12+5 is already accounted for).
So, another 80 crits = 80 d12 extra damage = 520 more damage on average or 6300 damage. Even using a greatsword AND 18-20 crit would only increase this by 0.5/d12 (as d12 average is 6.5 and 2d6 average is 7)... So this would increase the average damage by 300 to a total of 6600 average damage.
But, "just" using a weapon, or perhaps magic initiate to get the hex spell, that did an extra d6 damage would add 3.5 average damage/hit and 7/crit, would add 1820 for non-champion fighter or 2100 damage for a champion with 18-20 crit range, while for the barbarian that extra d6 damage would "only" add 1410.5 average damage. So, as you can see, the real value of the fighter (in terms of raw basic damage) comes from the many extra hits they get compared to the barbarian.
In the same way, a bonus of +1 to hit, or a lower AC by 1 (19 AC instead) would increase the number of hits by 1 for each 20 attacks... Which in my calculations would mean 20 more hits for the barbarian (290 more average damage) but 40 more for the fighter (500 more average damage).
Lowering the AC to 15 instead (without +1 or better weapons) would mean another 5/20 hits, for a 100 more hits for the barbarian, but 200 more hits for the fighter, while not increasing the amount of crits (since the average rolled 20's doesn't change by lowering AC, just the number of hits actually doing damage). Suddenly the increase of damage is 1350 for the barbarian but 2300 for the fighter...
These calculations are quick headcounts with children playing loudly around me so not 100% sure it's correct ;) But the point is that the fighter will benefit more the lower the AC is, since they get more hits that deal damage. The average damage is 11.5/hit(6.5 for d12 and 5 from Str) for the fighter and 13.5 (6.5 +7) for the barbarian, but since the fighter has twice the attacks of the barbarian they will gain more and more the lower the AC is. In addition a +1 weapon would mean not only twice the attacks that hit but also the extra, if little, +1 damage on twice the hits... And anything that added an extra dice of damage would increase the damage output for the fighter a lot more than for the barbarian.
In short, the fighter will catch up faster against lower AC and will get more out of magic weapons than the barbarian because of the increased number of hits.
Like I said I didn't include these things because they aren't relevant for what I did math on. No subclass, because with just 3 subclasses each there would have to be 9 different calculations to compare each against the other. With 6 each it would be 36 calculations. It's also highly irrelevant because the calculations show a kind of base damage, which means you can get an idea of what will be extra useful for the fighter vs the barbarian (IE, like I just showed in the last post, fighter benefits more for each lowered AC of the target meaning it will catch up faster and faster the lower the AC is, in addition they benefit more from magic items and effects that add extra damage on each hit (not once/turn since that would be the same for both).
I didn't factor in GWM because it's highly irrelevant to show what the BASE ability is, since while obviously a fighter with great weapons would most likely use it, it's just as likely that a barbarian using great weapons would also get it and then suddenly we have a whole other focus, namely who benefits more of GWM, fighter or barbarian. That's a whole other thread. But just because you brought it up I'd like to make a short note of how, as I just said, the fighter benefits more the lower AC they have, they would also lose more by making the AC higher... So, using GWM to deal more damage would more likely benefit the barbarian more in this case. As for the extra bonus attacks from GWM, it's either on a crit, which wouldn't make that much difference considering the fighter average 40 crits out of 800 attacks, while the barbarian averages 39 crits out of the 400 attacks. So on average the fighter deals one more crit in 200 rounds. Obviously the champion crits more, but that's a subclass and once again... Not the point.
The other way to get bonus attacks is from downing an enemy and this is honestly just not possible to calculate in a valuable way. It clearly depends on what enemies you face and if you can put them to 0 hp in one round, which depends on so many different factors it's just irrelevant. Especially since it's likely that a barbarian could also take the feat and basically gain the same benefits, or more.
Action surge is also irrelevant, because these calculations aren't made to see who's the best vs the other or anything, just to show what the base is. Clearly a barbarian would benefit more from an action surge, but they don't have it so it doesn't matter. Does the fighter deal more damage with an action surge? Yes. How much more? Impossible to calculate in a useful relevant way. What we can use the calculations for is this: Since action surge would increase the fighters average damage, this class ability means that fighters benefit more from short rests than the barbarian! Since each short rest would mean they get an extra action surge and would catch up better. Now we know!
I mean the optimal way to run a fighter (for pure damage) would be 1 round of combat/short rest. This way they would go way beyond what any barbarian can do. Still not relevant to the calculations ;)
Except that it's not irrelevant. It's a bit too much to ask you to add in. But it's relevance is actually very important because these are key base features of any Fighter that can be used by them as appropriate to them. You allowed Rage on the Barbarian because you found it integral to them and how they dealt their damage, particularly over long periods. That same reasoning is exactly why Action Surge and the Bonus from GWM is important because those are factors that are a part of things regardless of Subclasses or any other outside factors beyond the basic key feature requirments you used for something like Rage or the Feat that is being compared when used by both of those basic classes in conjunction with certain weapons and key features.
I never myself entered Subclasses into the issue. Nor did I ask for it. But your attempt to say that these things don't actually matter for the issue is objectively and factually incorrect when you want to compare the two on such a long term damage level. And the only valid reason like I said is that it's hard to actually quantify the full value of them to get their full impact. The attitude that these two things don't matter when they are either Integral to one of the two classes or to the Feat that you are partly discussing itself actually creates an unfair bias in your approach that does actually need mentioning even if it can't be properly rectified mathematically for proper comparison because the Details are too many to accurately work out on a general level.
Also. Barbarians do not actually gain more benefit from Action Surge than the fighter does. In fact no class is able to take advantage of it to the extent that a max level fighter is capable doing. So your attempt to say that it doesn't matter because if the Barbarian had it it would help them more is actually objectively incorrect as well. Because the Truth of it is that it's power is contained solely in the amount of attacks it can add in which is actually much greater for the Fighter than the Barbarian. That's not to say that the Barbarian wouldn't get some use out of it. But turning 2 attacks into 4 is nothing compared to turning 4 attacks into 8 and the dramatic increase in static damage alone that creates. Particularly over a long period of time.
You have completely missed the whole point of my post.
Not sure where to start but... On action surge, what I meant was that if lets say a barbarian deals more damage with 2 attacks than a fighter does with 4 attacks, this means that the barbarian will still do more damage with 4 attacks than a fighter with 8. Sure it would depend on how much more the barbarian did but since the barbarian CAN'T have action surge and still be level 20 barbarian, the comparison is useless because this is NOT a class vs class comparison of best class ever. Which is what you seem to think I meant.
The bonus from GWM is INCREDIBLY irrelevant, because the barbarian could also take it. Since both can use it, the question wouldn't be "how much base damage does these two classes deal" but instead "who benefits more from GWM, Fighter OR barbarian?". Also, since there is no good way to implement this because of enemies having different hp and so on, it's just not worth doing. We all understand that GWM is a good feat to have if you use a great weapon. We all know bonus attacks are good. There's nothing more we need to know, unless you want to answer the question of who benefits the most. I'd be interested to find out but the calculations would be so horrible that I'm not going to, since it's still irrelevant for my post.
As for the last thing you mention, the level 20 barbarian can RAGE UNLIMITED TIMES A DAY = this is relevant. Even so, I did calculations WITH and WITHOUT it. So you can compare it yourself if you wanted, but since it IS an option for them to do ALL DAY LONG. Reckless Attack is ALSO UNLIMITED = Relevant. This is ALWAYS an option, they can ALWAYS get advantage like this. It's much more relevant than doing some calculations with action surge which just is guesswork. We don't know how many action surges will be made during a day so it's irrelevant. Obviously, and I said this too, the more action surges the fighter can make the better he will be. No one argued that. It's obvious. But it's also irrelevant because it would put dumb limitations and make the whole idea useless.
Now, I mentioned this before already and said that the fighter, in 200 turns would more than likely be able to get advantage on a few hits which of course would increase the damage output. NO ONE is arguing that.
My calculations are NOT made to be a Fighter VS barbarian, who is the best ever. Doing this we would have to actually use subclasses because otherwise the question isn't useful, since even if base figher would be worse than base barbarian, if the subclasses were 4 times better than all barbarian subclasses the fighter would still be better in all ways right? But these calculations isn't a competition, it's just FACT of how much damage they deal on average over 200 turns against an AC of 20. The barbarian would deal a whole lot more if it used reckless attack and rage, and I also listed the damages without them just to compare. NOWHERE did I complain about the fighter being a worse class.
The point of the calculations is ONE thing, to show what base damage they deal with their base abilities that they can use all the time, ie extra attack, rage, reckless attack.
What this allows us to do, which seems to be the highest missable point here, is get an understanding of what things they both benefit from. Like in the example where I mention how the fighter actually gains more average damage from a +1 sword than the barbarian would. And how the fighter would get much more out of a +1d6 damage modifier than the barbarian. And how, the lower the AC of the opponent gets the more the fighter will shine. THAT'S the point, this is just math, not PVP.
So, with these calculations we can understand how they both work. Now, with this base understanding we could better understand which subclasses would work well, which spells would work well and so on.
It's NOT, I say it again, PVP. It's NOT a competition of who is the best damage dealer.
Here is your problem with all of this despite your long paragraphs. First of all. The greater number of Criticals is actually a big factor in the damage that is dealt despite the fact that they can both take it first of all. Which changes their damage by alot. Second of all.
The Barbarian does not have Action Surge so regardless of what buff it would get from it. The Fighter does get it. So it is relevant to the damage that the fighter does regardless of how the Barbarian might make use of it if it only could. On top of that the increased number of criticals that the Fighter Got would Further increase the issue of the extra attacks gained from Criticals thanks to GWM which would further alter the damage that the Fighter does.
So no. Despite your protests neither are actually as irrelevant as you want to make them. For one because They get different amounts of use out of them and for two. One of them is the difference in the effectiveness and battle prowess of one of the classes compared to another as a key component of that class.
So in short. I didn't understand wrong. My points are still valid. The comparisons are not equal.
Sorry mate, think what you want but you didn't understand it. Now, just to be clear I'm not trying to yell or am angry or anything I'm just trying to show the emphasis of my points. It might have come of wrong and that's on me. I'm full on covid-mode here so my brain isn't at 100% capacity :)
Anyways, you're still talking about comparing fighter vs barbarian but it's not supposed to be a VERSUS thing. It's just to show the bases. Think of it more like if you would compare let's say greataxe with greatsword damage (just the weapons). Then you could see that they both have 12 as maximum damage, however the greatsword has a minimum damage of 2 instead of 1 + an average damage of 7 instead of 6.5 for the greatsword. So, looking only on these numbers we could see that the greatsword is marginally better for both regular criticals and regular hits. If you however consider the abilities of the half-orc and things like the barbarians crit we can still see that they could probably benefit more of a greataxe in this case, because their abilities just add one extra die and a d12 is better than a d6.
As far action surge and the barbarian.. My comment on action surge on the barbarian was meant to be a "if both barbarian and the fighter (or like if you houseruled every class had action surge) had access to it, the barbarian would benefit more from it since by then the barbarian would also gain just as much from it. But since they don't, there's no point in talking about it from that specific point, that the barbarian has it. As it is now they would have to multiclass to get it and obviously that is a weird comparison to make in this scenario. In addition you would lose out on +4 STR capstone so...
Action surge on the fighter though, since it's not available all the time it's irrelevant because then you aren't doing a general calculation but instead you're doing a very specific situation and frankly it's not needed because like I said it's clear that the more action surges they can do, the better for them. This we all know. This is on the same level as the advantage situation, I did calculations for the barbarian with and without advantage because they ALWAYS have access to advantage. The fighter doesn't. This doesn't mean they won't ever get advantage and I did bring it up, but doing calculations for a fighter always having advantage would also be weird because no matter how hard they try they wouldn't be able to always get it.
If you look at the numbers you can see how the barbarian compares without advantage and how much better it becomes with advantage, this also gives us an idea of how good advantage actually is. It DOES even the scores for the fighter and the barbarian, and it SHOULD. They are both martial classes and if one was superiour in all ways, it would be really weird and bad game design.
As for criticals with action surge, as you can see if you look at the numbers, the barbarian has 39 criticals and the fighter 40. If you wanted to specify a situation you could for instance look at those numbers and say:
let's say there's 20 rounds of combat without rests, the fighter would then have 20 action surges (since they get 2/rest later). 20 action surges means the fighter gets 80 more attacks. This means that against ac 20 they would get 44 extra hits and 4 extra crits. Then add that damage and yay, now you can compare the damage if the fighter had the possibility to rest 10 betwen every 20 rounds of combat. Now, this would have put the fighter at 26 more damage from criticals, not that much really... On the other hand the extra hits would have added 506 damage, so while I agree they would do extra damage it's not from the criticals.
This is still not relevant to my calculations because it adds nothing to them, my calculations on the other hand add the base for this specific calculation. That's the point I'm trying to make.
As for GWM, once again, it doesn't add anything to my calculations because the point of them isn't to compare fighter versus barbarian, or who benefits more from GWM. My calculations could be used to make such a comparison though. But the point is, not everyone will automatically take GWM just because they use a greatweapon. Now, I'm not saying it's not a good option but it's still just an option. If I had used GWM in my calculations, they would have been pretty much useless for a fighter who didn't take this feat because it's much more complicated to start subtracting options than just adding them.
Now however, since the calculations are without GWM, it's easy to simply add an extra attack and see the outcome. Right now it's 40 criticals so that's another 40 attacks, which is another 2 criticals (which wouldn't add a extra attack) and 22 hits. Simply add the extra damage and it's done.
However note that GWM also adds an extra attack when you down an enemy so if you fought goblins and killed one each turn you'd have 1 extra attack each turn. Now, since my calculations are without GWM we could easily make a new calculation just for fun of how much extra fun a fighter with GWM would have against a bunch of goblins, almost an extra attack each turn on average. IF however I had already accounted for criticals adding extra attacks, from GWM, these calculations would be very off.
Also, once again, it's NOT a versus thing. Unless you stop treating it like a versus thing you won't understand it.
By not adding GWM or action surge, we CAN use these calculations to look at more specific situations. Like, even the example up there with 20 rounds of combat without a rest is probably far of a normal average battle, so even that is kinda irrelevant unless you're trying to look at how much damage the fighter would do with action surges and a rest every 20 rounds. If I had used this in the calculations they'd be bad.
Just to show how the calculations could have looked for the fighter the ways that have been brought up.
Now we give the fighter a greatsword, GWM and action surge. (I'm skipping weapon style because my brain isn't working). I'm also leaving out other valid assumptions like downing an enemy every 4 hits or having advantage on every 3rd hit or similar things. I'm only mentioning this because I want you to imagine what it would have looked like then.
The Fighter has +11 to hit and deals 2d6+5 damage. He makes 4 attack/round and has action surge twice/rest, get's bonus attacks on crits and when you down an enemy. Since the goal is 200 rounds we'll use 10 rounds of combat as an average battle lenght and they would start out rested (ie having action surges). He hits on a 9+ = 602,4 hits out of which 554,4 are normal hits (1108.8 d6 + 2772) and 48 are crits (192 d6 + 240). Bonus attacks are included for a total of 1300.8 d6 + 3012 damage for a total of 7564.8 average damage.
VS
The Fighter has +11 to hit and deals 1d12+5 damage. He makes 4 attack/round = 800 attacks. He hits on 9+ = 480 hits of which 440 are normal hits (440 d12+2200) and 40 are crits (80 d12 + 200). This gives him 520d12+2400 = 5780 average damage on 200 rounds with this setup.
Now, which would you rather use as a base if you wanted to see how well the fighter did with a bow instead? Or a longsword? And what if our average fights are 15 rounds, or 5? In the first example I'd have to re-calculate how many hits are made and added, then re-calculate again if using archery weapon style, then recalculate the damage.. And possibly re-calculate the average combat length since the amount of action surges would be off. Since crits add extra attacks you would have to take this into consideration for how many action surges are made so most likely you'd have to do a "action surge reset".
In the second example, you swap out the damage (1d12 = 6.5 average, 1d8 = 4.5 average damage = you'd just remove 2 damage from each hit) and add a number of hits according to archery style if you want to use this (since it's a +2 modifier it adds 2 hits/20 attacks, the rest are already calculated). No subtracting hits or things like this beforehand needed.
As for the reason of using a great axe on both fighter and barbarian it's because if you want a cleaner comparison you use as many similar things that are reliable (ie, reckless attack isn't a 1 use thing, it's an option for ALL attacks = reliable). By using great axe for both we can see the numbers when both have the same gear, which gives a better visual than if they have different weapons. A wizard using a ballista to make an attack probably deals more damage than a rogue despite both having just 1 attack. When you go to extremes it might sound silly but the general idea is the same, if you use the same weapon you get a better visual of what they actually do.
As for my previous calculations, I could have done the same calculations with greatswords instead and it would have been just as "fair" and give a good visual, I just used a great axe because it's a barbarian thread about brutal critical originally and the brutal critical benefits more from great axe than greatsword.
Anyways the calculations, once again, are made with a simple (simpler?) basics so you could more easily swap out something and see how much it would improve if you wanted to. Also considering feats are optional even if most people probably allow them, that's another good reason to not use it for the base calculations.
This is why I didn't argue for Sub Classes or Fighting STyles. They are far too variable. They are goign to be potentially different even on characters that are otherwise the same. Two Fighters using the Great Weapon Fighting style could play very different because one is a Battle Master and One is a Champion or a Samurai. On the Other Hand Two Champions can also play very differently if one has Great Weapon Fighting Style and one has Archery style instead.
So I was never worried about those. I only asked about a couple details that were fairly universal. The bonus action attack of GWM. Despite the fact that both the Fighter and the Barbarian have it. Because of the greater number of crits potentially and a basically incalculable number of killing blows. I can understand that one being too much to calculate but just wondered what thought you put into them or if you'd thought of a way to kind of simulate those variables a bit.
For Action Surge it's something that is universal to all Fighters and all Fighters are pretty much going to use it much like Barbarians are going to use their Rage. But it's exact usefulness is rather Variable based upon how their day goes and the rests and the amount they actually manage to attack. But i was wondering what if any thought you put into them in your calculations because they are important base numbers. And It just happens that they affect the base numbers potentially in favor of the fighter more than the Barbarian and it was the Fighter that seemed to be lagging behind a bit in your calculations, so I wondered what you considered representative of those important disparities when talking about just how much damage they both do since you did factor in to some extent an average idea of the crits for both of them. So even if you hadn't calculated the GWM thing. Which still could be important. If I'm wanting to have an idea about how my fighter is going to do in comparison to that Barbarian. I absolutely am going to want to know the difference this has on the character as best that I'm able. Because this is going to be a core thing I am doing as a fighter regardless of if I'm an Archer, I'm a GWM, or I'm even going Sword and Board and defensive fighting styles and playing a tank. It's always an important factor in the output of the damage, or potentially other areas, of my character.
Well, as you could see from the original numbers, despite the fighter having twice the number of attacks they only do 1 more critical hit, 40 vs 39. (without action surge). This means that on average, the bonus attack from a crit is 40 for the fighter and 39 for the barbarian. As for bonus attacks from downing an enemy it's going to depend on what enemies they face and would come down to who can on average at least put down one or more enemies each turn... In general, since the barbarian can reliably guarantee advantage, the other ability of the GWM will benefit the barbarian more since even against an AC of 20 the barbarian would reliably get a lot of hits in with the +10 damage, while the fighter would have some issues using this all the time unless they had a way to get advantage as well... So it would depend a lot on the situation really. The lower the AC though, the more the fighter could use it more reliably and still deal a whole lot of damage.
As for action surge vs rage, yes, in a way they will.. But not really. A barbarian can use, since this is a level 20 comparison, rage unlimited times a day, rest or no rest. The fighters action surge can at most be used twice at this level, for each rest. Which means that while we can presume they will use all action surges each rest, we have no way of measuring how many rests are made since this would just be a made up number. There are suggestions but that's it, just suggestions. Since I did the calculations at 200 rounds, it would also depend a lot of how long each battle would be. If we have 2 battles of 100 rounds, they could clearly at most use 4 action surges since they'd have 2 before the first and possibly 2 before the 2nd. This is a highly unlikely scenario though. On the other hand, maybe they have a 1 shot marathon with 1 round of battle each day, maybe like some kind of olympics or something, then they would have 200 action surges. This is why I mean it doesn't matter for the calculations made, since there is no official "every day you take 4 short rests" and "a combat is only 15 rounds" kinda rules. If that had been the case, it would have been fairly easy to see how many action surges the fighter would get each day.
Rage on the other hand has no limitations at this level, 200 rounds in a day? can still rage all day.
In general, what I figured out from the calculations is basically that the higher the AC the more the barbarian would benefit really, because for the barbarians the critical hits play a bigger and bigger role. Since the ability to constantly get advantage also gives an increased chance of a crit (like the 800 attacks of a fighter without advantage gives 40 crits and 400 attacks of the barbarian gives 39 crits)...
With lower AC, the fighters higher number of hits means they will quickly catch up and then surpass the barbarian. At the same time, positioning and such also becomes important for the fighter because having advantage will almost double the amount of crits and increase the number of hits.
On average, I think they even out pretty well but long term I actually think the fighter will be much better, especially considering things like magic weapons. A flametounge for instance would be so much better on a fighter, adding 3640 average damage compared to 2821 on a barbarian. And remember this is still without advantage or action surges.
Against an AC of 15 the fighter would hit 680 out of its 800 attacks instead of 480, while the barbarian would only get another extra 35 hits.. basically the barbarian would only miss if rolling double 1's with reckless attack, but since advantage gives the barbarian so many of its hits already its almost no change. Just for damage numbers the fighter would add 2300 average damage against an AC of 15 vs 472,5 for the barbarian.
Against an AC of 15 the barbarian, using reckless attack, rage and a flame tounge would do 10922,5 damage on average while the fighter would be doing 13144. Throw in some action surges and advantage and you can see how much better the fighter becomes.
As for actually factoring in what the action surge is doing it's fairly easy, unless you start factoring advantage and such... But basically since on average you will roll each number once for each 20 rolls, so in 20 rolls you will have the span of 1-20.. On average that is, we all know dice are fickle beings... But over a million rolls or something you'd roll more or less each number the same amount of times. So what you do is, look at what number is required to hit, in this case with a +11 to hit against an AC of 20, this means a roll of 9 or higher is a hit.
so in 20 rolls, 8 rolls are misses (1-8), 11 are hits (9-19) and 1 is a crit (20).
An action surge gives you 4 extra attacks, so with 5 extra action surges (5x4=20 attacks) you would average 8 misses, 11 hits and a crit.
And by looking at what weapon you're using, in this case a great axe, you can calculate extra damage from this. The crit is 2d12+5 (18), the hits are 11d12+55 (71,5+55=126,5).. So 144,5 average damage on 5 action surges. Divide by 5 and you get 28,9 extra damage/action surge.
By changing AC you can figure out how many extra hits you would get as well and by instead changing a weapon you could just change the average damage instead, like a d8 would be 4.5 instead of 6.5 from the great axe. A greatsword would be 7 instead of 6.5 and so on. It's really only the advantage calculations that are messy :)
Still fevered brain from covid here so calculations might be off today too, but think they're about right.
i'm not nit picking all of the math down to the finest detail. We're really only getting a ballpark range here. But you talk about how we have guidelines... not set rules which would make it easy but guidelines. And I think those guidelines are useful for giving us at least some idea of what to expect even if it's not always realistic or practical. But we can adjust based upon how games are personally playing for us to get some idea.
For example the recommended is 2 short rests and two combats in between each of those rests. Giving us an idea of 6 Action Surges a day... Now the numbers are going to change based upon if your getting 5 turn combats or 10 turn combats just as two examples... But this gives us an idea based upon numbers like this that we can fall back to giving us a mental idea of say 30 or 60 rounds of combat in a day respectively as just an average, Since these numbers are all averages anyway. 30 rounds a day is going to be basically just short of 7 days (6 and 2/3 technically) to reach 200 rounds by that. While 60 rounds of combat on average a day we're looking at more like 3 days (3 and 1/3 technically) Telling us that it would be 40 and 20 Action Surges respectively. This means that we have 160 and 80 extra attacks respectively.
if we use the numbers that you gave here for 20 attacks and apply them roughly to these numbers (i'm not up for doing it perfectly and for that I apologize). 140 attacks would be 80 misses, 88 attacks, and 8 crits just extrapolated from your rough numbers so if I've done the math correctly from this rough estimate number This gets us something like 1012 damage roughly from the normal attacks and another 144 from the Crits for a total of roughly 1156 damage.
On the other hand the 80 extra attacks is more like 40 misses, 44 regular hits, and 4 crits. Giving us more along the lines of 506 damage for regular attacks and 72 on the crits. For a total of 578.
When we go back to your original post comparing the base damage we know that without action surge going on you listed the fighter over 200 rounds doing 5780 damage on average We end up looking at a total of 6936 average damage over 200 rounds in the 5 round combats under book suggested terms of 2 short rests and 2 combats between each rest that is listed in the book. And 6358 average damage over 10 round combats under the same conditions.
These are numbers we can look at and compare to the Barbarian that you have listed at 5390 average damage from just rage, 5928 from Reckless Attack, and 7384 using both abilities together over all 200 attacks.
Now I admitted that there are some variables that make things hard to calculate. But these are just numbers mostly based off of book suggested with just a couple of easy to calculate variables for simplicity just to show some comparable numbers when you explain the caveats of how you reached those numbers. It also shows just how powerful Action Surge can get the more often that it can be used and how much it can actually change things the more optimal the circumstances become for it's usage throughout regular play such as a bunch of relatively short encounters with mostly one or two combats a day over many days and/or the ability to rest often versus not getting to rest as much.
I think this has kinda gone off topic. Understandable, because the OP started with "is that all the barbarian gets, that sucks"... That's always going to start an argument no matter which class.
As much as all the calculations can be helpful (and fun), I think what it all comes down to is that the barbarian doesn't suck, although it's abilities are different to other classes so they will shine in different situations.