GFW does not add a lot to average damage, but average damage is only consistent in consistently large sample sizes. Since most combats do not require 1000 to hit rolls, we're dealing with very small sample sizes. Statistically this means a much larger standard deviation. The real value of GFW, IMHO, is that it really stinks to roll a 1 or 2 on damage dice with a great (and we mean fantastic, you're gonna love it, everyone's gonna love it) weapon. This can make a combat last 1 or more rounds longer than it would without GWF, while 1 AC can help you last another 1 or more rounds. This is about how you want to play, tanky or glass cannony.
As for 1D12 vs 2D6, if you like bigger risk with bigger reward take the axe. The real determinants here are the influence of minimum damage (1 less for the axe), the flat curve vs the bell curve for damage (this does matter even in small sample sizes). The chances of doing max damage with the axe are 3x better, but so is the chance of doing minimum damage. The second chance provided by GWF is more likely to make a difference to the combat with the axe, but is more likely to be used with the 2D6 weapons. The axe also can make a noticably bigger difference with features that provide an extra crit die.
In summary, make your decisions based more around how you want to play the character and less around some idea of perfected manipulation of mechanics. The mechanics serve the player not the other way around, and in any case a character optimized one specific way still has their kryptonite.
Greatsword (2d6) goes from 2-12 (7) damage to 6-12 (9) damage.
Greataxe (1d12) goes from 1-12 (6.5) damage to 3-12 (7.5) damage.
Polearm (1d10) goes from 1-10 (5.5) damage to 3-10 (6.5) damage.
Comparing to Dueling which is +2 damage flat out all but Greatsword fall short. The fun side is though you have that chance of the big hits with them. Besides you can't use Great Weapon Master with a rapier ( : Also if you take Polearm master your offhand strike goes from 1-4 (2.5) to 3-4 (3.5) which takes the whole damage from 8 average to 10 damage on average. Still a small boost but its certainly not awful, and you avoid those really sad 1 damage rolls for your big smashy sticks.
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"Where words fail, swords prevail. Where blood is spilled, my cup is filled" -Cartaphilus
"I have found the answer to the meaning of life. You ask me what the answer is? You already know what the answer to life is. You fear it more than the strike of a viper, the ravages of disease, the ire of a lover. The answer is always death. But death is a gentle mistress with a sweet embrace, and you owe her a debt of restitution. Life is not a gift, it is a loan."
Greatsword (2d6) goes from 2-12 (7) damage to 6-12 (9) damage.
Greataxe (1d12) goes from 1-12 (6.5) damage to 3-12 (7.5) damage.
Polearm (1d10) goes from 1-10 (5.5) damage to 3-10 (6.5) damage.
Comparing to Dueling which is +2 damage flat out all but Greatsword fall short. The fun side is though you have that chance of the big hits with them. Besides you can't use Great Weapon Master with a rapier ( : Also if you take Polearm master your offhand strike goes from 1-4 (2.5) to 3-4 (3.5) which takes the whole damage from 8 average to 10 damage on average. Still a small boost but its certainly not awful, and you avoid those really sad 1 damage rolls for your big smashy sticks.
You can roll a 1 or 2 on the second attempt and must keep it. The minimum does not change, but the reroll does increase the odds of getting a better result. The statistIcal averages listed near the top of the thread come very close to a simulation I programmed in Powershell to roll damage 100,000 times.
Greatsword (2d6) goes from 2-12 (7) damage to 6-12 (9) damage.
Greataxe (1d12) goes from 1-12 (6.5) damage to 3-12 (7.5) damage.
Polearm (1d10) goes from 1-10 (5.5) damage to 3-10 (6.5) damage.
Comparing to Dueling which is +2 damage flat out all but Greatsword fall short. The fun side is though you have that chance of the big hits with them. Besides you can't use Great Weapon Master with a rapier ( : Also if you take Polearm master your offhand strike goes from 1-4 (2.5) to 3-4 (3.5) which takes the whole damage from 8 average to 10 damage on average. Still a small boost but its certainly not awful, and you avoid those really sad 1 damage rolls for your big smashy sticks.
The Great Weapon Fighting style does not give you a minimum of '3' on the die rolled. It only lets you reroll a '1' or '2' once, and you could still get a '1' or '2' after the (single) reroll.
Oh hey I suck really bad at reading comprehension. Its been years that I have been messing that up... yikes.
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"Where words fail, swords prevail. Where blood is spilled, my cup is filled" -Cartaphilus
"I have found the answer to the meaning of life. You ask me what the answer is? You already know what the answer to life is. You fear it more than the strike of a viper, the ravages of disease, the ire of a lover. The answer is always death. But death is a gentle mistress with a sweet embrace, and you owe her a debt of restitution. Life is not a gift, it is a loan."
All the players that I've had have been happy with Great Weapon fighting (granted, they've only ever used mauls and greatswords), but I think it is good. Sure, it doesn't increase the average damage that much, but it gives a nice boost to 2d6 weapons.
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Please check out my homebrew, I would appreciate feedback:
"When you roll a 1 or 2 on a damage die for an attack you make with a melee weapon that you are wielding with two hands, you can reroll the die and must use the new roll, even if Speed TestScrabble Word FinderSolitaire the new roll is a 1 or a 2. The weapon must have the two-handed or versatile property for you to gain this benefit."
Now the average roll on a D10 is 5.5. This is calculated by adding all the possible rolls together and then dividing that by the number of possible rolls, so 1+2+3+4+5+6+7+8+9+10=55. 55/10=5.5. The Great Weapon Fighting style allows us to reroll any 1 or 2 on the die and we 'must' use the new result. The average result of this new dice roll will again be 5.5. So the average result of the first roll by a character possessing the Great Weapon Fighting style will instead be 5.5+5.5+3+4+5+6+7+8+9+10=63. 63/10=6.3.
The average damage roll of someone possessing the Great Weapon Fighting style will be 6.3 instead of 5.5. This is a benefit of 0.8 extra damage points per hit. Frankly I find this to be sadly lackluster compared to being able to up the armor class by one or when compared to the whopping +2 damage bonus of the Dueling fighting style.
A better rule perhaps might be someone possessing the Great Weapon Fighting style should be permitted to reroll their damage die for 'any' roll if they choose. That actually does not bump it up all that much more really, making the average roll instead 5.5+5.5+5.5+5.5+5.5+6+7+8+9+10=6.75. So the style would confer a damage bonus of 1.25 damage points, making it marginally more competitive with the other styles.
Such as the extra damage some clerics do at lv 8 Holy weapon / Divine Favor
Great weapon fighting increases any die by (1 - 2/die size); 2/3 on a d6, 3/4 on a d8, 4/5 on a d10, 5/6 on a d12. As 2d6 weapons roll more dice, the average bonus from 2d6 (4/3) is better than anything else.
Great Weapon Fighting adds more damage than Dueling if you're using a greatsword and rolling at least one more die that is a d8 or larger. This is somewhat uncommon (level 11+ paladin is the most likely), but in the end the point of GWF is that, well, it lets you use a 2d6 weapon instead of a 1d8 weapon.
The really bad one is two weapon fighting. It's adequate before level 5, but once you get two attacks it falls behind (at 18 stat, two greatsword hits with GWF is 24.67, three shortsword hits with TWF is 22.5, and that actually underestimates the difference because you sometimes either don't get your off hand weapon attack, or get a bonus main weapon attack).
I'm not entirely sure what you mean by your GWF damage bonus statement. It increases 2d6 weapons from 7 to 8.33 (8+1/3), which is a ~19% (4/21) increase. It increases 1d12 weapons from 6.5 to 7.33 (7+1/3), which is a ~12.8% (5/39) increase. 1d10 weapons are 5.5 to 6.3, ~14.5% (8/55) increase. And the RAI is that GWF does not apply to bonus damage, so you can't always count on that.
Dueling increases 1d8 weapons from 4.5 to 6.5, a ~44.4% (4/9) increase.
Where 2WF shines is when there is an effect that increases the damage of each hit, like Hunter's mark, hex, divine strike, or improved divine smite. With any one of these effects, it immediately starts out damaging other styles.
Where 2WF shines is when there is an effect that increases the damage of each hit, like Hunter's mark, hex, divine strike, or improved divine smite. With any one of these effects, it immediately starts out damaging other styles.
Hunter's Mark and Hex cost bonus actions. Not sure what you mean by divine strike, divine favor costs a bonus action. Improved divine smite is pretty nice, but by the time you're level 11 you probably have multiple things to do with bonus actions, like a bunch of your smite spells. Also, 2WF is not on the paladin list, though it's on the ranger list.
Where 2WF shines is when there is an effect that increases the damage of each hit, like Hunter's mark, hex, divine strike, or improved divine smite. With any one of these effects, it immediately starts out damaging other styles.
Hunter's Mark and Hex cost bonus actions. Not sure what you mean by divine strike, divine favor costs a bonus action. Improved divine smite is pretty nice, but by the time you're level 11 you probably have multiple things to do with bonus actions, like a bunch of your smite spells.
Cleric divine strike which martial domains get at level 8. Divine favor (thanks for another one) and the other BA spells mentioned last multiple turns.
By the time you are level 11, your BA attack will do 12-14 damage without a spell slot, compared to using your bonus action and a slot to cast a spell that adds 13.5 (blinding smite, 10.5 searing smite/branding smite less for others) damage to your regular attack once. Divine smite would be a higher damage use of that slot (and doesn't use BA), so smite spells are really only better if the secondary effects are needed. Even at higher level there isn't always a lot of options for BA (depends on class/build).
I’d also like to point out that GWF, compared to Dueling. Or TWF, or etc.
that on a crit. Those die 1s and 2s get rerolled again as well.
where a dueling fighting style has 0 added effect to a crit.
+1 ac won’t make a huge huge difference in the grand scheme. And does nothing to help if you are crit against. Since 1 ac is a flat 5% improvement. And GWF is a ... what was it? 20% improvement non crits?
thats a better improvement.
but ultimately: D&D isn’t played with a calculator or algorithm to run things 1000 times. It’s all flavor for how you envision your character.
Great weapons is definitely the most damaging melee weapon build in a vacuum. Dueling (and to lesser extent dual wielder) have higher AC, and two weapons get more per attack benefits. They each have different merits.
The fighting style is really about how you want to play your character. Since each has it's own dependencies and down side compared to the others, and we are niggling over one damage here and another there, they seem well balanced to me. Two weapon fighting has an advantage in having the highest minimum damage due to additive ability modifiers, but only when we don't consider misses. GWF has a high average with potential for highest max, especially when we throw on GWM, and again only if we hit with fewer opportunities than TWF. Dueling's +2 to damage allows sword and board to keep up with the others while having a more defense oriented build.
Great Weapon Fighting, combined with Heroism Paladins or Champion fighters are amazing, especially with Polearm Master or Great Weapon Master or both. You crit way more often than others, you are rewarded more for those crits than any other combination, you can attack as a bonus action when you crit, and it is a great way to do good damage on average, and great damage on the lucky crits.
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Please check out my homebrew, I would appreciate feedback:
...Where 2WF shines is when there is an effect that increases the damage of each hit, like Hunter's mark, hex, divine strike, or improved divine smite. With any one of these effects, it immediately starts out damaging other styles.
Great weapons is definitely the most damaging melee weapon build in a vacuum. Dueling (and to lesser extent dual wielder) have higher AC, and two weapons get more per attack benefits. They each have different merits.
I don't understand how Two Weapon Fighting gets more per attack benefits then Great Weapon Fighting from any of these effect. The Two Weapon Fighting action allows you to "...use a bonus action to attack ..." and the Two Weapon style allows you to add your strength/dex modifier to that bonus attack. If you have a different source to make a bonus attack with Two Weapon Fighting, like a Berserker's Frenzy or War Domain Cleric, you get the same amount of attacks.
...GWF has a high average with potential for highest max, especially when we throw on GWM, and again only if we hit with fewer opportunities than TWF. Dueling's +2 to damage allows sword and board to keep up with the others while having a more defense oriented build.
I agree, GWF is great for rolling average to high. You basically get a do over on damage rolls.
...Where 2WF shines is when there is an effect that increases the damage of each hit, like Hunter's mark, hex, divine strike, or improved divine smite. With any one of these effects, it immediately starts out damaging other styles.
Great weapons is definitely the most damaging melee weapon build in a vacuum. Dueling (and to lesser extent dual wielder) have higher AC, and two weapons get more per attack benefits. They each have different merits.
I don't understand how Two Weapon Fighting gets more per attack benefits then Great Weapon Fighting from any of these effect. The Two Weapon Fighting action allows you to "...use a bonus action to attack ..." and the Two Weapon style allows you to add your strength/dex modifier to that bonus attack.
I think you may have misunderstood what I meant because of tricky wording. TWF doesn't get more benefits per attack, I assume that is what you thought I meant. TWF gets more "per attack" benefits because it makes more attacks on average.
If you have a different source to make a bonus attack with Two Weapon Fighting, like a Berserker's Frenzy or War Domain Cleric, you get the same amount of attacks.
Berserker's frenzy is... Bad. Whatever increase in DPS you got in 1 battle will be more than countered by the exhaustion for the rest of the day. War cleric doesn't get extra attack so it still can't make as many attacks as martial characters. Also, neither of these classes get fighting styles.
GFW does not add a lot to average damage, but average damage is only consistent in consistently large sample sizes. Since most combats do not require 1000 to hit rolls, we're dealing with very small sample sizes. Statistically this means a much larger standard deviation. The real value of GFW, IMHO, is that it really stinks to roll a 1 or 2 on damage dice with a great (and we mean fantastic, you're gonna love it, everyone's gonna love it) weapon. This can make a combat last 1 or more rounds longer than it would without GWF, while 1 AC can help you last another 1 or more rounds. This is about how you want to play, tanky or glass cannony.
As for 1D12 vs 2D6, if you like bigger risk with bigger reward take the axe. The real determinants here are the influence of minimum damage (1 less for the axe), the flat curve vs the bell curve for damage (this does matter even in small sample sizes). The chances of doing max damage with the axe are 3x better, but so is the chance of doing minimum damage. The second chance provided by GWF is more likely to make a difference to the combat with the axe, but is more likely to be used with the 2D6 weapons. The axe also can make a noticably bigger difference with features that provide an extra crit die.
In summary, make your decisions based more around how you want to play the character and less around some idea of perfected manipulation of mechanics. The mechanics serve the player not the other way around, and in any case a character optimized one specific way still has their kryptonite.
I feel like some math earlier was a bit off...
Greatsword (2d6) goes from 2-12 (7) damage to 6-12 (9) damage.
Greataxe (1d12) goes from 1-12 (6.5) damage to 3-12 (7.5) damage.
Polearm (1d10) goes from 1-10 (5.5) damage to 3-10 (6.5) damage.
Comparing to Dueling which is +2 damage flat out all but Greatsword fall short. The fun side is though you have that chance of the big hits with them. Besides you can't use Great Weapon Master with a rapier ( : Also if you take Polearm master your offhand strike goes from 1-4 (2.5) to 3-4 (3.5) which takes the whole damage from 8 average to 10 damage on average. Still a small boost but its certainly not awful, and you avoid those really sad 1 damage rolls for your big smashy sticks.
"Where words fail, swords prevail. Where blood is spilled, my cup is filled" -Cartaphilus
"I have found the answer to the meaning of life. You ask me what the answer is? You already know what the answer to life is. You fear it more than the strike of a viper, the ravages of disease, the ire of a lover. The answer is always death. But death is a gentle mistress with a sweet embrace, and you owe her a debt of restitution. Life is not a gift, it is a loan."
You can roll a 1 or 2 on the second attempt and must keep it. The minimum does not change, but the reroll does increase the odds of getting a better result. The statistIcal averages listed near the top of the thread come very close to a simulation I programmed in Powershell to roll damage 100,000 times.
The Great Weapon Fighting style does not give you a minimum of '3' on the die rolled. It only lets you reroll a '1' or '2' once, and you could still get a '1' or '2' after the (single) reroll.
Oh hey I suck really bad at reading comprehension. Its been years that I have been messing that up... yikes.
"Where words fail, swords prevail. Where blood is spilled, my cup is filled" -Cartaphilus
"I have found the answer to the meaning of life. You ask me what the answer is? You already know what the answer to life is. You fear it more than the strike of a viper, the ravages of disease, the ire of a lover. The answer is always death. But death is a gentle mistress with a sweet embrace, and you owe her a debt of restitution. Life is not a gift, it is a loan."
It's all good, that's what the forum is for ;)
All the players that I've had have been happy with Great Weapon fighting (granted, they've only ever used mauls and greatswords), but I think it is good. Sure, it doesn't increase the average damage that much, but it gives a nice boost to 2d6 weapons.
Please check out my homebrew, I would appreciate feedback:
Spells, Monsters, Subclasses, Races, Arcknight Class, Occultist Class, World, Enigmatic Esoterica forms
Such as the extra damage some clerics do at lv 8 Holy weapon / Divine Favor
Great weapon fighting increases any die by (1 - 2/die size); 2/3 on a d6, 3/4 on a d8, 4/5 on a d10, 5/6 on a d12. As 2d6 weapons roll more dice, the average bonus from 2d6 (4/3) is better than anything else.
Great Weapon Fighting adds more damage than Dueling if you're using a greatsword and rolling at least one more die that is a d8 or larger. This is somewhat uncommon (level 11+ paladin is the most likely), but in the end the point of GWF is that, well, it lets you use a 2d6 weapon instead of a 1d8 weapon.
The really bad one is two weapon fighting. It's adequate before level 5, but once you get two attacks it falls behind (at 18 stat, two greatsword hits with GWF is 24.67, three shortsword hits with TWF is 22.5, and that actually underestimates the difference because you sometimes either don't get your off hand weapon attack, or get a bonus main weapon attack).
I'm not entirely sure what you mean by your GWF damage bonus statement. It increases 2d6 weapons from 7 to 8.33 (8+1/3), which is a ~19% (4/21) increase. It increases 1d12 weapons from 6.5 to 7.33 (7+1/3), which is a ~12.8% (5/39) increase. 1d10 weapons are 5.5 to 6.3, ~14.5% (8/55) increase. And the RAI is that GWF does not apply to bonus damage, so you can't always count on that.
Dueling increases 1d8 weapons from 4.5 to 6.5, a ~44.4% (4/9) increase.
Where 2WF shines is when there is an effect that increases the damage of each hit, like Hunter's mark, hex, divine strike, or improved divine smite. With any one of these effects, it immediately starts out damaging other styles.
uh, using one big weapon instead of two little weapons is cooler
7 + 4/3 = 8+1/3.
Hunter's Mark and Hex cost bonus actions. Not sure what you mean by divine strike, divine favor costs a bonus action. Improved divine smite is pretty nice, but by the time you're level 11 you probably have multiple things to do with bonus actions, like a bunch of your smite spells. Also, 2WF is not on the paladin list, though it's on the ranger list.
You can so make bonus action attacks occasionally with GWM which is nice
I know what you're thinking: "In that flurry of blows, did he use all his ki points, or save one?" Well, are ya feeling lucky, punk?
Oh. Oh! Ok. I get it.
Cleric divine strike which martial domains get at level 8. Divine favor (thanks for another one) and the other BA spells mentioned last multiple turns.
By the time you are level 11, your BA attack will do 12-14 damage without a spell slot, compared to using your bonus action and a slot to cast a spell that adds 13.5 (blinding smite, 10.5 searing smite/branding smite less for others) damage to your regular attack once. Divine smite would be a higher damage use of that slot (and doesn't use BA), so smite spells are really only better if the secondary effects are needed. Even at higher level there isn't always a lot of options for BA (depends on class/build).
I’d also like to point out that GWF, compared to Dueling. Or TWF, or etc.
that on a crit. Those die 1s and 2s get rerolled again as well.
where a dueling fighting style has 0 added effect to a crit.
+1 ac won’t make a huge huge difference in the grand scheme. And does nothing to help if you are crit against. Since 1 ac is a flat 5% improvement. And GWF is a ... what was it? 20% improvement non crits?
thats a better improvement.
but ultimately: D&D isn’t played with a calculator or algorithm to run things 1000 times. It’s all flavor for how you envision your character.
Blank
Great weapons is definitely the most damaging melee weapon build in a vacuum. Dueling (and to lesser extent dual wielder) have higher AC, and two weapons get more per attack benefits. They each have different merits.
The fighting style is really about how you want to play your character. Since each has it's own dependencies and down side compared to the others, and we are niggling over one damage here and another there, they seem well balanced to me. Two weapon fighting has an advantage in having the highest minimum damage due to additive ability modifiers, but only when we don't consider misses. GWF has a high average with potential for highest max, especially when we throw on GWM, and again only if we hit with fewer opportunities than TWF. Dueling's +2 to damage allows sword and board to keep up with the others while having a more defense oriented build.
Great Weapon Fighting, combined with Heroism Paladins or Champion fighters are amazing, especially with Polearm Master or Great Weapon Master or both. You crit way more often than others, you are rewarded more for those crits than any other combination, you can attack as a bonus action when you crit, and it is a great way to do good damage on average, and great damage on the lucky crits.
Please check out my homebrew, I would appreciate feedback:
Spells, Monsters, Subclasses, Races, Arcknight Class, Occultist Class, World, Enigmatic Esoterica forms
I don't understand how Two Weapon Fighting gets more per attack benefits then Great Weapon Fighting from any of these effect. The Two Weapon Fighting action allows you to "...use a bonus action to attack ..." and the Two Weapon style allows you to add your strength/dex modifier to that bonus attack. If you have a different source to make a bonus attack with Two Weapon Fighting, like a Berserker's Frenzy or War Domain Cleric, you get the same amount of attacks.
I agree, GWF is great for rolling average to high. You basically get a do over on damage rolls.
I think you may have misunderstood what I meant because of tricky wording. TWF doesn't get more benefits per attack, I assume that is what you thought I meant. TWF gets more "per attack" benefits because it makes more attacks on average.
Berserker's frenzy is... Bad. Whatever increase in DPS you got in 1 battle will be more than countered by the exhaustion for the rest of the day. War cleric doesn't get extra attack so it still can't make as many attacks as martial characters. Also, neither of these classes get fighting styles.