Also, Battle Master is impossible to quantify because there are two many choices and factors that affect the outcomes. Improved Critical is very cut and dry. Every 20 attacks you get an extra critical.
It's not impossible to quantify. If you want a really conservative estimate (i.e. ignoring side effects and party members) you can just work out how many rounds of combat a Champion has to participate in to roll enough 19s to match the damage from a Battle Master's Superiority Dice. It's pretty much always out of reach in tier 1 and 2. You can play a Battle Master in the most brain-dead way and the Champion would still lose simply because they either can't get into enough fights and even if there were, the party would have to stop and rest (giving the Battle Master all of their free damage back.)
If you're comparing like for like, the only difference is the extra damage from the Champion's 19s and the extra damage from the Superiority Dice, and the analysis is real easy, as Pantagruel666 showed. But it's still possible to do this for different builds, it just takes more work.
lol No worries. I've brainstormed every which way to exploit Elvin Accuracy. Hexblade - Devil's Sight - Darkness spell is one way. Another way is a Half-elf Rogue, using Steady Aim or attacking while hidden. The latter way is the most efficient I could come up with.
With Tasha's, Blind Fighting does the same thing as Devil's Sight but cheaper (no 2 level dip in Warlock, can use Fog Cloud instead of Darkness.)
Yeah for sure... I think the ol samurai nova bomb is pretty crazy too with Sharpshooter and action surge.
Arcane Archers can do this too by using Shadow Arrow on their first attack. They won't have advantage on the first attack, but they do get Curving Shot at 7th level which effectively gives them an additional attack if there's multiple enemies. And of course Battle Masters have Trip Attack.
I'd be curious which campaigns he's thinking about. The ones I've seen are more prone to "let's blow your daily encounter budget in one fight".
These are just the ones I've either played or have some passing knowledge of from skimming the books:
The Redbrand Hideout and Wave Echo Cave from Lost Mine of Phandelver (aka the Starter Set.)
Curse of Strahd has Death House, Amber Temple, Argynvostholt, the ruins of Berez, Castle Ravenloft.
Dead in Thay from Tales From the Yawning Portal is literally one giant dungeon crawl broken up into multiple themed sections. It's very much in the style of older deathtrap dungeons like Tomb of Horrors, though obviously less lethal. Most of the other adventures in this book also feature a large dungeon, though I haven't played them, only skimmed through them.
I know Rime of the Frostmaiden has at least one large dungeon too, and I imagine Tomb of Annihilation is also pretty taxing since it involves a lot of wilderness travel and at least one large dungeon (the tomb itself.)
Adjusted damage is the potential damage if Crusher procs and further attacks that round are made at advantage.
If you’re a Champion you’re definitely taking P/S/C or GWM Feats to capitalize on the higher crit range. This is not encompassed in the results.
If you're going to factor in Crusher's capacity for self-advantage, you'd have to do the same for the Battle Master (Trip Attack). Also note that if crit fishing is the name of the game, Battle Masters can also double up their own superiority dice on their 20s.
That said the optimal way to abuse both crit features and GWM is to already have advantage, so if you're doing that comparison you can forget about Crusher's side effects (probably better to compare against Slasher). But then Trip Attack doesn't make much sense for the Battle Master either, so now you have to contend with either crit-fished maneuvers or Quick Toss, which is basically a free bonus attack.
InquisitiveCoder, but those after effects are a reality, and those are impossible to accurately quantify, because the dynamics change from game to game.
And as you pointed out, Brewksy is conveniently adding after effects damage (which is impossible to quantify accurately) of the Crusher feat to help the Champion, but conveniently ignoring those things for the BM.
Takes on Champions effectiveness with Crusher or Slasher, that minimize or ignore that the rest of the party exists to benefit from crit debuffs, are the same sort of “on paper only” analysis that so over-values Hexblades.
GWM alone will improve the chance of a bonus attack each round by 18.54% for a Champion and only 9.75% for a Battlemaster. Over 20 attacks that’s 1.75 more attacks which is 12.333*1.75 = 21.5 damage. This reduces the break even to maybe 7-8 rounds?
Feats aren't free, but over 20 attacks with GWM, the battle master is now getting an extra 30 damage from converting misses to hits, the champion is getting an extra 11.5 damage from bonus action attacks, so the catch up rate is now .991 but the amount that has to be caught up is now 58, so instead of pulling ahead after 89 attacks, he pulls ahead after 79.
I'd be curious which campaigns he's thinking about. The ones I've seen are more prone to "let's blow your daily encounter budget in one fight".
These are just the ones I've either played or have some passing knowledge of from skimming the books:
Curse of Strahd has Death House, Amber Temple, Argynvostholt, the ruins of Berez, Castle Ravenloft.
Since I have CoS: of those locations, only Castle Ravenloft has any real restrictions on resting, the others have no wandering monsters and very small numbers of encounters that might plausibly wander (and generally one signature encounter that is massively overpowering). You're also ignoring Old Bonegrinder, the Wizard of Wines, Yester Hill, and the Werewolf Den, all of which are basically one or two fight locations.
Since I have CoS: of those locations, only Castle Ravenloft has any real restrictions on resting, the others have no wandering monsters and very small numbers of encounters that might plausibly wander (and generally one signature encounter that is massively overpowering). You're also ignoring Old Bonegrinder, the Wizard of Wines, Yester Hill, and the Werewolf Den, all of which are basically one or two fight locations.
I'm not ignoring them. The original claim if I remember right was that 2 fights per short rest is on the low end. There's definitely places in CoS where that's true. I know only Castle Ravenloft has explicit risks for short rests, but:
the adventure also encourages the DM to randomly ambush the players with Strahd (which I did pretty much every game day)
discourages traveling at night, which puts a time limit on how much time you can stay in an area and still be back the same day before nightfall, and
I've never had a group try to take short rests well before they're needed in any adventure
Takes on Champions effectiveness with Crusher or Slasher, that minimize or ignore that the rest of the party exists to benefit from crit debuffs, are the same sort of “on paper only” analysis that so over-values Hexblades.
I agree the party benefits are important to consider, but that's also why it baffles me that you seem hellbent on pursuing an unreliable gimmick build that does only one, maybe two things. If you're able to get 50% crit rate then Crusher is probably redundant, and there's other ways to duplicate Slasher's effects partially or in full. Meanwhile the same build on another subclass would still proc Crusher or Slasher 25% of the time while also having a bunch of other ways to control enemies or benefit the group that you can use at will instead of when the dice feel like it.
Worth noting, with two attacks the normal crit rate is 9.75% per turn, verses 19% with Improved Critical. That is a net increase of 9.25%. I don't know where a 50% crit rate is coming from.
When evaluating the value of an ability, you can only credit it for what in gives *above* what you would otherwise have.
Worth noting, with two attacks the normal crit rate is 9.75% per turn, verses 19% with Improved Critical. That is a net increase of 9.25%. I don't know where a 50% crit rate is coming from.
When evaluating the value of an ability, you can only credit it for what in gives *above* what you would otherwise have.
Good point... Something that hasn't been mentioned yet
I'm not ignoring them. The original claim if I remember right was that 2 fights per short rest is on the low end. There's definitely places in CoS where that's true.
I tend to count "if you make trouble in area X, the monsters in area Y are likely to come over to play" as a single fight.
Worth noting, with two attacks the normal crit rate is 9.75% per turn, verses 19% with Improved Critical. That is a net increase of 9.25%. I don't know where a 50% crit rate is coming from. When evaluating the value of an ability, you can only credit it for what in gives *above* what you would otherwise have.
I brought up the 50% because the discussion regarding a "reliable" Crusher or Slasher build. 50% is the lowest number I'd accept as somewhat reliable and practical if Crusher or Slasher is the only thing your build is contributing to the party. 2 attacks with Improved Critical and Elven Accuracy or 3 attacks with normal advantage will get you to 47% (1 - 0.9^6). 3 attacks with Elven Accuracy would get you up to 61% (1 - 0.9^9), but that's still close enough to call it a coin toss for the sake of brevity.
I agree that the Champion subclass can only take credit for what happens on 19s specifically, but in the context of getting some side effect to happen often enough for the party to build a strategy around it, I think the absolute number is important too. If you're only going to get the feat side effects 1 out of every 5 rounds that's still a nice bonus, but it's not something I'd plan around. It might not even occur once on any given battle. If you've got at least 50% chance per round there's about a 7/8 chance or better the effect will occur at some point in a 3+ round combat (though that still assumes a friend beat you in initiative and set up advantage for you somehow.)
Team composition also often isn't factored in; obviously all attack-roll characters get better when a druid or bard drops faerie fire on a cluster of foes. In such a scenario, a tier 2 Champion has about a 34% chance of critting at least once per turn, or 57% on one when they use Action Surge; other archetypes have around 20% and 34%, respectfully.
However, as stated before, in such a scenario, a BM might choose to only spend their dice on near-misses or crits to maximize their added damage values (weapon die + mod often matches or beats 2d8) unless they use them for other tactical options.
With 2 attacks, which covers the Tier 2 range, Improved Critical grants a 19% chance to crit - or just under a 1 in 5 chance to crit. Let's say the AC is such that the bonus action attack has a 60% chance to hit, and the Fighter has an 18 strength.
With a greatsword a hit does 11 points of damage on average. Muliply that by the chance to hit (0.6) = 6.6. Then multiply that by your chance to crit (0.19) = 1.254. Improved Critical added to GWM grants 1.254 damage per turn. *Without* improved critical, GWM adds 0.6435 damage per turn (based on a 9.75% chance to crit per turn). SUMMARY: Improved Critical adds an additional 0.6105 damage per turn to GWM.
Now apply the regular extra damage IC adds, which is 0.35 damage per attack, or 0.7 damage per turn.
Total: Improved Critical + GWM adds 1.3105 damage per turn (that IC can take credit for) IF 18 strength, 2 attacks, 60% chance to hit, using a greatsword.
Keep in mind, this would require a human variant or a level 8+ to pull off if you're doing point buy or standard array, due to having a feat and having 18 strength.
ALSO keep in mind, ALLLLLL Champion gives you at levels 3 through 9 is this pathetic extra damage, and a modest bump to initiative rolls at level 7.
Ignoring other factors like Elven Accuracy, here's correct math on Improved Champion + GWM, although I need to emphasize I'm not defending Champions here - the subclass is demonstrably, objectively bad.
Assumptions taken from your post:
We're assuming (approximately, at least) a level 6-7 Champion Fighter with ASIs +2 Strength and GWM (net bonus to hit: +7) facing an AC 16 target (base accuracy 60%), i.e. the standard AC for a CR 8 target.
Note: the DMG-recommended AC for a target compared to "standard" ASI progression (non-Fighter/non-Rogue) grants 65% accuracy at all CRs from 1-20 except for 9, where accuracy spikes to 70%, but I am copying your post's assumption of 60% instead.
Note 2: your ASI math is off, because Fighters can start at S16 and get 2 ASIs by level 6 without needing to be a variant human or TCL.
Greatsword, but no other exotic issues introduced, like the GWF style or Brutal Critical from e.g. being a Half-Orc.
Introducing GWM, both bonuses applied: 16.15; Improved Critical: 17.63
Improved Critical improves GWM from 16.15 to 17.63, a net benefit of +1.48 DPR.
Significant points of interest:
You don't crit flat damage, but you do crit damage dice, and you do so on a per-hit basis. From what I can tell, you ignored the extra 2d6 from the bonus action attack critting, which is why your result (+1.31) doesn't match item 3 above (+1.41).
You should either apply GWM's -5/+10 to all of your strikes or none of them, in general - it makes no sense to apply them to your base strikes but not the bonus one. You ignored GWM's -5/+10, but at 60% accuracy it's a good idea to use it, and the more DPH you do, the more valuable the bonus action strike is in additive terms (i.e. 0.0925X is a higher number the higher X is).
I found my mistake. I did not factor that on the BONUS action attack, you can also crit. And also, I did not calculate the +4 strength bonus into it (brain fart)
FACTORS:
Strength: 18
Weapon: Greatsword
No. of Attacks: 2
Chance to Crit (on your turn) with Improved Critical: 19%
Chance to Crit without Improved Critical: 9.75%
With GWM NOT applying +10 - 5
Chance to hit 60% (Nat 9 or better on the die)
Average Damage per attack with Improved Critical: 11.7 (factoring in crits)
Average Damage per attack without Improved Critical: 11.35 (factoring in crits)
Bonus Action Damage Per Turn with Improved Critical: 11.7 x 0.19 = 2.223
Bonus Action Damage Per Turn without Improved Critical: 11.35 x .0975 = 1.106625
VALUE ADDED TO BONUS ACTION ATTACK: 1.116 PER TURN
Next: Improved Critical adds 0.35 additional damage per attack x 2 attacks = 0.7 damage.
1.116 + .70 = 1.816
TOTAL VALUE ADDED FROM IMPROVED CRITICAL (UNDER THE SPECIFIED CONDITIONS): 1.816 extra damage PER TURN.
*on a build which emphasizes static damage modifiers and is not particularly suited for crits.
Ah well.
You can, by going all-in on critical enhancement, make a Champion build that is decent by level 15 or so. This is enough beyond the usual scope of campaigns that it's ignorable.
Hold up. There's a difference between GWM/SS's bonus being less beneficial for a Champion, and other builds being better than GWM/SS.
Maximizing a tiny fraction of your attacks at the expense of the majority is not a winning strategy. It doesn't suddenly become a good idea just because it's the one thing the Champion has going for it.
To the extent that GWM is a feat almost always taken at level 12 (or SHOULD be) by all but Fighters, it’s ignorable.
Not even remotely close to being true. GWM (and Sharpshooter) always beats an ASI in terms of damage if there's advantage involved, and beats an ASI without advantage once Extra Attack comes into the picture (which is only 1 level before your first opportunity for an ASI.)
Not true at level 4 with a +3 score modifier, arguable at level 8 with a +4. Agree to disagree I guess, landing attacks on the rounds you make them is more important than debatably having decimal points in your favor over 5 rounds of combat or whatever assumptions you’re making for T2 GWM with less than 20 strength.
It's not impossible to quantify. If you want a really conservative estimate (i.e. ignoring side effects and party members) you can just work out how many rounds of combat a Champion has to participate in to roll enough 19s to match the damage from a Battle Master's Superiority Dice. It's pretty much always out of reach in tier 1 and 2. You can play a Battle Master in the most brain-dead way and the Champion would still lose simply because they either can't get into enough fights and even if there were, the party would have to stop and rest (giving the Battle Master all of their free damage back.)
If you're comparing like for like, the only difference is the extra damage from the Champion's 19s and the extra damage from the Superiority Dice, and the analysis is real easy, as Pantagruel666 showed. But it's still possible to do this for different builds, it just takes more work.
With Tasha's, Blind Fighting does the same thing as Devil's Sight but cheaper (no 2 level dip in Warlock, can use Fog Cloud instead of Darkness.)
Arcane Archers can do this too by using Shadow Arrow on their first attack. They won't have advantage on the first attack, but they do get Curving Shot at 7th level which effectively gives them an additional attack if there's multiple enemies. And of course Battle Masters have Trip Attack.
These are just the ones I've either played or have some passing knowledge of from skimming the books:
The Redbrand Hideout and Wave Echo Cave from Lost Mine of Phandelver (aka the Starter Set.)
Curse of Strahd has Death House, Amber Temple, Argynvostholt, the ruins of Berez, Castle Ravenloft.
Dead in Thay from Tales From the Yawning Portal is literally one giant dungeon crawl broken up into multiple themed sections. It's very much in the style of older deathtrap dungeons like Tomb of Horrors, though obviously less lethal. Most of the other adventures in this book also feature a large dungeon, though I haven't played them, only skimmed through them.
I know Rime of the Frostmaiden has at least one large dungeon too, and I imagine Tomb of Annihilation is also pretty taxing since it involves a lot of wilderness travel and at least one large dungeon (the tomb itself.)
If you're going to factor in Crusher's capacity for self-advantage, you'd have to do the same for the Battle Master (Trip Attack). Also note that if crit fishing is the name of the game, Battle Masters can also double up their own superiority dice on their 20s.
That said the optimal way to abuse both crit features and GWM is to already have advantage, so if you're doing that comparison you can forget about Crusher's side effects (probably better to compare against Slasher). But then Trip Attack doesn't make much sense for the Battle Master either, so now you have to contend with either crit-fished maneuvers or Quick Toss, which is basically a free bonus attack.
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InquisitiveCoder, but those after effects are a reality, and those are impossible to accurately quantify, because the dynamics change from game to game.
And as you pointed out, Brewksy is conveniently adding after effects damage (which is impossible to quantify accurately) of the Crusher feat to help the Champion, but conveniently ignoring those things for the BM.
Takes on Champions effectiveness with Crusher or Slasher, that minimize or ignore that the rest of the party exists to benefit from crit debuffs, are the same sort of “on paper only” analysis that so over-values Hexblades.
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I'm going to make this way harder than it needs to be.
Feats aren't free, but over 20 attacks with GWM, the battle master is now getting an extra 30 damage from converting misses to hits, the champion is getting an extra 11.5 damage from bonus action attacks, so the catch up rate is now .991 but the amount that has to be caught up is now 58, so instead of pulling ahead after 89 attacks, he pulls ahead after 79.
Decimals over dozens of rounds is not relevant to player decisionmaking, and swallowed entirely by the randomness of actual dice.
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I'm going to make this way harder than it needs to be.
Since I have CoS: of those locations, only Castle Ravenloft has any real restrictions on resting, the others have no wandering monsters and very small numbers of encounters that might plausibly wander (and generally one signature encounter that is massively overpowering). You're also ignoring Old Bonegrinder, the Wizard of Wines, Yester Hill, and the Werewolf Den, all of which are basically one or two fight locations.
Edit: Brain fart on some of the calculations: The corrected version is below
I'm not ignoring them. The original claim if I remember right was that 2 fights per short rest is on the low end. There's definitely places in CoS where that's true. I know only Castle Ravenloft has explicit risks for short rests, but:
I agree the party benefits are important to consider, but that's also why it baffles me that you seem hellbent on pursuing an unreliable gimmick build that does only one, maybe two things. If you're able to get 50% crit rate then Crusher is probably redundant, and there's other ways to duplicate Slasher's effects partially or in full. Meanwhile the same build on another subclass would still proc Crusher or Slasher 25% of the time while also having a bunch of other ways to control enemies or benefit the group that you can use at will instead of when the dice feel like it.
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Worth noting, with two attacks the normal crit rate is 9.75% per turn, verses 19% with Improved Critical. That is a net increase of 9.25%. I don't know where a 50% crit rate is coming from.
When evaluating the value of an ability, you can only credit it for what in gives *above* what you would otherwise have.
Good point... Something that hasn't been mentioned yet
I tend to count "if you make trouble in area X, the monsters in area Y are likely to come over to play" as a single fight.
I brought up the 50% because the discussion regarding a "reliable" Crusher or Slasher build. 50% is the lowest number I'd accept as somewhat reliable and practical if Crusher or Slasher is the only thing your build is contributing to the party. 2 attacks with Improved Critical and Elven Accuracy or 3 attacks with normal advantage will get you to 47% (1 - 0.9^6). 3 attacks with Elven Accuracy would get you up to 61% (1 - 0.9^9), but that's still close enough to call it a coin toss for the sake of brevity.
I agree that the Champion subclass can only take credit for what happens on 19s specifically, but in the context of getting some side effect to happen often enough for the party to build a strategy around it, I think the absolute number is important too. If you're only going to get the feat side effects 1 out of every 5 rounds that's still a nice bonus, but it's not something I'd plan around. It might not even occur once on any given battle. If you've got at least 50% chance per round there's about a 7/8 chance or better the effect will occur at some point in a 3+ round combat (though that still assumes a friend beat you in initiative and set up advantage for you somehow.)
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Team composition also often isn't factored in; obviously all attack-roll characters get better when a druid or bard drops faerie fire on a cluster of foes. In such a scenario, a tier 2 Champion has about a 34% chance of critting at least once per turn, or 57% on one when they use Action Surge; other archetypes have around 20% and 34%, respectfully.
However, as stated before, in such a scenario, a BM might choose to only spend their dice on near-misses or crits to maximize their added damage values (weapon die + mod often matches or beats 2d8) unless they use them for other tactical options.
Ignoring other factors like Elven Accuracy, here's correct math on Improved Champion + GWM, although I need to emphasize I'm not defending Champions here - the subclass is demonstrably, objectively bad.
Assumptions taken from your post:
Here's what the DPR looks like:
Improved Critical improves GWM from 16.15 to 17.63, a net benefit of +1.48 DPR.
Significant points of interest:
I found my mistake. I did not factor that on the BONUS action attack, you can also crit. And also, I did not calculate the +4 strength bonus into it (brain fart)
FACTORS:
Strength: 18
Weapon: Greatsword
No. of Attacks: 2
Chance to Crit (on your turn) with Improved Critical: 19%
Chance to Crit without Improved Critical: 9.75%
With GWM NOT applying +10 - 5
Chance to hit 60% (Nat 9 or better on the die)
Average Damage per attack with Improved Critical: 11.7 (factoring in crits)
Average Damage per attack without Improved Critical: 11.35 (factoring in crits)
Bonus Action Damage Per Turn with Improved Critical: 11.7 x 0.19 = 2.223
Bonus Action Damage Per Turn without Improved Critical: 11.35 x .0975 = 1.106625
VALUE ADDED TO BONUS ACTION ATTACK: 1.116 PER TURN
Next: Improved Critical adds 0.35 additional damage per attack x 2 attacks = 0.7 damage.
1.116 + .70 = 1.816
TOTAL VALUE ADDED FROM IMPROVED CRITICAL (UNDER THE SPECIFIED CONDITIONS): 1.816 extra damage PER TURN.
*on a build which emphasizes static damage modifiers and is not particularly suited for guaranteeing or exploiting crits.
Ah well.
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I'm going to make this way harder than it needs to be.
You can, by going all-in on critical enhancement, make a Champion build that is decent by level 15 or so. This is enough beyond the usual scope of campaigns that it's ignorable.
To the extent that GWM is a feat almost always taken at level 12 (or SHOULD be) by all but Fighters, it’s ignorable.
Yawn.
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I'm going to make this way harder than it needs to be.
I'm getting some déjà vu.
Maximizing a tiny fraction of your attacks at the expense of the majority is not a winning strategy. It doesn't suddenly become a good idea just because it's the one thing the Champion has going for it.
Not even remotely close to being true. GWM (and Sharpshooter) always beats an ASI in terms of damage if there's advantage involved, and beats an ASI without advantage once Extra Attack comes into the picture (which is only 1 level before your first opportunity for an ASI.)
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Not true at level 4 with a +3 score modifier, arguable at level 8 with a +4. Agree to disagree I guess, landing attacks on the rounds you make them is more important than debatably having decimal points in your favor over 5 rounds of combat or whatever assumptions you’re making for T2 GWM with less than 20 strength.
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I'm going to make this way harder than it needs to be.