A fifth-level Fireball averages 28 damage, multiplied by however many targets it hits and presuming none of them save. Presuming the same roughly 65% "success" rate as a generic attack (which is NOT true, saves are far more likely to fail than attacks, but close enough for comparison), that's 18.2 damage per target. It cost the wizard a third-level spell slot, and the wizard can do nothing else of any consequence on that turn. Let's assume the wizard is relatively intelligent and saves a Fireball for at least three targets, so we'll call that 54.6 damage. Not too shabby.
Now. A fifth-level Dingdong using TWF with paired shortswords and going all out gets three attacks. Each primary attack is 1d6+3, average of 6.5 So 13 from those two. The offhand attack is an average of 1d6 (also +3 if the dingdong is using TWFS, but that's a bad fighting style so ignoring it for now), up to 16.5. The fifth-level dingdong can then dump two second-level and one first-level spell slots into those attacks for a total of 7d8 radiant damage, or 31.5 average damage. We're up to 48. Apply the same 65% penalty to that whole mess as the Fireball, and we get 31.2 damage down from the 48 total average damage delivered. That's a smidge over 57% of the damage of a wizard nailing three enemies with the most overtuned third-level damage spell in the game, and unlike the wizard, the dingdong has three separate chances to crit and add another ~8 to 11 average damage to the mix (accounting for the 65% penalty for accuracy). The dingdong needs only one of those to start rivaling the damage of a wizard blasting an entire group of baddies with a fireball, and it also gets to retroactively not burn spell slots on a miss. If the paladin gets to make a reaction attack that round, it gets to add another 1d6+3+2d8 to it, averaging another ten damage.
A paladin using Divine Smite can keep up more-or-less evenly with the damage of a wizard using a deliberately overtuned spell in that spell's best situation (striking many multiple targets simultaneously), and it does so with a chance for outlandish SuperMegaUltraCrits while wearing heavy armor with a d10 hit die and a slew of incredibly powerful class features. And unlike the wizard, the paladin doesn't need enemies to be dumb and cluster up to get Fireball'd. It can go Ginsu Mode on whatever happens to be convenient, and all the memes about paladins being bad at long range or having no control options are just that. A Strength-based paladin can chuck throwing weapons as well as a STR fighter or barbarian can and they can shove or knock prone as easily as any other Strong Guy character. On top of that, Command is a very potent controlling optioon, Compelled Duel ain't nothing and both Thunderous and Wrathful Smites have all the same potency of control effects as plenty of other first or second-level spells. Plus, higher-level dingdongs get Banishment, which is about as Controlling a control spell as one can really ask for.
Dingdongs do not need the help. They never have. They're head and shoulders the most powerful overall class in D&D, with full-progression casters only pretending to compare because high-level spells are bonkers. Up to a certain point, the dingdong doesn't care. Cast Greater Arcana all you like, dingdong will just walk up and cut you into brisquette while you're busy waggling your fingers all funky.
The Wizard was not the part to focus on, it was the sorcerer.
Fireball does average 28 damage on a failed save, 14 on a successful save. if 65% saved, you'd expect average damage to be, 18.9 or if 65% failed for the average to be 23.1? Maybe I have misunderstood this one? I haven't looked into calculating save DPR figures well enough, I must humbly admit.
So the Sorcerer gets to cast this and then fireball which is going to add 7.15 So they could be pushing around 30 average DPR, which is not far off from the Paladin, while only having 1 chance to actually crit tho; the trade off is Sorcerer gets to do this at least twice a day (3 I believe if they burn other spell slots to create a 3rd, 3rd level slot), Paladin is left with like 3 1st level spell slots, so 2nd time they try for this they are down on damage and after that entirely exhausted. This also is all single target damage, so basically Paladin does well vs. single target, not so well against groups, if a Paladin has to fight 5 orcs they aren't going to want to burst a divine smite on every single one. Which is where spells like Bless are actually better since you're just hoping your team mates can clear the group faster from your 1 lost turn. Fighter can action surge, hit 4/5 times with a +7.5% average increase to attack. Paladin does one thing really well, but does not stand out in any other. Paladin does get it's Aura's, sure, and it does get some spellcasting/healing but in Battle, if it's not about single target boss Nova, Paladin isn't that powerful, and the levels they shine at that single target Nova is levels 9-15, during which yes, spell casters get more powerful spells (animate objects....... )
But yeah, if we jump back to Paladin not using TWF or the brokeness of polearm master, it's 2 attacks a round, which Paladin is actually balanced well for. Which I did admit in previous post, yes 3 smites a turn might be a bit OP'ed.
Paladin can be floored pretty reliably with 1 spell, heat metal. A single 2nd level spell, is going to floor a Paladin near every time. There is no save to heat metal, there is no attack roll to heat metal, it is 2d8 damage (+1d8 per level up cast) and the saving throw does not half that, disadvantage on ability checks and attack rolls for being in contact with the item. It takes 5 minutes to Doff Heavy Armor, 1 minute to Doff Medium. at level 3 a Paladin has an average of what, about 27HP with +2 CON, 15 points of healing from healing hands, and maybe 13 average healing from cure wounds. So a total of about 55 HP, over the full minute heat metal will do an average of 90 damage. Casters definitely out do martials, including Paladin; most Paladin's lack any form of real ranged option, they are melee fighters with maybe javelins, or maybe a cantrip. Basically a caster only really dies if they let the Paladin get near them but most casters have methods to increase the size of the gap. The only way a Paladin can survive the full minute generally is if they have something to reduce damage taken by half, like fire resistance or aren't for some reason wearing metal armour. Of course the Paladin could cast dispel magic (if it's prepared), but the Druid can cast it at a higher level (so need to run a check) and the druid has way more slots to cast with than a Paladin has to dispel with, each dispel is a smite gone.
EDIT: Actually though of an entirely different way/concept Divine Smite could work in which would result in damage being spread over time to make less of a NOVA spike but slightly more damage spread in general.
The idea is simpler, remove Divine Smite from being fueled by spell slots and instead fueled by it's own resource (probs based on proficiency). Where the new attacks add the Paladin's Charisma Modifier to the damage (no +d8s) and that the Paladin can use their Charisma instead of Strength as the modifier for the attack roll, their choice. Recharge on short rest. Still at-will, but needs to be declared before the attack roll, not after.
Paladin can still Nova with this and can cast a smite spell as bonus action but the nova is reduced overall on the flip side of a Paladin's resources lasting longer. If people then think Paladin has too many different resources, drop Divine Sense, it is useless in 90% of campaigns.
Here's a question for anyone who's played a high-level spellcaster: would you give up crits on cantrips and Scorching Ray in exchange for having options for spells above second level that you can cast on targets without them using one of their twenty-seven daily uses of Legendary Resistance or their six +15 saving throw scores to no-sell?
I have a level 16 wizard active in an ongoing active game. She has access to Disintegrate, but has cast it exactly once because it's a trap. All the deadly control spells people freak out about bounce off of anything worth casting them on because everything in R5e has enough Legendary Resistances to make your whole Spellcasting class feature mostly worthless. Most of my big fights are spent concentrating on Wall of Force, Telekinesis, Draconic Transformation, or my other limited options for spells that don't say "Oh, did the enemy make their save? WHELP! That's a spell slot and a combat turn you'll never see again. Better hope that semi-corporeal wall blob doesn't finish swallowing the paladin before your next turn byeeeee!"
I'd like to occasionally maybe be able to cast a damaging or enemy-affecting spell above second level that has a chance to succeed, please. If that requires me to give up crits? Fair deal.
Why would I have to give up crits on spells for this? There are numerous leveled spells that aren't "Save or suck," and those alternatives will remain, whether spells are able to crit or not. If we're making a random, unrelated, theoretical situation, then I guess I'd say crits. Again, there are numerous different types of spells then other than save or suck one's, and most monsters don't have legendary resistance. To be honest, only something really shiny would have to be on the table to give up crits.
PS-I'm gonna try to not get myself too involved in the parts in this thread about monster crits, but I will respond to some of the spell crit stuff.
Here's a question for anyone who's played a high-level spellcaster: would you give up crits on cantrips and Scorching Ray in exchange for having options for spells above second level that you can cast on targets without them using one of their twenty-seven daily uses of Legendary Resistance or their six +15 saving throw scores to no-sell?
I have a level 16 wizard active in an ongoing active game. She has access to Disintegrate, but has cast it exactly once because it's a trap. All the deadly control spells people freak out about bounce off of anything worth casting them on because everything in R5e has enough Legendary Resistances to make your whole Spellcasting class feature mostly worthless. Most of my big fights are spent concentrating on Wall of Force, Telekinesis, Draconic Transformation, or my other limited options for spells that don't say "Oh, did the enemy make their save? WHELP! That's a spell slot and a combat turn you'll never see again. Better hope that semi-corporeal wall blob doesn't finish swallowing the paladin before your next turn byeeeee!"
I'd like to occasionally maybe be able to cast a damaging or enemy-affecting spell above second level that has a chance to succeed, please. If that requires me to give up crits? Fair deal.
Why would I have to give up crits on spells for this? There are numerous leveled spells that aren't "Save or suck," and those alternatives will remain, whether spells are able to crit or not. If we're making a random, unrelated, theoretical situation, then I guess I'd say crits. Again, there are numerous different types of spells then other than save or suck one's, and most monsters don't have legendary resistance. To be honest, only something really shiny would have to be on the table to give up crits.
PS-I'm gonna try to not get myself too involved in the parts in this thread about monster crits, but I will respond to some of the spell crit stuff.
This is why I wish for them to rework Legendary Resistances entirely to simply be able to be used against not just save or suck spells targeting solely casters, but also against damage itself. That way it sucks for all equally, the casters and the melees, but it also helps both if either one triggers one, as that's one down that helps both. If these resists not just block the casters alone but also the physical damage dealers, it finally becomes a team effort to take down a Legendary Monster and not just a damage race guided by turn economy. It also prompts the DM to think about when to use the resists. This may need some rewording and rebalancing, but here for example is a house rule I have used successfully so far:
Flavor Text: Creatures which have gained powers beyond most mortal comprehension are called Legendary or even Mythical among common folks. Because these legends and myths, are commonly believed and sometimes even feared across all races, these creatures have gained additional powers similar to how divine beings gain more power from the common folks believing in them.
Ability: Legendary Resistance (X/Day). The Creature is visibly surrounded by a mysterious Aura during combat. If the Creature fails a saving throw or gets hit by an attack, the Creature can choose to succeed the save or to negate all damage from the attack. Using a charge of this Ability, visibly weakens the Aura of this trait.
Flexible Value X based on CR and Party size: The Value X calculates like this: (X = Creature CR/5 + Number of PCs in the party - 4) With the "-4" representing the optimal party size suggested by the DMG towards which all monsters and the monster CR are supposed to be balanced for, which is 3 to 5 players. IT also explains why sometimes an entire army of creatures loses to such a creature lore wise, but a small group of adventures wins.
Explanation: With this change, while Legendary Creatures can potentially have more Legendary Resistances at higher CRs, means they usually use them faster and less focused against certain types of effects. This allows for every party member to more equally contribute to weakening a legendary Creature's Resistances. With this change, even a save and suck spell that gets resisted has a meaning for the entire group, as it means that resistance can't be used to block damage and vice versa. While a resisted strong hit or crit may feel equally shitty as a resisted save or suck spell, it removed a resistance that could have been used to prevent a magical spell. It turns the encounter away from a mindless HP race where all other things a character can do besides damage are meaningless, and instead becomes a collaborate effort to first dwindle the mysterious powers of this Legendary creature before you can actually affect it properly. Makes these creatures feel far more legendary. It also helps balance these resistances and make them matter against any combination of party, be it many or no casters at all. I know it has some improvements to the wording that could be done, but it worked great so far and my players love especially the visual style of the diminishing aura representing the strange divine/primal protection, which I always try to tailor towards the type of creature.
The rules have to be different for PCs and not-PCs. Because PCs are endlessly fiddly and over-complicated by DM/NPC standards, with dozens and dozens of moving pieces that make absolutely no sense for the DM to have to bother with mid-session. Players get that junk because it helps them focus down on the one single character they're playing for dozens of sessions and hundreds of hours; the stat block a DM's going to use one time for one combat doesn't need all that extraneous crap.
And yes - that is exactly what people keep pushing for. "Keep crits, dump the stupid Recharge mechanic! Crits are better anyways!" No. No they are not, and they never will be. Yes, people get excited when they roll a crit because it means their turn will be extra punchy for zero resource investment. But hey - players already do everything in their power to stop the DM from critting or take away those crits when they happen. Adamantine armor, Grave clerics, Silvery Barbs...players will do anything to avoid getting critically struck themselves, despite everybody claiming that Critting Is Super Fun and the DM deserves to do it too. Why not let the DM have fun doing something only a DM gets to do, ne? If the players are going to deny the DM all of their crits anyways, why also insist on taking away all the best monster abilities while we're at it?
Well, on a fundamental level, rules are same for PCs and NPCs. Attacks, saves, checks, stats, basic combat mechanics. Sure, NPCs are simplified and can do less stuff than PCs, but I like it being the sole exception, when players are stronger only because they have options to use in a smart way, optimal keys to capitalize on various situations, not because the game treats them differently on a basic level. It's already enough that DM adjudicates combat in a manageable way so that the story goes on.
Frankly, I haven't seen much opposition to recharge mechanics, but it's a matter of perception, I guess. I'm all for recharge stuff, myself. I'd also say that even players could use that, too.
This is why I wish for them to rework Legendary Resistances entirely to simply be able to be used against not just save or suck spells targeting solely casters, but also against damage itself. That way it sucks for all equally, the casters and the melees, but it also helps both if either one triggers one, as that's one down that helps both. If these resists not just block the casters alone but also the physical damage dealers, it finally becomes a team effort to take down a Legendary Monster and not just a damage race guided by turn economy. It also prompts the DM to think about when to use the resists. This may need some rewording and rebalancing, but here for example is a house rule I have used successfully so far:
Flavor Text: Creatures which have gained powers beyond most mortal comprehension are called Legendary or even Mythical among common folks. Because these legends and myths, are commonly believed and sometimes even feared across all races, these creatures have gained additional powers similar to how divine beings gain more power from the common folks believing in them.
Ability: Legendary Resistance (X/Day). The Creature is visibly surrounded by a mysterious Aura during combat. If the Creature fails a saving throw or gets hit by an attack, the Creature can choose to succeed the save or to negate all damage from the attack. Using a charge of this Ability, visibly weakens the Aura of this trait.
Flexible Value X based on CR and Party size: The Value X calculates like this: (X = Creature CR/5 + Number of PCs in the party - 4) With the "-4" representing the optimal party size suggested by the DMG towards which all monsters and the monster CR are supposed to be balanced for, which is 3 to 5 players. IT also explains why sometimes an entire army of creatures loses to such a creature lore wise, but a small group of adventures wins.
Explanation: With this change, while Legendary Creatures can potentially have more Legendary Resistances at higher CRs, means they usually use them faster and less focused against certain types of effects. This allows for every party member to more equally contribute to weakening a legendary Creature's Resistances. With this change, even a save and suck spell that gets resisted has a meaning for the entire group, as it means that resistance can't be used to block damage and vice versa. While a resisted strong hit or crit may feel equally shitty as a resisted save or suck spell, it removed a resistance that could have been used to prevent a magical spell. It turns the encounter away from a mindless HP race where all other things a character can do besides damage are meaningless, and instead becomes a collaborate effort to first dwindle the mysterious powers of this Legendary creature before you can actually affect it properly. Makes these creatures feel far more legendary. It also helps balance these resistances and make them matter against any combination of party, be it many or no casters at all. I know it has some improvements to the wording that could be done, but it worked great so far and my players love especially the visual style of the diminishing aura representing the strange divine/primal protection, which I always try to tailor towards the type of creature.
Actually, a really good idea about Legendary Resistances. I also hate it how they distort combat. You either have to forget about control spells, use those without saves (like forcecage), or shower the enemy with lesser effects to quickly shave off LR, like a monk dumping 4 ki per turn on stunning strikes. It's okay if legendary monsters have higher saves, but this exceptional mechanic sours things.
That's why, by the way, I fell in love with Nioh dilogy - it's fair, no boss is fully immune to anything. A build based on debuffs won't suck against bosses.
Basically I said that big critical from classes like Paladin and Rogue is the main cause for the changes in critical hits since they do too much damage.
What exactly is too much damage? Can you define it? Is it a specific number or a specific fraction of the monster's max HP? 20% maybe?
Is it a sin for a Rogue to do 20% damage in one attack but not for a Fighter to deal 5% four times in the same turn? Is it still too much if the Rogue misses 4 out of 5 attacks? Is another Rogue fine because their crits only do 19%, but they never miss? Would it still be too much damage if crits only happened 1% of the time? 0.1%? If the Rogue never criticals but lands 100% of their attacks when the odds were 80%, is that too much? Every "additional" Sneak Attack the Rogue lands also adds as much damage as a crit. If the Rogue crits but everyone else has gone crit-less for 40 rolls, is that also too much? If the Rogue crits on turn 1 and misses on 2 and 3, is it still too much? Every miss costs them the same amount of damage that a crit adds. Can the Rogue do too little? They're way more likely to do 0 than the Fighter.
What are the symptoms of "Too much damage"? How exactly does doing "too much damage" make a fight go significantly different? How does randomly taking off 20% when you were expecting 10% make the remaining 80% of the fight any different?
The average is the only meaningful measure. D&D is a game of chance. Theoretically anything could happen. We could simulate the same fight twice and get completely opposite outcomes. Every single PC could roll nat 1s for 5 rounds straight! But those events are so incredibly unlikely they don't budge the mean. In practice any fight worth discussing has enough rolls in it to smooth out the outlier events most of the time.
this was wrong because there is no difference in a fighter and rogue doing a critical hit, they are both 5% overall damage increase.
The average of a 4d10 attack is 22h + 0.05*22 (h = hit rate.) The average of four 1d10 attacks is 4(5.5h + 0.05*5.5) = 22h + 0.05*22 thanks to the distributive property. It's the same thing. If anything the Rogue is getting screwed in this comparison because they add their ability modifier fewer times than the Fighter.
InquisitiveCoder insists the issue is Divine Smite being too powerful in general, I say it's the ability to Divine Smite on a critical that is the real issue
See my previous rant about "too much damage." All a paladin needs to do to produce the same damage as a crit is smite one additional time. And they get to do that any time they feel like it, unlike the Rogue.
Presuming the same roughly 65% "success" rate as a generic attack (which is NOT true, saves are far more likely to fail than attacks, but close enough for comparison), that's 18.2 damage per target.
Just pointing out this is HIGHLY monster and save-dependent. Legendary Monsters usually have at least one save proficiency. Generics don't. STR and CON are closely associated with monster size. DEX not so much, though high AC generic monsters tend to have low DEX (their AC usually comes from armor.) The other 3 stats are all over the place. e.g. INT and CHA often go down to 1 for animals and oozes. However Wisdom rarely goes below 8 since it's also used for perception.
65% is not a bad estimate. It could easily be higher though, and it's more likely to be higher against high AC enemies (the very same ones the "ding-dong" will struggle to hit.)
Also, Fireball still deals half damage on a save. So you're really looking at 0.65*28 + 0.35*14 = 23.1 damage per target, or 69.3 for three. This is why I said area damage rolls with save-for-half are generally worth 3 times an attack's. 46.2 average for two targets vs 0.70*28 = 19.6 if it were an attack. Even with the occasional crit on the attack, the area version delivers 2.35 times the damage with just two targets. Factor in the asymmetry between AC and DEX saves (high AC -> low save) and you get close to 3.
The other issue here is that it's not an apple to oranges comparison. A Fireball can deal incredible amounts of cumulative damage against crowds, but unless it thins the herd, it doesn't make the fight easier. A Paladin dumping all their slots into one target will probably kill it prematurely and have a knock-on effect for the rest of the fight. Also, it's much easier for the Paladin to obtain advantage on all attacks than for the Wizard to disadvantage any target's saves, and if the Paladin has GWM and Polearm Master their baseline Smite-less damage is still broken whenever they have advantage.
Re: Legendary Resistance, I think a simple change would go a long way. The whole point is to prevent players from auto-winning fights early, so it becomes less necessary the longer the fight goes. If you just subtract 1 use at 75%, 50% and 25% HP, the threshold for succeeding on fight-defining spells gets lower the closer the party gets to finishing the fight the "fair" way.
I get that, but I was also going for the sort of quick and dirty math that was relatively easy to grok and follow. Even then, it went on longer than I like, but the idea was mostly bearing out the fact that a dingdong going 300% Hog Ham Wild with Smites can manage same-ballpark damage as a deliberate overpowered spell of equivalent level doing what it was built to do and assaulting multiple enemies. Which, yeah - that's not great. Smite needs reworking, and frankly so do the Smite spells. They should not be concentration. But that's off base enough for this thread to not really be worth more discussion, I suppose.
Basically I said that big critical from classes like Paladin and Rogue is the main cause for the changes in critical hits since they do too much damage.
What exactly is too much damage? Can you define it? Is it a specific number or a specific fraction of the monster's max HP? 20% maybe?
Is it a sin for a Rogue to do 20% damage in one attack but not for a Fighter to deal 5% four times in the same turn? Is it still too much if the Rogue misses 4 out of 5 attacks? Is another Rogue fine because their crits only do 19%, but they never miss? Would it still be too much damage if crits only happened 1% of the time? 0.1%? If the Rogue never criticals but lands 100% of their attacks when the odds were 80%, is that too much? Every "additional" Sneak Attack the Rogue lands also adds as much damage as a crit. If the Rogue crits but everyone else has gone crit-less for 40 rolls, is that also too much? If the Rogue crits on turn 1 and misses on 2 and 3, is it still too much? Every miss costs them the same amount of damage that a crit adds. Can the Rogue do too little? They're way more likely to do 0 than the Fighter.
What are the symptoms of "Too much damage"? How exactly does doing "too much damage" make a fight go significantly different? How does randomly taking off 20% when you were expecting 10% make the remaining 80% of the fight any different?
The average is the only meaningful measure. D&D is a game of chance. Theoretically anything could happen. We could simulate the same fight twice and get completely opposite outcomes. Every single PC could roll nat 1s for 5 rounds straight! But those events are so incredibly unlikely they don't budge the mean. In practice any fight worth discussing has enough rolls in it to smooth out the outlier events most of the time.
this was wrong because there is no difference in a fighter and rogue doing a critical hit, they are both 5% overall damage increase.
The average of a 4d10 attack is 22h + 0.05*22 (h = hit rate.) The average of four 1d10 attacks is 4(5.5h + 0.05*5.5) = 22h + 0.05*22 thanks to the distributive property. It's the same thing. If anything the Rogue is getting screwed in this comparison because they add their ability modifier fewer times than the Fighter.
InquisitiveCoder insists the issue is Divine Smite being too powerful in general, I say it's the ability to Divine Smite on a critical that is the real issue
See my previous rant about "too much damage." All a paladin needs to do to produce the same damage as a crit is smite one additional time. And they get to do that any time they feel like it, unlike the Rogue.
Presuming the same roughly 65% "success" rate as a generic attack (which is NOT true, saves are far more likely to fail than attacks, but close enough for comparison), that's 18.2 damage per target.
Just pointing out this is HIGHLY monster and save-dependent. Legendary Monsters usually have at least one save proficiency. Generics don't. STR and CON are closely associated with monster size. DEX not so much, though high AC generic monsters tend to have low DEX (their AC usually comes from armor.) The other 3 stats are all over the place. e.g. INT and CHA often go down to 1 for animals and oozes. However Wisdom rarely goes below 8 since it's also used for perception.
65% is not a bad estimate. It could easily be higher though, and it's more likely to be higher against high AC enemies (the very same ones the "ding-dong" will struggle to hit.)
Also, Fireball still deals half damage on a save. So you're really looking at 0.65*28 + 0.35*14 = 23.1 damage per target, or 69.3 for three. This is why I said area damage rolls with save-for-half are generally worth 3 times an attack's. 46.2 average for two targets vs 0.70*28 = 19.6 if it were an attack. Even with the occasional crit on the attack, the area version delivers 2.35 times the damage with just two targets. Factor in the asymmetry between AC and DEX saves (high AC -> low save) and you get close to 3.
The other issue here is that it's not an apple to oranges comparison. A Fireball can deal incredible amounts of cumulative damage against crowds, but unless it thins the herd, it doesn't make the fight easier. A Paladin dumping all their slots into one target will probably kill it prematurely and have a knock-on effect for the rest of the fight. Also, it's much easier for the Paladin to obtain advantage on all attacks than for the Wizard to disadvantage any target's saves, and if the Paladin has GWM and Polearm Master their baseline Smite-less damage is still broken whenever they have advantage.
Re: Legendary Resistance, I think a simple change would go a long way. The whole point is to prevent players from auto-winning fights early, so it becomes less necessary the longer the fight goes. If you just subtract 1 use at 75%, 50% and 25% HP, the threshold for succeeding on fight-defining spells gets lower the closer the party gets to finishing the fight the "fair" way.
The amount that is too much is relative, I mean everybody would agree anything above 50% of a BBEGs/bosses total HP is generally too much, 2 characters could just wipe them. Is 40% too much? these are meant to be bosses that last multi-round fights sometimes, like meant for 4+ rounds. When a character does something significant that reduces the fight by 1 round, that's tolerable but not necessarily the best, a character that can shorten the fight by 2 rounds? That is definitely too much. So the answer isn't not a specific number so much as it is specific outcomes.
Also you got fighter and rogue the wrong way around, fighter is the the one gets the lower increase on crit because they add their weapon mod more often, since static damage isn't affected by crit, that is less of their overall damage that contributes towards critical.
Also good to know I was right about 23.1 being the average dpr for fireball at level 3
I get that, but I was also going for the sort of quick and dirty math that was relatively easy to grok and follow. Even then, it went on longer than I like, but the idea was mostly bearing out the fact that a dingdong going 300% Hog Ham Wild with Smites can manage same-ballpark damage as a deliberate overpowered spell of equivalent level doing what it was built to do and assaulting multiple enemies. Which, yeah - that's not great. Smite needs reworking, and frankly so do the Smite spells. They should not be concentration. But that's off base enough for this thread to not really be worth more discussion, I suppose.
The problem is, if you compare what I put above, the paladin using 3 attacks around and smiting, was actually only the tiniest bit higher on DPR than a sorcerer on single target when sorcerer can maintain it for more rounds and one of those spells sorcerer used was AoE. Paladin isn't as over-powered as people in here are making out. Yes, Polearm master is broken, yes getting three smites off a round is a little OP'ed and yes crit smites are definitely overpowered. But 2 normal attacks doing smites is still behind most spell casters whom are using ranged AoE spells. I feel TWF can be fixed easily by limiting divine smite to main hand only, Polearm master as a feat just needs entirely reworking.
Resistance, kindly stop getting caught up in the particulars. We get it, you think paladins are perfectly A-OK peachy keen fine and everything else should be buffed to three billion percent of its natural output. The examples are just that - examples. They're not worth dickering endlessly about.
The fact is this: crits are overblown and aggravating. Lessening their impact on combat means other things can be given that reclaimed share of impact, such as badass awesome Recharge abilities for monsters or cool character powers for PC classes. Maybe instead of dealing an 'automatic crit', the Assassinate feature of the Assassin subclass (which is, I remind you, one feature of a class redolent with cool infiltrator and social manipulation abilities nobody pays attention to because OOH FREE CRIT!) could deal maximized Sneak Attack damage, instead. Wouldn't that be cool - instead of relying on an overblown crit that may or may not do what you want, when you get that one perfect blow it is a perfect blow, dealing the most damage in one strike you could ever possibly hope to deal.
The issue with removing criticals is you don't get the stories so to speak, the RNG nature of them does create moments, so if you remove or nerf criticals, you still need something that disrupts the odd combat encounter, just to create those types of moments.
If your combats are so boring that the odd lucky/unlucky crit is the only way to make Memorable Moments out of them, I have sad news for you: removing crits isn't the issue.
If your combats are so boring that the odd lucky/unlucky crit is the only way to make Memorable Moments out of them, I have sad news for you: removing crits isn't the issue.
They are not, but again, it's about the random and unexpected which even the DM was not prepared for, those moments of pure chaos. These are not bad things and losing them entirely would make the game more bland.
Resistance, kindly stop getting caught up in the particulars. We get it, you think paladins are perfectly A-OK peachy keen fine and everything else should be buffed to three billion percent of its natural output. The examples are just that - examples. They're not worth dickering endlessly about.
The fact is this: crits are overblown and aggravating. Lessening their impact on combat means other things can be given that reclaimed share of impact, such as badass awesome Recharge abilities for monsters or cool character powers for PC classes. Maybe instead of dealing an 'automatic crit', the Assassinate feature of the Assassin subclass (which is, I remind you, one feature of a class redolent with cool infiltrator and social manipulation abilities nobody pays attention to because OOH FREE CRIT!) could deal maximized Sneak Attack damage, instead. Wouldn't that be cool - instead of relying on an overblown crit that may or may not do what you want, when you get that one perfect blow it is a perfect blow, dealing the most damage in one strike you could ever possibly hope to deal.
Almost none of that is facts. Your problem with crits does not make them overblown or aggravating for anyone other than you some others with the same problem. For many they are fun additions and the variability they add is seen as a net gain to the game as predictability is boring to them.
The amount that is too much is relative, I mean everybody would agree anything above 50% of a BBEGs/bosses total HP is generally too much, 2 characters could just wipe them. Is 40% too much? these are meant to be bosses that last multi-round fights sometimes, like meant for 4+ rounds. When a character does something significant that reduces the fight by 1 round, that's tolerable but not necessarily the best, a character that can shorten the fight by 2 rounds? That is definitely too much. So the answer isn't not a specific number so much as it is specific outcomes.
Ok but:
You need some definition or you're just arguing for whatever you subjectively find to be an outlier. I can't argue with your gut feelings and crits are outliers by definition.
There's a million different ways to produce outlier outcomes of varying magnitude. A party of level 1s could fight a monster with 20 AC and roll nothing but 15-19s on their d20s and max damage on their damage dice. No crits, yet 6 times the expected damage per round. Just talking about "specific outcomes in a vacuum is useless. You can't divorce the outcomes from their likelihood. If you instinctively dismiss my example because it's so astronomically unlikely to occur, even if the magnitude of the effect was a 500% increase in everyone's total damage, then you don't think taking averages is bullshit after all.
There's legitimate reasons why a monster might have abnormally low HP and lose 40% damage from a crit Sneak Attack. Monsters with high AC have low HP to compensate; these fights will generally be more reliant on save-based spells than weapon attacks. Monsters with higher offensive capabilities also have lower defenses and vice-versa; these fights will be shorter but more dangerous. Search for monsters of any CR on DDB and see for yourself how much variation there is in HP.
The only sane way to talk about random events is with averages and variances. Crits are too rare to skew the average significantly.
Also you got fighter and rogue the wrong way around, fighter is the the one gets the lower increase on crit because they add their weapon mod more often, since static damage isn't affected by crit, that is less of their overall damage that contributes towards critical.
That's not what I said. I said the Rogue is at a disadvantage because they add their static bonuses fewer times. Again, the proportion is irrelevant. A TWF Fighter doing 3(h(1d6 + 4) + 0.05*1d6) is getting less of their damage from crits than a Rogue doing h(1d8 + 4 + 3d6) + 0.05*(1d8 + 3d6), but the Fighter's still doing more damage no matter what hit rate you pick.
The amount that is too much is relative, I mean everybody would agree anything above 50% of a BBEGs/bosses total HP is generally too much, 2 characters could just wipe them. Is 40% too much? these are meant to be bosses that last multi-round fights sometimes, like meant for 4+ rounds. When a character does something significant that reduces the fight by 1 round, that's tolerable but not necessarily the best, a character that can shorten the fight by 2 rounds? That is definitely too much. So the answer isn't not a specific number so much as it is specific outcomes.
Ok but:
You need some definition or you're just arguing for whatever you subjectively find to be an outlier. I can't argue with your gut feelings and crits are outliers by definition.
There's a million different ways to produce outlier outcomes of varying magnitude. A party of level 1s could fight a monster with 20 AC and roll nothing but 15-19s on their d20s and max damage on their damage dice. No crits, yet 6 times the expected damage per round. Just talking about "specific outcomes in a vacuum is useless. You can't divorce the outcomes from their likelihood. If you instinctively dismiss my example because it's so astronomically unlikely to occur, even if the magnitude of the effect was a 500% increase in everyone's total damage, then you don't think taking averages is bullshit after all.
There's legitimate reasons why a monster might have abnormally low HP and lose 40% damage from a crit Sneak Attack. Monsters with high AC have low HP to compensate; these fights will generally be more reliant on save-based spells than weapon attacks. Monsters with higher offensive capabilities also have lower defenses and vice-versa; these fights will be shorter but more dangerous. Search for monsters of any CR on DDB and see for yourself how much variation there is in HP.
The only sane way to talk about random events is with averages and variances. Crits are too rare to skew the average significantly.
Also you got fighter and rogue the wrong way around, fighter is the the one gets the lower increase on crit because they add their weapon mod more often, since static damage isn't affected by crit, that is less of their overall damage that contributes towards critical.
That's not what I said. I said the Rogue is at a disadvantage because they add their static bonuses fewer times. Again, the proportion is irrelevant. A TWF Fighter doing 3(h(1d6 + 4) + 0.05*1d6) is getting less of their damage from crits than a Rogue doing h(1d8 + 4 + 3d6) + 0.05*(1d8 + 3d6), but the Fighter's still doing more damage no matter what hit rate you pick.
That's the problem with crits, exactly the point at which they become bad is subjective/opinion based. There isn't any golden rule that says that at X point crits become too powerful, rather it's about experience and I can't give you a magic formula for that. That might feel like a cop out, but as far as I am aware there is no magical point for it or golden number.
Are you talking about crits or overall damage for Rogue, Rogue is at a disadvantage for overall damage because they get to add their static bonus less, but this leads into another discussion which is about consistency, a fighter's damage is generally vastly more consistent than a Rogue's, fighter gets more attacks in general and while each attack generally does less damage than a rogue's due to sneak attack the fighter will crit more often. Which was one of my original points, when Rogue or Paladin crit, their damage noticeably spikes whereas for a fighter, getting a critical, the damage is less noticable, since maybe they also missed one more attack on that round or even if they didn't the fact they land say two other attacks, that one attack that crit doesn't stand out. The chance a (non-champion) fighter gets three crits is so statistically low it is basically insignificant, it's 5% of 5% of 5% without advantage or 9.75% of 9.75% of 9.75% with.
Are you talking about crits or overall damage for Rogue, Rogue is at a disadvantage for overall damage because they get to add their static bonus less, but this leads into another discussion which is about consistency, a fighter's damage is generally vastly more consistent than a Rogue's, fighter gets more attacks in general and while each attack generally does less damage than a rogue's due to sneak attack the fighter will crit more often. Which was one of my original points, when Rogue or Paladin crit, their damage noticeably spikes whereas for a fighter, getting a critical, the damage is less noticable, since maybe they also missed one more attack on that round or even if they didn't the fact they land say two other attacks, that one attack that crit doesn't stand out.
No. There's immense variation for both characters when you consider the possibility of misses and the wide range of possible damage rolls. You're cherry-picking a scenario where a Rogue or Paladin is doing precisely average damage and then gets a lucky crit, when it's just as possible for them to underperform due to a string of bad attack/damage rolls and then simply break even with a crit, and it's also just as possible for them to overperform with no crits due to a series of lucky attack/damage rolls.
5th level Rogue with +3 PB, +4 DEX shooting a Longbow with 3d6 Sneak Attack against a 15 AC target.
The same Rogue, if we assume natural 20s are regular hits instead of crits.
5th level Fighter with +3 PB, +4 STR using a Greatsword with Great Weapon Fighting Fighting Style (reroll 1s and 2s).
The same Fighter, if we assume natural 20s are regular hits instead of crits.
The Rogue attacking for 3 rounds.
The Fighter attacking twice for 3 rounds
First, the curves for individual attacks with and without crits are nearly identical. The difference is that crits add an extremely thin (i.e. unlikely) tail of higher possible damage values.
Second, when you compare the Rogue and the Fighter over 3 rounds there's practically no difference. This is including the Rogue's crit Sneak Attacks. When you account for all the possible combinations of hits and misses, low damage rolls, high damage rolls, regular hits and critical hits, it's a wash. In both cases you're looking at an extremely wide range of cumulative damage, and in both cases the curves are centered around 91-94 damage (94.08 for the Rogue, 91.21 for the Fighter.)
You can pit the same Rogue and Fighter against each other dozens of times and get 3 round totals anywhere from 40-140 damage for either one with 95% probability depending on which of the millions of possible dice roll permutations decide to manifest. I'll put that another way: the damage of a 5th level Fighter or Rogue can vary by as much as 100 damage over 3 rounds based on nothing but dumb luck. Your brain selectively remembers only the times someone rolled big numbers.
I don't want to hear any more of this "Rogue crits are a problem" nonsense. It's not true.
Resistance, kindly stop getting caught up in the particulars. We get it, you think paladins are perfectly A-OK peachy keen fine and everything else should be buffed to three billion percent of its natural output. The examples are just that - examples. They're not worth dickering endlessly about.
The fact is this: crits are overblown and aggravating. Lessening their impact on combat means other things can be given that reclaimed share of impact, such as badass awesome Recharge abilities for monsters or cool character powers for PC classes. Maybe instead of dealing an 'automatic crit', the Assassinate feature of the Assassin subclass (which is, I remind you, one feature of a class redolent with cool infiltrator and social manipulation abilities nobody pays attention to because OOH FREE CRIT!) could deal maximized Sneak Attack damage, instead. Wouldn't that be cool - instead of relying on an overblown crit that may or may not do what you want, when you get that one perfect blow it is a perfect blow, dealing the most damage in one strike you could ever possibly hope to deal.
As others have said, almost none of these things are facts. You don't need to remove crits for other abilities to shine, you just need to make the other abilities slightly cooler.
You can view crits as "overblown and aggravating" but again, that's just one opinion, by no means is that facts.
Your assasin idea is a good one, but that still doesn't solve the problem of the people who are playtesting 1DD, and using the existing 5e rules/subclasses.
Resistance, kindly stop getting caught up in the particulars. We get it, you think paladins are perfectly A-OK peachy keen fine and everything else should be buffed to three billion percent of its natural output. The examples are just that - examples. They're not worth dickering endlessly about.
The particulars matter. If you're going to do math to support you're claims, then there's nothing wrong with people pointing out errors in that math.
Are you talking about crits or overall damage for Rogue, Rogue is at a disadvantage for overall damage because they get to add their static bonus less, but this leads into another discussion which is about consistency, a fighter's damage is generally vastly more consistent than a Rogue's, fighter gets more attacks in general and while each attack generally does less damage than a rogue's due to sneak attack the fighter will crit more often. Which was one of my original points, when Rogue or Paladin crit, their damage noticeably spikes whereas for a fighter, getting a critical, the damage is less noticable, since maybe they also missed one more attack on that round or even if they didn't the fact they land say two other attacks, that one attack that crit doesn't stand out.
No. There's immense variation for both characters when you consider the possibility of misses and the wide range of possible damage rolls. You're cherry-picking a scenario where a Rogue or Paladin is doing precisely average damage and then gets a lucky crit, when it's just as possible for them to underperform due to a string of bad attack/damage rolls and then simply break even with a crit, and it's also just as possible for them to overperform with no crits due to a series of lucky attack/damage rolls.
5th level Rogue with +3 PB, +4 DEX shooting a Longbow with 3d6 Sneak Attack against a 15 AC target.
The same Rogue, if we assume natural 20s are regular hits instead of crits.
5th level Fighter with +3 PB, +4 STR using a Greatsword with Great Weapon Fighting Fighting Style (reroll 1s and 2s).
The same Fighter, if we assume natural 20s are regular hits instead of crits.
The Rogue attacking for 3 rounds.
The Fighter attacking twice for 3 rounds
First, the curves for individual attacks with and without crits are nearly identical. The difference is that crits add an extremely thin (i.e. unlikely) tail of higher possible damage values.
Second, when you compare the Rogue and the Fighter over 3 rounds there's practically no difference. This is including the Rogue's crit Sneak Attacks. When you account for all the possible combinations of hits and misses, low damage rolls, high damage rolls, regular hits and critical hits, it's a wash. In both cases you're looking at an extremely wide range of cumulative damage, and in both cases the curves are centered around 100 damage (98.60 for the Rogue, 100.24 for the Fighter.)
I don't want to hear any more of this "Rogue crits are a problem" nonsense.
It sounds like a very simple concept went over your head in regards to consistency. The more attacks you make per round, the more "consistent" your damage gets. Fighter makes more attacks than rogues from level 5 and more attacks than paladin from level 11, ignoring action surge. I think this is another case where you've got yourself confused and straight up are just looking at the wrong numbers, again DPR isn't everything. I could write paragraphs of text to show the numbers but why waste the time when you never looked at any of the previous examples anyway. Essentially Rogues get more spikes because their damage in inherently more inconsistent. Paladin obviously is more inconsistent because they have a resource which they can burn at their own leisure but even by level 11, without that resource Paladin would be less consistent on damage than Fighter since fighter gets another jab of extra attack.
Also your anydice is just off, I think you forgot that to prove it's not a spike, you need to look at critical hits SEPARATE to normal hits, where you have critical hits, they are combined with normal hits. If you actually split critical hits off entirely you'll find at yes, critical hits are a huge spike. But again, this is because you're assuming overall damage, which is obvious from what you've put together, when I say crits spike, I mean the crit spikes, but I think you're again going to fail to even comprehend this basic statement. So let me do a simple table for you,
Attack Die - Damage
7 - 0
15 - 16
18 -17
3 - 0
20 - 38
14 - 25
11 - 20
See how the 20 is higher than any other roll? That is the spike I am talking about. Now let's do that for your fighter.
attack dice - damage results - total
15 + 13 - 10 + 13 - 23
12 + 11 - 13 + 13 - 26
14 + 11 - 16 + 15 - 31
18 + 5 - 13 + 0 - 13
20 + 13 - 20 + 13 - 33
9 + 2 - 11 + 0 - 11
4 + 3 - 0 + 0 - 0
Here the round with the 20, sure it does the most damage, by 2... these aren't comprehensive or representative of actual play, I used a dice roller tool off of google, and just re-rolling the 1st 1 or 2 that came up on the D6s for fighter. When you look at it a the damage of the round, a single crit isn't pushing the damage significantly far away, and we do not really need to worry about the rounds a fighter gets 2 criticals here, since the chances of that are a measly 1 in 400, it would be a spike but one that is significantly less common than rogue just getting 1 critical on 1 attack.
At this point I'm convinced you don't understand statistics or probability. I'm sorry but I can't help you. I can't think of any clearer proof that there's no difference between the fighter and the rogue than showing you all the possible 3 round totals with their probabilities.
At this point I'm convinced you don't understand statistics or probability. I'm sorry but I can't help you. I can't think of any clearer proof that there's no difference between the fighter and the rogue than showing you all the possible 3 round totals with their probabilities.
I've edited the response to make it clearer but I'd say the opposite, you're missing the forest for the trees. You are routinely failing to understand basic concepts. But let's just see if I put it the simplest way that I can.
A fighter does 4 attacks a round. Each attack has a 35% chance to miss, each attack has 60% chance to normal hit and 5% chance to critical
Another fighter does 1 attack a round, each attack has a 35% chance to miss, each attack has a 60% chance to normal hit and a 5% chance to critical.
1) Both of these fighters does 1d8+4 damage on a normal hit. Which fighter does the more consistent damage per round?
Ignore DPR, ignore overall damage, focus only on the matter of consistency. Which does more consistent damage per round?
2) the fighter that does 1 attack a round does 4d8+16 damage on a normal hit while the one that does 4 attacks a round does 1d8+4, which does more consistent damage over the course of a round?
The Wizard was not the part to focus on, it was the sorcerer.
Fireball does average 28 damage on a failed save, 14 on a successful save. if 65% saved, you'd expect average damage to be, 18.9 or if 65% failed for the average to be 23.1? Maybe I have misunderstood this one? I haven't looked into calculating save DPR figures well enough, I must humbly admit.
So the Sorcerer gets to cast this and then fireball which is going to add 7.15 So they could be pushing around 30 average DPR, which is not far off from the Paladin, while only having 1 chance to actually crit tho; the trade off is Sorcerer gets to do this at least twice a day (3 I believe if they burn other spell slots to create a 3rd, 3rd level slot), Paladin is left with like 3 1st level spell slots, so 2nd time they try for this they are down on damage and after that entirely exhausted. This also is all single target damage, so basically Paladin does well vs. single target, not so well against groups, if a Paladin has to fight 5 orcs they aren't going to want to burst a divine smite on every single one. Which is where spells like Bless are actually better since you're just hoping your team mates can clear the group faster from your 1 lost turn. Fighter can action surge, hit 4/5 times with a +7.5% average increase to attack. Paladin does one thing really well, but does not stand out in any other. Paladin does get it's Aura's, sure, and it does get some spellcasting/healing but in Battle, if it's not about single target boss Nova, Paladin isn't that powerful, and the levels they shine at that single target Nova is levels 9-15, during which yes, spell casters get more powerful spells (animate objects....... )
But yeah, if we jump back to Paladin not using TWF or the brokeness of polearm master, it's 2 attacks a round, which Paladin is actually balanced well for. Which I did admit in previous post, yes 3 smites a turn might be a bit OP'ed.
Paladin can be floored pretty reliably with 1 spell, heat metal. A single 2nd level spell, is going to floor a Paladin near every time. There is no save to heat metal, there is no attack roll to heat metal, it is 2d8 damage (+1d8 per level up cast) and the saving throw does not half that, disadvantage on ability checks and attack rolls for being in contact with the item. It takes 5 minutes to Doff Heavy Armor, 1 minute to Doff Medium. at level 3 a Paladin has an average of what, about 27HP with +2 CON, 15 points of healing from healing hands, and maybe 13 average healing from cure wounds. So a total of about 55 HP, over the full minute heat metal will do an average of 90 damage. Casters definitely out do martials, including Paladin; most Paladin's lack any form of real ranged option, they are melee fighters with maybe javelins, or maybe a cantrip. Basically a caster only really dies if they let the Paladin get near them but most casters have methods to increase the size of the gap. The only way a Paladin can survive the full minute generally is if they have something to reduce damage taken by half, like fire resistance or aren't for some reason wearing metal armour. Of course the Paladin could cast dispel magic (if it's prepared), but the Druid can cast it at a higher level (so need to run a check) and the druid has way more slots to cast with than a Paladin has to dispel with, each dispel is a smite gone.
EDIT: Actually though of an entirely different way/concept Divine Smite could work in which would result in damage being spread over time to make less of a NOVA spike but slightly more damage spread in general.
The idea is simpler, remove Divine Smite from being fueled by spell slots and instead fueled by it's own resource (probs based on proficiency). Where the new attacks add the Paladin's Charisma Modifier to the damage (no +d8s) and that the Paladin can use their Charisma instead of Strength as the modifier for the attack roll, their choice. Recharge on short rest. Still at-will, but needs to be declared before the attack roll, not after.
Paladin can still Nova with this and can cast a smite spell as bonus action but the nova is reduced overall on the flip side of a Paladin's resources lasting longer. If people then think Paladin has too many different resources, drop Divine Sense, it is useless in 90% of campaigns.
Why would I have to give up crits on spells for this? There are numerous leveled spells that aren't "Save or suck," and those alternatives will remain, whether spells are able to crit or not. If we're making a random, unrelated, theoretical situation, then I guess I'd say crits. Again, there are numerous different types of spells then other than save or suck one's, and most monsters don't have legendary resistance. To be honest, only something really shiny would have to be on the table to give up crits.
PS-I'm gonna try to not get myself too involved in the parts in this thread about monster crits, but I will respond to some of the spell crit stuff.
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HERE.This is why I wish for them to rework Legendary Resistances entirely to simply be able to be used against not just save or suck spells targeting solely casters, but also against damage itself. That way it sucks for all equally, the casters and the melees, but it also helps both if either one triggers one, as that's one down that helps both. If these resists not just block the casters alone but also the physical damage dealers, it finally becomes a team effort to take down a Legendary Monster and not just a damage race guided by turn economy. It also prompts the DM to think about when to use the resists. This may need some rewording and rebalancing, but here for example is a house rule I have used successfully so far:
Flavor Text: Creatures which have gained powers beyond most mortal comprehension are called Legendary or even Mythical among common folks. Because these legends and myths, are commonly believed and sometimes even feared across all races, these creatures have gained additional powers similar to how divine beings gain more power from the common folks believing in them.
Ability: Legendary Resistance (X/Day). The Creature is visibly surrounded by a mysterious Aura during combat. If the Creature fails a saving throw or gets hit by an attack, the Creature can choose to succeed the save or to negate all damage from the attack. Using a charge of this Ability, visibly weakens the Aura of this trait.
Flexible Value X based on CR and Party size: The Value X calculates like this: (X = Creature CR/5 + Number of PCs in the party - 4) With the "-4" representing the optimal party size suggested by the DMG towards which all monsters and the monster CR are supposed to be balanced for, which is 3 to 5 players. IT also explains why sometimes an entire army of creatures loses to such a creature lore wise, but a small group of adventures wins.
Explanation: With this change, while Legendary Creatures can potentially have more Legendary Resistances at higher CRs, means they usually use them faster and less focused against certain types of effects. This allows for every party member to more equally contribute to weakening a legendary Creature's Resistances. With this change, even a save and suck spell that gets resisted has a meaning for the entire group, as it means that resistance can't be used to block damage and vice versa. While a resisted strong hit or crit may feel equally shitty as a resisted save or suck spell, it removed a resistance that could have been used to prevent a magical spell. It turns the encounter away from a mindless HP race where all other things a character can do besides damage are meaningless, and instead becomes a collaborate effort to first dwindle the mysterious powers of this Legendary creature before you can actually affect it properly. Makes these creatures feel far more legendary. It also helps balance these resistances and make them matter against any combination of party, be it many or no casters at all. I know it has some improvements to the wording that could be done, but it worked great so far and my players love especially the visual style of the diminishing aura representing the strange divine/primal protection, which I always try to tailor towards the type of creature.
Well, on a fundamental level, rules are same for PCs and NPCs. Attacks, saves, checks, stats, basic combat mechanics. Sure, NPCs are simplified and can do less stuff than PCs, but I like it being the sole exception, when players are stronger only because they have options to use in a smart way, optimal keys to capitalize on various situations, not because the game treats them differently on a basic level. It's already enough that DM adjudicates combat in a manageable way so that the story goes on.
Frankly, I haven't seen much opposition to recharge mechanics, but it's a matter of perception, I guess. I'm all for recharge stuff, myself. I'd also say that even players could use that, too.
Actually, a really good idea about Legendary Resistances. I also hate it how they distort combat. You either have to forget about control spells, use those without saves (like forcecage), or shower the enemy with lesser effects to quickly shave off LR, like a monk dumping 4 ki per turn on stunning strikes. It's okay if legendary monsters have higher saves, but this exceptional mechanic sours things.
That's why, by the way, I fell in love with Nioh dilogy - it's fair, no boss is fully immune to anything. A build based on debuffs won't suck against bosses.
What exactly is too much damage? Can you define it? Is it a specific number or a specific fraction of the monster's max HP? 20% maybe?
Is it a sin for a Rogue to do 20% damage in one attack but not for a Fighter to deal 5% four times in the same turn? Is it still too much if the Rogue misses 4 out of 5 attacks? Is another Rogue fine because their crits only do 19%, but they never miss? Would it still be too much damage if crits only happened 1% of the time? 0.1%? If the Rogue never criticals but lands 100% of their attacks when the odds were 80%, is that too much? Every "additional" Sneak Attack the Rogue lands also adds as much damage as a crit. If the Rogue crits but everyone else has gone crit-less for 40 rolls, is that also too much? If the Rogue crits on turn 1 and misses on 2 and 3, is it still too much? Every miss costs them the same amount of damage that a crit adds. Can the Rogue do too little? They're way more likely to do 0 than the Fighter.
What are the symptoms of "Too much damage"? How exactly does doing "too much damage" make a fight go significantly different? How does randomly taking off 20% when you were expecting 10% make the remaining 80% of the fight any different?
The average is the only meaningful measure. D&D is a game of chance. Theoretically anything could happen. We could simulate the same fight twice and get completely opposite outcomes. Every single PC could roll nat 1s for 5 rounds straight! But those events are so incredibly unlikely they don't budge the mean. In practice any fight worth discussing has enough rolls in it to smooth out the outlier events most of the time.
The average of a 4d10 attack is 22h + 0.05*22 (h = hit rate.) The average of four 1d10 attacks is 4(5.5h + 0.05*5.5) = 22h + 0.05*22 thanks to the distributive property. It's the same thing. If anything the Rogue is getting screwed in this comparison because they add their ability modifier fewer times than the Fighter.
See my previous rant about "too much damage." All a paladin needs to do to produce the same damage as a crit is smite one additional time. And they get to do that any time they feel like it, unlike the Rogue.
Just pointing out this is HIGHLY monster and save-dependent. Legendary Monsters usually have at least one save proficiency. Generics don't. STR and CON are closely associated with monster size. DEX not so much, though high AC generic monsters tend to have low DEX (their AC usually comes from armor.) The other 3 stats are all over the place. e.g. INT and CHA often go down to 1 for animals and oozes. However Wisdom rarely goes below 8 since it's also used for perception.
65% is not a bad estimate. It could easily be higher though, and it's more likely to be higher against high AC enemies (the very same ones the "ding-dong" will struggle to hit.)
Also, Fireball still deals half damage on a save. So you're really looking at 0.65*28 + 0.35*14 = 23.1 damage per target, or 69.3 for three. This is why I said area damage rolls with save-for-half are generally worth 3 times an attack's. 46.2 average for two targets vs 0.70*28 = 19.6 if it were an attack. Even with the occasional crit on the attack, the area version delivers 2.35 times the damage with just two targets. Factor in the asymmetry between AC and DEX saves (high AC -> low save) and you get close to 3.
The other issue here is that it's not an apple to oranges comparison. A Fireball can deal incredible amounts of cumulative damage against crowds, but unless it thins the herd, it doesn't make the fight easier. A Paladin dumping all their slots into one target will probably kill it prematurely and have a knock-on effect for the rest of the fight. Also, it's much easier for the Paladin to obtain advantage on all attacks than for the Wizard to disadvantage any target's saves, and if the Paladin has GWM and Polearm Master their baseline Smite-less damage is still broken whenever they have advantage.
Re: Legendary Resistance, I think a simple change would go a long way. The whole point is to prevent players from auto-winning fights early, so it becomes less necessary the longer the fight goes. If you just subtract 1 use at 75%, 50% and 25% HP, the threshold for succeeding on fight-defining spells gets lower the closer the party gets to finishing the fight the "fair" way.
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I get that, but I was also going for the sort of quick and dirty math that was relatively easy to grok and follow. Even then, it went on longer than I like, but the idea was mostly bearing out the fact that a dingdong going 300% Hog Ham Wild with Smites can manage same-ballpark damage as a deliberate overpowered spell of equivalent level doing what it was built to do and assaulting multiple enemies. Which, yeah - that's not great. Smite needs reworking, and frankly so do the Smite spells. They should not be concentration. But that's off base enough for this thread to not really be worth more discussion, I suppose.
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The amount that is too much is relative, I mean everybody would agree anything above 50% of a BBEGs/bosses total HP is generally too much, 2 characters could just wipe them. Is 40% too much? these are meant to be bosses that last multi-round fights sometimes, like meant for 4+ rounds. When a character does something significant that reduces the fight by 1 round, that's tolerable but not necessarily the best, a character that can shorten the fight by 2 rounds? That is definitely too much. So the answer isn't not a specific number so much as it is specific outcomes.
Also you got fighter and rogue the wrong way around, fighter is the the one gets the lower increase on crit because they add their weapon mod more often, since static damage isn't affected by crit, that is less of their overall damage that contributes towards critical.
Also good to know I was right about 23.1 being the average dpr for fireball at level 3
The problem is, if you compare what I put above, the paladin using 3 attacks around and smiting, was actually only the tiniest bit higher on DPR than a sorcerer on single target when sorcerer can maintain it for more rounds and one of those spells sorcerer used was AoE. Paladin isn't as over-powered as people in here are making out. Yes, Polearm master is broken, yes getting three smites off a round is a little OP'ed and yes crit smites are definitely overpowered. But 2 normal attacks doing smites is still behind most spell casters whom are using ranged AoE spells. I feel TWF can be fixed easily by limiting divine smite to main hand only, Polearm master as a feat just needs entirely reworking.
Resistance, kindly stop getting caught up in the particulars. We get it, you think paladins are perfectly A-OK peachy keen fine and everything else should be buffed to three billion percent of its natural output. The examples are just that - examples. They're not worth dickering endlessly about.
The fact is this: crits are overblown and aggravating. Lessening their impact on combat means other things can be given that reclaimed share of impact, such as badass awesome Recharge abilities for monsters or cool character powers for PC classes. Maybe instead of dealing an 'automatic crit', the Assassinate feature of the Assassin subclass (which is, I remind you, one feature of a class redolent with cool infiltrator and social manipulation abilities nobody pays attention to because OOH FREE CRIT!) could deal maximized Sneak Attack damage, instead. Wouldn't that be cool - instead of relying on an overblown crit that may or may not do what you want, when you get that one perfect blow it is a perfect blow, dealing the most damage in one strike you could ever possibly hope to deal.
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My point was always that criticals are the issue.
The issue with removing criticals is you don't get the stories so to speak, the RNG nature of them does create moments, so if you remove or nerf criticals, you still need something that disrupts the odd combat encounter, just to create those types of moments.
If your combats are so boring that the odd lucky/unlucky crit is the only way to make Memorable Moments out of them, I have sad news for you: removing crits isn't the issue.
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They are not, but again, it's about the random and unexpected which even the DM was not prepared for, those moments of pure chaos. These are not bad things and losing them entirely would make the game more bland.
Almost none of that is facts. Your problem with crits does not make them overblown or aggravating for anyone other than you some others with the same problem. For many they are fun additions and the variability they add is seen as a net gain to the game as predictability is boring to them.
Ok but:
The only sane way to talk about random events is with averages and variances. Crits are too rare to skew the average significantly.
That's not what I said. I said the Rogue is at a disadvantage because they add their static bonuses fewer times. Again, the proportion is irrelevant. A TWF Fighter doing 3(h(1d6 + 4) + 0.05*1d6) is getting less of their damage from crits than a Rogue doing h(1d8 + 4 + 3d6) + 0.05*(1d8 + 3d6), but the Fighter's still doing more damage no matter what hit rate you pick.
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That's the problem with crits, exactly the point at which they become bad is subjective/opinion based. There isn't any golden rule that says that at X point crits become too powerful, rather it's about experience and I can't give you a magic formula for that. That might feel like a cop out, but as far as I am aware there is no magical point for it or golden number.
Are you talking about crits or overall damage for Rogue, Rogue is at a disadvantage for overall damage because they get to add their static bonus less, but this leads into another discussion which is about consistency, a fighter's damage is generally vastly more consistent than a Rogue's, fighter gets more attacks in general and while each attack generally does less damage than a rogue's due to sneak attack the fighter will crit more often. Which was one of my original points, when Rogue or Paladin crit, their damage noticeably spikes whereas for a fighter, getting a critical, the damage is less noticable, since maybe they also missed one more attack on that round or even if they didn't the fact they land say two other attacks, that one attack that crit doesn't stand out. The chance a (non-champion) fighter gets three crits is so statistically low it is basically insignificant, it's 5% of 5% of 5% without advantage or 9.75% of 9.75% of 9.75% with.
No. There's immense variation for both characters when you consider the possibility of misses and the wide range of possible damage rolls. You're cherry-picking a scenario where a Rogue or Paladin is doing precisely average damage and then gets a lucky crit, when it's just as possible for them to underperform due to a string of bad attack/damage rolls and then simply break even with a crit, and it's also just as possible for them to overperform with no crits due to a series of lucky attack/damage rolls.
I'll prove it to you with AnyDice.
First, the curves for individual attacks with and without crits are nearly identical. The difference is that crits add an extremely thin (i.e. unlikely) tail of higher possible damage values.
Second, when you compare the Rogue and the Fighter over 3 rounds there's practically no difference. This is including the Rogue's crit Sneak Attacks. When you account for all the possible combinations of hits and misses, low damage rolls, high damage rolls, regular hits and critical hits, it's a wash. In both cases you're looking at an extremely wide range of cumulative damage, and in both cases the curves are centered around 91-94 damage (94.08 for the Rogue, 91.21 for the Fighter.)
You can pit the same Rogue and Fighter against each other dozens of times and get 3 round totals anywhere from 40-140 damage for either one with 95% probability depending on which of the millions of possible dice roll permutations decide to manifest. I'll put that another way: the damage of a 5th level Fighter or Rogue can vary by as much as 100 damage over 3 rounds based on nothing but dumb luck. Your brain selectively remembers only the times someone rolled big numbers.
I don't want to hear any more of this "Rogue crits are a problem" nonsense. It's not true.
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As others have said, almost none of these things are facts. You don't need to remove crits for other abilities to shine, you just need to make the other abilities slightly cooler.
You can view crits as "overblown and aggravating" but again, that's just one opinion, by no means is that facts.
Your assasin idea is a good one, but that still doesn't solve the problem of the people who are playtesting 1DD, and using the existing 5e rules/subclasses.
The particulars matter. If you're going to do math to support you're claims, then there's nothing wrong with people pointing out errors in that math.
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HERE.It sounds like a very simple concept went over your head in regards to consistency. The more attacks you make per round, the more "consistent" your damage gets. Fighter makes more attacks than rogues from level 5 and more attacks than paladin from level 11, ignoring action surge. I think this is another case where you've got yourself confused and straight up are just looking at the wrong numbers, again DPR isn't everything. I could write paragraphs of text to show the numbers but why waste the time when you never looked at any of the previous examples anyway. Essentially Rogues get more spikes because their damage in inherently more inconsistent. Paladin obviously is more inconsistent because they have a resource which they can burn at their own leisure but even by level 11, without that resource Paladin would be less consistent on damage than Fighter since fighter gets another jab of extra attack.
Also your anydice is just off, I think you forgot that to prove it's not a spike, you need to look at critical hits SEPARATE to normal hits, where you have critical hits, they are combined with normal hits. If you actually split critical hits off entirely you'll find at yes, critical hits are a huge spike. But again, this is because you're assuming overall damage, which is obvious from what you've put together, when I say crits spike, I mean the crit spikes, but I think you're again going to fail to even comprehend this basic statement. So let me do a simple table for you,
Attack Die - Damage
7 - 0
15 - 16
18 -17
3 - 0
20 - 38
14 - 25
11 - 20
See how the 20 is higher than any other roll? That is the spike I am talking about. Now let's do that for your fighter.
attack dice - damage results - total
15 + 13 - 10 + 13 - 23
12 + 11 - 13 + 13 - 26
14 + 11 - 16 + 15 - 31
18 + 5 - 13 + 0 - 13
20 + 13 - 20 + 13 - 33
9 + 2 - 11 + 0 - 11
4 + 3 - 0 + 0 - 0
Here the round with the 20, sure it does the most damage, by 2... these aren't comprehensive or representative of actual play, I used a dice roller tool off of google, and just re-rolling the 1st 1 or 2 that came up on the D6s for fighter. When you look at it a the damage of the round, a single crit isn't pushing the damage significantly far away, and we do not really need to worry about the rounds a fighter gets 2 criticals here, since the chances of that are a measly 1 in 400, it would be a spike but one that is significantly less common than rogue just getting 1 critical on 1 attack.
At this point I'm convinced you don't understand statistics or probability. I'm sorry but I can't help you. I can't think of any clearer proof that there's no difference between the fighter and the rogue than showing you all the possible 3 round totals with their probabilities.
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I've edited the response to make it clearer but I'd say the opposite, you're missing the forest for the trees. You are routinely failing to understand basic concepts. But let's just see if I put it the simplest way that I can.
A fighter does 4 attacks a round. Each attack has a 35% chance to miss, each attack has 60% chance to normal hit and 5% chance to critical
Another fighter does 1 attack a round, each attack has a 35% chance to miss, each attack has a 60% chance to normal hit and a 5% chance to critical.
1) Both of these fighters does 1d8+4 damage on a normal hit. Which fighter does the more consistent damage per round?
Ignore DPR, ignore overall damage, focus only on the matter of consistency. Which does more consistent damage per round?
2) the fighter that does 1 attack a round does 4d8+16 damage on a normal hit while the one that does 4 attacks a round does 1d8+4, which does more consistent damage over the course of a round?