In another discussion, I saw someone describe the difference between +1 to hit and +4 to hit as something like a 50% increase in hit probability. And my first thought was that this sounded right. Especially since its a natural inclination to believe that those dear ASI's must have a major effect.
But then I stepped back to think about it. Since we are rolling a D20, each increase of +1 improves our chances of hitting on an attack roll by 5%. So the difference between an attack with a 10 in the stat vs a 20 is only a 25% chance of hitting. That isn't nothing, but it isn't nearly as big a gap as we might intuit it to be.
Especially because hit chance is never decided purely by the ability modifier. The proficiency bonus acts to basically keep a lower limit on hit chance above 25%. I.e. a level 20 barbarian with a 10 in strength will still have a +6 to hit an enemy with a war axe, so even against an ancient dragon with 20 AC, they have over a 25% chance to hit it before any other considerations.
So does anyone else feel like they exaggerate the increase in hit chances in their mind?
There are two different ways of talking about it, which can cause confusion sometimes. For example, if your hit chance increases from 25% to 50%, then it could either be described as:
The boost will turn 25% of your attacks from misses into hits.
Your attacks will hit 100% more often (5 out of 20 vs 10 out of 20).
Both are accurate descriptions in the right context. Sometimes the first number is more useful, while sometimes the second number is more useful. It largely depends on what argument you are trying to make.
So an increase of +3 will only impact 15% of your attacks, but that 15% translates into a much larger impact on your overall damage.
Edit: I find the second number more useful when talking about things like attack rolls for fighters, which are made multiple times every turn. I find the first number more useful on niche rolls, where you can say things like "This feature will only come into play once every 5 sessions."
In another discussion, I saw someone describe the difference between +1 to hit and +4 to hit as something like a 50% increase in hit probability. And my first thought was that this sounded right. Especially since its a natural inclination to believe that those dear ASI's must have a major effect.
But then I stepped back to think about it. Since we are rolling a D20, each increase of +1 improves our chances of hitting on an attack roll by 5%. So the difference between an attack with a 10 in the stat vs a 20 is only a 25% chance of hitting. That isn't nothing, but it isn't nearly as big a gap as we might intuit it to be.
Especially because hit chance is never decided purely by the ability modifier. The proficiency bonus acts to basically keep a lower limit on hit chance above 25%. I.e. a level 20 barbarian with a 10 in strength will still have a +6 to hit an enemy with a war axe, so even against an ancient dragon with 20 AC, they have over a 25% chance to hit it before any other considerations.
So does anyone else feel like they exaggerate the increase in hit chances in their mind?
My experience is the exact opposite - too many players assume all attacks hit, ignoring how significant accuracy is to hitting.
The CR table in the DMG assumes at all levels except 9 a 65% chance to hit, based on assuming your ability modifiers are +3 at level 1, +4 at level 4, and +5 at level 8. I generally use that table as my basis when analyzing any build, because it gives me a way to assume monster AC, instead of operating in a vacuum.
Note that this means your accuracy is really 65% with your static damage and 70% with your damage dice, since your damage dice can crit and that's what the math works out to.
So the accuracy benefit from an ASI is level dependent, which makes sense - the higher the ACs of what you're fighting, the more of a benefit an increase in accuracy is, and what you're fighting tends to have a higher AC at higher levels. If you started at +3 as expected, you can't fall behind more than two ASI steps, so the biggest possible accuracy benefit from an ASI in that scenario is where almost all of your damage is static and you've reached level 8 and kept going, at which point a +1 to hit is 60% -> 65%, which is an 8.33% accuracy increase. +4 to hit would be 60% -> 80%, which is a 33.33% accuracy increase.
Keep in mind that the value of hit chance is greater for some classes than others. Rogues only ever get one attack per action, for example, so maximizing the hit chance is super important if you want to get your sneak attack off. There's also side benefits of the ASIs like AC, Skills, Saves, HP, etc. so it's not all about the ability to hit.
Keep in mind that the value of hit chance is greater for some classes than others. Rogues only ever get one attack per action, for example, so maximizing the hit chance is super important if you want to get your sneak attack off. There's also side benefits of the ASIs like AC, Skills, Saves, HP, etc. so it's not all about the ability to hit.
Generally the value of the to hit chance increases the expected damage the same amount regardless of the number of attacks. The number of attacks only changes the variance of the amount of damage:
A high level rogue with a 60% chance to hit and expected damage of 40 damage if they hit will on average do 24 damage on their turn, if they can get the hit probability up ot 75% that increases to 30. His fighter buddy with 4 attacks each with a 60% chance to hit and expected damage of 10 damage per hit will also on average do 24 damage on their turn, and if they can get the hit probability up ot 75% that increases to 30 as well.
There are complexities that might not make it strictly true if different attacks do different damage and different chances to hit. For example a hasted rogue with sharpshooter might not take the -5 penalty to hit on his second attack if he missed with his first attack because he really wants the sneak attack to work but if he hits with his first attack it is worth taking the penalty for the extra damage it produces.
Also remember improving ASIs increases the damage on a hit as well as the to hit probabity. Increasing your strength/dex from 10 to 20 not only can increase your probability to hot form (say 50% to 75%) but also increase your damage, if you do hit, if you are yielding a 1d8 weapon the damage would increase from an average of 4.5 to 9.5 ie more than double. I admit in a high magic game it would be proportionally less (with a +3 weapon the average damage would go from 7.5 to 12.5). Not to mention defencive and non combat gains in things like saving throws and ability checks.
Not hitting sucks. Having everyone save against your confusion sucks too. Even if it isn't a huge increase, both the payoff (potentially turning a miss into a hit) and the frequency (nearly every action you take in combat) of the increase make it very valuable to me. Valuable enough that I'm not sure I've ever played more than 2-3 characters who had more than one feat (and those that did probably were half-feats with +1 stat).
In another discussion, I saw someone describe the difference between +1 to hit and +4 to hit as something like a 50% increase in hit probability. And my first thought was that this sounded right. Especially since its a natural inclination to believe that those dear ASI's must have a major effect.
Against an AC 16 target it's a 50% increase, but it's rare that you're running into targets where you have a base 30%. ASIs are more important for total weapon DPR (STR 14 with a longsword is +4/1d8+2; against AC 12 that's 4.45 dpr including crits. STR 20 with a longsword is +7/1d8+5, which is 7.825 dpr or 75% more) or for expected duration of save every round powers.
Keep in mind that the value of hit chance is greater for some classes than others. Rogues only ever get one attack per action, for example, so maximizing the hit chance is super important if you want to get your sneak attack off. There's also side benefits of the ASIs like AC, Skills, Saves, HP, etc. so it's not all about the ability to hit.
Generally the value of the to hit chance increases the expected damage the same amount regardless of the number of attacks. The number of attacks only changes the variance of the amount of damage:
A high level rogue with a 60% chance to hit and expected damage of 40 damage if they hit will on average do 24 damage on their turn, if they can get the hit probability up ot 75% that increases to 30. His fighter buddy with 4 attacks each with a 60% chance to hit and expected damage of 10 damage per hit will also on average do 24 damage on their turn, and if they can get the hit probability up ot 75% that increases to 30 as well.
There are complexities that might not make it strictly true if different attacks do different damage and different chances to hit. For example a hasted rogue with sharpshooter might not take the -5 penalty to hit on his second attack if he missed with his first attack because he really wants the sneak attack to work but if he hits with his first attack it is worth taking the penalty for the extra damage it produces.
Also remember improving ASIs increases the damage on a hit as well as the to hit probabity. Increasing your strength/dex from 10 to 20 not only can increase your probability to hot form (say 50% to 75%) but also increase your damage, if you do hit, if you are yielding a 1d8 weapon the damage would increase from an average of 4.5 to 9.5 ie more than double. I admit in a high magic game it would be proportionally less (with a +3 weapon the average damage would go from 7.5 to 12.5). Not to mention defencive and non combat gains in things like saving throws and ability checks.
I think we're almost saying the same thing here but let me clarify. If you only get one attack, having a higher chance to hit is more valuable because if you miss you do nothing. A fighter with 4 attacks can still try 3 more times and therefore might be ok spending an ASI on something like a Feat rather than the ability score (especially when they get tons of ASIs and can pick it up later). So yes statistically the average damage is the same (especially over time) and your absolutely right that the number of attacks changes the damage variance, but that's not really what I'm talking about.
There might be a psycholical effect but generally speaking value when dealing damage is based on expected damage. The value of the rogue upping his expected damage per round from 24 to 30, is exactly the same as the value of the fighter doing so even though the fighters damage is more consistent.
I will say that the math is actually a bit wonky for a rogue, assuming they are using their bonus action to either make another attack or to gain advantage on their attack. It sounds sort of counterintuitive, but against average AC foes, the rogue actually cares about increases to hit chance less than a longsword fighter who has identical damage.
That's because a fighter who hits 50% of their attacks deals 50% of their damage, while a rogue that hits 50% of their attacks is dealing much more than 50% of their damage. Its the same for any character that can make multiple attack rolls and has a 'once per turn' rider, but rogues are the most noticeable.
There is an inflection point for higher ACs where suddenly those rogues benefits more from hit chance than any other class, but those AC values are extremely high. Also, the rogue still absolutely benefits from bonus hit - just not by quite the same margin. Its only really relevant for people who are really trying to minmax.
I like what you said Aetherlwolf. I don't like adding in bonus actions to discussions like these though because that makes build choices and situational things muddy the waters. If you just go with basic attack actions, over 4 rounds missing half your attacks will get a fighter 80 damage where a rouge would get 48 (still using the example Jegpeg - Fighter 10 per hit - Rouge 24 w/sneak). If we factor in bonus action for a Rouge then they end up with 96 but then you should also add a Fighter bonus action to keep things even. So assuming two weapon fighting is the most even thing to consider, the Fighter ends up at 100. Really similar values but only if the Rouge can use a bonus action to attack. So assuming they can only do this half the time (based on my experience this is fair but your mileage may vary), the Rouges damage drops to around 72. See totally muddy :)
As the actual damage depends on choice of weapon as well as ASIs and level I did an illustrative example wheere the Rogue and Fighter did identical DPR. A fighter with 1d8 weapon and a duel welding fighting style would do 11.5 damage per hit excluding criticals, crits would increase that to 11.9. With a 50% chance to hit over 4 rounds they would do 95.2 damage.
A level 20 Rogue with +5 dex using a 1d8 weapon would do 1d8+10d6+5 damage on a hit which averages 46.5 without crits 48.6 with crits with a 50% chance to hit over 4 rounds they would expect to do 97.2 damage over 4 rounds, so a little more than a fighter unless uses their action surge. The rogue is however likele to "waste" more damage as if an enemy has low HP left and the fighter kills it with his first attack he can attack a different enemy with his extra attacks where the rogues extra damage is wasted. There will also be times when the rogue is unable ot get sneak attack off.
Duel wielding doesn't make sense for a level 20 fighter, with the fighting style they would making 5 attacks with 1d6+5 (8.5) damage on a hit, with a 50% chance to hit over 4 rounds they would do 85 damage on average, so compared to sword and board they do less damage, have less AC and tie up their bonus action.
Duel wielding is a viable option for a rogue especially at high levels when nearly all the damage is sneak and getting sneak attack damage from 50% to 75% is a huge benefit, (about 140demage over 4 rounds is they can do it every turn) but how often does the rogue need to hide to be able to get sneak attack at all, how often will he forego the second attempt at a sneak because disengaging is a higher priority. Many rogues prefer to keep there distance from the bad guys and they need ot invest in a feat to attack with their bonus action and may have higher priorities.
As Lathius said putting in duel wielding muddies the waters and and a rogue making a single attack per turn is perfectly viable I will leave the comparison at that.
Against a low AC target, like a gelatinous cube, the increase in hit percentage might as well not exist. But against a high AC target like a dragon, a single point can massively multiply the hit percentage. Only around 14-16 AC do I feel like it performs intuitively.
A lot of people make the same mistake here as those who say LeBron James is better than Michael Jordan: they look at numbers instead of statistics or percentages. On paper, LeBron’s numbers are better, but when adjusted for the average of their era, MJ comes out way ahead.
Always look at percentages, never flat numbers.
That said, I do think players overrate small statistical increases. It’s what annoys me about people who whine about low stat rolls: only against very high AC enemies will that +1 make more than a negligible difference.
So does anyone else feel like they exaggerate the increase in hit chances in their mind?
In my mind? No. I always translate each +1 on d20 to "5 percentage points" (in raw terms). I have a very good sense of how these numbers work because I use statistics regularly in my job, and I also have written programs that use RNGs of various types, so again, I have a good sense of them.
On the other hand, the thread title and poll ask, "Do players overestimate the "benefit" an ASI gives to their to-hit probabilities?" And I suspect they probably do. The thing about an ASI is that it does not come in a vacuum. There is also a proficiency bonus, and there may be weapon bonuses. If your character has +4 to a stat, +3 to proficiency bonus, and +1 to a weapon, that's already +8 to hit, total. Adding another +1 to the stat will only be a 1/8 or 12% increase in to-hit probability. But to many players, I suspect it feels more like a 25% increase (1/4 raise from 1 in 4 to 1 in 5 is 25%). I think in the minds of many players this translates into "I will hit 25% more often," which is false. Each +1 to hit provides a 5 percentage point increase in your chance of hitting a given target, but the percent increase depends on other factors and your prior probability to hit. Many people also don't understand the difference between percent and percentage points.
Furthermore, specifically with ASIs, I think some players value the sheer numerical increase of an ASI vs. the taking of a feat that may not provide any numerical benefit at all but may provide a variety of situational benefits that dramatically outweigh a +2 increase to a stat (which will translate to a +1 bonus), such as giving advantage on certain types of rolls, or providing other abilities that are hard to quantify. ASIs are easy to quantify and a +1 seems like a pretty darn simple number to figure out (it's just 1, after all), and a lot of players don't think in relative or qualitative terms when trying to figure out the "most effective" way to build.
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I voted that they do, in general, as with many hybrid classes (Monk, Ranger and such) a boost to a spell DC may well be a better choice than increased chance to hit. I feel that each ASI opportunity is different for each class and all 6too often folks get stuck on the extra +1 to hit, when sometimes an extra 1 to a DC would serve better.
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Talk to your Players.Talk to your DM. If more people used this advice, there would be 24.74% fewer threads on Tactics, Rules and DM discussions.
Yeah these discussions get hard when you narrow the scope to just one thing like to hit. In reality, that plus one also affects AC, damage, initiative, saves, and skills as well (talking about Dex based characters here). There's other factors that come in play as well when taking the whole game into context. If you have low hit points, for example, you might be better off taking resilient con (especially as a caster) than boosting your ASI to 20 right away but it depends on how deadly your game is. In a highly social game, other feats or scores might become more important as combat is diminished. So yeah fun discussion but as it so often happens the answer is ... it depends.
Sure if you use percentages it looks huge. I would argue that 1.65 hit points of damage is almost never crucial, unless the enemy has 1 hit point left. It's like the old Ross Perot analogy of a person who has 1 penny to his name and finds another penny on the sidewalk. You've doubled your "net worth" but you still don't have any real money. Doing "33% more damage" sounds amazing until you find out it's 33% of a small number.
If you like maxing things out this way, that's great. I don't think your level 2 bladesinger would perform substantially better than mine, who has a 16 DEX, 18 INT right now (she just hit level 3), as a general case. In specific situations against specific threats, yes. As a general rule? No.
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The thread's specifically about hit probabilities, not about expected damage (whether dealt or taken).
And in practice everything matters as much or as little as the DM wants. PCs are a bit too effective? Increase monster HP, AC and saves. PCs are struggling too much for fun? Do the opposite. PCs are never really at risk? Increase monster damage and the DC for saves against their abilities. PCs are having to make death saves left and right? Again, do the opposite. This isn't difficult.
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1) One cannot look at hit probabilities in a vacuum. That is only one half of the damage equation.
2) And as for "DM's can do anything", I have seen that fallacy destroyed many many times on many a forum. If my char was the only one the DM had to deal with, sure, that logic holds. But that is not the case. Once again, it can't be looked at in a vacuum. The DM cannot say "when the Bladesinger attacks, the Hob's AC is 18, for anyone else, it is 17". The DM either designs the scenario around the lowest common denominator, where the most powerful chars carve it up, boring everyone, or the DM designs the scenario around the most powerful char, which puts everyone else at much higher risk, or the DM does something in between, which makes no one happy.
1) Clearly one can. It's what this thread does. It's not asking about the damage equation, it's asking about hit probabilities.
2) The DM can quite easily say that the hobgobling getting attacked by the Bladesinger has AC 18 and 25 hp while the other hobgoblin getting attacked by the monk has AC 15 and 17 hp, or whatever seems appropriate. Or they can give the monk an item or ability that makes up for the disparity in stats. Nothing is supposed to be set in stone from before the campaign even starts.
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In another discussion, I saw someone describe the difference between +1 to hit and +4 to hit as something like a 50% increase in hit probability. And my first thought was that this sounded right. Especially since its a natural inclination to believe that those dear ASI's must have a major effect.
But then I stepped back to think about it. Since we are rolling a D20, each increase of +1 improves our chances of hitting on an attack roll by 5%. So the difference between an attack with a 10 in the stat vs a 20 is only a 25% chance of hitting. That isn't nothing, but it isn't nearly as big a gap as we might intuit it to be.
Especially because hit chance is never decided purely by the ability modifier. The proficiency bonus acts to basically keep a lower limit on hit chance above 25%. I.e. a level 20 barbarian with a 10 in strength will still have a +6 to hit an enemy with a war axe, so even against an ancient dragon with 20 AC, they have over a 25% chance to hit it before any other considerations.
So does anyone else feel like they exaggerate the increase in hit chances in their mind?
For a 1st level character with +5 to attack, vs a creature with AC 15 needs 11 or more on the dice (50% chance).
If +4 is added to the attack, then it only needs 7 or more (65% chance).
So the +4 has increased the change from 50% to 65%, and some statisticians will then claim therefore you are 30% more likely to hit in this example.
I'm sure somebody will post a big long table of to-hit vs AC and then you can compare then more completely.
There are two different ways of talking about it, which can cause confusion sometimes. For example, if your hit chance increases from 25% to 50%, then it could either be described as:
Both are accurate descriptions in the right context. Sometimes the first number is more useful, while sometimes the second number is more useful. It largely depends on what argument you are trying to make.
So an increase of +3 will only impact 15% of your attacks, but that 15% translates into a much larger impact on your overall damage.
Edit: I find the second number more useful when talking about things like attack rolls for fighters, which are made multiple times every turn. I find the first number more useful on niche rolls, where you can say things like "This feature will only come into play once every 5 sessions."
My experience is the exact opposite - too many players assume all attacks hit, ignoring how significant accuracy is to hitting.
The CR table in the DMG assumes at all levels except 9 a 65% chance to hit, based on assuming your ability modifiers are +3 at level 1, +4 at level 4, and +5 at level 8. I generally use that table as my basis when analyzing any build, because it gives me a way to assume monster AC, instead of operating in a vacuum.
Note that this means your accuracy is really 65% with your static damage and 70% with your damage dice, since your damage dice can crit and that's what the math works out to.
So the accuracy benefit from an ASI is level dependent, which makes sense - the higher the ACs of what you're fighting, the more of a benefit an increase in accuracy is, and what you're fighting tends to have a higher AC at higher levels. If you started at +3 as expected, you can't fall behind more than two ASI steps, so the biggest possible accuracy benefit from an ASI in that scenario is where almost all of your damage is static and you've reached level 8 and kept going, at which point a +1 to hit is 60% -> 65%, which is an 8.33% accuracy increase. +4 to hit would be 60% -> 80%, which is a 33.33% accuracy increase.
Keep in mind that the value of hit chance is greater for some classes than others. Rogues only ever get one attack per action, for example, so maximizing the hit chance is super important if you want to get your sneak attack off. There's also side benefits of the ASIs like AC, Skills, Saves, HP, etc. so it's not all about the ability to hit.
Generally the value of the to hit chance increases the expected damage the same amount regardless of the number of attacks. The number of attacks only changes the variance of the amount of damage:
A high level rogue with a 60% chance to hit and expected damage of 40 damage if they hit will on average do 24 damage on their turn, if they can get the hit probability up ot 75% that increases to 30. His fighter buddy with 4 attacks each with a 60% chance to hit and expected damage of 10 damage per hit will also on average do 24 damage on their turn, and if they can get the hit probability up ot 75% that increases to 30 as well.
There are complexities that might not make it strictly true if different attacks do different damage and different chances to hit. For example a hasted rogue with sharpshooter might not take the -5 penalty to hit on his second attack if he missed with his first attack because he really wants the sneak attack to work but if he hits with his first attack it is worth taking the penalty for the extra damage it produces.
Also remember improving ASIs increases the damage on a hit as well as the to hit probabity. Increasing your strength/dex from 10 to 20 not only can increase your probability to hot form (say 50% to 75%) but also increase your damage, if you do hit, if you are yielding a 1d8 weapon the damage would increase from an average of 4.5 to 9.5 ie more than double. I admit in a high magic game it would be proportionally less (with a +3 weapon the average damage would go from 7.5 to 12.5). Not to mention defencive and non combat gains in things like saving throws and ability checks.
Not hitting sucks. Having everyone save against your confusion sucks too. Even if it isn't a huge increase, both the payoff (potentially turning a miss into a hit) and the frequency (nearly every action you take in combat) of the increase make it very valuable to me. Valuable enough that I'm not sure I've ever played more than 2-3 characters who had more than one feat (and those that did probably were half-feats with +1 stat).
And of course stats boost other things too.
My homebrew subclasses (full list here)
(Artificer) Swordmage | Glasswright | (Barbarian) Path of the Savage Embrace
(Bard) College of Dance | (Fighter) Warlord | Cannoneer
(Monk) Way of the Elements | (Ranger) Blade Dancer
(Rogue) DaggerMaster | Inquisitor | (Sorcerer) Riftwalker | Spellfist
(Warlock) The Swarm
Against an AC 16 target it's a 50% increase, but it's rare that you're running into targets where you have a base 30%. ASIs are more important for total weapon DPR (STR 14 with a longsword is +4/1d8+2; against AC 12 that's 4.45 dpr including crits. STR 20 with a longsword is +7/1d8+5, which is 7.825 dpr or 75% more) or for expected duration of save every round powers.
I think we're almost saying the same thing here but let me clarify. If you only get one attack, having a higher chance to hit is more valuable because if you miss you do nothing. A fighter with 4 attacks can still try 3 more times and therefore might be ok spending an ASI on something like a Feat rather than the ability score (especially when they get tons of ASIs and can pick it up later). So yes statistically the average damage is the same (especially over time) and your absolutely right that the number of attacks changes the damage variance, but that's not really what I'm talking about.
There might be a psycholical effect but generally speaking value when dealing damage is based on expected damage. The value of the rogue upping his expected damage per round from 24 to 30, is exactly the same as the value of the fighter doing so even though the fighters damage is more consistent.
I will say that the math is actually a bit wonky for a rogue, assuming they are using their bonus action to either make another attack or to gain advantage on their attack. It sounds sort of counterintuitive, but against average AC foes, the rogue actually cares about increases to hit chance less than a longsword fighter who has identical damage.
That's because a fighter who hits 50% of their attacks deals 50% of their damage, while a rogue that hits 50% of their attacks is dealing much more than 50% of their damage. Its the same for any character that can make multiple attack rolls and has a 'once per turn' rider, but rogues are the most noticeable.
There is an inflection point for higher ACs where suddenly those rogues benefits more from hit chance than any other class, but those AC values are extremely high. Also, the rogue still absolutely benefits from bonus hit - just not by quite the same margin. Its only really relevant for people who are really trying to minmax.
I like what you said Aetherlwolf. I don't like adding in bonus actions to discussions like these though because that makes build choices and situational things muddy the waters. If you just go with basic attack actions, over 4 rounds missing half your attacks will get a fighter 80 damage where a rouge would get 48 (still using the example Jegpeg - Fighter 10 per hit - Rouge 24 w/sneak). If we factor in bonus action for a Rouge then they end up with 96 but then you should also add a Fighter bonus action to keep things even. So assuming two weapon fighting is the most even thing to consider, the Fighter ends up at 100. Really similar values but only if the Rouge can use a bonus action to attack. So assuming they can only do this half the time (based on my experience this is fair but your mileage may vary), the Rouges damage drops to around 72. See totally muddy :)
As the actual damage depends on choice of weapon as well as ASIs and level I did an illustrative example wheere the Rogue and Fighter did identical DPR. A fighter with 1d8 weapon and a duel welding fighting style would do 11.5 damage per hit excluding criticals, crits would increase that to 11.9. With a 50% chance to hit over 4 rounds they would do 95.2 damage.
A level 20 Rogue with +5 dex using a 1d8 weapon would do 1d8+10d6+5 damage on a hit which averages 46.5 without crits 48.6 with crits with a 50% chance to hit over 4 rounds they would expect to do 97.2 damage over 4 rounds, so a little more than a fighter unless uses their action surge. The rogue is however likele to "waste" more damage as if an enemy has low HP left and the fighter kills it with his first attack he can attack a different enemy with his extra attacks where the rogues extra damage is wasted. There will also be times when the rogue is unable ot get sneak attack off.
Duel wielding doesn't make sense for a level 20 fighter, with the fighting style they would making 5 attacks with 1d6+5 (8.5) damage on a hit, with a 50% chance to hit over 4 rounds they would do 85 damage on average, so compared to sword and board they do less damage, have less AC and tie up their bonus action.
Duel wielding is a viable option for a rogue especially at high levels when nearly all the damage is sneak and getting sneak attack damage from 50% to 75% is a huge benefit, (about 140demage over 4 rounds is they can do it every turn) but how often does the rogue need to hide to be able to get sneak attack at all, how often will he forego the second attempt at a sneak because disengaging is a higher priority. Many rogues prefer to keep there distance from the bad guys and they need ot invest in a feat to attack with their bonus action and may have higher priorities.
As Lathius said putting in duel wielding muddies the waters and and a rogue making a single attack per turn is perfectly viable I will leave the comparison at that.
.
The answer is it depends on AC.
Against a low AC target, like a gelatinous cube, the increase in hit percentage might as well not exist. But against a high AC target like a dragon, a single point can massively multiply the hit percentage. Only around 14-16 AC do I feel like it performs intuitively.
A lot of people make the same mistake here as those who say LeBron James is better than Michael Jordan: they look at numbers instead of statistics or percentages. On paper, LeBron’s numbers are better, but when adjusted for the average of their era, MJ comes out way ahead.
Always look at percentages, never flat numbers.
That said, I do think players overrate small statistical increases. It’s what annoys me about people who whine about low stat rolls: only against very high AC enemies will that +1 make more than a negligible difference.
Wizard (Gandalf) of the Tolkien Club
In my mind? No. I always translate each +1 on d20 to "5 percentage points" (in raw terms). I have a very good sense of how these numbers work because I use statistics regularly in my job, and I also have written programs that use RNGs of various types, so again, I have a good sense of them.
On the other hand, the thread title and poll ask, "Do players overestimate the "benefit" an ASI gives to their to-hit probabilities?" And I suspect they probably do. The thing about an ASI is that it does not come in a vacuum. There is also a proficiency bonus, and there may be weapon bonuses. If your character has +4 to a stat, +3 to proficiency bonus, and +1 to a weapon, that's already +8 to hit, total. Adding another +1 to the stat will only be a 1/8 or 12% increase in to-hit probability. But to many players, I suspect it feels more like a 25% increase (1/4 raise from 1 in 4 to 1 in 5 is 25%). I think in the minds of many players this translates into "I will hit 25% more often," which is false. Each +1 to hit provides a 5 percentage point increase in your chance of hitting a given target, but the percent increase depends on other factors and your prior probability to hit. Many people also don't understand the difference between percent and percentage points.
Furthermore, specifically with ASIs, I think some players value the sheer numerical increase of an ASI vs. the taking of a feat that may not provide any numerical benefit at all but may provide a variety of situational benefits that dramatically outweigh a +2 increase to a stat (which will translate to a +1 bonus), such as giving advantage on certain types of rolls, or providing other abilities that are hard to quantify. ASIs are easy to quantify and a +1 seems like a pretty darn simple number to figure out (it's just 1, after all), and a lot of players don't think in relative or qualitative terms when trying to figure out the "most effective" way to build.
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I voted that they do, in general, as with many hybrid classes (Monk, Ranger and such) a boost to a spell DC may well be a better choice than increased chance to hit. I feel that each ASI opportunity is different for each class and all 6too often folks get stuck on the extra +1 to hit, when sometimes an extra 1 to a DC would serve better.
Talk to your Players. Talk to your DM. If more people used this advice, there would be 24.74% fewer threads on Tactics, Rules and DM discussions.
Yeah these discussions get hard when you narrow the scope to just one thing like to hit. In reality, that plus one also affects AC, damage, initiative, saves, and skills as well (talking about Dex based characters here). There's other factors that come in play as well when taking the whole game into context. If you have low hit points, for example, you might be better off taking resilient con (especially as a caster) than boosting your ASI to 20 right away but it depends on how deadly your game is. In a highly social game, other feats or scores might become more important as combat is diminished. So yeah fun discussion but as it so often happens the answer is ... it depends.
Sure if you use percentages it looks huge. I would argue that 1.65 hit points of damage is almost never crucial, unless the enemy has 1 hit point left. It's like the old Ross Perot analogy of a person who has 1 penny to his name and finds another penny on the sidewalk. You've doubled your "net worth" but you still don't have any real money. Doing "33% more damage" sounds amazing until you find out it's 33% of a small number.
If you like maxing things out this way, that's great. I don't think your level 2 bladesinger would perform substantially better than mine, who has a 16 DEX, 18 INT right now (she just hit level 3), as a general case. In specific situations against specific threats, yes. As a general rule? No.
WOTC lies. We know that WOTC lies. WOTC knows that we know that WOTC lies. We know that WOTC knows that we know that WOTC lies. And still they lie.
Because of the above (a paraphrase from Orwell) I no longer post to the forums -- PM me if you need help or anything.
The thread's specifically about hit probabilities, not about expected damage (whether dealt or taken).
And in practice everything matters as much or as little as the DM wants. PCs are a bit too effective? Increase monster HP, AC and saves. PCs are struggling too much for fun? Do the opposite. PCs are never really at risk? Increase monster damage and the DC for saves against their abilities. PCs are having to make death saves left and right? Again, do the opposite. This isn't difficult.
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1) Clearly one can. It's what this thread does. It's not asking about the damage equation, it's asking about hit probabilities.
2) The DM can quite easily say that the hobgobling getting attacked by the Bladesinger has AC 18 and 25 hp while the other hobgoblin getting attacked by the monk has AC 15 and 17 hp, or whatever seems appropriate. Or they can give the monk an item or ability that makes up for the disparity in stats. Nothing is supposed to be set in stone from before the campaign even starts.
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