I used to remember the time when the Great Axe had the special rule of dealing 3x critical hit damage instead of the regular 2x. It gave the greataxe a distinctive edge, yet it was maybe to polarizing and in general I'm not a fan of multipliers, as they typically can get exploited and tend to break the game.
TLDR: I have been looking through 5e mechanics but I can't find anything apart from +3 critical hit die (through Barbarian class and/or Half-Orc) to justify using a great-axe.
Since the 3x Critical feature is removed from the Great Axe I find it difficult to mechanically justify using a Great Axe. 2d6 Has better average damage and has somewhat of a bell-shaped chance distribution to boot: this means that the expected damage roll of 2d6 lies between 5 and 9 2/3rds of the time you roll for damage. With 1 die weapons, this is not the case as each result is as likely to come up.
Sure there is the Great Weapon Fighting Style for fighters, which let's you Re-Roll 1's and 2's. Yet here again we see that 2d6 weapons will roll 2/3rds of the time 1-2's in comparison to 1/6 for the Great Axe, that is 4 times as much. Of course the chance to roll a 1 or 2 again is of course higher for 2d6 (double) but the net gain is better for the 2d6. The expected results improve to the 7 to 10 range (2/3rd of the time) and the average is increased by 1,33 to 8,33. 1d12 Also benefits from this fighting style yet the variance remains great between 3-12 and the average bumps to 7,33 which is a 0,83 increase. At least the total awful roles are gone.
Here is a graphic to show these probabilities and give a clearer image.
*EDIT: I previously used the graph when only 1 die could be re-rolled*
Here we can clearly see that even a 2d6 weapon without Great Weapon Fighting has more chances to roll close to it's median, than a 1d12 weapon without the fighting style.
So I went on for my search to make 1d12 viable again apart from boosting the critical range and adding critical dice, though Barbarian Class and/or Half-Orc racial feature. TLDR: only after +3 critical hit dice the 1d12 gains an advantage on average, you can make it work with +2 critical hit if you gain advantage and/or have Improved Critical from the Champion Fighter subclass.
I came across the Savage Attacker Feature, which allows you reroll the weapon damage dice and choose which roll you use. Yet only once in your turn. Which is why many people call this a trap feature. Before level 5, when martial classes gain the extra attack feature, this is good as you can reroll almost your attacks, since most classes don't get any bonus attacks, yet. Once past level 5 this feature looses it's functionality as it is limited to only one reroll. Though it does limit the chance of bad dice rolls, it doesn't bring as much as staple features for melee martial classes like Great Weapon Master or Pole-arm Master which scale better because they give a bigger damage boost, either at a penalty or without and bring more benefits as well. Even the feature Sentinel brings more combat functionality to your Melee character and boost your damage by granting you more Attacks of Opportunity and the ability to keep one foe locked in melee range, which ensures more damage.
To bring more clarity we look at the numbers for Savage Attacker are:
2d6 it moves the (66,6%) expected damage range from 5 - 9 to 7 - 10, median from 7 to 8 and average damage from 7 to 8,37. DELTA Average = 1,37
1d12 it moves the (~66%) expected damage range from 3 - 10 to 8 - 12, median from all results to 12 and average damage from 6,5 to 8,49 DELTA Average = 1,99
For more visual insight in the matter I have created a plot that shows the impact of re-rolling damage and picking the highest result in comparison to the original.
When rolling for multiple attacks you can only benefit from the Savage Attacker re-roll on one hit. It also means that you need to judge if you will want to be able to still reroll the damage on the second attack. Meaning the bleu (2d6) and yellow (1d12) plot which shown the superior reliability of 2d6.
So this made me think that you would only use this feature in combination with Great Weapon Fighting and only reroll on the first attack if your roll 5 or lower, to have a change that there will be a significant impact. Because, let's be honest, +2 average damage isn't wild. Sure you can now benefit from the greater variance on the d12 but still, the before mentioned features can bring a lot more for simple damage boosting.
This led me to home brew a new version of Savage Attacker Improved edition, that keeps the limitation of 1 reroll but improves the effect and gives some extra benefits, so it becomes more viable in comparison with the staples GWM and PAM. I'll keep the design discussion over there.
This leads to the conclusion that in the core rules there is only fluff or high level play that rewards a character for wielding a Great Axe. So that's why I came up with some simple suggestions to buff the Great Axe, so it can become great again and isn't disregarded by most two-handed Melee warriors.
Give the Great-axe and additional critical hit die, so that it become a viable option for any Half-Orc or any Barbarian with level 9+.
Give the Great-axe a flat +1 to damage. Which brings it's average to 7,5, which is only 0,5 more that 2d6 but with the disadvantage of high variance.
If you wield a Great-axe have it confer half proficiency bonus to Intimidation checks, as long as you are proficient with the weapon.
Or just something that makes players who like to do some math on character building a reason to seriously consider the Great-axe again.
What has your experience been with great-axes? Am I overthinking this issue? Haven't you seen any great-axes since you started playing DnD 5e? What are your house-rules to make the great-axe cool?
Many thanks for reading until down here, it's much appreciated.
*Edit for clarification and update to homebrew Feature with included math.
Wow that was lot of text! I don't know what to say. Do I benefit from Greataxe if I am Half-Orc Fighter? (Compared to Maul)
It depends on what subclass your fighter is. Half-Orc only grants +1 critical die.
TLDR: Nope, only your style will ;-)
It did run some numbers on Superior Critical, because only then a Great-Axe starts to deal more damage on average. Without advantage if you to hit <= 75% the lower the more the Great-Axe starts to compensate through the chance of critical hits becoming relatively more important. With advantage on your to hit <= 50% because the advantage lets you hit more often and 2d6 does 0,5 more damage on average than a 1d12.
Yet the difference on average is rather slim: between +9 and -2% damage for wielding a great axe compared to a Maul. If you have Great Weapon Fighting style, than the Maul becomes 6% better that the Great-Axe on average.
*bump* I'm sorry for pushing my thread, yet I want to ask a question regarding it: is this level of interaction quite normal for in depth questions on this forum on homebrew?
Weapons in general have very little variation in 5e. Size of damage die, whether it can dual-wield or not, whether it can DX or not, whether you can throw it or not. That's about it for the most part. Everything else has to be weird homebrew.
Frankly, I'd be more inclined to do weapon-specific bonus feats than mess with the base weapon stats in general. You could offer a bonus to Intimidate if you like, though I'd perhaps allow that to simply convert Intimidation to STR rather than CHA, or lower the DC. As it stands, greataxe is the best weapon for Barbarians or other Brutal Critical-possessing characters because "a damage die" does not mean 2d6 for the greatsword, it means one singular d6. Whether that matters to your players is up to them, as I'm going to assume that one or two average damage per attack won't make or break more than one really memorable fight in a blue moon.
Hi, I come back to you because I finally saw the inherent error that is made in the fighting styles.
So dumb that I didn't point it out on the first pass on Fighting styles. I did point out that 2d6 will trigger the Greatweapon Fighting Style (GW FS) four times as many as with d12 but have only half the potential damage boost. Yet this means that GW FS increases the average damage of 2d6 with +1,33 while only with +0,83 for 1d12.
In the diagram below you can see the different ranges I allowed to be re-rolled and at 1-4 range for 1d12 the increase is exactly the same, as expected.
So this seems like something WotC would have put in their errata if they ever play-tested any fighter with a Great-axe. Because why would you want to punish a great-axe two times? I already has more variability and 0,5 average damage less than 2d6. So even with this change to GW FS, the average damage will remain 0,5 lower: 2d6 @ 8,33 and 1d12 @ 7,83. Which is still 6%, which seems very low but the real problem is the variability. Even with GW FS the Great-Axe is still less frequent to hit in the middle range [ 7 - 10 ] than a Great-Sword is.
I presume that with my Savage Attacker Improved Edition and this GW FS Redux the Great-Axe will start to shine finally, as GW FS reduces that chance of rolling 1-4 significantly and thus make damage boosting (by re-rolling just under or equal the initial result which grants +6 for a Great-Axe) much more frequent to happen.
At this point I wouldn't boost the Great-Axe further, yet I don't mind the old extra damage die on the critical hit to be re-applied for the Great-Axe.
If you combine the house rule for Great Weapon Fighting for a Great Axe to allow to reroll any 1-4's and the Savage Attacker Redux. And you decide to reroll any initial roll that ends up <=7 you get 90,9% of the time a 8+ on that weapon damage roll.
Now this can only happen once per round but doesn't come with the cost of reducing the to hit chance by 20%, like -5/+10 does.
So on average that attack will deal 4,76 more damage than a vanilla Great Axe would do, for one attack, at the cost of a Half-Feature and a Fighting Style.
Knowing that Duelling brings a flat +2 bonus to damage, it seems like nothing over powered there.
This has come up in our games, we made a simple change for the great sword, great axe. gave the player a choose to roll either 2d6 or 1d12. At first we changed them both to 2d6, but one of the players like the 1d12 as better change for max damage over better average.
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Hi DnD lovers.
I used to remember the time when the Great Axe had the special rule of dealing 3x critical hit damage instead of the regular 2x. It gave the greataxe a distinctive edge, yet it was maybe to polarizing and in general I'm not a fan of multipliers, as they typically can get exploited and tend to break the game.
TLDR: I have been looking through 5e mechanics but I can't find anything apart from +3 critical hit die (through Barbarian class and/or Half-Orc) to justify using a great-axe.
Since the 3x Critical feature is removed from the Great Axe I find it difficult to mechanically justify using a Great Axe. 2d6 Has better average damage and has somewhat of a bell-shaped chance distribution to boot: this means that the expected damage roll of 2d6 lies between 5 and 9 2/3rds of the time you roll for damage. With 1 die weapons, this is not the case as each result is as likely to come up.
Sure there is the Great Weapon Fighting Style for fighters, which let's you Re-Roll 1's and 2's. Yet here again we see that 2d6 weapons will roll 2/3rds of the time 1-2's in comparison to 1/6 for the Great Axe, that is 4 times as much. Of course the chance to roll a 1 or 2 again is of course higher for 2d6 (double) but the net gain is better for the 2d6. The expected results improve to the 7 to 10 range (2/3rd of the time) and the average is increased by 1,33 to 8,33. 1d12 Also benefits from this fighting style yet the variance remains great between 3-12 and the average bumps to 7,33 which is a 0,83 increase. At least the total awful roles are gone.
Here is a graphic to show these probabilities and give a clearer image.
*EDIT: I previously used the graph when only 1 die could be re-rolled*
Here we can clearly see that even a 2d6 weapon without Great Weapon Fighting has more chances to roll close to it's median, than a 1d12 weapon without the fighting style.
So I went on for my search to make 1d12 viable again apart from boosting the critical range and adding critical dice, though Barbarian Class and/or Half-Orc racial feature. TLDR: only after +3 critical hit dice the 1d12 gains an advantage on average, you can make it work with +2 critical hit if you gain advantage and/or have Improved Critical from the Champion Fighter subclass.
I came across the Savage Attacker Feature, which allows you reroll the weapon damage dice and choose which roll you use. Yet only once in your turn. Which is why many people call this a trap feature. Before level 5, when martial classes gain the extra attack feature, this is good as you can reroll almost your attacks, since most classes don't get any bonus attacks, yet. Once past level 5 this feature looses it's functionality as it is limited to only one reroll. Though it does limit the chance of bad dice rolls, it doesn't bring as much as staple features for melee martial classes like Great Weapon Master or Pole-arm Master which scale better because they give a bigger damage boost, either at a penalty or without and bring more benefits as well. Even the feature Sentinel brings more combat functionality to your Melee character and boost your damage by granting you more Attacks of Opportunity and the ability to keep one foe locked in melee range, which ensures more damage.
To bring more clarity we look at the numbers for Savage Attacker are:
For more visual insight in the matter I have created a plot that shows the impact of re-rolling damage and picking the highest result in comparison to the original.
When rolling for multiple attacks you can only benefit from the Savage Attacker re-roll on one hit. It also means that you need to judge if you will want to be able to still reroll the damage on the second attack. Meaning the bleu (2d6) and yellow (1d12) plot which shown the superior reliability of 2d6.
So this made me think that you would only use this feature in combination with Great Weapon Fighting and only reroll on the first attack if your roll 5 or lower, to have a change that there will be a significant impact. Because, let's be honest, +2 average damage isn't wild. Sure you can now benefit from the greater variance on the d12 but still, the before mentioned features can bring a lot more for simple damage boosting.
This led me to home brew a new version of Savage Attacker Improved edition, that keeps the limitation of 1 reroll but improves the effect and gives some extra benefits, so it becomes more viable in comparison with the staples GWM and PAM. I'll keep the design discussion over there.
This leads to the conclusion that in the core rules there is only fluff or high level play that rewards a character for wielding a Great Axe. So that's why I came up with some simple suggestions to buff the Great Axe, so it can become great again and isn't disregarded by most two-handed Melee warriors.
Or just something that makes players who like to do some math on character building a reason to seriously consider the Great-axe again.
What has your experience been with great-axes?
Am I overthinking this issue?
Haven't you seen any great-axes since you started playing DnD 5e?
What are your house-rules to make the great-axe cool?
Many thanks for reading until down here, it's much appreciated.
*Edit for clarification and update to homebrew Feature with included math.
Wow that was lot of text! I don't know what to say. Do I benefit from Greataxe if I am Half-Orc Fighter? (Compared to Maul)
It depends on what subclass your fighter is. Half-Orc only grants +1 critical die.
TLDR: Nope, only your style will ;-)
It did run some numbers on Superior Critical, because only then a Great-Axe starts to deal more damage on average.
Without advantage if you to hit <= 75% the lower the more the Great-Axe starts to compensate through the chance of critical hits becoming relatively more important.
With advantage on your to hit <= 50% because the advantage lets you hit more often and 2d6 does 0,5 more damage on average than a 1d12.
Yet the difference on average is rather slim: between +9 and -2% damage for wielding a great axe compared to a Maul. If you have Great Weapon Fighting style, than the Maul becomes 6% better that the Great-Axe on average.
*bump* I'm sorry for pushing my thread, yet I want to ask a question regarding it: is this level of interaction quite normal for in depth questions on this forum on homebrew?
I believe people read the thread but do not know what to say or add. Yes, Greataxe needs some boost.
If you like the greataxe, like I do, then just use it.
"Not all those who wander are lost"
Weapons in general have very little variation in 5e. Size of damage die, whether it can dual-wield or not, whether it can DX or not, whether you can throw it or not. That's about it for the most part. Everything else has to be weird homebrew.
Frankly, I'd be more inclined to do weapon-specific bonus feats than mess with the base weapon stats in general. You could offer a bonus to Intimidate if you like, though I'd perhaps allow that to simply convert Intimidation to STR rather than CHA, or lower the DC. As it stands, greataxe is the best weapon for Barbarians or other Brutal Critical-possessing characters because "a damage die" does not mean 2d6 for the greatsword, it means one singular d6. Whether that matters to your players is up to them, as I'm going to assume that one or two average damage per attack won't make or break more than one really memorable fight in a blue moon.
Please do not contact or message me.
Hi, I come back to you because I finally saw the inherent error that is made in the fighting styles.
So dumb that I didn't point it out on the first pass on Fighting styles. I did point out that 2d6 will trigger the Greatweapon Fighting Style (GW FS) four times as many as with d12 but have only half the potential damage boost. Yet this means that GW FS increases the average damage of 2d6 with +1,33 while only with +0,83 for 1d12.
In the diagram below you can see the different ranges I allowed to be re-rolled and at 1-4 range for 1d12 the increase is exactly the same, as expected.
So this seems like something WotC would have put in their errata if they ever play-tested any fighter with a Great-axe. Because why would you want to punish a great-axe two times? I already has more variability and 0,5 average damage less than 2d6. So even with this change to GW FS, the average damage will remain 0,5 lower: 2d6 @ 8,33 and 1d12 @ 7,83. Which is still 6%, which seems very low but the real problem is the variability. Even with GW FS the Great-Axe is still less frequent to hit in the middle range [ 7 - 10 ] than a Great-Sword is.
I presume that with my Savage Attacker Improved Edition and this GW FS Redux the Great-Axe will start to shine finally, as GW FS reduces that chance of rolling 1-4 significantly and thus make damage boosting (by re-rolling just under or equal the initial result which grants +6 for a Great-Axe) much more frequent to happen.
At this point I wouldn't boost the Great-Axe further, yet I don't mind the old extra damage die on the critical hit to be re-applied for the Great-Axe.
I have come back with some calculations:
If you combine the house rule for Great Weapon Fighting for a Great Axe to allow to reroll any 1-4's and the Savage Attacker Redux.
And you decide to reroll any initial roll that ends up <=7 you get 90,9% of the time a 8+ on that weapon damage roll.
Now this can only happen once per round but doesn't come with the cost of reducing the to hit chance by 20%, like -5/+10 does.
So on average that attack will deal 4,76 more damage than a vanilla Great Axe would do, for one attack, at the cost of a Half-Feature and a Fighting Style.
Knowing that Duelling brings a flat +2 bonus to damage, it seems like nothing over powered there.
This has come up in our games, we made a simple change for the great sword, great axe. gave the player a choose to roll either 2d6 or 1d12.
At first we changed them both to 2d6, but one of the players like the 1d12 as better change for max damage over better average.