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I was recently thinking to myself how, lately, alot of my character builds are very, VERY similar. Two-handed weapons seem to be the way to go, but it got me thinking:
Why do we very rarely see one-handed weapon builds? Most builds are focused either entirely on the offensive or defensive aspects, with very little in between (aside from Crowd Control).
Now, assuming that the game is designed around APL+1 encounters, how much damage should each character be able to deal in order to end an encounter with some, but not a large amount, of resource loss to the party (i.e., a standard encounter)?
I started look at the total hit point amounts of various Bestiary entries, as well as the estimated HP per level according to the Creature Creation guidelines in the Bestiary, and the numbers seem so amazingly low that I can't help but wonder if high-damage optimization is even necessary for the average encounter.
Now, don't get me wrong. YMMV, especially when DM's can make more or less difficult encounters to cater to the group style and power level. However, assuming APL+1, does the average damage needed to defeat an enemy seem low, especially compared to the numbers optimized characters can put out? Does this change the perceived effectiveness of various classes which are frequently said to put out incredibly small amounts of damage? (i.e., Monk and Rogue)
"Viable damage" is enough damage to be able to kill the enemy in a short enough time that combat doesn't become a grind.
That is a purely subjective measure. Some players like combat to be over as fast as possible, some players like the tactical maneuvering and ebb and flow of combat, and are OK if it takes two or three more rounds.
In a purely mathematical sense, to be successful, you have to be able to reduce the enemy to zero hit points faster than they are reducing you to zero hit points. As long as you can do that, with a margin for error in case of the "one bad roll" scenario, then you are doing "viable damage."
I have played fully optimized melee powerhouses, and I have played totally sub-optimal role play concepts and both are fun to me. If the combat lasts a bit longer with my concept characters, well, I like combat too.
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Which is a fair statement, to be sure. What if I said that I could build a monk that could deal 25% of an APL+1 creature's HP over the course of 2-3 rounds. Would this be considered Viable? (i.e., capable of killing the enemy with little, but some, loss to party resources)
In my one group, where the DM likes combats to be over in 1-2 rounds, no.
In my other group, where 10 round combats are expected, yes.
Viability is, of course, subjective. It is going to depend on a weird conglomeration of party makeup, campaign difficulty, and non-damage abilities that the character can contribute. I wouldn't expect the same raw damage from a Bard as a Fighter, and that Bard might make the difference between "viability" and not for a Two-Weapon Rogue. What might be viable in one situation might not be in another, and the boundaries between the two will always be vague and hazy.
That said, we can still make certain estimations for a "normal" campaign, like an AP. For example, your theoretical Monk dealing 25% of an APL+1 creature hitpoints over 2-3 rounds (assuming the monk is built primarily towards damage, rather than maneuvers or something), would probably fall onto the "non-viable" side of things for many campaigns. If you take, for example, a level 10 Monk fighting a level 11 creature with average hitpoints, that would come out to 14.5 damage/round. That is the kind of damage one would expect from a caster taking pot shots, not a martial combatant. For a class like Monk, with moderate skill points and no magic, it would be difficult to cover the "utility gap" such a weak offensive output would create.
I'm not real sure, but my goal for any character who I thought of at all as a damage dealer would be at least 2o% of the baddies HP in one round.
I think that, if 4 party members all focus their actions on one enemy....they're in trouble if it takes more than one round to bring the enemy down. Of course, for encounters with big baddies this may take longer.
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If you take, for example, a level 10 Monk fighting a level 11 creature with average hitpoints, that would come out to 14.5 damage/round. That is the kind of damage one would expect from a caster taking pot shots, not a martial combatant. For a class like Monk, with moderate skill points and no magic, it would be difficult to cover the "utility gap" such a weak offensive output would create.
This is exactly my point. If every party member can at LEAST make that kind of contribution to the combat, while losing minimal resources, could this change the way some "weak" classes are viewed?
If you take, for example, a level 10 Monk fighting a level 11 creature with average hitpoints, that would come out to 14.5 damage/round. That is the kind of damage one would expect from a caster taking pot shots, not a martial combatant. For a class like Monk, with moderate skill points and no magic, it would be difficult to cover the "utility gap" such a weak offensive output would create.This is exactly my point. If every party member can at LEAST make that kind of contribution to the combat, while losing minimal resources, could this change the way some "weak" classes are viewed?
The problem is, that unless you're one-shotting everything you fight, more damage is always going to make a difference and therefore be an appealing choice. For every time you severely overkill something, you're going to kill something else in one or two fewer blows than it would have otherwise taken. That's why optimizing for damage is never a bad idea. There really is no attainable optimal level of damage output at which point specializing in other things becomes the superior choice, from a numbers crunching perspective.
EDIT: although, characters who can actually do other things are certainly more fun to play IMO.
Enough to kill the enemy.
Enough to kill the enemy, before it kills you.
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I was recently thinking to myself how, lately, alot of my character builds are very, VERY similar. Two-handed weapons seem to be the way to go, but it got me thinking:
when ever i make a character, i choose a level between 2-12 then i pick a cr monster from the beastiary, and see how well i can "solo that creature". if i can barely fight it then i rework the character, with in my concept, to see if i can make it better for combat versus that enemy. if you do this keep a few things in mind:
1 fight different monster types, fight devils, demons, undead, beasts, magical beasts, giants ect..2 play like you want your character to die, dont fake roles or use bad npc tactics
3 use different combos of weapons and armor types
4 keep WBL in mind for that encounter.
ive actually thrown quite a few potential characters in the trash, because they didnt translate to the game very well.
but once you do this it gives you a very accurate sense of "how viable" the ammount of damage your character will be doing, is.
You're repeating yourself. If the enemy kills you, you clearly weren't doing enough damage to kill them.
not true, ever heard of bleeding damage? yeah it dies a round after you because you put 30 points of bleed on it lol.
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There really is no attainable optimal level of damage output at which point specializing in other things becomes the superior choice, from a numbers crunching perspective.
Oh, I absolutely agree with this statement. Optimizing for damage is a great way to help your party survive, and, frankly, it's a lot of fun. I just recently made a CN Cleric of Lamashtu with the Ferocity and Demon subdomains and I'm having a BLAST with all that rockin' Falchion damage.
I guess my point is that there are a lot of player ideas that can get pushed under the table due to not being able to do enough damage. I was actually recently considered making a Scrollmaster wizard with the Enhancement school who focused on melee combat and swapping to using the weaponized scrolls once they hit 1 HP and were about to break, but I realized how little damage this would put out compared to an optimized damage dealer, even if my defenses were passable, which is part of what got me thinking about what viable damage is.
Now of course, the answer to the question of "How much damage is enough damage?" is "Enough to win." However, assuming that the average encounter is intended to be a APL+1 encounter, does this skew our perception of "Enough to win" towards a lower range of viability?
.. when ever i make a character, i choose a level between 2-12 then i pick a cr monster from the beastiary, and see how well i can "solo that creature". if i can barely fight it then i rework the character, with in my concept, to see if i can make it better for combat versus that enemy....ive actually thrown quite a few potential characters in the trash, because they didnt translate to the game very well.
but once you do this it gives you a very accurate sense of "how viable" the ammount of damage your character will be doing, is...
Minor quibble with this. It works well if you are building a primary melee dps build.
I have had lots of builds that don't solo anything at CR very well, but contribute extrememly well in a party. Tripping, disarming, tanking, debuffing, controling, flanking, ranged, caster, etc... many of those do not always solo well.I used to have alot more time than I do now, and did something similar. What I did though is I had a handful of 'standard' characters. They were midrange, semi-optimized barbarian, rogue, sorc, and cleric. I would then pair 2 or 3 of them up with my potential build and see how they did against APL+1 or +2 encounters. It is more work, but I trusted the results more.
I didn't say you made a mistake.
Example: My reach-trip lore warden has to be able to do some damage to be what I would consider a viable asset to a party. somethings you can't trip or reach doesn't help much. However, he doesn't necessarily have to be able to do enough damage to solo encounters (he also doesn't have a great AC). Since his key build points are movement, tripping, and reach. He is only so-so at soloing encounters. But he is very good at setting things up for the others to do lots of easy hit damage.
A tank has to be able to inflict some damage. Otherwise he is so low of threat that intelligent opponents will just ignore him. Then he is no longer a tank, he's just a boulder. I have had that problem before, I build an extremely survivable tank, but he didn't do enough damage. he didn't need to be able to out DPR the vegomatic ranger, but he did need more than the d8+3 that he was doing.
I'm agreeing with Mort and Davor that if I think he can do X damage over 2-3 rounds, that is viable IF my build is not primarily for DPR up close melee.
I would guess that 20%-30% is a reasonable number.
Now of course, the answer to the question of "How much damage is enough damage?" is "Enough to win." However, assuming that the average encounter is intended to be a APL+1 encounter, does this skew our perception of "Enough to win" towards a lower range of viability?
Ah, I think I see your point better now.
The issue remains, however, that different things will be expected from different characters. A character dedicated to damage that only deals 25% of the damage as part of a typical party in a typical encounter is not going to be pulling their weight. While a Wizard might only deal 5% of the damage, he is handling 95% of the battlefield control. The Bard could get away with 25%, when he is providing 75% of buffs and skill checks. A damage dealer that does his exact proportion of damage and nothing else just isn't going to cut it.
However, I would call your Scrollmaster idea perfectly viable. Assuming your defenses are good enough that you aren't absorbing a disproportionate amount of healing afterwards, you are really just a Wizard that traded "pot shots with a crossbow" for "stabs with a scroll-sword." If you damage is about 25% of an APL+1 encounter, you should be quite proud. I mean, at the end of the day, you are still a Wizard, and using the spells on those scrolls along with your normal repertoire is going to provide more than enough utility or buffing to make up any utility gap.
You do have a point with some "weak" classes, in that with work and dedication they can easily deal enough damage (and have enough utility) to be "viable." I know people get a bit hyperbolic, but I don't personally think any of the classes are "non-viable" in an AP-style campaign (even the Rogue). It is more that the overall utility+damage result for such classes is significantly lower than similar characters of other classes, or that the options that result in a character's utility+damage being "viable" are narrow enough to be annoying.
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In my one group, where the DM likes combats to be over in 1-2 rounds...
I think I know that guy!
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I hope this doesn't come across as rude (it isn't meant to be), but the OP sounds like an optimizer who has suddenly realized that optimization really isn't necessary after all. It is to all players to some degree, but certainly the level of optimization seen on these boards is really, really not necessary to succeed at most AP adventures and modules. You can play a sucky archetype or not take Power Attack (*gasp*) and be just fine.
I do agree that the amount of damage you need to expect to do depends on how much damage the rest of the party can be expected to contribute. For a secondary combatant, 20-30% of an APL+1 critter per round is adequate. Across a party of 4, if everybody is doing 25% of an APL+1 encounter's total hp per round, then the PCs win in 1 round: 25% x 4 PCs = 100%.
If an APL+1 encounter is composed of multiple lower-CR enemies, then primary damage dealers should figure on doing proportionately more damage, because lower-CR groups tend to have more total hp than single monsters of a given CR.
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I hope this doesn't come across as rude (it isn't meant to be), but the OP sounds like an optimizer who has suddenly realized that optimization really isn't necessary after all. It is to all players to some degree, but certainly the level of optimization seen on these boards is really, really not necessary to succeed at most AP adventures and modules. You can play a sucky archetype or not take Power Attack (*gasp*) and be just fine.
I do agree that the amount of damage you need to expect to do depends on how much damage the rest of the party can be expected to contribute. For a secondary combatant, 20-30% of an APL+1 critter per round is adequate. Across a party of 4, if everybody is doing 25% of an APL+1 encounter's total hp per round, then the PCs win in 1 round: 25% x 4 PCs = 100%.
If an APL+1 encounter is composed of multiple lower-CR enemies, then primary damage dealers should figure on doing proportionately more damage, because lower-CR groups tend to have more total hp than single monsters of a given CR.
Unless you have some other source of damage coming from somewhere, you had better be taking Power Attack to do melee damage. Even 2d6+1 1/2 strength doesn't cut it after level 5.
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You're assuming a 2H Str-based melee build. There are PLENTY of other ways to do damage.
I am NOT assuming that.
First I said that unless you have some other way of doing damage (in melee), you need Power Attack. Arcane Strike and sneak attack are examples of this. Smite evil, I would say, is not an example for this, because it is not always on.
Of course, at range the equivalent is Deadly Aim, which yes, unless you have some other source of high damage, you do need.
The example I gave as a 2-handed strength-based build was to show that even it will start to lack if the character in question does not pick up Power Attack at his earliest convenience.
If you view your job as damage, and you aren't investing abilities and feats into your job to help you, you aren't committed to the role you have chosen.
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So, you need Power Attack unless you don't need Power Attack because you have something else? We may be agreeing argumentatively.
Regardless of how you choose to do damage, you do not need to be bleeding-edge optimized in order to be effective and successful at Paizo APs and modules. You just don't. IMO playing a finely-tuned and perfectly-optimized character is easymode. I am not trying to propagate any role-player vs. roll-player nonsense... but this idea that you "must" take certain feats based on the expected role of your build is just not true for most Paizo APs and modules as written.
Now if you GM runs a hardmode kind of game, you do have to adjust your playstyle a bit. But for adventures built using default assumptions about encounter balance and design, characters don't need any particular level of optimization.
For instance, look at the iconics in the back of any RotRL book. They are hardly what you'd call optimized. Yet that party of four "weak" characters is what the designers say can be successful at RotRL, which is generally considered the hardmode AP.
Yet that party of four "weak" characters is what the designers say can be successful at RotRL, which is generally considered the hardmode AP.
With a softball DM, RotRL is fine for the Four Stooges. With a hardcore DM and maybe playing Age of Worms, those four are guaranteed worm food by the end of the second installment.
The level of optimization "needed" depends on the type of game being run. The type of game being run should depend on the players' preference.
There is no single truth regarding optimization in the game, because of the range of difficulty levels it can encompass.
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So, you need Power Attack unless you don't need Power Attack because you have something else? We may be agreeing argumentatively.
Regardless of how you choose to do damage, you do not need to be bleeding-edge optimized in order to be effective and successful at Paizo APs and modules. You just don't. IMO playing a finely-tuned and perfectly-optimized character is easymode. I am not trying to propagate any role-player vs. roll-player nonsense... but this idea that you "must" take certain feats based on the expected role of your build is just not true for most Paizo APs and modules as written.
Now if you GM runs a hardmode kind of game, you do have to adjust your playstyle a bit. But for adventures built using default assumptions about encounter balance and design, characters don't need any particular level of optimization.
For instance, look at the iconics in the back of any RotRL book. They are hardly what you'd call optimized. Yet that party of four "weak" characters is what the designers say can be successful at RotRL, which is generally considered the hardmode AP.
Yes, you need Power Attack, unless you have some way of simulating Power Attack with another ability.
Starting at level 3, you will run into things with hardness. You will fight enemies with DR, and sometimes it's just DR/-, meaning if your character is doing 1d8+3, have fun.
This isn't about hardmode, this is about being ready for what's coming. What's coming are flesh golems and devils. What you stand a chance of fighting are large elementals who use fly-by-attack and absorb hits. Some of these things combine DR with fast healing, and if you're bringing a twig when you need a battering ram, you're in trouble.
All the damage that isn't stopped by DR and ER?
I find this thread fairly interesting. In the 20+ years of playing and DMing, i've yet to hear this come up at a table.
So from that, I would say it's viable if someone at your table isn't telling you otherwise.
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Kirth, I wasn't counting the Dungeon APs. I never played SCAP, but STAP and AoW were both hardmode far beyond RotRL. I'm not trying to make the statement that optimization is unnecessary in any campaign with any GM. I'm arguing that it's mostly unnecessary in adventures built using the default 3.5/PF encounter design and balance principles.
Mergy, you might run into things with hardness or DR starting at level 1, for instance, animated objects or
Is Power Attack a good choice, even the best choice for many characters? Sure, but you can do damage viable for most PF adventures without it.
Now, assuming that the game is designed around APL+1 encounters, how much damage should each character be able to deal in order to end an encounter with some, but not a large amount, of resource loss to the party (i.e., a standard encounter)?
Damage is not the whole story. You have to be able to withstand an attack from said creature, and you have to be able to hit it.
However, assuming APL+1, does the average damage needed to defeat an enemy seem low, especially compared to the numbers optimized characters can put out? Does this change the perceived effectiveness of various classes which are frequently said to put out incredibly small amounts of damage? (i.e., Monk and Rogue)
The problem with the monk and rogue are not necessarily low damage output as low hit chances. The rogue has 3/4 BAB and the monk has to choose between a low-damage output weapon that will hit and their unarmed strike which at high level struggles to maintain a valid attack bonus to strike a CR+1 target's AC regularly.
When the rogue hits with surprise or flanking, his damage is very respectable. When a monk manages to deliver a flurry of blows unarmed that strike their target, there's nothing badly wrong with his damage output.
@OP: Measuring hp damage dealt works primarily for measuring the effectiveness of martial characters, but that being said, yes, you're absolutely correct.
If an individual PC can regularly defeat creatures of a CR equal to the character's CR-1, then that PC is certainly viable. For example, if a 5th level monk can regularly solo CR4 encounters, then that monk is viable in regards to combat.
If an individual PC can deliver 25% of the damage needed to defeat a BBEG (assuming APL+3), then that character, again, is viable. Given that a single BBEG has a different actin economy than multiple smaller baddies, I would argue that being able to deliver 20% of the damage needed to defeat it would mean that the PC is pulling his/her weight. For example, if the same character as above is capable of doing 20-25% of the damage needed to defeat a CR8 baddie on his/her own, then that character is more than powerful enough to be considered viable.
Measuring the effectiveness of Buffers and Controllers is more difficult.
Enough damage allow me to ride my horse back to the pub and still be in one piece.
enough damage to singlehandedly kill a level appropriate foe in 2-3 rounds.
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Starting at level 3, you will run into things with hardness. You will fight enemies with DR, and sometimes it's just DR/-, meaning if your character is doing 1d8+3, have fun.
If I am dealing damage to the BBEG and he's not dealing damage to me, I'm going to win. Even with my lousy 1d8+3. It is just a question of how much time is required.
If I happen to be using Compel Hostility to force the BBEG's attention, then no, he does not have the option to just ignore me and go for a softer target.
(Characters who make is a priority also have access to DR/- and fast healing by level 5).