So, I may have the opportunity to play a Taskshaper in the near future. The gist of the class is it's a 3rd party, shapeshifting and ability mimicking class.
One of the nifty tricks it has is that its proficiencies list boils down to "Everything" (all weapons, all shields, all armor).
I'd like to take full advantage of this power by using the best weapon I can find, regardless of status as Exotic or otherwise.
Is it the Falcata? The Falchion? The Ripsaw Glaive? I can use anything, so I'd like to make it count.
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Falchon for 2d4 damage and a high crit range. 17-20 that is a 20% chance to crit. 1 in 5 are pretty good odds.
Despite that I tend to use a great sword for 2D6 for no good reason other than bigger dice. I rather do more damage every hit instead of double every fifth hit. You'll have to guage how well you roll. I tend to roll bad so I don't trust getting crits when i need them
Fauchard is the best reach weapon, and falcata is the best one hand.
These two right here.
If you're talking about straight DPR, Earthbreaker and Great Sword are the tops.
Based on my calculations, assuming Power Attack and BAB 4 against a 15+CR estimated AC, here's the others:
Falcata (1d8 19–20/×3): 6.00 DPR, 7.92 two handed
Falchion (2d4 18–20/×2): 5.98 DPR, 7.82 two handed
Earthbreaker and Great Sword both come in at exactly 8.36 DPR.
I can post the spreadsheet I came up with for this, if someone can point me to a shared folder somewhere. It has a separate tab for melee and ranged, auto-adjusts Power Attack and Deadly Aim based on your BAB, and allows you to account for concealment and mirror image.
(I've been using it to determine which feats and spells to pick up. Interesting discovery: It takes my archer 5 rounds of full attacks to make up for the one round lost to casting Aspect of the Falcon.)
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Statistically, the best weapon is the heavy bombard.
Personally, I'd recommend the falchion. It's a bit easier to get into dungeons.
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Falchon for 2d4 damage and a high crit range. 17-20 that is a 20% chance to crit. 1 in 5 are pretty good odds.
Falchion is 18-20 unless you have improved critical or keen; it becomes 15-20 under those circumstances.
Anyway, number crunching usually shows the falcata to come out on top, marginally above things like the falchion, elven curve blade and nodachi that provide a gigantor crit range.
The falchion from what we hear all around us.
The Nodachi has a d10 and the same crit range, giving it higher damage output.
As far as average damage, and only speaking of mundane weapons, the earthbreaker and greatsword are at the top. If you want to look into critical hits, multipliers, and other important stats, it gets mroe complicated.
Straight DPR, critfishing, range, what? If you really can use any weapon, I suggest a Nagant M1985 revolver or a Mosin-Nagant M1891 rifle, depending on whether you like one-handed or two-handed better. The fully-automatic modern firearms look tempting, but they resolve attacks in a limited line and they can only attack enemies in that line once, so they're not very practical.
Scroll down until you get to modern firearms if you're not familiar with them.
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The answer is:
What levels will you be playing to, what's your strength look like, and what feats will you have access to?
These answers are pretty much nailing it for straightforward "most damage in a hit." If you are playing into the teens the critical feats can be amazing, especially the no save or save for partial ones like bleeding, stunning, exhausting, etc. If that's your gig, the answer is "two Wakizashis."
Falchon for 2d4 damage and a high crit range. 17-20 that is a 20% chance to crit. 1 in 5 are pretty good odds.
Falchion is 18-20 unless you have improved critical or keen; it becomes 15-20 under those circumstances.
Anyway, number crunching usually shows the falcata to come out on top, marginally above things like the falchion, elven curve blade and nodachi that provide a gigantor crit range.
Add in the burst enchantments and your damage potential on a falchion can quickly become insane.
(I've been using it to determine which feats and spells to pick up. Interesting discovery: It takes my archer 5 rounds of full attacks to make up for the one round lost to casting Aspect of the Falcon.)I will quote myself
Whisper's Rule of Buffing: If combat has already started no buff is worth giving up a full round of attacks for.
Overall, that's good advice. I've gotten to the point where I only buff if I had to move in that round. (And Gravity Bow only has a 2.5 round recovery time, less if the bad guys have DR.)
Also sense the creation of Bracers of the Falcon, nobody has cast Aspect of the Falcon. Considering the completely wrong price of the item.
Ah, yes, I cried when they banned Braces of Falcon's Aim from PFS.
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The Ripsaw Glaive is pretty darn awesome at lower levels. I had my Half-Elf Paladin of Shelyn use one as a rainbow chainsaw. And let me tell you, it is pretty fun to smite evil with a rainbow chainsaw.
I don't think there are many exotic weapons that just have straight-up better stats than the martial favorites - you're mostly looking at the abilities and awesome factor. Come on, how cool is it to beat up people with a Battle Ladder?
Come on, how cool is it to beat up people with a Battle Ladder?
Very. =)
Anywho, you need parameters to work with: Starting at level 1, going through the Serpent's Skull AP.
Probably going Full Plate, so the Falcata looks tempting just so I can use a shield too.
I love high crit modifiers (my favorite weapon in the game I've used so far is the Earthbreaker).
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Whisper's Rule of Buffing: If combat has already started no buff is worth giving up a full round of attacks for.
You are playing a 7th level Cleric. Your party is in fireball formation marching order. You suddenly have a close encounter with a white/blue/red dragon. You are in position for a full round of attacks. You win initiative.
Q. What should you do?
A. You cast Communal Resist Energy before it breathes. For the comic loss choose the wrong type of energy.
***************************************************************
You are playing a 7th level Cleric. You are in a party of seven with a martial bent. Suddenly, your group is ambushed by dozens of foes! A big fight is on, and you have no buffs active.
Q. What do you do?
A. Cast Blessing of Fervor. Your six martial allies are hasted.
*****************************************************************
Q. You are playing an evangelist cleric or a bard. What is your first action in almost every combat?
A. Start Inspire Courage. +x +x to all allies, for the entire combat, is probably worth more than the loss of your first full round of attacks.
*****************************************************************
Those counterexamples aside, Whisper's Rule of Buffing is wise.
If you play a reach build sometimes you don't have to choose between buffing and attacking.
^I think he meant for a character who's meant to be a primary damage dealer, not a dedicated caster or buffer. =)
@Illeist: That's interesting. I'd do that, except I absolutely hate playing ranged characters. I can never keep the bonuses straight in my head and it ends up bogging things down with "Oh wait, I actually have an extra +1 here...but no there's a -2 with that too...but can you add a +1 back too and..."
So, I may have the opportunity to play a Taskshaper in the near future. The gist of the class is it's a 3rd party, shapeshifting and ability mimicking class.
One of the nifty tricks it has is that its proficiencies list boils down to "Everything" (all weapons, all shields, all armor).
I'd like to take full advantage of this power by using the best weapon I can find, regardless of status as Exotic or otherwise.
Is it the Falcata? The Falchion? The Ripsaw Glaive? I can use anything, so I'd like to make it count.
Without a doubt it's the Fauchard. Two handed strength bonuses, high crit range and, most importantly Reach. Reach is a very big deal.
Now, I'm not sure it's better than a Falcata AND a shield, but that's not really what you asked.
Heavy Pic
Premium grade stabby with the X4 crit
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By the by, greatsword and earth breaker aren't tops. Spreadsheets factoring in as many details as you can actually manage will clearly indicate that greatsword and earth breaker lose out to nodachi, elven curve blade, falchion, and the falcata; all of these are statistically superior weapons.
But y'know what? Buy a nuke. /end statement
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One handed weapon: falcatta
Two handed up close: falcatta: the crit range and multiplyier statistically give it the most damage after +18? damage or so.
The Bardiche Could be the best reach weapon depending on how often you ger charged. Brace is incredibly, incredibly nasty as the person takes a double damage hit from entering the square, and then probably a single damage hit from leaving it.
Trip is statistically irrelevant after the .. clarification that any weapon can trip. If you can miss a trip attack by 10 you probably shouldn't be making it.
Best = highest threat range = best chance to crit = the most damage
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Best = highest threat range = best chance to crit = the most damage
The falcata being in possession of both a middle of the road crit range and x3 modifier result in statistically more damage than 18-20/x2 weapon, although not by much. This fact does not change even with the inclusion of critical feats in the equation.
The numbers have been crunched and what you say is the undisputed truth but the dice still fall as they may :)
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By the by, greatsword and earth breaker aren't tops. Spreadsheets factoring in as many details as you can actually manage will clearly indicate that greatsword and earth breaker lose out to nodachi, elven curve blade, falchion, and the falcata; all of these are statistically superior weapons.
But y'know what? Buy a nuke. /end statement
Actually, my spreadsheet currently factors in the following for each weapon:
- Number of dice
- Damage die
- Crit threat
- Crit Multiplier
- Using two-handed (for both strength bonus and Power Attack)
- To hit penalty for multiple attacks (for TWF)
- Attacks per round
- Custom Additional attack bonus (such as weapon enhancements)
- Custom Additional damage bonus (such as weapon enhancements)
- Concealment/% miss chance
- Mirror images
For all weapons across the board, you enter BAB and can set separate attack and damage bonuses for the following:
- STR Bonus
- Power attack
- Morale
- Competence
- Trait/racial
- Other
With all of these factors, the Great Sword and Earthbreaker both come out ahead of the Nodachi and the Elven Curved Blade (8.360 DPR vs. 8.050), and all four of these come out ahead of the Falcata (7.920) and Falchion (7.820), assuming these are both used two-handed.
Now, I haven't factored in feats or traits that give bonuses to critical confirmation rolls, but I also haven't tried to take into account the percentage of creatures that are immune to critical hits. Given the small bump in DPR that critical hits actually give you, this probably balances out.
Do you see anything else that you think I'm missing? I've posted the spreadsheet, WeaponDamageOdds.xlsx, to the PFS GM Shared Prep folder, under "Helpful Resources". I've maintained all the columns showing each calculation step, so you can just unhide these if you want to track what I'm doing.
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I believe I see where you're finding the difference from. The falcata doesn't bypass them until your damage modifier gets to a certain point on its own. It's not the sort of weapon you want to take to using right off the bat. Fact is, it's probably not worth the feat unless you're running a fighter; nodachi/falchion will barely lag behind and both don't require you to take EWP. Falchion and nodachi are similar to the falcata in that they don't truly take off until your modifier is sufficiently high and you slap keen on them (or improved critical.) Keen/improved crit also helps falcata out a lot.
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I'd be interested in the results of which dmg die uses range/multiplier correctly (ie to use with a warpriest assuming it doesn't change by release)
IE for dmg, what is the best weapon for a warpriest with 1d8/2d6/2d8/3d6/3d8 to use.... 20/x4? 18-20/x2 19-20/x3...
I would go for the higher range rather than the higher multiplier :
1) Critting is very satisfying. So critting more often makes you feel real good (and the look on the GM's face is priceless)
2) Higher multiplier gives you a real risk of overdamaging your opponent (like dealing 50 damage to a creature with only 12 HP left). So I really do not like it, unless you have a way to deal the "unused" damage to another opponent.
That said, I know that some players just delight in dealing the greatest amount of damage they can, even if it happens only on rare occasions.
Think I might be pretty well settled on the Falcata at this point then, unless I go with some ludicrous weapon like the Ripsaw Glaive, Battle Ladder, or that one Dwarven hammer that explodes when you hit people with it.
Could swap to a Dex based build and do a Spiked Chain for shiggles I suppose.
Elven Curveblade. 1d10, two handed, 18-20 x2 crit. And you can use weapon finesse with it. I use a smaller (1d8) one handed version for my Bladebound Kensai Magus. I just hit 5th level, so I can turn it into a keen weapon now. Crits on a 15-20. It's delicious.
- Rebis
Soooo... a Katana?
If what you are looking for is damage. Then i think it depends on what bounsses you have on top of weapon damage.
I think a general progression (and someone would need to do the math to figure out the break points between weapons) would be something like
Greatsword -> Nodachi -> Falcata
At low levels the bigger damage die of the Greatsword contributes more to your average damage than your static modifier and still has a decent crit range. At low levels you can't obtain the feats or enhancements to expand critical threat range so it does less for you.
As your static damage multiplier grows and you gain accesss to size enhancements and the impact enchant as well as improved critical or keen greater average damage in produced by having a wider crit threat range and/or multiplier.
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By the time you are able to afford a +2 equivalent weapon, (+1 Keen Falcata), Falcata will be the better pure DPR weapon but Greatsword is quite good and is totally acceptable to use.
I would recommend Nodachi only for Crit focused builds, that are based around proccing the critical feats.
I have posted the math below.
That's really cool stuff man :) can it account for trading flat +1 enchantment bonuses for things like keen? Getting a 15-20 crit range seems like it could be a game changer and a few builds seems to be able to pull this off kind of early on.
Actually, my spreadsheet currently factors in the following for each weapon:
- Number of dice
- Damage die
- Crit threat
- Crit Multiplier
- Using two-handed (for both strength bonus and Power Attack)
- To hit penalty for multiple attacks (for TWF)
- Attacks per round
- Custom Additional attack bonus (such as weapon enhancements)
- Custom Additional damage bonus (such as weapon enhancements)
- Concealment/% miss chance
- Mirror images
That's actually one of the questions I built it to answer.
1) In row 1, enter your base weapon information, add +1 to the Additional attack bonus and Additional Damage bonus columns.
2) Copy the information to row 2 and row 3.
3) In row 2, change the Addition Attack/Damage bonus to +2.
4) In row 3, change the crit threat to reflect the Keen weapon.
Now you have a straight comparison.
Of course, all of this is just "off the shelf, all things being equal, which weapon does more damage". Overall, the takeaway seems to be that nothing can match the damage boost you get from two-handing a weapon, especially if you have Power Attack, and a bigger damage die on the weapon makes up for a higher crit range in the long run. Also, if you're planning to do Enlarge Person or Lead Blades, make sure you have a 1d8 or higher weapon.
But in the end, it all depends on your concept. If you're want to do a TWF build or a Dex fighter or a crit-focused build, clearly Earthbreaker is not the weapon to go with. But my wakizashi-wielding, Improved Crit Two-Weapon Rogue/Fighter started carrying a Great Sword around as backup for when those damn earth elementals pop up...