Hello
Many times, martial classes tend to be built to do damage in melee combat. For most of these classes, they have many different levels of "power" in terms of melee or ranged damage. Everyone likes "ON" mode, where the ranger has his 1st favored enemy, the paladin smites a demon, the Bloodrager is raging, large, and hasted, etc. But how much should you do in "Off" mode, when your only buff is Power Attack? Or to put it another way, when could a warrior NPC do your job competently in a fight?
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I'm not sure if there's a formula which works well across all levels, but based on some quick calculations with a suboptimal but competent Warrior build (Power Attack + Weapon Focus + Furious Focus with greatsword) I'd say that even the NPC stand in should be able to inflict around 3*level Damage Per Round against an "average" AC (based on the "Monster Statistics by CR" table)
In games like APs with standard difficulty I'd expect that a PC who inflicts 5*level DPR will seem pretty decent and somebody who gets to 10*level DPR consistently will seem powerful. Of course this could vary by the group and game, and I'm not accounting for DR or incorporeal foes.
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Here are some numbers for a generic 10th level fighter
Level 10 Fighter Primary Damage
+7 Str, +2 Weapon Training, +2 Feat, +2 Weapon
2d6+13 Damage
2d6+22 Damage Power Attacking
Level 10 Fighter Secondary Damage
+5 Str, +1 Weapon Training, +1 Weapon
1d8+7 Damage
Level 10 Fighter Tertiary Damage
+5 Str
1d6+5 Damage
If I recall, I assumed weapon focus and specialization on the primary weapon, and no feats for secondary or third weapon. I assumed greatsword for primary, long bow for secondary and short sword for tertiary.
Barbs/bloodragers shouldn't ever really be in a fight in "off" mode. It's a free action buff that has enough rounds to last for all the fights in a day fairly easy.
Barbs/bloodragers shouldn't ever really be in a fight in "off" mode. It's a free action buff that has enough rounds to last for all the fights in a day fairly easy.
Same logic applies to warpriests, since they can swift action all of their self buffs. They don't have to waste their first turn reving up (if you NEEDED to spend your valuable standard action to buff, then that could lead to arguments that they would do more damage getting an extra turn of attacks in)/
I suppose that the same logic applies to clerics, oracles, druids- the 3/4 BAB divine characters with the 9 spell levels, basically. Due to quickened spell at mid levels allowing basic stuff like divine favor to be constant.
I wouldn't include 6 level casters in that consideration for quickened spell too much. That is 5th spell level minimum, which is rather late game for them. And really late game before they have enough of those spells to toss around consistently.
So in general, I would question 'how buffed should you be without spending a turn or being high leveled'. That seems like the relevant area for most games. Overall, for classes that CAN pull off swift action buffs, that is enough of their 'strength' tht it should count.
Although, for general discussions of DPR, buffless should generally be considered. Just to consider whether the foundation is doing well enough, or if there is room to improve. Also, whether your (melee caster damage+buff) is anywhere near mentioned vs. (martial damage + buff from you). The buffers curse really- should you even bother doing melee, or should you just support the big guy?
I'd say that even the NPC stand in should be able to inflict around 3*level Damage Per Round against an "average" AC (based on the "Monster Statistics by CR" table)
In games like APs with standard difficulty I'd expect that a PC who inflicts 5*level DPR will seem pretty decent and somebody who gets to 10*level DPR consistently will seem powerful. Of course this could vary by the group and game, and I'm not accounting for DR or incorporeal foes.
this seems like a good estimate at first glance. My charging paladin can do around 70 damage without buffs on at lvl 15. Which is quite decent.
Yeah, I actually did a little math to come up with the 3*level DPR number for an NPC Warrior. I just didn't want to clean it up enough to post it.
The higher numbers for PCs are based off of what I recall seeing in play plus some spreadsheets my girlfriend uses to estimate DPR.
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Well, huh. My current character - a 4URog/4UBar - does basically zilch damage "unbuffed" but raging, flanking, a few buffs from the mage and cleric and I'm cleaning up.
Barbs/bloodragers shouldn't ever really be in a fight in "off" mode. It's a free action buff that has enough rounds to last for all the fights in a day fairly easy.
Well, my arcane will sometimes wait a round to see what choices I need to pick (I.E. Blur/Displace don't help v. blindsight, resist energy can be super useful but is otherwise useless, sometimes someone else casts haste eliminating a need for me to, etc). Also there is the occasional bit where you get hit with fatigue and cannot rage, which is a bummer.
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Paladin - Level 10
Strength +5, +2 Strength Belt, Power Attack, +2 Weapon, Falchion2d4+18
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Fighter (Starknife Weaponmaster) - Level 10
Strength +2, +2 Strength/Dex Belt, Piranha Strike/Deadly Aim, Startoss Style, Startoss Comet, Startoss Shower, Weapon Specialization, Weapon Training 2, Gloves of Dueling, Trained Grace, Trained Throw, Focused Weapon - Starknife
1d10+26 either thrown or melee.
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I was actually thinking about making a Starknife Fighter. How's it treating you, overall?
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Well, huh. My current character - a 4URog/4UBar - does basically zilch damage "unbuffed" but raging, flanking, a few buffs from the mage and cleric and I'm cleaning up.*scratches head*
How do you do zero damage unbuffed if you're a rogue/barbarian?
Pretty sure that's an exaggeration of the 1d4+6/3 he's likely doing without rage or sneak attack. Plus the decreased accuracy of two weapon fighting. But haste, heroism, rage, blessing of fervor and flank, he's looking at +9 to hit, +2d6 or 3d6 damage plus an entire extra attack. So probably 4-5 hits doing sneak attack versus the 1-2 without buffs. So somewhere around 96 damage on average, versus around 14. Kind of makes it feel like zilch.
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Eh, even if you can consistently do 30 damage with a successful attack and make fifty attacks a round... there's still going to be times where you wiff every single attack. You know, like the famed monk "flurry of misses". Some days your dice don't roll well. Other days you annoy the GM by one shotting the adventure's BBEG with a max damage crit for x4 damage in the surprise round.
Always amusing when you cleave an ogre in half with your scythe cause the GM forgot you just acted in the surprise round (action was pulling out weapon), and tries charging past you to the casters.