You're a Half-Orc without martial weapon proficiency?
You want slashing damage?
You think it looks cool?
I'm sure it's some deity's favoured weapon ...?
Because sometimes it's fun to take something that isn't optimal in favour of taking something for a character reason.
The Greataxe has an equal chance to do between 1 to 12 points of damage. Your chance to roll any particular number is 1 in 12. This means your chance to roll 12 is slightly over 8 percent, but the chance to roll 1 is exactly the same. The Earthbreaker is a bell curve with the average roll being 7. Your chance to roll either minimum or maximum damage is slightly over 2 percent.
The Earthbreaker will more often than not roll average, or near average. The Greataxe on the other hand has a greater chance to get an extreme roll. You have a greater chance of getting a good roll with a Greataxe, but you also have a greater chance of rolling poorly. With the high critical multiplier the great axe has a better chance to roll spectacularly well.
Use a Butchering Axe over either.
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It's a badder axe than a greataxe.Use a Butchering Axe over either.How is this even related to the question?!
Not to mention that Butchering Axe is an exotic weapon so it has nothing to do with the topic.
Heavens to Betsy! Was confinement to martial proficiency a listed requirement by the OP that I missed somewhere, or are you just grouchy today?
<hold still><Calming Touch>
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It's a badder axe than a greataxe.Use a Butchering Axe over either.How is this even related to the question?!Not to mention that Butchering Axe is an exotic weapon so it has nothing to do with the topic.Heavens to Betsy! Was confinement to martial proficiency a listed requirement by the OP that I missed somewhere, or are you just grouchy today?
<hold still><Calming Touch>
Ah! I'm of the idea that when the OP clearly asks to choose between A and B, usually Y is not a relevant answer.
It's not different from replying "just pick a bow" to someone asking "which one is better: light or heavy crossbow?". Not really helpful.
Because sometimes it's fun to take something that isn't optimal in favour of taking something for a character reason.
There are very few cases where having an axe is a truly impactful decision for a character.
There are a few, but they don't come up very often.
OF course it's very easy to create a backstory for a character that deems they use a greataxe, but that begs the question of why would you make a character backstory that utilizes a suboptimal weapon intentionally? Unless it's a cultural thing, like a a dwarf or some similar race there isn't a true reason to write yourself into the corner of using a suboptimal weapon unless you don't care about optimization at all. But in that case one wouldn't ask the question of why use X over Y. So quite obviously OP did not care about flavour at all, because this is a Roleplaying game, and all decisions are superseded by flavour when necessary.
Else literally everyone would be playing a barbarian and never any other martial class, and a samsaran wizard over any other arcane caster, and a samsaran cleric over any other divine caster.
TLDR; Obviously flavour exists but it has zero bearing on this discussion.
Ah! I'm of the idea that when the OP clearly asks to choose between A and B, usually Y is not a relevant answer.
It's not different from replying "just pick a bow" to someone asking "which one is better: light or heavy crossbow?".
...firing Bolts of Mountainous Molehill Bludgeoning.
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The Greataxe has an equal chance to do between 1 to 12 points of damage. Your chance to roll any particular number is 1 in 12. This means your chance to roll 12 is slightly over 8 percent, but the chance to roll 1 is exactly the same. The Earthbreaker is a bell curve with the average roll being 7. Your chance to roll either minimum or maximum damage is slightly over 2 percent.
The Earthbreaker will more often than not roll average, or near average. The Greataxe on the other hand has a greater chance to get an extreme roll. You have a greater chance of getting a good roll with a Greataxe, but you also have a greater chance of rolling poorly. With the high critical multiplier the great axe has a better chance to roll spectacularly well.
This is actually the reason I came to prefer the Greatsword or Earth Breaker: A low roll tends to hurt you more than a high roll helps (so much 'overkill' at times), so I personally prefer the 'bell curve' of 2d6 (Far too many "just don't roll a 1 on damage" encounters in the past).
Overall, I think the Greatsword is still the better weapon: the 3x Crit for Earth Breakers and Greataxes is truly impressive, but it is often a gratuitous overkill (at least, at lower levels): Criting twice as often for only 2x damage is probably a better deal overall.
- At first level, an 18 Strength (base) Raging barbarian with Power Attack does 6d6+36 (avg 57) with a Earth Breaker crit.
- With a Great Sword, you crit twice as often for a mere 4d6+24 (avg 38) damage.
- In most cases, your target is probably a mangled corpse at this point.
What it really comes down to is do you want a slow steady approach that gets the job done, or do you prefer a more wild approach with a lot of spectacular (both good and bad) results. Personally I agree with you that the slow steady method is better, but there is something satisfying about killing the BBEG in a single shot.