We don't have the GMG yet, so we don't have exactly what monster stats should be, but we can use averages. But what level?
At level creatures and two levels lower creatures both seem like good comparison points to me.
Also how much can flat footed be assumed? That affects everyone, but rogues especially.
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Always hitting may make a sorcerer with dangerous sorcery casting magic missile tops at L1. 3*(1d4+2) = burst DPR 13.5
When attack rolls are involved it makes a significant difference whether you're targeting giant rats or a hobgoblin soldier with its shield raised, and a buddy to either side. These conditions need to be defined to get a meaningful answer.
Probably want to look at level+2 and level+4 threats to get an idea of how much your DPR is doing to a single threat (moderate and severe solo bosses respectively). Also, consider the 3-action and 2-action DPR because it is easier for enemies to deny you a 3rd attack now.
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Calculating DPR to any degree of accuracy should be much more difficult because of the action economy and so many builds having better things to do with their third action than just attacking again. Like, "what if the Fighter is feinting" is something that's actually worth considering.
I'm sure proper calcs will come out eventually but I wouldn't be quick to trust anything people post in the first week.
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Calculating DPR to any degree of accuracy should be much more difficult because of the action economy and so many builds having better things to do with their third action than just attacking again. Like, "what if the Fighter is feinting" is something that's actually worth considering.
I'm sure proper calcs will come out eventually but I wouldn't be quick to trust anything people post in the first week.
I think the fundamental problem is just that DPR tells you less than it did in 1e. There are questions like how valuable is inflicting XYZ condition instead of doing damage, or how many actions can you expect to be able to attack the enemy which aren't going to have an easily calculated DPR answer. Or even ones that don't have a DPR related answer.
Like, is the archer who does the most damage to a creature more valuable than the one who does less damage but also shoots them to the ground? Or the monk that jumps up, grabs on, and melee's it in the sky? What if the fighter does less DPR, but scares them into crit-failing the bard's spirit blast or getting crit by the wizard's disintegrate? Who was more valuable?
There isn't a clear DPR answer to those questions, you need to analyze them in context of the party, the monster, and the environment. DPR still helps some, but it isn't the tool it was in 1e. I don't think even the best calculations will be as good at evaluating options as they were.
My gut feeling says to me that Rangers with Bears animal companions might be the top dog for damage dealing.
If I recall correctly, Barbarians are only behind fighters in terms of attack bonus by 2. And crits are determined by rolling a nat 20 or beating the target AC by 10.
So fighters will ostensibly only have a 10% better chance of getting a crit than any class with Master Weapon Training. Of course this doesn't account for various ways to buff your attacks or debuff enemy AC, which I think most classes have access to at least some.
Giant Instinct Barbarians will have a lot of single hit damage, and still have only about 3 less to hit than a fighter.
I guess what I'm saying is, I think the margins will be thin.
From some reasonably simple modeling I've done, a Giant Instinct Barbarian, MC into Fighter to get Double Slice took the cake. Moving to flank, then double slice with non-agile weapons.
Then, once Rogues get Gang Up and ... Backstab? (The Reaction that lets them attack someone their buddies attacked) they were our top contender.
However, I haven't tested how Weapon Scaling changes any of our base calculations, nor weapon specialization.
But if I had to put money on the most absurd Damage it would be a Rogue, who's hasted, who is flanking (Gang up) and has Backstab (so effectively 5 strike actions, 4 base + 1 for Backstab) who MC'd into ranger to get the 1 action 2 attacks, who has a Ranger buddy who gives him the Hunter's Edge benefits, and just rips into someone.
6 attacks. in this order. +0, +0, -2, -4, -4, -4
Glorious.
i also feel that a straight up ranger two wielding is pretty crazy in pure dpr numbers.
i mean, 6 attacks at -2, 7 attacks if hasted, is no joke.
and even before that, having only -1/-2 MAP is pretty insane.
as for burst, i think that paladin can do a nasty 2 turn setup if he chooses to use his focus on litanies, but not sure.
How is the Ranger getting 6 attacks? Twin Takedown is flourish, so only 1 per turn = (
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If I recall correctly, Barbarians are only behind fighters in terms of attack bonus by 2. And crits are determined by rolling a nat 20 or beating the target AC by 10.
So fighters will ostensibly only have a 10% better chance of getting a crit than any class with Master Weapon Training. Of course this doesn't account for various ways to buff your attacks or debuff enemy AC, which I think most classes have access to at least some.
Giant Instinct Barbarians will have a lot of single hit damage, and still have only about 3 less to hit than a fighter.
I guess what I'm saying is, I think the margins will be thin.
a note on giant instinct:
Clumsy no longer reduces your attack for Strength based attacks.
so Titan maulers have the same attack roll as all other barbarians.
a second note on the crit chance:
an additive 10% can be a potential 300%-0% increase in actual critical range.
if a barbarian hits on a 10 and crits on a 20, then the fighter hits on a 8 and crits on a 18-20, which is 3 times more crits than the barbarian.
but if a barbarian hits on a 12, and again crits on a 20, then the fighter as well only crits on a 20, meaning it's a 0% increase in crits.
So it's not that straightforward.
This is misleading and I really wish no one ever used (relative) statistics this way.
You're not wrong, but it doesn't capture the truth well. The barbarian has a 5% chance to crit while the fighter has a 15% chance to crit. Yes, 15% is 3 times more than 5%. But saying it's 3 times more is misleading because you're using the relative chance between them, rather than the absolute chance the action will happen.
plus, Agile may indeed be a trap.
So just doing some Quick Maths. Comparing a D6 weapon to a D8. With a +23 to damage and the Three extra weapon dice the Agile weapon will do more damage, just barely. With the differences being more pronounced the higher the AC. The Agile weapon being anywhere from like 2% - 8% more DPR with those parameters.
Oh yea, that would probably do it.
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i find the additive to be the misleading one.
if each does 100 hits, one will crit 5 times and the other will crit 15 times. That's certainly not a "10% difference".
that certainly isn't portraited well enough if you just say "you get 10% more crit" because when someone hears 10% more crit, he expects 10% more crits, which is 100% not what he's getting from a flat additive 10% chance.
using additive on percentages should burn in a fire because it just misleads people.
relative chances on % is the correct order to show things.
i mean, consider how ridiculous this is:
"if you pick up X option you get 10% more crit."
"so if i was critting 10 times before now i'm critting 11?"
"no, now you crit 30 times"
"...what?"
Number of crits is not a known number. That's why it doesn't make sense.
If you expect to 10% of the time, yes that means statistically you'll get 10 crits out of 100 attacks, but you have no other way of estimating how many crits you have.
The other reason relative is bad is because saying I've increased my chance to crit by 200% doesn't mean anything without other information. You have to know what the initial chance to crit was.
"200% increase" to 5% crit chance would be 15%.
"200% increase" to a 30% crit chance would be 90%.
That's why relative % are bad.
i find the additive to be the misleading one.
if each does 100 hits, one will crit 5 times and the other will crit 15 times. That's certainly not a "10% difference".
that certainly isn't portraited well enough if you just say "you get 10% more crit" because when someone hears 10% more crit, he expects 10% more crits, which is 100% not what he's getting from a flat additive 10% chance.
using additive on percentages should burn in a fire because it just misleads people.
relative chances on % is the correct order to show things.
i mean, consider how ridiculous this is:
"if you pick up X option you get 10% more crit."
"so if i was critting 10 times before now i'm critting 11?"
"no, now you crit 30 times"
"...what?"Number of crits is not a known number. That's why it doesn't make sense.
If you expect to 10% of the time, yes that means statistically you'll get 10 crits out of 100 attacks, but you have no other way of estimating how many crits you have.
well, you do.. comparatively.
i mean, in pf1 you'd pick up keen because "it doubled" your critical rate. You weren't saying that it gives me 5/10% crit rate.
Here, you can see on average how much difference it makes since ACs and Attack bonuses are generally much more streamlined.
yes, there may be 1-2 points difference between two monsters, but on average it's always be within that +/-1 for each level of monsters excluding outliers.
That's literally how I always thought of it with PF1.
"Oh, my scimitar has a 15% crit rate!* If I add Keen or Improved Critical I'll have a 30% crit rate!"
*Neglecting the fact that you have to actually hit on the number rolled an then roll a confirmation, so it's really the rate of threatening a critical in PF1.
I will say shroudb's initial post about the crit was enlightening to me. Because the axiom:
"+1 to hit is a 5% increase to hit AND crit"
isn't true, for reasons they've already pointed out.
For me personally thinking about things relatively is enormously helpful. Because you can get a sense for how much crits make up your average DPR, and knowing the relative increase in Crits you could then apply that (quickly) to someone's DPR; where you can't really do that with knowing the absolute chance to crit. (You could, but you'd end up converting it back to a relative increase and applying that to the ratio of normal:crit damage).
Also, if someone gets turned around by fairly simple statistical concepts, I don't know if I want them at the table talking about Mathematical modeling.
A +1 to hit is a 5% absolute increase in chance to hit and crit barring the extreme ends of the spectrum.
*That is if you only succeed on a 20 (because you would otherwise require a 21 or better roll which is impossible) or if you only fail on a 1 (because a 1 is always a failure).
To know you're relative chance to hit requires having a target AC score to go against. Which is one of the reason this is again bad.
You don't know target ACs most of the time, and it changes as you level and the enemies change. You can pick an average AC value to do the math against, but that doesn't change the problem.
It's like the old and misleading statistic about the rate of birth defects in births doubling for women over the age of 35.
It's roughly true. Going from about 0.07% at age 20 to about 0.03%. at age 35.
But saying it doubled is scary. While saying the chance changed from about 1 in 1000 to about 3 in 1000 is less so.
If you're a Level 1 martial (not Fighter) and you're fighting this dude.
https://2e.aonprd.com/Monsters.aspx?ID=165
a +1 to hit will not increase your chances to crit. And that's not to say anything for any monster that has an AC of 16, and uses Raise Shield to give themselves more AC.
To know you're relative chance to hit requires having a target AC score to go against. Which is one of the reason this is again bad.
You don't know target ACs most of the time, and it changes as you level and the enemies change. You can pick an average AC value to do the math against, but that doesn't change the problem.
I mean... we're operating is a system with bounded accuracy. So we absolutely know the range of AC values people will fight at a given level.
I find value in the relative increase / decrease of events happening. I think it is a mistake to try and dissuade people from using it in their analysis.
For a +1 to hit:
If you need >21 to hit before the bonus (BTB), it does nothing.
If you need 11 to 20 hit BTB, it gives an additive +5% to hit but does not increase crit chance. Expected damage from the hit increases by .05*(hit damage). This is a multiplicative increase in expected damage between 9% (for 11 to hit BTB including crit on 20) and increasing nonlinearly for harder targets, up to +50% multiplicative damage increase for 20 to hit BTB.
If you need 2 to 10 to hit BTB, it gives and additive +5% to hit and an additive 5% to crit. Expected damage from the hit increases by .1*(hit damage), while possibly also increasing the chance of special rider effects. For an 10 to hit BTB, this is an 18% multiplicative increase in expected damage, while for a 2 to hit BTB it is an 7% multiplicitve increase in expected damage.
If you need a -9 to 1 to hit, it increases crit change by additive +5%, giving .05*(hit damage) extra expected damage per attack and increasing rider chance. Multiplicative increase to damage at 1 BTB is 3% and going down.
The greatest effect of the crit rules change compared to PF1e is in the 2 to 10 BTB hit range: +1 to hit is MUCH more valuable then it used to be. The marginal utility of the +1 jumps considerably if the player can achieve this level of accuracy.
I agree with your breakdown, and it accurately represent both the absolute and relative increases.
I do want to address the last bit though. Based on expected challenge, I would say PCs with master weapon proficiency will probably expect to hit on a 10 or 11. The fighter is probably the only one that can reach a point where he will be able to hit on a 8 or 9. So while the best range is if you can reach accuracy levels to hit on a 2 to 10, most PCs probably wont be able to do better than hitting on a 9 or so.*
*I didn't run a lot of numbers, just doing some estimates off the top of my head.
+1 to hit, barring exceptional cases, increases your damage per attack by 10% of the average hit damage.
Those exceptional cases are needing more than 10 or less than 2 to hit. In those cases it's only half as effective.
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Flickmace fighters and paladin champions are heavily underrated.
Being able to proc an AoO is huge for DPR, especially if you can get multiple AoO's in a turn at higher level. Another attack at no MAP.
The gnome flickmace is absolutely the best weapon for champions and for one-handed-weapon fighters.
Except it force taking Human and it force Unconventional Weaponry.
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That's a typo puksone. Take a look at the book or at AoN here.
+1 to hit, barring exceptional cases, increases your damage per attack by 10% of the average hit damage.
Those exceptional cases are needing more than 10 or less than 2 to hit. In those cases it's only half as effective.
I think a lot of folks would say needing more than a 10 to hit is not an exceptional case. If most martial characters are attacking more than 1x a round, it is unlikely that a majority of attack rolls will be benefiting 10% from a +1. Broad statements about effects of bonuses to DPR are just much more conditional than in PF1. Much to PF2’s benefit as an interesting and tactically rich game.
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I don't get the flickmace hype. Ranseur has reach, one-handed and a D10 dmg. The crit specialization is a little bit situational.
What is the best dpr build for a fighter?
Flickmace isn't really focused on maximizing DPR, it's about having reach, and a shield, while rolling a decent Die size.
So it's really good with a Champion build, almost always allowing them to get their AoO when allies are struck (with a certain 1st level feat.. the name escapes me).
As for highest Fighter DPR build citricking has a google sheet, somewhere, that shows all the different Fighter attack routines at different levels with a Greatsword.
I don't think there will be 1 build that's just best, but more like 1 build at a level that's best. And the weapon includes either a Greatsword or a GreatPick.
Can we MC with this theoretically highest fighter DPR? Or Just straight Fighter?
Whip also has half the die size, which is why people are "CUCKO FOR THE GNOMISH FLICKMACE!"
And because it's ancestral you can make it simple...? I think.
Whip also has half the die size, which is why people are "CUCKO FOR THE GNOMISH FLICKMACE!"
And because it's ancestral you can make it simple...? I think.
It is normally advanced, so you can make it martial w/ancestry feats, letting fighters get legendary proficiency and martials that get martial weapons get master proficiency. For everyone else you can scale it to expert+critical specialization even though your class doesn't support the weapon.