| Kuzcoburra |
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Alright, I think this is a question a lot of people had on their mind: Just how *does* the thaumaturge’s damage compare to other classes? At a quick glance, they seem overpowering: At level 1, they’re sitting on a +4 to damage, and at level 20 they’re sitting on a +20 to damage (compare to Giant Instant Barbarian’s +6 @ level 1, and +18 @ level 20). But the picture’s a bit more nuanced than that. By this point, many of these components are common knowledge among the playtest; I'd just like to get some concrete comparisons through them.
If you prefer to use pictures, I've compiled my results into an imgur album that you can view here: it's got pictures of the tables, as well as some plots. I'll be linking to them one-by-one below, but the imgur album's got the juicy details all in one place.
(I’ll be using “`X`~`Y`~`Z`” a lot to represent the “mininimum ~ average ~ maximum” damage. While normally talking about the average is enough for most discussions, we’ll see that separating these is important to the discussion of the Thaumaturge’s balance)
- • Implement’s Empowerment requires either a free hand or a held implement, soft-locking the player into a 1H weapon to enjoy its benefits. 1H Weapons have much smaller damage dice (1d4, 1d6, 1d8), which happen to be about two steps behind 2H weapons damage dice for comparable traits (1d8, 1d10, 1d12).
→ Going up in damage dice is a +1 increase in damage on average, so that +2 damage is approximately the two steps worth of damage. So a 1d6’s [1~3.5~6] becomes [3~5.5~8] compared to a 1d10 weapon’s [1~5.5~10]. Same average result, but higher minimum and lower maxiumum. This points to a theme around the Thaumaturge’s power: *consistency*. Keep that in mind going forward.
- • Esoteric Antithesis requires 2 actions (1 if Find Flaws was a S or CS), and guarantees that your strikes trigger a Weakness of AT LEAST [2+[Level/2]], making each strike deal [2+[Lv/2]] additional damage on a hit. However, this is NOT equivalent to a simple +[2+[Lv/2]] increase in damage. If you look at the damage order of operations you can see that they’ve explicitly enumerated the steps. Damage is rolled (including striking runes in “Increasing Damage” and crits in “Doubling and Halving Damage”) in step 1, and Weaknesses/Resistances are applied in Step 3, and hit points are reduced in Step 4.
→ This means that Esoteric Antithesis’s damage is NOT multiplied on a critical hit. This drastically changes conventional wisdom about the value of accuracy and crits, and means that damage comparisons need to specifically be in the context of the entire spectrum of d20 results, not just an “apples to apples, if hit/crit what’d you get”
- • The thaumaturge’s KAS is CHA, a mental ability score, unlike virtually all other martial’s STR/DEX. This means that the Thaumaturge cannot start the game with an 18 in STR/DEX, putting them behind in modifiers at levels 1-4 and 10-14; this reduction applies to both accuracy and damage.
So, given those components, I’ve done the math to try to help visualize exactly how the damage of the Thaumaturge stacks up compared to several similar classes:
• 1) A Featureless Martial (a class w/ no bonuses to damage or accuracy beyond the typical T-5-13 Weapon Proficiency with Weapon Specialization @ 7 and 15 – think either a generic class, or a martial class not benefitting from its combat steroid, like a Rogue against a non-flatfooted target),
• 2) A Giant Instinct Barbarian (the “I have tons of flat bonus damage” class, for the damage design comparison),
• 3) a Fighter (the “How important is critting” comparison), and
• 4) the Precision Ranger (which has the same action economy for buffing against foes as the Thaumaturge – one action per foe to get its benefit).
Each of these classes is designed near-optimally. They're assumed to have the highest possible offensive damage stat (STR) at level 1, increasing it at every opportunity, and I've run the numbers using d6 and d10 weapon sizes: large, but still has beneficial traits.
I’ve compiled this into a large excel document that people can feel free to download and double check my math, or add their own classes to compare how their favorites stack up, or just add their own modifiers (like, “how does this change if we give them a [deadly d10] weapon instead of a generic d10 weapon?”). You can grab it from this google drive file. As always, scan anything you're about to download for viruses before opening, especially MS Office documents that can have programs hidden in their macros. Let me know if the sharing permissions aren't working.
Alright, getting into things:
CF/F/S/CS Result Tables by Level
To do this, I set up a table that measures the bonus to attack rolls + the minimum, average, and maximum damage on both a success and critical success of a strike at all levels from 1-20. You just type in a base damage dice (such as d6 for Thaumaturge and d10 for everybody else), and it’ll autocalculate everything for you.
You can see a screenshot of this table at this link
.
This particular table doesn’t take into account accuracy, it’s just “if you Strike, how much damage do you deal on a Crit Fail, Fail, Success, Crit Success”. It also doesn’t include any weapon properties, as relevant ones are simply “bonus damage” that adds the same number to all results for all classes equally (e.g., a [deadly d10] weapon is +[1~5.5~10] on a crit for all classes), or “bonus accuracy” which can be factored in later. It does however include your fundamental weapon runes (+X and Striking runes), included at the level equal to their item level.
The first takeaway that we can get from this is the value of a critical hit is significantly reduced. In the table I have a screenshot of, you can see that for a Thaumaturge with a d6 weapon, the ratio of a CS/S – normally = 2 for all other classes – is now noticeably lower. It works out to being [1.68 ~ 1.75 ~ 1.79] for [min ~ avg ~ max] damage.
This table shows how this ratio changes with the damage dice size
The minimum damage is always [1.59], the average damage scales from [1.59~1.77] ([1.64~1.73] for typical 1H damage dice sizes), and the maximum damage ratio scales from [1.59 ~ 1.84] ([1.68~1.80] for typical 1H damage dice sizes). For easy of math, I adopt the approximation that the ratio is [1.6~1.7~1.75], and typically use “1.7” as the generic approximation of how much bonus damage you get from a crit.
Comparing Class CF/F/S/CS Results to Each Other.
So there’s two points of comparison here: How do other classes compare to the Thaumaturge, and how does each of these classes compare to the featureless martial?
Tables showing the ratio of the Thaumaturge's damage compared to selected other classes. Green = Thaumaturge does more damage than that class, and Red = Thaumaturge does less damage than that class.
Important Results: The Thaumaturge's minimum and average damage is on par with the Giant Instinct Barbarian -- the king of flat damage -- across all levels, both of which drastically exceed every other class's damage on a successful Strike. This creates a very high consistency floor for the Thaumatuge, meaning they're always going to be dealing a LOT of damage. They are, at worst as good as the Giant Instinct Barbarian.
Even on an Critical Hit, while the Giant Instinct Barbarian pulls away from the Thaumaturge by a significant margin, the Thaumaturge still meets or significantly exceeds the other classes by comparison. For a Fighter, that's expected, as their damage comes from Critting more frequently, and these results do not take into account relative accuracy.
A plot visualizing each classes average damage (thick colored line) as well as their maximum and minimum damage (matching colored dashed lines). The range of the Thaumaturge's damage values has been highlighted in blue for visibility.
This plot just makes plain to see what we've already said: the minimum damage is higher than the typical damage per successful strike of every other class in the game, and on average, the Thaumaturge will be lock-step in power with the largest damage dealer (per successful strike) in the game. Remember that raising the minimum is not equivalent to lowering the maximum: RNG-heavy wargames like Pathfinder are very risk-adverse. While less exciting, guaranteeing a minimum contribution results in more efficient and more certain action.
But not all of this is scaled on a crit, so we gotta hit that next step to look more wholistically.
A plot visualizing each classes average damage (thick colored line) as well as their maximum and minimum damage (matching colored dashed lines) when they crit. The range of the Thaumaturge's damage values has been highlighted in blue for visibility.
If you open Plot 2 and Plot 1 and quickly flip between 'em you can see that at this scale, every class EXCEPT the Thaumaturge is in the exact same relative position, but the Thaumaturge drops behind because it's CS:S ratio is lower. This still keeps it on par with the other classes on average, but the damage floor is still much higher than what all classes other than the Giant Instinct Barbarian have to offer, that floor even outperforming the average damage of Fighters.
Now these numbers are good to have, but since we're comparing classes it's generally easier to make that comparison directly instead of inferring. So what we're going to do is instead take every classes' damage at each result and level and divide it by that of a featureless martial's corresponding damage, to see how much extra value the class features are providing.
Similar to Table 3, this table compares how much better the selected classes are compared to a featureless martial, where blue is better than green is better than white.
This is basically just rescaling the information so that we can just immediately pull out what we want. Again, plots are easier to read, so have yourself one of those.
A plot showing how many times better a class is compared to a featureless martial, rescaled so that the featureless martial's damage is = 1 at all levels.
This allows us to see exactly how much any given class is out-performing another, and by how much. A value of 1 here means that it's exactly the same as a Featureless MArtial's average damage, a value of 2 means that it's double that damage, etc.
Like Plot 3 above, but on a crit success instead of a regular hit.
Similar to quickly flipping between plots 1 and 2, flipping between plots 3 and 4 shows that all classes are in the same spot, except for the thaumaturge whose contribution lowers. It's not that low, and is still consistently on-par with all other Martials, and only sees the single largest damage dealer in the game consistently out-perform it.
To quickly compile all of that information into a single table so you can see the exact numbers, here you go.
Incorporating Accuracy
Instead of running simulations, we’re just gonna set an explicit probability.
Here is a table that shows the outcome of any attack roll, assuming they need a certain target number to meet the enemy’s AC.
I’ve chosen “You hit on a 10” here because 1) it’s easy, and 2) it’s approximately true for typical AC-by-level for creatures of your level (normally 9-11 needed to hit). Usefully, it also includes how the degree of success changes for any given modifier, which can be used to compare things like “if I have X bonus” or “if I’m taking Y MAP” or “of I’m using a different class that has a different proficiency progression”.
From there, we can construct degree of success tables per class by counting up the number of results of each degree of success, and linking it to the damage of the Strike. If we expand this table to include all of the modifiers from the previous table,then we can also see how each +1 and -1 impacts each class separately, to challenge the conventional wisdom of ±1 = ±10% damage].
Quick note: that conventional wisdom is “±10% of your Strikes damage is added to your average damage, i.e., 10 percentage points”. These tables are comparing to your new average damage to your old average damage, which isn’t the same thing. Kind like how going from 50 to 55 out of 100 is a 5 percentage point increase, but a 10% increase in the value.
Here's a table showing what that looks like for the Thaumaturge's minimum damage, showing the expected damage on average per attempted Strike if the Thaumaturge was cursed to always roll minimum damage
The tables on the side show how modifiers affect this number as a %, so the +1 modifier at level 2 is = +14% damage on average (1.14*5.25 = 5.99). This is useful for sliding the results around for if we're looking at a monster with a higher/lower AC (need a 13 to hit? Take the -3 modifier column. Need a 6 to hit? Take the +4 modifier column), or if we're benefitting from bonuses to our attacks (MAP = -5 modifier = -5 column) or they're suffering penalties to their AC (Flat footed = -2 AC = effective +2 to hit = use +2 column).
Here's a similar table showing what that looks like for the Giant Instinct Barbarian's minimum damage, showing the expected damage on average per attempted Strike if the Barbarian was cursed to always roll minimum damage
This is assuming we're trying to hit that same creature that the Thaumaturge is trying to hit. Since the Thaumaturge needs a 10, the Barbarian might need a 9 or a 10 depending on level due to their differences in STR. That's factored into here. And we can repeat this process for the minimum, average, and maximum damage for all classes.
What that looks like extrapolated to cover the minimum (left), average (middle), and maximum (right) damage for all classes: the Thaumatuge (top row), Giant Instinct Barbarian (2nd row), Fighter (3rd row = middle), Precision Ranger (4th Row), and a Featureless Martial (5th row = bottom).
But that's just a giant wall of text. Useful later, but impossible to digest. Let's trim the fat.
Taking into account their relative accuracy, the Expected Damage per Strike of each class assuming that they're all attacking the same foe that the Thaumaturge needs a 10 to strike.
Remember that "average" here means "if the player were cursed to always roll average damage, this is the damage they'd do on average per strike". Since other classes have different accuracy (Fighter = higher proficiency, Other martials can start with 18 in their offense stat but Thatumaturge can only start w/ 16), they might need to roll a different number to hit the for (Fighter = 7, for example). The results change w/ level.
Since this does not include modifiers (yet), this can't quite be used to compare Damage Per Round. This is more "Damage per Strike after accuracy before modifiers". Once we figure out modifiers, you can slap a -5/-10 modifier to account for MAP and determine for yourself what your damage per round looks like with how you choose to spend your actions.
But before we hop into modifiers, let's look at what we have as a plot, so we can actually see what the difference is.
A plot of the information in Table 10 describing each classes expected damage range per Strike action attempted including their relative accuracy, color-coded by class in the familiar way. The Thaumaturge's expected damage range is highlighted in blue for visibility.
Here, we can see that while the maximum damage is the lowest of all the classes, being on par with a featureless martial's maximum damage, but the minimum is as high as the average damage of the Ranger and the Fighter, and it still consistently performs alongside the Giant Instinct Barbarian as the two largest damage dealers in the game even after factoring in accuracy. The gap as been lessened (especially for the Fighter), but to see by how much we need to switch to that relative view from before.
The same information as in Plot 5, but rescaled so that 1 = the expected damage of a featureless martial cursed to roll the average value on all damage rolls. The Thaumaturge's expected damage range is highlighted in blue for visibility.
Rescaling Plot 5 so that the Featureless Martials Average Damage = 1 at all levels, we can more directly see how classes compare to one another. Here, we see that the Thaumaturge is a consistently strong performer, whose minimum damage flirts with that of the ranger and fighter's average damage at almost all levels, and on average is on par with the Giant Instinct Barbarian's average damage.
While the Ranger and Fighter can get lucky and have very high damage rolls if the stars align, their typical performance is easily masked by the Thaumaturge.
What's the impact of modifiers on each class
The last thing that we need is to understand how modifiers play into this picture. An udnerstanding of modifiers gives us the flexibility we need to take this wholistically: We can account for Multiple Attack Penalties, make comparisons on foes with a differing AC, talk about the value of class features that provide bonuses, and so on.
Thankfully, the value of [±1] modifiers doesn't really change with level, so we can just look at modifier vs. attack/damage result.
This is what compiling all that information looks like, averaged across accuracy and levels.
Important Note: When looking at Percentages, it's important to understand WHAT it's comparing to. The conventional wisdom of "A +1 = +10% damage" is talking about +10% of the damage dealt by a successful strike, whereas the +14% in the +1 column in this table is "the expected damage per strike including accuracy increases by 14% compared to no accuracy modifiers". These numbers can be similar or totally different things without properly converting one to the other, so it's important to compare apples to apples.
Again, difficult to pull anything from reading numbers, so in graphical form:
The information from Table 11, showing the percentage change in damage for a given modifier, in graphical form.
Apologies, The X-axis label is wrong, this is looking at modifiers from -10 to +10, not level -10 to level +10.
The variance is way too small here, so we'll have to zoom in by rescaling the information
The information from Plot 10, reexpressed in terms of a percentage point difference from the effect of a given modifier on a featureless martials's damage.
Apologies again, the minor grid lines don't line up correctly. Turns out R is hard as a newbie who learned it just for this post?
Since most classes have the same proficiency scaling, same starting ability modifier, and same critical:hit damage ratio as a featureless martial, most of the lines are just going to dissappear on the +0.0% line.
What we see here is that the Thaumaturge value is negative here for positive modifiers, meaning they benefit less from each +1 they get compared to other classes. For example a +5 modifier gives 5% less of an increase in damage for the Thaumaturge than other classes (+72% vs. +77%). It also means that - for small penalties - the Thaumaturge is more insulated against damage loss than other classes. So against a creature taking cover (+2[circ] AC), the Thaumaturge gains an extra edge.
It's important to consider what this means for gameplay:
→ The Thaumaturge is less reliant on getting a crit to deal biggo damage, and thus reduces team coordination. It's less desirable to spend your 3rd action to set up your frontliner for a big crit instead of helping yourself out. This means that players feel like they share the "credit" of contributing to team damage less (compared to "Oh, if I Stride into flanking for my barbarian and Prepare to Aid his attack roll, I can contribute +30% or 40% of his damage, which is way bigger than the 50% of my damage that a second strike suffering from MAP would deal".
→ The Thaumaturge cares less about penalties to accuracy, and will thus spend more actions just standing still and striking, reducing the diversity of their gameplay. Find Flaws, Esoteric Antithesis, Strike Strike Strike Strike Strike. Give them something fun to do.
In the end, any conclusions that can be drawn?
Honestly, nothing so clear-cut as to say that "oh yeah, just by looking at the numbers this is totally unbalanced". It's something that'll heavily rely on actual playtest experience. How much does the once-per-foe action tax affect things? How does Recall Knowledge DC scaling with the wildly split stats impact the game? And so on. And I think that this work will help highlight what comparisons particular attention should be paid to during that playtesting.
But, statistically, we can confidently conclude that the Thaumaturge will consistently perform as one of the highest damage dealing classes in the game once it starts swinging. Other classes might get lucky rolls with max results on bonus damage dice, but the Thaumaturge at its worst is going to be hitting as hard as a Giant Instinct Barbarian.
I think an important question to consider is.... why? What about the Thaumaturge's identity makes "dealing truckloads of damage" a reasonable core component of it. Like, all classes deal lots of damage given their circumstances, but I'm of the opinion that it's much too close to stepping on the toes of the Giant Instinct Barbarian, whose entire identity is "when I rage, I deal tons of flat damage - you WILL get hurt".
If you made it this far... neat! Thanks! Hopefully this helped you see something new, or gave you a nice reference to back up numbers in future discussions.
| swoosh |
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
But, statistically, we can confidently conclude that the Thaumaturge will consistently perform as one of the highest damage dealing classes in the game once it starts swinging. Other classes might get lucky rolls with max results on bonus damage dice, but the Thaumaturge at its worst is going to be hitting as hard as a Giant Instinct Barbarian.
Well, no. At worst the Thaumaturge is going to be getting nothing because they critically failed Find Flaws or because the weakness is one they could have simply exploited naturally and because empowerment is less of a proper damage bonus and more an acknowledgement of the quasi-two-handed nature of the class' core mechanics.
More commonly, 2-12 additional damage which, contrary to your assertion, puts them more in line with an Animal or Fury barbarian than Giant except the Thaumaturge's extra damage cannot crit and is mutually exclusive with triggering weaknesses normally. So strictly worse than either of those combat mechanics.And that is not even touching upon the action economy, which you mentioned in your opening statement but do not appear to have accounted for in your math.
I am not sure any conclusion can really be drawn when so many of the underlying mechanics of the game are simply ignored here.
| Golurkcanfly |
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
Kuzcoburra wrote:But, statistically, we can confidently conclude that the Thaumaturge will consistently perform as one of the highest damage dealing classes in the game once it starts swinging. Other classes might get lucky rolls with max results on bonus damage dice, but the Thaumaturge at its worst is going to be hitting as hard as a Giant Instinct Barbarian.Well, no. At worst the Thaumaturge is going to be getting nothing because they critically failed Find Flaws or because the weakness is one they could have simply exploited naturally and because empowerment is less of a proper damage bonus and more an acknowledgement of the quasi-two-handed nature of the class' core mechanics.
More commonly, 2-12 additional damage which, contrary to your assertion, puts them more in line with an Animal or Fury barbarian than Giant except the Thaumaturge's extra damage cannot crit and is mutually exclusive with triggering weaknesses normally. So strictly worse than either of those combat mechanics.And that is not even touching upon the action economy, which you mentioned in your opening statement but do not appear to have accounted for in your math.
I am not sure any conclusion can really be drawn when so many of the underlying mechanics of the game are simply ignored here.
They do bring up a good point about the damage dealing being such a major element is a little strange when that's the focus of so many other classes. There's definitely niches that aren't filled that the class could fill, with the most thematic (imo) being a combat debuffer where they actually weaken the target with Esoteric Antithesis.
| Kuzcoburra |
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
Well, no. At worst the Thaumaturge is going to be getting nothing because they critically failed Find Flaws or because the weakness is one they could have simply exploited naturally and because empowerment is less of a proper damage bonus and more an acknowledgement of the quasi-two-handed nature of the class' core mechanics.
I felt that it was implicitly clear from the context that the "at worst" was "at worst within the scope of what was being investigated here, which was a thaumaturge benefitting from buffs X, Y, and Z, compared to these other classes benefitting from buffs A and B, striking an identical generic foe". But, you know, like 30 words shorter.
The failure of the class at providing value when sufficiently available weaknesses are present - despite being the core identity of the class and where it should shine - is discussed at length in a number of other threads and beyond the scope of this particular post.
More commonly, 2-12 additional damage which, contrary to your assertion, puts them more in line with an Animal or Fury barbarian than Giant except the Thaumaturge's extra damage cannot crit and is mutually exclusive with triggering weaknesses normally. So strictly worse than either of those combat mechanics.
Which is why the second half of the post takes relative accuracy and degree of success rate and modifiers into account, and the Thaumaturge still performs quite favorably compared to the highest possible flat damage subclass - being within a few points of matching it at a minimum and on average at almost all levels - which puts it comfortably above the less-damaging comparisons you suggested. You seem to misunderstand the reasons for taking representative comparisons for different facets of its design.
And that is not even touching upon the action economy, which you mentioned in your opening statement but do not appear to have accounted for in your math.
I am not sure any conclusion can really be drawn when so many of the underlying mechanics of the game are simply ignored here.
Which is why I - repeatedly - limited the analysis to the value of an individual Strike, while providing the toolbox necessary to extend the analysis to any combination of actions + strikes as needed.
Want to compare Precision Ranger's Hunted Shot to Thaumaturge on a single-action basis? Take the Thaumaturge's expected damage at that level w/ a +0 modifier, and compare to (Precision Ranger w/ +0 modifier) plus (Featureless Martial at -5 modifier). Or whatever other combination of actions and activities you want. Do a full round comparison, or 4 full rounds attacking the same foe while ramping up Rule of Threes, or whatever fits your fancy. Want to see how using a [deadly] or [fatal] weapon affects things, instead of just generic d6 vs d10 weapons? You've got the excel sheet. Modify the base damage dice, add the modifers to the table, and it'll autocalculate all the tables for you. Plots not included. I had to learn R for those.
I've done the framework to make those further analyses, but have not done a combat simulation accounting for all possible combinations of environmental/player action choices. At that point, the effort vs. value rate drops too low, and you get into "just play test it to see what it's actually like" territory, which is exactly where I said that this should go if it wished to be expanded past that point.
| Unicore |
I have been away from the boards for a bit, but I don't think the conclusion that you don't double the damage from weakness on a critical hit is a clear reading of RAW, so much as an assumption about RAI.
If the order of operations mattered that much, something like immunity to critical hits would be completely impossible because it would have already been doubled before the immunity. Also, when you do a close read of the weakness rule it, its literal description says that if you do 2d6 fire damage to a creature with weakness, you do 2d6+5 damage instead which means the example of the rule is changing the actual damage roll, not just the damage done after calculating the damage roll. The only thing called out as not doubling on a critical hit is damage that is done because the attack is a critical hit.
I understand that this conflicts with the order of operations of assigning damage in certain regards, but at the very least, it seems necessary to call this a GM question and not a clearly intended way to read the rules.
The Raven Black
|
Does resistance applies twice if the attack is a critical hit ?
If no, neither should the weakness.
I do not think they are applied twice.
| Kuzcoburra |
They are definitely not applied twice.
The other user is likely unaware of the intentional (albeit admittedly subtle) difference between "dealing damage" (e.g., outgoing damage that you're dealing to another creature) vs. "taking damage" (e.g., incoming damage that actually reduces your HP) used in language. The damage roll determines the amount of damage you're tracking in Step 1, and that damage is modified by each step in turn until the final amount of damage is finally removed from their hit points in Step 4.
The Damage Rules explicit set the steps in order
When making a damage roll, you take the following steps, explained in detail below.
1. ) Roll the dice indicated by the weapon, unarmed attack, or spell, and apply the modifiers, bonuses, and penalties that apply to the result of the roll.
2. ) Determine the damage type.
3. ) Apply the target’s immunities, weaknesses, and resistances to the damage.
4. ) If any damage remains, reduce the target’s Hit Points by that amount.
And refer to them as ordered within their descriptions
Once your damage die is rolled, and you’ve applied any modifiers, bonuses, and penalties, move on to Step 2.
And note that Weaknesses and Resistances are not bonuses, penalties, nor modifiers to the damage and so would not be applied to this step in any way.
The rules for Weaknesses specifically talk about taking damage, not dealing damage
Whenever you would take that type of damage, increase the damage you take by the value of the weakness. For instance, if you are dealt 2d6 fire damage and have weakness 5 to fire, you take 2d6+5 fire damage.
The expression of [2d6+5] here is not a new damage roll, it is simply an expression of the damage at this point in the step and used as short hand instead of "if the damage roll was [2d6+0] and you rolled a [7] for that [2d6], then the damage becomes [7+5=12].".
The rules for critical immunity also specify that it applies to damage take
Immunity to critical hits works a little differently. When a creature immune to critical hits is critically hit by a Strike or other attack that deals damage, it takes normal damage instead of double damage. This does not make it immune to any other critical success effects of other actions that have the attack trait (such as Grapple and Shove).
This does not change the damage the player's attack deals (for example, when comparing a single attack and damage result to multiple creatures' AC) and thus does not play into Step 1, and only modifies the damage taken in Step 3.
So the attack's outbound damage is [2*X], and when you get to Step 3, the Critical Immunity changes it to [1*X] (just like any other immunity would change it to [0*X]). Nobody says that "immunity makes you go back to Step 1 and change the damage roll to [0d0+0]".
The steps are ordered, the descriptions of the steps indicate that the order is intentional, the language in all places is consistent with the intent of the step that they're modifying, and nothing in the descriptions indicates that you backtrack through the steps.
| RyMarq |
Some notes, a basic check indicates you didnt make any mistakes.
It looks to me that, by math as written, the Thaumaturge is losing in total damage as compared to every other Martial listed, or is very close. In those cases it is close, that is because unlisted is a major trait that the Thaumaturge does not have an equivalent to being unused in the comparison.
Dual-slice, power attack, familiar precision damage, all effects that the thaumaturge lacks an equivalent to. Nothing wrong with this, of course, the thaumaturge is then slightly behind all martials with a more more consistency and a bit more of a specialty in one-action strikes. Its a unique sort of damage pattern, but very much within 2e standards.
So, if the class is balanced as a martial, it seems to me that adhering to the martial baselines like this is doing makes a lot of sense.
I dont "love" that 2e has these strong baselines with little deviation, but looking at the math here, its at least a distinct way to go about it, and is well within the norms set by the class. Rather than hitting hard, the damage is because your attacks 'burn' into the foe. Its not haymakers so much as salt on giant snails.
Ultimately, utility effects and disables are very guarded, but accessible to *every single class* as part of that. I am not sure it would make sense to try to rebalance the class towards that given the game's core principles. So, what else is there except damage, and damage expressed in a somewhat unique way?