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Third, Chained Monk's Flurry of Blows is literally TWF. The ability gives you the benefits of those feats although that is often forgotten, not sure why. Maybe because you don't actually gain the feats?
Probably because it works with some 2-handed weapons, so it is an outlier when compared to TWF.
And, as Derklord said, it is not TWF, it is something patterned about it.
it is heavily skeeved when compared with the normal CMonk damage as it has an in-built increase in BAB, so an increase in accuracy and number of attacks.
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As the DPR seemed about equal from the discussion provided by Derklord and Diego Rossi, we can conclude that by going into the TWF feat path you are sacrificing reliability in return for higher potential.
Derklord data are way more accurate. Mine has errors. It shows who has spent time perfecting a DPS calculator and who had made one in a rush. :-/
The limit of DPS calculators is that there is no way to calculate "wasted" damage. Doing 70+ points of damage on a target with 1 hp left, killing someone with the second attack when you have 3 with a 2-handed weapon or 6 with TWF, and so on. But it is still a valuable indicator.
Just to point it out, a single attack dealing a lot of damage has advantages against several smaller attacks. At mid-levels you often get targets with DR or Hardness that you can't bypass (or that requires the expenditure of limited resources to bypass it) and less larger damage attacks are less affected, as you apply the DR/Hardness less times.
More to the point, multiple small attacks relies on multiple attacks which relies on a Full Attack action, and that's often not happening.
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More to the point, multiple small attacks relies on multiple attacks which relies on a Full Attack action, and that's often not happening.
Without a full attack, you can't use TWF, so paragons between TWF and other forms of attacks become meaningless.
If "move and strike once" is the norm, vital strike becomes more interesting, but in my games, I try to keep a balance between the "1 big enemy" scenario and the "mob of opponents" scenario, so often the melee guys have several targets within the 5' step range.|
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Third, Chained Monk's Flurry of Blows is literally TWF. The ability gives you the benefits of those feats although that is often forgotten, not sure why. Maybe because you don't actually gain the feats?
Probably because it works with some 2-handed weapons, so it is an outlier when compared to TWF.
And, as Derklord said, it is not TWF, it is something patterned about it.
it is heavily skeeved when compared with the normal CMonk damage as it has an in-built increase in BAB, so an increase in accuracy and number of attacks.The fact flurry of blows does other things in addition to being TWF does not change the fact that it's just TWF. Just like the fact that Ranger can get TWF without increasing Dex does not mean they didn't get TWF. Yes, flurry does increase their accuracy by increasing the effective BAB, but it still applies the TWF penalties as normal and at no point changes that.
In short, I don't see why people are saying "oh it's not X" when the mechanic says, "you get the benefit of X".
Because you don't need to use two hands and instead you can use a two-handed weapon?
Because it is a class feature and doesn't give the feats, nor their benefits of having the feats?
Because it doesn't work as a prerequisite for stuff that requires TWF, but works as a prerequisite for things that require FOB as a prerequisite?
Because it always applies the unmodified character strength bonus to damage rolls, regardless of what weapon he is using?
After a few differences, it isn't the same thing anymore.
In short, I don't see why people are saying "oh it's not X" when the mechanic says, "you get the benefit of X".
But it doesn't say "you get the benefit of X"! Maybe you would understand the people if you stopped making things up!
What the text actually says is "as if using X", which per definition means the X is a comparison, and not what the thing actually is.
You could rip out the pages of the CRB with the TWF rules (and the respective feats), and you would still know how FoB works, because it is not TWF.
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...the image you get is less of a devastating human blender, and more of someone blindly flailing around hoping they will hit something...
Maybe that's the image they want.
So why would anybody put such potentially detrimental penalties on themselves just the for sake of more damage?
Because you don't need to always succeed to have fun.
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Damage Per Round(DPR) is the 'derail' in this thread. DPR is a somewhat statistical metric and a tool to compare what are mostly normal(several die results added together) to flat(one die result) distributions. The metric should include variance(σ^2) or standard deviation(σ) or AAD as that is very helpful to describe the probable damage distribution but again, most of the curves are flat with 1d20 to measure success and to 1-2 die rolls for damage. Math has its own jargon so it's fine to use those terms. As a metric it is useful as an average number and sanity check but without the standard deviation or variance it is hard to tell how significant the comparison is. It is well known that nostalgia and risk avoidance means people will generally remember past events with overly (& falsely) positive or associated negative emotional feelings. I've found like in gambling, players will underestimate and/or discount risk.You're right - DPR is a useful metric for getting a basic idea of potential output, but it doesn’t tell the full story without considering variance or standard deviation. Those factors help illustrate the range and consistency of damage, which is crucial in understanding actual performance.
Nice thread necro.
Reading back through this thread, most of the answers (understandably) assumed the user of the feats in question was not a spellcaster.
Granted, we're talking about pretty niche stuff here, but, e.g., a paladin can cast Blade Tutor's Spirit to eliminate all or almost all (depending on the caster level) of Power Attack's attack penalty. I feel reasonably confident that such a character would benefit more from whipping out a pair of 18-20 crit range weapons (especially if the off-hand weapon is already keen) than if he were using a single two-handed weapon with Power Attack.
I always assumed it was an error that was never corrected.