My friend made a DPAD calculator, and I hope it's useful to people, and might even be able to be corrected and expanded on by the community.
I'm torn however on if the Wizard is doing too much damage or not at level 17+. Does it make sense that in D&D Magic is just more powerful than heroic martial charachters, and thats the way it's going to be, or should there be errata to tone down the Wizards powers further?
First off, how many rounds of combat are you assuming here? What weapons are the fighters and rogues using? What combat style? What spells is the wizard using? Etc. These are important factors that make a big difference in the results. A 2h weapon using fighter will do more than one that uses a single weapon. The longer an adventuring day is, and the more rounds of combat there are, the less and less powerful wizards are. Etc.
In any case, it looks to me like the biggest difference between the wizard and figher is about 150 damage or so (around 950 compared to around 1100, just guessing by looking at the chart). So the wizard is doing about 15% more damage than the fighter is. That's not a very big difference, and one could argue that such a difference is perfectly acceptable, since wizards are the "glass cannons" and fighters are the "tanks." But in the other chart, the wizard is behind by about the same amount. So it really evens out.
In any case, I look at those charts and I don't think about wizards vs. fighters. The poor rogue is the one who should be complaining.
FallingIcicle wrote:
A bug was just found, the Level 17 and 20 Fighter aren't using both Action surges. That makes the difference a bit less, and Also, the Thief isn't calculating the 1 miss per day it gets to turn into a hit. Fixing shortly.
Your friend's spreadsheet uses an AC of 15 and a Dex bonus of +2 as its baseline assumption. He also assumes 4 encounters per day that last only 4 rounds each, at all levels. The results are skewed due to those assumptions. We do not know that any of those assumptions are appropriate. If monsters get proficiency bonuses to saves, then saves will be a lot higher than +2 in MANY cases. Likewise, in order to really figure out how many rounds of combat a day will take, we would need access to the DMG so that we could check the EXP budget. I would venture to guess that at level 20, 4 encounters that only last 4 rounds is a pretty strong underestimate. Needless to say, I do not put much value into your friend's graph. I think his project will become useful. I think, however, we should wait until the PHB, DMG, and MM are out to start inputting appropriate numbers.
The numbers are based on the average stats from the Starter set. As for the XP budget, that was provided in a Legends and Lore article. Basically, you have 2 hard fights, or 6 moderate fights. But like I said, those numbers are all adjustable so you can play around and see what sort of effect it has.
Right now the amount of damage output each class can do, is much higher (about 60% higher) than the expected Max cumuliative hp all the monster are likely to have, within the XP budgets. That's why I want to add in the limiting factor in later, when we are able to. But I don't expect combat to last that much longer at higher levels than lower levels, unless there is something I'm missing.
If you up the AC to 25 or 30 and lower Saves to -1 you'll see there is a balancing factor, but the numbers stay within a certain range.
Basic document clerics, surprisingly, actually don't seem to do a lot of non-combat stuff. Most of their non-combat spells come in the form of rituals using the Augury-class spells. As rituals, they don't take spell slots.
They have buffs and healing spells, naturally, but I don't consider those utility.
I do notice that the cleric / wizard only jump ahead in terms of pure damage after we start hitting levels 13+. That's when we start having access to the once-a-day, high level spell stuff.
I'm very doubtful about the acuracy of the chart, however. There's a huge leap at 17 when the wizard and cleric get level 9 spells. The rogue DOESN'T have a jump in dpr. Which is problematic, because, at that level, the Thief subclass gets their Archetype capstone: it gives them a fifth round of combat for everyone else's four. That means that their power curve should be taking a huge leap at this point. Its not. Its actually showing the curve slowing down. Fighter gets a boost in power at 11... but not when he's getting new Fighting Styles or Critical hits from his martial path?
Because its not, I have suspicions that the chart isn't taking subclass features into account. This is a problem, since subclasses can really boost the power of martial classes, while it seems to add more flexibility to caster classes than direct power - mostly making cantrips or weapon attacks stronger, which isn't that useful at high levels. Overchannel, a 14th level evoker ability, is the only one that matters, but that is dubious help, considering that we'd be calling for Concentration checks for using it more than once a day.
In either case, without subclasses? Without feats? Yeah, the martial classes drop in terms of dpr. This should not be a surprise. Martial classes get lots of feats that directly boost their damage output; casters get none. As well, like you said, this is assuming no healing, buffs, or utility. Which not only rapidly cuts down on the caster's survivability, but also assumes we're in a white room with nothing better to do than throw spells; unrealistic scenario unlikely to come up in play.
Mephi, the Chart is only showing levesl 1,5,11,17 and 20. The 5 vs 4 rounds should be in there, but it's only an extra ~40 damage per encounter. But if you see any errors in the "excel" sheet or missing factors that would be great to know.
So I just double checked, and the Rogue is going 20 times not 16, so his extra turn is being calculated, but it's still not breaking 1,000. What do you think is missing?
Also, don't forget to take into account squishiness 
So there were some drastic errors in the math before. The main document has been updated, but a new document is being created as well. Right now, if you increaes rounds per encounter to 5 and encounters per day to 5, the Fighter actually does more damage than the wizard at level 20.
Daganev wrote:
This DPA/DPR is so dull to the rest of us that do not break the game down this way.
CCS wrote:
Lawolf wrote:
Lawolf wrote:
Ashrym wrote:
Lawolf wrote:
It's kind of laughable to assume the wizard is spending 100% of his slots on combat on one hand and at the same time another group is complaining that the utility of a wizard is overshadowing all the other classes. You can't have it both ways. I would guess anywhere from 30 to 50% of a wizards spell slots will go to non-damage/death causing effects. Some of those may be in combat stuff of course.
Emerikol. wrote:
Ashrym wrote:
I don't believe four wizards would ever survive the first day of adventuring in my normal routine game.
I do not believe the wizard is ever going to be the equal of the fighter at straight combat. I do think the wizard can get close though by devoting himself solely to combat. If I had a wizard doing that in my game and I was a fellow player, I'd suggest he play a fighter because he's not really contributing very well spending is full effort doing what a fighter does better.
Utility is the point of the wizard. Some crowd control sure. But utility is his prime directive. I'm sure one of the other arcane classes will do straight combat far better.
Like all these maths calculations, there will be a bunch of assumptions that arent reliable. You'll just have to play and see if you feel like wizards are overpowered at level 17+. In about 2 years time. Try and have fun in the interim.
I personally think wizards do too much damage, simply because they rarely have to roll to hit. Almost always, they'll at least do half damage. Unless lots of monsters have 'evasion' like rogue (and hopefully Monk too) PC's get.
A rogue or fighter can do a ton of damage, IF they are rolling well. A bit of bad luck, and they do pathetically bad. Wizards don't have bad luck to contend with.
That fact alone makes it unbalanced, no matter what any professional or amateur mathematician can prove or disprove.
I will not be nerfing wizards damage rolls, but I might make them roll to hit defenses like fort/ref/will/AC. I also might take away some DoaM in some cases, and give a lot of quick monsters resistances, and the evasion trait. Giving rogues, fighters, monks, etc. DoaM short and long rest abilities might be a good idea too. I'll see in novemeber, when all this forum speculation becomes actual experienced play discussion.
PS: another thing to consider is that wizard AoE spells not only don't 'miss' they also can hit MANY creatures. So, if I wiz averages 50 HP damage per encounter, say, and I fighter averages 50 HP damage per encounter, the wiz still wins, as he or she is doing 50 HP damage to 1-4+ creatures at once, where martial PC's are just hitting one guy all the time. Meteor Swarm, for example doesn't do 40d6. It does 40d6 or 20d6 to everything on the table, or mind theater. That could easily add up to 1000's of HP damage in one round, with one action.
Lawolf wrote:
seti wrote:
FallingIcicle wrote:
Ashrym wrote:
seti wrote:
On rogues are you upping their chance of sneak attack damage going off each turn due to having an off hand bonus attack?
Dracones wrote:
The Calclator now shows damage for all 20 levels. And you can adjust rounds/encounters/defences and max hp, for each of the 4 different tiers, and see hows the graph changes. This can be really helpful in balancing out your adventuring day for each of the classes. It also shows variance in fighter and rogue builds, and how much health you can expect each class to heal.
Updated DPAD Blog Post with new links to DPAD calc.
Lawolf wrote:
Karnos wrote:
Don't we have 4E as a better platform for homogeny?
Do we really need 5E to be "all things equal"?
ShadeRaven wrote:
Daganev wrote:
mellored wrote:
Daganev wrote:
ShadeRaven wrote:
mellored wrote:
Karnos wrote:
Tony_Vargas wrote:
Tony_Vargas wrote:
AaronOfBarbaria wrote:
You can do X combat maneuver instead of attacking ... that's still combat ability. In theory, those exchanges should be balanced against other combat options, but they don't help the fighter out of combat. Yes, the fighter has their background to give them out of combat utility, but everyone has that as well. Many classes have class abilities that give them exploration or interraction abilities, and the fighter lacks those a lot (though the Battlemaster fighter does have a way of sizing people up interestingly, which could prove useful in interraction, and the Eldritch Knight may have some mobility spells that prove useful in exploration).
I'm really okay with these numbers. I was very worried at first. Though I don't think combat will take 4 rounds on average, especially at low levels; 1 or 2 rounds is really what I'm expecting, with the damage that CR 1 monsters are capable of throwing around. But I'll be able to use this document to help me balance adding Con score to HP.
kanageddaamen wrote:
Just as a case in point, 2nd level characters in an encounter at Wyvern Tor took 8 rounds last night.
h347h50 wrote:
ShadeRaven wrote:
ShadeRaven wrote:
Tony_Vargas wrote:
Ashrym wrote:
Xeviat-DM wrote:
Tony_Vargas wrote:
One of the features that is most overlooked when making these fighter comparisons is the ability to reroll 3 saving throws per day after seeing the die roll. The fighter can shrug some pretty nasty effects even if they are not in a proficient save.
Another factor of combat is the assumption that enemies do not have ranged attacks and will concentrate all attacks on the nearest target. An enemy spellcaster could very possibly have their own Metior Swarm and devestate the party wizard before they have a chance to go. A fighter could very easily be standing after a volley that downs a wizard.
Enemies may strike from behind the party swarming the rear guard.
Point is that D&D is not a video game with repetitive established peramiters that are predictable. A DM with imagination can create a balance challenge for all classes where each can use their own talents to prevail over.
I think the point of all of this back and forth is that this sort of analysis is impossible. There is no defined optimal spell preperation, or utility to damage casting ratio for a mage and there is no optimal strategy for fighter builds.
All the numbers are conditional, and hence any sort of raw numeric analysis is flawed to begin with.
The only way to test this sort of balance is via playtesting, which there has been a lot of.
This whole attempt at analysis smacks of trying to prove a hypothesis (ie, if you want to do damage, be a mage) than testing balance.
Ashrym wrote:
I’m rechecking, but the code to calculate level 1 rogue damage seems pretty shameful even if it does turn out to give the correct answer. There are enough operations in this spreadsheet that the odds of it being error free are near zero.
Most of your assumptions are based on high level wizards yet you discount features that come later in a fighter's progression. At low levels a Fighter can easily surpass a wizard without trying. The wizard does not catch up until around 7-11 when they get more uses of the spells you are basing your argument on.
Calling ranged combat occasional seems very odd. Most pure claw and fang monsters are only low level and will be during the period that a fighter surpasses the wizard without applying special class features or feats. IF your DP is throwing bears up against level 15 wizards then yes it will be trivial to avoid them. Likewise it will be trivial to dispatch them for any class. A low con fighter (lets say 14 con) will have enough hitpoints to survive the average meteor swarm (Assuming a failed save) by level 8, by the time a fighter should be encountering it they will shrug it off and most likely have an 18 - 20 con, re roll a save and if they feel it needed have advantage on dex saves through one of the several feats they can take although I think taking 70 damage is not that bad when you regenerate 7 - 10 hp a round and second wind for 1d10 +20 as a bonus action.
I think you overestimate the impact of a wizard's damage. They are great for melting hordes of low to mid level badguys but the fighter is right there with them when fighting a foe that presents a challenge. The two classes effectivness is more based on the nature of the challenge than some presumed superiority.
I haven't seen this in a while, and the updates are impressive (although some of the acronyms could be explained more in the text.
For levels 1-15 things look pretty comparable, especially between the fighter and the wizard (so long as you're not going TWF, which is a little weak without feats).
It's nice that for the majority of people's campaigns (levels 1-10) things will be fairly solid.
I imagine in play the rogue's numbers will be a little lower. How sneak attack is designed certainly does make it easier to reliably use, especially with a bow.
Tony_Vargas wrote:
Is there an updated version of this spreadsheet that I should be using instead?
Level 1 Fighter is better than level 1 Rogue, but still not perfect. The GWF damage is rounded slightly and the Dueling damage incorrectly doubles the +2 on a crit.
The level 1 Rogue damage was wrong for both TWF and rapier/longbow. For TWF the hit % was not even correct, so I suspect that this spreadsheet was incompletely ported from a similar spreadsheet for 4ᵗʰ edition.
One thing that puzzles me is that people want more from a fighter than what its archetype promises. "Fighter" means that the PC is dedicated to fighting.
If a player wants to have more utility, he or she can shift ability scores so that Charisma (or Intelligence/wisdom) is higher, or he or she can take feats that don't necessarily fit with the fighting archetype, or he or she can multiclass into bard or rogue or cleric what have you. He or she can also decide what proficiencies he or she starts with based on background or build a custom background.
The key to me is more about how the game as a whole gives players a chance to create the PC that speaks to them (and keep all PCs relevant as unique individuals in the game world). So far, I believe it will do that pretty well.
With background proficiency and abiltiy checks rather than just skill checks, even the 8 charisma (-1) PC has a chance to succeed in a social situation. (Vague reference spoiler relating to Mines of Phandelver to follow) I know because my 8 charisma Wizard was able to successfully interact with Agatha a few nights ago.
Rhenny wrote:
The_Jester wrote:
While trivial, Natural Athlete is a point in favor of the Fighter having "non-combat" abilities. Furthermore, while all other classes gain access to feats, there is no set "level" at which feats are typically gained (outside of 4th level). In addition to gaining more feats than all other classes, they also gain feats at a faster rate, especially once exponential XP is factored into the equation.
It has been proven that fighters can spend their feats on noncombat features, and given their increased feat allotment, are more likely to branch out of their "primary" schtick to do so. Furthermore, even in games where feats are not allowed, it has been stated that fighters gain more ABIs than other classes, and therefore "improve" their noncombat skills at a faster rate, regardless of their starting value.
You may be dismissive of the importance of such features, but your dismissal does not eliminate the point that such features exist, and that fighters (even Champion Fighters) can (and do) have noncombat functionality. While I have respected your opinion on many ocassions Tony, in this instance I think you are blinded by personal feeling in order to see the improved value of a 5E fighter over his 1E, 2E, or 3E counterpart.
Did you participate in the playtest perchance? Most who participated in the playtest were thankful of the fact that the classes feel balanced, and that each class can contribute in a meaningful manner without any other class (spellcasters especially) overshadowing them, and making them feel irrelevant. Even the much maligned ranger felt like it contributed a meaningful and relevant role within the party, unlike his predecessors.
Karnos wrote:
Dracones wrote:
The_Jester wrote:
The_Jester wrote:
Ashrym wrote:
The_Jester wrote:
Ashrym wrote:
Kalani wrote:
Kalani wrote:
Why do some people not understand other people's desire to have the classes be reasonably balanced against the default assumption? If they're unbalanced in specific circumstances (warriors get to shine against golems, casters get to shine against swarms ...), then that's fine.
The fact is that the game was designed with certain expectations: http://dnd.wizards.com/articles/features/building-adventures
I quote:
Building Adventures wrote:
The_Jester wrote:
Why are some of those curves non-monotonic?
Edit: I assume that it is because of increases in monster stats at levels where player stats do not increase.
The rogue damage is still significantly incorrect, can you please relay that to Waxeagle to look at more carefully?
I'm just probably going to give fighters (and maybe other martial PCs) daily heroic combat (and utility) abilities. (AKA martial spells, AKA powers, AKA I HATE 4e because this stuff is baked into it.)
They'd start with one, and by level 20 you'd have access to 4-6 per day. These powers would represent the martial hero sometimes going above and beyond normal people, and doing something super awesome, and well heroic without having to rely on the randomness and luck of rolling 20's. I know the typical 5e fighter we've seen needs this. Rogues really don't, IMO. Barbarians, rangers, and monks might need this too, as might all their subclasses. I'll see.
They'd do things like 2[w]-4[w] damage, not be reliant on crits, some would be 'reliable', some would impose conditions, act as stances, Force saves rather than target AC, act as AoEs, have non-combat utility functions, and act as DoaMs. I'll just start making some up. I'm hesitant to really do anything other than make notes, outlines, and jot ideas down until November, though.
There. That will fix the 5e martial vs. caster issues I've been having without having to nerf tons of spells.
I suggest everyone who wants to do this (or something like it) start thinking and writing about it, and we can all talk about it on some other thread at a later date, when we have all 3 core books.
Obviously, some D&D players do NOT want anything like this in their games. That's totally fine. There's nothing badwrongfun if everyone at your game table is down with caster superiority.
Dracones wrote:
Overpromises wrote:
Daganev wrote:
Overpromises wrote:
Ah, I see on the rapier/longbow rogue. It might be worth adding the word “advantage” to that.
Overpromises wrote:
I think it's correct still. Here's what's happening in the first attack:
to-hit * (weap+SA+stat) + crit*(weap+SA)
The second one is a bit more complicated
to-hit*(weap) + crit*(weap) + (1-to-hit) * (to-hit+crit) * SA
That's correct, because if your second attack is a crit (And your first attack was a miss), SA is applied twice. The sheet does it a bit backwards, in the miss damage you get (to-hit+crit)*SA, and on the sheet you have 1-to-hit times the miss damage column. This is to keep the math consistent in the damage column across the entire column.
Just to check the math real quick. For the Rogue, with a .55 hit chance, at L1 duel wielding short swords.
we have
.55 * (3.5 + 3.5 + 3) + .05 * (3.5 + 3.5) = 5.85
And then for the second attack:
.55 * (3.5) + .05 * (3.5) + .45 * (.55 + .05) * 3.5 = 3.045
That's where the numbers on my sheet come from. Hope that helps.
Daganev wrote: