Post/Author/DateTime	Post
#1 Karnos Aug 13, 2014 15:51:56	In the absense of additional rules or modifiers, the great sword is generally better damage.  Better average, better crits, simply better. Extreme corner cases exist (you need to deal exactly 12 damage, chance of rolling max damage with great axe is better than great sword), but the great sword, essentially, is better all-around.   That had been established weeks ago.   Then comes the PHB.  Two interesting things that might make the Great Axe situationally superior.   Half-orc Savage Attacks- Half-orc characters gain an extra damage die on a crit.  Great Axe gains 1d12, while Great Sword only gains 1d6.   Barbarian Brutal Critical- Barbarian characters gain up to 3 extra damage dice on a crit.  Great Axe could gain 3d12, while Great Sword could gain 3d6.   I assume these abilities stack, so a Half-Orc Barbarian would gain up to 4d12 damage on a Great Axe critical.     The question is: is it enough?  These bonuses certainly allow a Great Axe to crit for more damage than a Great Sword, but they do not help the Great Axe's average non-critical damage.  The Great Sword is still doing an extra .5 or .875 damage per non-critical hit.     The Barbarian, as far as I can tell, has no way to gain an expanded critical range (though attacking with advantage via reckless attack does increase critical chance).  Is a 5% or 9.75% chance of doing a few extra damage on a critical enough to make up for doing a little bit less damage on every non-critical hit?   It's just a matter of doing the math, but I'll leave that as an excercise for someone else.  For extra credit, try to figure out if a champion fighter half-orc would do better with a great axe or a great sword.
#2 Lawolf Aug 13, 2014 16:21:19	Karnos wrote:
#3 Mephi1234 Aug 13, 2014 17:32:08	Did the variance matter that much if we were talking about a Battle Master Fighter in the first place, with no worry about Critical hits in the first place?
#4 Grifford Aug 13, 2014 17:39:21	Karnos wrote:
#5 Lawolf Aug 13, 2014 17:49:19	By level 13 (9 for halforcs) a barbarian does more DPR with an axe than a sword. The increased damage is less than 1 DPR. This increase in damage is not worth the increased variance. Ever. Except for the most extreme corner cases, the greatsword is always the superior weapon choice when compared to the axe.    There are weapons that beats both the sword and the axe however. The halberd and glaive in combination with Polearm Master + Great Weapon Master will put out the highest single target damage in the game. This combination also gives you a very high chance of triggering a reaction attack as well.
#6 jaelis Aug 13, 2014 18:18:59	Pretty sure that wide or narrow variance is a matter of taste in the long run. Things tend to average out.
#7 Lawolf Aug 13, 2014 18:24:36	jaelis wrote:
(Reply to #6) Lokiron	jaelis wrote:
#9 Elfcrusher Aug 13, 2014 18:51:58	I couldn't possibly have an opinion on this without seeing some artwork of the axes and swords in question.
#10 Grifford Aug 13, 2014 19:01:51	Elfcrusher wrote:
#11 jaelis Aug 13, 2014 20:57:26	Lawolf wrote:
#12 Lawolf Aug 13, 2014 21:14:38	jaelis wrote:
#13 lawrencehoy Aug 13, 2014 21:27:11	jaelis wrote:
#14 Lawolf Aug 13, 2014 21:50:15	lawrencehoy wrote:
#15 Wuzzard Aug 13, 2014 22:46:03	You don't need to run it any times. The 10%/10 guy hits on average once every ten attempts doing his 10 damage, except 3 points go to waste since the creature only had 7 points.  The 100% guy gets to do 1 point of damage each round and as soon as he drops a guy he moves onto next one, no waste. The 100% guy gets to do an effective 1 point of damage each round, while the 10% guy only gets to do 0.7 points of damage each round.
#16 Lawolf Aug 13, 2014 22:54:47	Wuzzard wrote:
#17 MonsterEnvy Aug 14, 2014 0:20:33	Another Idea is to be a Barbarian half Orc and take 3 levels of Champion Fighter. It increases the crit chance to 10 precent and adds reckless which gives advantage increasing the crit chance even more.
(Reply to #13) Lokiron	lawrencehoy wrote:
#19 jaelis Aug 14, 2014 6:01:31	Lawolf's simple example isn't wrong, but I would call it misleading. It is rigged such that the damage 1 weapon will never waste any 'extra' damage on an overkill, while the damage 10 weapon always will, except if the target has 10 hp (or a multiple of 10). In the case of a 10 hp target, the damage 10 weapon has a 61% chance to kill the target faster, and about a 4% chance the weapons tie.   Also, it sounds like he did a lot of analysis comparing the greatsword and greataxe, but that doesn't address the question of how much variance matters, because the two weapons have different means.   A better test would be to compare 2d6 vs 1d13, I'll do that later today and we can see. Or if you want a simple example to illustrate the idea, compare a weapon that always does 5 points to one that does 10 half the time and zero half the time.
#20 Veleria Aug 14, 2014 6:09:42	The more complex calculations need to be to prove the difference between the weapons the more it seems they are close enough. If the average damage is so close I think most players will not notice the difference and will simply choose the one they feel is more fun.(kinda the point of a game) Some players I know will like the big swingy d12 because they like the feel of rolling large numbers occasionally. I prefer rolling many smaller dice for consistency. We are both close enough that we will probably never notice the difference.
#21 Pyromantic Aug 14, 2014 6:15:16	jaelis wrote:
(Reply to #21) Lokiron	Pyromantic wrote:
#23 Pyromantic Aug 14, 2014 6:28:11	Lokiron wrote:
(Reply to #23) Lokiron	Pyromantic wrote:
#25 Lawolf Aug 14, 2014 6:31:12	Pyromantic wrote:
#26 Leugren Aug 14, 2014 6:40:29	The Savage Attacker feat can help mitigate the swinginess of Great Axe damage a bit, offering the equivalent of advantage on damage dice once per turn.
#27 Karnos Aug 14, 2014 6:41:10	Pyromantic wrote:
#28 jaelis Aug 14, 2014 7:01:04	Pyromantic wrote:
#29 Pyromantic Aug 14, 2014 7:08:41	Karnos wrote:
#30 Lawolf Aug 14, 2014 7:19:25	It does have to do with dice analysis. You analyze expected number of hits needed to down a target until you reach a 100% chance to do so.    Take your statement about an 8 HP enemy vs 2d6 or d13 damage. Yes the d13 has a higher chace to kill the target in 1 hit, but the expected number of hits to kill the target is actually larger. This is because the d13 can roll a string of 1s and 2s. It isn't unreasonable for such a weapon to take 3 or 4 hits to bring down an 8 HP target. On the other hand, the 2d6 damage weapon will rarely take more than 2 hits.   The effect of luck actually doesn't favor the PCs. A string of good luck is numerically worth less than a strong of bad luck. For example let's simplify combat to a string of die rolls. You need to get 4 points in 5 rolls. If you succeed you win, but if you fail, it is a TPK. If one die is a 6 sided die with three 0s and three 2s, yes you have a higher chance of winning in just 2 rounds of combat, but your chance of getting a TPK is also quite large. If the die had one 0, four 1s, and one 2, your chance of winning is actually much higher, even on if you don't get a lucky streak.
#31 Pyromantic Aug 14, 2014 7:23:04	jaelis wrote:
#32 jaelis Aug 14, 2014 8:49:33	Dice analysis tell you which weapon has a better chance of winning a particular fight. Analyzing what kind of fights you are likely to encounter is I think a much broader topic. (I don't really disagree with what you are saying, I just think it needs to be clear that's a feature of the game and not so much the weapons.)   The point I am reacting to is Lawolf's Also, you must take into account the damage variance. For the fighter, the greater variatian in damage for the axe, which means it will genrally take roughly 5% longer to kill an enemy as compared to the greatsword.
#33 malisteen Aug 14, 2014 7:31:34	On balance, most encounteres favor the party.  If they didn't, then most campaigns wouldn't get anyhere, because the expected result of any combat would be TPK.  Since the game is balanced to the party in most encounters to begin with, good streaks of luck for the players and bad streaks of luck for the monsters don't make much difference to the expected outcome, but bad streaks of player luck or good streaks of monster luck can make a big difference.   For this reason, a high variance monster is typically much more dangerous than a low variance monster.  Because the math is written such that the party should be able to survive average monster damage, a monster that does exactly the average all the time is unlikely to bring the party down, but a monster with a high variance can spell disaster, even if the average damage output is still the same.  If it gets an unlucky streak, then oh well, it loss, just like the average monster was going to do anyway, but if it gets a lucky streak?   On the other hand, since the math is typically balanced in favor of the party, then high variance for PCs is not good.  So what if you get a hot streak and deal way more damage than the all average all the time guy?  That guy was still going to win the fight anyway.  But if you get a garbage streak, suddenly things can look grim.   High variance favors the underdog, and the underdog is almost always the monsters.  Even boss battles in D&D are not typically designed such that TPK is the more likely outcome than victory.
(Reply to #33) Lokiron	malisteen wrote:
#35 Pyromantic Aug 14, 2014 9:39:20	jaelis wrote:
#36 FFSAA Aug 14, 2014 10:41:21	Lawolf wrote:
#37 Uchawi Aug 14, 2014 10:46:55	I don't believe many players are as worried about attack/damage ability, as much as utlity or other abilities like skills or spells that takes care of the other 50 percent of the game or non-combat. At least that is my concern when comparing classes. I don't even worry about weapon envy unless the gap is significant.
(Reply to #36) malisteen	FFSAA wrote:
#39 Veleria Aug 14, 2014 13:03:09	These turn to kill evaluations are irrelevant because D&D is not a solo game. other players will be hitting the monsters too with any variety of damage dice so the hp fariances will swing constantly.
#40 Lawolf Aug 14, 2014 13:15:23	So you are saying that if you had an attack that did 50 damage but only hit on a 20, it would have no impact on combat length because the rest of the party is attacking too? What about compared to an attack that hit on an 11+ for 5 damage per hit? What about when your party gets the monsters HP down to 5 with through their combined attacks? Which is better now?   FYI: A level 17 half-orc barbarian deals 44 average damage on a crit and only 11.5 average damage on a normal hit. My above example, while extreme, is closer to the truth than you might think.
#41 jaelis Aug 14, 2014 13:54:51	Pyromantic wrote:
#42 Veleria Aug 14, 2014 14:20:06	Lawolf wrote:
#43 Pyromantic Aug 14, 2014 14:59:36	jaelis wrote:
#44 Lawolf Aug 14, 2014 15:13:55	Pyromantic wrote:
#45 mellored Aug 14, 2014 15:12:51	I agree with lawolfs assesment. It's not worth using a greataxe, even as a high level barbarian.  Always choose greatsword.     The only time you might want to is if a target had 10 to 18 hit points (depending on you Str) left  Or you are a half-orc barbarian 17 / assassin 3. But in that case, you'd be carring both weapons, and only swaping for special occasions.
#46 Fantasyfilmsman Aug 14, 2014 15:33:09	Nice analysis. But my buddy's Greatsword fighter would disagree with you. He's hitting avg overall but my sons Dragonborn Great Axe fighter is killing it.  It's only antidotal but he hasn't seen it yet with the sword.
#47 Lawolf Aug 14, 2014 15:44:02	Fantasyfilmsman wrote:
#48 Pyromantic Aug 14, 2014 15:56:47	Veleria wrote:
#49 Larry_Hunsaker Aug 14, 2014 23:07:36	Regarding the 1 damage - 100% to hit vs. 10 damage - 10% to hit vs. a foe with 7 hitpoints, the 10/10% wins this only 47% of the time.    You can determine it with some probability.   Since the 1/100% kills target in 7 attacks, you simply ask the question, "what are the odds of the 10/10% guy missing his first 6 attacks?" That is the only way the 1/100% guy wins this duel. If the 10/10% guys hits even just once in the first 6 attacks, he wins. So the odds of the 10/10% guy missing all 6 of his attacks would be:   9/10 x 9/10 x 9/10 x 9/10 x 9/10 x 9/10 = 0.53 or 53% of the time. So he has a 47% chance of hitting 1 time or more during his first 6 attacks. Thus the 1/100% guys barely wins this comparison.   If the target had 8 hitpoints, the odds require 7 misses in a row:   9/10 x 9/10 x 9/10 x 9/10 x 9/10 x 9/10 x 9/10 = 0.48 or 48% of the time. So he has a 52% chance of hitting 1 time or more during his first 7 attacks. Thus the 1/100% guys barely loses this comparison.   So it really matters how many hitpoints the target has, compared to the higher damage attack. The reliable guy will lose against all foes with 8-10 hitpoints.   Larry
#50 Daganev Aug 15, 2014 1:53:32	When you play games psychology and fun are often more important than the math. If the math is unbalanced but nobody who plays the game knows that, is it really unbalanced? In general unless there is a experiential numerical difference between choices, I always pick the option that is more fun.