Classes and D&D 4E (my analysis)

[magicbox]

So, I've heard a lot of people weigh in on whether or not there is power creep in 4E D&D. That, for the uninitiated, is the tendency of gaming companies to lure people to buy new books by promising that the new classes/races/everything will be suitably more kick ass than the original classes or races

Comments

[kearsley]

Interesting. It also reminds that comparisons of classes are only valid within a role. I wonder, though, about a comparison of damage output across the roles, as I really do think that Jeff is right in that Halek and Vincent (neither one DPS) have better damage output than he does.

Alternately, maybe axes are one die too far, but that would end up clustering weapon damage (1-handed) on the d8. I can see the battle axe / greataxe tradeoff (1-2 AC) but not the long sword / battle axe one.

I think, in the interests of modelling, I'll toss together a web-based calculator for our Adventure! dice pools, though. Just to get an idea of the chance of 1 success, 2 successes, etc. at varying pool sizes.

[magicbox]

I would whole-heartedly agree that both Halek and Vincent (fighter and warlord respectively) have higher damage output, even assuming that they're using longswords (which they don't). The class order, from highest damage to lowest damage is (assuming one-handed weapons are longswords for those who can wield them and two-handed weapons are greatswords

[kearsley]

That's what I was wondering, really. So long as wizard improves on a different graph from fighter types, I don't think different starting points are a big deal.

I hadn't looked at the later wizard abilities as, well, I don't really want to learn another's class well enough to have the temptation to metagame them*, but my initial thoughts are that Defender and Leader types are the two necessary roles. Controller is nice, but will be stuck with little to do in many fights. A defender can support a number of strikers, though having too many of the latter versus the former results in the (relatively soft) strikers taking damage.

* Despite Warlord essentially being the class that functions at the apex of its abilities when metagaming.

[magicbox]

Oh, the trade-off for the battleaxe/longsword swap is the proficiency bonus. You only get +2 to hit with the battleaxe (1d10 damage), and you get +3 to hit with the longsword (1d8 damage). So it's approximate to swapping 1 damage per round (on average) for 1 to hit. Depends on what you want. After all, missing sucks.

[kearsley]

So 1 extra damage versus 5% to-hit. Where the extra damage is a 22% increase. Bah. Now I need to check whether percent changes in to-hit chance are on the same scale as damage.

[magicbox]

They aren't. You can't get a greater average damage if you're not hitting in the first place. And this is hard to negotiate when you're not looking at specific target numbers. For instance, the +3 vs. +2 is irrelevant if you're 4th level and you're swinging at level 1 goblins. You're almost always going to hit, so the extra average damage is king. But in that fight against the dragonborn in scale armour, you guys would give your eye-teeth to get extra bonuses to hit, screw the extra damage.

[kearsley]

That's what I guessed. The way my intuition was going was: Assume that I need 20 to hit with an axe and am doing 5.5 damage 5% of the time. If I trade to a longsword, then I need 19 to hit, meaning that I'm doing 4.5 damage 10% of the time.

Over an infinite number of swings, that should be 0.275 damage / swing with the axe and 0.45 damage / swing with the sword.