Docken — Yesterday at 9:42 PM @Landrian, @Firmshrimp, @Tink (Justin), @Daes... how does the slightly ramped up combat feel? Combat is down to 1-2 rounds but damage is ramped up a bit.

After the one shot last week for me, I noticed how the high pressure combat felt so I wanted to ramp up the stakes in this vs it feeling pretty grindy during the-trials Tink (Justin) — Yesterday at 9:52 PM I like it better when its just a few rounds. The Trials has gotten to sometimes be 4-6+ rounds for a fight… which high output characters are to blame for that, really. Docken — Yesterday at 10:01 PM Fake difficulty (increased HP) is at fault there. I've been inflating HP instead of damage (or both) because I wanted the group to work for it instead of a crit killing someone (especially with how power creep works).

Basically, PC damage went up disproportionally to your HP pool... so throwing higher level enemies at you would kill you in less hits (1-2) instead of (3-5) Firmshrimp — Yesterday at 10:42 PM I personally prefer arcade style combat but I’m not deep into optimizing things in general Docken — Yesterday at 10:42 PM What do you mean by arcade style? Firmshrimp — Yesterday at 10:43 PM Beat ‘em up. Inflated hp lots of turns Docken — Yesterday at 10:48 PM It's pretty interesting to me because I bet you could design encounters the same way sports are designed...

Soccer is literally all about drama and suspense (you only get to see 1-2 goals a game so there's a ton of build up to those moments) vs something like basketball, where both teams score 100+ points each (40+ times a game) Basketball is pretty low suspense because so many points are scored that any individual doesn't matter much but it's fun to watch because you see a lot of action. Daes — Today at 9:30 AM I’m not entirely sure yet. I think somewhere in between the two styles is what I would prefer. Long fights drag out and get boring, especially with a bunch of players. However, short fights don’t leave a lot of room to use your cool features and think creatively. Tink (Justin) — Today at 11:39 AM I feel like my Rogue dropping 40+ on average for a Hit is the problem… because if I were to crit. I get exceed 100 for one hit if my rolls fall right. Daes — Today at 12:09 PM Max damage on a crit for you is 102. Unless I didn’t factor something in. Wait… I messed that up. 98. 2(5(6)+2(8))+6=98 Docken — Today at 12:21 PM Your rogue dropping 40+ at level 10 isn't unreasonable though, that's the game. Enemies should be hitting back at the same HP-to-damage ratio. That particular build is also an example of being able to basically double/triple dip in damage sources.

Sneak Attack is designed for a rogue (who should be the premiere martial damage dealer) to keep up with the warrior (who should be a good martial damager dealer but not the best because they trade damage for survivability).

An unproc'ed Booming Blade is expected to do 21 damage at level 11 (procing it does 34.5), a unoptimized fighter will deal 36... the other martial characters with two attacks will do roughly 24. This is great because it allows classes that don't get multi-attack (or even for character with multi-attack) to take a single attack to stay relevant in combat.

Alright.. so optimization. A fighter should use a different set of weapons at level 11 because additive damage from things like Flame Weapon (2d6) per attack scale better with more attacks. We'll add 6d6 (21) damage to their expected damage (this is equivalent to casting Magic Missile at 4th level). That's 57.

Like I implied earlier, a rogue should get sneak attack every turn because that allows them to keep up with the fighter. Guess what a rogue gets for sneak attack at level 11? 6d6. And in the case of magic tricksy rogues, they get their extra 2d8 (9) with an additional proccing 3d8 (13.5) damage. 57 with a normal attack, 66 with Booming Blade, and 79.5 with the proc.

We didn't throw Great Weapon Master on the Fighter but that additional 30 damage would change the math a bit but damage stays relatively in line here. It's nuts, but it's inline. There's also the trade off that if the rogue misses with Booming Blade, they can't bonus action another attack to get another shot at hitting Sneak Attack. If I were to account for chance to hit, all of these calculations are multiplied by 0.65 to account for bounded accuracies 65% chance to hit -- quick math implies that using Booming Blade instead of leaving your bonus action for a second attack might be a wash.

There's a lot to think about regarding short vs long fights and I'm not quite aligned with the idea there isn't a lot of room to use them. I mean, you're right that you get less opportunities to do something cool but shorter fights generally reward creativity more as it should/could end the encounter practically before it even starts.

Before I dive into that though, certain class abilities (👋 Action Surge) are wayyyyy better in shorter fights. If fights aren't expected to go more than 2 rounds, getting an additional "top half" action kind of means you're a lot stronger (33%? 50%?). If the encounter goes to 10 rounds? Well, now it was worth 10%? 9%?

On the flip side, "set up" spells and abilities (👋 Hex 👋 Hunter's Mark) get punished a little bit. It's additive (linear) damage instead of multiplicative so the reward isn't quite there but I suspect those types of spells or abilities would trim a round of a 6+ round encounter.

Longer fights punish casters who rely on relatively limited resources for combat. With inflated hit points, it might mean 2-3 fireballs are necessary to end an encounter when 1 would be in a normal encounter.

Personally, I like suspense and drama in the games I play. A crit *matters when combat is shorter, a crit should imply that whatever got crit should be on the floor in the fetal position. It sucks when it happens to players or in the first round of combat but that's where Silvery Barbs comes in now. You better hope the Barbs player saved their reaction to stop a crit, it puts decisions back in the game (and makes them matter).