what's fair damage?

[killianh]

I've seen hundreds of "do+4000 a round damage" builds, but I'm wondering what would be considered a fair amount of damage output in a given round?

The reason I ask is because I recently built a fighter and used a pretty basic charger\AoO build and ended up killing the BBEG on my first attack. The BBEG was a Warhulk type at CR 22 and I one shoted it at level 18 with a straight fighter. DM was a fair bit displeased, but I tried to show him how it happened with only a few feats (Power attack, leap attack, Battle jump, Shock Trooper, and Combat brute) though he still wants me to try and tone it down so I don't outshine the other party members.

[killianh]

say for level 20, but if anyone has a scale per level that would be nice

[Jarian]

I've seen hundreds of "do+4000 a round damage" builds, but I'm wondering what would be considered a fair amount of damage output in a given round?

The reason I ask is because I recently built a fighter and used a pretty basic charger\AoO build and ended up killing the BBEG on my first attack. The BBEG was a Warhulk type at CR 22 and I one shoted it at level 18 with a straight fighter. DM was a fair bit displeased, but I tried to show him how it happened with only a few feats (Power attack, leap attack, Battle jump, Shock Trooper, and Combat brute) though he still wants me to try and tone it down so I don't outshine the other party members.

Uberchargers aren't known for being 'fair' at damage. That whole shtick is aimed at one-shotting anything within the CR +10 range.

There is no hard and fast rule for what 'fair' damage is. However, if it were me I'd take a sampling of monsters of the CR equal to the level you're looking at, then divide their average hitpoints by four. Thus, a party of four that outputs that average damage amongst themselves should be able to down one CR = Level creature per round. That's about as close an answer to 'fair' as you're going to get.

You can do more damage easily, and less damage just as easily. It really depends on what is appropriate for your group.

[Biffoniacus_Furiou]

I'd say that was entirely your DM's mistake, rather than a problem with your character specifically. He probably didn't give the opponent any defenses beyond basic AC and HP. At that level of play, you need to have some sort of miss chance (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/spells/displacement.htm) at the very least. If he knew what everyone was playing ahead of time, then there should have been disposable minions to absorb a few of your high-damage attacks and terrain or other features to prevent you from charging the boss first thing. Dealing damage is about the only thing a Fighter can even do, it's absurd asking you to tone that down when your character is almost guaranteed to be outshined by any other character in existence when initiative doesn't get rolled.

[LanSlyde]

I'd say that was entirely your DM's mistake, rather than a problem with your character specifically.

This ^^

Also, as stated above, uberchargers are meant to one shot just about everything. That said, they are fairly simple to negate. Flying is one way, teleport as an immediate action. Hell even a simple grease spell tends to foil chargers pretty easily.

[Tvtyrant]

I asked this in an earlier thread (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=229120), and got some decent answers.

[MeeposFire]

In 4e they did do the math for figuring out how much damage was considered baseline for "effective" against normal creatures. I believe it was about 3-4 rounds for a striker and 4-5 rounds for a non-striker that is trying to deal damage. This was against normal (not elite or solo) creatures with a fair (but no high) level of optimization.

You could do the same thing for 3e but it is much harder because the math is not as easy due to the number of variables (for instance all monsters in 4e run off the same basic math but monsters in 3e are practically their own class types and that does not include all the small aspects of customization of feats and the like).

Even if you could do the math I am not sure if others will agree on the number of rounds needed and you would have to figure out what is considered a "standard" enemy.

[D@rK-SePHiRoTH-]

Expected damage (core optimized for basic 2handed melee) at level 20 is ~45 per hit*
It's the same for both barbarians (when raging) and fighters (when using their weapon of choice).
This is what WoTC considered "fair" for a melee type.

*you can see it for yourself if you try it

Because standard high damage at LV1 is ~12 damage, the formula is:

11+(levelx1,7) per hit

[DoctorGlock]

I find fair damage kind of nebulous.

Still, it should be rated as "whatever is needed to take down the big bad monster before it inevitably eats your face"

In games I've played in, minimum base competence generally means from lvl 1-6 damage is 7/lvl, 7-12 is 10/lvl, 13-16 is about 15/lvl and 16+ is 20/lvl damage. It is assumed that should be spread out over the attacks that manage to hit, because enemies generally have defenses above the utterly absurd AC such as invisibility and miss chance

[Alabenson]

Assuming fighting the BBEG wasn't the first time your DM saw your character in action, he should have had a fair idea of what kind of damage you were capable of on a successful charge. Which means he choose to throw a lone wall of hp and AC against a charger, and should have known full well that doing so essentially meant free XP for the party. Its the DMs job to understand the capbilities of his party and plan accordingly, and charging is a fairly basic melee build strategy with plenty of ways to mitigate it.

That said, if your other party members are low-op then I could see it being an issue, the same as any other build that is substantially higher-op than the rest of the party. Could you give us a little more information?

[Bloodgruve]

In the Binder 'create your own vestige' they mention that you should balance to a Warlock of the same level.

Blood~

[demigodus]

Depends on the enemies.

If your DM is throwing enemies at you that can one shot you, so that you are playing rocket tag, anything short of a one-round-kill is sub par damage. In that case you would want one-hit-kills, and once you start one-hit-killing, doing 110% of the enemy's HP as damage, or 1,000,000% of it doesn't matter, since dead=dead.

If the DM wants to run a tank-and-spank style adventure, then you want something that can kill tougher enemies in 4~5 rounds from your damage dealer, accounting for miss chances and such.

Basically, it depends heavily on the type of game you/the DM want to play.

[Answerer]

You're a Fighter 18. If your DM was fielding 'fair' enemies, you would never actually hit them. It seems to me that he doesn't understand the dynamics of high-level D&D.

Actually, really, at level 18 even with fairly naive optimization, I'd expect a Fighter to one-round anything he could get his hands on. It's that latter point that Fighters fail at.