Benchmark numbers?

[13_CBS]

Benchmark numbers come up a lot in the frequent Tier or Tier-related discussions that we have on this forum, or are frequently alluded to; a character needs to be able to do X amount of damage by ECL Y, for example, or that a character needs to have an AC of Z to expect to survive melee combat at ECL Y, etc.

Unfortunately, I don't have very much experience playing D&D, so I don't really know precisely what the values of X and Z in the above examples are. So, in order to find out more about this, I'd like to ask the following questions.

For ECLs 1, 5, 10, 15, and 20, and for a character encountering only CR appropriate challenges, using any officially printed source and any official WotC online material...

What does a character's total Attack Bonus have to be in order to "reliably" hit a monster and deal damage to it? (Feel free to use any reasonable definition of "reliably" here--hitting more than 50% of the time, more than 75% of the time, etc.)

What does a character's total damage per round have to be in order to deal at least "good" damage to a mosnter?

What does a character's total AC have to be in order to be considered "tanky"?

What does a character's total HP have to be in order to not be considered "squishy", or in order to be considered "beefy"?

What does a character's total Grapple modifier have to be in order for that character to be considered "good" at grappling?

What does a character's total Fort/Ref/Will save bonuses have to be in order to "reliably" successfully save against effects targeting those saves?

What does a save-or-suck/lose/die effect's user's total Save DC have to be in order for that Save DC to be sufficiently difficult to save against?

...and that's all the questions I could come up with.

(If my intentions are not clear, I would like, if possible, for answers to be formatted more or less like this:

"At ECL 1, a character needs to have a total Attack bonus of +X to be considered "good" at melee. At ECL 5, that has to be +Y, and at ECL 10, +Z, at ECL 15, +A, ECL 20, +B..."

And so on and so forth.)

[WhatBigTeeth]

This thread (http://www.minmaxboards.com/index.php?topic=3472.0) will usually put you in the right ballpark. You usually want to have a bit of leeway past the mean averages, since variance is crazy, but if your character can reliably beat the means at its CR +/- 1, you can be reasonably confident that it's on the right track.

[TuggyNE]

It'd be nice if someone could reprocess that data into a more immediately usable form, though. I think that's been done already in part, but not necessarily all the way.

[WhatBigTeeth]

Dictum Mortuum's Wizard Handbook had some nice charts for the same kind of information. You can check them out here (http://www.dandwiki.com/wiki/Wizards%27_Handbook_by_Dictum_Mortuum_%28DnD_Optim ized_Character_Build%29/Spells)(yeah, yeah, dandwiki, but its formatting is way less decayed than the original). And the grappling handbook (http://www.minmaxboards.com/index.php?topic=585.0) has a nice CR-grappling chart in the opening post.

[13_CBS]

Thanks for the links, everyone. :smallsmile:

I don't suppose there are similar links for, say, damage per round? I've often been told that, for example, a Warlock does not do very much damage per round despite it targeting touch ACs (so it is very accurate), and I don't know enough about D&D 3.5 to judge whether (Warlock level/ 2)d6 damage per round is truly good or bad.

[Flickerdart]

Target damage per round is an exponential increase - monsters get more HD as they go up in CR, but also have higher Constitution scores. Hitting stuff isn't very hard (http://www.dandwiki.com/w/images/1/16/TorchvsNormalAC.jpg), it's fairly simple to have an attack bonus of 35 by level 20 for auto-hit against almost anything (20 BAB, +5 weapon, +10 Strength) on your first attack. Damage is much more important, which is why Power Attack is such a popular feat. HD tends to be rather detached from CR, so it's really a toss-up how much any monster will have.

[ArcturusV]

Yeah, the reason the Warlock isn't very good at it's Blasting is the low damage.

Yes, you'll do 10d6 all day long. As a standard action (So just once per round), as I recall.

Compare to even say, a Rogue. Which is by no means the king of damage, but isn't exactly a slouch either.

You WILL get Sneak Attack, one way or another. It's so damned easy to get. As you're probably Dex Focused you'll be Two Weapon Fighting in my experience, with a very likely chance to hit.

So you'll be hitting for 5x 1d6 + (Damage Pluses which could be variable depending on enchantments, but probably at least +10) + 10d6 Sneak Attack.