Gemini476
2014-10-10, 10:24 PM
Somewhat recently, I took a look at the damage dealt by psionic powers like Energy Ball and started wondering if the damage types were truly as different as those powers made them out to be. Is fire damage truly so much more resisted than acid that +1 damage/CL balances them out? Is sonic damage so dreadfully powerful that it needs to do -2 damage/CL in comparison to fire?
So I decided to check it, using this helpful spreadsheet (https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0Agyi5tgUTatCdHFjS05Kb18xVGd2bTZhak5YaGQtM FE&usp=drive_web#gid=3) that I did not make.
Here are some assumptions that I made for this test:
The target is pretty much a block of tofu. Beyond energy resistance and immunity equal to the average of its CR (and even then only percentual resistance and immunity!), it has no notable abilities that respond to a specific energy type. It uses the mean for resistance.
The target does not have vulnerability to any energy type, because the spreadsheet doesn't have that in it as far as I can tell.
The target is of equal CR to the caster's level.
The target has failed its save against the spell, as well as any spell resistance it may have. The only thing we're looking at is the difference in damage dealt.
The spell deals 1d6 damage/CL of the appropriate damage type. It has no additional effects, and uses the same save/attack bonus/whatever for every type.
The five damage types tested are Fire, Cold, Electricity, Acid, and Sonic.
For calculating the average damage dealt to an enemy with Resistance to that energy type, Anydice.com (http://anydice.com/)was used. Since Anydice.com does not give smaller chances than 0,01%, results with less than that chance of appearing were ignored. For example, when calculating the results for level 16 I used only the results of 32-80 since there's 0,01% chance in total of a roll of less than 32 on 16d6 occurring.
The formula used to calculate damage was
Level * 3.5 * (1 - % Immune - % with Resist) + % with Resist * (Average damage dealt to an energy with Resist X)
Here (http://i.imgur.com/Pwo9wXA.png)are my results. I'll try to pretty up my .XML file in the next few days if anyone is interested in seeing how I came to those numbers, but it's not really that interesting.
Some conclusions to draw from that chart:
Sonic damage is, as expected, the best of the five types. However, it never reaches more than +1 damage/die in comparison to fire damage.
Acid damage is second best, but only deals +0,1 damage/die on average in comparison to fire damage.
Electricity and Cold are close to being ties for third best, although Electricity takes a slight lead. It's also notably better than cold damage during the PFS levels.
Fire damage is actually not the worst damage type for certain levels - the entire 10-13 stretch has it do more damage than cold, and for level 13 it's the second best damage type of the lot.
This may not actually be the case in-game - certain CRs might have more of a certain type of Elemental than another, for instance, boosting average resistances for certain types while not the average resistances for campaigns set outside the Inner Planes. However, I figure that it could be interesting to think about.
So I decided to check it, using this helpful spreadsheet (https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0Agyi5tgUTatCdHFjS05Kb18xVGd2bTZhak5YaGQtM FE&usp=drive_web#gid=3) that I did not make.
Here are some assumptions that I made for this test:
The target is pretty much a block of tofu. Beyond energy resistance and immunity equal to the average of its CR (and even then only percentual resistance and immunity!), it has no notable abilities that respond to a specific energy type. It uses the mean for resistance.
The target does not have vulnerability to any energy type, because the spreadsheet doesn't have that in it as far as I can tell.
The target is of equal CR to the caster's level.
The target has failed its save against the spell, as well as any spell resistance it may have. The only thing we're looking at is the difference in damage dealt.
The spell deals 1d6 damage/CL of the appropriate damage type. It has no additional effects, and uses the same save/attack bonus/whatever for every type.
The five damage types tested are Fire, Cold, Electricity, Acid, and Sonic.
For calculating the average damage dealt to an enemy with Resistance to that energy type, Anydice.com (http://anydice.com/)was used. Since Anydice.com does not give smaller chances than 0,01%, results with less than that chance of appearing were ignored. For example, when calculating the results for level 16 I used only the results of 32-80 since there's 0,01% chance in total of a roll of less than 32 on 16d6 occurring.
The formula used to calculate damage was
Level * 3.5 * (1 - % Immune - % with Resist) + % with Resist * (Average damage dealt to an energy with Resist X)
Here (http://i.imgur.com/Pwo9wXA.png)are my results. I'll try to pretty up my .XML file in the next few days if anyone is interested in seeing how I came to those numbers, but it's not really that interesting.
Some conclusions to draw from that chart:
Sonic damage is, as expected, the best of the five types. However, it never reaches more than +1 damage/die in comparison to fire damage.
Acid damage is second best, but only deals +0,1 damage/die on average in comparison to fire damage.
Electricity and Cold are close to being ties for third best, although Electricity takes a slight lead. It's also notably better than cold damage during the PFS levels.
Fire damage is actually not the worst damage type for certain levels - the entire 10-13 stretch has it do more damage than cold, and for level 13 it's the second best damage type of the lot.
This may not actually be the case in-game - certain CRs might have more of a certain type of Elemental than another, for instance, boosting average resistances for certain types while not the average resistances for campaigns set outside the Inner Planes. However, I figure that it could be interesting to think about.