Xetheral
2014-10-13, 07:02 PM
The Hunter class feature choices Colossus Slayer and Horde Breaker both effectively grant extra damage, but do so via decidedly different mechanisms. Both trigger off making a weapon attack, but Colossus Slayer 1/turn grants, on a hit, 1d8 bonus damage with a weapon attack against a target below full HP. Horde Breaker grants an additional weapon attack, regardless of whether the original attack hits or misses, against a different target within five feet of the original target.
Neither will activate every turn, but fairly clearly Colossus Slayer will activate more often than Horde Breaker. Horde Breaker, however, has the potential to deal significantly more damage by enabling the character to again apply their base damage to a new target. Accordingly, making more attacks per turn strongly favors Colossus Slayer, which will have more chances to get the required hit to activate. Conversely, dealing higher base damage strongly favors Horde Breaker by sometimes giving an extra opportunity to apply that damage. The question then becomes: for a given activation ratio, at what level of base damage does Horde Breaker surpass Colossus Slayer in extra damage dealt?
Interaction with Other Sources of Attacks
As a side note, I'd like to mention that neither Colossus Slayer nor Horde Breaker require taking the Attack Action in order to activate, they merely require making a weapon attack. This has several interesting consequences:
Both CS and HB can trigger on Bonus Action attacks. Both CS and HB can trigger on opportunity attacks. Both CS and HB can trigger on a Haste attack. Both CS and HB can trigger on a Commander's Strike attack.
Limitations to this Analysis
Before going farther I'd like to highlight some additional factors to keep in mind that this analysis cannot capture:
Single-target bonus damage is often preferable to extra-target bonus damage, because it aids in target selection and focusing fire. Single-target bonus damage is more likely than extra-target bonus damage to kill a foe outright rather than permitting death saving throws. Single-target bonus damage is more likely to be wasted on overkill than extra-target bonus damage.
Activation Ratio
The ratio between the number of turns that Colossus Slayer activates and the number of turns that Horde Breaker activates is critical to the analysis of which provides more average damage. However, this ratio is likely to strongly vary from game to game. There is no rigorous way to account for these variations, so the table below is designed to simply present the data for multiple ratios and allow users to select what seems reasonable in their games. Factors to keep in mind when guessing what ratios seem reasonable: How many attacks do you make? (more attacks strongly favors Colossus Slayer) How often does your DM like to use solo monsters? (more solos strongly favors Colossus Slayer) How often does your DM like to use ranged attackers? (more ranged attackers favors Colossus Slayer, due to less enemy bunching) How often does your DM prefer to have opponents focus fire on PCs? (more focused fire favors Horde Breaker, due to more enemy bunching) How many melee combatants does your party have? (more melee combatants favors Colossus Slayer, due to less enemy bunching) How many AoE-capable characters does your party have? (more AoE characters favors Colossus Slayer due to less enemy bunching) How good is your party at teamwork tactics? (more party teamwork favors Horde Breaker due to greater ability to promote enemy bunching) Do you plan on using GWM or Sharpshooter's -5/+10 ability? (using this ability strongly favors Horde Breaker) Factors favoring Colossus Slayer suggest a higher ratio. Factors favoring Horde Breaker suggest a lower ratio.
*Important Note
Counter-intuitively, be sure NOT to consider your chance to hit when determining whether the indicated activation ratio is reasonable. Technically, the higher your chance to hit the more likely Colossus Slayer is to activate. Horde Breaker's activation rate does not depend on hit chance, but the average applied damage dealt by Horde Breaker does. Ultimately, the average bonus damage provided by both abilities is reduced by the same chance of missing, and so it can be ignored in this comparison. (This permits a two-dimensional, rather than three-dimensional, analysis.)
Using the Table
Find your average base damage without Colossus Slayer or Horde Breaker on the table. The corresponding ratio on the left indicates the CS/HB activation ratio at which both abilities provide equivalent bonus damage. If this ratio seems notably high for the type of game you expect, then Horde Breaker will likely provide more bonus damage. If this ratio seems notably low for the type of game you expect, then Colossus Slayer will likely provide more bonus damage. If the ratio seems reasonable, the difference in bonus damage between the two abilities is likely to be negligible. Because the fighting style Great Weapon Fighting increases the extra damage from Colossus Slayer when using an appropriate weapon, an extra column has been provided for multiclass Rangers with that style.
http://i264.photobucket.com/albums/ii192/Xetheral/CSvsHBAnalysis.jpg
Example
Rather than just eyeballing it, the player of the ranger Hijorn takes a wild guess at some of the numbers involved in calculating the ratio. Considering the factors above and remembering past games with this DM, she guesses that maybe on 80% of rounds she's shooting at a target with less than maximum hit points. Similarly, she guesses that on maybe 50% of rounds somewhere on the battlefield there are two adjacent enemies, suggesting a ratio of 1.6. With Hunter's Mark Hijorn deals d8+d6+3 points of damage on a hit with a longbow, averaging 11 points of damage. However, Hunter's Mark bonus damage doesn't apply to a secondary target, so her base damage is instead 8.5 Looking on the table, she sees that 8.5 damage corresponds to a CS/HB ratio of about 1.9. This is somewhat higher than her estimate of 1.6, so she figures that Horde Breaker might be a slightly better choice, but that the difference is likely to be small. She knows that when she hits level 5 she'll gain an extra attack which would favor Colossus Slayer, but also that she intendeds to boost her dex to 20 by level 8, and she thinks the chance of getting a magic weapon that provides bonus damage is fairly high. The extra damage will favor Horde Breaker. The value of the extra attack is hard to quantify, but the 2 extra damage from dex will boost the ratio on the table up to 2.35, and a magic weapon would boost it even farther. She selects Horde Breaker, confident that the choice at the very least won't hurt her now, and might become quite favorable as she gains levels.
Edit: Fixed a mistake in the example.
Neither will activate every turn, but fairly clearly Colossus Slayer will activate more often than Horde Breaker. Horde Breaker, however, has the potential to deal significantly more damage by enabling the character to again apply their base damage to a new target. Accordingly, making more attacks per turn strongly favors Colossus Slayer, which will have more chances to get the required hit to activate. Conversely, dealing higher base damage strongly favors Horde Breaker by sometimes giving an extra opportunity to apply that damage. The question then becomes: for a given activation ratio, at what level of base damage does Horde Breaker surpass Colossus Slayer in extra damage dealt?
Interaction with Other Sources of Attacks
As a side note, I'd like to mention that neither Colossus Slayer nor Horde Breaker require taking the Attack Action in order to activate, they merely require making a weapon attack. This has several interesting consequences:
Both CS and HB can trigger on Bonus Action attacks. Both CS and HB can trigger on opportunity attacks. Both CS and HB can trigger on a Haste attack. Both CS and HB can trigger on a Commander's Strike attack.
Limitations to this Analysis
Before going farther I'd like to highlight some additional factors to keep in mind that this analysis cannot capture:
Single-target bonus damage is often preferable to extra-target bonus damage, because it aids in target selection and focusing fire. Single-target bonus damage is more likely than extra-target bonus damage to kill a foe outright rather than permitting death saving throws. Single-target bonus damage is more likely to be wasted on overkill than extra-target bonus damage.
Activation Ratio
The ratio between the number of turns that Colossus Slayer activates and the number of turns that Horde Breaker activates is critical to the analysis of which provides more average damage. However, this ratio is likely to strongly vary from game to game. There is no rigorous way to account for these variations, so the table below is designed to simply present the data for multiple ratios and allow users to select what seems reasonable in their games. Factors to keep in mind when guessing what ratios seem reasonable: How many attacks do you make? (more attacks strongly favors Colossus Slayer) How often does your DM like to use solo monsters? (more solos strongly favors Colossus Slayer) How often does your DM like to use ranged attackers? (more ranged attackers favors Colossus Slayer, due to less enemy bunching) How often does your DM prefer to have opponents focus fire on PCs? (more focused fire favors Horde Breaker, due to more enemy bunching) How many melee combatants does your party have? (more melee combatants favors Colossus Slayer, due to less enemy bunching) How many AoE-capable characters does your party have? (more AoE characters favors Colossus Slayer due to less enemy bunching) How good is your party at teamwork tactics? (more party teamwork favors Horde Breaker due to greater ability to promote enemy bunching) Do you plan on using GWM or Sharpshooter's -5/+10 ability? (using this ability strongly favors Horde Breaker) Factors favoring Colossus Slayer suggest a higher ratio. Factors favoring Horde Breaker suggest a lower ratio.
*Important Note
Counter-intuitively, be sure NOT to consider your chance to hit when determining whether the indicated activation ratio is reasonable. Technically, the higher your chance to hit the more likely Colossus Slayer is to activate. Horde Breaker's activation rate does not depend on hit chance, but the average applied damage dealt by Horde Breaker does. Ultimately, the average bonus damage provided by both abilities is reduced by the same chance of missing, and so it can be ignored in this comparison. (This permits a two-dimensional, rather than three-dimensional, analysis.)
Using the Table
Find your average base damage without Colossus Slayer or Horde Breaker on the table. The corresponding ratio on the left indicates the CS/HB activation ratio at which both abilities provide equivalent bonus damage. If this ratio seems notably high for the type of game you expect, then Horde Breaker will likely provide more bonus damage. If this ratio seems notably low for the type of game you expect, then Colossus Slayer will likely provide more bonus damage. If the ratio seems reasonable, the difference in bonus damage between the two abilities is likely to be negligible. Because the fighting style Great Weapon Fighting increases the extra damage from Colossus Slayer when using an appropriate weapon, an extra column has been provided for multiclass Rangers with that style.
http://i264.photobucket.com/albums/ii192/Xetheral/CSvsHBAnalysis.jpg
Example
Rather than just eyeballing it, the player of the ranger Hijorn takes a wild guess at some of the numbers involved in calculating the ratio. Considering the factors above and remembering past games with this DM, she guesses that maybe on 80% of rounds she's shooting at a target with less than maximum hit points. Similarly, she guesses that on maybe 50% of rounds somewhere on the battlefield there are two adjacent enemies, suggesting a ratio of 1.6. With Hunter's Mark Hijorn deals d8+d6+3 points of damage on a hit with a longbow, averaging 11 points of damage. However, Hunter's Mark bonus damage doesn't apply to a secondary target, so her base damage is instead 8.5 Looking on the table, she sees that 8.5 damage corresponds to a CS/HB ratio of about 1.9. This is somewhat higher than her estimate of 1.6, so she figures that Horde Breaker might be a slightly better choice, but that the difference is likely to be small. She knows that when she hits level 5 she'll gain an extra attack which would favor Colossus Slayer, but also that she intendeds to boost her dex to 20 by level 8, and she thinks the chance of getting a magic weapon that provides bonus damage is fairly high. The extra damage will favor Horde Breaker. The value of the extra attack is hard to quantify, but the 2 extra damage from dex will boost the ratio on the table up to 2.35, and a magic weapon would boost it even farther. She selects Horde Breaker, confident that the choice at the very least won't hurt her now, and might become quite favorable as she gains levels.
Edit: Fixed a mistake in the example.