How much Damage do YOU really have to do?

[Firechanter]

Inspired by Zalabim's remark in the other thread about highest single-target damage:

Alternatively, we can assign a value of DPR to the non-testing parties, and count rounds using a combination of contributions. There's probably room for a whole thread on "how much damage do you really have to do."

And that's what I would like to discuss here. Where "you" refers to the dedicated Damage Dealer of the party. Let's make the assumption that we have a party of four, with one DD, one "Tank", one AoE and one support. The DD typically pays for superior DPR by inferior AC so they'll also take most damage per round.

So what makes having a DD worthwhile? In our current game, I play the DD. And I haven't exactly kept track, but I think my damage contribution is probably about the same as the rest of the party combined, or 50%. Sometimes more, sometimes less. OTOH, this also makes me the primary target in many fights and my character is _by far_the one who goes down most often and needs most healing. But in the end it's still worth it, because wrapping up quickly means saved resources in the long run; particularly if the enemy has AoE or any abilities that shift action economy (by, say, Dominating your Barb).

So basically, we need to look at how many XP our party needs to gain per day, how many HP (or what ranges of HP) that's usually worth, and how quickly our party can take these HP to zero. The necessary encounters should be split up into three brackets, separated by a total of two Short Rests.

Anything else we need to take into account? I don't want to run a lot of math for nothing because I made an oversight.

[Slipperychicken]

Controlling for CR would help. That way we could say "a party facing encounters at this CR should output this much damage per round".


I think a time limit on fights may be helpful. Say your party should be doing the required damage in no more than 10 rounds. Go over that, and you might need to do things like re-cast buffs, use another rage, and so on. To account for variation, we could say the average damage should KO the encounter in 7 rounds. Whatever limit we pick, we can just divide the encounter's HP (and the healing we could expect from it) by that number, and that's the DPR needed to finish it on time.


Since damage is variable, we should keep that in mind. If on average you kill a monster in 10 rounds, that means you have a 50% chance to take longer than 10 rounds, which probably isn't what we want.

[Giant2005]

Measuring damage is kind of pointless. The only metric that really matters is how few resources (most notably hit points) are expended in defeating your enemy.
The team that ends an encounter with more resources remaining is the better team, even if their damage isn't as good.

[JackPhoenix]

Measuring damage is kind of pointless. The only metric that really matters is how few resources (most notably hit points) are expended in defeating your enemy.
The team that ends an encounter with more resources remaining is the better team, even if their damage isn't as good.

Agreed. This is not an MMORPG or 4e, not everyone has a clearly defined role. In my group, there are 3 level 5 characters, valor bard (archer with sharpshooter feat), sorcerer (favored soul with life domain) and devotion paladin (sword and board). The bard does most damage overall, while being reasonably tanky in medium armor and with shield. Decent HP too, thanks to lucky rolls. The paladin is both tank and healer...but she can do decent damage if she uses smite. The sorcerer can heal, his normal damage sucks (he insists on trying to hit things with non-proficient longsword) while he refuses to use armor despite being proficient...but if the situation is right, his Fireball can do more damage than the other characters combined.

The "required" damage also depends on situation...against hordes of kobolds, your high damage is useless if its single target only. And while the sorcerer's Acid Splash was decent at killing two kobolds at the same time, killing zombies (surprisingly tough bastards in this edition) took him forever thanks to the low damage, while the bard basically one-shotted them...and if not, the AoE was actually decent in finishing them (or rather, weakening them before the shot, you want high damage as the last hit to keep them down) off instead of forcing the bard to waste another high damage attack on enemy with one or 2 hp left.

And of course it would be different even in different games...game with more roleplaying/exploration and less combat have different requirements from a game with few tough battles, which has still different requirements from a game with lots of easier fights.

[Pex]

Not enough to worry about doing as much as possible. A Sorcerer multiclassing two levels in Warlock can do significant damage with Quicken Eldritch Blast/Eldritch Blast with Hex cast an earlier round, but one is not playing the game wrong just being a single class Gold Dragon Sorcerer and casting plain Firebolt. Having Elemental Affinity to deal with fire resistance is nice and just cast something else when facing fire immunity. Eldritch Blast being the "best" offense cantrip doesn't make all the others The Suck and not worth having.

For warrior types same idea. A barbarian is all about damage, stereotypically speaking. Go gung ho and enjoy. Generally damage is important, but don't sweat it if your over time average damage is 1 or 3 less per hit it could have been because you chose to do something non-direct damage related into your build. Personally I'm playing a two-handed Devotion Paladin. Rerolling 1s and 2s has been a great help. I do not have Great Weapon Master and don't plan on taking it any time soon. Smites are enough for nova damage, and 8th level I'll increase CH by 2 for +1 to all saving throws. Add in immune to charm, mountain dwarf poison resistance and saving throw advantage, and eventual immune to fear my character is durable. At 12th level I'm seriously considering taking Resilient (Con) since my Con is 15 for the extra hit points and help on concentration checks. Our archer ranger does have Sharpshooter already. Along with Hunter's Mark she deals great damage for us, and I think more per round than me since I don't smite all the time. It's not a problem and we're not in competition. Our bard was quite happy enough to get a bonus to her saving throw thanks to me. Quibbling over a couple of hit points of damage dealing would be ludicrous.

[Firechanter]

I agree: saving your resources is what is most important. The longer you keep your resources, the longer you can keep going.

However, clipping the duration of a fight is a very good way to do that. It's also a very reliable strategy. Enemies don't just do single-target HP damage, they often have nasty surprises:
- AoE energy damage
- healing _their_ allies
- using Save-or-Sucks that take an ally out of the fight, or, even worse, make him turn on you
- damaging your equipment (cf. Black Pudding)
- or that Zombie thing that says you can't kill them if your Alpha damage is too low.

just to name a few. This should make clear that just optimizing AC won't cut it. We've had quite a few of those in our campaign -- encounters that made it very clear that if we didn't take out the enemy _quickly_, we'd be in big trouble.

I suppose you _could_ make a very tanky party with high AC and a couple of Paladin auras (especially if your DM allows them to stack) to protect you from magic attacks. But there's probably still a bunch of monsters that can bite you in the arse.

Also, less damage means more rounds, means more time at the table is spent on every single fight.