jsh
2007-08-26, 07:23 PM
I made a good faith effort to search this topic, and I didn't find anything.
Regarding the conversation Belkar has immediately prior to joining the team:
Belkar tells the monk that the monk may get a lot of attacks with his flurry attack; however, he has a low attack bonus and is therefore not very effective. That got me thinking about some old war math that I cannot find to cite, where it turns out that more not-so-good chances of hitting is better than fewer good chances of hitting.
I made a spreadsheet where I assumed a hypothetical character was deciding between monk & fighter, and wanted to look at the basic expected damage without modifiers other than level and class. Setting a +0 bonus as 1.00, +1 bonus as 1.05, &c. giving average damage for the monk's hands (3.5 on a 1d6) and a fighter's longsword (4.5 on a 1d8), and then giving a flat 50% chance chance of hitting (AC 10 for the opponent) I calculated expected damage for levels 1 through 13.
(In doing this, I assumed that there'd be symmetrical complications and they could be ignored.)
The results are interesting: at levels 1 through 5, the monk inflicts more expected damage than the fighter; at levels 6 and 7, the fighters inflict more damage (about 1/3 more at those two levels); at level 8, they are about even; and from levels 9 through 13, the monk inflicts more damage. Here is the fighter's expected damage as an approximate percentage of the monk's expected damage:
Level F % of M
1 88%
2 86%
3 84%
4 82%
5 80%
6 134%
7 133%
8 100%
9 99%
10 98%
11 92%
12 92%
13 98%
(The table ain't pretty, but I'm sure you can handle it.)
Obviously, there's more to consider than just this; however, it's still interesting.
Regarding the conversation Belkar has immediately prior to joining the team:
Belkar tells the monk that the monk may get a lot of attacks with his flurry attack; however, he has a low attack bonus and is therefore not very effective. That got me thinking about some old war math that I cannot find to cite, where it turns out that more not-so-good chances of hitting is better than fewer good chances of hitting.
I made a spreadsheet where I assumed a hypothetical character was deciding between monk & fighter, and wanted to look at the basic expected damage without modifiers other than level and class. Setting a +0 bonus as 1.00, +1 bonus as 1.05, &c. giving average damage for the monk's hands (3.5 on a 1d6) and a fighter's longsword (4.5 on a 1d8), and then giving a flat 50% chance chance of hitting (AC 10 for the opponent) I calculated expected damage for levels 1 through 13.
(In doing this, I assumed that there'd be symmetrical complications and they could be ignored.)
The results are interesting: at levels 1 through 5, the monk inflicts more expected damage than the fighter; at levels 6 and 7, the fighters inflict more damage (about 1/3 more at those two levels); at level 8, they are about even; and from levels 9 through 13, the monk inflicts more damage. Here is the fighter's expected damage as an approximate percentage of the monk's expected damage:
Level F % of M
1 88%
2 86%
3 84%
4 82%
5 80%
6 134%
7 133%
8 100%
9 99%
10 98%
11 92%
12 92%
13 98%
(The table ain't pretty, but I'm sure you can handle it.)
Obviously, there's more to consider than just this; however, it's still interesting.