How much damage a round is a blaster supposed to do?

[sorcererlover]

DM is getting worried I might be optimizing my orb of fire too much so I'd like some kind of guideline of how much damage I'm supposed to do a round assuming all of my orbs have 100% accuracy.

I read somewhere it's like ECL of party times 5?

[noob]

DM is getting worried I might be optimizing my orb of fire too much so I'd like some kind of guideline of how much damage I'm supposed to do a round assuming all of my orbs have 100% accuracy.

I read somewhere it's like ECL of party times 5?

Depending on the group and of where the damage is inflicted too much damage might go from 1 damage per turn to 10^10^10 damage per turn.
Look at how much damage per turn your average party member deals and try to not deal more than two times more this damage per turn.
Also the ability to go nova must come with the ability to avoid ever going nova until there is situations that can risk tpk (or else the gm will raise challenges and then all the encounters will be tpk level encounters)

[sorcererlover]

Depending on the group and of where the damage is inflicted too much damage might go from 1 damage per turn to 10^10^10 damage per turn.
Look at how much damage per turn your average party member deals and try to not deal more than two times more this damage per turn.
Also the ability to go nova must come with the ability to avoid ever going nova until there is situations that can risk tpk (or else the gm will raise challenges and then all the encounters will be tpk level encounters)

I want to make the argument that the other players are suboptimal and I'm normal unless I'm wrong.

For a standard d&d game, where fights take as long as they're supposed to against CR appropriate monsters without any modifications, how much damage is a blaster supposed to do compared to mundanes every round?

[noob]

I want to make the argument that the other players are suboptimal and I'm normal unless I'm wrong.

For a standard d&d game, where fights take as long as they're supposed to against CR appropriate monsters without any modifications, how much damage is a blaster supposed to do compared to mundanes every round?

A big problem is that the damage per turn needed for not dying against some cr appropriate monsters allows to annihilate most other monsters of the same cr.
Most monsters are unbalanced with each other even at a given cr and a team able to face the strongest monsters of a given cr will often steamroll all the other monsters of the same cr.
Also why orb of fire and not of force?
Is it that you like watching things burn?
If you want fire based damage then I advise you to find a way to apply searing spell and deal twice the hit points of the highest hp fire immune creature as damage in one turn.

[sorcererlover]

A big problem is that the damage per turn needed for not dying against some cr appropriate monsters allows to annihilate most other monsters of the same cr.
Most monsters are unbalanced with each other even at a given cr and a team able to face the strongest monsters of a given cr will often steamroll all the other monsters of the same cr.
Also why orb of fire and not of force?
Is it that you like watching things burn?

orb of fire does more damage and there's searing spell.

Ok, how do I put this, a core-only optimized barbarian, how much damage is he supposed to do a round? What about this barbarian boosted by other books that isn't ubercharger?

[noob]

A core only optimized barbarian deals damage per turn varying widely with armour and hit dice of the target due to the use of power attack and of a wounding weapon.
Basically against a gelatinous cube he can not miss and which have tons of hit dice he can probably deal way more than 150 damage per turn(as a level 20 barbarian).
If he likes light weapons(or whatever is the name of those weapons that ignore armour, undeads and constructs) he will often deal more than 100 damage per turn due to the fact many creatures have most of their armour under the form of natural armour or regular armour.
However that particular barbarian will have its damage drop a lot when facing constructs or undead or outsiders or fey(outsiders often gets every stat very high so it is likely that they will have a lot of armour that comes from dex and fey often gets armour from small size but fey are usually frail).
But against constructs and outsiders there is the demolition hammer which is utterly awesome and against undead there is some sword that deals double damage(both of those magic items are core)
so a level 20 core barbarian will most of the time have an average damage per turn way above 100 unless fighting particularly inconvenient monsters.

[sorcererlover]

A core only optimized barbarian deals damage per turn varying widely with armour and hit dice of the target due to the use of power attack and of a wounding weapon.
Basically against a gelatinous cube he can not miss and which have tons of hit dice he can probably deal way more than 150 damage per turn(as a level 20 barbarian).
If he likes light weapons(or whatever is the name of those weapons that ignore armour, undeads and constructs) he will often deal more than 100 damage per turn due to the fact many creatures have most of their armour under the form of natural armour or regular armour.
However that particular barbarian will have its damage drop a lot when facing constructs or undead or outsiders or fey(outsiders often gets every stat very high so it is likely that they will have a lot of armour that comes from dex and fey often gets armour from small size but fey are usually frail).
But against constructs and outsiders there is the demolition hammer which is utterly awesome and against undead there is some sword that deals double damage(both of those magic items are core)
so a level 20 core barbarian will most of the time have an average damage per turn way above 100 unless fighting particularly inconvenient monsters.

Thanks! How about at levels 10 and 15? So I can estimate how much a barbarian's damage scales with its level.

[noob]

Since I did not take in account strength and weapon damage in the calculations and estimated that ignoring those balanced out the fact I assumed most monsters would more or less get hit most of the time thanks to the light weapon enchantment(or that doubling damage would compensate the fact the monster have armour we can not bypass) I guess that linear extrapolation for lower levels would work if wbl was not exponential.
But due to how wbl works and how much dependant on qualitative enchantments that barbarian was for having reliable damage against most monsters(by the way I ignored the fact most of the time a core only barbarian will have an hard time full attacking against monsters that are played well but I think most monsters were designed not for using their powers and mobility but for standing still in front of the full attacking barbarian or else the barbarian of the team would be close to be unable to participate in many fights) It means that a lower level barbarian will have monsters he will have an hard time damaging fast(due to not having the three weapons I mentioned(forgot to mention ghost touch)).

[noce]

I had a fighter / kensai at level 16 that did 200 damage per round, plus 8 point of constitution damage.
Against a low ac enemy, damage raised to 250 + 8 con damage per round.
Those numbers are with as much power attack in order to still hit on a 2 on the last iterative attack.

Kensai and the exotic weapon master dip were from complete warrior, and feats included education, knowledge devotion, melee weapon master, so it wasn't a core build, but nothing a dm wouldn't allow.

Still, the warblade ubercharger was dealing twice as much damage (he tried to keep it "low"). And the party rogue with the serpent kingdoms dagger was dealing more damage than me, too.

The party psion was dealing 13 damage per round.

[Kelb_Panthera]

I'll assume you're already familiar with how to calculate DPR (and will be happy to explain if you need it).

Look at this; https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1J7KongPAMxJCKuSlDFIyRKj7YPWsTP2fJUh_tuS16Qs/htmlview

If you're doing enough DPR to cover the average hp for your current level's CR in one turn, you might want to reel it back. If you're doing so little it takes more than 3, turn it up.

[Rynjin]

Generally speaking a 3.PF combat is meant to take 3-4 rounds. Most characters should be able to 1 v 1 a CR = APL creature with little issue.

As a good eyeball, if you can vaporize a CR = APL creature with a single high level spell slot, you're good. If you can do it to the boss (CR +3-4), or with a significantly lower than your highest level spell slot, you've gone too far.

[Jack_Simth]

I want to make the argument that the other players are suboptimal and I'm normal unless I'm wrong.The only "normal" that matters for this is "for your table"

Outside of individual gaming tables, there's no "right" level of optimization. A party of poorly-optimized core-only bard and monks is just fine; a DM can easily tone down the encounters (whether via using lower CR critters, playing them stupid, or quietly reducing their abilities). A party of four highly optimized Tier-1 casters is fine; the DM can easily tone up the encounters (whether via using higher CR critters, playing them smart, or quietly increasing their abilities).

It's when there's a mix that there's a problem. If one character is way stronger than the others, the DM has an annoying situation: If he sets you up against opponents that are a suitable challenge to the high-op side of the party, then the critter will steamroll the low-op side of the party. If he sets you up against opponents that are a suitable challenge for the low-op side of the party, then the high-op side of the party will steamroll the critters. Neither's a good choice; in both scenarios, the low-op folks wonder why they're there.

If you've got one low-op player in a high-op group, then the low op player needs to tune up to match the table (whether that's with rebuilding and some build help, a few custom items, or whatever - the how is irrelevant for this discussion). If you've got one high-up player in a low-op group, then the high-op player needs to tune down to match the table (whether that's rebuilding, dropping a few obvious-buy items, or whatever - the how is irrelevant for this discussion).

The way you phrased the question, you're the single high-op player at the low-op table.

[Ramza00]

Honestly what is so good about Orb of Fire? Icelance is nearly as good at a lower level allowing you to use your 4th level slots for other 4th level spells that are awesome.

If the goal is save or suck Icelance does many of the same things at a lower spell level. Fort Save Ice Lance does 1d4 rounds of stun vs 1 round of daze. (Both are no actions when under the condition but Stun is stronger for the character drops any weapons / items they are holding and the rouge can now sneak attack.)

Both do damage. Ice Lance caps at 6d6 but Orb of Fire goes up to 15d6 but honestly the damage is not much higher if we are talking levels 11 and under, and if you can do 8th level spells we are no longer precislly comparing a 3rd vs a 4th level spell for utility for you have a lot more options at level 15.

Ice Lance hsa a medium range vs a close range.

Orb of Fire is a ranged touch attack, Ice Lance is a ranged attack but you get a +4 to the attack.

----

If the goal is conjuration damage in a fire spell, Blast of Flame (4th level) is also a conjuration spell so no spell resistance and you do not need to worry about AMF if you cast outside the AMF and it does 1d6 per caster level in a 60-ft. cone (max 10d6). Sure Orb of Fire has a higher max damage (15d6) vs (10d6) but remember Cone of Fire does this to a 60ft-cone area and that is a lot of squares literally over a 100 squares being pelt by a single spell.

Orb of Fire has its place and some pros vs its cons but I do not understand why everyone is so "gaga" over this spell. It is great but it is not the universal panacea and many spells work better.

[ericgrau]

orb of fire does more damage and there's searing spell.

Ok, how do I put this, a core-only optimized barbarian, how much damage is he supposed to do a round? What about this barbarian boosted by other books that isn't ubercharger?

Ooh I figured this out before. At all levels it's monster HP / 2.6 for CR = party level - 2 (4 of these is a "difficult" encounter). I assumed half attacks were single attacks and half attacks were full attacks. I checked at level 5 and level 15. In core damage actually scales pretty nicely with monster HP. You have to optimize all your +X gear very well to achieve it, but OTOH this is without any buffs, tripping, etc.

And with a quick table I found average monster HP: http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?172050-3-5-Average-Monster-Stats
Take your level, subtract 2, find monster HP of that CR, divide by 2.6 and you're done. Outside of core I think it's pretty easy to get around +50% damage simply by boosting attack bonus, damage, and #attacks with basic +X bonus feats, items and so on. Perhaps a bit more. Melee weapon mastery comes to mind for one: +2 to hit, +2 to dmg from only 1 simple feat. Once you count secondary attacks at -5 and -10 about half his attacks hit, or about 10 out of 20. So a +1 is +10% damage not +5% damage.

Anyway it scales quadratically not linearly. The core barbarian keeps up via multiple hits times scaling damage.

If your party is stronger than core barbarians then of course the damage should be more. As for how much damage should a blaster do vs a barbarian, I'm not sure. But IIRC it should be less with single target spells like the orb and more against multiple targets with spells like fireball. Also keep in mind that in core at lower levels a lot of ray spells miss. They aren't nearly auto hit until about level 11-level 15. To do it at level 11ish in core you need a good attack bonus (dex and so on) and precise shot. Even then a few foes have a good touch AC. Also by then in core your spells aren't SR:no like they are with the orb spells and SR starts to kick in a little before level 11.

[Quertus]

I want to make the argument that the other players are suboptimal and I'm normal unless I'm wrong.


The only "normal" that matters for this is "for your table"

Pretty much this.

However, if, without your character, the party would TPK constantly, then, yes, they are suboptimal, and need to improve, even if they are the majority.

[zlefin]

I use this for some useful benchmarking:
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1CCxnAb8apicr3fOrSCEFNRwHlzRieMrXm6ld9-uLAFc/edit#gid=0

at the top of the doc links to the text guide explaining it.