Savage Attacker Great Weapon Fighting

[herrhauptmann]

Race and Level: Bugbear Fighter 4.
Sources Available: Pretty much everything, including UA, though that requires DM permission.
Stats arrange in any way 8,10,12,14,16,18 then apply racial bonuses.

When doing damage, you usually have to focus on a combination of reliably hitting, and doing respectable damage.
Getting advantage on your attack rolls seems to average to what, an extra 2.5 on your attacks? But what about doing similar on your damage rolls, how much is it worthwhile?

I'm looking at Great Weapon fighter, which has "reroll any 1's or 2's on your damage dice, you must use the new roll." On a greatsword, that seems to change the average from 7 damage to 7.5. For a versatile weapon like a longsword, it goes from 5.5 to 6.5.

Then there's the feat savage attacker, which lets me reroll my damage if I don't like it, and use either total. Essentially "advantage on damage." For a longsword, that raises my average to 7.9.

Is that set of fighting style plus feat usually considered worth it?

Followup, is there an archetype that works especially well with it? I'm looking at battlemaster, samurai, and champion currently.
Battlemaster has the maneuvers, samurai gets advantage a few times per day, and champion gets crits on 19 and 20.

[meandean]

You raise an interesting point as far as how these two abilities would interact together. I assume you can use them on the same roll, or at least I don't see why not. You could probably spend hours figuring out when you should use one, or the other, or both, or which order you'd do them in if you do both, or can you even do Savage Attacker second when Great Weapon Fighting says you "must use the new roll"...

Both the rules and the math of that are beyond me. To keep it simple, I know that these abilities are kind of working against each other (Great Weapon Fighting would be better with the greatsword, Savage Attacker with the longsword), and I know that they're not all that good. Even if you use the greatsword, Great Weapon Fighting is basically about +1 damage. If you just increase your Strength by 2 instead, you'll gain +1 to hit (to-hit chance is something you should be factoring into your calculations, if you're not already), as well as that same +1 damage. You of course also increase your Strength save, grappling ability, etc. And the already-not-great Savage Attacker will decline further in significance once you get Extra Attack. I wouldn't recommend either of these abilities. (Defense fighting style is boring, but the better option.)

[herrhauptmann]

Alright, should've included.
DM has very generous starting stats, so with the racial bonus, I'll have a 20str at start.

Yeah, I did sort of notice that savage seemed to provide a bigger bonus to the versatile weapon. I expect a d12 would do even better too. My numbers did not include Stat bonuses yet. I was running my averages in excel btw. Makes it easy to get 100+ data points, even if rng is not great.

[herrhauptmann]

Math Time:
Great weapon fighter: longsword
Column A: random(1 to 10): 100 rolls gives 5.7.
COlumn B: if column A is less than 3, random (1 to 10), else, show column A. 100 rolls gives 6.55 (plus .81)

Great weapon fighter: longsword.
Column E: random(1 to 10): 100 rolls gives 5.18
COlumn F: if column E is less than 3, random (1 to 10), else, show column E. 100 rolls gives 5.95. (plus .76)

Add in Savage Attacker (roll twice and take best)
Column H: Higher value of either B or F. 100 rolls gives 7.7 (plus 1.14 of the max of column A, B, E, F)


Just Savage Attacker: Longsword
Column A: rand(1 to 10): 100 rolls gives 5.5
Column B: rand(1 to 10): 100 rolls gives 5.27.
Column C: Max of A and B: 6.84 (plus 1.34)


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Great weapon fighter: greatsword
Column A: random(2 to 12): 100 rolls gives 6.77
COlumn B: if column A is less than 5, random (1 to 10), else, show column A. 100 rolls gives 8.09 (plus 1.3)

Great weapon fighter: greatsword
Column E: random(2 to 12): 100 rolls gives 6.88
COlumn F: if column E is less than 4, random (1 to 10), else, show column E. 100 rolls gives 8.05 (plus 1.17)

Add in Savage Attacker (roll twice and take best)
Column H: Higher value of either B or F. 100 rolls gives 9.57 (plus 1.17 of the max of column A, B, E, F)


Just Savage Attacker: Greatsword
Column A: rand(2 to 12): 100 rolls gives 6.97
Column B: rand(2 to 12): 100 rolls gives 6.96
Column C: Max of A and B: 8.7 (plus 1.73)

[meandean]

Alright, should've included.
DM has very generous starting stats, so with the racial bonus, I'll have a 20str at start.Good to know :smallwink: Then I think most people in your situation would take Great Weapon Master. I think if you run the numbers, you'll find that:


On one straight roll against monsters with AC you'd expect to face at your level, GWM is slightly better than Savage Attacker. It's only worse if the AC is unusually high.
This only becomes more true if you have advantage.
Once you have multiple attacks, GWM really pulls away, because you can only use Savage Attacker on one attack. (You also can't see the future and thus may use Savage Attacker on what turns out to be your not-worst roll.)
The GWM bonus action attack on a crit or kill can't be easily quantified, but it's quite good.

If you really build towards increasing damage dice and crits -- Great Weapon Fighting style, Champion, Brutal Critical, all the rest of it -- I think the end result isn't as useless as people sometimes paint it. And it's fun, because crits are exciting anyway, and now you're getting more of them and they're bigger. That can be more fun than having a more reliable, but monotonous, GWM attack. Still, in terms of efficiency, I think that when you do that, you basically spend all of your levels and resources to get to where GWM is anyway. GWM lets you easily reach a similar DPR level and then devote the rest of your resources to other things.

[kazaryu]

Race and Level:

When doing damage, you usually have to focus on a combination of reliably hitting, and doing respectable damage.
Getting advantage on your attack rolls seems to average to what, an extra 2.5 on your attacks? But what about doing similar on your damage rolls, how much is it worthwhile? do you mean damage wise? or accuracy? when rolling at advantage you have a 51% chance of rolling a 15 or better (as opposed to 11 or better for a straight roll). for what thats worth.



I'm looking at Great Weapon fighter, which has "reroll any 1's or 2's on your damage dice, you must use the new roll." On a greatsword, that seems to change the average from 7 damage to 7.5. For a versatile weapon like a longsword, it goes from 5.5 to 6.5. pretty sure the greatsword should be a new average of 8.3. for 1d6 the average shifts to 4.166666666. and the longsword should be 5.9. it should benefit the smaller die weapon more, simply because it affects a larger portion of the die.

[RogueJK]

Skip Savage Attacker. Take Piercer, and wield a Pike. Piercer gets you 99% of the effect of Savage Attacker, plus the added effect of Brutal Critical, and it's a STR/DEX half-feat to boot. Great Weapon Fighting/Master still applies to a Pike. And as a Bugbear with a Reach weapon, you can now attack 15' away.


Something like this:
Bugbear Champion Fighter 6 -> Barbarian X (Bear Totem, Zealot, or Ancestral Guardian)
STR 18+1
DEX 16
CON 14+2
INT 10
WIS 12
CHA 8
Great Weapon fighting style
Piercer (20 STR) at 4, then plan for Great Weapon Master at 6, and Alert at Barbarian 4 (to go first more often and take advantage of that sweet +2d6 on all your attacks), followed by 18 CON or 18 DEX at Barbarian 8.

Your crit range is doubled to 19-20, and you can Recklessly Attack to generate Advantage to further double your crit chances again. On a GWM crit, you do 3d10+15, which bumps to 4d10+15 at Barbarian 9 and 5d10+15 at Barbarian 13. And you can reroll 1s and 2s, after using the Piercer reroll if needed.

You have both a +8 bonus (from DEX and the Alert feat) and eventually Advantage on Initiative rolls (from Feral Instinct at Barbarian 7), so are likely to trigger the Bugbear's racial damage against enemies who haven't gone yet. Plan to Action Surge for additional attacks when you beat the enemy's Initiative (as you frequently will), so you can to try to land +8d6 extra damage in the first round.

And you can attack from 15' away, plus have a high movement speed, which means you can play it as more of a mobile kiter tank than a frontline defender, using Ancestral Guardian.

[herrhauptmann]

I'm level 4, and going fighter.
Brutal critical is barbarian 9.

I'll look into piercer and pike.

[RogueJK]

I'm level 4, and going fighter.
Brutal critical is barbarian 9.

But you can take Piercer at Fighter 4, which gets you an additional damage dice on a critical (the same effect as the Barbarian's Brutal Critical). This is where the initial 3d10 on a crit comes from, right out the gate at Fighter 4. 1d10 base + 1d10 crit + 1d10 Piercer feat.

Then if you choose to multiclass out of Fighter into Barbarian, you could stack additional Brutal Critical dice on top of that once you eventually get high enough in Barbarian levels.

[bid]

I'm looking at Great Weapon fighter, which has "reroll any 1's or 2's on your damage dice, you must use the new roll." On a greatsword, that seems to change the average from 7 damage to 7.5. For a versatile weapon like a longsword, it goes from 5.5 to 6.5.
FYI it's exactly 2/3 extra damage for 1d6 and 4/5 for 1d10.
You only reroll once.