@NautArch It happened once ever.

@KorvinStarmast In one strike, or via all attacks combined?

I think the dice were kind, but with 30 of them coming from the -5 +10 feature, he only needed 70, and I think that without rage damage it would not have gotten over 100. That was all three hits combined.

@NautArch We all just went "WoW!"

(Hmm, maybe one of my long sword hit included? No, I think it was all him).

@KorvinStarmast Yeah, if they're rolling 4d12/hit and they're doing 3 strikes...

I doubt we'll see it again, but it was cool as hell that one time.

it's rare that I get a crit on an enemy that's at full health

I think that the Barb Brutal Critical was what made it possible.

i feel it happens when they're nearly dead and i'm not wanting to drop a 4th level smite for that

@NautArch 4d12?

Most Giants have well over 100 HP.

@DavidCoffron 1d12 greataxe with 3d12 brutal critical at 17th level

@NautArch he said tier 3 that's sub-17

@DavidCoffron oh, then i guess 3d12 on a crit?

He only had two brut crits, since his barb level is 9. LIke I said, the dice were kind that day.

So 1 count 1d12 and 2 counts 3d12

3d12 is significant ouch.

Average is 96.5, so definitely feasible with 2/3 grits

With str and rage there was another 24 damage before dice, but it still needed great rolls and he got them.

Two crits, in one round is not that common, needless to say.

yeah, they needed only 46 damage on 3 hits. If two were crits, then that's not that hard to do.

It's getting that second crit that's hard to do. :)

@NautArch Gotta wonder what Ftr3 (Champion) Bb17 might be like. Two attacks, brutal critical, crit on 19-20, haste, action surge.

@nitsua60 something glorious :)

@nitsua60 Blendomatic

@KorvinStarmast 0.9 percent

@nitsua60 hold person bonus action casting with sorcerer is better (autocrit)

Yeah, not something one can count on. (But he had advantage, since I'd pronced the guy

Nothing really beats the paladin for nova damage, though. fewer attacks, but significantly more damage per attack.

@NautArch Heck yeah; that paladin nova damage on a crit just sprays blood and ichor all over the dungeon walls.

I'm not sure pure fighter won't be right there in the conversation, though. If we're talking about action surge and haste, then the difference between Extra Attack and Extra Attack (3) is going to be huuuuge.

@nitsua60 At level 20 champion gets 4 ...

Twelve (12) attacks in one turn!

@NautArch idk. Warlock can do a lot with quickened Eldritch blast

@KorvinStarmast (right, but it's listed as "Extra Attack (3)", since only 3 of them are extra. And it's all fighters, not just champion.)

I don't think critting on 18-20 (high-level champion) is going to beat out what a battlemaster can do with those dice. Converting a miss to a hit is... say it with me, people: huuuuuge.

=)

Should we crowdsource this thing?

Divvy up the interesting build ideas?

@DavidCoffron at level 16, what is that? 6d10+30?

assuming no crits

@nitsua60 I think Eldritch Knight is also.pretty good at high levels. There are some really good disabling level 5 spells that can get you advantage on attacks

Hmm... OP doesn't even specify if everything should come just from this character.

@nitsua60 I see we were thinking along the same lines.

And you can grab action surge for another blast

(I.e. if my build depends on haste, can I assume a friend will pre-cast it for me, or do I have to go EK myself?)

@NautArch precast hex if you want

@nitsua60 Yeah that is one of the things we usually have to pin down with these kinds of questions.

Right now, my paladin at 17 could deliver with a greataxe against a non-fiend (GWM, GWF, PAM). If I hit on my main attack, extra atttack, bonus attack, I'd get: 2d12+1d4+45+16d8

Charop Qs are such a pain in the tuckus to refine.

@NautArch I, personally, would want expectation values. Because I don't believe in "assume everything hits." Which means we'd need a target AC.

@nitsua60 Yeah, incorporating chance to hit is big - but assuming the same modifier across classes, i'm not sure there's a difference?

@NautArch <cough>battlemaster<cough><cough>GWM/SS<cough>

@NautArch Cunning Action to Hide. Archery fighting style. Guiding bolt

@nitsua60 in terms of getting advantage?

@NautArch and the -5+10

I've thought a lot about fighters. And for all people (rightly?) think of them as the "simple" class to play, there's a lot there to crunch away on.

@NautArch the -5/+10

Fighters have different kind of crunch

I think for daily DPR, the fighter wins. But in terms of straight up nova, the paladin will outclass them.

And you could go devotion to get your CHA modifier added to your attack roll.

@NautArch best nova by far is casters (sorcerer/warlock is probably best) but for weapon attacks. Yeah

@NautArch But OP "prefers" mundane damage. Which I'm reading as a requirement, otherwise the line is moot and obviously some sort of sorlock divine smiting for 1d10b+372d8r is going to take the cake.

=)

@nitsua60 I'm not even sure OP would allow the player to take a casting class. It wasn't stated directly but it was implied by one of the now-deleted comments.

@nitsua60 Is going sorlock even that necessary? with only 1-2 encounters/day and a request for biggest damage in a round, having more/regenerating spell slots isn't as good as things to increase your attacks, damage (GWM, PAM, Sentinel)

@Rubiksmoose I didn't think casting classes were out, but the use of magic wasn't their core design

@NautArch I'm not sure, there was a confusing comment that seemed to imply otherwise potentially.

I could have misunderstood though.

Fighters are just stabmages.

@Maximillian Can I upcast my Extra Attack?

Just be sure you can do the somatic component.

Fistcasting, Kickchantment, The Knee of Divination, and many more important spells.

@NautArch I dunno, frankly.

Okay, I'm going to shoot to do a L20 battlemaster tonight. Because I like the complexity of figuring expectation values with precision dice thrown into the mix. MATLAB, here I come =)

I feel like so many charop questions come from the mindset that there are just great amazing builds out there that crush every other one in every case and all someone has to do is ask to find them.

@Rubiksmoose GiTP says what?

:D

lol

There are two schools of playing fighter. Massive Optimization vs Biggest Sword is Best Sword.

Because if your sword is large enough, nobody will dare tell you that biggest sword is not best sword.

And if they do, you can prove them wrong.

I'm trying to learn 7th Sea because we're finally starting our campaign, this seems like a lot of paradigm shifting for me and especially my DnD-focused player base.

I think they'll be cool with the roll mechanic, but I worry a bit about Stories, a mechanic where the players script quests for themselves.

Lots of d10s and cool sword techniques to play with

Play Eisen, embrace the zweihander.

This is a bit unfamiliar territory to me. I don't often GM games I haven't played before, nor games with heavy barrages of lore (although as a history enthusiast, the lore works well for me) nor games that... well, seem quite professional but whose rules I'm still not quite sure of.

The authors clearly have vision, and they have style, but I'm not sure if the book represents that well... yet.

@kviiri ... I'm interested.

I dunno, I'm weird. I seem to be able to RP much better over text/typing compared to voice or in-person.

@Yuuki It's interesting for sure, I'm just not sure whether it's a good fit with the group and everything else in the system

I also spend an inordinate amount of time trying to figure out an overarching narrative for my characters.

As a consequence, I feel like I kinda suck as a player.

Maybe I should give DMing some more tries.

I've mostly just DM'd one-shots and single-nighters.

So the player doesn't just decide on the goal, they actually script the Story

"I do this, then I do that, then I do that and then I reclaim my barony in Eisen".

(and that's the main way of mechanical character advancement!)

So basically I worry about the players creating Stories that, even if they don't contradict each other, go unfulfilled because they are nowhere near each other or anything else that's interesting

I do like some of the examples they provide in FATE's tutorials where one player states a story beat and then the other players build off of that.

The cool thing about the Stories is, they're proactive (where RPGs usually are all about reacting - do this or the Lich King rules the world, defeat the Minions of Chaos or all hell breaks loose etc)

Yeah, there are a lot of different techniques for making sure improvised stories follow expected narrative guidelines like "interact with each other meaningfully" or "have a satisfying ending."

But in addition to player Stories, the GM should create some Stories (using the same step-by-step pattern) of their own AND run Villain schemes in a way that's quite similar to the traditional RPG quest where the Villain sets up the scene and the players try to thwart it

So I'm really worried there'll just be too much of everything

Now I'm thinking about a campaign plot where the heroes take the fight to the Lich King whereas the Lich King personally doesn't care. He waits like Orcus on his throne because he is immortal and therefore can take as long as he wants to complete his plans.

And now I'm thinking of WoW's Wrath of the Lich King expansion.

Where the heroes taking the fight to the Lich King was actually his plan all along.

@Yuuki Wait of the Lich King

Because he's an immortal necromancer, he'll play the long game and wait for the heroes to become stronger. And stronger still. And strong enough that they'll serve as perfect champions. All he needs to do is wait until they arrive on his doorstep and he kills them where they stand.

Oh man, that'd be a great transition from a good -> evil and possibly a future evil -> good campaign.

7th Sea Villains are rather mechanically constrained too, compared to the usual RPG baddy. I like the idea, but I'm not sure how well it works.

@Yuuki ...I'd never thought how Wrath of the Lich King is just an MMO version of "Tomb of the Cybermen."

Alternately as the prologue for a more typical campaign.

Each Villain has an Influence value, which reflects the social power, wealth and stuff like that of the Villain. The Villain must scheme to increase their Influence - rob a bank for gold, murder a rival, something similarly evil, and can spend the Influence on a variety of things

@kviiri Hmm, sounds vaguely inspired by MLWM.

Whenever they scheme for Influence, they invest some of it into the scheme, and if the PCs thwart the scheme, they lose their investment - otherwise, they gain it back doubled.

Could definitely see it as a prologue where you have your players build fairly strong characters (8-10th level maybe?) to challenge the Lich King, he kills them and your party will eventually have to face them again with their new characters.

(each Villain also has a Strength value which is how strong a villlain is excluding their social status, minions and wealth)

They could even feature as secondary antagonists for your new party.

But yea, I worry that thwarting schemes, personal Stories and GM stories are a bit too much.

That does sound a bit overstuffed.

I asked my players how they felt and they want to at least try out the personal stories... I guess they're ok as long as they understand a Story might be left out of spotlight for several sessions in a row.

@nitsua60 yeah, that's a fair point, BM has so many buttons that one can push to guarantee a hit.

@KorvinStarmast Except, of course, it depends on the modifiers. Critting is very similar to converting a miss to a hit minus the modifiers. And if you're a half-orc, maybe the crit is more impactful than a miss-->hit. Or maybe those precision dice go to waste... there're a lot of moving parts =)

@nitsua60 Yeah, my half orc champion does get that added damage die on a crit ... but he does not have those silly underbit tusks. He looks more like mom. :p

But if you're a GWM taking -5/+10, then the if there's a miss to convert to a hit, that's more important than converting a hit to a crit.

@KorvinStarmast ...

Yep. A miss does zero damage ...

...

oh, his mom.

<facepalm>

Like that 1 Hal rolled the other nite ... yeah, I can send you the back story of my half orc champion. The short one.

With a picture. But as he's not optimized, he's not in the running for this competition.

hey there @KorvinStarmast and @nitsua60

@Shalvenay Hey! how you?

@KorvinStarmast alright here, as for you?

@Shalvenay Would love to see your additions or corrections to the journal entry. I am sure I missed forgot some of the things that happened. (Fridge went down Saturday, we are still living out of coolers until Friday ..)

@KorvinStarmast ah. I'll see about getting to that here in the near future

Thx, am hoping Salty will toss in his recollections as well. I sometimes will miss a key point perspective wise, so we get a little too Hal centric on the journal entries ...

Ok y'all, so my group played D&D last night and something struck me.

I'd like some help to see if this question would be on topic.

Most dice are engraved with a certain depth, meaning certain sides have less material and therefore less weight than others. Reading through a few questions, it seems like the expected die roll would be linear, however this is only the case when all sides are exactly the same.

Is there a higher probability to roll a low number if no steps are taken to readjust the weight of a multi-sided die?

I'd like to ask this as a question, but I haven't turned up much in my googling.

Most commercial gaming dice are imperfect enough that pip depth isn't the biggest factor in fairness.

@Anoplexian I am not a dice-scientist, but from my reading the amount of material taken to make the numbers is insignificant, and in most cases is fairly equal on all sides, so it wouldn't lead to an imbalance even if it were to be insignificant.

But that's why most dice have a specific face pattern: for example, d6s are laid out so that opposite faces always add up to 7.

@Shalvenay hiya.

This helps dice be fair over a long period even if they're not always fair for a specific roll.

Assuming you have pips, then higher sides would be more likely to come up, since they are lighter

Dice are often more "weighted" because of edge imperfections than because of literal weight. Also, opaque dice often have an imperfect fill inside 'em which throws the weight off more than the pips ever could.

Most gaming dice are tumbler-polished anyway, so true balance isn't even tried for.

@BESW When in doubt, salt test it, but unless there is a glaring imbalance it won't really affect anything.

@Anoplexian In short: Yes, but pips aren't the main reason and if you're really worried just buy some Gamescience or Chessex dice and be done with it.

For gaming purposes though most gaming dice imperfections aren't significant enough to notice except across thousand-roll statistics.