@waxeagle So I don't have the Starter Set (I don't see the point, since I'm not likely to play before at least the PHB comes out). Does it go up to max level for the available characters?

just L5

Basic includes level up info for 1-20

and the instructions for leveling the starter characters is pretty simplistic, no choices really, just do X, do Y

Oh. That's what I meant, I guess. Is there anything notably missing from that?

Or expressly missing, even.

@WesleyObenshain options mostly?

Basic has a solid if boring spell list for Cleric and Wizard, has a solid, if boring Fighter build and a solid if boring rogue build

it's like eating vanilla ice cream

Yeah. That's what I figured. So the information is available to determine if there's a power jump for any of the basic roles at various levels. That's kind of what I thought.

@WesleyObenshain definitely

@waxeagle (I can't @ him until he joins the room). So if GMNoob split off this paragraph:

Based on work @waxeagle did for first level, I know the "damage per adventuring day" (DPAD) is roughly the same for the Rogue, Fighter, and Wizard, but the cleric is roughly half that. Does the spread between classes stay the same through levels 5, 11 and 17 or is there power jump for one class or another at different tiers?

Would that be a "good" question, in your opinion?

@WesleyObenshain I can answer that question

@WesleyObenshain it's a solid question I think

Let me invite some of the other commentors and see what they think. Maybe once he has an answer to that, he can develop better questions for whatever else he wants to know.

I basically just established that the wizards potential damage dominates the fighter and rogue

Yeah. laughs

I don't think the question can be salvaged at all. It's based on unreleased rules. And a misreading of those unreleased rules, to boot.

@SevenSidedDie the criteria is sufficiently defined that this point is irrelevant

@waxeagle With sufficiently artificial criteria, any question can be made answerable. The stated problem is an attempt to understand the as-yet unreleased rules however. It's inappropriate to post such a question about any game.

@SevenSidedDie You might as well say we shouldn't ask 5e questions at all until the PHB comes out. This is very specific question (which is part of the current question) that we have someone ready and (apparently able) to answer.

Or the DMG. Or the MM. Or the next edition, so we know there won't be any more rules.

This question is based specifically on available material.

@WesleyObenshain We can ask questions about what has been released so far just fine. We can't ask questions that draw on a combination of released and unreleased rules though.

@WesleyObenshain The question is actually based on the encounter/XP guidelines, which do not appear in any published material. It appears in the playtest and in a preview article that carries a bolded warning that these are not final rules.

@SevenSidedDie Did you actually read what I proposed? Because your response is seeming like you didn't.

@WesleyObenshain I did. What you proposed mentioned "the adventuring day". No such thing is mentioned in available rules.

I say "mentioned", but it's more like "hinges on". The unreleased rules mentioned are central to the question posted and the proposal here.

The concept of an "adventuring day" has always existed, in the rules or outside. If he defines Adventuring day himself (basically 8 rounds of combat) it matters even less.

@WesleyObenshain 16

Sorry. 16 rounds.

How long the "Adventuring Day" is, isn't actually relevant to answering that part of the question.

but yes. It's definable outside the context of Mearls' blog

@WesleyObenshain Sure, he could define it himself. But then we're getting into artificially constructing the question so that it's not actually about the problem he's stated he's trying to solve, just to make it fit the letter of the rules here. The spirit of the rules would be ignored though: we don't host questions about speculation on unreleased rules.

It's not speculation

@SevenSidedDie It's about addressing class balance over the course of a day. Normalizing damage to a set number of rounds and trying to figure out if there is any semblance of balance in the system

It's speculation. It wants a statistical analysis of something under the 5e tag, which will become invalid when the actual rules are released.

@SevenSidedDie not irrelevant, expanded upon

Invalidated.

@SevenSidedDie not at all.

Relevance, I'm not contesting. The math become invalid without the actual math available to work with.

He wants to know if there's a significant gap in "DPS" between the various classes at higher levels. That analysis can be done with the available material just fine. It just needs some parameters which no clarification of the rules would ever define. So they have to be defined.

perhaps the only class for which this analysis will improve is the Cleric

He's not asking about DPS, he's asking about damage per adventuring day. Adventuring day is not defined, and a hypothetical definition removes it from being a question about 5e's actual rules. That puts it into homebrew or speculation.

Ignore the adventuring day construct. It's just that. A construct in which to establish a set number of rounds of combat

It's a construct derived from unpublished rules. I'd be fine if this weren't a 5e question, or if this were a question based on released rules. But it's neither.

We have a responsibility to make our 5e questions good. This question is terrible right now. Wait for the DMG, I keep saying.

I don't care one way or the other. I'm doing the analysis..If it has a home great, if not I'll put it in a blog post

In order to establish DPS for classes with a diminishing damage capacity (like Wizards) you need to establish a limit on how many rounds they have to engage between "recharges". No rule is ever going to clarify how many rounds that can or should be.

We're all excited about the new edition, but that doesn't mean we can start accepting questions about material that isn't published yet.

In this case GMNoob decided to define it as "adventuring day" based on some unpublished rules. But it doesn't really need to be. Calculations can be done for any specific number of rounds.

You keep coming back to this "unpublished material" thing and ignoring the fact that its besides the point entirely.

If he removes the term you're now griping about him providing information for a statistical analysis, at which point... what the hell?

@WesleyObenshain And that'd be fine. I still think it would make for a useless final math output, but basing it on some arbitrary "16 rounds of combat, then rest, then 16 more..." would make for something straightforward.

@WesleyObenshain If he wants to keep talking about XP and hard encounters and an implied canonical encounters-per-day (the latter which is a concept 5e lacks even in the playtest and preview encounter guidelines), then he wants to talk about the DMG material and should wait. If he can drop all pretense that that stuff is relevant and available, then it's fine.

@SevenSidedDie K. That's pretty much what I was trying to get at, but cutting it down.

* by

A new question, if it's muddy, might still get downvotes and maybe close votes, but I do think abandoning the existing one as a bad job is probably best regardless. A new formulation of the question really needs a clean break from the mess that is the past two questions on the subject.

@SevenSidedDie yeah, it should be a new question

Agreed.

With no mention of encounter math, I hope.

Just "here is the whiteroom setup: what are the implications".

@SevenSidedDie yeah no, it should lay out the construct for the analysis, that is a 16 round work day divided into 4 encounters (or whatever)

with 2 short rests etc

I still think such a thing fundamentally misunderstands the dynamic 5e has between PCs and encounters, but that too, is based on unreleased material. :)

@SevenSidedDie to some degree it does, but it's quantifiable in a way that other ways aren't

Well, I personally don't like the question because it optimizes solely on damage. But that doesn't make it a Bad Question on its own.

It's one aspect to look at though. And that's all it's aiming for.

True. I think 5e is going to defy a lot of expectations of quantifiability across different groups. I suspect a lot of the pre-play analysis will turn out to be unrelated to how it plays in practice, because of where it breaks with assumptions formed by the previous editions.

So something like: Based on work @waxeagle did for first level, I know the Total Damage Over 16 Rounds (16RD) is roughly the same for the Rogue, Fighter, and Wizard, but the Cleric is roughly half that. However, how does the damage spread ratio remain the same if you increase the number of rounds to 24 or reduce it to 8? Does the spread between classes stay the same through levels 5, 11 and 17 or is there a damage jump for one class or another at different tiers?

@SevenSidedDie well, I learned at least one thing today from my analysis. The starter set cleric shouldn't sit back and cast cantrips. It's a bad play

need something other than "damage spread ratio", there. That phrase is almost meaningless... "Damage per Round" probably.

@WesleyObenshain skip ratio, just damage spread

Although, if he doesn't get to it, maybe you should just self answer the question. :-P

@WesleyObenshain I think I'd rather write a blog post :)

@waxeagle I get the impression that at-wills are going to be situational and fall-backs, with doing other encounter-specific things being better sometimes. That's a significant departure from their role in 4e.

@waxeagle Fair enough.

@SevenSidedDie you mean like interacting with the environment?

@waxeagle That and other things. I suspect maximising per-round damage output is going to be a suboptimal strategy except in orc-and-pie encounters. And 5e's combat isn't interesting enough to make orc-and-pie fun for a whole campaign.

@SevenSidedDie yeah, I think my PCs were fairly bored through the first dungeon playing it straight up. I missed a couple of the cooler bits too and I'm going to have to do better next time

Hence my issue with it, but GMNoob's thesis is that he's concerned with being effective in combat so it make sense he'd ask about damage. There are other things to combat, but that's what a lot of optimizers focus on (no offense, @waxeagle)

@WesleyObenshain no, I've said a few times now that it would be silly for the wizard to spend their spells on damage (and having the cleric in the mix right now is silly as well). Damage is the easy thing to quantify, but it's not the only thing.

For instance, the L3 cleric spell I use in the damage calc is a terrible choice, but its the only thing that actually can be usefully cast for damage at that level

@waxeagle Have you considered assigning healing equal weight to damage (like you did with Sleep) and seeing how that affects it? It won't answer his question but it might help your analysis.

@WesleyObenshain will ponder

@waxeagle I suspect that 5e's forte will be "nest of orcs with many pies, also a bakery, and the chef has a vendetta against the ogre leader who hates pies; meanwhile the orcs in section 3 like peach pie, the ones in section 2 like pigeon pie, and the orcs in section 4 would like to break away and found a pie bakery in Waterdeep. Tacsit: The orcs have stolen some pigs to make pork pie. What do you do about that?"