#damage calculations

[its-a-me-disaster]

So I made a post about how much damage Grog could do, but let’s talk about VM’s other heavy hitter, Percy.

At level 20, with no buffs he has 4 attacks and an action surge (he can’t stack action surges) for a total of 8 attacks. Hypothetical crits on each, let’s break down the damage. For this I am using Percy’s two most powerful weapons Bad News and Animus. His attacks are dex based and his magically boosted dex is 22 for a +6 modifier.

Bad News: Bad News is the most powerful gun (2d12 piercing) but can only make 1 attack before reloading. Using a bonus action to reload only works once, so we have (attack, ba reload, attack, reload, attack, reload, attack, reload, attack) for five attacks. Max damage (24x5x2) plus modifiers (6x5) tops out at 270 points of damage. But, we’re not done. One of the trick shots for gunslingers is a violent shot, which deals an additional 1 damage die per grit point spent. Percy has +3 wisdom, so 3 grit points total. He gets back one grit per critical, so for max damage the first attack he deals can do 3 additional damage die, and each after can deal 1. So he gets an additional (3d12 + 1d12 x 4), doubled which is 168 points of damage. On top of that, he can empty out Cabal’s Ruin for an additional 10d6 lightning damage doubled, for 120 damage (he can only use it once until he absorbs another spell). If he also chooses to use Sharpshooter, he gets a flat bonus of 10 to each attack (50 total). So, with Bad News he has a total of 608 damage on a turn.

Animus: stats for Animus haven’t officially been released to my knowledge, however what I’ve been able to find is that it deals 1d10 piercing, 1d6 psychic and is a plus 1 weapon. It has six barrels (we know that for a fact), so with a bonus action reload Percy can use all 8 attacks with Animus. So, that’s (10+6) per attack doubled for (16x8x2) plus modifiers (7x8) for 312 points of damage in a round. Plus his violent shots (3d10 + 1d10x7) and Cabal’s Ruin (10d6) all of which is doubled. Adding sharpshooter (10x8), means that Percy tops out at 612 damage in a round.

To take it even farther to the maximum, we consider a whole round + buffs. Percy can’t get opportunity attacks with ranged weapons but he can still get buffed. My favorite spell (Holy Weapon) gives him an additional 2d8 Radiant damage for every hit, so an extra (16x2x8) 256 damage for Animus, cranking it up to 868 damage. In addition, his hemorrhaging critical deals half damage again at the end of the enemies next turn (assuming they survive this insane amount of damage) which is within one round. So, the max damage they take is (868x1.5) 1,302 points of damage in a single round. Almost two Tarrasque’s worth of damage (676 hit points per Tarrasque, so he deals 1.92 Tarrasques of damage). Yes that’s right, that’s what we have to measure damage in terms of for Vox Machina at level 20. How many Tarrasques of damage can you deal. I’m fairly certain no one is going to come close to dishing out that much punishment, ever.

[its-a-me-disaster]

Fun fact: Grog’s theoretical maximum damage for a single turn of combat with no buffs from anyone else is 584 points of damage at level 20.

2 attacks + action surge (2 attacks) + frenzied attack (bonus action) is five total attacks. Assuming all 5 are criticals (just for theory’s sake) you’ve got 1d12 + 1d6 (bloodaxe attuned with necrotic damage) + 1d4 (enlarged) for each hit (max 22) doubled for each hit (5 x 22 x 2= 220). Plus on four of them he can use a battle master maneuver (for example tripping attack) to deal an extra 1d8 damage, doubled because of crits (8x4x2 = 64). Adding the modifier which is strength (8), magical bloodaxe (2) and rage (4) for each hit is an extra 70 damage (14x5). Plus, he’s 17 levels of barbarian so he gets three brutal critical dice for each hit so (3x12x5 = 180). Add in Great Weapon Master dealing a flat 10 damage per attack. So for one turn of combat he’s dealing 220 + 64 + 70 + 180 + 50 for 584 points of damage with no buffs from allies.

If we wanted to take it to the extreme in a whole round you can then throw in one more hit from Retaliation (44+14+36+10 = 104 damage). Plus, with a little buff from his best buddy Pike, a fifth level Holy Weapon adds 2d8 radiant damage to every single hit, which is doubled for crits. So in a round (2x8x2x6 =192) in a round with one spell from Pike, Grog dishes out a whopping 880 points of damage in a single round.

In comparison, an ancient Red Dragon has 546 hit points. A Tarrasque has 676 hit points. A Kraken has 472 hit points. Grog could nearly solo an ancient red dragon in one turn with no buffs and could take out a Tarrasque by himself in one round. (In fact he deals 1.3 Tarrasques of damage)

[garykane]

Economic Damage Calculations Rely on Detailed Research

Anytime a person or business suffers a loss of income due to wrongful acts, they may be able to receive compensation related to the event.

Perhaps it was due to negligence on the part of an individual or third party related to performance of a business.

Determining the economic losses of a person or business can require a detailed analysis of a number of inter-related factors. A forensic accountant would focus on three areas when calculating a damage amount:

Cause of the event

A determination must be made for who is at fault related to the incident. This could be a person or perhaps a company with a history of poor safety standards.

But-for performance

Calculations will need to be made to ascertain what the profits or income would have been if the incident did not occur.

Continue Reading

[endreal]

Bard Talk: A little more on damage dice

Since my bard is currently having a nice long chat with Besmara and the jury's still out on whether the rest of the party is going to resurrect her or if I'll be bringing a new character into the game next session, I figured I'd repurpose my Bard Talk tag to talk about Pathfinder more generally.

And now, ☯✞ Click Through for more Soft Math ✞☯

In my previous post I said that your damage die doesn’t matter, but if you’re in the game for optimization then you’re interested in making best effect of all possible sources of damage, and your weapon is the most obvious starting point.

As indicated earlier, for a small or medium character the average damage per hit increases by about 1 point for each step that the die type increases (with only a few exceptions):

1d2 = 1.5

1d4 = 2.5

1d6 = 3.5

1d8 = 4.5

1d10 = 5.5

1d12 = 6.5

There are a few “anomalous” results in this progression as well - 1d3 is the result of a 1d6 roll divided in half and rounded up, and a few select weapons deal 2d4 or 2d6 damage.

1d3 = 2

2d4 = 5

2d6 = 7

I am unaware of any weapons that fall outside these boundaries, and are appropriately sized for a medium or small character.

An interesting trend begins to emerge - weapons that use multiple dice deal more damage on average than comparable weapons that use a single, larger dice. Let’s compare a 2d6 weapon in ideal test conditions (only miss on a 1) against a 1d12 weapon.

38d6 = 38*3.5  = 19*7 = 133

19d12 = 19*6.5 = 123.5

Similarly, a 2d4 weapon vs. a 1d8 weapon

38d4 = 38*2.5 = 19*5 = 95

19d8 = 19*4.5 = 85.5

And 2d4 vs. 1d10

38d4 = 38*2.5 = 19*5 = 95

19d10 = 19*5.5 = 104.5

In terms of raw damage, the 1d10 weapon exceeds the 2d4 weapon by an average of 9.5 damage over 20 hits, but because of the probabilities involved in rolling multiple dice vs. a single die for damage, the following can  be attained:

2d4: mean = 5.00, std. dev. = 1.58

1d10: mean: 5.5, std. dev. = 2.87

For a 2d4 weapon, 68.2% of damage rolls will be within one standard deviation of the mean: 3.42 (round down to 3) to 6.58 (round up to 7), 3-7 damage.

For a 1d10 weapon, 68.2% of damage rolls will be within one standard deviation of the mean: 2.63 (round up to 3) to 8.37 (round down to 8), 2-8 damage.

Damage dealt by the two weapons will be roughly identical over 2/3 of the time, with the most notable differences occurring in the second and third standard deviations when we begin to see that the 2d4 weapon cannot naturally result in either 1, 9, or 10 damage, all of which are possible results for the 1d10 weapon.

What if we factor in critical hits?

Two of the most common 2d4 weapons are the falchion (18-20/x2) and scythe (x4). Although they have drastically different crit ranges and multipliers, in ideal testing conditions they both result in +3(2d4) = 6d4 damage. Two popular 1d10 weapons include the halberd (x3) and heavy flail (19-20/x2), both of which translate into +2(1d10) = 2d10 damage when accounting for critical hits. Based on these weapons, the following now results:

44d4 = 44*2.5 = 22*5 = 110, std. dev. 7.42: 103-117 damage, 68.2% of the time

21d10 = 21*5.5 = 115.5, std. dev. 13.16: 102-129 damage, 68.2% of the time

Accounting for these factors a 2d4 weapon doesn’t quite catch up to a 1d10 weapon, but it is an effective way to reliably deal nearly comparable damage, and far outshines even many of the best 1d8 weapons.