Melee Physical Damage Comparisons

[morpheus562]

Removed

 

Edited November 21, 2022 by morpheus562
Added 2nd Kensai Build

[polytope]

My own thoughts:

Ascension - which many long time enthusiasts use and consider canon - actually removes both backstab and critical immunity from many bosses, toughening them in other ways.

A monk is the most damaging if they've got Righteous Magic from the headband and GWW against crit immune creatures, other fighters surpass monk against anything that can be critted. An improved hasted fighter/thief or fighter->thief using Assassination outdoes them all (true it's only 1/day, but so is the headband).

The blade isn't quite so badly off as the chart suggests because so few enemies actually have an AC below -12.

• Nizi the Black Dragon has base AC -12 and 21 dex (-17 total)
• Abazigal has base AC -12 and 19 dex in humanoid form, 17 in dragon form (-16 to -15)
• Fallen Solar(s) have base AC -10 and 19 dex (-14 total)
• Melissan has base AC -8 and 20 dex (-12 total), Ascension improves her base AC to -10
• Mariliths have base AC -9 and 18 dex (-13 total)

This is equally true of dual-classed human fighter->mages, thieves or druids (clerics can cast Holy Power so have fighter THAC0 anyway) but they will of course never have Critical Strike. Removing critical hit immunity from powerful enemies actually gives an advantage to single class fighters compared to overused and overpowered human dual classes.

Speaking of which, the blade's curve implies they are not autohitting AC0 (apart from critical misses) blades late game have a base THAC0 of 10, sub 7 for 25 str, 2 for Offensive Spin and 1 for gauntlets and they're already at 0, then sub another 5 mainhand (weapon enchantment) and 1 offhand (weapon enchantment - offhand penalty). Note that the offhand penalty for a blade could be obviated entirely by wearing Montolio's cloak. Also, blades and dual classed humans both might prefer to use Answerer long sword main hand, Crom off to make very low AC enemies more hittable. Then again, Answerer and Montolio's both come so late in the game you might ignore that for purpose of comparing builds.

[morpheus562]

8 minutes ago, polytope said:

My own thoughts:

Ascension - which many long time enthusiasts use and consider canon - actually removes both backstab and critical immunity from many bosses, toughening them in other ways.

A monk is the most damaging if they've got Righteous Magic from the headband and GWW against crit immune creatures, other fighters surpass monk against anything that can be critted. An improved hasted fighter/thief or fighter->thief using Assassination outdoes them all (true it's only 1/day, but so is the headband).

The blade isn't quite so badly off as the chart suggests because so few enemies actually have an AC below -12.

• Nizi the Black Dragon has base AC -12 and 21 dex (-17 total)
• Abazigal has base AC -12 and 19 dex in humanoid form, 17 in dragon form (-16 to -15)
• Fallen Solar(s) have base AC -10 and 19 dex (-14 total)
• Melissan has base AC -8 and 20 dex (-12 total), Ascension improves her base AC to -10
• Mariliths have base AC -9 and 18 dex (-13 total)

This is equally true of dual-classed human fighter->mages, thieves or druids (clerics can cast Holy Power so have fighter THAC0 anyway) but they will of course never have Critical Strike. Removing critical hit immunity from powerful enemies actually gives an advantage to single class fighters compared to overused and overpowered human dual classes.

Speaking of which, the blade's curve implies they are not autohitting AC0 (apart from critical misses) blades late game have a base THAC0 of 10, sub 7 for 25 str, 2 for Offensive Spin and 1 for gauntlets and they're already at 0, then sub another 5 mainhand (weapon enchantment) and 1 offhand (weapon enchantment - offhand penalty). Note that the offhand penalty for a blade could be obviated entirely by wearing Montolio's cloak. Also, blades and dual classed humans both might prefer to use Answerer long sword main hand, Crom off to make very low AC enemies more hittable. Then again, Answerer and Montolio's both come so late in the game you might ignore that for purpose of comparing builds.

I just checked Ascension and the only reference to removing Crit Hit protection is against Yaga-Shura. Not sure where you are getting "many bosses" from, so I hope you can elaborate. I also checked my game with Ascension installed, and he does have crit immunity. For consistency sake we need to focus on Vanilla since mod setups will make these numbers change DRASTICALLY. Saying one mod counts while another doesn't is just asking for inconsistencies.

To your second point, I agree: against bosses, most strong enemies, and anybody wearing a helmet the monk does the most damage while fighters do better numbers against trivial trash mobs and the random, occasional tough enemy since they can be crit. I agree Assassination will do some very interesting damage and for that very brief one round it will be devastating. Just note, Assassination is one use per day for one round versus one turn compared to the headband. GWW can be chained to ensure uptime to compete with IH, Assassination is very much one and done.

On its best day, the Blade is almost 200 DPR off from a fighter and almost 300 DPR off from the Monk. I would argue it is very badly off against enemies of any AC compared to the other classes. Hitting isn't the problem with Blades since Thac0 can be easily buffed, they lack in DAMAGE. The Answerer is not the answer here. Blades need APR and damage, and your proposal would reduce both. 

[polytope]

53 minutes ago, morpheus562 said:

I just checked Ascension and the only reference to removing Crit Hit protection is against Yaga-Shura. Not sure where you are getting "many bosses" from, so I hope you can elaborate. I also checked my game with Ascension installed, and he does have crit immunity. For consistency sake we need to focus on Vanilla since mod setups will make these numbers change DRASTICALLY.

You're right that we should mostly focus on vanilla, but I think Ascension (like the G3 fixpack) is used by the majority of players now. It's undergone considerable reiterations though, in my version neither yaga.cre nor finyaga.cre at the throne have critical hit protection or backstab immunity, neither does balth.cre & finbalth.cre, nor illasera.cre and finilla.cre while abazigal.cre has simply lost backstab immunity. Significantly finmel01 also loses immunity to backstab and criticals as soon as either Balthazar (if an enemy) or Gromnir (if not) dies.

59 minutes ago, morpheus562 said:

On its best day, the Blade is almost 200 DPR off from a fighter and almost 300 DPR off from the Monk. I would argue it is very badly off against enemies of any AC compared to the other classes. Hitting isn't the problem with Blades since Thac0 can be easily buffed, they lack in DAMAGE. The Answerer is not the answer here. Blades need APR and damage, and your proposal would reduce both. 

They'll never be on par with true fighters or monks (after the early game), but shouldn't be because they're also a spellcasting class after all.

I've found blades and dual class humans are more thwarted by enemy AC. How many ways to further reduce THAC0 besides Chant, Aid and the Ioun stone or Helmet? There's also potions of heroism and Tenser's Transformation but that disallows subsequent use of Offensive Spin thus reducing both apr and damage output (and preventing refreshment of buffs).

Do Improved Haste and Offensive Spin still work in combo in your game? With these a blade dual wielding actually has 6 Apr (7 with Gauntlets of Extraordinary Specialization) or 8 (9 w gauntlets) if using a speed weapon. 5 successful hits with Answerer (1 round of attacks w gauntlets and Crom off) lowers an enemy's AC by 10 points usually putting the bard on the same autohitting-except-for critical misses advantage as the monk for the next 3 rounds, in which time they can now deploy another weapon.

Admittedly, it's tedious to switch weapons and arguably cheesy to access the inventory screen during a melee. Switching from Answerer mainhand to Scarlet if it's in a quick weapon slot mid-combat doesn't seem like an exploit though.

[suy]

9 hours ago, polytope said:

You're right that we should mostly focus on vanilla, but I think Ascension (like the G3 fixpack) is used by the majority of players now. It's undergone considerable reiterations though, in my version neither yaga.cre nor finyaga.cre at the throne have critical hit protection or backstab immunity, neither does balth.cre & finbalth.cre, nor illasera.cre and finilla.cre while abazigal.cre has simply lost backstab immunity. Significantly finmel01 also loses immunity to backstab and criticals as soon as either Balthazar (if an enemy) or Gromnir (if not) dies.

You've blown my mind a bit here.

I clearly remember that at some point I checked Balthazar's stats and abilities, and had a good chuckle when I realized that it had critical hit protection due to the helmet without animation and some permanent Improved Haste effect (of the Haste2 type, the one granted by GWW, and which is the only source of Haste that a Monk is not immune to). It's funny to me, because the usual complaints vs the Monk class are exactly the lack of Haste and and lack of critical hit protection. A normal character can't have that.

But I did some quick check, and indeed in my (old) installation of Ascension+SCS, BALTH.CRE doesn't seem to have immunity to backstab nor critical hits. So it might have been a wrong check on my side, or that I checked the vanilla creature as well.

From the playthrough of that installation, I did not remember enemies having such immunities, but I could have overlooked that, so I'm gonna surely enjoy discovering this again the next ToB run!

But I surely pleasantly remember when I discovered that a Fallen Planetar can very consistently be killed in one single round with hour humble Rasaad, just with Critical Strike (and his usual equipment, which was of course a Strengh-buffing belt). So it's indeed something that not always we realize, because I don't remember people mentioning this a good strategy for disposing them.

Thanks.

 

[morpheus562]

Lots of updates around Kensais. Updated number attached in OP.

[Trouveur80]

Would be nice to use Tenser's Transformation for the blade.

 

Also, do you planned to add the Archer in this comparison?

Edited August 24, 2022 by Trouveur80

[morpheus562]

57 minutes ago, Trouveur80 said:

Would be nice to use Tenser's Transformation for the blade.

 

Also, do you planned to add the Archer in this comparison?

Blade's damage increases to 207 DPR with Tenser's, so hardly an improvement at the loss of their spellcasting. I plan to do a ranged comparison at some point to compare different Archer's and bows along with Kensai and throwing weapons.

[Endarire]

I heard there was an AC cap.  Is that true?  If so, what is it?

Thankee!

[Trouveur80]

6 hours ago, morpheus562 said:

Blade's damage increases to 207 DPR with Tenser's, so hardly an improvement at the loss of their spellcasting. I plan to do a ranged comparison at some point to compare different Archer's and bows along with Kensai and throwing weapons.

But it greatly increases ThAC0, so the diminishing damage based on opponent's AC doesn't apply.

Also, improved bard song is not taken into account either ? With the bard hat he blade can fight while under the song effect.

Edited August 25, 2022 by Trouveur80

[morpheus562]

6 minutes ago, Trouveur80 said:

But it greatly increases ThAC0, so the diminishing damage based on opponent's AC doesn't apply.

Also, improved bard song is not taken into account either ? With the bard hat he blade can fight while under the song effect.

Thac0 on a Blade can be improved to infinity and it would still only deal 207 DPR at the top end. Bard song is not taken into account because it takes one round of dealing NO damage for it to kick in so you can then time two rounds of dealing damage to going back to having to sing. Doing all that, with Tenser's, it comes out to 233.7 DPR. You can have two Blades dealing this damage and it would still be less than the top damage on the charts.

[polytope]

21 hours ago, suy said:

But I surely pleasantly remember when I discovered that a Fallen Planetar can very consistently be killed in one single round with hour humble Rasaad, just with Critical Strike (and his usual equipment, which was of course a Strengh-buffing belt). So it's indeed something that not always we realize, because I don't remember people mentioning this a good strategy for disposing them.

Yes critical vulnerability gives single class warriors an opportunity to shine late game where they tend to be eclipsed by spellcasters, and especially multi and dual class spellcasters (critical strike is proportionately better than whirlwind if you have weapon grandmastery, which multis don't... excluding briefly from casting Black Blade of Disaster).

On topic of the thread, I think swashbucklers should get a mention.

Swashbuckler set up with: Staff of the Ram +6 (1.6+12+1.4 base) 24 strength from girdle and a Holy Symbol (+12) gauntlets of Weapon Expertise (+2) specialization in staves (+2) and a point in 2 handed weapon style (+1) along with kit bonuses at max level (+8), THAC0 of -8 using Whirlwind.

• VS AC > -10  : 370.50 dam/round
• VS AC = -11  : 351.00 dam/round
• VS AC  =-12  : 331.50 dam/round
• VS AC = -13  : 312.00 dam/round
• VS AC = -14  : 292.50 dam/round
• VS AC = -15  : 273.00 dam/round
• VS AC = -16  : 253.50 dam/round
• VS AC = -17  : 234.00 dam/round

Admittedly this involves wasteful forging of the improved staff, and assumes the target can't be knocked back (either native immunity or being cornered against a wall) which ends the time window for damage of the WW.

Alternative set up: Wielding Angurvadal or Spectral Brand (1.8+5+1.4+1 fire/1.8+5+1.6 cold), strength and specialization as above, bearing either a shield offhand or even single weapon style, THAC0 of -7 using WW.

• VS AC > -  9 : 313.50 dam/round
• VS AC = -10 : 297.00 dam/round
• VS AC = -11 : 280.50 dam/round
• VS AC = -12 : 264.00 dam/round
• VS AC = -13 : 247.50 dam/round
• VS AC = -14 : 231.50 dam/round
• VS AC = -15 : 214.50 dam/round
• VS AC = -16 : 198.00 dam/round
• VS AC = -17 : 181.50 dam/round

How does a swashbuckler perform without 1-round-duration HLAs?

Angurvadal/Spectral Brand mainhand, Scarlet Ninja-to offhand, Gauntlets of Extraordinary Specialization, Montolio's Cloak, mainhand THAC0 of -11, offhand THAC0 of -9 and 7 APR while under Improved Haste.

• VS AC > -11    :    235.60 dam/round
• VS AC = -12    :    232.45 dam/round
• VS AC = -13    :    229.30 dam/round
• VS AC = -14    :    216.90 dam/round
• VS AC = -15    :    204.50 dam/round
• VS AC = -16    :    192.10 dam/round
• VS AC = -17    :    179.70 dam/round

Edited August 25, 2022 by polytope
Error: Swashbuckler gets only WW, not GWW

[morpheus562]

@polytopeI am not following for Swashbuckler? They do not get access to GWW nor do they get access to a holy symbol. The only way for them to get GWW is to dual class into a fighter, and then they wouldn't have UAI to use another class's holy symbol. Additionally, a dual into fighter would be behind the kensai that receives a bonus to hit and damage every 3 levels versus the every 5 levels that Swashbuckler gets.

[suy]

Swashbuckler actually gets Whirlwind (but not GWW) instead of Assasination.

[morpheus562]

6 minutes ago, suy said:

Swashbuckler actually gets Whirlwind (but not GWW) instead of Assasination.

Thank  you! So yes, Whirlwind will impart a -4 penalty to hit and damage which will be no bueno in terms of its damage output.