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Showing posts from December, 2011

Revisiting Expected Damage

So after more thought I have decided to revisit expected damage. Consider the case with a 20/x2 critical, which is reasonably standard. Probability of Hit (No Critical) ~=  (20-(AC of target - attack of attacker))/20 Minimum is always 1/20, maximum is always 19/20 The probability of a critical hit is always 1/20 Mean Damage = (Max Damage + Min Damage)/2 Expected Total Damage = Prob of Hit * Mean Damage + Prob of Crit  * Mean Damage In our 20/x2 case: Expected Total Damage = Mean Damage * (21-(AC-Attack)/20 Consider 3 undead (+3 attack, 2d6+2 damage) attacking an AC 14 PC Expected Total Damage = (14+4)/2 *(21-(14-3)/20 = 9*10/20 = 4.5 With 3 undead, this means expected damage of 3* 4.5 = 14 damage per round If we ignore criticals, the answer would be only 12 damage per round, a 17% difference! Generically we can expand the formula for any critical hit as follows: Expected Total Damage = Mean Damage *((20+Critical Rolls*(Critical Damage Multiplier-1))-(AC-Att