Things I Do

I mentioned before the spreadsheet I made to calculate hit percentages and the second page on it.

The second sheet is actually useful in a practical, non-theoretical way. It will calculate the BAB, Fortitude, Reflex, and Will saving throws as well as the die type for hit-points and the average hit-points for that die. In my gaming group, we roll against the DM for hit-points and take the higher of the two values. This will skew the average up a little bit, which is reflected in the final column.

All too often players will forget a step in the leveling up process and this sheet helps offset that just a little bit. You can also use it to check and see how well, or badly, off you are for hit points compared to the average baseline. Eventually I'll update it to include the Pathfinder update to the way that hit dice are determined.

The next sheet that will be added to the utilities is a sheet comparing average hit and Armor Class for each challenge rating. This sheet can help DMs create monsters, since it gives you a rough baseline for core stats or help players see what they need to be able to hit each level to remain useful in combat (in the most basic sense, spell casters and battlefield controllers don't necessarily need to be able to hit the monster in order to remain effective).

The Things I Do

I have discussions almost daily with one of my good friends about gaming. Perhaps not all the conversations start out that way, but that is usually where they end up at least temporarily.

Today's discussion was about current characters and combat tactics. His current character is very defense oriented. At level 5 he can get his AC into the high 20's, low 30's, at the trade off of his attack bonus. This prompted a discussion about average damage output since he was trading offense for defense. We went back and forth for a bit and eventually I decided to see if there was a point where the average damage output per round increased more from a boost to damage or to your hit rate.

This is the result.

You'll need to download the file to use it, but if you fill in the blue squares with the information required information it will generate a range of comparisons based on the To Hit and AC. This lets you compare your average damage output across a range of bonuses that may help you decide when to fight defensively or when to power attack for how much.

As a DM's tool this lets you enter your creature's effective AC and your PC's stats and you can get a rough idea of how long the fight will go on for if the melee classes do average damage.

I'll go into what the second sheet is on another post.

I plan on adding more sheets as more ideas arise. (Feel free to suggest them)