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so you average dmg is higher but wont your normal shot be better the more shots you take because it will hit more often so out of 100 shots you hit normal 65 times with the average dmg per shot coming out to 316 where as the average dmg over 100 shots with GWM over 100 shots hitting 45 times coming out to 280 dmg using the average damage? Im not a real big math person but if you hit less over time you will do less dmg or am I just way off base.
Normal shot is 7.5 average damage on a hit Sharpshooter is 17.5 average damage 65 hits times 7.5 damage is 487.5 damage 40 hits times 17.5 damage is 700 damage. The damage per shot shown in the video already took the chance to miss into account, it looks like you applied the chance to hit a second time with your numbers
Exactly what I was coming to the comments to say. Sometimes you just need to down that last hit point to put the enemy out of commission before their turn
@@grogmadman522yeah, the enemies aren't a single blob of hp points, so if you are consistently getting better turns to kill you can just go without sharpshooter
@@naturalkind5591 Honestly, ignoring cover lower than full cover is too OP. There's practically no defense against it, and you still may get +2 to attack from archery fighting style.
The one thing to take into account in BG3 is if you're using one of your weapon's special attacks (or a battle master special attack). If you really need that rider effect to land, it may be worth sacrificing the extra damage.
Just one thing to keep in mind: with the extra attack feature, even if not power-attacking nets more average damage, if GWM/ShSh lets you kill an opponent in one hit, its value rises dramatically
There's actually quite a bit more to it than straight DPR, mostly because BG3 is a very complex game. I find myself deactivating SS often, because my character does much more than just shoot people. I rely on higher accuracy over damage when: - I've used some poison before combat and I want to apply it to the enemy ASAP. - I'm using any of my battlemaster maneuvers that would quickly dispose of my enemy or make it significantly less threatening, such as pushing attack near a cliff or dissarming attack when a character near the enemy can take the weapon. - If the enemy is a spellcaster using a big concentration spell and I don't expect to kill him anytime soon. The chance of him missing the con save is more important than doing big damage if I know is going to take a while. - The enemy is so low that a normal hit would be enough. - I don't want to kill the enmy that fast, as some enemies in this game can do things like blow up when killed. I let them as low as possible so they're at my mercy, move everyone away from the AoE, then kill them. - With my assassin rogue when the enemy is surprised. I really dont want to miss that guaranteed crit, specially because I have an item that applies a special debuff upon crits.
This is why I really feel that losing the -5/+10 option for Weapon Masteries in D&D One is actually a downgrade in terms of tactical awareness. The Weapon Masteries, especially once you have a magic weapon you don't want to switch out, are essentially passive buffs that are always on with no downsides - you don't need to think about them, they either do something or they don't. Like Graze; did you hit? No Graze. Did you miss? Graze. You don't change your tactics to make Graze work, it either occurs or it doesn't. They really need to add -5/+10 to be automatically picked up when you acquire a Fighting Style. It shows the ability to switch things up as the situation demands, which is a sign of martial prowess. Stops it being a feat tax while still providing tactical options to the desert of options martials have.
If the enemy you are shooting has less remaining HP than the Minimum damage of an non-sharpshooter shot then you might as well launch a non-sharpshooter shot as your chance to kill is equal to your chance to hit
This is correct, especially for tabletop. But I found that with poisons in bg3, it often makes a lot more sense to first blind/paralize the enemy, or even several enemies in one turn if I feel like face rolling an encounter.
Something I think should be added here is: There are times where the amount of damage is not as relevant as actually hitting, special arrows or low Hp targets, so don't forget to switch it off if you don't need the dmg.
One situation where it's worth turning off the power attack is when you're trying to finish off an enemy with only a few points of health left; if any hit is almost guaranteed to kill them, you want the higher chance to hit rather than extra damage so that you'll be less likely to need to use more than one attack on them
Good to know. I'd really like to see you make a video about how much better range is in Baldur's gate 3 than Melee is. I've done some fights multiple times with different team comps and melee even when I'm not using control spells is just a liability.
Your average damage calculation only applies if the fight lasts a long time. It does not take into account how important it is to eliminate further enemy participation in a quick fashion. The length of the fight depends on more than just the average long term damage. So there still is a balance of risk, which bothered me quite a bit when I first heard about sharpshooter, especially because my first fights were driving home the high value of each and every action in the game. Not having played D&D or BG3 before, I didn't know you could toggle it. The fact that you can toggle it makes it an almost invaluable feat to take for some builds, because you can manage this risk on the fly when assessing how the battle is going. For example, if someone has low hp, that extra damage doesn't matter, and the increased to hit chance does. The other benefit about sharpshooter not mentioned is the no penalty for low ground.
Great Weapon Master and Sharpshooter be the kind of things that you'll need to micromanage them a bit, but they vary well rewarded if you optimize your attack bonuses.
very helpfully, i tried changing karlachs class to paladin on 2 play thrus, and completly hated it becuz i thought paladins acc was aweful. but turns out it was just great weapon master feat. i was about to try it again when i found out about oath of devotion has sacred wep which boost acc. very informative, idk why it doesnt say the feat lower acc
I remember somewhere picking up a fear bow and completely stun locking toll collector. They were stuck 4 feet away while i delt with the skulls and succeeded reapplying frightened every turn
I feel like the possibly understated summary point here is that the more base/avg damage you do either from weapon enchantments, special arrows, magic items, etc the less worth it it is to keep sharpshooter on in low hit percentage scenarios. Put simply a +10 damage means less if you’re already gonna hit hard. In-game considerations like having the cull the weak illithid perk make this even more true.
Very clear explanation. I think one of the biggest issues with GWM or SS is that it's simply not "fun" to miss, even if, on average, you are doing more damage. Also, if you think an enemy's nearly finished, not using GWM or SS will help ensure you finish them off, but that's tricky to know.
You are right on the pure math path regarding damage but the point you neglect to mention is consistency. Having a lower chance to hit increases the probability not to hit obviously. Situations with a lower hit ratio naturally lead to a higher demand to deal more damage. This is over a big sample size naturally accomplished. But when you have a small sample size, or in game terms, a battle lasting say 4-5 rounds you want to have consistency too. Especially on low levels I would say missing out on the first 2 rounds or so of damage could be a huge disadvantage. Therefor adding a factor to take this into account would provide a more complete view in my opinion. A have not thought about how high consistency should be valued in pure numbers so I can´t give one unfortunately. But for situations where the average damage using a method with lower hit rate is in the range of the method with the higher hit rate I would still pick the method with the higher hit rate.
also take into consideration the damage that your allies could potentially do to the target before the next sharpshooter turn. If you'd need just a little bit of damage to guarantee your allies could take them down, then it's possibly worth toggling off sharpshooter
I think people just saw you missing like 8 times (or however many it was) and forget sometimes you just get bad luck and that's it. 40% isn't that bad at all, specially for 10 extra damage, vs the 65% which I'd wager you still rolled enough to miss most of those. Just had a session (no karmic dice) where we missed a 70%~80% (multiple characters, but the accuracy was never under 70%) seven times in a row. Bad luck doesn't change what is mathematically better, unless you are in a moment where you need more reliable accuracy (say an enemy is concentrating on an important spell).
Yep, bad luck can happen no matter what chance you have. Had one fight where I had 95% chance to hit, whiffed twice, next character had 90% chance to hit, whiffed both attacks again. RNGesus giveth and RNGesus taketh away.
Videogame player here. If you ask me it's more about game philosophy. Then damage what you can deal and lost in the round/attack is high, it is always better to have keep random as small as possible and i hate random chances of deal or lost full HP. In BG3 combat becomes too random sometimes (then you not cheese) and this sux. If amount of damage is small - then such things feels not ass bad and punishing. But DnD is tabletop and turnbased - combat will be too long. And this sux too. I know, ttrpg players like random stuff , but for many ppl outside this culture such things only burn our chairs and seats. And in BG 3 - i sometimes swearing in the monitor on my first playthrough, especially in the time of Moonrise tower assault. Paladins a pretty hard to control(if you dont use cheese strats), they have pretty high AC, and you characters dies in 1 round - and then i keep missing with 65% chances to hit, i wanted burn the house of idiots who made this system. I loose my fight first time because of random misses. I know what if you think, you can deal with them without to much problem, but it is because you use things that combo them without even chances to resist - in my case it was Hunger of Hadar + flame wall and blasts in the middle of hunger. I feel like i cheese the game. And such things make combat borring af, especially because if i cast silence - 3 spellslots(1 from 3 caster) = encounter win in 90% of fights. I dont want play 3rd act second time because of this. Now i understend why lvls 5-8 most popular in dnd - the game have best balance in this range.
@@Anthony-wt3zv it's any game basically. I don't have any problem with this. My problem with it is some control isn't reliable at all, but other is too good. And with combination with high dpr it can make game is too random. I need to say - this thing is only about few encounters. Too be honest - the game isnt too difficult on highest difficulty. It have plenty of things to overcome even bad luck end even few 1s in the row rarely can loose encounter - more like you spend revivify at worst. And also you can F5 any time. I did it one time, then boss was at 15 hp and i have 75% to hit - boss on next turn will kill 1 char. And after 4 strikes i press f8:)) i just dont want spend even 1 scroll of revivify. So it's more about how it feels then end result.
That is a nice and quick explanation. But with BG3 in mind in particular, there is a specific case that -while obvious- should be mentioned. Squishy mobs. One hit with GWM does often bring mobs to the brink of death. Then its better to switch it of since the minimal damage of a normal hitis often enough to kill them. (But now that I saw your math and remember this game has high ground shenanigans, I should play a ranger in my next run)
Something of note that probably goes without saying, but actually killing an enemy is a probabilistic thing. There's not really any reason to use sharpshooter on an enemy with only 1 hitpoint, obviously, so the current hitpoints of a monster is important to consider as well. Notably, in BG3, we actually get to know the exact current remaining hitpoints of any monster on the field. So, when a monster is at low enough health that it's time to consider whether to use sharpshooter, simply multiply the chance to miss the attack by the chance to not kill on a hit (both for with and without sharpshooter), subact one by the result, and compare which is most likely to kill. It gets a little more complicated with multiattack, but the concept is still there.
Astarion Level 1-3: Typical rogue, needs constant repositioning, sometimes can't even get sneak attacks off because of some minor inconvenience. Astarion after I gave him two Hand Crossbows, Assassin sub-class, Sharpshooter and Arrows of many targets: "I have become death, destroyer of worlds."
Thank you for this. I knew there had to be a mathematical reason why the hardcore builds all used sharpshooter and GWM, but they all just sum it up as "Its the best feat". The math makes me less sad about those 45% hit chances.
My problem is that my normal hit damage fluctuates a lot between self immolation, extra damage on concentration, hunters mark and extra to hit, so basically, the maths, even without ac, changes constantly.
As one comment already pointed out, also when the targets HP is low enough to kill without the acc penalty. But also if you really just need to hit the damn thing regardless, such as a high threat mob you can either kill in one shot yourself if youre lucky with buff up, or with 2 chars with buff down, but missing would mean you are unable to kill at all or without spending valuable resources you want to use elsewhere. Optimizing damage is great for optimizing damage, but also remember that you will also have individual situations where optimized damage isnt always what you want. (Also if the dice are being a bitch and hate you since you cant dice jail the dice in this game)
well, i did some math and figured out the equetion basically, an attack with GWM is worth it when: 40h-10>=d where: h is the chance to hit without GWM (assumed to be more than 0) d is the average damage of the attack if it hits, without GWM (assumed to be more than 0) bear in mind this formula doesn't take into account crits, or advantages and disadvantages the general form is this: (d+10)(h-c)>dh which leads to: 10h>cd+10c where c is the difference in chance to hit between a normal attack and a GWM attack (assumed to be more than 0) i arrived at the first equetion by solving for c=0.25 since without any advantages/disadvantages the chance to hit for a GWM attack is 25% points lower basically, GWM becomes better the higher your original hit chance and the lower your original damage per hit
I find the only time I turn off sharpshooter is when I don’t need the extra damage. If they have 7 hp and I am dealing 1d8 +3 +1 +3 lightning, I don’t care about the +10 since the minimum damage is more than the target hp.
1:03 Oh, neat. I usually do that math by separating the crit odds/damage as its own thing (0,6 * 7,5 + 0,05 * 11 on the example). Turns out, same result.
Currently polearm masters should turn off GWM for the polearm bonus action attack as it is currently not getting the plus 10 damage. Just make sure to turn it back on before you end turn, especially if you have repose maneuver or sentinel feat.
So many people saying: oh but you didn't account this or that that you get later on. By the time you're in act 2 you get so many bonuses to hit you have basically +90% to hit even with sharpshooter on
That's from a single ring. I found it yesterday actually in act 2. If I knew about it, I would have talked about it here. That ring is broken and I wish it didn't exist but oh well.
@@PackTactics not only that, but gloves of dexterity, the staff that doubles bless, the sword that gives you another bless effect,etc. Also advantage from fairy fire, heat metal, knocking them prone, etc.
There is one exception here that should be notable. Specifically rogues. As much as the 10 extra damage is nice on your one shot, the majority of your damage comes from sneak attack. Sneak attack rewards Consistency, not 'all or nothing'. Fighters/rangers however, free reign there. More attacks means that the risk is better to take, and less opportunity cost.
Sneak attack scaling isn't as great as you think it is but Thief rogue getting an extra bonus action shot is massive. You have the formula here so you can check out sneak attack damage if you want.
From a pure numbers game you might be doing more damage on average but i feel like in a lot of encounters a few turns of doing no damage can really snowball over having lower but more reliable damage. This problem kinda reminds me of pokemons ever present choice of going for a higher damage move in echange for adding a chance to miss which can cost you a lot
Another point where you shouldn't use sharpshooter or great weapon master is when an enemy has less hp than your minumem damage. As it doesn't matter and any hit would kill them, so use the higher chance to hit. It's really useful when trying to take enemies out of a battle.
do note that offhand attacks with a handcrossbow doesn't take the -5 penalty. that is even more broken. not sure if they fixed it in the latest patch forgot to check the logs.
People seem to forget that the boss in the tutorial had a 40% chance to be hit by pretty much everything, yet a lot of people hit and killed him pretty consistently. Might as well take the shot to do +10 damage, that’s still a pretty solid chance.
My criteria is, if your opponent will not die from a regular shot, use Sharpshooter. If they will, or if the party has enough damage among them, take the higher chance.
Don't forget to account for action economy. Better to do less damage and kill a mob to eliminate it's actions in the combat if there is the opportunity.
Unfortunately this isn't quite the full picture. What you want to actually know is the expected number of shots to kill the enemy. So you want to calculate a nice binomial distribution. Your value will come out roughly the same as the sd doesn't change
It is the full picture. I gave you the formula to find that out. Obviously I can't crunch everything you do because I have no idea what you're fighting.
Guesstimates are good enough for me: Is the Average normal damage higher or lower than 10? If it IS 10, sharpshooter is equal to regular shots at 25%*. If lower, you can probably keep SS on until 20%. If (much) higher, 30 (or 35)% are decent breakpoints. The ratio of hit chance factors grows a lot when going lower than 20% hit chance, so i'd turn SS off or try to get advantage. * 0.25*20 = 0.5*10, not counting crit hits/misses, kinda cancels eachother out** \*\* slight favour for SS due to +0.5 avg damage (1/20*10+1/20*0 sharpshooter bonus dmg on nat 1 or 20).
Here's a wrinkle for you. Your target is concentrating on a big spell. Is it better to attack without sharpshooter to have a better chance to trigger a concentration check, or is it still best to use sharpshooter since the DC of the less likely concentration check will be higher due to the extra damage?
Unless you're dealing heavy damage per shot more hits is better, since the Concentration DC doesn't even start to go up until you're dealing more than 21 damage.
A downed mage concentrates less. Whether that's worth skipping the concentration check is heavily dependent on what "big spell" is being used. Generally, I'd suggest bumping the already mentioned accuracy requirement by roughly +3% per spell level. The backside of that calculation also needs to account for how valuable +10 hp off the mage would be; if it denies them another round of value. If your party has resources waiting in the wings that would make a harder DC/hit a better value and whether you can force a harder DC. None of that lowers the threshold more than 10% for me, personally, but that's also more difficult to extract the meaning of value from.
@@notsure7813 Not much more consideration than legendary resistances. If they're putting out a shield, they can't counterspell and vice versa. If I'm spitting the damage and I baited a shield, the allied casters just get to capitalize harder. If they can't, then accuracy may be better.
I'm playing a Paladin/Sorcerer multiclass. The Savage Attacker feat seems very enticing, but I only have two feats in total to invest (two lv 6 multiclass). Should I pick Savage Attacker, or Great Weapon Master? Great Weapon Fighter fighting style makes Savage Attacker feat worse, relatively speaking, which is not the case for Great Weapon Master. Then let's assume we use Defence Fighting Style, which is better: Savage Attacker or Great Weapon Master? The way I read it, Savage Attacker gives you advantage on ALL your damage dice in an attack, and that includes smites and other misc. damage effects from other sources.
Savage attacker is like 1.33 dpr increase, It's very bad. Never pick savage attacker, it's a trap feat. Also smite is not a melee weapon attack. It's not how it works in D&D but BG3 lies to you sometimes so it might work but I don't think so. You can try.
This only make sense if you start shooting like crazy and the only factor that matter is Damage/Shoots, this is not the case in a game where killing enemys before they can do anything is more important than hitting a wall
As far I can tell, people in bg3 are more concern with chance on hit and not much on damage, my poor melee base fire warlock is trashed on for using Everburn Blade and not Githyanki sword from exploit/command drop spell and not Eldritch Blast spammer, even on Explorer or Balance mode, you are expected to min max to good extended, it be true?
My estimations werent too far off then, I thought my avg dmg was about double, so its worty as long it does not cost more than half my hit chance, so i used 45% as threshold 😂
Just plugged in my own numbers for stronger items, reaching in average damage of 14 and it seems that the breakpoint for some reason is at a higher percentage than that of half of the damage. Is this correct? or has there been a error in calculation somewhere
I don't disagree with your math over a period of several turns but when we get into tactics its worth considering things like "Would a higher chance of doing less damage THIS TURN put the opponent within range of being finished off by another character? if you have a flind with 25 hp dealing ~17 damage won't kill them but if you did ~7 damage you might puts them close enough that your hasted gwf barbarian with a bloodlust elixir can finish them off this turn. Interparty teamwork to optimize action economy while denying actions to your opponent is often more powerful than dealing big damage numbers.
+10 damage per hit for only -5 penalty to hit. How on earth could you turn that off??? That's like a chance to get a free hit on each of your attacks with a penalty that gets nullified by your stats!
Hey i have a question. You always talk about the 3-4 rounds of combat that an enqounter lasts. So if you only have 3 tries wouldnt shooting normally have better damage?
@@PackTactics Oh for sure, but like "Gaming Culture" (i think that's def the wrong word for it lol) can really condition the average player into certain styles of player, or to have certain habits in games. I think that's probably just why people came into BG3 with certain expectations or false beliefs of how the math works out They are def different games, different mechanics and such
So assuming no +x on your weapon, and like 16 (essentially base) dexterity, what hit chance is it actually going to be better to not use sharpshooter? Like 40% base chance?
I think you would make a better point if you talked in terms of rounds to kill and pointed out that a monster with half hp remaining still does as much damage as a healthy one (in most cases). Otherwise people would still gravitate toward the illusion of consistency of higher hit chance.
The deal is that there are so many alternative ways of massively increasing your dmg without taking sharpshooter. So specially on the early game you can hit the hp breakpoints without sharpshooter. Getting a more consistent to hit ratio with a good base dmg will get along further.
This video didn't suggest leaving it on all the time. This suggested finding out how it works and where to find the breaking point. It suggested using both shots.
@@PackTactics I dont think you understand what I am saying. You multiplying it by accuracy just provides average, but average damage over an adventuring day or a campaign doesn't matter in a distinct missed attack. It doesn't matter what your average damage is if you need to finish off an enemy but you miss, you still do 0 damage (or low damage if youre using a weapon that still does damage on miss). That is what I am trying to explain. Of course sharpshooter and great weapon master are great feats, but we should still talk about the downsides which are relevant and folding misses into the average doesn't catch the full story.
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so you average dmg is higher but wont your normal shot be better the more shots you take because it will hit more often so out of 100 shots you hit normal 65 times with the average dmg per shot coming out to 316 where as the average dmg over 100 shots with GWM over 100 shots hitting 45 times coming out to 280 dmg using the average damage? Im not a real big math person but if you hit less over time you will do less dmg or am I just way off base.
Normal shot is 7.5 average damage on a hit
Sharpshooter is 17.5 average damage
65 hits times 7.5 damage is 487.5 damage
40 hits times 17.5 damage is 700 damage.
The damage per shot shown in the video already took the chance to miss into account, it looks like you applied the chance to hit a second time with your numbers
@@erberor8007 im not a math guy I havent seen a classroom in a long time so i was wondering thanks
I just wanted to know how you turn sharpshooter on and off.
its under passives tab
@@captain_context9991
Also remember: if your target's hp is low enough that they are likely to die to a hit without Sharpshooter, turn it off for that attack.
Exactly what I was coming to the comments to say. Sometimes you just need to down that last hit point to put the enemy out of commission before their turn
Or target another enemy if a character with lower DPR can kill the enemy before its next turn.
@@ganjiblobflankis6581 when that lower dpr character can miss id rather confirm the kill
Methodical step by step focus over pure dpr for me
@@grogmadman522yeah, the enemies aren't a single blob of hp points, so if you are consistently getting better turns to kill you can just go without sharpshooter
I refuse. I NEED to see muh big numbers.
Sharpshooter is crazy strong in BG3. With high ground being do easy to come by there’s almost never a need to turn off your power attack.
And even with that it might be worse than in 5e, where you can get +5ac from 3/4s cover, which BG3 doesn't have.
@@naturalkind5591 Honestly, ignoring cover lower than full cover is too OP. There's practically no defense against it, and you still may get +2 to attack from archery fighting style.
Don't forget to always carry your highground boxes.
@@Nerazmus Holy F!... That's right! Crates are now portable bonuses to ranged attacks! I hadn't even realized it before!
High ground you mean those 3 crates every party member carries
The one thing to take into account in BG3 is if you're using one of your weapon's special attacks (or a battle master special attack). If you really need that rider effect to land, it may be worth sacrificing the extra damage.
Or when you need to break an enemy's concentration, a reliable tap is important.
Just one thing to keep in mind: with the extra attack feature, even if not power-attacking nets more average damage, if GWM/ShSh lets you kill an opponent in one hit, its value rises dramatically
The Baldur's Gate era of the channel is going to be amazing. Solid adcive as always
There's actually quite a bit more to it than straight DPR, mostly because BG3 is a very complex game. I find myself deactivating SS often, because my character does much more than just shoot people. I rely on higher accuracy over damage when:
- I've used some poison before combat and I want to apply it to the enemy ASAP.
- I'm using any of my battlemaster maneuvers that would quickly dispose of my enemy or make it significantly less threatening, such as pushing attack near a cliff or dissarming attack when a character near the enemy can take the weapon.
- If the enemy is a spellcaster using a big concentration spell and I don't expect to kill him anytime soon. The chance of him missing the con save is more important than doing big damage if I know is going to take a while.
- The enemy is so low that a normal hit would be enough.
- I don't want to kill the enmy that fast, as some enemies in this game can do things like blow up when killed. I let them as low as possible so they're at my mercy, move everyone away from the AoE, then kill them.
- With my assassin rogue when the enemy is surprised. I really dont want to miss that guaranteed crit, specially because I have an item that applies a special debuff upon crits.
This is why I really feel that losing the -5/+10 option for Weapon Masteries in D&D One is actually a downgrade in terms of tactical awareness. The Weapon Masteries, especially once you have a magic weapon you don't want to switch out, are essentially passive buffs that are always on with no downsides - you don't need to think about them, they either do something or they don't. Like Graze; did you hit? No Graze. Did you miss? Graze. You don't change your tactics to make Graze work, it either occurs or it doesn't.
They really need to add -5/+10 to be automatically picked up when you acquire a Fighting Style. It shows the ability to switch things up as the situation demands, which is a sign of martial prowess. Stops it being a feat tax while still providing tactical options to the desert of options martials have.
If the enemy you are shooting has less remaining HP than the Minimum damage of an non-sharpshooter shot then you might as well launch a non-sharpshooter shot as your chance to kill is equal to your chance to hit
This is correct, especially for tabletop. But I found that with poisons in bg3, it often makes a lot more sense to first blind/paralize the enemy, or even several enemies in one turn if I feel like face rolling an encounter.
Something I think should be added here is: There are times where the amount of damage is not as relevant as actually hitting, special arrows or low Hp targets, so don't forget to switch it off if you don't need the dmg.
XD ok this is what everbody else has written here too
Excited for the build videos now that you’re level 5
One situation where it's worth turning off the power attack is when you're trying to finish off an enemy with only a few points of health left; if any hit is almost guaranteed to kill them, you want the higher chance to hit rather than extra damage so that you'll be less likely to need to use more than one attack on them
Good to know. I'd really like to see you make a video about how much better range is in Baldur's gate 3 than Melee is. I've done some fights multiple times with different team comps and melee even when I'm not using control spells is just a liability.
Your average damage calculation only applies if the fight lasts a long time. It does not take into account how important it is to eliminate further enemy participation in a quick fashion. The length of the fight depends on more than just the average long term damage. So there still is a balance of risk, which bothered me quite a bit when I first heard about sharpshooter, especially because my first fights were driving home the high value of each and every action in the game. Not having played D&D or BG3 before, I didn't know you could toggle it. The fact that you can toggle it makes it an almost invaluable feat to take for some builds, because you can manage this risk on the fly when assessing how the battle is going. For example, if someone has low hp, that extra damage doesn't matter, and the increased to hit chance does. The other benefit about sharpshooter not mentioned is the no penalty for low ground.
Great Weapon Master and Sharpshooter be the kind of things that you'll need to micromanage them a bit, but they vary well rewarded if you optimize your attack bonuses.
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very helpfully, i tried changing karlachs class to paladin on 2 play thrus, and completly hated it becuz i thought paladins acc was aweful. but turns out it was just great weapon master feat. i was about to try it again when i found out about oath of devotion has sacred wep which boost acc. very informative, idk why it doesnt say the feat lower acc
those equations are awesome. this video is fantastic
I remember somewhere picking up a fear bow and completely stun locking toll collector. They were stuck 4 feet away while i delt with the skulls and succeeded reapplying frightened every turn
Extra attack + thief with 2 hand crossbows is so good
I enjoy all of Pack Tactics videos
I feel like the possibly understated summary point here is that the more base/avg damage you do either from weapon enchantments, special arrows, magic items, etc the less worth it it is to keep sharpshooter on in low hit percentage scenarios. Put simply a +10 damage means less if you’re already gonna hit hard. In-game considerations like having the cull the weak illithid perk make this even more true.
Very clear explanation. I think one of the biggest issues with GWM or SS is that it's simply not "fun" to miss, even if, on average, you are doing more damage. Also, if you think an enemy's nearly finished, not using GWM or SS will help ensure you finish them off, but that's tricky to know.
I love how bg3 brought more people to this channel to understand math and optimization
You are right on the pure math path regarding damage but the point you neglect to mention is consistency. Having a lower chance to hit increases the probability not to hit obviously. Situations with a lower hit ratio naturally lead to a higher demand to deal more damage. This is over a big sample size naturally accomplished. But when you have a small sample size, or in game terms, a battle lasting say 4-5 rounds you want to have consistency too. Especially on low levels I would say missing out on the first 2 rounds or so of damage could be a huge disadvantage. Therefor adding a factor to take this into account would provide a more complete view in my opinion. A have not thought about how high consistency should be valued in pure numbers so I can´t give one unfortunately. But for situations where the average damage using a method with lower hit rate is in the range of the method with the higher hit rate I would still pick the method with the higher hit rate.
Your reasoning makes no sense.
You are correct about consistency.
Now to re-calculate with Karmic Dice…
also take into consideration the damage that your allies could potentially do to the target before the next sharpshooter turn. If you'd need just a little bit of damage to guarantee your allies could take them down, then it's possibly worth toggling off sharpshooter
I think people just saw you missing like 8 times (or however many it was) and forget sometimes you just get bad luck and that's it. 40% isn't that bad at all, specially for 10 extra damage, vs the 65% which I'd wager you still rolled enough to miss most of those.
Just had a session (no karmic dice) where we missed a 70%~80% (multiple characters, but the accuracy was never under 70%) seven times in a row. Bad luck doesn't change what is mathematically better, unless you are in a moment where you need more reliable accuracy (say an enemy is concentrating on an important spell).
Yep, bad luck can happen no matter what chance you have. Had one fight where I had 95% chance to hit, whiffed twice, next character had 90% chance to hit, whiffed both attacks again. RNGesus giveth and RNGesus taketh away.
Videogame player here. If you ask me it's more about game philosophy. Then damage what you can deal and lost in the round/attack is high, it is always better to have keep random as small as possible and i hate random chances of deal or lost full HP. In BG3 combat becomes too random sometimes (then you not cheese) and this sux.
If amount of damage is small - then such things feels not ass bad and punishing. But DnD is tabletop and turnbased - combat will be too long. And this sux too.
I know, ttrpg players like random stuff , but for many ppl outside this culture such things only burn our chairs and seats.
And in BG 3 - i sometimes swearing in the monitor on my first playthrough, especially in the time of Moonrise tower assault. Paladins a pretty hard to control(if you dont use cheese strats), they have pretty high AC, and you characters dies in 1 round - and then i keep missing with 65% chances to hit, i wanted burn the house of idiots who made this system. I loose my fight first time because of random misses.
I know what if you think, you can deal with them without to much problem, but it is because you use things that combo them without even chances to resist - in my case it was Hunger of Hadar + flame wall and blasts in the middle of hunger. I feel like i cheese the game.
And such things make combat borring af, especially because if i cast silence - 3 spellslots(1 from 3 caster) = encounter win in 90% of fights. I dont want play 3rd act second time because of this. Now i understend why lvls 5-8 most popular in dnd - the game have best balance in this range.
@@93overlord Well thats basically 5e too drop control and then default kill the encounter.
@@Anthony-wt3zv it's any game basically. I don't have any problem with this. My problem with it is some control isn't reliable at all, but other is too good. And with combination with high dpr it can make game is too random. I need to say - this thing is only about few encounters.
Too be honest - the game isnt too difficult on highest difficulty. It have plenty of things to overcome even bad luck end even few 1s in the row rarely can loose encounter - more like you spend revivify at worst. And also you can F5 any time. I did it one time, then boss was at 15 hp and i have 75% to hit - boss on next turn will kill 1 char. And after 4 strikes i press f8:)) i just dont want spend even 1 scroll of revivify.
So it's more about how it feels then end result.
That is a nice and quick explanation. But with BG3 in mind in particular, there is a specific case that -while obvious- should be mentioned.
Squishy mobs. One hit with GWM does often bring mobs to the brink of death. Then its better to switch it of since the minimal damage of a normal hitis often enough to kill them.
(But now that I saw your math and remember this game has high ground shenanigans, I should play a ranger in my next run)
when ur children ask u what they will ever need math for:
I like that he introduce Gator!
my babarian going smash, the wizard explaining the babarian when to smash harder and when to smash with more accuracy. babarian smashes
Something of note that probably goes without saying, but actually killing an enemy is a probabilistic thing. There's not really any reason to use sharpshooter on an enemy with only 1 hitpoint, obviously, so the current hitpoints of a monster is important to consider as well. Notably, in BG3, we actually get to know the exact current remaining hitpoints of any monster on the field.
So, when a monster is at low enough health that it's time to consider whether to use sharpshooter, simply multiply the chance to miss the attack by the chance to not kill on a hit (both for with and without sharpshooter), subact one by the result, and compare which is most likely to kill. It gets a little more complicated with multiattack, but the concept is still there.
Astarion Level 1-3: Typical rogue, needs constant repositioning, sometimes can't even get sneak attacks off because of some minor inconvenience.
Astarion after I gave him two Hand Crossbows, Assassin sub-class, Sharpshooter and Arrows of many targets: "I have become death, destroyer of worlds."
Thank you for this. I knew there had to be a mathematical reason why the hardcore builds all used sharpshooter and GWM, but they all just sum it up as "Its the best feat". The math makes me less sad about those 45% hit chances.
Thank you for your information video
My problem is that my normal hit damage fluctuates a lot between self immolation, extra damage on concentration, hunters mark and extra to hit, so basically, the maths, even without ac, changes constantly.
As one comment already pointed out, also when the targets HP is low enough to kill without the acc penalty. But also if you really just need to hit the damn thing regardless, such as a high threat mob you can either kill in one shot yourself if youre lucky with buff up, or with 2 chars with buff down, but missing would mean you are unable to kill at all or without spending valuable resources you want to use elsewhere.
Optimizing damage is great for optimizing damage, but also remember that you will also have individual situations where optimized damage isnt always what you want.
(Also if the dice are being a bitch and hate you since you cant dice jail the dice in this game)
Great video! I think it's important to consider what the expected DPR means. This is the average as you go towards an infinite number of rounds not
OR you just shoot and reload the save if you miss like a real gamer.
Certified bg3 experience
At that point, just download a mod that makes you guaranteed to succeed.
This video was very interesting and informative, as a former doubter thank you!
This is exactly what I wanted. Beautiful video.
well, i did some math and figured out the equetion
basically, an attack with GWM is worth it when:
40h-10>=d
where:
h is the chance to hit without GWM (assumed to be more than 0)
d is the average damage of the attack if it hits, without GWM (assumed to be more than 0)
bear in mind this formula doesn't take into account crits, or advantages and disadvantages
the general form is this:
(d+10)(h-c)>dh
which leads to:
10h>cd+10c
where c is the difference in chance to hit between a normal attack and a GWM attack (assumed to be more than 0)
i arrived at the first equetion by solving for c=0.25 since without any advantages/disadvantages the chance to hit for a GWM attack is 25% points lower
basically, GWM becomes better the higher your original hit chance and the lower your original damage per hit
Nice short informative video, this is how I found out you could turn Sharpshooter off 😅
I find the only time I turn off sharpshooter is when I don’t need the extra damage. If they have 7 hp and I am dealing 1d8 +3 +1 +3 lightning, I don’t care about the +10 since the minimum damage is more than the target hp.
1:03 Oh, neat. I usually do that math by separating the crit odds/damage as its own thing (0,6 * 7,5 + 0,05 * 11 on the example). Turns out, same result.
Yeah and you can always offset that -5 to hitting chance with advantages which in BG3 there are tons of ways to get them.
One more scenario: if the arrow is special, like a poison-tipped arrow.
Currently polearm masters should turn off GWM for the polearm bonus action attack as it is currently not getting the plus 10 damage. Just make sure to turn it back on before you end turn, especially if you have repose maneuver or sentinel feat.
Issue is with all the damage sources and damage riders can heavily favor one side or the other.
So many people saying: oh but you didn't account this or that that you get later on. By the time you're in act 2 you get so many bonuses to hit you have basically +90% to hit even with sharpshooter on
That's from a single ring. I found it yesterday actually in act 2. If I knew about it, I would have talked about it here. That ring is broken and I wish it didn't exist but oh well.
@@PackTactics not only that, but gloves of dexterity, the staff that doubles bless, the sword that gives you another bless effect,etc. Also advantage from fairy fire, heat metal, knocking them prone, etc.
what ring are you guys talking about? sounds like something I wouldn't wanna miss
@@xNero96x
There is one exception here that should be notable. Specifically rogues. As much as the 10 extra damage is nice on your one shot, the majority of your damage comes from sneak attack. Sneak attack rewards Consistency, not 'all or nothing'.
Fighters/rangers however, free reign there. More attacks means that the risk is better to take, and less opportunity cost.
Sneak attack scaling isn't as great as you think it is but Thief rogue getting an extra bonus action shot is massive. You have the formula here so you can check out sneak attack damage if you want.
This means basicly if you have archery FS turn ON the shapshooter, unless you are shooting kobolts or really high AC monsters.
about advantage and disadvantage: Baldur's gate already gives you the hit chance so how is it different?
From a pure numbers game you might be doing more damage on average but i feel like in a lot of encounters a few turns of doing no damage can really snowball over having lower but more reliable damage.
This problem kinda reminds me of pokemons ever present choice of going for a higher damage move in echange for adding a chance to miss which can cost you a lot
Another point where you shouldn't use sharpshooter or great weapon master is when an enemy has less hp than your minumem damage. As it doesn't matter and any hit would kill them, so use the higher chance to hit. It's really useful when trying to take enemies out of a battle.
Remember that more hits is slightly more valuable than big damage because of overkill
do note that offhand attacks with a handcrossbow doesn't take the -5 penalty. that is even more broken. not sure if they fixed it in the latest patch forgot to check the logs.
That was fixed in the first patch.
People seem to forget that the boss in the tutorial had a 40% chance to be hit by pretty much everything, yet a lot of people hit and killed him pretty consistently. Might as well take the shot to do +10 damage, that’s still a pretty solid chance.
Hey Kobold, I know this is unrelated, but is the malleable Illusions/simulacrum combo any good?
I'd like to see your thoughts on BG3's version of Tavern Brawler
That's going to take a while. I have a lot of videos to make before then. Sorry.
Hey, a bit of a metagamey question: are gator and kobold the same person?
I think they are both parts of Bagpipes’ character, Sam. Kobold looks like her but Gator has the voice.
My criteria is, if your opponent will not die from a regular shot, use Sharpshooter. If they will, or if the party has enough damage among them, take the higher chance.
Don't forget to account for action economy. Better to do less damage and kill a mob to eliminate it's actions in the combat if there is the opportunity.
I gave you the formula so you can account for that.
Remember everyone
Sharpshooter + Dual Crossbow > Hunters Mark + Dual Crossbow
Unfortunately this isn't quite the full picture. What you want to actually know is the expected number of shots to kill the enemy. So you want to calculate a nice binomial distribution. Your value will come out roughly the same as the sd doesn't change
It is the full picture. I gave you the formula to find that out. Obviously I can't crunch everything you do because I have no idea what you're fighting.
Sorry, Pack Tactics, you're actually wrong because you didn't account for my personal luck stat
True. I can't find that. Sorry.
Guesstimates are good enough for me:
Is the Average normal damage higher or lower than 10? If it IS 10, sharpshooter is equal to regular shots at 25%*. If lower, you can probably keep SS on until 20%. If (much) higher, 30 (or 35)% are decent breakpoints.
The ratio of hit chance factors grows a lot when going lower than 20% hit chance, so i'd turn SS off or try to get advantage.
* 0.25*20 = 0.5*10, not counting crit hits/misses, kinda cancels eachother out**
\*\* slight favour for SS due to +0.5 avg damage (1/20*10+1/20*0 sharpshooter bonus dmg on nat 1 or 20).
The power of math!
Here's a wrinkle for you. Your target is concentrating on a big spell. Is it better to attack without sharpshooter to have a better chance to trigger a concentration check, or is it still best to use sharpshooter since the DC of the less likely concentration check will be higher due to the extra damage?
Unless you're dealing heavy damage per shot more hits is better, since the Concentration DC doesn't even start to go up until you're dealing more than 21 damage.
A downed mage concentrates less. Whether that's worth skipping the concentration check is heavily dependent on what "big spell" is being used.
Generally, I'd suggest bumping the already mentioned accuracy requirement by roughly +3% per spell level.
The backside of that calculation also needs to account for how valuable +10 hp off the mage would be; if it denies them another round of value. If your party has resources waiting in the wings that would make a harder DC/hit a better value and whether you can force a harder DC.
None of that lowers the threshold more than 10% for me, personally, but that's also more difficult to extract the meaning of value from.
@@SCh1m3ra if they have their reaction you have account for the potential +5 from the shield spell as well.
@@notsure7813
Not much more consideration than legendary resistances.
If they're putting out a shield, they can't counterspell and vice versa. If I'm spitting the damage and I baited a shield, the allied casters just get to capitalize harder. If they can't, then accuracy may be better.
I'm playing a Paladin/Sorcerer multiclass. The Savage Attacker feat seems very enticing, but I only have two feats in total to invest (two lv 6 multiclass). Should I pick Savage Attacker, or Great Weapon Master?
Great Weapon Fighter fighting style makes Savage Attacker feat worse, relatively speaking, which is not the case for Great Weapon Master.
Then let's assume we use Defence Fighting Style, which is better: Savage Attacker or Great Weapon Master? The way I read it, Savage Attacker gives you advantage on ALL your damage dice in an attack, and that includes smites and other misc. damage effects from other sources.
Savage attacker is like 1.33 dpr increase, It's very bad. Never pick savage attacker, it's a trap feat. Also smite is not a melee weapon attack. It's not how it works in D&D but BG3 lies to you sometimes so it might work but I don't think so. You can try.
I didn’t even figure out how to turn off sharpshooter on bg3.
And if you miss and die, you do no damage.
FACTS
This only make sense if you start shooting like crazy and the only factor that matter is Damage/Shoots, this is not the case in a game where killing enemys before they can do anything is more important than hitting a wall
If you are using on hit affects you might considerations other than average damage.
I do. I highly value Damage dealt vs Damage taken and so does the party I played with. It's what we do in D&D 5e.
Where you going to do that 'mirror image is bad' video you mentioned? Because I'm under the impression its good.
It might take a loooooong time before I make that video but anyways, basically the dodge action is just better.
Hey it happened!
My takeaway is that facing rules + environmental interactions = good game
As far I can tell, people in bg3 are more concern with chance on hit and not much on damage, my poor melee base fire warlock is trashed on for using Everburn Blade and not Githyanki sword from exploit/command drop spell and not Eldritch Blast spammer, even on Explorer or Balance mode, you are expected to min max to good extended, it be true?
Proper Math! Yay! 😎
...will sharpshooter affect throwing an enemy at another enemy?
same math can be used for spellmight gloves
does Sharpshooter work for spells?
My estimations werent too far off then, I thought my avg dmg was about double, so its worty as long it does not cost more than half my hit chance, so i used 45% as threshold 😂
I love this video!
Just plugged in my own numbers for stronger items, reaching in average damage of 14 and it seems that the breakpoint for some reason is at a higher percentage than that of half of the damage. Is this correct? or has there been a error in calculation somewhere
I don't disagree with your math over a period of several turns but when we get into tactics its worth considering things like "Would a higher chance of doing less damage THIS TURN put the opponent within range of being finished off by another character? if you have a flind with 25 hp dealing ~17 damage won't kill them but if you did ~7 damage you might puts them close enough that your hasted gwf barbarian with a bloodlust elixir can finish them off this turn. Interparty teamwork to optimize action economy while denying actions to your opponent is often more powerful than dealing big damage numbers.
+10 damage per hit for only -5 penalty to hit. How on earth could you turn that off??? That's like a chance to get a free hit on each of your attacks with a penalty that gets nullified by your stats!
Hey i have a question. You always talk about the 3-4 rounds of combat that an enqounter lasts. So if you only have 3 tries wouldnt shooting normally have better damage?
I gave you the formula to figure that out in the video.
I think gamers are just used to XCOM and other CRPGs where accuracy is wayyy more important than doing more average damage
They're different games with different mechanics.
@@PackTactics Oh for sure, but like "Gaming Culture" (i think that's def the wrong word for it lol) can really condition the average player into certain styles of player, or to have certain habits in games. I think that's probably just why people came into BG3 with certain expectations or false beliefs of how the math works out
They are def different games, different mechanics and such
So assuming no +x on your weapon, and like 16 (essentially base) dexterity, what hit chance is it actually going to be better to not use sharpshooter? Like 40% base chance?
He literally explained how to do the math
I think you would make a better point if you talked in terms of rounds to kill and pointed out that a monster with half hp remaining still does as much damage as a healthy one (in most cases). Otherwise people would still gravitate toward the illusion of consistency of higher hit chance.
The deal is that there are so many alternative ways of massively increasing your dmg without taking sharpshooter. So specially on the early game you can hit the hp breakpoints without sharpshooter. Getting a more consistent to hit ratio with a good base dmg will get along further.
Mathematical 🐊
There are a few situations where accuracy overrides dpr. Please don't leave this video thinking you need to leave it on always.
This video didn't suggest leaving it on all the time. This suggested finding out how it works and where to find the breaking point. It suggested using both shots.
why are you using a hand crossbow in your offhand instead of a heavy/light crossbow +1? you haven't found one?
Because I do more damage with hand crossbows. You have the formula from the video now, you can find it.
with my luck on attack rolls i have to turn it of at 80% hit chance...
ya but how do i turn it off
Hi gator :)
How is the power of darkvision in Baldurs Gate 3 . Should I care?
Darkvision is important in act 2. Like if its too dark, you have disadvantage on your shots.
Gloom stalker/assassin Astarion with Sharpshooter = ezgg
Average damage doesnt matter the turn that you miss. This is a common mistake people make whether it has to do with gambling or the stock market
Why do you think we multiply it by the accuracy?
@@PackTactics I dont think you understand what I am saying. You multiplying it by accuracy just provides average, but average damage over an adventuring day or a campaign doesn't matter in a distinct missed attack. It doesn't matter what your average damage is if you need to finish off an enemy but you miss, you still do 0 damage (or low damage if youre using a weapon that still does damage on miss). That is what I am trying to explain. Of course sharpshooter and great weapon master are great feats, but we should still talk about the downsides which are relevant and folding misses into the average doesn't catch the full story.