The 12 Days of Critmas: The Epiphany

The wise men have arrived to explain why this was a dumb series.

I was pretty interested in what the maximum possible amount of damage a mid tier player could deal in a single turn was, but it turned out to be incredibly boring, since most classes were reduced to hitting things twice as their action and quickening the same spell with their bonus action. Also, it’s very stupid- after this single turn, at least one of the feats taken, normally two, become useless, so the build becomes ineffective, and, in practice, most of these would not deal anywhere near as much damage as their maximum. Against an enemy with AC 10 and a +3 to all saves, each final build (not the crit ones), will deal, on their turn:

• Artificer: 29.5
• Barbarian: 45.2
• Bard: 35.625
• Cleric: 72
• Druid: 101.85
• Fighter: 85.125
• Monk: 33
• Paladin: 53.325
• Ranger: 38.925
• Rogue: 48.2
• Sorcerer: 50.575
• Warlock: 52.925
• Wizard: 48.525

In this case, druid still wins, followed by fighter and cleric, then a lot of classes dealing about 50 damage. What this really shows is that making a lot of attacks probably does the most to maximise damage spikes, that vulnerability is a big deal in 5e and that attack bonuses are often more important than the size of the damage dice, which is part of why archers and finesse fighters are such great builds but don’t get a look in in this series. Bear in mind that AC 10 low at level 8, so against a more typical enemy at these levels, the expected damage decreases even more. A lot of of these builds will be much less useful on their next turn, and have little utility outside of combat. The final main problem with all this is that if you had a party of greatsword wielding variant humans with shadow touched and metamagic adept, it would probably be a really boring campaign. As a pallet cleanser, here are some more fun ideas for character creation, not necessarily focused on simply theoretically hurting things a lot.

Undead warlocks are really cool- I like the idea of playing someone who’s patron is, inexplicably, their own ghost. Maybe they were a powerful wizard, and the PC is the product of a spell gone wrong. Maybe there’s some weird time shit going on, and this is a vision of the future they’re fated to realise. You can also use feats in more fun ways than pure damage increase. There are some options for shadow touched like disguise self which are useful for far longer than inflict wounds, and war caster allows a spellcaster to have two hands full, opening up a massive range of new builds. Many of the feats in Tasha’s are a lot of fun- the slasher, piercer and crusher feats offer some new tactical improvements in combat, and telepathic is amazing. None of this has looked at races- how racial features synergise with specific subclasses is very interesting, and innate spellcasting can give traditionally combat-focused classes like barbarians and fighters more utility options. Anyway, christmas is over, this post is bad luck, and the real present was being a scaly with giant non-insect pets all along.