Well prepared bard build for campaign playing.

[Legacy_WhiZard]

               

simanoi140 wrote...

And if I prefer to stay with my xbow as just a bonus to my character, and focus on singing, casting buffs and using scrolls instead of shooting, what should I do? And I can't get what are this numbers about generally. It's like rapid shot isn't useful or? By the way, I've got both bonus expansions.

Bard, rogue, and assassin all have UMD.  Thus these builds often don't focus on using many spells inherently and instead devote their level investment towards combat.  If you get 20 or more bard levels you can take lingering song which will make your song last much longer.

@WhiZard - about Your first reply, I found nice-looking build for this 'arcane archer'. It's Bard/Red Dragon Disciple/Arcane Archer.

RDD is sometimes used to get devastating critical or make use of "mighty" bows that are capable of adding a significant amount of strength to the damage.

Seems good but could You write something more about this rogue flanking class? I have to say that I prefer rogue than assassin because death attacks apply even rather than flank attacks. But maybe I'm wrong?

Death attack is the same as sneak attack, but allows also for a chance of paralysis if the target is not already involved in combat.  Both sneak and death attack will apply significant damage to creatures that are attacking another creature.

And what about str and dex, both of them focus on dex? I heard that death attacks are linked with strenght by some very strange way but I can't say if it's true.

Death attack uses the intelligence modifier + 10 + assassin level for the DC.  All ranged attacks are based on dexterity (or wisdom with zen archery) rather than strength for determining if they hit.  Thus a large investment in dexterity is often good for a ranged build.  Bards make perfect ranged candidates because they only need 16 charisma max to cast all their spells and most of the spells they cast are buffs and don't require a high DC.  Also bard is freely able to use UMD to use any scroll they find.
               
               

               
            

[Legacy_MrZork]

               

simanoi140 wrote...

And I can't get what are this numbers about generally. It's like rapid shot isn't useful or?

Unfortunately, it's somewhat complicated to figure the total impact of a feat like Rapid Shot. I find it most useful to figure out the effect on overall average damage per round (DPR) and it needs to account for critical hits, etc.

I worked up spreadsheet to rough out the DPR calculations a while back. Assume we are talking about an archer who is permahasted (or at least will be hasted during typical combat), and can choose between activating Rapid Shot or not for a given opponent. Broadly speaking, the –2 per attack will tend to make Rapid Shot a DPR disadvantage against opponents who are "harder" to hit and the extra attack will make it an advantage against "easier" to hit opponents. (And, even that isn't completely straightforward, as the extra attack per round is always an advantage against opponents that you were only going to hit on a natural 20 anyway.) By level 40, for a DEX build with lots of AA levels, with the great AB progression AAs effectively have, I suspect that Rapid Shot will tend to be a win except against some high-AC bosses. For a build with few AA levels or a lower overall AB (due to pre-epic class split, lower DEX, etc.), Rapid Shot may increase DPR only versus lower level mobs and will decrease it versus harder-to-hit opponents.
               
               

               
            

[Legacy_WhiZard]

               

MrZork wrote...

simanoi140 wrote...

And I can't get what are this numbers about generally. It's like rapid shot isn't useful or?

Unfortunately, it's somewhat complicated to figure the total impact of a feat like Rapid Shot. I find it most useful to figure out the effect on overall average damage per round (DPR) and it needs to account for critical hits, etc.

I worked up spreadsheet to rough out the DPR calculations a while back. Assume we are talking about an archer who is permahasted (or at least will be hasted during typical combat), and can choose between activating Rapid Shot or not for a given opponent. Broadly speaking, the –2 per attack will tend to make Rapid Shot a DPR disadvantage against opponents who are "harder" to hit and the extra attack will make it an advantage against "easier" to hit opponents. (And, even that isn't completely straightforward, as the extra attack per round is always an advantage against opponents that you were only going to hit on a natural 20 anyway.) By level 40, for a DEX build with lots of AA levels, with the great AB progression AAs effectively have, I suspect that Rapid Shot will tend to be a win except against some high-AC bosses. For a build with few AA levels or a lower overall AB (due to pre-epic class split, lower DEX, etc.), Rapid Shot may increase DPR only versus lower level mobs and will decrease it versus harder-to-hit opponents.

Damage per round can be a little complicated as the effect of criticals is small, yet enough to be a tie-breaker.  What I have below is the full hits per 20 combat rounds, which is an exact computation of the expected value (or average) given the way the AB breaks.   The first row is where the first attack would normally require a 20 and the rows following it show what happens when the AB is increased by one at a time until the last row where the hits per round reaches its cap.  Bolded lines in Rapid shot progression indicate when using it becomes inferior.

Ranged Table (4APR from ranged non-crossbow weapon)

---           RS           Haste    RS+Haste


4              5              5              6

5              5              7              6

6              5              9              6

7              7              11           8

8              9              13           10

9              11           15           12

11           13           18           14

13           15           21           16

15           18           24           20

17           21           27           24

19           24           30           28

22           27           34           32

25           30           38           36

28           34           42           41

31           38           46           46

34           42           50           51

38           46           55           56

42           50           60           61

46           55           65           67

49           60           68           73

52           65           71           79

55           68           74           83

58           71           77           87

61           74           80           91

63           77           82           95

65           80           84           99

67           82           86           101

69           84           88           103

71           86           90           105

72           88           91           107

73           90           92           109

74           91           93           110

75           92           94           111

76           93           95           112

76           94           95           113

76           95           95           114

               
               

               

                     Modifié par WhiZard, 07 mars 2012 - 02:15 .
                     
                  

            

[Legacy_MrZork]

               WhiZard, we are getting very close to the same results. The difference is that I am getting one extra row of Rapid Shot disadvantage in the DPR calculations against the easier (in terms of AC vs AB) opponents. That is due, as you note, to the effects of critical hits. Against opponents where the extra attack balances the attack penalty to result in the same number of total hits (the row where you have 46 hits for both hasted and hasted-with-RS columns), the –2 attack penalty will result in fewer criticals because the threat roll is tougher to make.  As a test, I did the simpler case of ignoring crits by overriding the critical multiplier in my weapon data table for longbows and set it to 1 (no extra crit damage) and I got the same result you did.
               
               

               
            

[Legacy_WhiZard]

               

MrZork wrote...

WhiZard, we are getting very close to the same results. The difference is that I am getting one extra row of Rapid Shot disadvantage in the DPR calculations against the easier (in terms of AC vs AB) opponents. That is due, as you note, to the effects of critical hits. Against opponents where the extra attack balances the attack penalty to result in the same number of total hits (the row where you have 46 hits for both hasted and hasted-with-RS columns), the –2 attack penalty will result in fewer criticals because the threat roll is tougher to make.  As a test, I did the simpler case of ignoring crits by overriding the critical multiplier in my weapon data table for longbows and set it to 1 (no extra crit damage) and I got the same result you did.

The effect of critical hits is minor.  To get to your progression (19-20/x3 assumed) I would just multiply all values by 1.2 and then add in the following modifiers +0.2 for all blows that can confirm on a one, -0.1 for all blows that only confirm on a 20, -0.2 for all blows that can't confirm on any roll.  These modifiers are too low to be significant for anything more than a tie breaker when comparing the rapid shot effect.

In order to get to where your DPR is drastically different than the hit ratio you would need a higher multiplier or a higher crit range.  However, the effect of sneak attack can bear significantly more of an effect dependent on its damage as a ratio of the weapon damage.
               
               

               

                     Modifié par WhiZard, 07 mars 2012 - 04:46 .
                     
                  

            

[Legacy_Empyre65]

               I know this is slightly off-topic, but it looks like the situation would be similar for a Monk using Flurry of Blows, an extra attack with -2 on all attacks. One difference is that Flurry of Blows doesn't require using up a feat because it is free at Monk level 1.
               
               

               
            

[Legacy_Empyre65]

               Oops, my post didn't appear, so I clicked Submit again, and then it appeared twice. I'd delete this extra post if I could.
               
               

               

                     Modifié par Empyre65, 07 mars 2012 - 09:21 .
                     
                  

            

[Legacy_MrZork]

               WhiZard, I agree. Particularly, the critical hit effect is minor on the decision of whether to activate Rapid Shot against a given opponent. Especially since one is unlikely to know an opponent's exact AC early in a given battle, whatever precision consideration of critical hits may add is not practically relevant. The difference in DPR between builds rarely changes much by considering critical hits, but high AB builds (which are a possibility with AAs) are the ones where it's likely to have the most impact, so I include it.

(And, the particular spreadsheet I use for this sort of thing already calculates exact average crit damage in the expected damage numbers, since I initially created it to resolve for myself the greatsword vs. greataxe question, particularly whether the 2d6 19-20/x2 vs. 1d12 20/x3 stats for the weapons would make either one a clearly better choice.)

Empyre65, the situations are similar and there is still an advantage to extra attacks per round against low-AC opponents. Basically, if you were going to hit them anyway, you may as well hit an extra time per round. With monks, the situations where that case is true may be more limited, because monk AB doesn't usually get as high as arcane archer AB. With AAs, it's not uncommon to have an AB that's higher than the AC of many opponents, and turning on Rapid Shot can add +15 or +20 damage per round against those guys.

If this thread is mostly about a character with considerable buffing ability for play in the OC, where it is rare to even hit level 20, then AB will never get really high and any real value in RS would be limited to the moderate extra damage done to low AC opponents. There are quite a few of those in the OC, but they aren't typically much of a threat.
               
               

               
            

[Legacy_MrZork]

               

The difference in DPR between builds rarely changes much by considering critical hits [...]

Re-reading that, I just want to clarify that I'm not saying critical hits don't change DPR. I'm just saying that, in making a decision between two similar builds, the decision rarely flips due to being more accurate about critical hit damage, unless the difference between the builds is directly important to crits.
               
               

               
            

[Legacy_WhiZard]

               

MrZork wrote...

The difference in DPR between builds rarely changes much by considering critical hits [...]

Re-reading that, I just want to clarify that I'm not saying critical hits don't change DPR. I'm just saying that, in making a decision between two similar builds, the decision rarely flips due to being more accurate about critical hit damage, unless the difference between the builds is directly important to crits.

Correct, and since flurry of blows was also brought up, I have looked at the difference between considering and not considering critical hits with a monk/WM having a threat roll of (16-20/x3).  Here the multiplication factor was 1.5 and the modifiers were -0.5 (for each blow unable to confirm), -0.4 (for each blow that confirms on 20 only), -0.3 (for each blow that confirms on 19-20 only), -0.2 (for each blow that confirms on 18-20 only), -0.1 (for each blow that confirms on 17-20 only), +0.5 (for each blow that can confirm on a one).  The difference in modifiers between flurry and not flurry for the same progression never reached higher than 1.4 (and this was reached when the modifiers were in favor of not flurrying).  If they reached the 1.5 this would be the equivalent on the hit chance chart to make the chances that were off by one become equal.  Since this didn't even happen, the best the DPR could show as to whether one would be better flurrying or not, would only be in the cases where the hit chance was a tie.  
               
               

               

                     Modifié par WhiZard, 07 mars 2012 - 06:31 .
                     
                  

            

[Legacy_WhiZard]

               For those interested I am posting a table which has the expected value of hits per 20 rounds to compare the effect of flurry of blows.

Monk table (6 APR on right handed kama, all DW feats assumed)
---     DW   Flurry   Haste   DW+Flurry   DW+Haste   Flurry+Haste   DW+Flurry+Haste
6       8         7           7               9                        9                      8                            10
7         8         7           9             9                     10                      8                             10
8         8       7       11               9                  11                      8                            10
9       10        9        13              9                     14                      10                            11   
11     12      11         16              9                     17                      12                           12
13     14     13         19            12                     20                 14                           15
15     17   16            22           15                     24                 17                           18
18     20     19            26           18                     28                      20                            21
21     24     22          30            22                    33                      24                            26
24     29     26         34             26                    39                      29                            31
28     34     30         39             31                    45                      34                            37
32     39     34           44           37                    51                      39                            44
36     45     39         49             43                    58                     45                             51
41     51     44           55             49                    65                     51                             58
46     57     49           61             56                    72                     57                             66
51     64     55           67           63                    80                     64                             74
57     71     61         74             70                    88                     71                             82
63     78     67         81             78                    96                     78                             91
69     86     74         88             86                 105                     86                           100
74     94     81           93             94                 113                     94                           109
79     102   88           98         103                121              102                           119
84     108   93       103         112           127                   108                           128
88     114   98          107         121               133              114                            137
92     120   103        111           127               139                   120                            144
96     125   107        115         133          144                   125                            151
99     130   111         118           139               149                  130                            158
102   134   115         121        144          153                   134                           163
105   137   118         124           149              156                   137                           168
107   140   121         126        153               159                   140                           172
109   143   124         128         156              162                   143                           175
111   145   126        130           159         164                   145                           178
112   147   128          131           162              166                   147                           181
113   149   130          132           164         168                   149                           183
114   150   131           133           166              169                  150                           185
114   151   132          133             168        170                   151                          187
114   152   133        133            169              171                   152                          188
114   152   133         133             170              171                   152                          189
114   152   133         133             171              171                   152                     190

               
               

               

                     Modifié par WhiZard, 07 mars 2012 - 06:57 .
                     
                  

            

[Legacy_WhiZard]

               

MrZork wrote...
Re-reading that, I just want to clarify that I'm not saying critical hits don't change DPR..

Just to give a rule of thumb.  The damage dealt on a creature not immune to crits divided by the damage that would be dealt if it was immune to crits is given below:

1 + (0.05 * critical range * (critical multiplier -1))

This equation loses accuracy as the critical range increases.  Again this is more of a quick rough calculation.
               
               

               
            

[Legacy_Vampir Drache]

               If you are still interested at what levels to improve CHA, increase CHA until its at lvl 19. Than you can focus on DEX.
Spear, halberd, and scythe are good melee weapons that give you a longer reach. Each of these weapons can be improved by a a blacksmith.  Spear with fairy dust, halberd with dragon's blood, and scythe with adamantine.
               
               

               
            

[Legacy_MrZork]

               

Vampir Drache wrote...

If you are still interested at what levels to improve CHA, increase CHA until its at lvl 19. Than you can focus on DEX.
Spear, halberd, and scythe are good melee weapons that give you a longer reach. Each of these weapons can be improved by a a blacksmith.  Spear with fairy dust, halberd with dragon's blood, and scythe with adamantine.

Why 19? If the goal is to cast all bard spells, then 16 is plenty. If the goal is to be able to cast more spells between rests, then the increases come at even numbers, sp 19 may not be the best stopping point. Of course, in the OC there are items that increase CHA as well, so it's pretty easy to hit the +12 ability increase from magic cap.

The reach of weapons may be a factor (honestly never double-checked that there is much of an in-game advantage to it), but any of those but the spear would require a pure bard to spend a feat on weapon proficiency. Though the two smith-made halberds are among the best weapons in the OC, an elf bard could use the longsword without spending any feats and the astral blades are pretty nice. Ditto for the morningstars (which any bard can use).
               
               

               

                     Modifié par MrZork, 12 mars 2012 - 06:20 .