A Story of a Failed build idea
Added 2022-03-24 01:20:35 +0000 UTCSometimes we see thumbnails like this one, but be skeptical folks.
Comments
I got bored and ran some numbers. I went to monsters 5e and sorted all monsters with cr between 5 and 10 by ac and built a distribution. The average AC was about 16. Let's say your to hit bonus is +6, so you hit AC 16 with a 10 or higher. If you use focussed aim whenever you miss and roll an 8 or 9 on average you spend 1.35 chi per 20 attacks, your accuracy increases by 3.2% (+1 to hit gives 5%), and 37% of you chi spent turns a miss into a hit. If you use focussed aim whenever you miss and roll an 8 or higher(if the AC is higher than 16 you can miss with 9,10,11 too) then you spend 2.15 chi per 20 attacks, your accuracy increases by 6.75% and 63% of your chi spent turns a miss into a hit.
Daniel Renzi
2022-04-03 15:23:30 +0000 UTCSorry I meant to say 7’s and 8’s. Maybe I had Don’t cry for (Monk) Argentina stuck in my head :) Also, the misses into hits carry extra weight if you’re going for blade cantrips.
Marius Smit
2022-03-31 01:58:59 +0000 UTCAhh- now I see what you are trying to do. By wrong, I only meant that you aren't getting a +2 to accuracy with your strategy (not that it isn't a good idea). Actually, you had me convinced with your explanation ... until i realized that +2 is what you get when you KNOW the AC, so it has to be wrong. It is easy to calculate the effect for each AC, so you can go through the monster list and build an ac distribution to see what the average effect is. If you are willing to reroll any number 6 and higher (and it isn't obvious to me why you would reroll a 6,7 and not a 8,9,10) you would get a +2 to accuracy for every creature whose ac is average or greater ... but the ki cost is now harder to calculate . This would give an overall accuracy of at least +1 if the ac distribution is symmetric. I think a bigger problem is focussed aim itself. It's not that spending a ki point to change a miss into a hit isn't good (it is!), its that these opportunities don't happen often enough even if you know the AC. I don't think extra attack and focussed aim are enough to carry the monk class all by itself.
Daniel Renzi
2022-03-29 10:55:20 +0000 UTCThe exercise assumes the average with no other information. Yes you could spend it on a higher AC where it is wasted but you will be saved from spending it in another situation as you state. For DPR calculation we assume the average chance to hit is 60% which is already an assumption for lacking knowledge. Practically it will play out differently but assuming this robotic behavior allows us to determine the lower end of the mechanical effect. In actual play you can only gain information. The important part of the exercise is spending only the allocated budget of ki per attack. Sometimes it won’t help, other times it won’t be needed but on the average it seems to be the most likely two numbers to be a near miss.
Marius Smit
2022-03-27 19:38:41 +0000 UTCThat is a very clever idea: It is also wrong :( Here is a simple example. Let's say you fight two monsters, one who has an AC two less than average and one whose ac is 2 more than average. Your chance to hit is 70% vs the first and 50% vs the second which averages out to 60%. Now you focussed aim whenever you roll a 6 or 7. Your probability of hitting the first guy is still 70% and your probability to hit the second guy is still 50%. So your overall change to hit is still 60%. The good news is that you only spent half as much ki as you thought you would (you hit the first guy on a 6 or 7 without focused aim). The bad news is every point of ki you did spend was wasted.
Daniel Renzi
2022-03-26 17:00:01 +0000 UTCIt reflects the truth of calculating by averages which we already do by assuming 60% chance to hit. DPR calculations that assume this do not reflect other context as I stated. My suggestion is for the purposes of calculation you play robotic with full faith that the ACs will average out since we are already working from the 60% assumption.
Marius Smit
2022-03-25 14:12:05 +0000 UTCThe other problem is that that, even more than most cases, the theory here doesn’t reflect reality. It reality, we usually have a lot of context for enemy AC. By the second round, it’s not uncommon that we know what we’re aiming for, so averages do a very poor job of representing the truth, here.
There’s No Race Like Gnome
2022-03-25 13:09:51 +0000 UTCIt’s not a bad method, but the main problem is that we don’t know whether you missed because you rolled below the average AC or because you rolled average and the AC was higher. So it’s not just 6s and 7s we have to look at.
There’s No Race Like Gnome
2022-03-25 13:07:09 +0000 UTCI don't know if you're wrong, but it sounds like a pretty good strategy to me.
Treantmonk's Temple
2022-03-25 01:20:39 +0000 UTCTell me if I’m wrong but I account for focused aim by assuming that the average monster AC is such that you have a 60% chance to hit if you keep up with ASIs. That means you should blindly use the feature when you roll a 6 or 7 on the d20 for the attack. That gives you an effective +2 to your attacks over 20 attacks given on average every die roll should occur once in average terms. Some monsters will have a higher AC in which case the Ki spent when rolling 6 or 7 will be wasted but in other case their AC will be lower or other results in combat will give you more information about what hits. Without considering outside information however it’s a +2 improvement on to hit by reserving 2 Ki for this purpose over 20 attacks on average . I’d say the way to use it for a CBE + SS build is to use it for 6’s and 7’s on the 48 attacks with the hand crossbow per short rest which will use about 5 Ki to give the same effect as the Archery fighting style.
Marius Smit
2022-03-24 20:41:26 +0000 UTCJust an FYI patrons, there was a point in this video I failed to take out [removed]'s name so I blurred it out - but I messed that up and the blur goes on for too long. I've corrected the video and re-uploaded it, so this version will be taken down when that goes public tomorrow.
Treantmonk's Temple
2022-03-24 20:11:13 +0000 UTC
