NP Comic for Thursday, Jun 1, 2023

[Darth Fluffy 302]

NP Comic for Thursday, Jun 1, 2023

A good smack upside the head fixes many a technical difficulty. Unless it breaks the thing.

[mlooney 3,417]

Sorcerers aren't built, in general, for hand to hand combat.  

[Pharaoh RutinTutin 1,586]

The Boss level Minions didn't go down in one shot like the first level Minions?

Impossible.

Every one knows the baddies get weaker as you go along.

 

[mlooney 3,417]

Assuming D&D 5 and goblin stats and either magic missile or Eldritch blast (about all the a 1st level sorcery is likely to have), you will kill a goblin with MM on the average and have a 30% chance of killing one with EB.  Goblins have 7 hit points and MM does 10.5 average damage  (3d4+3) and EB does 5.5 (1d10).  You would need to roll minimum damage for MM to not kill a goblin and would need to roll  a 7 or better for  EB to kill the goblin.

[The Old Hack 2,448]

16 hours ago, mlooney said:

Sorcerers aren't built, in general, for hand to hand combat.  

Nor are wizards. Which may be a large part of the reason that Rincewind is built for land speed.

[ijuin 572]

Yes, Rincewind always knew when it would be best to put some distance between himself and trouble.

[Darth Fluffy 302]

18 hours ago, mlooney said:

Assuming D&D 5 and goblin stats and either magic missile or Eldritch blast (about all the a 1st level sorcery is likely to have), you will kill a goblin with MM on the average and have a 30% chance of killing one with EB.  Goblins have 7 hit points and MM does 10.5 average damage  (3d4+3) and EB does 5.5 (1d10).  You would need to roll minimum damage for MM to not kill a goblin and would need to roll  a 7 or better for  EB to kill the goblin.

Average damage is misleading in this case.

MM damage:

1 in 64 chance of 6, still barely up, 1 HP

3 in 64 chance of 7, down, 0 HP

6 in 64 chance of 8, down, -1 HP

54 in 64 chance of 9 through 15, down, -2 HP through -8 HP

Are the bleed out rules still check each round, subtract 1 HP, dies at -10 HP? Does 0HP bleed out, or is that stably unconscious?

 

EB damage:

6 in 10 chance of 1 through 6, still up, 6 down to 1 HP

1 in 10 chance of 7, down, 0 HP

3 in 10 chance of 8 through 10, down, negative HP

 

The averages suggest MM is twice as good as EB. In reality it gets this job done 63 in 64 times (nearly always), vs 4 in 10 times (40% of the time).

Also, 1 HP maximum remaining means that ANY additional hit is a KO.

 

[mlooney 3,417]

5e doesn't have negative hit points as such.  If you hit 0 you start making death saving throws.  Fail 3 and you are dead.  NPC, in general, don't have DST and just die when they hit 0.

Magic Missile is a 1st level spell, which a 1st level caster only has 2 slots for.  Eldritch blast and Fire Bolt are cantrips which a caster can cast an unlimited number of.  I made a mistake when assigning Eldritch Blast to a sorcerer as it's a warlock only cantrip.  Fire bold is what a sorcerer would use.  Does the same damage at 1st level as EB.  Warlocks at 2nd and higher levels get some powers that make EB a better spell than FB, but at 1st level they are more or less the same, other than the type of damage done.  Fire Bolt does fire and eldritch blast does force.  

[Darth Fluffy 302]

1 hour ago, mlooney said:

5e doesn't have negative hit points as such.  If you hit 0 you start making death saving throws.  Fail 3 and you are dead.  NPC, in general, don't have DST and just die when they hit 0.

Magic Missile is a 1st level spell, which a 1st level caster only has 2 slots for.  Eldritch blast and Fire Bolt are cantrips which a caster can cast an unlimited number of.  I made a mistake when assigning Eldritch Blast to a sorcerer as it's a warlock only cantrip.  Fire bold is what a sorcerer would use.  Does the same damage at 1st level as EB.  Warlocks at 2nd and higher levels get some powers that make EB a better spell than FB, but at 1st level they are more or less the same, other than the type of damage done.  Fire Bolt does fire and eldritch blast does force.  

OK, so 5e down is down and dead.

The most significant difference is in the chance of failure to take out the opponent, 1/64 for MM vs 60% for EB or FB. That highlights the difference in odds.

A sorcerer would be well advised to use up what he has to remove threats, then switch over to cantrips. Actually, that's a seriously good cantrip, and he can follow up with that and finish the target off.

I don't suppose there are rules regarding igniting the target with the fire bolt, are there? That should be a thing.

[mlooney 3,417]

10 hours ago, Darth Fluffy said:

I don't suppose there are rules regarding igniting the target with the fire bolt, are there? That should be a thing.

Yes, it can set things on fire, however it's not like a fire elemental that can cause damage the next round.

[The Old Hack 2,448]

On 6/2/2023 at 10:08 AM, ijuin said:

Yes, Rincewind always knew when it would be best to put some distance between himself and trouble.

Which was generally a very, very short time after trouble became apparent. At times this interval could be measured in microseconds.