I know I went into it in pretty substantial detail in the previous post, but I wanted to show my calculations for why the new version of the dragonborn breath weapon is going to change the way that I play my Eldritch Knight Fighter.
The PHB version of the Dragonborn takes an action to use their breath weapon, which they can do once per short rest. It starts off at 2d6 damage, scaling up with each tier of play (levels 5, 11, and 17) by 1d6. Fizban's version scales differently, going from 1d10 at level 1 and adding 1d10 to that every tier. This means that in tier 1 it actually does less damage, but at level 5 and higher, it does more. Far more importantly, your breath weapon does not take an action, but rather counts for one of your attacks. If you don't have the extra attack feature, that more or less means the same thing, but Barbarians, Fighters, Monks, Paladins, Rangers, and some Artificers, Bards, Warlocks, and Wizards, that makes a huge difference.
Being not just a Fighter but an Eldritch Knight Fighter, I have a few options when it comes to attacking.
At level 12, I have three attacks when I take the Attack action. With a +1 Battleaxe, my attacks deal 1d8+6 on a hit, or an average of 10.5 damage (if we don't factor in the chance to crit, and we're also putting aside missing).
So, if I just take the Attack action and hit with all three attacks, my average damage per round is 31.5.
My next option is just for Eldritch Knights. At level 7, you get War Magic, which allows you to make a single attack as a bonus action after you cast a cantrip. EKs would be well-advised to pick up Green Flame Blade or Booming Blade (or both) as cantrips. Each of these add some magical damage on top of the initial strike starting at level 5 (and do more damage as a secondary effect, which we're going to ignore for the time being). At 5, 11, and 17 you add an extra d8 on top of the normal weapon damage - fire for Green Flame Blade and thunder for Booming Blade.
So, if my fighter hits with one of these (getting 2d8 extra damage from the cantrip, or an average of 9 extra damage) that hit will land for 19.5, and then I get another normal attack as a bonus action, for an extra 10.5
Which comes to 30.
Basically, unless I can get the secondary target damage from Green Flame Blade or if I'm convinced the target's going to move and take the secondary damage from Booming Blade, I'm better off just making my three attacks (though only by a little - and critting with one of these cantrips scales better as more of the damage is coming from dice rolls - so if the target is paralyzed or I otherwise have a heightened chance for a crit it's probably better to go with the cantrip attack).
But now, let's talk about that breath weapon.
I only swap one of my attacks out for the breath weapon. The breath weapon deals 3d10 damage at this level. That's an average of 16.5 damage, which you'll note is better than one of my attacks. It can't crit, but on the other hand, the target's guaranteed to take at least half of it (barring immunities or features like evasion/avoidance.)
Thus, a single attack action would give me one breath (16.5) and two normal attacks (10.5 each) for a total of 37.5 damage. That's well above the average damage for both the other scenarios.
Now, of course, there are other possibilities here.
Let's imagine a paladin fighting with a greatsword. We'll just imagine that my Aasimar paladin with the +2 greatsword is now a dragonborn. They're level 8 and have the Great Weapon fighting style. Thus, the 2d6 they roll averages out to 8.33 (repeating). With a +5 Strength and +2 from the weapon, they're hitting for an average of 15.33 damage (ignoring when they go great weapon master, which is a feat they just got at level 8).
At this level, their breath weapon only does 2d10, or an average of 11 damage. So, admittedly, here it seems in a single-target scenario, they really ought to stick to the weapon (though if they can hit multiple targets, the breath weapon pulls ahead sharply).
Let's imagine that we finish Curse of Strahd and hit level 11. Now, as a Paladin, they're doing an extra 1d8 radiant damage with every hit. But their breath weapon also goes up by 1d10, now doing (as we saw earlier) 16.5.
One thing to consider is whether the fighting style applies to the extra d8. If it doesn't, it's just 4.5 added to the attack, but if it is, it's 5.25. Either way, it still actually pulls out ahead, dealing either about 20.5 or slightly less. So, ok.
Now, at level 17, the breath weapon scales up to 22 damage, while the Paladin's attacks do not (though they have more spell slots to smite with).
And in basically any scenario where you could potentially hit multiple targets, the breath weapon is better.
What about a paladin who goes sword-and-board? We'll use Enoch, my friend's paladin from the campaign with my Fighter, Jax. Enoch has the Dueling fighting style, so he does an extra 2 damage on a hit, but typically uses a longsword. We'll say it's a +1 longsword for our purposes (I think it's actually not magical because of sentimental reasons, but he uses sacred weapon to make it hit for full damage).
So, with +5 to Strength, he's got the same damage bonus as Jax. But at level 12 (my friend became a dad before his character hit 11, so he hasn't had a chance to play this yet as he's been taking an extended leave of absence for very reasonable reasons) he also has that Improved Divine Smite, so his longsword is doing 2d8 (1d8 slashing and 1d8 radiant) + 8 (5 for strength, 1 for the weapon, 2 for dueling), for a total of 17. Therefore, the breath weapon is just slightly under his average weapon damage, though only by half a point.
Paladin might be a bad example, though - they're more about hitting harder with fewer attacks. I think a Barbarian could have some of the same issues (give a Barbarian my Paladin's sword and they're doing, while raging, an average of 17 damage per hit - 7 from the 2d6, 5 from strength, 2 from the sword, and 3 from rage - though a sword-and-board Barbarian would be doing less). But Monks, Rangers, and others that don't boost the damage of their attacks quite as much will seriously benefit from this, making a breath attack standard operating procedure in single-target situations.
And remember, all of this has been just talking about single-target situations.
The power of the breath weapon utterly explodes as soon as you're hitting a second target, not to mention a 3rd or 4th.
I did more of this napkin math earlier and figured out that even though Green Flame Blade is designed for two-target scenarios, if I can angle myself around so that I can hit those two targets with the Breath Weapon and then follow up with two attacks (what I termed "BWAA," an abbreviation that amuses me) it actually outpaces Green Flame Blade... by, like, a lot.
Now, the breath weapon is, of course, a limited resource. But while my PHB breath weapon often winds up sitting on my character sheet unused because it takes a full action (and it is pretty hard to line up two, let alone three or more targets, which is what I'd need to make the old version worth using) I'm finding myself feeling extremely excited to play Jax again and make this a regular thing for me to use in combat.
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