#max damage

victor:turbo-tastic

emily:max damage

sparky:cybug baby

Incorruptible #17 (April 27, 2011)

Thanks to @tobyjamessharp for this art piece, and to @mad--pie​ for the individual portraits used in this article!

With the end of the campaign, it’s time for one last max damage post! Due to a combination of spell choices and class abilities plus some new spell shenanigans, the Mighty Nein have the reverse situation to Vox Machina: the highest damage dealers by far are the spellcasters. Furthermore, all of the Mighty Nein except the physical fighters deal more single-target damage than a Level 20 Vox Machina’s lowest-ranked single target damage dealer, Keyleth. Keep in mind, however, that Keyleth in particular excels at multi-target damage, and as an Archdruid, she can cast spells while wildshaped and can wildshape as much as she wants, so in a straight-up fight, would still likely wipe the floor with them one-on-one.

We didn’t include Essek here despite being a member of the Mighty Nein for a couple of reasons. First, he is an NPC, not a PC, and therefore doesn’t quite follow typical PC rules. This makes it a little bit of an unfair comparison, since the others are bound by specific balancing rules and he is not. Second, we simply don’t know enough about his capabilities. From what we have seen, it’s likely Essek has a similar spell slot capacity as Caleb, but we haven’t seen him use the same single-targeted spell attacks that Caleb has access to, specifically Scorching Ray and Cat’s Ire (a reskinned Bigby’s Hand). This makes it likely that he will suffer the same problem as Keyleth in these analyses: high damage to groups, but suffers when it comes to single-target damage. From what we’ve seen, Essek’s biggest single-target, single round bomb would be an 8th level Gravity Fissure, for a maximum of 80 damage. It’s possible he has other tricks up his sleeve, but we simply don’t know.

As a reminder, our rules:

Only look at single-target damage.

Any AoE spells assume a single target.

Ignore creature-specific resistances and vulnerabilities.

“Vulnerability” from special abilities like Path of the Grave can be used, since those can be targeted to affect any enemy or damage type.

All attack rolls crit

All targets fail saving throws

Only use abilities/spells that take effect during a PC’s turn

No reactions

No ongoing damage

No creatures from conjuration spells

Setup for persistent spells/abilities can take as many rounds as necessary, as long as they’re still active when the damage round happens.

None of our setups, even while some of them are fairly complicated, require more than a minute, and all persistent abilities used last at least a minute.

None of this setup can come from another character, and characters are limited to their own equipment (to the best of our knowledge as of episode 141).

With that, we’re ready to go, so without further ado, our level 16 Mighty Nein max damages, in order of lowest damage to highest!

A week or so ago I saw a couple of posts about the theoretical max damage of Grog and Percy ( can’t remember who posted, sorry)

I thought it would be fun to do the same with some of the meighty nein, but boosted to level 20! Of course this means trying to predict what levels people will take, but it’s fun to speculate!

So first I would like to cover our resident Warlock turn Paladin Fjord.

I will be making a couple of assumptions to find his max damage, they are as follows:

•He will be Warlock 13/ Paladin 7 (Travis seem to be alternating between class levels so this will be how it lands at level 20). •He replaces the Tirsting Blade eldritch invocation for eldritch smite (as he will have the extra attack from paladin) and will take the Lifedrinker eldritch evocation at level 12 in warlock. •All attacks are assumed to be critical and max damage is rolled. •The creature being attacked has no natural resistances or vulnerabilities. •The creature being attacked is a Fiend or Undead (for the sweet, sweet extra d8 on divine smite). •Buffs can be applied as many turns in advance as needed, but the damage dealt to the creature must be done in at most 1 round.

With that out of the way, let’s crunch some numbers!

First let’s find the maximum damage that Fjord can do with no help from the rest of the nein in one turn:

On turns prior Fjord sets up his Hexblades curse and Fury of the tides Channel divinity. These will give him a +6 and +5 to his damage respectivly ( assuming they are in front of something). On the attacking turn he will use his bonus action to cast banishing smite adding 5d10 and then use his action to attack twice. On the first attack he will pour his 2 5th level spell slots left (warlocks gain 3 at level 11) into divine smite and eldritch smite. This adds 6d8 from the divine smite (5d8 + 1d8 from the creature being a Fiend or Undead) and 6d8 from the eldritch smite ( there is no dice cap for eldritch smite unlike divine smite!). With the d10 from wield in the star razor in two hands that is: 5d10 + 12d8 + 1d10 = 156 doubling it because it’s a critical it goes to 312 damage. Adding all the bonuses to damage (including Fjord’s half-orc brutal critical die) it goes to 345 damage from 1 attack! The second attack will have a second level divine smite attached for 4d8 and no eldritch smite (as it is once per turn) will give us: 4d8 + 1d10 = 42, doubled for crit, adding bonuses totals for 100. Much less than the first, but still very impressive, bringing the total damage in one turn to 445.

Let’s now expand things a bit. Fjord now has a full round to deal damage. This will add an opportunity attack, however, because of war caster Fjord can cast a spell in its place, say, booming blade. So, 3d8 from the initial damage of booming blade, another 2nd level slot gives us: 3d8 + 4d8 + 1d10= 66, doubled and adding modifiers we get 160 damage from an opportunity attack, adding the 4d8 from the creature moving the total goes to 637 damage by himself in one round

Things only get better if we allow the other members to help. Haste from Caleb gives Fjord another attack and Holy Weapon from Cad grants another 2d8 to every attack, bringing the total damage to 867, using his final level 2 slot to smite one last time.

But that’s not all. Because there is one more feature that can boost the damage of any of the neins damage capabilities. Cadeuceses Path to the grave feature. By having Fjord attack with his action first and only using 1 2nd level spell slot per attack to divine smite (no eldritch smite yet!) and then casting banishing smite, as well as applying the 5th level divine smite and eldritch smite to the opportunity attack, as well as the fury of the tides damage(as it is also one a turn), Fjords damage rockets to 1378 damage in 1 round.

That is a huge amount of damage, equal to more than TWO Tarrasques, although they have to be undead ones. This puts level 20 Fjord on par with Percy!!!