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I would like to know how much an average level 20 character is capable of doing per turn and per ten turns, and how much a level 20 party is capable of doing per turn and per ten turns. I intend on using this information to create a final boss for a level 20 campaign, I am planning so if you have any tips related to that as well I would appreciate it!

What I'm Looking For

  • How much damage can each individual person do in that first initial big bang turn where they do the most damage?
  • How much damage can the whole party do in that first turn?
  • The average damage of each individual over ten turns.
  • The average damage of the whole party over ten turns
  • At what point would the party start to run out of steam?
  • Anything else I should know.

Some Guidelines

  1. About 4-6 players.
  2. All players are level 20.
  3. I am allowing any classes, races, and subclasses from any printed sources book, That means no blood hunters.
  4. Assume it's a relatively balanced party, a tank, healer, support, damage dealer, spell caster ect..
TheLittlePeace
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circusbaby23
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    Welcome to the stack! I see you already took the [tour], and don't forget to visit the [help] for more... Well, help. These sorts of questions can sometimes be ill-received, albeit not against the rules. Similar questions have been asked already though - does this question help? – TheLittlePeace Aug 10 '23 at 16:18
  • It would probably be better to ask separate questions for specific builds or specific party makeups. What prompted the question? Is there an issue or problem you anticipate? – Jason_c_o Aug 10 '23 at 20:33
  • Just because people have ideas like how unanswerable it is can we please stop closing perfectly good questions? Let the answer say it can't be answered (which is wrong) but the question is perfect valid. – SeriousBri Aug 13 '23 at 16:59

2 Answers2

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There is no such thing as an “average level 20 character”. Design it based on your actual party.

There is simply no way to answer this question with an actual average. Any average given will be an average of some number of actual characters. But if the characters used in that average differ significantly from the actual characters in your party, then you’ve used the wrong numbers for designing your encounter.

Since this is for the conclusion of a campaign, just design the boss based on the actual characters you have. This will guarantee a much better outcome than a boss designed according to some likely incorrect and total arbitrary assumption. You will have real data, so use it.

Thomas Markov
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    It may also be worth mentioning - creating encounters for higher level play is usually tailored to the players anyway. No amount of CR calculation will get it right, since that starts to fall apart somewhere in the mid-levels. – TheLittlePeace Aug 10 '23 at 16:25
  • Also, you don't have to come up with a singular number of boss HP to you have to stick to, you can just write down a ballpark figure and then fudge it on the fly. Feel like the fight is over too soon? Just secretly add some HP to your boss. Maybe they even go down first only to rise up again for a dramatic last stand. Seems like it's starting to drag? Just pretend like it has only a handful of HP left. Someone pulls off some extremely cool and unlikely move that would be a cool way to kill the boss but they still have too much HP left? Nope, they just killed it, what an awesome coincidence! – Kryomaani Aug 10 '23 at 23:10
  • Also, your "average" will be less and less meaningful as you go up in levels. You can maybe get away with it for the first few levels where enemies with (for example) an extensive list of resistances and immunities, a wide array of spells and lair/legendary actions will be quite rare. But by level 20 so much stuff is highly situational. – biziclop Aug 11 '23 at 22:17
  • Yet somehow all the optimisation community use baseline figures when working out what counts as a good damage build. Just because it isn't useful under every circumstance doesn't mean it can't be done. – SeriousBri Aug 13 '23 at 16:58
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About 31 points, with most classes varying from 21 to 43

From your question it sounds to me you do not have a group assembled yet to tailor the encounter to - for example you are not even clear on how many player characters we are going to have in that fight or what their classes exactly are. If that is true, it might be better to wait until the characters are made and design the encounter for them then.

That said, of course you can generate statistics about average damage outputs for character builds. Here is a Q&A on average damage output per level, across all levels. Based on this, expected average damage output per round per PC ranges from about 21 to about 43 on level 20, across a large range of classes and builds, with the middle ground somewhere around 31 damage. This considers a multi-round fight, not just a single round with a character piling all their nova effects on.

Note that characters optimized for damage output can get to much higher amounts, and that these numbers already include the discount for having to hit Armor Class or overcome Saving Throws, so they will be a good bit lower than the raw damage output on hits that would hit all the time.

Nobody the Hobgoblin
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    Those numbers feel low for classes focused on damage dealing. I was pulling those sorts of expected damage numbers by level 7 with an Arcane Trickster (using Elven Accuracy to reduce the risk of a miss to as close to zero as possible, along with Booming/Greenflame Blade to make damage with a +1 dagger 1d4+4d6[Sneak Attack]+1d8[cantrip]+5, 26 average on normal hit, 47 avg on a crit, which occurred ~14% of the time). Admittedly, an extreme example (and you need to get advantage regularly), but by level 20, with minimal optimization, that would be well above 43 avg with no resource expenditure. – ShadowRanger Aug 10 '23 at 23:56
  • @ShadowRanger Yes, as many optimization/maximization questions show, you can get much higher. The top end here were my own damage oriented builds, and even those without Sharpshooter or GWM and squeezing out all tricks. Keep in mind these are averages across a lot of builds and not everyone is min/maxing. – Nobody the Hobgoblin Aug 11 '23 at 04:53
  • @ShadowRanger Also, this is not raw damage on hits, it is expected damage delivered (i.e. after hit chances, saves etc). – Nobody the Hobgoblin Aug 11 '23 at 06:05
  • Yeah, I understand it's average actually applied damage per round, including chance of missing. In practice, that had no meaningful impact on the Arcane Trickster build I described; I got crits far more often than I missed with that build (once I got Elven Accuracy, I think I missed on an attack just once across the latter half of Wild Beyond the Witchlight, while I crit several times), so the average damage per round was a little above the normal hit damage (and cantrip kicker damage bumped it even higher when it applied). – ShadowRanger Aug 11 '23 at 14:55
  • And I get that optimization helps, but it takes almost no optimization for some of these classes to hit the top end of that range. A level 20 Rogue, no cantrips, no Elven Accuracy, just reliable advantage (they should be able to pull that off by level 20 most of the time) and a non-magic d8 weapon averages 42.9 DPR from the d8 + 5 (Dex) + 10d6 (Sneak Attack) alone (assumes base 65% chance to hit, 87.75% with advantage, and accounts for 9.75% chance to crit and double the dice). Add a +1 magic weapon and you'll exceed 45 DPR (due to bonus damage and increased hit chance). – ShadowRanger Aug 11 '23 at 15:02
  • It isn’t clear to me where you’re getting your numbers from. You link to the question, but I didn’t see the specific numbers mentioned here anywhere in the answers. – Thomas Markov Aug 11 '23 at 17:49
  • @ThomasMarkovwasonStrike You can read them of off the chart in the answer. Each horizontal line is one damage step. – Nobody the Hobgoblin Aug 11 '23 at 17:56
  • @ShadowRanger All of them were built and calculated without assuming advantage on attacks. I agree, it would make sense to assume that Sneak Attack is on most every round (it does not even need Adv, just an ally in 5'). My sample rogue build was at 54 dmg/turn raw, and the average across classes was 66, which adjusted for 65% hit rate gave these 43. – Nobody the Hobgoblin Aug 12 '23 at 14:18