5

I am looking towards concentration saves, and getting to +9 means automatic success on a low damage check, or a check up to 21 damage.

At some point I assume the average single hit may exceed 21, which would necessitate a higher CON save, but I am not sure when that would be.

So, using creatures from the monster manual only if that helps (although all creatures may be more useful) what CR am I likely to be facing when a single hit will cause more than 21 damage on average?

By average I mean something like "the average CR5 monster does x damage on a single hit". I am also not considering the source of the damage, a spell, melee attack, breath weapon etc all count (although spells and breath weapons could take into account save chances to determine average damage, and I will be a Paladin with +5 to everything at least by level 6).

To provide a bit more clarity after a comment, I am not worried about critical hits, and I am assuming I actually get hit, so hit chance isn't a factor, just the damage a hit would cause.

I know there are a lot of people here who dislike "average" questions, but please don't ask me if this is an x/y question, and don't comment that averages aren't useful. They are useful to me and I can use this to decide at what level (and if) I need the Resilient Constitution feat.

I haven't found the monster creation tables useful, because that is damage per round, and my next step would probably be checking all the creatures manually, but this may be community knowledge somewhere.

Thomas Markov
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SeriousBri
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    Should an average include the chance of 0 damage on a miss? Or is it average damage, assuming you are hit? Should it include the chance of extra damage on a critical? If so, answerers will need your AC, because the chance of a crit goes up the higher your AC is (assuming you only care about average when hit). – Kirt Dec 24 '23 at 23:18
  • @Kirt good clarifying question! Assuming I am hit, and not including crits (to keep it easier) – SeriousBri Dec 24 '23 at 23:24
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    I think this is a fine question, as far as "averaging things" questions go. It has a clear objective and scope, and the source data is objective, official, documented, etc. – Thomas Markov Dec 25 '23 at 00:57
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    I do think that this is subtly asking the wrong question. Instead of average damage exceeding 21, you are probably more interested in what % of monsters at each CR will exceed 21 on average. Currently, as @ThomasMarkov mentions in his answer, a few monsters with absurdly high damage are skewing the averages. – MannerPots Dec 25 '23 at 04:16
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    @MannerPots That’s a good point; I’ll add that calculation when I get around to it. – Thomas Markov Dec 25 '23 at 04:31
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    Related:What is the average damage per attack for monsters by CR – Nobody the Hobgoblin Dec 25 '23 at 08:23

1 Answers1

9

CR 11 and CR ≥ 15

I've constructed this table from this spreadsheet of Monster Manual data. Using a pivot table, I show the average, max, and standard deviation within each CR of the average damage per hit. CR 11 comes in at 23.4 avg dam/hit with higher than average variance due to the Remorhaz boasting a walloping 50.5 damager per hit with its bite attack. Then, from CR 15 and up, the average damage per hit for each CR is greater than or equal to 21 (CR 18 is exactly 21.0).

CR 7 gets an honorable mention, coming in just under due to the mind flayer's Extract Brain attack (averaging 55 dam/hit) being included in my analysis.

CR Avg Avg Dam/Hit in CR Max Std Dev % of Monsters dealing > 21/hit
0 1.9 4.5 1.1 0.0%
0.125 4.8 8.5 1.5 0.0%
0.25 5.6 9.0 1.7 0.0%
0.5 6.7 11.5 2.4 0.0%
1 8.0 18.0 3.5 0.0%
2 11.3 22.5 4.8 5.3%
3 12.7 22.0 5.4 9.1%
4 13.1 24.5 5.6 14.3%
5 16.4 36.0 6.8 26.3%
6 16.9 40.5 9.1 26.3%
7 20.5 55.0 12.8 33.3%
8 17.0 33.0 8.4 40.0%
9 18.5 30.0 8.1 33.3%
10 19.2 26.5 5.5 33.3%
11 23.3 50.5 12.4 33.3%
12 10.3 23.0 8.6 25.0%
13 19.6 35.0 9.2 33.3%
14 18.8 22.5 4.0 50.0%
15 34.8 61.5 19.3 75.0%
16 24.9 43.5 11.0 60.0%
17 23.4 28.5 4.1 71.4%
18 21.0 21.0 - 0.0%
19 21.5 21.5 - 100.0%
20 23.0 28.0 4.6 66.7%
21 26.6 49.0 16.5 50.0%
22 24.8 29.5 6.7 50.0%
23 26.6 31.0 5.2 75.0%
24 28.0 35.0 9.9 50.0%
30 32.0 32.0 - 100.0%

And some bar charts because charts are cool:

enter image description here

enter image description here

Thomas Markov
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    Good summary! Nit: Using "dam" for "damage" feels unintuitive, given the more common abbreviation "dmg", it wouldn't cause ambiguity issue with DMG the book since the capitalization is different and the context is different. – justhalf Dec 25 '23 at 10:54
  • This answer ignores the fact that it's impossible for a party to encounter all monsters of a given CR the same number of times. – Mołot Dec 25 '23 at 15:08
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    @Mołot My answer ignores that, or the question ignores it? I’ve provided exactly the statistics asked for by the question. The usual caveats obviously apply: do I really need to explicitly state “but your table probably does not have an equal chance of encountering each monster”? – Thomas Markov Dec 25 '23 at 15:13
  • @Mołot as Thomas says, the question ignores that (deliberately). This answer, assuming the data is right, seems pretty close to amazing based on what I asked. – SeriousBri Dec 25 '23 at 15:56
  • @SeriousBri I didn’t check every single monster for accuracy, but I did some spot checking and corrected one number that failed the eye test. – Thomas Markov Dec 25 '23 at 18:28
  • The only thing I'd add is why CR 11 spikes before CR 15 provides a clear breaking point, if you're able to tell. Solid work, regardless – Ifusaso Dec 26 '23 at 05:52
  • @Ifusaso I mentioned it in the brief summary, the Cr 11 remorhaz skews that group up with its 50 damage bite attack. Is that what you mean? – Thomas Markov Dec 26 '23 at 12:27
  • I missed that. I saw the nod to Mind Flayers at 7. Disregard haha – Ifusaso Dec 26 '23 at 16:40