this post was submitted on 15 Jun 2025
11 points (100.0% liked)

Dungeons and Dragons

12279 readers
1 users here now

A community for discussion of all things Dungeons and Dragons! This is the catch all community for anything relating to Dungeons and Dragons, though we encourage you to see out our Networked Communities listed below!

/c/DnD Network Communities

Other DnD and related Communities to follow*

DnD/RPG Podcasts

*Please Follow the rules of these individual communities, not all of them are strictly DnD related, but may be of interest to DnD Fans

Rules (Subject to Change)

Format: [Source Name] Article Title

founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
[email protected]
[email protected]
11
2024 savage attacker (lemmy.zip)
submitted 4 days ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]
4 comments fedilink hide all child comments
 

My paladin has the savage attacker feat from the soldier background. Hitting level 2, id like to take great weapon fighting. I often use a maul and divine favor, so I’m rolling 2d6+1d4 per attack. Savage attacker really isn’t improving my damage much, and with gwf; I think it’ll have even less of an impact. Has anyone run into this issue?

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] [email protected] 6 points 4 days ago* (last edited 4 days ago) (1 children)

I haven't played it personally, but Savage Attacker was garbage in 2014 rules, and 2024 didn't change it any, so arguably it's even more garbage now due to power creep. Great Weapon Fighting (GWF), to my amazement, has actually gotten literally worse not even accounting for power creep. It's still better than Savage Attacker once you get a second attack though, due to Savage Attacker's once per turn limitation. And yes, the raised damage floor from GWF does seem to mean less situations where you would want to use Savage Attacker, and lowered gains from using it.

As for how much it's affected, assuming your DM does not allow these feats to apply to Divine Favor (not sure how the 2024 rules feel about this but I believe that was considered the 'official' ruling in 2014), Savage Attacker adds 1.37 average damage to a hit with your maul when you do not have GWF, but only 0.91 average damage to a hit when you do have GWF.
Source: calculated by myself with anydice

P.S. As a fellow maul enjoyer, thank you for your dedication to the superior 2d6 weapon.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago)

Divine favor says that the extra damage is ‘weapon damage’. So I think it works with savage attacker and gwf (dm agrees). I know normally gwf is considered ‘bad’; but I think with the 3 dice it’s pretty ok for me. But it stinks that savage attacker gets even worse with gwf; especially given that it’s an origin feat.

My goal with the build is to find ways to get my maul to do as much damage as possible (I’m planning on great weapon master at level 4). But savage attacker really seems to be useless. I redid your calculation with divine favor, and it looks like savage attacker would only be adding .95 damage:

Divine favor added in