Optimum Level of Deceptive Attack

[dublindog]

Originally Posted by Lupo

1) often, a Deceptive Attack will grant a very minor benefit. It is somewhat less useful than I thought. E.g., for attack skill in the 15-17 range, a DA improves your chances to hit by +5%/+10% AT MOST.

Yes, this is true. But also remember that 15-17 is a very sensitive range because of the expanded critical hit rule. When you move your skill from 16 to 14, you are moving the chance of a critical down from 9.26% to 1.85%. 15 to 13 lowers P[Crit] from 4.63% down to 1.85%.

Also remember that the benefit is absolute, not relative. At 17/11 the DA level is 2 giving -4/-2 = 13/9. This moves P[landed blow] from 42.6% to 53.1%. Sure, that's only a 10.5% benefit, but it's a ~24.6% improvement.

I know percents are often confusing in this respect.

For example, if your initial chance was 20% and DA moved it to 40% that's a "benefit" of 20%, but an improvement of 100%. Meaning hits are twice as likely as they were, 40% is 200% of 20%. See how easy it is to use three different percents to represent the same thing? Since the later two are easier to get confused with imprecise language, I stuck with "benefit" being the actual additional improvement in chance to hit.

A benefit can never be more than 100%, but an improvement can be above that. For example:

Attack 24 / Defense 16. Without DA, your odds of landing a blow are 10.91%. You need a critical hit.

Chart says that optimal DA is 6 levels bringing the contest to: 12/10 = 37.97% chance of landing a blow.

Benefit chart says 27.06, which is true, 10.91+27.06=37.97

But this more than tripled your chance of success! You are 3.48 times more likely to hit.

That's a 248% improvement!

In the Skill 15-17 range you can see improvements of 20-40% over the original values.