Nova vs. DPR Characters - Which is Better?

So, nova characters, ones that are capable of dumping insane amounts of damage in one or two rounds. I’ll be talking specifically about single-target damage dealers, not your generic Fireball Evocation Wizard AoE damage spell junkies. My impression is that nova characters are often looked down upon by the 5e community, because they're almost always very resource inefficient. While that is certainly a factor to consider at all times, in my opinion, assessing them as any less than characters that have very effective and efficient Damage Per Round, or DPR as we call it, isn’t rationally justifiable.

Now, I am completely biased towards my sorcadins and other super-nova characters. I do prefer them over the DPR specialists, I fully admit that. So, keep it in mind as I’m laying the case in this video. If anything, videos I made about these types of characters are very good at murdering the like subscribe and bell icon buttons, so it’s a win-win for me either way.

You may sometimes hear me say things like “Nova characters are the best healers” or “nova characters are the best combat controllers” or even “Nova characters are the most versatile combatants”. While these statements make little to no sense at face value, I will explain the meaning behind.

When you consider how the enemy can defeat you, it usually involves some kind of superior damage output, debilitating control or deny effects, grinding you down through some kind of attrition or pressure or just plain action economy overload. Special cases, circumstances an  d scenarios exist, but those are outliers that usually require creativity and out-of-the-box thinking by the DM, players, or both.

Whenever you are able to quickly kill one or more enemies, preferably before they even get to do much or any harm, you are immediately shifting the scale and flow of combat in your party’s favor. If the enemy deals a lot of damage, killing it denies that damage from subsequent rounds. If the enemy constantly stuns, charms or poisons you, killing it removes those negative conditions in the future. If the enemy is applying constant pressure or just has a whole load of actions on their turns, removing them balances the combat flow and action economy.

Damage is always the solution. It may not be and often isn’t the best one, but it almost always works. Of course, if a 9th level hostile spellcaster casts Invulnerability spell on themselves, you have to look to your party’s Wizard, Bard or Sorcerer to do something about that because you are dealing 0 damage. But, in most other cases, you have the ability to severely diminish the threats you and your party are facing, and do it in a very fast, violent and often flashy way.

Now, I’m not saying nova characters are better than DPR characters. I think both general concepts have their place and their purpose. But, if my party doesn’t have a big damage dumper, I often find myself longing for a Sorcadin or an Eldritch Knight or even a Sorlock capable of rolling a ton of damage in a round or two. Don’t get me wrong, Fireballs and Lightning Bolts and big dick damage AoE spells are always sick to see. They get the job done. However, when enemies’ hitpoints get into triple-digit territory, I always find massive single-target damage dealers a boon to have in any party.

Let’s imagine a party of 3 level 5 characters stuck in Hell for whatever freaking reason. You have your level 5 Scribe Wizard with a Fireball and Lightning Bolt, a level 5 Sorcadin with Shadow Blade, Booming Blade and Quickened Metamagic and let’s say a level 5 Twilight Cleric to deny some of the damage party takes. You’re fighting against let’s say 2 Barbed Devils, each at 110 hitpoints. This is a deadly encounter, but I am quite confident this specific trio of player characters can pull it off with a high chance of success.

Ignoring saving throw bonuses and probability percentages – I just can’t be bothered micro-calculating those and I frankly don’t even care - on average, a Scribe Wizard will deal 14 to 28 lightning damage to both devils with some combination of Awakened Spell feature and Fireball + Lightning Bolt spells. A Twilight Cleric activates Spirit Guardians, dealing roughly 7 to 14 radiant or necrotic damage on average to both devils as well. However, devils attack too and they deal on average 52 damage combined in round number 1, 104 damage in the second round and 156 in the third. Even with Twilight Cleric’s channel divinity, if one partymate takes all of that damage, they can fall down to 0 hitpoints very easily. For the sake of argument, I will assume only one of the devils failed a Lightning Ball or Bolt Dexterity saving throw and both of them succeed on a Wisdom saving throw against Spirit Guardians. I’ll estimate the total average damage done to 35 on a more wounded devil, which puts it at 75 hitpoints left.

All right, let’s do the Sorcadin level 5 supernova damage. I will just assume your DM was at least somewhat nice and let you pre-activate your Shadow Blade. With your standard action, cast Booming Blade with your Shadow Blade. With your bonus action, Quicken your Booming Blade with a Shadow Blade again. Assuming both attacks hit without a crit, that’s on average 78 damage dealt to the devil that had 75 hitpoints. That devil is now gone, unable to deal any more damage to any partymate ever, at least in this particular combat encounter. I don’t know about you, but I think that’s pretty neat. The other devil can easily die to 1 more round of Divine Smites, Lightning Balls or Bolts, Spirit Guardians, Spiritual Weapons and Booming Shadow Blades.

Down below, in the description of this video, I will link a couple of older videos where I talked about what I believe are solid nova character concepts in D&D 5th edition. You’re welcome to watch them or save them for later. I’m sure there are better ones out there, but I’ve been told by a fair few people they’re strong, effective and fun to play, so that’s that.

I’d be very thankful if you’d dump a few supernovas on those like, subscribe and bell icon buttons down below, it always helps the channel and gives me another reason to get back and make more videos.

If, for whatever reason, you’d like to read the script I wrote for this video, it’s available as an article on my Patreon page under the Fireball tier. It’s 100% optional, especially since I’ve just read it word for word in this video, but if you find the Patreon perks worth the trouble, worth your time and worth your money, chuck a few bucks my way over there.

With everything said and done, MMM out, talk to you soon!

IMAGES:

https://www.artstation.com/artwork/zr85L