Character Builds

[rijackson741]

Hunless you think that math is wrong. In that case, of course you should find the flaw.

I already pointed out the flaw. When calculating damage per round you are ignoring AC, which you cannot do. Against monsters with a high BC, low AC builds, to quote you, "are useless against a large number of things that you'd actually care to use them on.".
You also have an omission, which I also pointed out: you are ignoring critical hits. True, there are many monsters that are immune to critical hits, but there are many that are not.

Instead of doing back-of the envelope calculations that don't take everything into account, use the formulas I gave in the other thread.

Lastly, when judging a build you are ignoring everything other than damage per round (which you should calculate as average damage, not max possible damage). If you want a glass cannon build that's fine. If the only thing that matters to you is damage then I have said that you cannot beat a QSD build in the current version of the game (you might be disappointed in the next version though). But whether or not that is the "best build" is a matter of opinion.

[NatePrawdzik]

Bud, you're kind of annoying me now.

I have addressed Attack Chance in every single post. How about instead of telling me I'm ignoring it, you read my posts and actually reply to my points.

I have addressed Critical Hits in my previous post. How about instead of ignoring it, you read my post and actually reply to my points.

I have addressed the Glass Cannon claim. How about instead of making a specious counterclaim, you give me your criteria for what constitutes reasonable defenses in your mind, and we can come to a consensus on if this build constitutes that. Please notice in my last post how I point out that you can increase defenses instead of taking increased EXP. Please consider actually reading my posts and replying to my points. DR of 6 in basic farming gear is hardly a "Glass Cannon". Oh, you mean block?

When I engage and kill something before it can hit me, I have an effective block rate of 100%. Thus, even if that happens only 80% of the time, the monsters don't even have a CHANCE to attack me 80% of the time. Meanwhile, the swarm mechanic doesn't kick in because my target is dead and the other monsters lose interest. Please explain how this makes me a Glass Cannon.

Are you just trying to troll the new guy?

PS: I have argued (in my first post, so you know) that QSD is too good and needs to be removed or adjusted. No, I won't be disappointed if it is removed in some update. Oh, and by "best" build, I mean the one producing the most exp/hour. That is a direct function of two things: Kill Speed and EXP/kill upgrades (the earlier in your leveling you can hit these, the greater your exp/hour). If by best, you mean something else (like max DR, max damage per hit, max HP, etc), then that's just for fun and up to you. Which is what I said already (if you'd just actually read, our conversation would really go swell, mate).

[nyktos]

Bud, you're kind of annoying me now.

(...)

Are you just trying to troll the new guy?

this game is supposed to be fun, and we are only here to talk about the game.
let's keep this civil - and not let things blow up into something unnecessary / please?

that being said, we all have opinions about the game & some of us feel strongly about them.

don't take offense at objections and most importantly,
don't be offensive with your objections about other members posts.

this game is in a very early stage & everything posted in the past 48 hours will be heavily considered in the next meeting.

[keep that in mind]

especially when you make great points & back them up with examples.
thank you for your contributions & please be considerate of others as you post.

this is directed at everyone who is a member of the forum.
please understand my intentions & thank you for reading my post.

[fiernaq]

Dual wielding QSDs has been discussed before too, but I can't find the thread (fiernaq maybe can). Yes, you get a lot of damage, but you get a horrible BC because you get another -20%.

That's actually the problem with dual wielding QSDs. You gain 0 damage and the stats boost is barely worthwhile. Dual wielding Blackwater Poisoned Daggers is a phenomenal gain over wielding just one alongside a shield but the difference in dual wielding QSD is... minimal.

1 QSD + Remgard Shield: 1/3 Dagger Pro (Oegyth), no FS or Spec skills.
QSD = 20AC, -20BC [+DagP = 6 more AC]
RS = -3AC, 9BC, 1DR
Total: 23AC, -11BC, 1DR for 0 skill points spent

2 QSD: 1/3 Dagger Pro (Oegyth), 2/2 FS: DW, 1/1 S: DW
QSD1 = 20AC, -20BC [+DagP = 6 more AC] [+S: DW = 10 more AC]
QSD2 = 20AC, -20BC [+DagP = 6 more AC] [+S: DW = 10 more AC]
Total: 72AC, -40BC for 3 skill points spent

The first build can spend those 3 points on WA for 36AC. Dual wielding gives you 13 more AC at the cost of 29BC and 1 DR plus you're further away from getting points in Cleave.

One look at my build and you'll see that I am very much a glass cannon style build but even I didn't go to the absolute extreme that is possible. I took Enhanced Combat Helmet and the +5% resist bonus rather than going with the Dark Protector. I wear Leather Gloves of Attack instead of Fine Gloves of Swift Attack. And of course I use Remgard Shield and don't even bother collecting FS: S&S.

Here's the problem, though. All this talk is great and it works wonderfully at high levels (30+) but the QSD build is incredibly difficult early on. I spent so much of my time using hit-n-run and save-reload tactics that early game was not very fun for me at all. Some of the key pieces of equipment, you don't get until long after you need them. Try that trek to Remgard when you're missing half of the best equipment and your stats suck... no fun. So yeah, if you want to min-max and plan ahead for the absolute best eventual build, then you're on the right track. Note that I didn't say you're absolutely correct, just that you're on the right track. Why? Because this game is still in development. In 6.12 or maybe one of the slightly earlier dot releases, going Unarmed was by far the best option because it had the same AP cost as QSD without the penalties and there was no fighting style skills, proficiency skills, or specialization skills.

I think the reason rijackson is trying to tell you to take your time is that there is no such thing as a "best build". There are only "flavor of the month" builds that come and go as the patches hit and new content is added and old content is changed. That means that all this planning ahead won't necessarily do you any good because they could easily walk in and nerf QSD or dual wielding on the next patch and all of a sudden your hard work goes right out the window.

So yes, keep looking into this stuff, theorycraft some awesome builds, but try not to word your posts in such a way that readers see "this is the god spec, don't even bother trying anything else. there is no need for you to come up with alternate builds because this is the best and the only one that everyone should be going for."

Cheers and good luck!

Ok, so I was trying not to make this post too big but there are a couple of things I wanted to highlight.

1) Many monsters have over 100BC and several even have over 150BC. To get a 90% chance to hit you need 174 more AC than your target's BC which against those monsters would require 274AC and 324AC respectively.
2) AC has a pretty bad case of diminishing returns. In other words, the more you get, the less it does for you. This is offset slightly by adding new monsters with higher amounts of BC which suddenly make AC more important again.
3) Even with 4 points in Evasion, monsters still have the possibility of attacking first by moving into the square that you occupy. Without points in Evasion, they have a 15% chance to attack you even without moving but they can also still move to attack.
4) Every category of monsters has at least one with between 150 and 215AC and many of those high AC monsters are the ones you will eventually want to farm for xp/gold/etc..
5) The difference between 0, 30, and 60 BC against a 150AC monster is the difference between them having an 87% chance to hit, 83% chance to hit, and 75% chance to hit respectively.

I do recommend putting several of your level up points into AC. There's a fine balancing act between AC and AD that you have to do up until the point where you become overpowered for the current content in order to stay effective in all areas. After that, sure, throw everything else into AD if that's how you want to do things. I also don't recommend staying near 0BC even if you're running around with a QSD at level 10 simply because of how easy it is for a monster to walk up and crit you in the face. Other things such as Corpse Eater, I've found to be incredibly powerful simply because they allow me grind fast without having to worry about my HP slowly dropping off.

Understanding some of the base concepts of the game such as how turns/rounds/ticks work is key to realizing why CE is one of my favorite skills. Take the blessing you get from the RoLS as an example. Did you know that you can run through an entire dungeon (3+ minutes) without it ever ticking? In other words, it is effectively not present. Did you know that actor conditions like Bleeds can also stack up without ever ticking and then one shot you once you finally stop? I watched a stack of bleeds take 61 HP off me before and that's only because I realized what was happening and stopped.

Anywho, there are a ton of other things to learn about this game in order to design the "perfect" build and playing style. I'm pretty sure that the end goal will be to have several balanced play-styles that all work just as well or at least within a very small margin of each other.

[NatePrawdzik]

Thank you to the two posters above me. I appreciate the constructive criticisms/feedback.

Since I can't tell the future, it's just as likely a future patch will make my build better, as that it will make it worse, as that it will be neutral in respect to my build. I'll adapt either way. Planning around this is impossible. My point is to answer as many of the following questions as I can: "What's the best setup right now?" "Why is that?" "How much better is it?" "Is it too good?" "Are other options reasonable to consider in light of this information?" "Should something be done to fix this?"

That's all the kind of things I would imagine you'd like to know as developers, and since I have no emotional connection to playing the way you want me to play, but a desire to play the way that is most rewarding (abusing game mechanics or not), you'll get a more honest feedback from me and other players like me than you will from players who are emotionally invested in this game. What I won't be doing is working outside your system (with a hex editor or some sort of hack), because that doesn't tell you anything you don't already know, and it doesn't give me a fun experience either.

I define fun as figuring out the most abusive, in-game mechanics and pushing them to the absolute limit. It's a metagame for me, in which I assume you design a game to be played a certain way and I push the game to find out how good your rules and planning are at keeping things "fair". If you plan well, you win and the game is balanced. If not, I win, and the game is broken. In that case, I give you feedback so you can change the game and we can start the metagame all over, round 2, can you hopefully beat me this time. The result of this cycle is you get to release a finished product that has been hammered as hard as I can, forged into something as abuse-resistant as possible, and that is a more beautiful thing for everyone involved. I have to assume many of your playtesters feel the same way.

Back on topic:

One thing to consider is that due to the Save feature, monsters having a 15% chance to attack first doesn't matter. Perhaps if you make some type of monsters with 100% chance to attack first, defensive building will gain in value, but as of now all you have to do is save prior to starting your clear of a room (or prior to a combat), and suddenly monsters have no chance because they never attack. Thanks to Flee, it's even more possible to defeat anything (I basically cleared the game with my character who was ~30 or so. Lower levels could too, but there's no point to masochism of that kind). When you're fighting like that, what you want is to hit as accurately and as hard as possible as there is a real life time penalty (number of wasted reloads) if you don't. No other consideration is relevant. I was able to clear the swarming cave at a low level because if you attack first and kill in the first round, they don't swarm. When I messed up or got unlucky, I just reloaded. I cleared the mines (freeing the prisoners, etc) while my guy was at 5 health. Kill speed is the only relevant factor in this version of the game. The only reason I even recommend taking IF is because it gives you some wiggle room to reload a bit less often. It doesn't help against things with horrible actor conditions on strike - for those, you have no choice but to reload if they hit you (unless you're so godly it won't matter), but frequent reloading is just an annoyance you kind of have to deal with at mid levels if you are doing things that you otherwise would have no business attempting.

The point about the early game is valid, but that's over pretty fast. Most of my early game was spent killing hundreds of Small Dogs (and Wild Boars when available), building a sizable meat inventory reserve. It plays out like a snowball rolling downhill. You start slow, but once you pick up speed you keep on accelerating until you reach max velocity. Even so, thanks to Save/Flee, you can clear the snake cave without too much trouble by level 8 (taking your first WA).

I really think that if you want to curb these kinds of abuses, a number of things should change.
1) QSD is too good, but as this is a dead horse now, and I'm happy to be told it will change.
2) Monsters should have "first strike" capabilities, or at least some monsters should (much like some are crit-immune).
3) Flee should be disabled on all bosses and minibosses. I should not be able to kill something when I have a 5% hit rate dealing 1% of it's health and it has a 95% hit rate dealing 100% of my health. Yet, I have killed everything in the game even when this was nearly the case, simply through patience and a willingness to use the tools I've been presented with. This turns the game into "AP, AD, AC - nothing else matters". I doubt that's the intent.
4) I'm aware of the game mechanics and that is why I have stated that ultimately 350% AC is a good goal. That puts you at a 90% hit rate against the hardest monsters. More accuracy has too many diminishing returns to recommend. Less might require you to reload too often. That said, notice I've stated that ~200% is good for RoLS farming (which is roughly 20,000 kills, and thus pretty relevant). I leave it to you to discover why.
5) I believe that no matter what you do, one build will always be the most efficient. I word my posts to indicate my thoughts on what that build is and to describe how much more efficient it might be so that the developers can determine if it's too good or not, and so that players can determine if it's something they want to pursue or not. If I think something is the best, I say it's the best. The "in my opinion" part is self-evident, as is your right to disagree. Since you can see that I back my opinions up with math, and you can see what that math is, my hope is that you will form your own opinion based on the same kinds of reasoning, and not just emotion. Either way, I have no vested interest in changing your mind, or anyone's. I just really love a great conversation about game theory, game design, and math-centric game mechanics. I can't be the only guy who wants to geek out on that stuff (posting to these boards). >.>
6) CE is good stuff early, but later on when you have basically unlimited gold, your CE is doing nothing more than saving you more of a resource that's already abundant. (CE saves potions, and that's about it.) Is more useless gold really important?
7) AC is important, and if you got 6% per level I'd recommend it. At 5%, you're getting ripped off. Here's why:
Level w: 1AD
Level x: 1AD
Level y: 1AD
Level z: 1AD 1Weapon Accuracy
Total #: 4AD 12%AC
Level w: 1AC
Level x: 1AC
Level y: 1AD
Level z: 1AD 1Hard Hit
Total #: 4AD 10%AC
7) Let me just fix one of your quotes as a reply:

Understanding some of the base concepts of the game such as how turns/rounds/ticks work is key to realizing why CE is NOT one of my favorite skills. Take the damage you get from Bleeds as an example. Did you know that you can run through an entire dungeon (3+ minutes) without it ever ticking? In other words, it is effectively not present. Did you know that actor conditions like Bleeds can never actually land on you? I watched a stack of monsters attempt to Bleed me before and that's only because I realized I forgot to save the game before combat.

Please don't mistake a new poster for a new player.

[fiernaq]

Good stuff!

1) Truth. I don't think it's a direct problem with the QSD as much as I think it has to do with the whole AP design. Unfortunately, the AP design is also rather fun and I'm not sure it even needs changed. Leaving the AP system in place will just make balancing items more difficult.
2) Agreed. However, skills like Evasion would probably need modified to address this. Personally, I think each level of Evasion should be worth less than it is now (1 point = 33% chance to attack, 3 points = monster can only move, not directly attack) but that the number of possible levels should be greater. For example, if monsters started with a 60% chance to attack you if you were in the square next to them, then 1 point in Evasion decreasing that amount by 5% wouldn't be quite as bad and the Evasion should be limited to 10 points so that monsters would always have at least a 10% chance to attack first. See my notes on #3 tho.
3) Fleeing is always a valid option and that's not the problem. The problem is how easy it is to get away with it. Default flee success chance is 80% if I'm not mistaken and 4 points in Evasion takes that to 100%. Ideally, each monster would have it's own "difficulty to flee from" number with most boss monsters being higher than the average ant/snake/wolf. However, you should still be able to flee even from your worst nightmare. One way to combat this is to implement an actor condition when you flee that raises your next chance to flee but lowers your AC/AD considerably. Taking points in Evasion should also still help you to flee but not by as much; I figure a 2% increase per level would be fine as that caps out the boost to your chance to flee by 20%. If a monster has a difficulty to flee from rating of 60% and you have 10 points in Evasion you should now have an 80% chance to flee. A boss with an FFR (flee from rating) of 0% would be considerably more difficult (impossible without Evasion) but at least with 10 points in Evasion you'd still have a 20% chance to flee.
4) The RoLS really isn't that much better. You gain 5% BC (which you've already stated has a fairly low priority), 1-1 damage (a single level would give you as much), 6 crit (for your "toys"), and Shadow Regeneration (which doesn't stack with itself). You also lose 4 HP although you've already said that that's not such a big deal. Honestly, looking at that information I could understand why you might want 1 of these (basically just for Shadow Regen) but the second ring is virtually worthless and certainly not worthy of a 10,000 kill grind in a low xp area.
5) I disagree. Stronger against a particular monster? Certainly. Stronger by virtue of being strongest against the most commonly fought monsters? Certainly. But no one build will ever be the best at everything and because of that, you will always be able to build a "slightly less than ideal build" that excels in a particular area even more than the "best build". As you said, though, you're just bringing this information to our knowledge and for that I do thank you. I too really enjoy a good theorycraft discussion and trying to find the "best build" even if I don't agree with the concept.
6) I still think CE makes combat (moving from one monster to the next) quicker. I don't have to watch my HP, make a judgement call about whether to keep going, stop and save, drink a pot, eat a food (sustenance), or find a corner and wait for health to regen. Instead, I just keep plowing through monsters as fast as possible and only stop to save when I come across a crit heavy mob or a boss or when I'm working on a quest area. In other words, the time saved allows me to progress fast enough to pay for itself. That it saves gold is only a very minor "oh cool" feature.
7) I found that I didn't have enough AC just relying on WA. 150% of my 295% AC comes from level up points. Take away my Evasion, CE, Regen, HH, and Cleave and that's 9 skill points which works out to 108% AC if spent on WA. I'm level 58. Without spending any level up points on AC, that puts me at 253% AC which is far below what I would consider necessary to clear the areas I currently fight in with any kind of ease not to mention the fact that I would be more vulnerable without Evasion, I'd need more pots without CE and Regen, and without Cleave I'd be forced to do my best to avoid groups. I already have plenty of damage to kill every monster in the game in one turn so the extra AD I'd have from spending level up points on AD would be useless except for the fact that I'd be missing more often so I'd need the extra AD to still be able to kill the monster in one round.
- In short, I think a mixture is better than straight up ignoring AC from level up points.
8) If I have to save/reload that often, I'm doing something wrong. Saving and reloading is not fun. It's there to get you out of a pickle, not to help you ignore every single tiny little actor condition that comes your way. Stuff happens. Even maxed out, you'll have less than a 95% chance to hit and there's always the possibility that a fight manages to last more than one round (not very likely) or for a monster to get the first hit in (more likely). If I'm forced to save before each and every single monster and reload the first time something happens, I'm going to be spending a lot of time looking at the save/reload screen and not as much time killing monsters and gaining levels. Is it possible to do what your edit of my quote says? Sure. Not much fun though and arguably worse than building a better char so that you don't have to worry about the little things. That's why I have 35% BC and 4 DR and Corpse Eater among other things.

Trust me, I love this kind of dialogue. I love having to go back and double check to make sure I got it right and aren't missing something silly that could make my char better than it already is. I love helping players, both new and old, learn more about how the game works and finding areas that need improvement.

But.

I think you may be confusing the realistic best with the hypothetical best. Yes, your method should result in the absolute best build currently possible but I don't think it's the best way to get there. In other words, I could probably achieve nearly equal end results quicker and with considerably less saving and reloading by tweaking it slightly to account for the various monsters faced at different levels.

[Duke]

EDIT: Dual Wield (DW) and Dual Wield Specialization (DWS) have been added to this post. A thoughtful post from Duke (below) got me to work out the cost vs benefit of going this route (see my post below), and I'm sold on this.

Hey, thanks Nate! I tried my best.
I'm not the greatest at really crunching the numbers, but I try to look at it from a best case scenario and like you mentnioned, what is the opportunity cost when making choices. We've had lots of discussions around the fact that this dagger can do more damage in the long run than a two handed sword for example, and so hopefully the combat system will get corrected and make these things balance out, so we can try out different weapons. Keep up the good work here.

[rijackson741]

I have addressed Attack Chance in every single post. How about instead of telling me I'm ignoring it, you read my posts and actually reply to my points.

I have addressed Critical Hits in my previous post. How about instead of ignoring it, you read my post and actually reply to my points.

I only said you were ignoring them in the calculation of damage per round. Of course, for monsters that are immune to critical hits you can ignore the chance of getting one, but you have to take into account the chance of getting a hit. If you only land 1 hit in 3 you only get 75% of the maximum possible damage.

PS: I have argued (in my first post, so you know) that QSD is too good and needs to be removed or adjusted. No, I won't be disappointed if it is removed in some update.

It's not just a QSD problem, it's a basic problem of the game mechanics. The damage per hit depends too much on base damage, and too little on the damage from the weapon. That means low AP weapons are always better than high AP weapons, and QSD is just the extreme example of that. So what will be changed is much more than just changes to the QSD. The whole way damage is calculated is probably going to change, and along with it there may also be changes to the way certain skills work. See http://andorstrail.com/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=4096

I define fun as figuring out the most abusive, in-game mechanics and pushing them to the absolute limit. It's a metagame for me, in which I assume you design a game to be played a certain way and I push the game to find out how good your rules and planning are at keeping things "fair". If you plan well, you win and the game is balanced. If not, I win, and the game is broken.

Well, there we differ. Using save games to essentially erase some parts of the game mechanics was certainly not how the game was designed to be played. There is no right or wrong way to play AT (if there are any written "rules of play" I have never seen them ), and if your style of play is just to get as many XP as fast as possible (in real time, as opposed to game turns) that's fine. It's not my style though, or that of many others. AT was designed so that you can't actually die. You just "fall unconscious", and wake up in a bed somewhere. In the early versions (before I started playing) I believe the only option was in fact "Continue current game". Save games were added so that players could have more than one character. Personally, my style is to try and avoid getting killed (a.k.a falling unconscious) as much as possible. I have used save games to avoid the inconvenience of waking up in a bed somewhere I don't want to be (there are purists that would frown on even using save games for that), but I would not use them as part of a strategy. Doing so would make me feel like I hadn't really won the game. So for me, the fact that a monster has a 15% chance of getting the first hit matters. Actor effects matter. BC matters. Everything matters, and AC and AD are therefore just one path to a powerful build, not the only path (or even necessarily the best path).

I really think that if you want to curb these kinds of abuses, a number of things should change.

I think just one change would address a lot of what you describe. Only allow the game to be saved at a minimum of 5 minute intervals, with a few exceptions. Those exceptions would be when you just killed a boss monster, or just found an extraordinary or legendary item, in which case the ability to save a game would be activated immediately.

[NatePrawdzik]

I love all these great replies! You all inspired me to put together a spreadsheet to make things easier to figure out with what's going on in the game. I haven't added Critical Hits data in yet (because I don't use them at the moment), but I can add those in too if you feel like it would be worth doing.

The .xlsx spreadsheet is titled "Andor's Trail" on Mediafire, here:
https://www.mediafire.com/?2krk5uz35k73di1

I'd like to know if you see any flaws with what I've done so far; I'm not totally confident I've set things up error-free.

Thank you again!

[rijackson741]

'm not totally confident I've set things up error-free.Thank you again!

When calculating probabilities I never give myself a 100% probability of getting it right

Your probability calculations are not correct though. Rather than just throwing back a corrected spreadsheet, I'll do my best to explain why, and how to calculate them.

First, the probability to successfully strike X number of times. By that I mean exactly X times, not X times or more (which has a different probability). Using some example numbers form your spreadsheet, let's first ask what is the probability of the specific sequence hit, hit, miss, miss, miss. If the probability to hit is p, then the probability of getting the first hit is p, and the probability of getting both the first and second hits is p^2 (which is what you calculate). However, we have a requirement that the next three attacks are all misses, which has a probability (1-p)^3. So the probability of this specific sequence is p^2*(1-p)^3. We are not done yet though, because there are many sequences that give two hits out of 5 (10 of them in fact). The number of such sequences is given by the binomial coefficient, n!/(r!*(n-r)!), which you can work out for yourself gives a result of 10 when n=5 and r=2. So, in general, if the probability of a hit is p, then the probability of getting exactly n hits out of N attacks is

Binomial dist.png

which is the binomial distribution. As a tip, you can do a sanity check here. Add the the probabilities of all possible events. If it isn't 100%, there's a mistake somewhere

Now for the really good stuff
Your calculation for the probability of a killshot would be correct if the probability of the damage numbers was uniformly distributed, but it is not. Let's take your numbers as an example again. First we'll split the damage into a fixed part and a part that can vary. In your example, the damage per hit can be split as 15+(1 to 7). So the damage for n hits is n*15, + the sum of n rolls of a 7 sided dice. When you roll a dice multiple times some totals are more likely than others, so we do not have a uniform distribution. The probability of getting a specific number from multiple dice rolls in fact doesn't follow any distribution. When n=1 it's a uniform distribution, and as n approaches infinity the distribution approaches a normal distribution. It can be calculated though. This is how to calculate the number of ways, c, of getting the number p from n rolls of an s sided dice. Since the total number of possible outcomes is 1/s^n, we can also then calculate the probability, P, of getting a number that is greater than or equal to p:

Dice count.png

The reason it took so long for me to reply was that I tried to implement that in Excel without resorting to VBA, because then anyone looking at the Excel sheet would get warnings about macros. Ha Ha! That was a big waste of my time . In the end I just implemented a few functions in VBA, and anyone that is interested in the attached spreadsheet can either take my word for it that there's nothing malicious in there, or they can hit Alt-F11 and look at the code for themselves, or they can not look at the spreadsheet

Moving on, I couldn't figure out your logic for the final calculation of the chance to kill in single round. This is just the sum of the products of the probabilities of getting a given number of hits and the probabilities of killing with that number of hits. You can do another sanity check at this point. Set the monster HP below the minimum damage, and the chance to kill in a single round + the chance to miss all attacks should be 100% (which also means of course that the chance to kill in a single round is never 100%, no matter what your AC and AD are).