[RPG] What deals more damage on a weapon, +1 to hit or +1 to damage

dnd-5ehomebrewoptimizationstatisticsweapons

Background: I'm introducing masterwork items for 5e as a homebrew rule, both to help players spend surplus gold on something useful when they cannot buy magic items, and to make shopping a bit more interesting — e.g. when you buy a horse, do you want to spend extra for a well-bred horse that is a bit faster, or economize and get a nag that is slower?

For weapons, I have the option to make the masterwork items deal +1 extra damage, or add +1 to hit. I am currently going with the extra damage, to avoid any risks with bounded accuracy. I suspect that for the levels where such items are making a difference, the extra damage might actually be stronger, and I want the effect to be as small as possible.

Players will get access to magic as in typical D&D adventures, so by the mid-levels they likely will have magic weapons and this will matter less. They also can use feats. I'm most interested in the effect on level 1-10 characters, if that makes a difference or makes the answer easier.

For the campaign world (a rather generic D&D world like Forgotten Realms) assume that for the first 10 levels:

  • Characters start with +3 stat bonus on their prime stat (race and point buy) and use their ability score increases to raise it to +5.

  • Characters have a to hit chance of 65%: to hit grows from +5 to +9, for simplicity increasing every second level. Monster ACs average from 13 to 17 (see here), and again for simplicity, increase every second level.

  • Characters deal an average 9 + level damage per attack (from crits, feats, spells, character features). Those with Great Weapon Master or Sharpshooter deal 19 + level damage instead, at 5 worse to hit (ignoring archery for simpicity).

Best Answer

All things being equal, damage bonuses are more valuable against low-AC targets where you're probably going to hit anyway, while to-hit is more valuable against high-AC targets where misses drag down the average a lot.

If you have a high base damage (that is, your damage total before adding a +1 for the weapon), then the to-hit is much more valuable, because you're depending on actually connecting to get that big ball of base damage, and the +1 is a proportionally smaller part of that damage total. (Taking it to the extreme can be useful for illustration: If you hit for 30 damage, adding 1 to that is nothing, while possibly converting no damage into 30 damage is a big deal!)

At low level, the differences are minimal, but grow as characters gain class features that add to their damage, such as sneak attack, smites, rage, and so on.

Or to put that another way, rogues and greatweapon users are going to want a +1 to hit at all levels, and +1 to hit remains useful across your career. A +1 damage favors characters who use smaller weapons, such as two-weapon specialists, and tends to fade over time as the base damage per hit goes up.

I would suggest having masterwork weapons just be +1 damage. In my opinion, +1 to hit will make magic +1 weapons feel much less special in a way that the damage bonus won't.