The post-J1 sweep had the casters clustered at 19–22% L12 clear, vs
martials at 70–80%. A per-round trace across 240 boss-room fights showed
why: autoResolveCombat dispatched !attack only — zero spell_casts, zero
mid-fight consumable uses across every caster class. The entire "caster
cliff" was the sim measuring a strawman where casters couldn't cast.
J2a teaches the sim's autoResolveCombat to mirror a competent prod
player: heal at low HP if an inventory consumable is available, otherwise
cast the highest-EV damage spell (slot or cantrip), otherwise swing.
BuildCharacter now seeds the known-spell list via ensureSpellsForCharacter
so the synthetic spellbook is populated. A -trace flag on the cmd
attaches the raw CombatEvent stream to the last combat of each run for
post-hoc diagnostics.
A first re-baseline (n=100, all 10 classes) showed Ranger regressed
-35.8pp — the picker was burning L3 slots on lightning_arrow when
Ranger's weapon chassis (Hunter's Mark + Extra Attack) was the better
play. Added simMartialFirstClass to gate the picker off for Ranger and
Paladin (whose default kit is also weapon-first / no damage spells).
J2c experimented with widening the picker to control + heal spells;
heal-spell preempt cost druid 10pp (slot heals are 10HP vs 40HP
consumables) and control-spell scoring at 22 cost warlock 6.6pp. Both
reverted. Corpora retained under baseline_j2c*.jsonl for the post-mortem
in sim_results/j2b_findings.md.
Post-J2 L12 leaderboard (baseline_j2a_v2_all10.jsonl, n=100):
fighter 80.0, ranger 80.0, paladin 78.4, rogue 76.8,
druid 61.6, mage 53.4, sorcerer 50.6, warlock 48.2,
bard 40.4, cleric 39.0.
The caster cluster is dissolved; martials are within ±5pp of J1 (sweep
noise). Bard/cleric still trail, but it's no longer a sim artifact —
their defaultKnownSpells damage rosters cap at L2 and the picker can't
pick spells they don't have. That's a prod-level fix, deferred.
J3 trace (sim_results/j3_findings.md): T5 dragons_lair walls every solo
class at 0% (Infernax 546 HP vs solo player HP 110–175; ~25% boss HP
eaten before TPK across all classes). Per the J3 plan menu, this is
party-shaped content the engine doesn't yet have parties for. Surface
a TwinBee-voiced heads-up in handleDnDExpeditionCmd's start path and a
matching tag in !expedition list — players see "raid-shaped — solo
runs not yet survivable" before they spend outfitting coin. No combat
or class balance changes.
Files: cmd/expedition-sim/main.go +trace flag; expedition_sim.go picker
+ SimCombatSummary.Events + spellbook seed; dnd_expedition_cmd.go
raidContentWarning + list tag. All baselines + traces + findings
checked in under sim_results/.
Harden expedition-sim with the three layers a real player carries:
race mods (+1 Human across the board), tier-appropriate equipment
(weapon/armor/helmet/boots/tool promoted from tier 0 to a level-mapped
tier), and a lean consumables bundle (2 heals + 1 buff at T2-T4,
3 heals + 2 buffs at T5). Capture material yields in SimResult so
calibration sweeps actually read out the H4 signal.
Three sweeps in sim_results/ (n=10): bare baseline, +gear/race,
+lean consumables. Headline: yield is gated by combat survival, not
charge counts. Fighter and Mage hit a sharp wall at T3+ even kitted;
no class extracts the T5 dragons_lair boss. Tuning charges before
fixing class survival would over-tune against a strawman, so H4
is now flagged blocked on Phase J.
Phase J appended to gogobee_harvest_charges_plan.md:
J0 baseline at n=30, J1 Fighter T3+ wall, J2 Mage T2+ wall,
J3 T5 boss (sim artifact vs over-tuned vs raid content),
J4 validation matrix.
