JazzVibe

Step 1: Let every character in the party be an exact replica. This means bless will impact each character the same. (This isn't real world yet, but if we handle this case first we can later come back and add party member differences into the party).

Analysis
Base Case: Bless is not cast. Each party member contributes 100% of their base damage each turn for a total of 600% damage per round. If the combat lasts 4 rounds that's 2400% of a party members base damage.

Bless Case 1: In the best case scenario the party member casting bless will win initiative and go first. This sets his damage that turn to 0% (assuming he doesn't pick himself as one of the 3 targets).

Assumption: 50% chance to hit
With a 50% chance to hit that means bless will up net chance to hit to 62.5% chance to hit. That will increase damage by 25% for 3 party members. At the end each round the damage will be as follows:

round 1: 575%
round 2: 1250%
round 3: 1925%
round 4: 2600%

Bless Case 2: In the worst case scenario the party member casting bless will do so at the end of the round.

Assumption: 50% chance to hit

round 1: 500%
round 2: 1175%
round 3: 1850%
round 4: 2525%

Bless Average: I'm going to average out the best case and worst cases to get a quasi average case

round 1: 537.5
round 2: 1212.5
round 3: 1887.5
round 4: 2562.5

In the average case scenario with 6 identical party members you are increasing the party's damage by less than 7% after 4 rounds of combat. It comes at the opportunity cost of doing 10% less damage on turn 1.

Keep in mind that higher damage now is more important that higher damage later. Eliminating enemies earlier in combat has a very profound effect on how much damage the party takes in a fight. So killing that monster on turn 1 as opposed to turn to is 1 less monster turn. Even if the bless character makes up the difference by turn 2 it' still potentially 1 less attack on the party.

Final comparison before real data is attempted to be placed in:

What if the bless caster doesn't cast bless but instead casts a damage spell. I'm going to assume a level 1 spell will do about 150% of your normal damage (this may not hold if we are looking at level 20 characters but it should be a fairly good approximation.

This changes the damage layout to:
round 1: 650
round 2: 1250
round 3: 1850
round 4: 2450

Doing this gets the bless caster a 5% damage increase after 4 rounds of combat. However, he's 17% damage behind at round 1. He doesn't catch up in damage till round 3. Since damage now is better than damage later I would be inclined to say bless isn't nearly that good in this fictional whiteroom.

Now things may change and I may be proven wrong when we add in some actual characters to look at but I'll work on the analysis and post it later.

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