How often do your players multiclass?

[FrogReaver]

I definitely do. You don't seem to understand how limited a resource it is, or how absurdly, uselessly, white room the idea of using SD on nothing else is.

You can't use it all the time. You can't rely on it to make most attacks with the -5+10.

At least 1/4, possibly more, of your attacks in most adventuring days will be made without knowing the exact AC of the enemy. You will misspend some of your superiority dice, or you will decline to use it when you ought to, at least a few times per adventure. Even if you don't, you don't have enough SD, and the player who is going to only ever use their SD for Precision Attack is going to be too rare to consider in a discussion of how playing a build will work out at the table.

Get out of the white room, and sit at a table with this.

I have used the build in a campaign. I assure you it works exactly as described. You have so many uses of it and need to use it so rarely that you rarely run out of superiority dice.

You do occasionally misspend dice or don't have any idea what the ac of an enemy is and avoid using it. That said the tactic at level 5 with 2 attacks is closer to +3.5 for all attacks over the whole day when not misused. I estimate +3 for all attacks over the whole day because I agree and understand you will misuse it sometimes.

 

[pukunui]

I have three players in one group who almost always multiclass, while the rest tend to stick with one class. In my other group, no one ever multiclasses.

As for me, I don't think I've ever played a character that didn't multiclass. At least not in 5e. Possibly in previous editions.

 

[doctorbadwolf]

I have used the build in a campaign. I assure you it works exactly as described.

Sure it does.

I'm sure your DM is very challenging, too. lol

Maybe your DM always makes it transparent what the enemies' AC values are, and doens't put your character's life at risk often enough for you to need to use other manuevers, I couldn't say.

Doesn't matter, because you're still avoiding 90% of the refutation of what you put forth, in favor of trying to pretend it all hinges on how reliable Precision is.

Your attempt to accuse me of "dismissing anything you say" didn't work, so now you're just ignoring everything but the unprovable question and acting like it's the whole debate.

I'm done, here, unless you decide you'd like to actually address the original point of contention without relying on a single specific usage of a single subclass of a single class, or anything else that is equally theorycrafted in a vacuum.

 

[FrogReaver]

Sure it does.

I'm sure your DM is very challenging, too. lol

Maybe your DM always makes it transparent what the enemies' AC values are, and doens't put your character's life at risk often enough for you to need to use other manuevers, I couldn't say.

Doesn't matter, because you're still avoiding 90% of the refutation of what you put forth, in favor of trying to pretend it all hinges on how reliable Precision is.

Your attempt to accuse me of "dismissing anything you say" didn't work, so now you're just ignoring everything but the unprovable question and acting like it's the whole debate.

I'm done, here, unless you decide you'd like to actually address the original point of contention without relying on a single specific usage of a single subclass of a single class, or anything else that is equally theorycrafted in a vacuum.

My assertion was that without damage feats Booming Blade keeps you fairly close in damage but with damage feats it doesn't. I then went on to demonstrate a build using damage feats where the damage difference when compared with booming blade was large. It's not the only character I can come up with that illustrates this but it was a simple one that only used one feat and didn't require variant human.

So what does it mean that I can show that some builds that use feats get a lot more damage out of their second attack than the little bit that booming blade adds to a single attack? To me that means that booming blade isn't able to keep damage close to builds with feats. What does it mean to you?

 

[doctorbadwolf]

My assertion was that without damage feats Booming Blade keeps you fairly close in damage but with damage feats it doesn't. I then went on to demonstrate a build using damage feats where the damage difference when compared with booming blade was large. It's not the only character I can come up with that illustrates this but it was a simple one that only used one feat and didn't require variant human.

So what does it mean that I can show that some builds that use feats get a lot more damage out of their second attack than the little bit that booming blade adds to a single attack? To me that means that booming blade isn't able to keep damage close to builds with feats. What does it mean to you?

So show another example. This time, try one that doesn’t require oddball player behavior for the issue to show up significantly, and that isn’t only relevant to one subclass of one class, who chose one ability within that subclass.

If it doesn’t matter for most, or even a plurality, of standard gish builds, then it doesn’t show that Booming Blade doesn’t keep your damage within acceptable values compared to Extra Attack, when feats are in play. It just shows that there are builds where Extra Attack matters more than in other builds, which hasn’t ever been a point of contention.

 

[Li Shenron]

I’m curious how often players end up multiclassing. I find in my games that it’s fairly rare. Then again in my games we typically stay below level 11.

how often do they multiclass in your games? How often does word believe people multiclass?

I have had zero multiclassed characters in 5e.

The last time I've seen multiclassed characters was in 3e.

 

[Arnwolf666]

Surprisingly I have not seen multiclassing in over 3 years. Even at the hobbyshop games. Around here the players have been looking at multiclassing as something power gamers do to make the game less fun and to make munchkin players to break the game.

 

[TwoSix]

So show another example. This time, try one that doesn’t require oddball player behavior for the issue to show up significantly, and that isn’t only relevant to one subclass of one class, who chose one ability within that subclass.

If it doesn’t matter for most, or even a plurality, of standard gish builds, then it doesn’t show that Booming Blade doesn’t keep your damage within acceptable values compared to Extra Attack, when feats are in play. It just shows that there are builds where Extra Attack matters more than in other builds, which hasn’t ever been a point of contention.

If the argument is that Booming Blade ameliorates the need for Extra Attack in the level 5-7 range so that you can dip more effectively, than yea, that really shouldn't be in dispute. Assuming a decent proc rate on the extra 2d8 for BB (and if it isn't proccing, the enemy isn't moving, so win-win), you're looking at a DPS increase of 8-9*hit %, which is pretty close to an extra attack for a non 2-hander. And you didn't spend a precious low-level feat on it! It makes going sword and board for a gish actually feasible.

Now, if damage is your number one priority, absolutely you should be targeting using a 2 hander with GWM (or archery with SS), but then you shouldn't really be building a gish anyway.

 

[FrogReaver]

If the argument is that Booming Blade ameliorates the need for Extra Attack in the level 5-7 range so that you can dip more effectively, than yea, that really shouldn't be in dispute. Assuming a decent proc rate on the extra 2d8 for BB (and if it isn't proccing, the enemy isn't moving, so win-win), you're looking at a DPS increase of 8-9*hit %, which is pretty close to an extra attack for a non 2-hander. And you didn't spend a precious low-level feat on it! It makes going sword and board for a gish actually feasible.

Now, if damage is your number one priority, absolutely you should be targeting using a 2 hander with GWM (or archery with SS), but then you shouldn't really be building a gish anyway.

Yep. All I was saying was that booming blade only really guarantees your damage is within an acceptable range of a featless characters. Once you throw feats into the mix that’s no longer guaranteed. Can someone make a character with damage feats and optimize using them poorly such that booming blade still keeps up? That’s surely possible but not really the point I was making.

 

[TwoSix]

Yep. All I was saying was that booming blade only really guarantees your damage is within an acceptable range of a featless characters. Once you throw feats into the mix that’s no longer guaranteed. Can someone make a character with damage feats and optimize using them poorly such that booming blade still keeps up? That’s surely possible but not really the point I was making.

Well, I think the issue here is that "acceptable" really has no parameters. Just looking at Tier 2, I'd consider Firebolt damage (11*hit% damage) to be the floor, and Agonizing Blast and Extra Attack with a 2 hander to be the baseline for what "good" damage looks like. (19-25*hit% damage)

Using a one hander with Booming Blade, we're looking at 1d8+4+2d8 (assuming 1d8 automatic, and 50% chance of a BB proc), so 17.5*hit%. Swapping to a 2 hander with a fighting style would bump that up to 22.8*hit% damage. Not quite as good damage, but in the 90% range of an extra attacker with no feat investment, so I'd say it's acceptable for my standards.

I'd have to figure out what the damage ceiling actually is for Tier 2 (I'm assuming something like XBE/SS BM fighter, or a Berzerker Barbarian with GWM), and see how much that impacts the damage ceiling. A third attack plus accuracy bonuses plus the extra 10 damage, I'd assume it's close to double the "good" damage value.