D&D (2024) Sharp shooter/Great Weapon Mastery

[pemerton]

What does it mean?

As per Gygax's DMG, which I still think is the only way of making sense of hp, it means a glancing blow, a nick, or the wearing down of the opponent's werewithal.

The attack roll and damage roll are discrete processes at the table, but not discrete things in the fiction.

 

[UngeheuerLich]

I don't think it's good for D&D - especially given it's wide player-base - to make effectiveness in combat turn on what are basically mathematical tricks.

And in the fiction, it's not like the to hit number and the damage number represent discrete things. Like a high roll to hit followed by a low damage roll doesn't mean a really, really precise but rather gentle poke.

You could do the pathfinder 2e route and just give automatically extra damage if you hit by 5 or more.
Could at least be an option in the DMG.

 

[pemerton]

You could do the pathfinder 2e route and just give automatically extra damage if you hit by 5 or more.

I'm not sure this is a good fit with bounded accuracy.

One aspect of bounded accuracy is that players don't feel obliged to eke out every possible bonus; in the context of combat, this is because the marginal increase in damage gained by increasing the chance to hit from (say) 12 in 20 to (say) 14 in 20 isn't an overwhelming advantage - given the general variability of combat, the frequency of "excess" damage, etc.

Once you link damage to degree of success on the to hit roll, this feature of bounded accuracy is lost.

 

[TwoSix]

Once you link damage to degree of success on the to hit roll, this feature of bounded accuracy is lost.

Agreed. If you're going to make degree of success matter, I'd rather just go with assumed auto-hit and only roll damage, and have armor be damage reduction. (Like Into the Odd/Electric Bastionland.)

 

[pemerton]

Agreed. If you're going to make degree of success matter, I'd rather just go with assumed auto-hit and only roll damage, and have armor be damage reduction. (Like Into the Odd/Electric Bastionland.)

That would be a huge reworking for D&D, I think.

 

[tetrasodium]

Agreed. If you're going to make degree of success matter, I'd rather just go with assumed auto-hit and only roll damage, and have armor be damage reduction. (Like Into the Odd/Electric Bastionland.)

I don't think that 5e ever successfully had that feature though. Players seem more desperate for every plus one they can get than ever before because it really makes a difference when it takes them from hitting on like a ten or eleven to a nine or ten... Especially when they have multiple attacks. 5.5/6e would need to go back to something like 2e's 6/15 for - 1/+1 even if they keep the attributes on one uniform scale insiof six. That larger gap raises the cost of a plus one & lowers the sting of a "low" Stat to the point where it actually makes questioning if shifting it is worth the cost/benefit

 

[TwoSix]

That would be a huge reworking for D&D, I think.

Oh, I'm not saying to make that change for D&D. I'm just saying that if degrees of success on the combat roll matter to you, there are D&D-adjacent systems out there that accommodate it.

 

[Mistwell]

How about this as a fix for guidance.

Guidance: For one hour, you grant the target proficiency in one skill of your choice. If the target already has proficiency in that skill, they instead gain expertise in that skill. You can only have one guidance in effect at a time and you cannot dismiss this spell once active.

 

[Chaosmancer]

How about this as a fix for guidance.

Guidance: For one hour, you grant the target proficiency in one skill of your choice. If the target already has proficiency in that skill, they instead gain expertise in that skill. You can only have one guidance in effect at a time and you cannot dismiss this spell once active.

That wouldn't be bad. I'm guessing no effect if the target has expertise though?

 

[Mistwell]

That wouldn't be bad. I'm guessing no effect if the target has expertise though?

Yes. That at least offers some token protection for bounded accuracy