D&D 5E Sharpshooter/Great Weapon Master and Why They Are Broken 101.

[Corwin]

Reminds me of that song: Everything Is Awesome (When You're Living the 5MWD)!

 

[FormerlyHemlock]

Sorry for you Flamestrike but Hemlock is right.

The oddest thing about this is that some of what Flamestrike says is correct too, e.g. you can create adventures for wizard-heavy parties, and Rottweilers are not cats. It's true, but it's irrelevant as a response to what I wrote, so it's odd that he tries to address it to me. I think we call that a straw man.

Obviously, even the aforementioned party of necromancer + bladesingers is going to struggle with an adventure that takes place entirely in an deadmagic pocket, whereas a party of Fighter/Rogues would have a ball with it. Lesson 1: it's not hard for the DM to "win" and "beat" the players. Lesson 2: only bad DMs try to beat the players.

 

[TwoSix]

No, they dont. You can create an adventure for a party of Wizards within the DMG baseline; its just harder to do.

I feel like "harder to make challenging adventures for" and "powerhouses" have a pretty strong degree of correlation.

 

[Fanaelialae]

Sorry for you Flamestrike but Hemlock is right. A party of wizard punches well over wxpected DMG baselines, especialy when they will have a common spellbook in which rhey will have pooled their knowledge.

One necro, one summoner and maybe two bladesingers will plow through almost any dungeons without difficulty once they reach level 5. It will get really uggly once they reach level 12. But don't just believe me, do some simulations and you will see. Days of Codzilla are gone, but they're not that far away so we have forgotten about them.

I overall disagree.

I do agree that if this group doesn't need to concern itself with resource conservation (1 encounter per day) then they can punch well above the baseline. However, if they have to conserve resources (because they have to get through roughly 7 encounters before they can take a long rest) then they lose their edge.

For obvious reasons, long rest abilities (ie, vancian spells) tend to pack more of a punch than abilities that recharge on a short rest. That means that a wizard tends to have more potential to nova than a warlock. However, the big issue is that if you nova you might not have enough gas left in the tank later in the day.

At least that's been my experience with 5e. Long rest casters can absolutely dominate when fresh, but if they go nova the other characters end up having to carry them through the end of the day, which doesn't always go that well.

 

[FormerlyHemlock]

I overall disagree.

I do agree that if this group doesn't need to concern itself with resource conservation (1 encounter per day) then they can punch well above the baseline. However, if they have to conserve resources (because they have to get through roughly 7 encounters before they can take a long rest) then they lose their edge.

For obvious reasons, long rest abilities (ie, vancian spells) tend to pack more of a punch than abilities that recharge on a short rest. That means that a wizard tends to have more potential to nova than a warlock. However, the big issue is that if you nova you might not have enough gas left in the tank later in the day.

At least that's been my experience with 5e. Long rest casters can absolutely dominate when fresh, but if they go nova the other characters end up having to carry them through the end of the day, which doesn't always go that well.

Helldritch proposed one necro, one summoner, and two bladesingers. That group can beat a Medium-sized encounter with minimal resource expenditure (since you mention 7 fights in a day, they pretty much have to be Medium if you are trying not to break the daily XP budget). Kobold.com says a Medium encounter at 10th level might be [roll, roll] two Hook Horrors and two Hellhounds, for a total of 5600 XP of difficulty [15.6% of the daily 36,000 XP budget, so you could have about 6.42 such encounters per day].

Two Hook Horrors and two Hellhounds vs. a dozen or two skeletal archers each doing d6+6 points of damage per hit, a conjure Fire Elemental who takes half damage from all of their attacks, cantrips from the Necromancer and the summoner, two AC 20ish Bladesingers, and whatever the Bladesingers whistle up using their own spell slots/concentration.

You can't seriously tell me that encounter is a heavy resource drain on the PCs. It's like a teenager fighting a five-year-old. The wizards could do that same fight a dozen times without running out of resources, which means they're punching well above the DMG-predicted "you'll have to rest after only six fights" baseline.

 

[Fanaelialae]

The thing is, if you have an entire party of wizards, then they are likely able to share the load, casting fewer spells each while destroying their opponents and therefore able to keep plenty of spells in reserve. For instance, if they are all 5th level, then it might only take two of them to drop a couple of fireballs to essentially finish the combat with some minor mop-up.

Four 5th level wizards have eight 3rd level spells to go between them (up to 12 if they all use Arcane Recovery to recharge a 3rd level slot, but that may not be the best choice for a long adventuring day, particularly if you want to cast Shield regularly). Assuming average damage and a roughly 50/50 split of failed saves, a fireball deals 21 damage. Against a CR 2 ogre (a low deadly fight could involve up to 5 of these guys) that's 2 or 3 fireballs (even assuming they all fail their saves which, granted, is likely). That also assumes that the ogres are grouped closely enough to all be targeted at once. If not, 6 fireballs might be more realistic. If an ogre gets lucky and rolls well on saves, again 6 fireballs are needed.

By the book, 3.1 of these five ogre encounters would constitute the xp for a full adventuring day for these 5 wizards. Unless those ogres bunch up, the wizards are liable to run out of fireballs before all of the ogres are dead. Ogres may not be sophisticated but a fireball only has a 40 foot diameter; if the ogres simply line up in a killer can-can formation no fireball can target all 5 at once. And again, this brief kind of adventuring day actually plays to their strengths.

Encounters where enemies come in waves can also be a challenge for casters, since it limits their ability to nova the encounter (unless there is a single spawn point they can choke with a spell).

That doesn't begin to consider the possibility of something like fire resistance or an enemy with counterspell / dispel magic, which can really ruin a caster's day. The DM doesn't even have to use such encounters often; if they do come up they are likely to have serious TPK potential. A party of all casters certainly has power behind it, but also some glaring weaknesses.

 

[Fanaelialae]

Helldritch proposed one necro, one summoner, and two bladesingers. That group can beat a Medium-sized encounter with minimal resource expenditure (since you mention 7 fights in a day, they pretty much have to be Medium if you are trying not to break the daily XP budget). Kobold.com says a Medium encounter at 10th level might be [roll, roll] two Hook Horrors and two Hellhounds, for a total of 5600 XP of difficulty [15.6% of the daily 36,000 XP budget, so you could have about 6.42 such encounters per day].

Two Hook Horrors and two Hellhounds vs. a dozen or two skeletal archers each doing d6+6 points of damage per hit, a conjure Fire Elemental who takes half damage from all of their attacks, cantrips from the Necromancer and the summoner, two AC 20ish Bladesingers, and whatever the Bladesingers whistle up using their own spell slots/concentration.

You can't seriously tell me that encounter is a heavy resource drain on the PCs. It's like a teenager fighting a five-year-old. The wizards could do that same fight a dozen times without running out of resources, which means they're punching well above the DMG-predicted "you'll have to rest after only six fights" baseline.

In a typical day, you should be mixing it up. I've never done a day of 7 medium difficulty fights. That seems like it would be mindlessly boring. I'm also not at all convinced that an all fighter party would fair any worse against your proposed encounters.

Besides, do you normally start your campaigns at 10th level? In order to become a 10th level wizard, you typically have to survive that long. How well do you think they'd do at 3rd level? Cause I'm pretty sure the all fighter party would handle things fine.

 

[Tony Vargas]

In a typical day, you should be mixing it up. I've never done a day of 7 medium difficulty fights. That seems like it would be mindlessly boring. I'm also not at all convinced that an all fighter party would fair any worse against your proposed encounters.

An all-fighter party would obviously do better the weaker, less varied, and more numerous the encounters. And, yeah, it'd potentially get pretty mindlessly boring the further the DM leaned in that direction.

That doesn't begin to consider the possibility of something like fire resistance or an enemy with counterspell / dispel magic, which can really ruin a caster's day.

It also doesn't really consider wizards, just some hypothetical class that can only cast fireball.

 

[Fanaelialae]

It also doesn't really consider wizards, just some hypothetical class that can only cast fireball.

Sure, but fireball spam was one of the examples put forth.

 

[Tony Vargas]

Sure, but fireball spam was one of the examples put forth.

Of course, it's just only one such example. A group of wizards who expect they're going up against enemies vulnerable to fire and/or prone to fighting in close order might all prep fireball, they might prep a wider variety among them otherwise. 5e neo-Vancian casters are enormously flexible, so, well we can come up with an example of what they might do with a spell, they're never actually restricted to using just that spell.

Conversely, if you build a GWM fighter, what he can do is great, with that sort of weapon, but anything else he does is going to be a step down from it. He's a lot less flexible. A whole party of 'em might whallop through a lot of straightforward melee opponents (though as you rightly point out, it'd be oddly monotone and potentially boring), but presented with any other set of challenges could run into serious difficulty.

Whether you're talking wildly overflexible wizards being broken, or hard-hitting GWM/SS melee types being broken, they're only as broken as the DM wants them be. The (em)Power(ment)'s all on his side of the screen.