D&D General The Sharpshooter feat and multiple attacks

[James Gasik]

D&D has always picked some odd hills to die on. Some things we want to conform to some vague notion of "reality", like swapping weapons or how long it takes to put on armor.

Some things we are fine with totally abstracting, like not dying in a single sword hit, or somehow being able to avoid bolts of lightning.

Other things we could care less if they conform to any realism at all, like flaming spheres that only damage you at certain moments in a turn, or having giants that don't collapse under their own weight.

Often you run into this problem where someone will accept anything if it's explicitly magical, but won't accept anything some random guy at a gym couldn't do in real life. A high level character can get punted off a steep cliff, take 70 damage, stand up, dust themselves off, and keep on trucking without any other ill effects, but letting a Cleric cast cure wounds and healing word or even casting a spell while wielding a hammer and a shield simultaneously (despite being a class that is intended to use shields and cast spells while in melee) is right out.

Rather than actually address this, game designers just keep making magical options available for every class and giving magic more things it can do, because doing it any other way will cause a vocal section of the player base to scream that letting non-magical characters bend the rules of physics is somehow "not D&D".

I don't see this paradigm changing, as it's been reinforced by decades of the game's legacy; if you want a character to bend reality, you have to give them magic. Be it a magic item or some kind of boon.

Or just change the rules in your home game.

 

[Bacon Bits]

Yeah, except historically the magical options they keep adding generally take the form of "spells" that spellcasting classes can easily draw from, or "magic items" that you've got about as much chance of finding as a glass of water in the Nine Hells.

Character options aren't really equitable if they add them under the "class features" for some classes and the "rewards" section for others. What was their solution to that in late 5e? Eliminate rewards.

I can't help but feel like we've lost the beat.

 

[Ancalagon]

Oh, I agree it's terribly unrealistic. I also don't care.



I'd have no objection to hand crossbows doing d3 or d4 damage. Although, it looks like One D&D is going to include pistols. I guess I can just take 2 levels of Artificer and be the Gnome with Gno Gname.



I think I'm at a point where if we have wizards hurling firebolts all day and fireballs a handful of times without sweating (quite a feat to beat the heat!) and then for the finale creating a pocket dimension for a meal or to store untold loot, that I think I'd like the option to include some minimal magical tricks for everyone else. Especially when darkvision is just a thing. Nobody's biological eyes work like that without magic, but the game seems afraid to say, "Oh, yeah, that's actually just magic."

I mean, Crossbow Expert allows a high-level Fighter, with a surge of adrenaline, to fire a heavy crossbow 8 times in 6 seconds, and we're to believe that's not magic? A heavy crossbow that requires a windlass or crow's foot to span it? When light crossbows historically had a battlefield rate of fire around 2 to 4 per minute? That's at least a 20-fold increase in firepower. It's double the specified rate of fire of the M1 Garand (40-50 shots/minute), meaning it's got a higher aimed rate of fire than the semi-automatic rifle credited as "the greatest battle implement ever devised" precisely because of how it enhanced the firepower of infantry. Nobody is that much of an expert! Like the magic is already there. We're just in denial about it.

This is the thing with D&D. We've got this heavy bold culture of "no magic unless caster! NO MAGIC UNLESS MAGICIAN! ONLY SPELLS IF MAGICIAN!" But we've also got a game with this pervasive problem that casters are a lot of fun and get really powerful and have a lot of dynamic choices, while martials... mostly decide whom to attack just like they did at level 1. And one of them scales really well, while the other struggles to stay relevant.

So we have this situation where martials have to stick to reality because they're "not magic," so when we improve them we're obliged to only let them do things you arbitrarily accomplish in 15th century Europe. Meanwhile, casters can do whatever you can imagine from fiction? Well no wonder it's broke! There's your problem.

I just... I don't find "that's not realistic" to be not only a credible defense anymore, I don't think it's a desirable defense anymore.

A heavy crossbow shooting 8 times in a 6 second round is ridiculous, as you well state.

however, unrealistic crossbows are not the only way to make martials better! a swordsman totally can swing a sword that fast, if they are very, very good. I've also seen extremely fast archers.

So yes, "cranking up" the martials to make them better is good. If, at high level, their abilities become somewhat legendary, that's ok. But we don't need ridiculous hand crossbows and thrown forks to make that happen. "It's ok because everything is magic and martials need help" is ... lazy

 

[James Gasik]

A heavy crossbow shooting 8 times in a 6 second round is ridiculous, as you well state.

however, unrealistic crossbows are not the only way to make martials better! a swordsman totally can swing a sword that fast, if they are very, very good. I've also seen extremely fast archers.

So yes, "cranking up" the martials to make them better is good. If, at high level, their abilities become somewhat legendary, that's ok. But we don't need ridiculous hand crossbows and thrown forks to make that happen. "It's ok because everything is magic and martials need help" is ... lazy

But "it's not ok because everything isn't magic" isn't exactly ideal either. If we're going to have two sets of rules, one for people who use magic and one for people who don't, unless there are limits placed on what magic cannot do (which really, there basically isn't), we're left with a game where being nonmagical is the inferior choice.

And it's lazy, IMO to let this be the status quo and rather than fix it, just make it possible for every class to be magical or supernatural in some way.

Because you really have to ask what the benefit of "realistic" crossbows is? What about the game is made better because crossbows have to adhere to rules that limit them? What's the advantage of a limited crossbow? Especially in a game that limits lots of things unrealistically to begin with, like how all the advantages of using a shield boil down to an AC boost you strap to your arm, or how slings that terrified the Romans during the Punic Wars are relegated to the dumpster bin of D&D weapons.

Why do we even have weapons if some are just bad? If they're not all going to be equally viable, it's just wasted space in the PHB.

 

[Oofta]

Personally I'd say nerf crossbows. Give heavy crossbows a loading property (with no way to get rid of that property) but don't require any proficiency would be my preference. People already fire way too many arrows from a bow, it's not like you need CE. Want to be the Men in Tights version of archer that has a bazillion ranged attacks? Get a bow.

I like having the option of characters that are not explicitly magical. It's not like casters can "do whatever you can imagine", there are pretty significant limits for the levels most people actually play. Yes high level fighters are action heroes, Rambo on steroids (is that redundant?) I'm okay with. Yet another wizard in a different costume? We have a ton of options for that.

I just don't see a need for the crossbow expertise feat.