What makes Great Weapon Master and Sharpshooter so good?

[The Crimson Binome]

Talk for yourself.

Most DMs want PHB content to be good enough to be used as is.

Many use feats. Very few allow feats but first double-check WotC's work.

Asking DMs to pre-screen every option individually is
a) dismissive b) ridiculous and c) asking them to do WotC's work

You don't speak for most DMs. Nobody here does. Most DMs aren't represented on these boards.

In order to play 5E as it was intended, screening content is explicitly the job of the DM. If you don't want to do the job they give you, then you have no right to complain about the game not working. The game works as the designers want it to work, even if it doesn't work as you (or I) want it to work. If you want it to work differently, then you are empowered to make it so at your own table.

They sold you a bag of parts, and if you ignore the instructions, then you can't reasonably complain about the end product not being functional. You are certainly within your rights to complain that they should have sold you a finished product that worked right out of the box (and I would agree with you), but that doesn't change the reality of what they sold you.

 

[Satyrn]

Talk for yourself.

Most DMs want . . .

Is this a case of

A) spinning on a dime;
B) do as I say, not as I do; or
C) Delicious irony?

I'm picturing Zapp as a Borderlands psycho screaming "I smell delicious!"

 

[BookBarbarian]

Most DMs want PHB content to be good enough to be used as is.

Talk for yourself.

Many use feats.

How many?

Very few allow feats but first double-check WotC's work.

How few?

Asking DMs to pre-screen every option individually is
a) dismissive b) ridiculous and c) asking them to do WotC's work

I screen nothing but 3rd party and homebrew. My game has yet to break. But I can only talk for myself of course.

 

[Satyrn]

My game has yet to brake.

Mine's had way too many stops and starts.

 

[Mistwell]

Sorry now you're just grasping.

The hard minmaxing fact remains: offense is the best defense. Removing the foe's hit points is the goal of combat. If you play a fighter or other martial your primary job is this and nothing but this. Having feats that make you twice as good at your job, is simply unsustainable - it drastially reduces options in the game, since it is decidedly unfun to play a build that kills foes half as fast as your buddy.

Everything else is just words.

This is incredibly simplistic analysis. Offense is the best defense sometimes, and defense is the best defense sometimes, and it all depends on the circumstances. There is no generalization that can be made due to the number of factors in play. If you play a fighter or other martial your primary job is sometimes to do more damage, and sometimes to prevent the rest of your party from taking more damage, depending on the circumstances. Your decision that the job of the fighter is exclusively to do damage is faulty logic and deeply simplistic. It's like you're stating that D&D is tic tack toe as opposed to three dimensional chess.

 

[FrogReaver]

This is incredibly simplistic analysis. Offense is the best defense sometimes, and defense is the best defense sometimes, and it all depends on the circumstances. There is no generalization that can be made due to the number of factors in play. If you play a fighter or other martial your primary job is sometimes to do more damage, and sometimes to prevent the rest of your party from taking more damage, depending on the circumstances. Your decision that the job of the fighter is exclusively to do damage is faulty logic and deeply simplistic. It's like you're stating that D&D is tic tack toe as opposed to three dimensional chess.

Killing enemies faster means the enemies get less turns which means you and your party take less damage. I can make a very good argument that killing faster is a greater form of damage reduction than almost anything else.

 

[BookBarbarian]

Mine's had way too many stops and starts.

I always like when my typos are pointed out cleverly.

I salute you sir!

 

[Mistwell]

Killing enemies faster means the enemies get less turns which means you and your party take less damage. I can make a very good argument that killing faster is a greater form of damage reduction than almost anything else.

Doing more damage, 1) does not necessarily mean killing enemies faster, depending on the circumstances, and 2) positioning yourself such that a mass of enemies focus on you and your higher AC may well be more important to the party in a given set of circumstances than you killing one or two of that large pack of creatures.

Particularly if you're in a group that has a spell caster that is much better at killing a large group of foes with an area attack than your fighter-type, because they can kill 20 foes when you can only kill 1-4 of them, your position and defense as the fighter-type might in fact be far more crucial for the party than your doing more damage.

And even that is very simplistic, but at least it's less simplistic than "More damage = Enemies Get Less Turns". It really does depend on the circumstances, and it's not an analysis that is best done by considering just your PC and just the foes - the rest of the party plays havoc with so many other factors in play.

Sometimes you want to do as much damage to one creature as possible, sometimes you want to do as much damage to many creatures at once is best, sometimes you want to simply keep a group of monsters focused on you, sometimes knocking one creature prone and then grappling them so they cannot move is the most important thing you could do, and sometimes even the dodge action while blocking a corridor is the most important thing you can do for the party. There is no good generalization that can be made here about damage being the most important thing.

 

[devincutler]

Killing enemies faster means the enemies get less turns which means you and your party take less damage. I can make a very good argument that killing faster is a greater form of damage reduction than almost anything else.

Which means, de facto, the enemies killing your martial as fast as possible is the best tactic for them, and defending thwarts this.

Not to mention doing more damage can mean different things. For example, against a horde of 1 hp rats (to use an edge example), I would rather have 6 attacks that do 1d3 damage than 1 attack that does 4d10+40 damage.

 

[Oofta]

Which means, de facto, the enemies killing your martial as fast as possible is the best tactic for them, and defending thwarts this.

Not to mention doing more damage can mean different things. For example, against a horde of 1 hp rats (to use an edge example), I would rather have 6 attacks that do 1d3 damage than 1 attack that does 4d10+40 damage.

Overkill is pretty much never part of the theoretical discussions because it's too complex to figure out.

Just like there'a always the assumption that GWM will get buffs or advantage that somehow are never applied to the other fighting styles. Or that maybe, just maybe, chasing after DPR doesn't really matter all that much to some people.