ClaytonCross
Kinder reader Inflection wanted
DnD isn't a solo game, but it is a group game. And groups can be small. The game where I had a barbarian with this feat had a standard of three or four people in it. We are getting into the specific minutia here, but we had no rogues, no tanks except for me, and a veritable horde of multi-classed monstrosities. That 1d8+11 I could do with this feat and rage? It was the lowest damage in the party. The cleric was hitting for something like 5d8+5 at-will. So, especially in that instance I was being far from selfish, I was just trying to keep pace and fulfill my role.
Frontliner, great defense, decent but not OP offense. Stick in some enemies craw and let them choke on me while my party did the rest.
Also, I think "damage" is so easy to pull off that it is essentially a non-role. Being a tank and a damage dealer, or a sneaker and a damage dealer, is pretty much baked into the game anyways. And the type of people who care about you maybe dealing more damage than them are going to be doing way better than the guy who is playing a shield barbarian with a one-handed weapon.
So if your taking the role of front line defense, aka the tank. It seems like your "problem with the feat" is your trying to make it into a way to do more damage while your character is a defensive character that would better benefit from Shield Master or Defensive Dualist. The Cleric is your DPR, so why are you a defensive tank trying to compete with that damage? Why does being the lowest damage in the party matter? It should be understood based off of the role you chose as a tank. Their is not need for you to have "decent but not OP offense". My point is/was your competing in a fight against another players role, even though your not intended to be in that role. If you don't die and the Cleric gets to do there DPR because of it you did your job and the party will live because you never went down. That's what a tank does. So being unhappy with not getting more damage from a feat not intended for your role in the party seems so weird. What will happen with this is that that other melee DPR fighters will take your "new feat design" and add it to their DPR build and only make them further form you, then the GM will adapt encounters to increase the difficulty so encounters are not too easy and boring and you will still be just as far behind the rest as ever and the party weight you pull will not change because encounters adapted to the group..... net 0, now two players have wasted feats for no gain. Also... an ASI does the same thing, to this is only useful once you have hit the 20 cap to raise the cap, messing with bounded accuracy and making running the campaign harder on the GM because now everything has to be adjusted. … Its just not beneficial in any way that I can see. Fixing nothing and creating problems for no reason.
I'm responding down the line, so I don't know if you go into more detail later, but a wizard taking booming blade is doing something really weird. They are going to have to have at least decent dex or str (likely dex) to be able to hit with the weapon, because booming blade is a weapon attack. Sure, it has a nice effect, if you are darting in and out of combat. Which is not a specialty of the wizard with it's low AC, low HP, and general focus on not being on the frontlines.
Not saying you can't do it, but you are jumping through a lot of hoops to do it, and it is about the worst possible place you can put your wizard.
The assertion it that a Wizard, with taking weapons master for shortsword proficiency and warcaster is worried about playing optimal... if they were they would intellect to 20 first. 16 -> 18 lvl 4, 18 -> 20 lvl 8, Warcaster lvl 12, flavor weapons proficancy for warcaster booming blade spell attack with a melee weapon... of which they could have a 16 dex for mage armor and they could have no intention of moving into melee combat but the GM sneaks monsters behind them, they are fighting in tight space dungeon, and enemies are deliberately engaging different enemies triggering opportunity attacks by the wizard. … that's all completely reasonable to happen. But it does require the feat to have weapon proficiency unless the at high levels with bounded accuracy monster AC, the wizard wants to be stripped of the +6 to hit proficiency provides making flavor choices like this unfeasible. Booming blade is great control spell and it could be used to keep a rogue or caster away from your tank a round or suffer a great deal of damage and with +3 dex and +6 proficancy it's a functional flavor option. Without this feet as it its you remove this player choice option as an in rules functional player choice my restricting them form a possible +9 to a max of +3 that is not likely to be able to hit with bounded accuracy. This kind of unique game play is exactly why feats exist and your suggestion to make it a +1 to hit, +1 damage removes it for something that can be achieved with an ASI or raises it above the intended bounded accuracy cap when used by a fighter with a +3 sword and 20 strength and now another redundant +1/+1.... If your going to cause that pain, at the least I recommend you make it a "weapon specialist" feat of its own, instead of removing options only do add something optimizers will take to break bounded accuracy.
I don't think it is about DPR optimization though. I play things because they are cool, got a Fey Pact of the Chain right now, with an awesome backstory, whose combat potential is nowhere near where it could be (still decent because party of 3, I need to pull weight in combat, but very much built for non-combat roles). But when you build a "cool" concept, you pick the cool thing you want to focus on. And if you want to be a sword wielding warlock, there are options for that that do not take your feat.
And remember, this is a feat. Unless you are playing human you are getting this at 4th level (and you are either not playing a dwarf or an elf or want something they don't provide) which means you were probably doing something else for the first three levels. And if that something was eldritch blast, you see your attack you've been using, look at the new weapon, and it is plain that smaller dice are worse. It actually takes someone whose been around for a while to know it is an average of +/- 1, and even then it is hard to justify using a worse attack during combat (at least for me)
And, I look at that warlock, and I just don't get what value the sword has to the design space. You want to cast hold person with a low spell DC? You are just wasting actions if it is low enough (and trust me, that is a pain I've seen many, many players go through) and you get the same damage with a staff, especially since warlocks don't get shields by default.
So, you need a player who definitely wants magic swords, but doesn't want to play anything centered around getting magic swords, except for taking a feat partway through the campaign that only gives them the ability to wield swords worse than if they had just built for wielding swords from the beginning.
And, let us not forget, you can wield any weapon anyways. You just don't get your proficiency bonus to hit if you aren't proficient. So, it is a feat that only increases your accuracy to hit.
Lets, say you don't take it for DPR optimization. Once you make that change others can get it and will. That has to be taken into account. With bounded accuracy and as much as a +6 or +30% increase in "to hit" is a HUGE DEAL as ACs meat or pass AC23 then its the difference of 5% hit on natural 20 or 30% hit which makes a profound impact on the use of those weapons. Even at lower levels its still at least a +2 or +10% chance to hit.
Yeah, sometimes people are jerks. Weapons matter so little in the grand scheme of things that I would have no problem if someone wanted to get a specific subset trained into them. I'd say more than likely your Story GM just didn't want the wizard "Suddenly Knowing" how to do something because of the feat, not really about the mechanical imbalance of allowing him to pick up a longsword and hit slightly more often.
Story GM and its easier to follow the rules than debate house rules, so having the feat allows the action at all and role playing the gaining of the skill can be done so its interesting and not just .."look I can use swords now!" … which I am not thrilled about (I would like to use feats when I get them) but I understand.