D&D 5E Scaling the number of off-hand attacks?

[FormerlyHemlock]

The broken part about GWM and SS is they are easily better than any other martial damage dealing feat out there. About the only thing that's close that I can think of is a Sentinel using melee rogue who can somehow frequently get opportunities to use Sentinel to trigger a second sneak attack.

What other damage dealing feats are there to compare to? Savage Attacks isn't very stiff competition (worse than ASIs) and Sentinel is primarily defensive in nature.

Sent from my LS670 using Tapatalk 2

 

[CapnZapp]

Sigh. Seems you really need this discussion to come full circle.

The issue isn't casters or skillmonkeys taking GWM or SS. That's a preposterous definition of "broken" or "overpowered".

The issue is that there is two kinds of fightery characters. The ones that take either of these, and the ones that don't.

It would be nice if the second group could hold a candle to the first, but they don't.

The issue is that if you plan to play a character using weapons to hurt foes, you need either of these two feats. They're that good.

If you don't take them, you're supposed to lose out on damage somewhat, but you gain other neat stuff instead. But it is very hard to turn away from that much extra damage. After all, killing your foes is the best way to not get hurt yourself. Specializing in something other than killing your foes better give very good benefits.

And since the extra damage from these feats can easily add 50% damage, those other choices start looking very stupid in comparison.

The extra damage from these feats is so significant, in fact, it pays off to build your strategy around enabling them as much as possible. In short: everybody that does not have these feats try their hardest to grant those who do advantage on their attacks.

This is when you should realize something's wrong. Because this isn't a fun strategy for everybody.

The ideal solution is not to remove them from play. That would reduce choice, and what we want is ADD choice. We want to tone them down a notch, so "not taking them" becomes a viable character building strategy, thereby ADDING choice to the game.

---

Now then, emd45, what do you think about the +5/-5 suggestion we were talking about?

 

[FormerlyHemlock]

If you don't take them, you're supposed to lose out on damage somewhat, but you gain other neat stuff instead. But it is very hard to turn away from that much extra damage. After all, killing your foes is the best way to not get hurt yourself. Specializing in something other than killing your foes better give very good benefits. ...

The ideal solution is not to remove them from play. That would reduce choice, and what we want is ADD choice. We want to tone them down a notch, so "not taking them" becomes a viable character building strategy, thereby ADDING choice to the game.

---

Now then, emd45, what do you think about the +5/-5 suggestion we were talking about?

I think the primacy of offense only applies under specific conditions. If you want defensive strategies to compete with sniping and greatswords, try large numbers of durable foes like CR 1 giant ants in an adverse environment like darkness or cliffs. The thing about offensive strategies is that they're like fighting an avalanche with a fire hose: if you can stay ahead of input you're fine, but when input climbs everything suddenly fails at once. GWM is more failure-prone than SS because SS also lets you fight in rough terrain with lots of cover, which helps defense, but try fighting your way through a horde of 30 armored AC 16 kobolds every ten minutes for an hour and then tell me you wouldn't rather have a shield than a greatsword.

Against AC 16, a DX 18 Fighter 8 with Archery does about 13 DPR using -5/+5 or 12 without. It's almost a complete waste of a half-feat. Crossbow Expert would boost you to 18ish instead. So I think if you go down this road, you'll make warlocks and crossbow fighters more attractive, but won't actually solve your problem of no one wanting to play defensive builds--you're just changed which offensive builds are best. If you want diverse characters you need to present diverse threat profiles. Fire breathing ants, man.

Sent from my LS670 using Tapatalk 2

 

[guachi]

What other damage dealing feats are there to compare to? Savage Attacks isn't very stiff competition (worse than ASIs) and Sentinel is primarily defensive in nature.

Crossbow Expert - although it's pretty good the fewer attacks you have compared to SS and GWM.
Charger - The damage bonus is ok but it requires constant movement.
Dual Wielder - GWM is better than Dual Wielder even before you account for the -5/+10 part of the feat.
Grappler - It's so specialized I wouldn't say SS or GWM are better worse considering how you'd likely use Grappler.
Mounted Combatant - It's awesome because Advantage is awesome but it's probably not as universally usable as SS or GWM.
Polearm Master - From a damage standpoint it's inferior, but I like the flavor enough that I think it's "cooler"
Savage Attacker - Very weak.
Sentinel - Good for control. Rocks in a melee heavy party. Even better on a melee rogue. In fact, I'd rate this the best feat for damage but it's really specialized to a melee rogue. The extra damage scales nicely, in a way that GWM/SS don't (that is, it's weaker at lower level than higher level)

 

[CapnZapp]

I think the primacy of offense only applies under specific conditions. If you want defensive strategies to compete with sniping and greatswords, try large numbers of durable foes like CR 1 giant ants in an adverse environment like darkness or cliffs. The thing about offensive strategies is that they're like fighting an avalanche with a fire hose: if you can stay ahead of input you're fine, but when input climbs everything suddenly fails at once. GWM is more failure-prone than SS because SS also lets you fight in rough terrain with lots of cover, which helps defense, but try fighting your way through a horde of 30 armored AC 16 kobolds every ten minutes for an hour and then tell me you wouldn't rather have a shield than a greatsword.

Against AC 16, a DX 18 Fighter 8 with Archery does about 13 DPR using -5/+5 or 12 without. It's almost a complete waste of a half-feat. Crossbow Expert would boost you to 18ish instead. So I think if you go down this road, you'll make warlocks and crossbow fighters more attractive, but won't actually solve your problem of no one wanting to play defensive builds--you're just changed which offensive builds are best. If you want diverse characters you need to present diverse threat profiles. Fire breathing ants, man.

Okay, Emdw, I will give you the benefit of the doubt and give you a piece of advice.

Your game is clearly so off the baseline that I beg you to consider stopping participating in these kind of threads.

I mean, "a horde of 30 armored AC 16 kobolds every ten minutes for an hour"? "large numbers of durable foes like CR 1 giant ants in an adverse environment like darkness or cliffs"?

This is not normal. This is not what most people playing D&D will face.

Myself, I'm DM:ing published adventures (currently an upleveled version of Legacy of the Crystal Shard) and this game features nothing even close to that kind of combat.

But you know what? Even if it did, it would still be so infrequently that nobody would regret their GWM selection because of it.

I don't think we can have a fruitful discussion, put simply. Not until you start looking through published modules for examples of truly representative opposition, and base your forum posts on that.

For example, sure, GWM is not overpowered when fighting dwarfs in armor. But AC as high as 16 or 18 is a spice best used sparingly. Thugs, barbarians, undead, animals, monsters - they all have had lower AC.

If I were to take a pure guess I'd say the most common AC low-level heroes will face is twelveish. What would be your guess? (Not talking about your home game now)


Regards,
Zapp

 

[FormerlyHemlock]

Okay, Emdw, I will give you the benefit of the doubt and give you a piece of advice.

Your game is clearly so off the baseline that I beg you to consider stopping participating in these kind of threads.

I mean, "a horde of 30 armored AC 16 kobolds every ten minutes for an hour"? "large numbers of durable foes like CR 1 giant ants in an adverse environment like darkness or cliffs"?

The ant scenariocomes straight out of Quests of Doom II. You may prefer easier combats, but if you imagine I'm a lone outlier in ignoring encounter guidelines you're mistaken. Deadly threats are where the fun is at! I'm always quite up front about the fact that I ignore "encounter balance," so if you change the thread title to something like "Sharpshooter OP in Balanced Encounters" I will ignore the thread. But if it's a thread about the general proposition I may drop in occasionally to point out a solution that doesn't involve any houserules.

Edit: not that every session features a deadly combat. Some days all the fighting that happens is a lone roper in a cave. Other days they ram and board a neogi death spider. It varies.

For example, sure, GWM is not overpowered when fighting dwarfs in armor. But AC as high as 16 or 18 is a spice best used sparingly. Thugs, barbarians, undead, animals, monsters - they all have had lower AC.

If I were to take a pure guess I'd say the most common AC low-level heroes will face is twelveish. What would be your guess? (Not talking about your home game now)

It totally depends on what the PCs are doing. If they're fighting hobgoblins they will face lots of AC 18. Orcs, AC 13. On balance, AC 13-15 is my guess at most likely under most circumstances for levels 1-6 (because they'll avoid deadlier threats), which makes Sharpshooter/GWM. a strong pick. But it doesn't work under all circumstances.

Sent from my LS670 using Tapatalk 2

 

[jgsugden]

Monsters follow roughly the same AC progression that PCs do. Something man sized that has no armor and is not particularly dexterous will have a 10 or 11 AC. If they have light armor or are dexterous, 12 or 13. If both lightly armored and dexterous, or in medium armor: 14 or 15. If in heavy armor or built of durable materials: 16 to 22. Deific ACs arise above 22.

A -5 penalty to hit turns 1 out of 4 rolls from a hit to a miss, or a smaller percentage if there is advantage. However, even with advantage, it is a big change. DPR is one way to measure the impact, but DPR is a simplistic tool that does not take into account concepts like overkill (wasted damage beyond what it needed to meet a goal (such as taking the monster down)) or deviations in damage per strike. Simply put, those that focus on DPR have taken a step on efficiency analysis, but there is still a long journey ahead of them before they can truly evaluate the true efficiency of an option.

As for deadly threats being the majority of combats: That violates the recommended guidelines and it alters many assumptions in the game. Amongst the impacts are a likely change in the rate of encounters per short rest and encounters per long rest. We all know that an easy battle seems pointless at times because it is soooooo easy... but that is only if there is a single goal (killing).

A single zombie can be an interesting challenge for a high level party if the goal is not just to kill the zombie, but to kill it in a certain way or before it can do a certain thing. Also, monsters do not need to be the main threat in a combat - they can be a hazard that the PCs must navigate. For example, let's say that the 8th level party comes across a barn full of kobolds at the edge of the village. As soon as they do, the monsters try to fight their way past the PCs to get away. If they get away, they'll kill villagers and livestock. If all the kobolds turned on the PCs, the PCs would likely yawn their way through the slaughter. If they have to figure out how to stop the kobolds from getting away (requiring them to be selective in how they attack), it becomes a different challenge.

In other words, you don't have to go deadly all the time to create challenges if death is not the only challenge you go to...

If you follow the math of the edition and do not min/max like crazy, 5E is a lot of fun. If you push for the cracks and try to optimize every little detail, you're going to push the game outside the target goals where the game works best. Your choice.

 

[FormerlyHemlock]

As for deadly threats being the majority of combats: That violates the recommended guidelines and it alters many assumptions in the game. *snip* In other words, you don't have to go deadly all the time to create challenges if death is not the only challenge you go to...

If you follow the math of the edition and do not min/max like crazy, 5E is a lot of fun. If you push for the cracks and try to optimize every little detail, you're going to push the game outside the target goals where the game works best. Your choice.

Clarifying a few points:

1.) I'm not saying you should go deadly exclusively. (I mentioned that some sessions there is very little combat at all, e.g. a single roper. It depends.) I am saying that you can go deadly freely, or in other words based on what's believable for the situation and not based on "difficulty". In AD&D trolls came in bands of 2d6. In 5E terms that covers a range from 5400 XP (hard for 4 6th level PCs) at the low end to 64,800 at the high end (Deadly for 4 20th level PCs). If you slavishly follow the difficulty guidelines and keep all encounters Medium/Hard, all of this variability goes away and trolls magically come in groups of 2-3 when you are 10th level, and start coming in groups of 4-6 when you are 15th level. That makes no sense. I claim that embracing variation (trolls come in groups of 2-12, period) is not only a lot of fun, but is also less prone to the failure modes this thread is complaining about (primacy of offense makes GWM/SS no-brainers relative to other feats). It also has the salutary effect of encouraging PCs to recon threats instead of charging blindly ahead in the assumption that the DM wouldn't give them anything they couldn't handle.

2.) 30 kobolds every ten minutes makes shield fighting more attractive relative to GWM/offense heavy styles, but it doesn't even come close to violating 5E guidelines. It's not even a Deadly fight for 4 5th level characters. Neither are 14 CR 1/2 giant ants--but they are 546 HP worth of enemy, and that make primary-offense strategies far less effective as a defense compared to e.g. 138-odd HP of Tyrannosaurus. If you think GWM is a "win button" in cramped tunnels, you're probably not fully exploiting the available playstyles, and I accordingly recommend giant ants. It violates zero DMG guidelines.

3.) I fully agree that conflicts are more fun when the objective isn't always "kill everything on the other side." Protecting civilians can be a fun change of pace; capturing enemies without killing them is another (e.g. to sell them as slaves--note that Sharpshooters are utter rubbish at capturing anyone); single combat between champions (David and Goliath: "If he be able to fight with me, and to kill me, then will we be your servants: but if I prevail against him, and kill him, then shall ye be our servants, and serve us.") is a form of social interaction through combat; disabling or killing the enemy crew before they can destroy a vital resource (e.g. scuttle their ship) is another.

 

[FormerlyHemlock]

Crossbow Expert - although it's pretty good the fewer attacks you have compared to SS and GWM.
Charger - The damage bonus is ok but it requires constant movement.
Dual Wielder - GWM is better than Dual Wielder even before you account for the -5/+10 part of the feat.
Grappler - It's so specialized I wouldn't say SS or GWM are better worse considering how you'd likely use Grappler.
Mounted Combatant - It's awesome because Advantage is awesome but it's probably not as universally usable as SS or GWM.
Polearm Master - From a damage standpoint it's inferior, but I like the flavor enough that I think it's "cooler"
Savage Attacker - Very weak.
Sentinel - Good for control. Rocks in a melee heavy party. Even better on a melee rogue. In fact, I'd rate this the best feat for damage but it's really specialized to a melee rogue. The extra damage scales nicely, in a way that GWM/SS don't (that is, it's weaker at lower level than higher level)

I'll divide the above into two tiers: worthless and worthwhile. By "worthless" I don't mean "would have no impact if it were free" but "worse than an ASI". Worthless options might as well not exist but can still be mined for ideas for magic items and class builds--e.g. a "Savage Attacks"-granting weapon might be pretty cool for a rogue.

Worthless (IMHO)

Savage Attacks: Weaker than boosting your primary attribute, especially as you get more attacks.

Charger: Doesn't scale with number of attacks. Not really a damage-boosting option anyway, mostly a mobility-boosting option.

Dual Wielder: Worse than just boosting your Dex by +2.

Worthwhile:

Sentinel: Good for control, as you noted, at least against a single enemy. If you use the DMG variant rule on marking it becomes straight-up good for control. Your offensive application is interesting, but the feat would still play a useful role even without any offensive benefit.

Polearm master: Good for anyone, especially reckless GWM Barbarians and Paladins, because it can boost them from 2 attacks per round to effectively 4, roughly doubling damage.

Grappler: Arguably worthless, unless you read Grappler as enabling grappling of Huge/Gargantuan creatures, in which case it becomes niche. Pinning is pointless compared to proning, which unlike pinning imposes disadvantage on their attacks without giving them advantage to attack you back. Not a damage-dealing feat in any case.

Mounted Combatant: Hybrid damage-dealing and defensive feat. On the one hand it gives you advantage to attack creatures smaller than your mount, which usually means Medium creatures unless you have a Paladin/Sorc who Enlarged himself and his mount. On the other hand, it enables you to use your HP 19 warhorse in combat without risking its life, so you can boost your movement to 120' per round (Dash) or 60' with Disengage without even using your own action, thus letting you melee-kite anything of Large size or larger to death. (Medium-sized creatures could theoretically be in a place where your mount cannot go, but Large creatures are obviously using passages that your mount can use.) In addition to that, it allows you to use a lance (1d12 damage, effectively +2) with your shield, and if you don't melee-kite and your mount is intelligent (thanks, Find Steed!) you can let your warhorse attack for up to 22 extra points of damage (+4 for 2d6+4, plus a DC 14 STR save proning attack on a charge and a bonus action attack against prone targets). You could do this without Mounted Combatant, briefly, until the enemy kills your AC 11 HP 19 warhorse that costs 400 gold or 10 minutes and a 2nd level spell slot (Find Steed) to replace, so Mounted Combatant is almost required to make using a mount in melee combat feasible. It's a fantastic feat, especially for paladins.

Crossbow Expert: Can almost double your damage output at low levels, tapering off from there, but stacks with Sharpshooter, and removes a key weakness.

Great Weapon Master: Can boost your damage against lightly-armored foes by 50%, possibly more against weak enemies due to bonus action attack.

Sharpshooter: Can boost your damage by 50% at short range, removes a key weakness of ranged weapons (trouble shooting past cover), and can boost your damage by 200% or more at long range.

Spell Sniper: Similar to Sharpshooter, removes a key weakness and extends your range. Can grant you access to better cantrips but that's not usually a factor in choosing it.

Of all the worthwhile cantrips, most of them are about on par with GWM/Sharpshooter in desirability. Spell Sniper is weaker, but Polearm Master/GWM/Mounted Combatant/Crossbow Expert each have the capability to boost your DPR by 50% to 100%. Obviously the best thing would be to have a GWM Mounted Polearm Master Paladin of Devotion with maxed Strength and all three of the melee feats.

Anyway, that's why I don't see GWM/Sharpshooter as outliers in need of fixing. I wouldn't mind seeing the worthless options like Savage Attacks and Dual Wielder improved to the point where they join the list of worthwhile options, but the good options don't need nerfing. YMMV of course.

 

[CapnZapp]

Emdw, remember that a feat does NOT have to be better than +2 Dex.

Why?

Because when you have Dexterity 20, taking that ASI is truly "worthless" while taking the Dual Wielder feat is not.