D&D 5E Current take on GWM/SS

[Coredump]

I'm convinced. We should ban Bless.

You may be joking, but I have done that comparison. To prove how broken GWF was, they presented a fighter with GWM, PAM, Bless, and maybe something else.
So I did the break down to show how much of that damage came from each source..... spoiler: It was not GWM.

 

[Ashkelon]

I am not sure what you are counting as 'high level', by CR 9 the average AC is 17, by CR14 the average is 19.
Using the DMG suggestions, it is possible, but not likely, that most PCs will have a +2 weapon by level 15. It is likely they will have a Very Rare item, but no guarantee on what it is.

I'm using numbers straight from the monster manual. Someone did a very dice analysis of every monster in the MM and the average AC for monsters is quite a bit lower than what the DMG says the average should be. So unless you have a DM who has enough time to uniquely build every single monster used in your campaign, I believe using the MM data is more pertinent to the discussion. Most players will be facing MM monsters, not custom ones.

Also, a +2 weapon is only rare. A +1 weapon is uncommon. A +3 weapon is very rare. This is why it is so easy for most PCs to get decent weapons, even while using random treasure. Level 15 for a +2 weapon is actually a little on the high side in most situations, but I prefer to underestimate with magic items and give the benefit of the doubt to bad rolls when doing analysis.

 

[DaveDash]

People on both sides seem to be asking for "real numbers", so here's one more stab at it. This is the damage per Attack action by an archer fighter, with various combinations of feats and bonuses vs. various target ACs. This does not give the fighter any benefit from magic weapons or subclass abilities (both of which tend to make CE+SS even stronger). This also ignores any accuracy benefit from Sharpshooter (SS) allowing the fighter to ignore cover or range penalties or Crossbow Expert (CE) ignoring disadvantage in melee. So overall I think this is biased somewhat against CE+SS compared to actual play.

For the target ACs, I chose the DMG-recommended AC for a monster with a CR of character level - 2, as well as -4 AC and +4 AC from there.

The fighter is a variant human starting with 16 Dex and the Archery fighting style. The versions with Crossbow Expert use a hand crossbow; those without use a longbow. The "no feats" version chooses a non-combat feat and then uses all ASIs to increase Dex until it's capped at 20. The single-feat versions start with that feat and then use ASIs to increase Dex. The CE+SS version has both feats by level 4 and then uses ASIs to increase Dex. Versions with SS are always using the -5/+10.

The math includes all relevant factors and probabilities, including crits. Damage is rounded to the nearest 0.1.

              No feats  CE only  SS only  CE+SS  CE+SS+Bless  CE+SS+Bless+Adv  No feats+Bless+Adv
Lv 4, AC 9       8.3      14.6     14.1    23.5     27.6           32.6               8.9
Lv 4, AC13       7.0      12.3     10.4    16.9     21.0           28.9               8.9
Lv 4, AC17       5.3       9.3      6.7    10.3     14.4           22.7               8.3
Lv 6, AC10      18.5      24.8     31.7    39.9     46.5           52.5              19.8
Lv 6, AC14      16.6      22.2     23.9    29.4     36.0           47.8              19.8
Lv 6, AC18      12.8      17.1     16.1    18.9     25.5           38.9              18.9
Lv11, AC12      27.8      33.0     44.6    56.2     65.5           74.0              29.7
Lv11, AC16      23.5      27.9     32.9    41.4     50.7           67.3              29.5
Lv11, AC20      17.8      21.1     21.2    26.6     35.9           54.7              27.6

Even against the high-AC targets with no attack bonuses (Bless or Advantage), using the -5/+10 from Sharpshooter is always an advantage. In extreme cases adding CE+SS gives almost 4x (366%) the damage as not having the feats (32.6 vs. 8.9 damage for an AC9 target at Lv4 with Bless and Advantage).

For targets of typical AC, it looks like CE+SS gives a bit more than double damage compared to a baseline longbow archer if you assume that parties tend to generate more situational advantages for themselves as they increase in level.

For example:
At level 4 vs. an AC 13 target, CE+SS averages 16.9 damage vs. 7.0 damage without feats.
At level 6 with Bless vs. an AC 14 target, CE+SS averages 36.0 damage vs. 18.3 damage without feats.
At level 11 with Bless and Advantage vs. an AC 16 target, CE+SS averages 67.3 damage vs. 29.5 damage without feats.

It's true that Crossbow Expert also contributes significantly to damage, but SS is the larger component at higher levels and/or when you stack more attack bonuses.

Exactly, and when you take these numbers and add the following assumptions:

1. There will usually be fights with low CR creatures involved through-out your adventuring career (5e game design tenant).
2. Magic weapons.
3. Advantage will be gained from time to time - and depending on levels of party optimization - possibly most of the time.
4. Other factors that you have identified such as SS ignoring cover, non SS having to deal with cover.

It's not hard to see how my numbers (and others who have played, Zard, Celt, etc) in game are 2:1 ratios.

 

[Coredump]

Until you can prove with maths all the factors that happen in a real game, your posts are meaningless.

You claimed way back in this thread that 2:1 almost never happens. Wrong. I've given some sample data but its a bit of work going back and compiling all this stuff so I don't feel the need to do any more.

If you wanted to get objective it about it you'd do your own experiments to see for yourself, instead of trying to prove your maths arguments are correct.

Yeah.... that whole 'multiplication' fad really can't be trusted... Probably better if we stick with you just telling us how the game works. Maybe you can even provide more 'real' numbers like that 14.5 attack bonus. Or was it a 12 bonus? or is it a 17 bonus? Yeah, your stories seem much more reliable than that tricksy addition and multiplication stuff....

 

[DaveDash]

Yeah.... that whole 'multiplication' fad really can't be trusted... Probably better if we stick with you just telling us how the game works. Maybe you can even provide more 'real' numbers like that 14.5 attack bonus. Or was it a 12 bonus? or is it a 17 bonus? Yeah, your stories seem much more reliable than that tricksy addition and multiplication stuff....

There's this little thing called Bless which adds an average of 2.5 to your attack roll. I hear it's really neat.

 

[Coredump]

Wait, who was saying that the math shows that GWM and SS don't significantly increase player damage. How can they even make that claim? The math clearly shows the opposite (and that is before taking into account the large number of ways to increase accuracy they are easily available to players).

Define 'significantly' and define under what conditions......

 

[iserith]

[MENTION=6786202]DaveDash[/MENTION]: If you play on Roll20, can I observe one of your games, schedule permitting?

 

[Ashkelon]

You may be joking, but I have done that comparison. To prove how broken GWF was, they presented a fighter with GWM, PAM, Bless, and maybe something else.
So I did the break down to show how much of that damage came from each source..... spoiler: It was not GWM.

Isn't the effect of bless multiplicative with GWM. Say you have a 50% chance to hit while using GWM. Bless gives you about +12.5% chance to hit, increasing your chance to hit and thus your damage per attack (DPA) by ~25%.

So a fighter who deals roughly 13 DPA [(8.33+5+2+10)*50%] with GWM, gets a 25% boost in total DPA from bless, or about 3.25 per attack. On the other hand, GWM is contributing a full 5 (10*.5) DPA in this scenario before accounting for bless. Take bless into consideration and that boosts GWM up to 6.25 DPA .

I'm not sure what kind of math you did, but GWM appears to contribute almost double what bless does to DPA.

 

[Minigiant]

It's definitely not a detriment. He still has the best attack bonus in the game (+7 at level 1 is quite absurd), and can use full cover as protection in between rounds. He also still does have great hit points and a very good AC, better than other options.

I ran a EK Crossbow Expert in an 'arena' tournament where we were doing deadly fights each level - starting at level / They started off Deadlyx2, and went up to Deadlyx5.
Early on I put him in heavy armour despite the fact he didn't have the strength for it. It made him a very tough opponent and he took the least damage in the group.
He was absolutely critical to the groups combat success.

The EK Crossbowman in my party died since he went archer and made our frontline porous. Not his fault. We choose to not bring a "tank". We had mages, healers, and skills guys. We paid for not bringing a tank.

When encounter 7 came, we were out of buffs and them bugbears got us good.

 

[DaveDash]

@DaveDash: If you play on Roll20, can I observe one of your games, schedule permitting?

Lol if you want - you can even cameo. We're not doing any of this higher level combat stuff though any more, this was ages ago in October when 5e first came out. What I'm running right now is the very end of City of the Spider Queen converted to 5e. I'm not sure how much you'd get out of that.
We do run one shot stuff for giggles though every now and again to test various things.

I think everyone here has forgotten the point. I started posting data from games because @Coredump claimed he'd done all the maths with all the variations and that 2:1 damage ratios "almost never happen".

Well, not only has someone else subsequently posted maths which proves under fairly common scenarios (ie, Bless) that in fact 2:1 damage ratios are likely, but based on the games I have ran where party optimization is a major consideration, 2:1 damage ratios are to be expected.

Is that going to be a problem at every table? Absolutely not. But it HAS been a problem at some tables - such as Zardinaar wrapping up his campaign at level 12 due to SS + Bless + Xbow Expert abuse.
What does the game really gain by having these feats in there? What does it lose by taking them away or modifying them?

My actual core issue with SS + CBE is not the damage potential, although it is overpowered. It's the fact you can create a character with very few weaknesses. It's like 3rd Edition multi-classing all over again.