D&D 5E Current take on GWM/SS

[Minigiant]

No, it's a design flaw because it breaks the design paradigm and the math backs that up. Nearly every damage boost in the game system (Hex, Hunter's Mark, Sneak Attack, Colossus Slayer, Giant Killer, Horde Breaker, etc., etc., etc.) are either once per turn or once per round. Even things like casting spells. Once per round (plus potentially an extra cantrip).

This is how the game is designed. I cannot help it if you cannot see this. For people who do various types of design for a living, it's obvious. The game designers went out of their way to prevent abuse by limiting frequency. Remember the 3E Haste issue. It opened up a HUGE can of worms. WotC learned from that.
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Bless
Flame Arrows
Any spell that grants advantage long term
Any spell that paralyzes

If hold person- fighter-blender wasn't supposed to be a thing, someone done goofed.

If flame arrow wasn't supposed to be a thing, someone goofed bad.

 

[Gadget]

This reminds me of the 3.0 Haste arguments all over again.

 

[KarinsDad]

Bless
Flame Arrows
Any spell that grants advantage long term
Any spell that paralyzes

If hold person- fighter-blender wasn't supposed to be a thing, someone done goofed.

If flame arrow wasn't supposed to be a thing, someone goofed bad.

Thanks for the correction.

Unlimited use (or long duration) damage boosts are limited to once per round or turn.

Resource intensive damage boosts can occur for more than a single turn, but offensive ones tend to have saving throws every round.

 

[KarinsDad]

You're the one who said it's an "exploitable design anomaly." That requires a player to exploit it. They can choose otherwise if exploiting the exploitable design anomaly is impacting the game experience in a negative way.

Can someone not exploit the feat accidentally just by using it? Must it be a malicious exploitation? Can one player be having a blast doing 30 extra points of damage per round and another player be annoyed by it, but not saying anything?

 

[Ashkelon]

Honestly, I think the spells you mentioned are a little too powerful for their level.

Bless should be +1 as a level 1 spell, +2 as a level 3 spell, +3 as a level 5 spell, and +4 as a level 7 spell.

Haste Should be a 5th level spell.

Paralyze should not grant free critical hits.

Etc.

Note: I'm fine with spells that just give advantage to attacks as long as SS and GWM -5/+10 aren't in the picture. By themselves such things don't increase damage too much over the base line.

 

[iserith]

Can someone not exploit the feat accidentally just by using it? Must it be a malicious exploitation? Can one player be having a blast doing 30 extra points of damage per round and another player be annoyed by it, but not saying anything?

All of those things can be true. Only we're talking about a situation where a player is aware that his or her actions are negatively impacting the game experience. Is it okay for that player to continue doing what he or she is doing because it's allowable by the rules? Does it require the DM removing those rules or altering them for the player to stop engaging in behavior that is known to be disruptive? Is it possible for a player to have these feats and use them to make the game experience better for everyone?

My answers to those questions are: No. No. Yes. What's yours?

 

[Tony Vargas]

Archery Style gives you an inherent +2 bonus over the standard, Sharpshooter allows you to ignore cover, Bless adds +2.5 average to your roll,
Bless is not innocuous. It adds +2.5 to your attack rolls on average, which is almost the equivalent of the most powerful magical weapons in the game (AND it adds this to your saving throws as well).

Simple example.

Wizard casts Hold Person.

AC 18 foe fails save.

11th level great weapon Fighter would normally hit a held AC 18 foe for 3 criticals for about 65 points of damage. DPR is about 54 points of damage. There is a slim chance that the Fighter misses, but with advantage, it's fairly uncommon at +9 to miss, even without a magic weapon (most PCs have at least a +1 weapon by level 11, but we'll ignore that).

Sounds like Bless, Hold, and archery style are the candidates for breaking bounded accuracy.

Archery Style does seem to stand out at +2, but it's not like fighters can't use all the help they can get.

Bless is random.

Hold's crits goose DPR, but Advantage still doesn't stack and is less significant the closer you are to needing a 20 to hit or 1 to miss.

And those feats push DPR up a lot.

The idea of Bounded Accuracy was to keep second-best characters and low level monsters relevant even at high levels, and let the DM use higher level monsters without the party being unable to do anything to them. A random +1d4 bonus doesn't seem like it'd blow that out of the water, because it is random, and you will get only a +1 some of the time, when you're missing easy targets, and +4 some of the time when you're trying to hit hard ones, and that's in keeping with bounded accuracy.

Advantage, whatever the source, isn't a threat to Bounded Accuracy because it doesn't stack and is lower-impact at the extremes of very easy and very hard targets.

It seems like damage, and not Bounded Accuracy, is what's at issue.

 

[kerbarian]

Players aren't in a competition with each other for damage output. It is a cooperative game about storytelling so it's spotlight that matters - how much impact a PC has on the story. Calculating spotlight time requires examining all three pillars, not just combat.

If your game is nothing but combat and your combats all amount to nothing more than a race to get Team Monster to 0 hp, then yeah, those feats are going to seem "off." For everyone else who engages with all three pillars of the game and who design encounters where the enemy can be defeated through means other than hit point attrition, these feats are not an issue.

I still don't understand the argument that because all three pillars are important, it doesn't matter if the combat pillar isn't well-balanced. Yes, combat is not the entirety of the game, but it's (at least) a third of the game, and it's still important for that part of the game to be internally balanced.

This isn't a problem of a character focused on combat (e.g. a fighter) outdamaging a character focused on social and exploration (e.g. a bard). It's a problem of a few specific combat builds (using SS or GWM) dramatically outclassing other characters who are also focused on combat. That's a problem of balance within the combat pillar, regardless of what happens in the other pillars.

 

[Minigiant]

Thanks for the correction.

Unlimited use (or long duration) damage boosts are limited to once per round or turn.

Resource intensive damage boosts can occur for more than a single turn, but offensive ones tend to have saving throws every round.

Indeed.
But again, the issue of players making PCs to abuse these spell then complain about how easy the game is... that is a group problem.

Archery style alone is fine. SS alone is fine.

A cleric who is spamming bless 5-8 times a day on a fighter ally tuned to stack bonus damage and whining about difficulty is ridiculous.

 

[iserith]

This isn't a problem of a character focused on combat (e.g. a fighter) outdamaging a character focused on social and exploration (e.g. a bard). It's a problem of a few specific combat builds (using SS or GWM) dramatically outclassing other characters who are also focused on combat. That's a problem of balance within the combat pillar, regardless of what happens in the other pillars.

It's those things combined with specific tactics that the players are choosing to do. They don't have to choose to do that if causing some characters to outclass other characters who should be doing well with the combat pillar and negatively impacting the game experience. Instead of buffing up the guy with the feats all the time, buff the other guy sometimes instead. Or defeat the enemies through means other than hit point attrition. Players have control over the spotlight and they can choose to share it with others.

These things are getting talked about as "must-have" feats and "must-do" tactics. None of that is true if it's negatively impacting the game experience.