D&D 5E Current take on GWM/SS

[Ristamar]

Pemerton also believes that the feat has no underlying fiction, a controversial claim.

"I shoot him in the throat" = -5/+10. In GURPS this is "shooting for the eyeslits."

"I go berserk and smash his face in really hard" = Reckless + GWM.

If anything I'd say that it's Reckless Attack without GWM that has no underlying fiction.

The only really odd thing about 5E is that -5/+10 is that you need a feat or levels in Rogue in order to hit someone in the eyes, throat, or kidneys. Aesthetically I'd prefer it if -5/+10 were available to everybody, but that's not how 5E was built.

I can see your point, though I've never been a fan of Called Shot mechanics in any edition.

Final point: if you nerf GWM/SS, the next-most-optimal DPR combination is not necessarily going to be on a fighter chassis. It could be that Polearm Mounted Paladins become the next big thing in melee, and Necromancers become the next big thing at range. (The Necromancer can spend 5 SP per day at 6th level and a couple of hundred gold and have 4d6+20 ranged damage at +4 to hit on tap all day, which isn't really far behind the Sharpshooter Fighter with Archery doing 2d8+28 at +4 at the same level.)

That may be true, though I believe those options are far more situational and can be more easily managed by a DM.

 

[Celtavian]

In practice I've found that the opportunity cost of Bless is surprisingly high--reflexively casting Bless in every combat is a poor practice, even from a DPR standpoint. Sometimes Faerie Fire is superior, sometimes Web or Evard's Black Tentacles. Defensively, sometimes Circle of Power is better, sometimes Polymorph. It depends on the PCs and on the threat.

I disagree. bless is always a productive casting unless you expect the fight to end very quickly.

Watched someone cast faerie fire the other day, five of six targets saved. He was using a concentration slot on a spell that affected only one target. You can save by random luck against many spells. And bless stacks with the advantage given by the fire.

Web and evard's tenatcles do not interfere with bless and are not usually cast by the cleric.

Circle of Power is generally a paladin or a bard taking with magical secrets and useful only against casters or creatures with magical effects, which are very rare. Once again, it stacks with bless.

Polymorph does not compete with bless. Only a trickery cleric would have the choice. Even then Polymorph affects one target for a 4th level slot, while bless affects three for a 1st level slot.

It's almost never bad to cast bless. Though I don't waste spell slots on short fights. I generally wait to cast bless if I think the fight will be substantial.

We have debated the power of bless. It probably is an overpowered spell for 1st level. I've found clerics have a lot of boring, but powerful spells like spiritual guardians, holy aura, and divine word. All very boring, but very powerful.

 

[Celtavian]

That is already the case for everybody but archer fighters and barbarians. Even Barbarians aren't clearly better off with GWM than Polearm Master today--GWM is just more fun because it makes you feel like Reckless Attack is useful and flavorful ("Reckless" feels like like "crazy big damage"). Against hobgoblins, for example, Polearm Mastery is clearly superior, so in a hobgoblin-heavy campaign you'd take Polearm Master first while hoping for GWM later.

I don't feel there are many great caster feats. Quite a few good general feats that casters can take to improve themselves. But very few caster focused feats to make them more fun and interesting. Given the dearth of feats in the PHB and ability to purchase feats, I imagine they're saving caster feats for a magic book. One thing about 5E design, not a lot of flexibility for expansion with feats.

 

[FormerlyHemlock]

Watched someone cast faerie fire the other day, five of six targets saved. He was using a concentration slot on a spell that affected only one target. You can save by random luck against many spells. And bless stacks with the advantage given by the fire.

Web and evard's tenatcles do not interfere with bless and are not usually cast by the cleric.

When you only hit one target, what you do is have anyone kill that target as quickly as possible and then cast it again on the rest. Also, there's nothing wrong with dropping a concentration spell voluntarily and re-casting if you're not happy with the results you got the first time. Faerie Fire is cheap.

In my group, Bless is cast by the Lore Bard or the paladin. There is no cleric. The bard is basically my atheist cleric.

Bless "interferes" in the sense of opportunity cost: you can't spend your concentration or your action on two different spells. Conjure Animals is frequently better than Bless in any fight worth mentioning. In a rinky-dink Medium or Hard fight you might as well Bless instead of spending real spells, but when you're going up against a Great Wyrm (excuse me--"ancient") Red Dragon Dragon Sorcerer 19, Bless suddenly gets a lot more expensive due to Concentration economy. The Great Wyrm fight is still in the planning phases but I'm not at all sure that Bless is going to make the cut.

 

[Celtavian]

When you only hit one target, what you do is have anyone kill that target as quickly as possible and then cast it again on the rest. Also, there's nothing wrong with dropping a concentration spell voluntarily and re-casting if you're not happy with the results you got the first time. Faerie Fire is cheap.

In my group, Bless is cast by the Lore Bard or the paladin. There is no cleric. The bard is basically my atheist cleric.

Bless "interferes" in the sense of opportunity cost: you can't spend your concentration or your action on two different spells. Conjure Animals is frequently better than Bless in any fight worth mentioning. In a rinky-dink Medium or Hard fight you might as well Bless instead of spending real spells, but when you're going up against a Great Wyrm (excuse me--"ancient") Red Dragon Dragon Sorcerer 19, Bless suddenly gets a lot more expensive due to Concentration economy. The Great Wyrm fight is still in the planning phases but I'm not at all sure that Bless is going to make the cut.

If the bard is the source, he might have better spells. I would probably cast holy aura or spiritual guardians instead of bless at higher level as a cleric.

 

[pemerton]

Pemerton also believes that the feat has no underlying fiction, a controversial claim.

"I shoot him in the throat" = -5/+10. In GURPS this is "shooting for the eyeslits."

And if I roll a 1 on the damage die, and do a total of 14 hp leaving 40 remaining?

Compared to a non-feat attack that rolls a crit, and leads to a kill?

What character isn't always trying to take the best shot? What does the variation on the damage die, and the variation in the relationship between damage dealt and final hit point total, represent?

In an abstracted combat system, in which "damage" doesn't correlate in any straightforward way to physical effects in the fiction, in which "shooting someone in the eyeslit" doesn't (and played straight by the rules, can't) blind the target, called shots by tweaking one component of the resolution process to adjust the other has no obvious fictional interpretation.

 

[FormerlyHemlock]

And if I roll a 1 on the damage die, and do a total of 14 hp leaving 40 remaining?

And what? You shot him in the throat for 14 points of damage. What's the question?

Compared to a non-feat attack that rolls a crit, and leads to a kill?

What character isn't always trying to take the best shot? What does the variation on the damage die, and the variation in the relationship between damage dealt and final hit point total, represent?

Variation on the damage die could represent shot placement (where do you hit?) or the vagaries of ballistic impacts (some people survive falls of thousands of feet in real life due to this). Called shots (whether behind a feat gate or not) are about trying for high risk/high reward shots: e.g. head shots, not body shots. That doesn't mean you couldn't occasionally hit a throat even when you're aiming for a body, but you have to admit that making deliberate tradeoffs in accuracy vs. deadliness makes perfect sense in the fiction, since it happens in real life too.

In an abstracted combat system, in which "damage" doesn't correlate in any straightforward way to physical effects in the fiction, in which "shooting someone in the eyeslit" doesn't (and played straight by the rules, can't) blind the target, called shots by tweaking one component of the resolution process to adjust the other has no obvious fictional interpretation.

You make too many assumptions, but yeah, in a game where your assumptions hold, Sharpshooter would be inappropriate in the fiction. And so would Armor of Agathys, and barbarian damage resistance, and Fire Shield, and poisoned crossbow bolts, and the Shield spell. And greataxes doing more damage than spears.

I don't share your assumptions, so called shots at vital targets makes perfect sense in my games. Therefore the claim that there is no underlying fiction is controversial.

 

[Minigiant]

But when "on top" can mean "half a percent extra damage dealt, some of the time" or "one percent less average damage taken, most of the time," the variance of the dice and the unpredictable idiosyncrasy of individual tables become overwhelmingly superior factors. It's difficult for those factors to overcome the feats as presented. Not impossible, to be sure, but difficult. Modify or remove them, and suddenly--even if there still were a single highest peak--the height difference is small enough to make a collection of strategies more-or-less equally valid.
A curve can have a single highest peak, without the height difference being meaningful to the end-user. Two TVs could be precisely equal in price, and one could (frex) have one of its statistics slightly ahead of the other--but if the end-user cannot detect the difference, then it might as well be no difference at all, at which point chance or personal preference are the only meaningful determiners of what to choose. Perhaps the end-user already has a DVD player of the same brand as one of the TVs, and thus goes with that because, ideally, it will be easy to get them to talk to each other. (Personal experience has led me to question this, of course.) Or maybe one is made in China and the other is made in the United States, or a friend bought one of them previously and found it easy to use. None of these metrics has any bearing on the effectiveness of the device as a TV, but all of them can factor into the choice when the differences between the two are reduced far enough.

What exactly counts as "reduced far enough"? Not really an answerable question, I'm afraid--it's essentially the sorites paradox (when does a heap stop being a heap?). It would seem that a lot of people--what fraction of the playerbase, I have no idea--agree that GWF and SS, as they currently exist, are too much more effective than the general average of other "good feats."

Superiority in the eyes of a pure number cruncher that is splitting hairs isn't the problem. It's the overshadowing superiority that becomes blatantly obvious to anyone that sees how the feats can be used optimally.

True. But who is being overshadowed?
No one has answered that question from a opinion neutral standpoint.

There are no rogue damage feats as no feat grants a bonus to the source of rogue damage: Sneak attack. The second you allow feats, the rogue falls behind dramatically even before SS/GWM.
Sorcerers, warlocks, and evokers have AOE which only rangers have (EK aoe is pathetic). So they still have mobs combat and controlling.
And shield users and duelist are defensive.

The only issue is TWF warrior. But there not GWM or SS fault. That is because Dual Wielder stinks like an otyugh's breakfast.

The problem isn't GWM and SS. The problem is rogues don't have a feat and dual wielder mades green hags look attractive.

I think pemerton's analysis of the feat as a "math trick" being the real problem is spot on. It's a spreadsheet metagame. Groups that don't play that type of game likely won't have a problem with the feats. And while there are other mechanics and options with which you play a similar metagame, none of them are as severe in the variance of their efficacy in the hands of casual player versus a hardcore optimizer.

I agree. It's a math trick.

It also helps, I'd say, that most people tend to list 3-4 different feats that would all work for *both* a ranged and a melee character, and which are useful for reasons other than simply jacking up damage, whereas GWF and SS are both much more specific than that and solely about the damage.

I do wish every feat ft all three pillars or were separated by pillar. But that is a pipe dream.
If the path to victory is killing, the nonkilling feats don't stand a chance.

 

[Coredump]

I don't know how many times I need to keep repeating this, but I will keep repeating it as much as needed.

Bless is -presumably- an easy example for you to grasp of how you can turn -5 into -2.5 - then combined with Archery Style its an effective -0.5 penalty, wiping out the majority of the penalty of the feat.

I suggest you keep repeating it until you get it right.

Bless does *not* negate the SS/GWM penalty. It simply changes the attack bonus range.

If you need an 8 to hit, using SS gives you a -5 penalty and you need a 13.
Getting a 3 on Bless does not make it a -2 penalty. It means you could hit on a 5, but instead take a -5 penalty and need a 10.

In contrast, Sharpshooter negates a cover penalty. (while Archery Style does not.)

Again, tell me what experience you have playing with an SS + Crossbow Expert in your group? I'd like to know why you're convinced there's no possible scenario in which these feats could ever pose a problem.

It is a very powerful combo...yet you keep saying that SS is the problem.

 

[DaveDash]

If the bard is the source, he might have better spells. I would probably cast holy aura or spiritual guardians instead of bless at higher level as a cleric.

There have been times where I have cast Holy Aura over bless but its 1/day. Depending on what Cleric you play Spirit Guardians can be great or not great. War Cleric? Great. Light Cleric? Not so great.

Bless is still the go to option.