D&D 5E Current take on GWM/SS

[Celtavian]

I don't think it's about the fantasy power level per se, I think it's about gamism vs. simulationism. You're basically gamist, as I understand it, and you try to provide fun encounters to your players. (Which BTW is perfectly fine. Not my cup of tea but not badwrongfun.) I am simulationist and try to provide a fun, coherent, interactive world for the players to generate their own conflicts/encounters within. At low levels, memorable and difficult fights in my campaign have consisted of things like getting detected by flying apes and draconian cavalry (re-skinned Centaurs) while sneaking into enemy territory, and holing up behind boulders for cover while trying to repel their missile fire. (Again, I did not force this encounters on them since it's a sandbox. I telegraphed the threat in this area, and the NPC's request/demand, and the players chose to try to infiltrate here instead of going elsewhere or gathering an army or negotiating or anything else.) A squad of a couple dozen cavalrymen isn't exactly a high-powered fantasy trope. The only thing it's violating is the DMG encounter guidelines, which is a gamist thing and not a fantasy convention.

DMG guidelines at low levels exist to generate squads of hobgoblins which are just barely big enough to lose in an interesting way. Simulationism dictates that squads of hobgoblins should be small enough to maintain a good force-to-space ratio over contested territory but big enough to not needlessly endanger the force against expected opposition. How big that is depends on a number of factors--and so there are multiple paths to victory. You can either hammer straight through the hobgoblin force, or you can start ambushing little chunks of two dozen of them at a time until they contract into a big ball of 400 nasty hobgoblins all in one fort--and then you bypass and ignore them. Mission accomplished, depending on what your mission was. To me that makes 400 hobgoblins an interesting challenge at mid levels (say, 5 to 8). At low levels (1 to 4) it would be a deadly challenge but you might have to engage anyway, cautiously, if all the other good guys are dead. That is an interesting challenge in a different way.

I don't acknowledge gamism versus simulationism. D&D is not like most games and isn't close to being a good simulation of the real world.

I look at D&D as cooperative story-telling. The DM creates a loose plot within the setting he chooses informing of the players of the parameters of play to guide them in the character creation process. The player's create characters they believe would be fun to play within the scenario the DM has outlined. They are the characters in the story, the DM is the plotter and world controller setting plot points in front of the players within the given world allowing them to take action to resolve each plot thread laid before them. He does this with a combination of challenges tailored to the characters the players have created and the general preferences of the players. You create this cooperative illusion of adventuring in a fantasy world as heroes (or sometimes villains) whose decisions affect some part of the world (or the entire thing) in some substantive way. I take the greatest pleasure when a story unfolds close to the manner I planned with wild card factor supplied by the decision of the characters that may take things in an unexpected direction. I tend to focus on the story using the mechanics to create the scenes and results I want, while always maintaining the illusion that the characters are "real" for the players.

 

[Minigiant]

I think most DMs do adjust their games.

I agree. But I don't think many DM adjust the game based on the game's assumption nor using the DMG as guides on what to watch out for. Making changes without knowing the baselines is how so many of the house rules and homebrews of D&D are unbalanced or broken.

 

[KarinsDad]

Your analysis is biased towards a certain outcome. It can be biased to highlight other components by altering the situation. For example, here's that same analysis with stacked Crossbow Expert, Sharpshooter, Bless, Advantage (Faerie Fire), and Purple Worm Poison, going up against a Beholder (AC 18, Con save +4). A beholder is a target that is absolutely worth spending 2500 gold on to kill safely, especially a whole shipful of beholders, so purple worm poison makes perfect sense. Under these conditions, Sharpshooter is the most insignificant element of the combination. The venom is of course the most potent element, but advantage and crossbow expert are nearly as important.

                      Damage  Decrease in extra damage
All bonuses            189.69      0%
All except Bless       164.28      15%
All except CE          142.27      28%
All except Advantage   130.75      35%
[B]All except SS          183.15      5%
[/B]All except PWV         61.77       76%
No bonuses             18.38 (20.63 with longbow)     100%

This once again highlights the fact that Sharpshooter is famous not for being especially strong, but for being cheap and readily-available, and also having nice synergies (ignoring cover and range are very nice). But in any fight which is actually important, there are better ways to spend your resources than on buffing the Sharpshooter to twice normal DPR.

Wow!!!

Talk about contrived situations that will almost never happen at most tables. Let's see, if we add in an extremely rare damage buff 4 times stronger than sharpshooter, then of course removing the huge damage buff will result in the most change, removing to hit buffs will result in moderate changes, and removing the smaller SS damage buff (compared to the poison buff) will result in the least change.

Your chart merely proves that SS is less of a damage buff per hit than Purple Worm Poison. Math 101. It does nothing to illustrate how potent or weak SS is.


The fact that you found a poison in the DMG that PCs typically have to find and kill a purple worm to acquire (a CR 15 creature compared to the CR 13 Beholder they are trying to kill) actually illustrates how broken SS is. If you have to go find a rare poison to get better damage (and you are limited to the number of doses) than a feat that PCs can just acquire and use every single round, then that feat sounds pretty potent.

In the lifetime of a campaign, a PC can easily do 100x or more damage with SS than with all of the poisons he uses combined.


This, of course, assumes that the DM allows Purple Worm Poison, the best weapon damage poison in the DMG, to be acquired by 11th level PCs. Heck, while you are at it, you might as well give the Archer the best magic items in the game too.

 

[aramis erak]

I don't care what other feat you take, as long as you're not doing 100 DPR at level 8, creating extra work for me as a DM, and eclipsing other party members.

100 dpr? fireball does on average 28 points, and is often going to hit 4+ targets. If he's the first to spot them, and they're a unit in formation, he can hit upwards of 20 of them... 3rd level spell.
Lightning bolt is less effective due to line instead of sphere, but also somewhat easier to avoid allies with, and can, if your buddies can line them up for you, hit 3+ per casting as well.
Stinking cloud
Ice Storm 2d8+4d6=average 23 damage, max 40, to a 20' radius.

Cantrips do double at this level...
Sorcerer: Fire bolt 2d10, empowered, averages 13.5 or so , quickened allows it twice, and it can be twinned each time so average damage for 2 rounds is 52 per round. Assuming a fire type matching, and the expected +5 Cha (because of Cha 16 base, +2 from race, +2 from 4th level attribute +2), this adds another 20 DPR... and a maximum of 100. Max of 50 DPR to single target.

let's see, fighter, GWM, +5 from STR/DEX, 2 attacks, and GWFS...
maximum damage including crits: 31 per attack without GWM. 41 per attack with it.
Average damage including crits: around 13 per attack, for 23 per attack with GWM....
but the average hit rate isn't so good. Bonus to hit is only +7 or so.

GWM doesn't cross your stated line. Spellcasters can, unless you don't ever allow your monsters to be closer than 20' apart.

 

[Ashkelon]

When talking about DPR, most people are referring to single target DPR. AoE DPR, while useful, is not as useful of a metric in most fights. As such it is usually only given a 1.5 to 2x multiplier to its single target value. So a 20 DPR fireball is only about as useful as 30-40 single target DPR.

 

[aramis erak]

When talking about DPR, most people are referring to single target DPR. AoE DPR, while useful, is not as useful of a metric in most fights. As such it is usually only given a 1.5 to 2x multiplier to its single target value. So a 20 DPR fireball is only about as useful as 30-40 single target DPR.

20' radius cylinder - expected AoE targets (per DMG, p 249) is 4. TotM, you should be using this. Rating monster, you should be using this.

 

[kerbarian]

Your analysis is biased towards a certain outcome. It can be biased to highlight other components by altering the situation. For example, here's that same analysis with stacked Crossbow Expert, Sharpshooter, Bless, Advantage (Faerie Fire), and Purple Worm Poison, going up against a Beholder (AC 18, Con save +4). A beholder is a target that is absolutely worth spending 2500 gold on to kill safely, especially a whole shipful of beholders, so purple worm poison makes perfect sense. Under these conditions, Sharpshooter is the most insignificant element of the combination. The venom is of course the most potent element, but advantage and crossbow expert are nearly as important.

                      Damage  Decrease in extra damage
All bonuses            189.69      0%
All except Bless       164.28      15%
All except CE          142.27      28%
All except Advantage   130.75      35%
[B]All except SS          183.15      5%
[/B]All except PWV         61.77       76%
No bonuses             18.38 (20.63 with longbow)     100%

This once again highlights the fact that Sharpshooter is famous not for being especially strong, but for being cheap and readily-available, and also having nice synergies (ignoring cover and range are very nice). But in any fight which is actually important, there are better ways to spend your resources than on buffing the Sharpshooter to twice normal DPR.

First, to pick nits: That would cost 2,500 GP per shot (the prices are per dose) and -- unless the DM is very generous about how long PWV retains potency after it's applied -- would require either time for pre-combat buffing or would use up actions during combat to apply the poison, which would dramatically drop the effective DPR.

Problems with your scenario aside, it's highlighting exactly the same thing mine did: large damage bonuses are the key to massive damage combos. GWM and SS are by far the largest per-attack damage bonuses in the entire PHB, and so they're by far the most important components of enabling huge damage combos in the PHB.

You've found another thing in the DMG with an even larger damage bonus, which (issues aside) stacks up in exactly the same way as GWM and SS only to a larger degree. Is your argument that because there's one thing in the entire DMG that would result in even more damage and which might be available to characters on a very limited basis, SS resulting in double damage every single combat isn't a balance problem?

 

[werecorpse]

Noted.
Could you tell me which feats you have changed and how?

 

[Ashkelon]

20' radius cylinder - expected AoE targets (per DMG, p 249) is 4. TotM, you should be using this. Rating monster, you should be using this.

Again though, focus fire is more useful than AoE. 28 damage to 4 targets is generally worse than 56 damage to a single target. This is because the spread out damage doesn't typically kill an enemy, while focus fire, especially if multiple characters do so, can kill an enemy. Killing enemies faster results in reduced total damage received.

AoE is great against nooks with low HP, and that is perfectly acceptable. But don't confuse the effect of the DPR caused by a fighter who can action surge for 100 damage to a single target at level 8 to that of s wizard who hits 5 targets for 20 expected damage each (after accounting for save for 1/2).

 

[aramis erak]

Again though, focus fire is more useful than AoE. 28 damage to 4 targets is generally worse than 56 damage to a single target. This is because the spread out damage doesn't typically kill an enemy, while focus fire, especially if multiple characters do so, can kill an enemy. Killing enemies faster results in reduced total damage received.

AoE is great against nooks with low HP, and that is perfectly acceptable. But don't confuse the effect of the DPR caused by a fighter who can action surge for 100 damage to a single target at level 8 to that of s wizard who hits 5 targets for 20 expected damage each (after accounting for save for 1/2).

Must be pretty impressive beasts to have 50% save vs Save DC's of 16+ for many level 5+ casters.