D&D 5E Current take on GWM/SS

[SkidAce]

I can't get behind your idea of an epic fight. I want a solo dragon to be an epic fight like Smaug in Lord of the Rings.

Shot at with a bow two or three times and dies?


(j/k, couldn't resist.)

 

[Celtavian]

A default Dex rogue outclasses a featless Dex fighter by a lot in ability checks. There was a rather big argument after a session at a table where the Dex Fighter player felt underpowered to the rogue as he went TWF. The DM had to let him bring another PC.

I don't know what percentage a fighter was designed to deal than others be I know if the designers had any skill they make fighters to deal more than others. Since that's all they let them do in the Basic Rules: do damage.

I'm not saying a DM has to redo their adventures. But feats are an option. Feats are a option that grants great and new choices: to focus or to broaden. You don't have to allows feats. But once you do, it changes things.

It's just like if you allow flanking. Suddenly your goblin matron and her 12 little goblins are extremely deadly. You might have to reduce the number of goblins.

This is a real concern of mine. The fighter is fairly weak without his ability to do damage. He is way behind everyone else on just about everything other than single target damage. It's one of the reason I go back and forth on changing or removing the feats. I don't want the fighter to become like the 3E fighter that was only used for multiclassing and rarely played as a solo class due to the weak saves and lack of interesting abilities other than fighting. The EK is a little better than the standard fighter. The Battlemaster can do some interesting things in combat. The fighter is a very focused class, whereas the rogue, ranger, and paladin have lots of other useful abilities. The barbarian is the king of taking damage.

The effect removing these feats would have on the fighter worries me a lot.

 

[Celtavian]

The poll is definitely broken and reporting a lower number of voters (and thus a higher percentage of votes for each category) than it should. I just confirmed the problem and reported it in this thread in Meta, with screenshots.

The reported number of voters is too low by at least 26, probably more since [MENTION=97077]iserith[/MENTION] saw the same thing. My guess is that the true number of voters is 180+ (could be over 200) and thus the percentage voting for "The problem isn't that bad" is closer to 50% than the currently-reported 70%.

I wouldn't want to rely on this type of poll for much anyway -- they're fun and interesting but others have pointed out their issues and biases. But for whatever the numbers are worth, it's worth knowing that the percentages being reported don't match the actual votes.

Strange. I did count. The vote should be about 50% for those that think it is fine and a combined 50% for the other options. I think I counted about 112 votes for the various other options. I wonder if the Other option isn't being taken into account.

 

[Celtavian]

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

The only feat we have changed is Warcaster allowing casters to used ranged spell attacks in melee range. We thought it was ridiculous to require a caster to buy Crossbow Expert to use ranged spells in melee range. Warcaster seemed the more appropriate feat for that ability.

I'm still a bit torn on the Sharpshooter and Great Weapon Master feats because if the fighter doesn't do a lot of damage, he's a fairly weak class. Removing the feats would remove one of the best options for the fighter to boost his damage. Whereas casters have tons of versatility at higher level and can attack the various weaknesses of enemies in a highly effective fashion against non-legendary creatures.

I would keep an eye on Legendary Resistance and Concentration. Those two anti-caster abilities have a bad effect on casters turning them into buff bots for the end game fights. I don't know if I like that aspect of the game.

 

[DaveDash]

The only feat we have changed is Warcaster allowing casters to used ranged spell attacks in melee range. We thought it was ridiculous to require a caster to buy Crossbow Expert to use ranged spells in melee range. Warcaster seemed the more appropriate feat for that ability.

I'm still a bit torn on the Sharpshooter and Great Weapon Master feats because if the fighter doesn't do a lot of damage, he's a fairly weak class. Removing the feats would remove one of the best options for the fighter to boost his damage. Whereas casters have tons of versatility at higher level and can attack the various weaknesses of enemies in a highly effective fashion against non-legendary creatures.

I would keep an eye on Legendary Resistance and Concentration. Those two anti-caster abilities have a bad effect on casters turning them into buff bots for the end game fights. I don't know if I like that aspect of the game.

The melee Fighter is weak-ish. The ranged Fighter is not.

Sharpshooter is a different kettle of fish to GWM.
Sharpshooter + XBE is a different kettle of fish to Sharpshooter.

This is also why my preferred house rule option is to not actually take away this massive damage nova, but add the trade-offs back into the game.

Ok, you want to do huge damage? That's fine, but you still need to take cover into consideration. Maneuver into a better position or face the likelihood of missing.
Ok so you want to go ranged and have all the advantages of being ranged? That's fine, but if I swarm you with melee you better dodge and be forced to fight your way out of it, instead of mowing down enemies from close range like you've got a shotgun.

 

[Psikerlord#]

This is a real concern of mine. The fighter is fairly weak without his ability to do damage. He is way behind everyone else on just about everything other than single target damage. It's one of the reason I go back and forth on changing or removing the feats. I don't want the fighter to become like the 3E fighter that was only used for multiclassing and rarely played as a solo class due to the weak saves and lack of interesting abilities other than fighting. The EK is a little better than the standard fighter. The Battlemaster can do some interesting things in combat. The fighter is a very focused class, whereas the rogue, ranger, and paladin have lots of other useful abilities. The barbarian is the king of taking damage.

The effect removing these feats would have on the fighter worries me a lot.

Single target damage is the most efficient and effective damage in the game. Fighters get action surge and free healing every short rest care of second wind. And they get more feats. They're perfectly competitive without the +10 damage mechanic (and paladins and barbs can take the +10 too, so it's not like the +10 helps fighters compete vs paladins/barbs).

We don't allow MCing however. So the fighter abilities are fighter only in our game. Which helps them stand out.

 

[KarinsDad]

This is a real concern of mine. The fighter is fairly weak without his ability to do damage. He is way behind everyone else on just about everything other than single target damage. It's one of the reason I go back and forth on changing or removing the feats. I don't want the fighter to become like the 3E fighter that was only used for multiclassing and rarely played as a solo class due to the weak saves and lack of interesting abilities other than fighting. The EK is a little better than the standard fighter. The Battlemaster can do some interesting things in combat. The fighter is a very focused class, whereas the rogue, ranger, and paladin have lots of other useful abilities. The barbarian is the king of taking damage.

The effect removing these feats would have on the fighter worries me a lot.

I think the main concern might be that your player(s) of the fighter is probably accustomed to this level of damage, so he might think that he is getting screwed over a bit. For a player who has not seen this mega-damage, he probably would not miss it.

But when I look at the damage comparison between a fighter and a rogue here, the fighter is slightly better damage-wise at most levels before any buffs or feats.

Once GWM comes into play, even for once per turn, the additional damage becomes obvious if just for the additional attack when a foe drops or the PC criticals.

The player of the fighter in our group is having a blast (GWM once per turn, Sentinel, and HWM at level 6). He just wades in and contributes heavily all of the time in combat. He gets more attacks than the other PCs, even the Paladin. He does more damage than the other PCs, even the Rogue. Out of combat, he's content to let the other players who do not shine as much in combat, shine. His PC is a BM, so he gets quite a few options and it is not always just the same attack.

There is no way that a fighter is underpowered with a once per turn modified GWM or SS feat. And of course, the reason to take a fighter is to fight. It's the schtick. It is not the schtick of the fighter to do 3x as much DPR as most other PCs. Otherwise, he would be underpowered if the DM does not allow the optional feats in the game system at all and I seriously doubt most people think this (because fighters would still get more ASIs and hence, slightly better saves and skills overall). As long as a fighter is doing about as much or more damage than the other melee PCs, he's doing his job.

 

[Psikerlord#]

I think the main concern might be that your player(s) of the fighter is probably accustomed to this level of damage, so he might think that he is getting screwed over a bit. For a player who has not seen this mega-damage, he probably would not miss it.

But when I look at the damage comparison between a fighter and a rogue here, the fighter is slightly better damage-wise at most levels before any buffs or feats.

Once GWM comes into play, even for once per turn, the additional damage becomes obvious if just for the additional attack when a foe drops or the PC criticals.

The player of the fighter in our group is having a blast (GWM once per turn, Sentinel, and HWM at level 6). He just wades in and contributes heavily all of the time in combat. He gets more attacks than the other PCs, even the Paladin. He does more damage than the other PCs, even the Rogue. Out of combat, he's content to let the other players who do not shine as much in combat, shine. His PC is a BM, so he gets quite a few options and it is not always just the same attack.

There is no way that a fighter is underpowered with a once per turn modified GWM or SS feat. And of course, the reason to take a fighter is to fight. It's the schtick. It is not the schtick of the fighter to do 3x as much DPR as most other PCs. Otherwise, he would be underpowered if the DM does not allow the optional feats in the game system at all and I seriously doubt most people think this (because fighters would still get more ASIs and hence, slightly better saves and skills overall). As long as a fighter is doing about as much or more damage than the other melee PCs, he's doing his job.

indeed if the fighter is UP without the +10 then the core rules are broken.

 

[Celtavian]

Until I see some spells like simulacrum and summoning in action, I don't know if I feel like taking away the feats. Even spells like bigby's hand and hypnotic pattern are highly effective in battle. 9th level spells seem very powerful as well. Foresight is extremely powerful. Holy Aura, Divine World, and AoE spells are more effective at clearing trash than melee damage. Hordes are pretty important to destroy in this game given a hundred orcs is still a ridiculous threat to a level 20 fighter.

I want to see how things play at higher level some more before I make the move. We fast-tracked our way through the end of Tyranny of Dragons because the DM was bored and wanted to wrap stuff up in a few tough fights where we could blow all resources. He was tired of running dragons and dragon cultists. Tyranny of Dragons was a very redundant module.

I want to test run on some other stuff before making final changes.

 

[Hussar]

No.

It's Fighter + Feats > Sorcerer || Evoker || Barbarian + Feats.
Fighter + Feats > Paladin + Feats over the course of a day.
Fighter + Feats >> Fighter.
Fighter + Feats >> Rogue.
Fighter + Feats + Bless (insert other effect here) >> Sorcerer + Fighter.

And

Fighter + Feats + Bless (insert other effect here) > Monsters Manual = DM workload++

Now whether or not that is an issue or not depends on these factors:
If your group is new (DM including), and you have a player who has read about these things on a guide, you're going to have a problem.
If your group are optimizers and the DM is new to 5e, you're going to have a problem.
If you're running an official AP and don't have time to tweak it you're going to have a problem.

However:

If your group doesn't go beyond level 8-12 you probably won't have a problem.
If your group doesn't group optimize you probably won't have a problem.
If your group (DM included) doesn't care about one single player totally dominating the combat pillar of the game you probably won't have a problem.

There are no conditions however in which these feats never cause a problem ever. They either cause problems, or do not cause problems. The mere fact however that there is the potential for problems means new DM's especially should be wary of them.

You misread what I said.

If fighter plus cleric=100, does fighter plus another class equal close to the same output. IOW what is the group output if the group does not buff optimize? Instead of the cleric contributing nothing in the first round of combat, what happens if he instead attacks, or drops Command or takes another action?

I'm not looking at individual contributions but the group as a whole.