D&D 5E Do DM's feel that Sharpshooter & Great Weapon Master overpowered?

As a DM do you feel that Sharpshooter & GWM are overpowered?


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A level 12 character can raise the dead. Doing some extra damage is hardly amazing.

Yes. By level 12 if the most important thing that characters are doing is the same "remove hit points from foes" that you were doing at low levels then you need to think about what kind of challenges your DM is putting you up against. The game should change to recognize new character capabilities. Let the damage dealers destroy the bad guys. When combat happens then those guys "win" the day. That's great. Other characters, that have focused on other capabilities will contribute in other areas.
 

Let the damage dealers destroy the bad guys.
So what is your plan to let rogues destroy bad guys? How about monks? How about TWF Fighters, Barbarians, Paladins, Rangers, etc? How about trident users? How about handmade throwers? There are many others, but these would be the most common.
 

I thought they were broken, and wondered how they got into the book. I did allow them as written for my first 5e game--and the players went, "Woh. Why does anyone not take these?" The ranged fighter cackled with glee while outdamaging everyone, and the barbarian enjoyed beating the crap out of most people. I ended up changing them around, cutting the damage bonuses, but leaving them mostly intact otherwise.

In the context of the mechanics, they're not that broken; the damage bonuses aren't that much. The penalties never once felt like a penalty, at all. In comparison, though, it's pretty OP to everyone else's abilities.
 

So what is your plan to let rogues destroy bad guys? How about monks? How about TWF Fighters, Barbarians, Paladins, Rangers, etc? How about trident users? How about handmade throwers? There are many others, but these would be the most common.

Rogues can manuever like no other except the Monk. In both cases for combat (and the Rogue might not even be tooled for combat), the manueverability is something that should be emphasised. Even if you have a large empty arena, insert some columns, maybe a couple of pieces of collapsed roof. Sharpshooters can't shoot through total cover, and GWM have to be in melee range. TWF you just have to write off as a lost cause - they're weak because the style's weak before the introduction of feats.
Non-GWM Barbarians tend to make great tanks and/or grapplers. Throw some high-impact enemies in for them to keep busy. Same with Paladins.

Handmade throwera are suboptimal and they should be. No one is running a handmade thrower because they think it should rival the most skilled of archers, they run them to succeed in spite of that .
 



It's generally understood that until your prime stat has cap ASI is better than feats, that makes ASI overpowered! :)

I very much think that feats that give a character a reliable use of a Reaction and Bonus action in combat will help a character faster than maxing a main stat first, but to each his own.
 

This makes absolutely zero sense.
My point was that once a player hits level 12 their power increase exponetially with or without feats. A cleric who could before only resurrect fallen within the minute at best, now has what a day? A week? Something silly long for the first step-up.

A level 12 Rogue is never rolling lower than a 10 on ability checks they're proficient with, a level 12 Fighter is getting three attacks a turn. At level 12, higher but spikkier damage due to a feat starts to lose impact.
 

It's so sad when the defenders of the feat consistently fail to acknowledge our real-world play experiences, far removed from any "white room" theorycrafting.

This is clearly a feat where the math was shown to work in the white room, but does not actually work in real gameplay, not in the hands of experienced optimizing gamers.
I would just like to point out that many of us saying the feat works as intended are saying that because of our real-world play experiences, and are experienced, even optimizing, gamers ourselves.

The difference is only that where you and Zard see clerics & bards or other means of assistance in mitigating the effect of the -5 to hit and say "This feat is broken", we say "Teamwork, as intended, makes the team shine." and don't single out just 1 piece of the puzzle and say it is broken (though I admit in Zard's case I've each and every piece of the puzzle individually called out as "broken") because that one thing - actually looked at by itself - doesn't do "too much".
 

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