Shield master on twitter

[Satyrn]

Man, that's how I originally called it when the PHB came out but went with the forum consensus. Once again the internet has led me astray. First porn, now this.

I'd say you should stick to the half of the internet devoted to kittens, but that's how I wound up with 2 dozen cats.

 

[Satyrn]

I created my Twitter account specifically to ask this question. So you can now know my real name if you wanted to as the linked tweet was to my question.

I think it's a dumb rules change and let Crawford know. It puts Shield Master far down the list of useful feats. I'm trying to think of a reason to take this feat and I really can't. Honestly, I think GWM taken by a shield user is a better feat than Shield Master is. And that's sad.

The paladin in my party survived last session because the "evasion" part of that feat came into play 2 or 3 times against fireball-level damage.

 

[Satyrn]

You're a sword and board user who does not benefit from Dex for attack and damage most of the time. But, you're one of the fighting classes, so you almost certainly have a high strength. IE, you almost certainly have a lower Dex in exchange for the higher Str.

The rogue ability depends on making your Dex save to begin with.

Yes, you have the shield bonus to Dex saves now, which helps. But, odds are you still don't have a high enough Dex bonus to depend on the Rogue-like ability to begin with. Only in the unusual cases of a PC who happens to have both a high Str and a high Dex would it be a genuinely rogue-like ability in practice for that PC.

It's not something you'd take as a feat itself. You'd probably prefer the Resilient Feat instead, if that were the purpose of the feat. That way it continues to go up as your proficiency bonus increases over time, and the other benefits of a higher Dex will come as well (such as initiative, and some skill checks).

It's just...not why people were taking this feat. People were taking it to do something with their bonus actions with a fighter-type, when they had decided to go with the (otherwise sub-optimal) sword and board instead of the big two handed weapon and/or polearm and/or duel wield or Dex fighter. There are ways to use your bonus action with each of those types of builds, and now the bonus action option for the sword and board guy is frequently useless (or even harmful, in a party of ranged attackers beside you).

You're answering a post about [MENTION=42037]Ik[/MENTION]j's experience with theory. My experience backs up his, too. Indeed, I find I am regularly surprised by elements of 5e that look useless on paper, but prove vital in play. Or maybe not vital, but useful. Or simply fun.

The most surprising contrast between in-theory expectations and in-play reality came when my table switched to using the standard array (not even point buy) a couple years ago. I have never felt like "all fighters are the same" as I've seen regularly theorized by posters here, for example, and very little else theorized about using standard array ever rings true, either.

The feat has shown itself to be useful - even vital - in my game, on a low dex paladin, because of the evasion feature.

 

[cmad1977]

If someone online says that a feat is ‘nerfed’ or OP I know that they don’t actually know what they are talking about and that the feat works fine.

Helps that I’ve see these things in action and they all... work... great.

 

[Mistwell]

The idea that a character with low or average dex doesn’t really benefit from a +2 to some dex saves and no damage on a successful save is...strained.

Contrast that with the words I wrote, which were: "Yes, you have the shield bonus to Dex saves now, which helps."

Does that match "doesn't really benefit" to you?

I said the ODDS are much worse in this scenario. Which is not a "strained" argument at all. You have two other issues going against you: 1) Your Dex was not naturally high because you're a Strength fighter, and 2) that bonus doesn't increase with proficiency bonus increasing. Those make "the odds" worse. You don't get the benefit as often as almost any other PC (because almost every other PC has independent motivation to increase Dex) and also you likely are not a race that benefits from a Dex boost (because you went in as sword and board) and you don't have proficiency in Dex saves like many do. So yeah, it's not that you don't get any benefit from it (you do, which is what I said), it's that you have much worse odds of getting that benefit than most others.

 

[Mistwell]

You're answering a post about [MENTION=42037]Ik[/MENTION]j's experience with theory. My experience backs up his, too. Indeed, I find I am regularly surprised by elements of 5e that look useless on paper, but prove vital in play. Or maybe not vital, but useful. Or simply fun.

The most surprising contrast between in-theory expectations and in-play reality came when my table switched to using the standard array (not even point buy) a couple years ago. I have never felt like "all fighters are the same" as I've seen regularly theorized by posters here, for example, and very little else theorized about using standard array ever rings true, either.

The feat has shown itself to be useful - even vital - in my game, on a low dex paladin, because of the evasion feature.

Not sure why you assumed I was speaking in theory. It's not something I said, or implied, and you never asked me.

I am answering from my experience. Direct, actual experience for quite some time now, playing a PC with this feat. It's literally his only feat, so I am intimately familiar with it. You can even find other threads around here where I asked for advice on taking the feat before I did.

You know how often the Dex benefit from the shield has benefited my character in an actual roll, over a year period of time? Twice. Neither was life-saving either. Just two ordinary saves made when it would have otherwise failed. That's it. That's how often that has come up in actual play for us, over an entire year.

You know how often it would have been helpful to bash the target AFTER my attack instead of before? I think zero. It would have hurt more than it helped, every time. We have too many ranged attackers in our party.

In actual, direct experience, this change is causing me to either talk my DM into ditching the feat, or ignore the new ruling. Because we both know this change makes the feat nearly useless to us in actual play.

 

[Satyrn]

Not sure why you assumed I was speaking in theory. It's not something I said, or implied, and you never asked me.

I am answering from my experience. Direct, actual experience for quite some time now, playing a PC with this feat. It's literally his only feat, so I am intimately familiar with it. You know how often the Dex benefit from the shield has benefited my character in an actual roll, over a year period of time? Twice. Neither was life-saving either. Just two ordinary saves made when it would have otherwise failed.

You know how often it would have been helpful to bash the target AFTER my attack? I think zero. It would have hurt more than it helped, every time. We have too many ranged attackers in our party. In actual, direct experience, this change is causing me to either talk my DM into ditching the feat, or ignore the new ruling. Because we both know this change makes the feat nearly useless to us in actual play.

It was all the following phrases in bold that came across as theory:

You're a sword and board user who does not benefit from Dex for attack and damage most of the time. But, you're one of the fighting classes, so you almost certainly have a high strength. IE, you almost certainly have a lower Dex in exchange for the higher Str.

The rogue ability depends on making your Dex save to begin with.

Yes, you have the shield bonus to Dex saves now, which helps. But, odds are you still don't have a high enough Dex bonus to depend on the Rogue-like ability to begin with. Only in the unusual cases of a PC who happens to have both a high Str and a high Dex would it be a genuinely rogue-like ability in practice for that PC.

It's not something you'd take as a feat itself. You'd probably prefer the Resilient Feat instead, if that were the purpose of the feat. That way it continues to go up as your proficiency bonus increases over time, and the other benefits of a higher Dex will come as well (such as initiative, and some skill checks).

It's just...not why people were taking this feat. People were taking it to do something with their bonus actions with a fighter-type, when they had decided to go with the (otherwise sub-optimal) sword and board instead of the big two handed weapon and/or polearm and/or duel wield or Dex fighter. There are ways to use your bonus action with each of those types of builds, and now the bonus action option for the sword and board guy is frequently useless (or even harmful, in a party of ranged attackers beside you).

It really didn't look like you were talking about any specific character in play, whereas now you clearly are talking about your experience. It's far more more interesting, so thank you.

 

[TwoSix]

It pretty much negates the usefulness of Cunning Action for rogues, since you can do anything with your action rather than just Dash, Disengage, and Hide.
Or bonus action attack, and Ready to attack again when the enemy acts, doubling your attacks each round with both being granted Sneak Attack.

Rogues can still use Cunning Action to do anything that isn't a combination of off-hand attack + something else, which is pretty good. And being able to ready an action simply lets a rogue do what was previously gated behind Sentinel or Haste, which doesn't seem like a big deal.

And the Tank fighter/ Paladin has a much better tactic. Move forward and offhand attack with his shield then Dodge, making your chances of being hit exceedingly low.

That does seem like a good idea, making tanks more tank like.

I mean, I hope we're of the same opinion that balance in 5e is hardly so precarious that a slight change to combat tactics for some builds will break the game wide open. At worst, this change would make some builds stronger, and some others less strong in comparison.

 

[Krachek]

It is amazing that the same company can produce Magic and DnD.
In magic rules are applied with almost 100% accuracy all around the world
And in DND rules are at least slightly different at each table.

 

[smbakeresq]

The paladin in my party survived last session because the "evasion" part of that feat came into play 2 or 3 times against fireball-level damage.

No one would take a feat because it gave you +2 to some saves in some situations for your 5th or 6th stat. A feat that gave you +2 to Dex saves all the time for the type of PC that would take Shield Master wouldnt be worth it. Paladins are Str, Chr, Con, Wis, then the rest, barring an odd build. You could build a Dex based Paladin but I have not seen one in 5e yet, it even as a proposed build. If it was a Dex based paladin you wouldn’t take Shield Master, it would be useless.


Why are people defending the change as no big deal when it clearly, by any objective measure, makes the feat worse than an ABI? Weapon and Board are clearly suboptimal, by a considerable margin, then other choices, this feat closed the gap some but never made it equal to the other options.

Feats are a limited pool, even if they are allowed. Why spend a feat on something like this when ABI or other options are out there?

Are these JC family accounts?