What makes Great Weapon Master and Sharpshooter so good?

[Tony Vargas]

What makes Great Weapon Master and Sharpshooter so good?

There are all sorts of build & party synergy & tactical details to exactly how, but why, at bottom, is because 5e has ways of making multiple attacks with a two-hander or ranged weapon, and that makes the large static damage bonus /per attack/ that much more potent. That applies to all damage bonuses, really, GWM/SS just grant a particularly large one.

 

[TwoSix]

Uncommonly low? If all you care about is average damage, which is a mistake for the reasons I say above, there are a lot of creatures where it makes sense, and many of those appear in higher volumes (fodder or soldier types that are used a lot).

Another thing to consider: Overpowered is not necessarily bad. It isn't player vs DM - so it doesn't need to be a balanced game. All that matters to me is whether the presence of the fun reduces fun for (other) players.

The problem with feats being unbalanced has nothing to do with player versus monsters. The problem is in inter-option balance.

 

[BookBarbarian]

Yup that would be a campaign setting element, circumstance, that strongly favors the combo, etc.

I do think the Barbarian, due to proficiencies and Advantage from class features, does have a good chance (maybe even the best chance) to resist being given a condition that causes disadvantage on attack rolls, such as Prone, Restrained, Poisoned, Paralyzed etc.

But yeah there is a good chance my DM just hasn't thrown enough adversaries that cause those at us.

Edit: Of course there could also be other reasons to have disadvantage like environment and such. I haven't encountered much of that yet either.

 

[TwoSix]

Math is math... The actual performance of the feats 5/10 feature - as stated - varies by the circumstances involved - most notably the hit chances and base damage.

One mans spurious is another man's basic mathematics.

Which is all well and good (you're not wrong!), but assuming a relatively baseline game, as presented by the DMG and published adventures, GWM and SS are the best damage choices for those situations.

 

[AmerginLiath]

A thought that I had while reading this thread is how the mitigation of the penalty on these feats has such an opportunity cost both the character him/herself and for the party overall. Yes, the choice of a given maneuver or fighting style can reduce that penalty, but that also means not taking a different maneuver or fighting style (which could benefit a different set of circumstances). Yes, a cleric casting Bless can reduce that penalty as well, but that costs Concentration (which could be used for another buff like Haste or a debuff/control spell) and possibly costs part of the Action Economy. The choice otherwise is to just gamble on the by-the-book risk-reward question of to-hit versus damage. There’s no right answer, but there are many different ways to pose the question.

 

[5ekyu]

A thought that I had while reading this thread is how the mitigation of the penalty on these feats has such an opportunity cost both the character him/herself and for the party overall. Yes, the choice of a given maneuver or fighting style can reduce that penalty, but that also means not taking a different maneuver or fighting style (which could benefit a different set of circumstances). Yes, a cleric casting Bless can reduce that penalty as well, but that costs Concentration (which could be used for another buff like Haste or a debuff/control spell) and possibly costs part of the Action Economy. The choice otherwise is to just gamble on the by-the-book risk-reward question of to-hit versus damage. There’s no right answer, but there are many different ways to pose the question.

Yes a good deal of the differences come from assumptions about buffs, assistance etc.

Concentration slot for multi person hold person may open up auto crit chances for multiple folks (crits dont favor the 5/10 as much since the -5 can cost you,more and the 10 is not doubled.)

 

[The Crimson Binome]

There really just aren't a lot of alternatives, in terms of what can compare. Each characters only has a handful of decision points over their entire career, and of the available options, these are among very few which provide a substantial bonus to damage.

Fifth edition isn't like third edition, when it comes to availability of options. In third edition, you could take feats to increase your damage, but you also had access to magic items. If nothing else, you could get a flaming/shocking sword that increased damage by ~7.

In fifth edition, you're lucky to find a magic weapon that you can use, and there are only a handful of weapons that really improve your damage. If you don't win the flametongue lottery, then you're very likely to end up as a level 12 character dealing ~10 damage per attack. Or you can take one of these feats and double your damage. It's really kind of a dividing line between the haves and the have-nots, because nobody else is walking around with a miscellaneous +4 or +7 damage from some other source. There's not a huge spread of efficacy based on countless minor modifiers.

Sure, there's a trade-off. Sure, it's not always worth it. But if you want to deal a lot of damage, then you don't really have any other choices. That's why they're such a big deal.

 

[FrogReaver]

I am legitimately not trying to start any sort of flame war, but these two feats seem hyped way beyond anything I have seen at the table.

+10 damage is good, probably around doubling your damage on a hit (for argument's sake I am assuming 12 or 11 damage on a hit normally), but it comes with a 25% drop in accuracy. The math definitely works out as a net gain, if I hit 3/4 as often but do twice the damage it is definitely a win, but it hardly seems overwhelming.

When I see someone running it at the table it feels very swingy. They are less reliable than other fighter types but they have impressive numbers when they hit. They feel almost like a barbarian in a box but it is not amazing, especially since we play at low enough levels that it works out that anyone who isn't a variant human basically gave up the +2 increase on their primary stat to take it.

At my home game table it is another matter, we use flanking rules and I can count on one hand the number of times a PC has attacked without advantage. In cases like that the penalty is hardly noticeable.

Is everyone always attacking with advantage, or am I missing some other game changing aspect?

I've seen everyone here talk about parties buffing you and magic weapons and so on. All that's just gravy but I'll explain the meat below.

Take a Battlemaster Fighter for example. He gets +2 hit from archery style and precision attack. (Precision attack is basically a +2/+3 bonus to hit over the whole course of a standard adventuring day). This basically completely negates the -5 penalty and he is left with +10 damage. End of explanation.

 

[Shiroiken]

Great Weapon Mastery, in a vacuum, is only a moderately powerful feat. Against creatures that have high HP and low AC, it's amazing, but otherwise you risk missing, which overall lowers your dpr. The problem that many have is the various ways a character can mitigate the -5 attack penalty, such as from Bless, Advantage, Precision Attack, Magic Items, etc. The perception is that these allow the feat to deal greater damage than it should. I had a polearm master paladin with GWM in my last campaign, and while he was able to deal a lot of damage when he paired up with the raging Wolf Totem Barbarian, I felt that it was manageable.

Sharpshooter is considered worse, however, because all three abilities work together. You can use it against a target with heavy cover at maximum range, and still only be at -5 to hit. Toss in the +2 from the Archery fighting style, and suddenly everyone is using Chewbacca's crossbow. I personally find the other two abilities to be more problematic than the -5/+10, but to each their own.

 

[mpwylie]

I don't really have much issue with them being overpowered at my table as I design my encounters keeping it in mind. My only issue with those two feats is their comparison to the rest of the feats as they are so clearly better than the rest by a decent margin.