D&D (2024) Sharp shooter/Great Weapon Mastery

[Kai Lord]

I can't help but wonder if we're going to see a repeat of 4E creating the market for Pathfinder all over again.

Or perhaps not. Maybe D&D is currently too big to fail.

 

[Micah Sweet]

I can't help but wonder if we're going to see a repeat of 4E creating the market for Pathfinder all over again.

Or perhaps not. Maybe D&D is currently too big to fail.

WotC will secure government funding if things go too badly.

 

[tetrasodium]

I suspect the fighter playtest will ultimately be the most important one.

I agree & don't think it's a coincidence that they made sure to include a caster leaning bard with the ritual magic changes. The mage & priest stuff needs the warrior stuff to compare durability & damage/alternative effects they carry. I'd like to see squishier mages with more of their budget spent elsewhere & think the barkskin change shows a bit about healing expectations

 

[Levistus's_Leviathan]

Ok, I strongly believe that WotC doesn't think martials need buffing.

They buffed the Light Property. A lot. Dual Wielding is no longer a bonus action tax on your character. This is really good for basically all of the Martial classes. We'll have to wait until the Warrior Class UA to see what else they change, but they clearly are working on rebalancing quite a few things in the game that they think are underpowered/overpowered (they nerfed Guidance, buffed Barkskin, buffed Rangers, both nerfed and buffed Rogues, etc).

 

[Neonchameleon]

Ok, I strongly believe that WotC doesn't think martials need buffing.

We've seen one martial so far - and it got both buffs and nerfs. Nerfs to the highest damage approaches with offturn attacks - and buffs to two weapon fighting and a couple of other places.

What we haven't seen is what WotC is going to do with the glorified commoners (fighter, barbarian) out of combat. Because that's where the major problems lie.

 

[Blue]

The problem I'm talking about isn't dual wielding crossbows with the loading issues involved. It was that in the current rules you get the bonus action attack from just using a single hand crossbow with no weapon in your other hand. You then combine this hand crossbow attack (with no penalty in melee thanks to Crossbow Expert) with the Sharpshooter feat, the +2 from Archery style offsetting the -5 from Sharpshooter - and you get three really powerful (+10 damage) and not that inaccurate attacks per turn. It's easy to use, ranged, and very hard hitting.

At the opportunity cost of two ASIs, which if going into DEX would have been +2 to hit and +2 to damage for every attack.

 

[Bill Zebub]

At the opportunity cost of two ASIs, which if going into DEX would have been +2 to hit and +2 to damage for every attack.

And also the inconvenience of not getting invited back for future games, on account of being a cheesemonger.

 

[Blue]

What Jeremy hasn't added is that (unless something else is going on) these are trap choices. They don't give you an ASI and only the most powerful of them give you the equivalent of a feat. I mean which would you take between the protector fighting style or Sentinel even without the ASI.

This seems to be 2014 thinking - that all feats are the same power. Looking at the 1st level feats from the first UA, none have + ability scores. And these fighting style feats seem equivalent of other 1st level feats.

So it's an equal power level to the other 1st level feats, which is the primary thing to compare it to. Not a trap at all.

 

[Remathilis]

I suspect the fighter playtest will ultimately be the most important one.

I'm going to call it now: battle master maneuvers are going to be baked into the fighter and it will get two brand new subclasses to replace the champion and BM.

 

[FitzTheRuke]

I'm going to call it now: battle master maneuvers are going to be baked into the fighter and it will get two brand new subclasses to replace the champion and BM.

I think you're right. All they have to do for a "simple"-built champion-like fighter with maneuvers is to make the maneuvers it uses easy-to-use.