April Rules FAQ: Great Weapon Fighting, Pact of the Blade, Green-Flame Blade, Booming Blade, Moonbea

The latest rules D&D 5E rules FAQ from WotC's Jeremy Crawford looks at class features and spells. More specifically, it discusses whether Great Weapon Fighting offers retools with features like Divine Smite (no), If Pact of the Blade's bond has to be with a melee weapon (no), if green-flame blade and similar spells work with extra, opportunity, and Sneak attacks (yes and no) and how moonbeam works.

The Sage Advice Compendium now has these updates incorporated. Read this month's answers here.

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[Saeviomagy]

Depends on the die, obviously. It's +0.5 on a d4, +0.67 on a d6, +0.8 on a d10. A greatsword with GWF style does 28% more average damage than a longsword with Dueling, as opposed to 55.5% more without a fighting style on either. So you're certainly right that Dueling is giving a bigger benefit. Players who use two-handed weapons and want to maximize their damage are still going to take GWFing, it's just not so obviously the best choice. (My PAM paladin took Defense.)

I took the die type into account. A d12 goes from an average of 6.5 to an average of 6.9 A d6 goes from an average of 3.5 to 3.9. A d10 goes from 5.5 to 5.95.

The enhancement is (average - 1)/sides. Take off 1/sides from the average, then add average * 1/sides back in.

 

[Ganymede81]

The boost of e.g. Booming Blade for rogues (I assume that is what we are discussing) is not as large when it costs a second chance at sneak attack. For a Swashbuckler it could be very neat to use booming blade. On a hit the rogue can deal a lot of damage and then run away to force the enemy to either not do anything useful (if it has no ranged option) or take even more damage. On a miss there is no second chance to deal sneak attack damage, so two-weapon fighting might still cause more damage overall.

While a rogue using this spell might do slightly less overall damage, they will also retain the benefit of their bonus action. That is difficult to facture into a DPS calculation, but opens up a huge number of opportunities.

 

[Greg Benage]

I took the die type into account. A d12 goes from an average of 6.5 to an average of 6.9 A d6 goes from an average of 3.5 to 3.9. A d10 goes from 5.5 to 5.95.

I guess this argument comes up every so often. To calculate, for example, a d6: (3.5 + 3.5 + 3 + 4 + 5 + 6)/6 = 4.167

 

[Greg Benage]

Grrr. Double post.

 

[Saeviomagy]

I guess this argument comes up every so often. To calculate, for example, a d6: (3.5 + 3.5 + 3 + 4 + 5 + 6)/6 = 4.167

Oops, I was calculating "reroll 1s only". Your way is easier to understand once you're removing higher numbers. It's still inferior to duelist until you're rolling extra dice, and it's still "rolling more dice than is necessary".

 

[scourge]

Does anyone have any clue what D&D's next adventure release will be?

 

[Xeviat]

A point about moonbeam that I haven't seen anyone mention, unless I overlooked it (it's 2 am after all) is this: The turns in a round all happen concurrently. The druid casts moonbeam and focuses it on the ogre. If the ogre is moved out of the way before its turn, then it was moved out of the way just before the beam fell upon them. The only time it gets weird with that is when the druid moves it, but you can simply say that it does take a little time to focus before it deals damage so you can't drag it quickly over a bunch of things, you have to move it no faster than 5 ft per 6 seconds for it to damage things (similar to a magnifying glass and sunlight on paper).

 

[Faenor]

No, he didn't. Stop saying that he did because you're wrong and perpetuating that information is literally why the Sage Advice was released in the first place.

What JC said is:
"Keep in mind, however, that a creature is subjected to such an area of effect only the first time it enters the area on a turn. You can’t move a creature in and out of it to damage it over and over again on the same turn."

Turn, not Round. BIIIG difference. Until you understand the difference between a Round and a Turn, you won't be able to grasp what this ruling means. What I described is exactly how it works. Yes a target can be damaged multiple times a Round, not multiply times a Turn.

I stand corrected. Thank you.

 

[Enevhar Aldarion]

Does anyone have any clue what D&D's next adventure release will be?

If the timing of the first announcement in relation to the actual release date stays the same as past adventures, we will not hear anything about the next one til probably the end of May or beginning of June.

 

[scourge]

Thanks! I much appreciate the information.