D&D 5E Assuming no GWM/SS, are different fighting styles roughly balanced?

[clearstream]

I can confirm our Crossbow Expert use no shield.

Shooting at range is much more useful than having a shield anyway.

And again, how are you maintaining range? We assume the archer excels outside and is gimped inside. So let's look at best case - outside - using the encounter distances from the DMs' Shield

Arctic, desert, farmland, or grassland 6d6 x 10 feet = min 60' max 360'
Forest, swamp, or woodland 2d8 x 10 feet = min 20' max 160'
Hills or wastelands 2d10 x 10 feet = min 20' max 200'
Jungle 2d6 x 10 feet = min 20' max 120'
Mountains 4d10 x 10 feet = min 40' max 400'

As the ambushing party i.e. the monsters or villains, I must be going to choose the shortest initial encounter distance, right? ("Surprise! Oh wait, we're 400' away. Just stand there slack-jawed for a few rounds please.") In every case, I'm closing in one round. In most cases I am also getting an attack in that same round. Archer presumably always moves away his maximum... oh wait that triggers an AoO and seeing as he spent his feats on CM/SS and one ASI he's not moving far. Or he takes Mobile and downgrades his AC, initiative, to hit and damage and then remembers Mobile doesn't work with ranged weapons. Or he took Variant-Human and hey - it's nighttime. Tell me how far you can see again?

The overwhelming majority of encounters simply aren't nearly so hard that you need to focus on defense.

Besides, the best way to not take damage is to kill off the monsters ASAP. I really recommend you to try an all-out offensive party sometime: you should find that the number of attacks made against you are so much lower when you can focus fire that it easily beats +2 in personal defense.

Yes, focus fire. If every party member shoots at range, martials as well as casters, and aren't inconvenienced by melee, this nets frighteningly effective results.

As a fighter there's no reason to attack the hulking brute slobbering in your face - instead you shoot across the room at the other monster that everyone else has already attacked.

Bringing down wounded foes quickly gives far better results, with far less incoming damage, than the traditional way of fighting, where each fighter squares off in a duel with "his own" monster.

Couldn't this problem be equally well - if not better described - as overly weak monsters? Not overly powerful characters?

 

[clearstream]

Yea. more specifically, I'm looking at-will attack patterns driven by build choice. Like:

1) Archery
2) Two-handed fighting
3) Sword-and board
4) Two-weapon fighting and derivatives
4a) Polearm Master
4b) Crossbow Expert hand xbow
4c) Monk Martial Arts
5) Cantrips
5a) Eldritch Blast + Agonizing Blast
5b) Greenflame Blade/Booming Blade
5c) War Magic
5d) Shillelagh
6) Sneak Attack

There's probably a few other niche ones I'm leaving out (grapple builds, wild shape, Polearm Master Quarterstaff+Shield). Just wondering if any of them are obviously cream of the crop or undertuned over a range of levels, and if there are any styles missing or that could use greater support. (Top of my head, thrown weapon builds and versatile weapons could use some love.)

I'd urge you to remember that optimised martial characters throughout the history of D&D have been able to pose difficulties for the naive DM who sets up a battle map that favours them. For example, a clear map for an optimised archer. However, casters have always overshadowed martial characters - even in 5e -
and that should be borne in mind before nerfing martial feats.

 

[clearstream]

I can confirm our Crossbow Expert use no shield.

Shooting at range is much more useful than having a shield anyway.

Offense beats defense, especially in a game so heavily slanted towards the player characters winning as 5th edition.

The overwhelming majority of encounters simply aren't nearly so hard that you need to focus on defense.

Besides, the best way to not take damage is to kill off the monsters ASAP. I really recommend you to try an all-out offensive party sometime: you should find that the number of attacks made against you are so much lower when you can focus fire that it easily beats +2 in personal defense.

Yes, focus fire. If every party member shoots at range, martials as well as casters, and aren't inconvenienced by melee, this nets frighteningly effective results.

Hopefully you saw my previous about ranges. So even outside, starting at minimum encounter distances - or at night - creates problems for the archer. Or what about we start at maximum ranges? With a bunch of shortbow wielding creatures who fire-retreat-fire-retreat. That's not a combat that hand crossbow guy can contribute to. He isn't fast enough to close. He doesn't have the range to attack them. Really, it's only when a DM plays ball and starts the combat off with nice, clear, well lit sight lines in all directions out to - but not much further than! - 120' that he excels. That's a minority of situations even if you aren't in a dungeon. Ranger archer fares better in controlling the terms of engagement, but gets only three attacks (at 11th) not four.

 

[Zardnaar]

And that the Rogue is far too squishy for such a moderate damage benefit.

I mean, compare to a hypothetical Rogue that gets one sneak dice every level, instead of every other: suddenly a reason appears to bring such a squishy damage dealer into the group, since now it justifies it's presence with actual top notch DPR.

Of course in games without feats the situation looks better.

Which makes me conclude that when the game offers a feat that increases the potential damage of a fighter by +50, it should have offered a damage-boosting feat for rogues as well. It needs to.

Sent from my C6603 using EN World mobile app

I'm not disagreeing with you.

I was also one of the 1st to call out the -5/+10 feats as being bonkers back in Sept/Oct 2014 on the WotC boards. A few people laughed at me but the opinion online seems to have changed about those feats.

 

[CapnZapp]

I'd urge you to remember that optimised martial characters throughout the history of D&D have been able to pose difficulties for the naive DM who sets up a battle map that favours them. For example, a clear map for an optimised archer. However, casters have always overshadowed martial characters - even in 5e -
and that should be borne in mind before nerfing martial feats.

Not sure if this is the argument you're making, but

"Don't nerf the martial feats because casters overshadow them anyway"

is an incredibly raw deal for all those weapon builds that AREN'T greatweapon and x-bow wielders.

How about us being able to rationally solve the imbalance between different martial build paths without bringing in casters (other than possibly pure cantrip blasters) into the discussion?

Feel free to discuss any martial-caster imbalance, but please do it separately.

Here, I can start:

I feel the linear fighter quadratic wizard imbalance is smaller/better than ever in 5th edition, especially in games with mc/feats, and is not on top of my priorities of 5e issues urgently needing a fix ​

Now, back to the build balance discussion: please don't pull the bad old "it's the DMs fault" blame game, it fixes nothing and only obscures the real issues. So, no, a DM isn't "naive" anytime a map favors ranged fire. Maps generally favors ranged fire, and no, the solution is not to go out of your way to make ranged fire hard to use. The solution is instead to do what every other fantasy game (and every other edition of D&D) has done: nerf ranged fire enough to make melee attractive.

But more to the actual point, vonklaude - why are we even having this argument? It is a fact 5th edition has removed/mitigated loads of restrictions on archery. Why don't you directly try to defend THAT instead of pulling the detestable blame game? Alternatively, and much more appreciated, you could concede 5e has done something bad with archery, probably unintentionally, and we could move on to discuss what limitations the edition needs to put back into the game. Thanks.

 

[CapnZapp]

And again, how are you maintaining range? We assume the archer excels outside and is gimped inside.

Why make that assumption?

As for your theory-based examples, my response is one big fat *shrug*

The number of encounters where the foes have better distance weapons than the party are exceedingly uncommon.

And with the way PC Perception reigns supreme over Monster Stealth it is far from a stretch to assume that any ambush will fail everytime. (Did you include a light-needing human in your party? Or did you not have a high-Wisdom character proficient in Perception? Not to mention the scouting-prowess of a familiar. Sorry, can't help you - that's a clear power mistake)

Try all you might, you can't "prove" me wrong when I say that in practical play (excepting kick in the door dungeon bashes), there will be plenty of instances where 120 ft is plenty, and plenty more than the melee bruisers that make up the overwhelming majority of MM critters.

In fact, proving this or that is completely uninteresting. All am asking y'all is to try it. If you Klaude actually tried it and came back to me saying "no, we were all ranged, but we got our asses handed to us", then you might have a case, and I would at least listen. But we both know that's not going to happen, because it's a definite win strategy against the game as written.

Couldn't this problem be equally well - if not better described - as overly weak monsters? Not overly powerful characters?

I'm sure you are aware I am one of the champions of "the Monster Manual needs stronger monsters" sentiment, so I'll tentatively answer yes, wondering where you think you can lead me with this...

 

[CapnZapp]

Reposting this cause it's pertinent to the discussion at hand.

Actually, ranged is at its most superior when the rest of the players follow suit and too create ranged characters.

Again, an assumption that used to be true but no longer is: the assumption that just because you build a ranged character you can't be a meatshield.

(If all the party "meatshields" have bows, and rapier & shield, any given one of the "archers hanging back" can instantly transform herself into a "meatshield" and everyone is sturdy enough that no "safe distance" is needed. If all the party meatshields have hand crossbows with CE, they don't even have to switch over to melee weapons.)

 

[CapnZapp]

* remove Crossbow Expert. It provides three benefits, all bad or misshapen.

More on this...

http://www.enworld.org/forum/showthread.php?470488-Crossbows-and-dual-wielding

 

[Barolo]

Is the comparison proposed in this thread strictly about damage dealing? Without feats, I would say archery is still very good, if only because range. But great weapons? In my book they are really lackluster, as the damage boost from d8+2 (dueling) to 2d6/reroll is real weak sauce compared to +2 AC from holding a shield. The numbers seem similar, but the extra damage rarely results in enemies defeated significantly faster, while the AC boost can often "buy" some extra rounds for the whole party as the frontline lasts longer (and even a small increase in the already high AC's of heavily armored fighters and paladins mitigates a lot of damage).

Dual wielder might feel good at lower levels (1-4) but loses effectiveness thereafter. There are still some niche builds that can make good use of it at higher levels. As I would prefer this combat style to be rare, I'm good with how it stands.

Agonizing eldritch blast outclassing other full casters' at wills really seems a sort of fail-safe (along with the other at-will invocations) in the rules for gaming tables where short rests are not happening, as the warlock is probably the class with the biggest resource linked to short rest recovery.

I'm not disagreeing with you.

I was also one of the 1st to call out the -5/+10 feats as being bonkers back in Sept/Oct 2014 on the WotC boards. A few people laughed at me but the opinion online seems to have changed about those feats.

Not sure about that. Many people never had any problems with those feats and don't even bother to engage in endless arguing for nothing.

 

[CapnZapp]

Finally found it!

This is a huge ASIDE to the original topic, and I recommend the OP skips this post completely.


The end analysis is that WotC have made it too cheap to build a ranged characters. Compared to 3rd edition, ranged fire is better/cheaper/less restrictive in at least seven ways, some more significant than others.

Roll back some or all of these ill-advised changes is the only true solution:
- getting to add ability bonus to damage (you didn't in 3E)
- getting to add Dexterity not Strength to damage
- being able to ignore cover (Sharpshooter)
- being able to ignore range (Sharpshooter)
- being able to ignore elf/target being attacked in melee (Crossbow Expert)
- being able to effectively "dualwield" a ranged weapon (Crossbow Expert)
- being able to effectively stack two weapon fighting styles (Crossbow Expert effectively gives you Two-Weapon Fighting which you can stack with Archery)
- being able to stack bow and ammo magic bonuses
- being able to "power attack" with ranged weapon (the -5/+10 part of Sharpshooter)
- being able to shoot effectively while on the move (a requisite for "kiting"). In 3E, you only got "extra attack" if you stood still

Okay, so this wasn't seven points. It was ten. And still I've probably forgot one!

Just sayin' lest we forget there is a definite price to be paid for all these cool "dex builds"...

PS. No elfs, "ignore elf/target" should have read "ignore self/target" DS
PPS. I thought the "missing eleventh" point would be in that thread too, but I can't find it and now I'm out of time. Hopefully you'll focus more on "wow that's an incredible number of lifted restrictions - I can't believe WotC thought that to be a good idea" than "he said eleven but only gave us ten"...

PPPS. And here's a summary of what I really think about this malarkey:

This doesn't sound like fantasy gaming to my ears. More like X-Com or Cyberpunk. But hey, if it works for you...

Myself, I like it when a game system makes you choose between slow brutal killing machine and fast but kind of only annoying. We'd all love to play fast killing machines, but what's so special about that if everybody can do it...

In other words, if the system doesn't reward you for rolling up a slow axe dwarf you risk ending up like Gimli. Tossed on the scrap heap.