D&D 5E CoS removed bonus action to two weapon fighting on attack my thoughts.

[CapnZapp]

[MENTION=12731]CapnZapp[/MENTION]
Thanks for the info.
But what is so broken about xbow expert?
From my point of view, it is not that OP.
1) It lets you attack with no disadvantage in melee (the fact that it also applies to attack spells is probably the problem in here, I would have stated only ranged weapon are affected by it.)

2) You ignore the loading quality of xbow (now they work like a normal bow)
3) You can shoot once more with a hand xbow already loaded if you have it hand if you attacked with a one hand weapon. (strange, I just noticed that it doesn't specify one hand melee weapon... Thx CapnZapp )

Other than the first case, I really see no reason to put that feat on the hate list, even then it is not such a big change; unless I have missed something?

The main thing is what Lord Twig has already explained to you, with his "Shortsword Expert" feat.

Ranged combat is inherently superior to melee combat. In my opinion, melee combat needs to get ALL the bonuses. Ranged combat is THAT good.

You yourself express this in your campaigns, when you say one character soaks all the attacks while dodging - and the rest whale on using ranged fire.

D&D used to be about heroic characters wielding swords and axes bravely entering melee combat to vanquish their foes.

In this light, Crossbow Expert is destroying that game. It is not the only straw, but it is the final straw (that broke the melee camel's back).

 

[Helldritch]

The main thing is what Lord Twig has already explained to you, with his "Shortsword Expert" feat.

Ranged combat is inherently superior to melee combat. In my opinion, melee combat needs to get ALL the bonuses. Ranged combat is THAT good.

You yourself express this in your campaigns, when you say one character soaks all the attacks while dodging - and the rest whale on using ranged fire.

D&D used to be about heroic characters wielding swords and axes bravely entering melee combat to vanquish their foes.

In this light, Crossbow Expert is destroying that game. It is not the only straw, but it is the final straw (that broke the melee camel's back).

Ranged combat has always been superior to melee; both historicaly and in fiction. How many great warriors were put down by a volley of arrows (Boromir, Roland and even Arthur)? That D&D 5ed is going that route isn't surprising but it is not as bad as in some other editions. Here's one.

A 1st edition elven long bow archer with bow spec was a real killer. Especially with the strength bow option in the dragon magazine. Add in the haste spell/potion and you had someone that was litteraly outshining the melee characters by a "long shot" (pun intended ).

A long sword specialist (x2) at lvl 13, could attack 5/2 would be +3hit/dmg over any other bonuses from strength and magic.
A long bow (or any bow saves xbow) at lvl 13 would attack 4/1, would be +2 hit/dmg within 30' and +1 hit/dmg at short range. Add it magic from stat, bow and arrow and factor in a strength bow and you could get someone with +10 to hit (+1 bow and +3 arrows were not that hard to get) and +16 dmg where our melee specialist (+3 weapon) would only get +9 hit +12 dmg. If you factor in the flame arrow spell then the bow man was lightyears away from the straggling melee character. And with a +3 bow (the holy grail of archers) the difference was just getting bigger. At that time, with haste the melee character was attack 10 times in two rounds whereas the archer was making 16 in the same two rounds!

In effect, 5ed gave much power back to the melee characters by evening out the possible dmg (GWM and SS feats) and the possible AC that dex based characters can get. Only the sword and board fighter type is losing a bit in that area. I would have liked to see a feat comparable to GWM for one handers. Yet, the Shield mastery feat does give a nice possibility (knock down and push) and covers (to a certain extent) the weak spot of most heavies, dex saves.

Yep my players are using ranged fire to deal their dmg but it is not something new. Mages and clerics have done that from the begining of basic D&D. Maybe ranged fire/spell should again provoke OA and still impose disadvantage when in melee. That way, xbow expert wouldn't be that broken.

So far in my game.
Mei is still not that much ahead of dmg. They fought werewolves and the fight lasted 9 rounds. I am actualy more afraid of the wizard now. The player has been really lucky got quite a few crits with firebolts/seering bolts. His clever use of levitation saved his skin this time. The players have reunited Irena with Sergei and Strahd is quite angry at them. He sends minions at them every few nights. The players are actualy quite afraid of our Vampire and they are also pursued by Baba Lysaga from whom they stole the gem for the Wizards of wine winery. They are now going to the Abbot...

 

[CapnZapp]

Ranged combat has always been superior to melee; both historicaly and in fiction.

This is fantasy RPG, specifically D&D.

It is the first and best example of a game where melee has been given many advantages over ranged.

(As an aside, the first and foremost of these is actually the concept of hit points itself. In any campaign where a single hit can kill, hitting first becomes paramount. For example: real-life today. There is a reason fantasy gaming doesn't feel like rocket tag)

Now I'm talking about d20 vs 5E.

The problem is that the 5e designers forgot to make sure they actually kept these checks. People are expected to create slow dwarf characters just as they have done for decades, except that the benefits you get in exchange for having no range and crappy movement simply are no longer there.

Crossbow Expert is actively deleterious to the game.

 

[Helldritch]

I would not go as far as you are.
1ed was paramount in giving a much higher dmg potential to range over melee.
2ed was barely an improvement for the melee.
3ed (d20 system) was quite a return for the bowmen. +2 fire bow with +2 thunder arrows?
4ed (d20 system too) had again the same problem as 3ed. Fire/thunder/(insert whatever elemental dmg type you want) weapon and amunitions.
5ed actualy improved in removing elemental amunitions and bows. Amunitions still stack with the weapon.

What I do agree is that one feature from the xbow expert should not apply outside crossbows and it should not benefits cantrips either.
I do agree that now, the benefits from having a slow dwarf are no longuer that appealing now.

The hp system has always encourage melee type in giving them a fair chance to close up to the ranged combattant. This has always been a stapple of fantasy genre and even in fantasy genre, ranged combattant had always been feared. The problem is that contrary to 3ed and 4ed, ranged combattant are no longuer doomed to allow attacks of opportunity if they fire in melee. A simple disadvantage is not enough. Maybe the developpers thought that by removing the elemental dmg from range it would be enough???

My biggest fear with Mei was that she would be way too powerful, this was not the case. As we see, she gets out of amunitions fairly fast and having more attacks will only make her spend her amunitions faster. Will it shorten the combats? Probably but I have ways to ensure that combat gets over the 6 round mark. I am confident that things will even out now. Cantrips are closing the gap in dmg now. We're having an other game tonight. We'll see how she goes.

 

[Greenstone.Walker]

Looking at the math of it, I don't see that the TWF + bonus attack combination is ever effective enough to worry about,

Assuming every attack hits (and also taking the 2wf fighting style):

Hunter's Mark. My ranger can do 1d8+1d6+STR with a longsword; he can do 2d6+STR + 2d6+STR with 2 shortswords or 2 hand crossbows.
Divine Smite. My paladin can do 2d8+STR with a longsword and level 1 smite; 1d6+1d8+STR + 1d6+1d8+STR with 2 shortswords. Taking the 2WF feat, he can do 2d8+STR + 2d8+STR!
As a Rogue, 2WF means one extra opportunity per round to get a sneak attack.

2WF is powerful. Double your damage, with the only drawback being 2 less AC. Allowing 2WF with ranged weapons removes that penalty.

Really, as an adventurer, using the rules in this thread, why would you ever use a longbow instead of two hand crossbows? The only advantage of the big bow is range, and most adventurers never fight at that range. Also, why would you ever use 2 shortswords instead of 2 crossbows?

 

[Helldritch]

Simply because at a certain point, you have no ammunition left.
My house ruling is that she has to use the special darts in a leather bandolier on which the darts are clipped on, that she made herself. Otherwise it doesn't work and she must revert to normal rules. And she can't buy darts made to fit her bandoliers, she has to built them herself.

The bandoliers hold a total of 6 darts each and she has 3 of them for a total of 20 darts (if you consider the 2 pre loaded darts). She now runs out of amunitions in 5 rounds. In my campaing, most figths last 7 to 9 rounds with some going as long as 12! She doesn't have that many darts and those that are so broken as to not be repairable with the mending cantrip are simply lost. She has to rely on the short swords to get sure that she has enough darts to see the end of combats with a fair amount of darts left.

She doesn't have the archer's fighting style so the +2 bonus to range attacks never applies to her. She does not hit that often and her dmg is not that impressive. In hand to hand she is still stuck with 3 attacks if she is out of bolts. So now she goes full hand crossbow 3 rounds and reverts to short sword and hand crossbow for the rest of her payload.

As for the "why not attack with hand crossbow instead of longbow"...
Breetai, pure rogue assassin, is doing quite fine in dmg. Many of our fight starts at long range for the hand xbow and sometimes even out of range for hand xbow. Nope, our assassin, the higher his sneak attack dmg gets, is the main dmg dealer. Maybe it is simply a question of luck at our table but the +2 to hit from archery is sorely missed by our ranger.

Both players took the SS feat. Mei uses it only on weak AC monster as the -5 is hitting her very hard while the assassin is using about 3 to 5 times per combat bringing his dmg dealt way higher than Mei. The assassin player was thinking of going multiclass in fighter to get a second attack but at level 5 his dmg out put started to be higher than Mei and he changed his mind.

So far, I am not distressed or anxious about the change I made with the two weapon fighting style. Mei often goes dual short swords now and the hand crossbows, although still used often, are not as game changing as I first thought. My white room calculations were giving me some concerns but real table time play showed me otherwise. Again I must stress that my fights are longuer than in most campaing I see, lasting from 7 to 9 rounds on average and encounters per day are rarely less than 3 per day. Sometimes there is time for a long rest, sometimes even a short rest is a risky bet. I keep players power in check, so I do not see a lot of "nova". The nova style players tend not to last very long at my tables. Resource management is crucial at my table. Maybe it is why the change is not that important...

 

[jaelis]

Assuming every attack hits (and also taking the 2wf fighting style):

Hunter's Mark. My ranger can do 1d8+1d6+STR with a longsword; he can do 2d6+STR + 2d6+STR with 2 shortswords or 2 hand crossbows.

OK, well let's fix up that comparison a bit. We should give the longsword (or better, rapier) ranger the duelist style (and then keep in mind he also gets +2 AC for his shield). And let's assume we're past level 5, since that's when I think most of your adventuring career takes place. Then the 2WFer has three attacks at (2d6+mod) = 12, for 36 total. The rapier has two attacks at (1d8+1d6+2+mod) =15, for 30 total. That seems fine to me, you won't always have Hunter's Mark up and the shield is certainly worth something.

But my actual comment was about the houserule suggested by the OP. So let's instead assume that the ranger gets a bonus action attack from haste or something, but that the extra TWF attack is free. Then the TWFer gets 4 attacks for 48 total, the rapier gets 3 attacks for 45 total. This favors the rapier (compared to when there's no bonus action attack available); thus my claim that TWF+bonus attack is not effective enough to worry about.

It's not that I think TWF is terrible. It's that a bonus attack is always worth more to the guy with the bigger weapon.

 

[Mephista]

What I am not sure of...
Is Mei not OP because most of my important fights are above the 6 rounds mark?
Is Mei not OP because there are no Hand X-bow in Barovia so she has to be careful with her amunitions?
Is Mei not OP because she did not take the archer style, barring her from the +2 to hit? (but there she'd lose her 3rd shot...)

What are your thoughts?

Mei is not overpowered because two weapon fighting was originally deisgned to take a bonus action in order to make it a "meaningful" choice between TWF as a Rogue or not. Not because its too powerful and needs to be limited. It was a question of style, not DPR. With how Extra Attacks work, TWF actually is always going to be a sub-optimal choice, bonus action or not.

Mei has several options using her bonus action to increase her damage a bit further, but rogue and ranger were never top contenders for damage in the first place, so a minor bump in DPR isn't going to matter a lot in a group this size.

I wouldn't worry too much about this being OP in the hands of an optimizer, though. Why? There are four main "duel weilding" classes:
~ Fighter (is better off with a greatsword for dealing damage than TWFing)
~ Ranger
~ Rogue
~ Bard

As of level 5, the Fighter does better damage with a greatsword than two weapons. Add on feats, and the greatsword is leagues ahead of two weapon fighting. Now, there might be issue with getting multiple attacks with crossbow+archer feats, but that's something easy to address by just saying you can't have both feats, which will put a stop to any optimizing right there. Ranger, Rogue and Bard are all non-contenders for top damage dealing in the first place, so an optimizer generally won't take them in the first place. TWFing dedicated rogues are thing already, thanks to the Swashbuckler class. Ranger needs all the help it can get. Same with melee bards.

Honestly, it sounds like you're borrowing trouble worrying about min-maxing.

 

[Helldritch]

As I said earlier, Mei is now at 4 attacks per round with at least a hand xbows in her hands. She runs out of bolts quite fast (5 rounds) if she uses two hand xbows. Since most of my fights go past the 5 rounds mark, she had to find a way to make sure her amunitions would last a bit longer. She went to weilding a short sword and a hand xbow. She gets 2 attack with her short sword and 2 with her hand xbow. This bring her to a shortage in amunitions at round 11. She does have the sharp shooter feat, but she isn't using it that much.

Maybe it is fortuitous that Mei isn't in the hands of an optimizer. In the current campaing she is the only one that died (and was raised ). The main dmg dealer is, surprisingly, the assassin. He gets to "assassinate" a lot as he is scouting ahead and he does take time to do his job. The auto crit on first hit is almost too strong especialy with the SS feat. His crit is regularly around the 45-50 dmg on average. He got lucky last night and killed two werewolves in row. First one was assassinated and he got a crit on the second round. Both doing 58+dmg. Mei isn't doing as much but she inflicts a bit more dmg in long fights.

 

[Greenstone.Walker]

She runs out of bolts quite fast (5 rounds) if she uses two hand xbows.

How?

"We are in town? Good, I buy 1,000 bolts. 50 gold, right? Cool, spare change covers that."

Also, you generally get half your ammo back at the end of each combat.