D&D 5E Current take on GWM/SS

[DaveDash]

Who said all damage classes should be equal? That is an assumption (valid for you) that you are putting forth as universal.

They don't have to be perfectly equal but there are expectations from other systems where this is true.

It's hard finding D&D players here and I have to attract them from other things that compete with D&D for time like MMOs.

If they want to play the glass cannon Sorcerer that works well in their MMO, then find a Crossbow Expert Fighter can do more damage than them at will at worst, or 1/short rest at best, their expectations are not going to be met, and they will go back to playing their MMO if the DM doesnt step in and house rule.

That's not an arbitrary example either, I do play with people like this, with these very valid expectations from other game systems.

The designers obviously took great care in ensuring the game was balanced, and many feats are. It's not surprising some slipped through the cracks. When one class using a combination that's easily achievable starts to completely outshine all other options the game is less for it, even if you don't care about balance, you're limiting options.

Not everyone likes to play with self imposed limits to make up for design flaws.

When it comes to damage I don't have a huge issue with it regardless - although I'd keep an eye on it if I had say a Sorcerer in my group who wanted to be a DPR king and a Crossbow Expert Fighter.
My main beef with the combination is it creates a very powerful character with a lot of strengths and very few weaknesses. Amazing ranged DPR, great AC with EK, great hitpoints, and the ability to tank.
Any time you have something in game which can create a character with very few weaknesses you have a design flaw. Much like 3e multi-classing which thank god they fixed for 5e.

 

[DaveDash]

How closely were you following the CR/XP budget guidelines for this group of characters?

What does it matter? I don't have any issues with the group in question.

 

[iserith]

What does it matter? I don't have any issues with the group in question.

How closely do you follow the CR/XP budget guidelines in general then? How many encounters per adventuring day on average? What difficulty are they rated based on the adjusted XP?

 

[DaveDash]

How closely do you follow the CR/XP budget guidelines in general then? How many encounters per adventuring day on average? What difficulty are they rated based on the adjusted XP?

This is an underdark campaign that is pre-written that I have converted. It's gone from level 10 and will finish about level 19.5. The median encounters go from a range of 10ish (Medium for a level 10 party based on DMG guidelines) all the way up to around about level 28 for some encounters.
It's sandboxey in nature so the players can tackle them in whatever order they wish - and being high level they can circumvent entire portions of the module if they so desired. However like Princes each area has an assumed level - with the median usually around their level.
They describe the level of play however as "difficult", even with "Easy mode" tactics. if they were a roleplay group and not a rollplay group I doubt they would have survived. Hence I have no issue with this game.

There are time pressures so large potions of downtime aren't a possibility, but they also have cleverly bought themselves a lot of time through wind walking through huge sections of the underdark.

There's no set piece "I am going to force them through n number of encounters for the day". I despise that style of D&D. Being railroaded through a large number of encounters as a player in HoTDQ is my worst experience of D&D in 20 years.
The number of encounters they do per day are dictated by what makes sense. In the beginning to put pressure on them I had Drow raiding parties attack them while they were resting, but they circumvented that and the NPCs don't have the means to track them down (Magnificent Mansion, etc). I'm not changing things to cheapen the experience.

 

[KarinsDad]

Well I don't see any increases on the fighter subclass levels. Granted only the champion is easy to gauge. The BM and EK would require assumptions. Added in, fighter would probably get ahead and stay there. This isn't counting the 2 + 1/level extra HP, the extra AS (which will probably go to Con for +1/level hp), higher AC, self heal and nova.

The rogue has mostly noncombat subclasses. Their default weapon defense is a bonus action Disengage which lower damage. Their second weapon defense is Uncanny Dodge. Third is Elusive.

You don't bring a rogue for damage. You bring a rogue for skills and see the damage as a nice bonus. This isn't a 3e/4e rogue. This is a pre3e rogue.

I did mention that the Fighters could nova whereas the Rogue typically cannot. However, Rogues get the wonderful Uncanny Dodge and Evasion which allow them to stay in fights a long time. That does a lot more than the extra hit point per level that the Fighter gets from hit dice. Sure, an EK can do cool things with magic. So can an Arcane Trickster. Magical Ambush can allow for more damage, especially with an area effect spell. So can Versatile Trickster. Or Assassins. Death Strike. Assassinate (once per encounter at most, but it is still more damage that surprise round than the Fighter, and parties would try to assist such a PC to use his ability, at level 3 for a Rogue elf using a bow, that's 33 average points of damage when the level 3 Fighter is dishing out 11 during that surprise round).

Ranged hiding Rogues can possibly set up advantage more often than Fighters and increase their damage that way as well (rarely missing). The fact remains that without feats, the Rogues are at least competitive. With feats, the melee types win hands down.

The problem with feats is the TWF one sucks.

The problem with Multiclassing is you have to take 5 levels of fighter or ranger and 5+ levels of rogue to make it not suck.

The issue is the design team's hate of TWF. This is because TWF was far away overpowered for a long time in the playtest they were too cautious withe the options.

TWF is fine with no options. The options for it however suck.

Agreed.

 

[KarinsDad]

This depends. All four members of my group can cast hold person, three of them with a DC of 18.

There were entire portions of the underdark they cast HP and ended every fight before it started. And yeah as a result we had some absurd counterspell battles too.

Any NPC up to 180hp is basically toast unless it has legendary resistance, because with GWM + Hold Person the Paladin can come close to killing it in one round.

Yes. All of the primary casters get Hold Person. Granted, not all foes are humanoids. Druids and Clerics do not get Hold Monster.

 

[Psikerlord#]

There's nothing wrong with crazy damage if there are multiple ways to get it. You want your damage dealers to deal crazy damage.

As long as the game still works. A SS archer deals 50-200% damage. A nonSS archer has 50-200% defenses or 50-200% exploration/social bonuses.

I don't care if the archer ranger outdamages the cleric, the tank paladin, the illusionist, and rogue by 100%. That's why I let him come. As long as 5-7 encounters of challenges is challenging.

No I don't want crazy damage in the game, at all. It breaks the HP quotas the monsters have, and upsets the intraparty damage ballpark I want everyone to be in. I understand some groups don't care about this. But I want a return to 2e like damage, a flatter damage ballpark where every PC can bring the smackdown, not a 4e like damage spread where strikers did all the heavy lifting.

Don't get me wrong - I liked 4e overall and played it for years. But over time I came to realize I prefer earlier versions of the game.

 

[aramis erak]

So basically... if you start with 16, you shouldn't take the "power attack" feats just for just damage until after you take +2 feats to get to 20 or if you have a dedicated, numerous, and reliable source of bonus accuracy.

Yep... but note the opposite: if you have a low attack mod in the weapons and the weapons are small, the power attack feat is worth while.

It also depends slightly on the nature of the campaign. Power Attacks with daggers are great for a rogue-assassin in a town game, where only a dagger doesn't raise suspicions. 2x((2d6 or 3d6) + 1d4) +(3 to 5) is good, but adding 10 to the minimum means dropping many templates WAY faster.

Huh why include attack bonuses <+2? (& that is marginal). You also ignore the damage bonus for the ability score which correlates very strongly with the attack bonus.

Really there are only a handful of interesting cases. (& close relatives of these)

1) a level Woodelf 4 Ranger with 16 dex wondering if he should take +2 Dex or Sharpshooter

2) the same at level 8 with 18 dex

3) A level 4 Dwarf Greatsword fighter with 16 STR wondering about taking +2 STR or Great Weapon Mastery

4) the same at level 6 with 18 STR

By my calculations the break even AC at above which ASI is better are
1)17 2)19 3)13 4)14

So the archer should always take the Sharpshooter feat instead of the +2 DEX as AC 17 is high. This is exaggerated as the sharpshooter feat effectively increases his accuracy even more.
The GW fighter has a much closer call & should probably not bother with it until he has maxed out his STR.

This is of course in line with your assessment.





There are errors in this table.

a) Level 8-12 presumably means 11-12 as you get a + prof at 9 & an other attack at 11.

b) There should be no difference between AC 11 12 & 13 for the longbow guy as he only misses on these if he rolls a 1 on the d20 (+10 AB, + 1 or more D4).

No, there are not. Or, more correctly, you're apparently not competent to assess whether there are or not, because you obviously do not understand it. You misunderstand the tables COMPLETELY - Nowhere do I mention levels.

Those are ranges of what natural rolls are needed, NOT CHARACTER/CLASS LEVEL.

As for why less than +2?

• Because not everyone who looks at the feat is a dedicated fighter. (The party druid was considering it.)
• Because I included the typical ranges for Adventuer's league play.
• Because it's not that much extra to change the entry, copy the result, and add a couple lines to the collation table.

Likewise, the +6 line is for barbarians. I should have added a +7 line, too, but since the comparison for raising

I'm ignoring the rest of your post because, plain and simple, you evidently had No Idea what you were looking at and thus are off on a wild tanget that has nothing to do with anything I posted.

To see if I can explain it better...

If your attribute modifier (and ONLY the attribute modifier NOT THE PROFICIENCY BONUS) is X, and your damage dice are Y, and the difference of their AC and your attack bonus is in the indicated range, then (for table 1standard attack is better, or (for table two), you'd have been better off with the attribute bonus instead of the feat. (Barring the other benefits being useful enough to justify it.)

The First table is for people who bought the feat: it tells when you're better off with the standard attack (But most things that mid-level characters can hit on a natural 10 will die from a 6 or 7 point minimum hit or two anyway...)

The second table is for looking at which is better - raising the attribute by 2 or taking the feat granting a power attack. And the difference is PROFOUND. Against most targets of similar CR to Party level, the bonus to attribute is better than a power attack.

So, for the guy with Greatsword specialization and a 16 STR at level 4, he's better off taking the +2 Str unless he's facing hordes of normal folk and/or normal animals... At level 1-3, he's +5 to hit, so the typical AC13-16 NPCs need natural rolls of 8-11, but things are (at least in published modules) getting higher AC's. So, unless he's facing knights, the power attack is superior against normal folk... but if he's facing Gargoyles, Giants, Dragons, Spectators, Knights, Stone/Iron Golems, Gorgons, Goblin Bosses, beholders, etc... until level 12, take the Str bonus, because most of your foes fall AC's into the range.

At level 12, Barbarians can consider higher attributes, but their bonus is high enough to push even the tougher crowd into marginally better with power attack. (+5 Att, +4 PB) ... even the 19 AC opponent is now below the range where +1 Attribute is better than Power Attack, but it's by a small amount.

 

[FormerlyHemlock]

Legendary Resistance is far from the only defense against Hold Person. If we're talking NPC spellcasters here, allow me to point out that Freedom of Movement lasts for 1 hour (no concentration requirement) and grants immunity to spells which restrain or paralyze you. (Incidentally it combos well with Evard's Black Tentacles in a chokepoint.)

Obviously, many NPCs will not have this spell cast on them, but for those that do opposition research (Augury, Divination, Contact Other Plane, Speak With Dead, etc.) instead of just charging into combat, there's a good chance the players' favorite tactic ought to fizzle. Of course it may take the PCs a few casts to figure out that the enemy isn't just rolling well on their saves...

 

[DaveDash]

Edit: Doesn't really matter.