Psikerlord#
Explorer
No, even without the +10, martials are the top damage dealers on a consistent basis.
D&D 5E Current take on GWM/SS
- Thread starter CapnZapp
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No, even without the +10, martials are the top damage dealers on a consistent basis.
Hussar
Legend
Because you're 25% increase in DPR is not a huge deal. Not when the class that's getting this buff, typically the fighter, is getting left behind by all the spell casting classes at higher levels. I have zero problem here. You burn a feat to deal 25% more damage. I burn a feat to have almost twice as many HP as you do. Who's got the bigger advantage? IOW, a 25% bump in damage is not going to break the game.
I'd love to hear your experiences in dealing with Crossbow Expert + Sharpshooter characters in your party.
Note - when I was playing an EK at lower levels, we'd quite often scout and then get bless up before the battle. I'm sure you've heard of this technique called scouting. Now that I play a Cleric Bless is either before combat or round 1, who cares if I miss out on a round? The amount of value it adds both in DPR and saving throws is massive, far greater than anything else I could do that round.
When I played a lower level EK from level 8 my expected DPR upon an action surge was around 80-100, depending on the AC of the opponents we were fighting. Any encounter under Deadly * 2 was a cake walk. Vampires? pfft. Dragons? pfft. Anything under CR 14 in the MM was basically free XP.
Not only that, I had the second best HD in the game, one of the best AC's, the best attack bonus, the ability to switch between a tank and a ranged fighter at will, and the ability to pick and choose between damage and accuracy at will. About the only "weakness" in combat really was Wisdom saving throws. I totally eclipsed everyone else in the party, and over the course of the day my damage was higher than all other party members combined - consistently. I didn't even need Bless to do it, as Bless was only really required in the harder fights against higher AC creatures.
Assuming you're running Princes of the Apocolypes - with the exception of the Elemental Princes at the end - I can pretty much kill everything in the back of the book in one round, and reduce the HPs of the Prophets themselves to a number in which someone else in the party can kill them that round. I have totally trivialized the entire combat pillar in the module, unless you as the DM start investing time in rebalancing all the encounters. Then what about the other party members who are now going to fall even further behind? Is this your idea of fun, to breeze through the combat pillar in 8 months - 1 year of play time? It very well may be, but I doubt it's most peoples cup of tea.
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This reminds a bit of discussions about caster power at mid-to-upper levels in 3E/PF.
Given that all these issues involve the resolution of declared actions, of course they are, in some sense, of the players' own devising. As a limit case, if a player never declares attacks for his/her PC these feats won't cause any issues! Probably no one is playing the game at that limit point, but I'm not sure on what basis you are saying that some deviations from the limit are typical and some are aberrant and the fault of the players.
D&D - especially in the post-AD&D era - presents itself, in part, as a type of optimisation puzzle, in the sense that a fair bit of PC building and game play involves manipulating numbers, with bigger being better. What is your threshold for acceptable or wrong-headed solutions to the puzzle that the game poses?
Well this goes back to the question I posted not far upthread, and to which [MENTION=93321]Psikerlord#[/MENTION] replied. (And from his most recent post, [MENTION=6786202]DaveDash[/MENTION] seems to agree.)
If you nerf the feats, you establish a degree of balance between various damage-dealing warrior builds but at the risk of underpowering warriors. (This raises an issue about non-feat-using games: are warriors automatically underpowered in those games, without these damage boost feats to support them?)
If you keep the feats as is, you make a couple of damage-dealing paths clearly superior, which suggests the alternative option of introducing some new feats for duelists and two-weapon fighters.
Just for the record, I don't have an issue with GWM and/or Polearm master. Having added up all the damage across all rounds of combat they don't get too silly - because they lose a lot of DPR running around the battlefield getting into a position to use their DPR (or throwing handaxes, javelins, and the like). So their actual average comes out in an acceptable range for me (having said that, I still am opposed to the idea of flat number bonus feats, and I can see cases where these feats cause issues).
It's SS and more so SS+EK that really bother me, and even casters can't really keep up. Damage in 5e is the primary way of killing things - there's very little save or die now. Wizards and Clerics can layer on a lot of damage given enough preparation time, but they're still expending resources to do it. Sorcerers can do impressive damage but they need to burn sorcery points and their highest level spell slots to do it. SS Fighters just need bolts or arrows.
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Shouldn't you play in a stupid fashion choosing less optimal choices lessening your fun to accomplish the goals of the game per Page 2 of the Basic Rules? Your fun is lessened and you get to use your intelligence to make less optimal choices to increase the group's enjoyment, creating a nebulous fun number that balances amongst the group per the Page 2 Basic Rules. So few people have fun designing a highly effective character using the hundreds of other pages of rules and recommendations in the game, so you should focus on Page 2 Basic rules over the hundreds of other pages. It should define all your choices.
D&D is all about creating exciting and memorable stories... by doing the most damage possible!
As an aside, one of my most fondest memories in my recent campaign is when my Wizard player rolled eight 1's in a row on a 10d4 roll. The disgust in his voice at doing a mere 14 damage with a 4th level spell was music to my ears. I still have the screenshot.
FormerlyHemlock
Hero
Really. You don't think an 11th level paladin with four attacks per round at advantage for 49 points of damage potential without even spending spell slots is piling on the numbers. 122 points of damage if he spends 3rd level spells. The Sharpshooter meanwhile is doing 58.5 points of damage potential, but at -5 to hit and no advantage.
GWM/SS are great feats as written but they're not outliers, son. Piling on the damage happens in many ways and with many class features.
Four attacks per round? Break that down to see what assumptions you're making there.
The Paladin also has to get close, and has to use his 1/short rest ability to get advantage. So for your comparison to be more worth while - the Fighter will be using an action surge as well. And note - The fighter is actually -3 +10 since he has an inherent +2 attack roll bonus over the Paladin.
But all that aside, yes Paladins are awesome when they can get in there and deal damage with spell slots to spare.
And I thought I was on your ignore list?
FormerlyHemlock
Hero
Nah. GWM in that case is greatly inferior to PM. Bonus attack always + reaction attack >> bonus attack sometimes.
Free advantage against medium foes and extra attacks with Mounted Combatant is also excellent. Extra attacks because you can actually let your warhorse/steed into melee without it getting instantly killed, since it can't be attacked against your will. If you're fighting large foes it can Help instead.
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