D&D 5E Current take on GWM/SS

[Minigiant]

Just because a feat is optimal does not make it imbalanced. Ideally, you want a bunch of optimal feats encouraging hard choices by players to get different, but equally effective, advantages.

I know that.
But some people stated they didn't like a feat because it was so good at doing damage it is a "must have".
But if you make optimization of a single aspect so good compared to other optimizations, there will always be a "must have".

 

[DaveDash]

I know that.
But some people stated they didn't like a feat because it was so good at doing damage it is a "must have".
But if you make optimization of a single aspect so good compared to other optimizations, there will always be a "must have".

But not really. These feats are so far above the rest that if you take them away there isn't really a must have option. There are a few to pick from.

Even the nerfed versions are still pretty good.

Is there a "must have" melee martial class? Nope. They're all pretty good.
Is there a "must have" spell? There's a few really good ones to pick from - if you're ever a Sorcerer you will figure this out.

D&D 5e is filled with agonizing choices without these feats as written. Whether to MC or not. Which spells to prepare. Whether to smite or not. Etc. These feats are the anomalies to the entire game design.

 

[Minigiant]

But not really. These feats are so far above the rest that if you take them away there isn't really a must have option. There are a few to pick from.

Even the nerfed versions are still pretty good.

Is there a "must have" melee martial class? Nope. They're all pretty good.
Is there a "must have" spell? There's a few really good ones to pick from - if you're ever a Sorcerer you will figure this out.

D&D 5e is filled with agonizing choices without these feats as written. Whether to MC or not. Which spells to prepare. Whether to smite or not. Etc. These feats are the anomalies to the entire game design.

There's always a mathematical superior option. There will always be a feat that gives you more DPR, or AC, or Accuracy than the rest.

If all you care about is damage. One feat will always be on top. That is a fact.

 

[Hussar]

Again, tell me what experience you have playing with an SS + Crossbow Expert in your group? I'd like to know why you're convinced there's no possible scenario in which these feats could ever pose a problem.

Who said I'm convinced? I've repeatedly stated that there may very well be a problem. However, with what you've presented so far, all I am fairly sure of, is that the source of the problem is partially because of the idiosyncrasies of your table. There is certainly enough evidence that a deeper look might be warranted. But, I'm not at all convinced that this problem will be endemic to every table. I'm also not convinced that the problem is even mechanical in nature.

Note, "not convinced" does not mean that I think that "there's no possible scenario in which these feats could ever pose a problem".

Why are you so convinced that your experience is universal? Have you run the encounters multiple times for multiple groups? Heck, have you even run the encounters multiple times for the same group? IOW, what testing have you done under controlled circumstances? Other than a simplistic DPR analysis and some fairly vague anecdotes from two or three posters, what evidence do you have?

 

[EzekielRaiden]

There's always a mathematical superior option. There will always be a feat that gives you more DPR, or AC, or Accuracy than the rest.

If all you care about is damage. One feat will always be on top. That is a fact.

But when "on top" can mean "half a percent extra damage dealt, some of the time" or "one percent less average damage taken, most of the time," the variance of the dice and the unpredictable idiosyncrasy of individual tables become overwhelmingly superior factors. It's difficult for those factors to overcome the feats as presented. Not impossible, to be sure, but difficult. Modify or remove them, and suddenly--even if there still were a single highest peak--the height difference is small enough to make a collection of strategies more-or-less equally valid.

A curve can have a single highest peak, without the height difference being meaningful to the end-user. Two TVs could be precisely equal in price, and one could (frex) have one of its statistics slightly ahead of the other--but if the end-user cannot detect the difference, then it might as well be no difference at all, at which point chance or personal preference are the only meaningful determiners of what to choose. Perhaps the end-user already has a DVD player of the same brand as one of the TVs, and thus goes with that because, ideally, it will be easy to get them to talk to each other. (Personal experience has led me to question this, of course.) Or maybe one is made in China and the other is made in the United States, or a friend bought one of them previously and found it easy to use. None of these metrics has any bearing on the effectiveness of the device as a TV, but all of them can factor into the choice when the differences between the two are reduced far enough.

What exactly counts as "reduced far enough"? Not really an answerable question, I'm afraid--it's essentially the sorites paradox (when does a heap stop being a heap?). It would seem that a lot of people--what fraction of the playerbase, I have no idea--agree that GWF and SS, as they currently exist, are too much more effective than the general average of other "good feats."

It also helps, I'd say, that most people tend to list 3-4 different feats that would all work for *both* a ranged and a melee character, and which are useful for reasons other than simply jacking up damage, whereas GWF and SS are both much more specific than that and solely about the damage.

 

[FormerlyHemlock]

You call bless contributing nothing? Really?

The third part of your paragraph has some merit. The first few is a lack of understanding of how powerful bless. I really can't believe you don't see how powerful a +1d4 on attacks and saves is for three members of your party compared to almost anything else in the cleric arsenal. Even at 20th level attack rolls absent magic items are around +11. bless increases your chance to hit by roughly 10 to 40%. It does even more for non-proficient saves. There is very little a cleric can do better than cast bless. The cleric would be casting bless the majority of the time even if GWM and Sharpshooter didn't exist. It's the best group buff in the game.

Arguendo, Bless is the best group buff in the game. If the best group buff in the game is a 1st level spell, that is far more of a balance issue than GWM/SS.

In practice I've found that the opportunity cost of Bless is surprisingly high--reflexively casting Bless in every combat is a poor practice, even from a DPR standpoint. Sometimes Faerie Fire is superior, sometimes Web or Evard's Black Tentacles. Defensively, sometimes Circle of Power is better, sometimes Polymorph. It depends on the PCs and on the threat.

 

[Ristamar]

There's always a mathematical superior option. There will always be a feat that gives you more DPR, or AC, or Accuracy than the rest.

If all you care about is damage. One feat will always be on top. That is a fact.

Superiority in the eyes of a pure number cruncher that is splitting hairs isn't the problem. It's the overshadowing superiority that becomes blatantly obvious to anyone that sees how the feats can be used optimally.

I think pemerton's analysis of the feat as a "math trick" being the real problem is spot on. It's a spreadsheet metagame. Groups that don't play that type of game likely won't have a problem with the feats. And while there are other mechanics and options with which you play a similar metagame, none of them are as severe in the variance of their efficacy in the hands of casual player versus a hardcore optimizer.

 

[FormerlyHemlock]

Just because a feat is optimal does not make it imbalanced. Ideally, you want a bunch of optimal feats encouraging hard choices by players to get different, but equally effective, advantages.

That is already the case for everybody but archer fighters and barbarians. Even Barbarians aren't clearly better off with GWM than Polearm Master today--GWM is just more fun because it makes you feel like Reckless Attack is useful and flavorful ("Reckless" feels like like "crazy big damage"). Against hobgoblins, for example, Polearm Mastery is clearly superior, so in a hobgoblin-heavy campaign you'd take Polearm Master first while hoping for GWM later.

 

[FormerlyHemlock]

What exactly counts as "reduced far enough"? Not really an answerable question, I'm afraid--it's essentially the sorites paradox (when does a heap stop being a heap?). It would seem that a lot of people--what fraction of the playerbase, I have no idea--agree that GWF and SS, as they currently exist, are too much more effective than the general average of other "good feats.".

There's a poll at the top of this page that provides some helpful data on that score.

 

[FormerlyHemlock]

Superiority in the eyes of a pure number cruncher that is splitting hairs isn't the problem. It's the overshadowing superiority that becomes blatantly obvious to anyone that sees how the feats can be used optimally.

I think pemerton's analysis of the feat as a "math trick" being the real problem is spot on. It's a spreadsheet metagame. Groups that don't play that type of game likely won't have a problem with the feats. And while there are other mechanics and options with which you play a similar metagame, none of them are as severe in the variance of their efficacy in the hands of casual player versus a hardcore optimizer.

Pemerton also believes that the feat has no underlying fiction, a controversial claim.

"I shoot him in the throat" = -5/+10. In GURPS this is "shooting for the eyeslits."

"I go berserk and smash his face in really hard" = Reckless + GWM.

If anything I'd say that it's Reckless Attack without GWM that has no underlying fiction.

The only really odd thing about 5E is that -5/+10 is that you need a feat or levels in Rogue in order to hit someone in the eyes, throat, or kidneys. Aesthetically I'd prefer it if -5/+10 were available to everybody, but that's not how 5E was built.

Final point: if you nerf GWM/SS, the next-most-optimal DPR combination is not necessarily going to be on a fighter chassis. It could be that Polearm Mounted Paladins become the next big thing in melee, and Necromancers become the next big thing at range. (The Necromancer can spend 5 SP per day at 6th level and a couple of hundred gold and have 4d6+20 ranged damage at +4 to hit on tap all day, which isn't really far behind the Sharpshooter Fighter with Archery doing 2d8+28 at +4 at the same level.)