D&D 5E Current take on GWM/SS

[Minigiant]

The problem is only restricted to TWF if you use spotlight balance and shoehorn classes into definite roles (eg rogue skill monkey). If you want a rough damage balance - like the core rules come with (ie no MCing and no feats) - then everything becomes a problem with the +10. Those who use GMW and SS do too much damage, and those without it do too little. If my goal is to keep the rough damage balance the core rules provide, the best and most convenient fix is obvious.

The best and most convenient fix is obvious, give rogue a feat and fix Dual wielder.

If you want a rough damage balance - like the core rules come with (ie no MCing and no feats) - then everything becomes a problem when some fighting styles have a feat, others have a bad feat, and a few styles have no feat at all.


The second you add any option (MC, feats, templates, boons, magic items) to the game, rogues and mages fall behind. There is no way to boost Sneak Attack nor spells. Every Class with Extra Attack or Multiattack will take any bonus damage or accuracy better as they can stack the same bonus 2-5 times.
Even at -5/+5, a blessed up warrior probably leaves a rogue or mage in the dust for single target DPR.

The contest between single attackers, mages, and multiattackers is a losing one.

 

[Celtavian]

The problem is only restricted to TWF if you use spotlight balance and shoehorn classes into definite roles (eg rogue skill monkey). If you want a rough damage balance - like the core rules come with (ie no MCing and no feats) - then everything becomes a problem with the +10. Those who use GMW and SS do too much damage, and those without it do too little. If my goal is to keep the rough damage balance the core rules provide, the best and most convenient fix is obvious.

I'm still wondering why some don't take into account DM concerns. It wasn't real fun to have the GWF annihilate enemies meant for an epic fight in a couple of rounds with nova damage using Action Surge coupled with the feats. Not every encounter can be built to stop melee from attacking or playing a melee is no fun. These feats create a situation where a GWF needs to be on or off. If he's on as in capable of striking the target, the target is going to end quickly making an epic fight anticlimactic. If its off, the player is bored and his character looks less than epic. If I boost hit points, the higher damage GWF still does the lion's share of damage making everyone else look less than epic. This problem is even worse with the Sharpshooter since turning him on and off is even more difficult.

I would like to see what some DMs are doing to account for the boost damage from these feats. Or if they have very little experience with the feats by optimizers. Or if they don't mind the players destroying an epic monster quickly. I know one of my pet peeves as a DM has always been how easily defeated powerful solo creatures are. I have always adjusted them to ensure that doesn't happen. You would have a hard time creating a story like The Hobbit or Game of Thrones in D&D because Smaug or the King of the White Walkers would be destroyed by an appropriate level of adventurers in about 20 to 30 seconds, while taking minimal damage. That just isn't epic and doesn't make them appear very dangerous.

 

[Minigiant]

I would like to see what some DMs are doing to account for the boost damage from these feats. Or if they have very little experience with the feats by optimizers. Or if they don't mind the players destroying an epic monster quickly. I know one of my pet peeves as a DM has always been how easily defeated powerful solo creatures are. I have always adjusted them to ensure that doesn't happen. You would have a hard time creating a story like The Hobbit or Game of Thrones in D&D because Smaug or the King of the White Walkers would be destroyed by an appropriate level of adventurers in about 20 to 30 seconds, while taking minimal damage. That just isn't epic and doesn't make them appear very dangerous.

Well the game is design for X encounters a day. 4-8 of them. A hard encounter for a level 11 4 member party has 250+ HP with +8 attack bonus and 81-88 damage. You have to handle that with 31,500 XP of monsters/traps/encounters before that. That's tough. You have one-shot any PC who has less than d10 HD and 14 Con.

The base monsters are weaker than the guidelines. But if the players are using options, the DM should too.

 

[DaveDash]

Well the game is design for X encounters a day. 4-8 of them. A hard encounter for a level 11 4 member party has 250+ HP with +8 attack bonus and 81-88 damage. You have to handle that with 31,500 XP of monsters/traps/encounters before that. That's tough. You have one-shot any PC who has less than d10 HD and 14 Con.

The base monsters are weaker than the guidelines. But if the players are using options, the DM should too.

The game isn't designed for 7 BBEG fights in a day however, and smart players can generally save these resources for those fights.

In actual fact, Action Surge *is* the mechanic in which fighters 'nova' damage, but the -5/+10 feats throw that completely out of whack when their penalties are removed. You end up doing 4x the damage 2/day over anyone else.

Warning Princes of the Apocalypse Spoilers:

Again, if I ran a SS + XBE Fighter through Princes I can pretty much trivialize every single combat encounter in that module once I reach level 8 - including all the Prophets (who all have up to about 130hp). With luck I could probably kill them on my turn. But using expected values of damage, they're dead round 1 more than likely.

The Princes themselves are the only things capable of putting up a fight.

Ok - so you can start buffing the monsters. But then what about the other players in the game? They're going to get respectively weaker, and you've also just increased DM workload. Isn't it just easier to house rule the feats?

 

[DaveDash]

I'm still wondering why some don't take into account DM concerns. It wasn't real fun to have the GWF annihilate enemies meant for an epic fight in a couple of rounds with nova damage using Action Surge coupled with the feats. Not every encounter can be built to stop melee from attacking or playing a melee is no fun. These feats create a situation where a GWF needs to be on or off. If he's on as in capable of striking the target, the target is going to end quickly making an epic fight anticlimactic. If its off, the player is bored and his character looks less than epic. If I boost hit points, the higher damage GWF still does the lion's share of damage making everyone else look less than epic. This problem is even worse with the Sharpshooter since turning him on and off is even more difficult.

I would like to see what some DMs are doing to account for the boost damage from these feats. Or if they have very little experience with the feats by optimizers. Or if they don't mind the players destroying an epic monster quickly. I know one of my pet peeves as a DM has always been how easily defeated powerful solo creatures are. I have always adjusted them to ensure that doesn't happen. You would have a hard time creating a story like The Hobbit or Game of Thrones in D&D because Smaug or the King of the White Walkers would be destroyed by an appropriate level of adventurers in about 20 to 30 seconds, while taking minimal damage. That just isn't epic and doesn't make them appear very dangerous.

I am building monsters using the DMG guidelines which generally seem to have much more HP than their MM counter-parts, and also seem to do a lot more damage. I also make some more realistic assumptions about resistances and regeneration than the DMG assumptions which results in more monster HP.
Dragons always use the spell casting variant rule.

I build NPC's like monsters, so at a higher enough CR NPC's will have 300+ hit points as an example, even if they're a spell caster like a Wizard.

One of my players who came straight from 3e to 5e didn't like this at the start, but after seeing how 5e combat works he understands it now.
It's also time consuming to do this.

 

[Minigiant]

The game isn't designed for 7 BBEG fights in a day however, and smart players can generally save these resources for those fights.

In actual fact, Action Surge *is* the mechanic in which fighters 'nova' damage, but the -5/+10 feats throw that completely out of whack when their penalties are removed. You end up doing 4x the damage 2/day over anyone else.

I never said 7 BBEG encounters.
I said 1 BBEG and 31,500 more XP of encounters.

I have not problem with fighters outclassing other classing in fighting however. They are called fighters. The class itself is 90% Combat, 9% exploration, 1% social. They can't do anything but fight really due to how they are built. So if they didn't outclass others in killing and living to tell the tale, it would be unbalanced and fighters would be garbage like in 3rd. I personally don't like the ratio of the pillars the fighter has but that's personal. It is not a balance issue.

Warning Princes of the Apocalypse Spoilers:

Again, if I ran a SS + XBE Fighter through Princes I can pretty much trivialize every single combat encounter in that module once I reach level 8 - including all the Prophets (who all have up to about 130hp). With luck I could probably kill them on my turn. But using expected values of damage, they're dead round 1 more than likely.

The Princes themselves are the only things capable of putting up a fight.

Ok - so you can start buffing the monsters. But then what about the other players in the game? They're going to get respectively weaker, and you've also just increased DM workload. Isn't it just easier to house rule the feats?

What about the other players?

If the players can use option to boost their characters, the DM must do the same if they want the same level of challenge. It is basic common sense.

If the DM allows feats and the players use the feats to gain power, the DM should adjust their monsters.
You can house rule the feats but that is the lazy route. The DMG shows you the game's assumptions and DMs should use these to adjust the game.
There's nothing wrong with being lazy. People don't always have the time. But house ruling the feats before using the tools given is lazy. It's not wrong but it is lazy.

It's like running 3rd or Pathfinder and knowing your players are not taking the joke feats and junk feats. An irresponsible DM, doesn't swap out all those Toughness feats on the monsters.

 

[Celtavian]

I am building monsters using the DMG guidelines which generally seem to have much more HP than their MM counter-parts, and also seem to do a lot more damage. I also make some more realistic assumptions about resistances and regeneration than the DMG assumptions which results in more monster HP.
Dragons always use the spell casting variant rule.

I build NPC's like monsters, so at a higher enough CR NPC's will have 300+ hit points as an example, even if they're a spell caster like a Wizard.

One of my players who came straight from 3e to 5e didn't like this at the start, but after seeing how 5e combat works he understands it now.
It's also time consuming to do this.

I don't like it either. I don't like the idea of NPCs of similar classes being stronger than the PCs. It makes the PCs appear weaker. I can understand this for some legendary wizard that has lived for a 1000 years or some priest that has sold his soul for dark power. I don't want to use this mechanic for just another wizard or fighter fighting the PCs.

I'll learn the tricks I need to get the right challenge level and feel for the campaign. I'm going to be converting the Pathfinder Giantslayer AP. Once I picked up the Pathfinder modules, I realized how much I miss their APs. I enjoy Pathfinder APs so much more than WotC modules. They're fun to read compared to the current WotC modules. The encounters are usually a great deal more interesting.

 

[werecorpse]

Celtavian, And others who think these feats are too powerful, I just read up to about page 30 of this thread and then jumped to the end. I haven't played much 5e (maybe 10 sessions level 1-3) but have played 35+ years of D&D and I am about to start a campaign that will probably go to 20th. I have a couple of optimisers in my group. My suspicion is that these feats are unbalancing so my questions is which feats have you changed and how?

Sorry if this is answered up thread.

edit: are there any other things I should look out for (spells etc). Happy to be redirected to other threads for any of this.

 

[SkidAce]

Sorry, but this poll is statistically worthless. Volunteer sample, narrow slice of the playerbase, terrible question structuring, the ability to see others' responses before making your own, the ability to change your response after you've made it...I'm sure there are other flaws, but that list alone is enough to make the data completely unreliable.

Still shows trends.

 

[SkidAce]

I am building monsters using the DMG guidelines which generally seem to have much more HP than their MM counter-parts, and also seem to do a lot more damage. I also make some more realistic assumptions about resistances and regeneration than the DMG assumptions which results in more monster HP.
Dragons always use the spell casting variant rule.

I build NPC's like monsters, so at a higher enough CR NPC's will have 300+ hit points as an example, even if they're a spell caster like a Wizard.

One of my players who came straight from 3e to 5e didn't like this at the start, but after seeing how 5e combat works he understands it now.
It's also time consuming to do this.

This part I agree with you on, and do the same myself.


Still think the feats are "okay" or perhaps limited to once per turn as the biggest nerf needed.