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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Celtavian" data-source="post: 6642422" data-attributes="member: 5834">Just to add one of the major factors is the hit point of the creature is insufficient for a battle to last beyond a round or two.In the above example we were fighting an adult green dragon with 207 hit points. The GWF did 115 points in the first round action surging with GWF. He took half its hit points in one turn. The paladin smote it for probably another 50 (not a GWM). My wizard didn't bother to attack because it was already handled, Why waste a spell slot when a thing is near dead. The bard was built to buff, not do damage. He might have thrown an orb for 15 points or so. So you have a dragon with a finite number of hit points getting hammered with a GWF nova. Maybe if the fight lasted longer, the damage would spread itself enough to do less of a percentage. Of course, if the fighter does huge upfront damage, that makes casters less willing to spend slots to do damage. Why bother if the thing is near dead and the fighter is using resources he recovers on a short rest.That's why these variables are so hard to calculate. If everyone in the group were novaing, maybe the GWF doesn't do the same percentage of damage over everyone else. It's so easy to preserve resources and use the GWF as a limitless source of high damage, that is what they ended up doing. The ability to nearly double his damage makes it very efficient for others to simply support the GWF's attacks rather than blow limited resources on their nova.So obviously player behavior also influenced the percentage of damage the GWF did over the others. The group found an efficient way to kill enemies buffing the GWF and they used it. I was an evoker. I sat on spell slots not using them to do damage because ti was so easy to cast a single fly or launch cantrips while the GWF went to town. Once you kill a dragon, not much else wants to disrupt your Short Rest. Pretty easy for the fighter to recover his resources a few times a day to use on any other big fights.It's probably true that players that don't like to buff the fighter and take the easy GWF damage don't see the same spikes. Some groups like to use their resources to shine in combat. I know our group and Dave's tend to have fun finding the optimal way to win. When the game system hands you a softball with Sharpshooter or GWF, we use it. Makes tons of sense to let the GWF hammer away since he can do it at will. Even the paladin runs out of spell slots for smiting. The wizard runs out of spells. The GWF keeps on going. We buff him with some stuff to take damage and make hitting easier, we get to save our slots in case the dragon dung hits the fan. I spent a lot of time preserving my magic thinking I would need it. I only really had to pull out the kitchen sink maybe two or three times over 16 levels.At this point, I've reached fatigue arguing this stuff. It seems so obvious to some of us because we have min-maxer groups that find the optimal way to win and repeat it endlessly. I'm getting the feeling that many groups like to mix it up. I've been in those groups too where it's sort of every man for himself as far as the spotlight goes. I imagine GWF or Sharpshooter maybe don't have the same effect in such groups. I imagine I'm too stuck in my group's play-style to consider that other groups may not focus their group's efforts on maximizing the effect of Sharpshooter and GWF, while withholding their own damage dealing capability to extend the adventuring day as long as possible. It's one of the reasons why the 5-7 encounter day doesn't work for group. We try to be so efficient with resources to extend the day that it lead to a bunch of trivial encounters breaking them up into smaller, easier fights.</blockquote>

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