Look at the math used to show the power of the feat by anyone that's ever concluded "it's broken" - they assume an average AC other than that set by how the DM chooses monsters. Then look at any time someone brings up "...but what if the DM doesn't choose that many low-AC enemies?" and how the replies seem to treat that as inherently different from the DM choosing monsters that match the average AC used in the math.
No one has made those arguments. I mean, yes, someone has used math to show the "power" of the feat, and someone has concluded that the feats are broken (very few, though, and not me, to whom you are responding), and average AC has been referenced in some side arguments (the average taken from all creatures and from creatures at certain CRs). The next argument though, the one where you say 'but what if the DM doesn't choose that many low-AC enemies" does not result in your argument "they think that if the DM's choice of monsters does anything but make these feats as powerful as they can possibly be, that said DM is "fixing" something "broken"."
You're conflating arguments to create an argument not made.
Here's the thing; I'm not taking you out of context - I'm telling you there is no such thing as the context you think you are in. The "specific case" you mention is the same as the general case.
Ah, so you taking me out of context isn't actually taking me out of context because you know what I'm saying better than I do, plus it's wrong.
No.
No, that's not what I'm doing.
Yes, it is. Twice now you have snipped a sentence immediately before I provide the qualifying and illuminating points for my argument, and then attacked the snipped piece as if I never said the other parts. You've snipped my arguments and then refuted the snipped parts with arguments that are themselves refuted by my full quote. It's a strange and nasty game that you continue to intentionally play and could easily be avoided by not selectively editing your quotes of me.
I've already told you my reasons for doing it. You can view that earlier post in this thread again to give yourself a second shot at understanding them, and I encourage you to ask questions about the reasons I provide if they remain not understood.
I didn't forget what you claimed, but that's not what's occurring.
And again I'll tell you that my intent is not to mischaracterize your statements, nor represent anything you haven't said as something that you have said. And because I have told you this, repeatedly, I'll ask that you stop accusing me of ill intent.
You are mischaracterizing my arguments by taking them out of context. This is easy to see in every case because your counterarguments ignore the parts you didn't quote that directly address your counter arguments. Your selective edits are allowing you to continue a conversation by continually ignoring the premises of my points that you dislike. That's not editing for clarity, it's direct misrepresentation.
For someone accusing others as intentionally misrepresenting their statements, it is very unexpected that you'd misrepresent someone else - which is what you have done by telling me my argument.
That's honestly what I picked up from your statements. If it's not your intent, please, I'm all ears.
And no, I didn't say anything about "a good game" - I said only that a DM, no matter how new, will recognize anything that they feel was not good.
That's funny. Right below this you said you thought at the time that your first game was "absolutely" good, but now you recognize it wasn't. But here you claim that any DM will know what's not good about his game as he's running it and regardless of his experience? This is a bit of cognitive dissonance -- you're claiming two conflicting arguments are true of the same thing at the same time.
You've overstated that. You don't know what everyone's experience has been.
I'm pretty confident that no one runs a great game the first time out.
I don't agree that first time DMs are all going to be expecting what you seem to think they will of the rules - in fact, I've experienced more often having to suggest to a first time DM not to alter things on a whim just because they saw some rule they think they'd rather be different, but to try it out as-is first and then alter if it doesn't work out for them, than I have experienced having to help a first time DM figure out which rule in particular was the one needing attention to suit their desires.
Because, to use Great Weapon Master as the example, noticing you don't like something is as simple as having it happen: A player with Great Weapon Master hits the monster the first time DM has put in play, and wham! bunch-o'-damage lays the thing to waste faster than the DM thought it would be killed off - and if the expedient killing of a monster is an issue for the DM in question, they can very easily say "That sucked, your character does too much damage." and start thinking about a fix - the obvious ones being character does less damage, or monster takes more damage to put down.
Your "in fact" is confirming my argument, not refuting it. The first time DM you counsel to not change things on a whim is very much expecting that change and the rest of the rules to work out a certain way, and, as you note, that's rarely the case. It takes experience to begin to anticipate how rules will actually function, and that's my point with these feats: the penalty looks like it will be effective in limiting the usefulness of the feats but they are actually more effective in more cases than is immediately apparent. By 10th level, it is better to use the feat against an AC 18 (which is rare for monsters) than to not to, and that's not assuming advantage or bless or bardic inspiration. Add those and it gets better. That's not immediately obvious.
And then your second sentence confirms my other point about an intentional selection of monsters to offset the feats. It's like you forgot what I was saying, or else grossly misunderstood it.
My first game was awful... if I compare it to my later, and especially my recent, games.
If I ask myself honestly if I thought it was good at the time, the answer is a resounding, confident, "absolutely." No, I didn't think it was perfect. No, I didn't think I had no issues at all. In fact, the truth of the matter is that my first session ever (not just as a DM, it was my first session of any kind of table-top RPG and I was DMing from just having read through the books once) ended with me thinking "Okay, so an ogre isn't a good thing for a 1st level fighter to try to take on alone - I'll find something that deals less damage for next time"
I actually am unsurprised by this. I, however, knew at the time my first game sucked, but I had good friends that were willing to muddle along for awhile. Then we rotated DMs and I went back to learning by observation. Then I got better. But, at no time, did I think I was "absolutely" a good DM. I count myself a better than fair one now because I'm constantly assessing what I could be doing better.
And maybe I'm inaccurate in thinking that similar experience to that - a train-wreck in hindsight that was plenty of fun at the time - is common among gamers, and that I'm not some prodigy... but I really think that it is true, because if everybody was having terrible trainwrecks that they couldn't even begin to figure out how to improve upon, I don't think so many people would be playing the game decades later like the two of us.
Trainwrecks can be their own kind of fun. I never said I didn't have fun, my game, however, was a trainwreck.
I said nothing that indicated that I think either of those things, nor that is reasonable for you to interpret as indicating those things.
Oh, come on. You said that my statement might be a threat. I said 'how could you possibly think it was a threat?' You responded with an example about a parent threatening a child with similar wording. I responded with asking you if you actually thought I had as much authority over you as a parent, with the intent to show that your example was ridiculous because, of course, I have no such authority or power over you. Apparently, you agree (as I expected you would). That you're upset by my question, given you floated the example that prompted it of a parent-child relationship, is really weird. Did you expect something else to occur from your example? Generally, when people tell me something works one way if one person is a parent and the other a child, I am going to ask how that's remotely applicable, and I may use sarcasm to do it because, really, how could you take such a thing seriously in the first place. It begs for sarcasm.
