D&D 5E Do DM's feel that Sharpshooter & Great Weapon Master overpowered?

[iserith]

I wonder how many people who voted are actually GM's, and not just players who like the skill...

I'm playing in a game where a PC has Sharpshooter. He misses a lot. When he does hit, the damage is nice. In last night's session, we made fun of him a lot for missing.

I'm running a game where a PC has Sharpshooter as well. I think he plays it a little smarter, taking the penalty to hit only when he knows for sure the enemy has low AC and/or when he's getting advantage. As I mentioned upthread, it's good damage, but it doesn't take anything away from the rest of the characters or diminish the difficulty of challenges in any meaningful way so far as I can tell.

 

[Corwin]

Are you prone to being a jackass in general or just in this thread?

I believe this type of behavior is frowned upon here on this forum. I will not fall into that trap by retaliating in kind.

You haven't contributed anything of value to this conversation. Your sniping and gotcha questioning of everyone is ridiculous, infuriating and distracting.

You can neither assign value to my contributions in this long thread, nor label them. I do not recognize your attempt to claim authority over, or pass judgement on, me.

@Hemlock is one of the most reasonable posters on this board. I'd actually enjoying reading his response to reasonable queries about his findings regarding martial weapon users, but I don't blame him one bit for not engaging with you.

Whereas I prefer to try and judge a given post on its own merits, rather than some sliding scale where I give the poster a pass for an outlandish claim just because I think they are "cool".

 

[AaronOfBarbaria]

First, we can't separatley analyze each knucklehead DM across the nation. Let's agree to use the AC indicated in the CR DMG chart as our baseline, ok?

I don't care what baseline is used for the math - just that whoever is doing the math acknowledges that the AC variable is set by the DM, and is not necessarily going to match up to the value assumed to enable any math being done, so that the result of the math is (as your most recent math I've seen seems to be) telling a DM at what point the performance peaks and what peak performance is like in practice so that they can use that information to determine if they personal are fine with that peak performance, or wish to avoid it, and how they can avoid it without doing anything beyond their normal activities as a DM.

It's just the "this math shows the feat to be universally broken" folks, I've got an argument against. (And I will note that said folks do seem to be, slowly, changing their arguments over time.)

SS common synergy w/the archery fighting style IS OP. That extra +2 to hit really synergizes just too well w/SS, and creates some fruit that's too low-hanging for my comfort. The billions of guys out there playing that same archer dude are not wrong - it is an obvious choice.

I've not seen Sharp Shooter at my table yet, so I've not really formed an opinion of it.

 

[AaronOfBarbaria]

I wonder how many people who voted are actually GM's, and not just players who like the skill...

I can only confirm that I am a DM staggeringly more often than I am a player, and that I voted "not overpowered".

 

[Ovinomancer]

I don't care what baseline is used for the math - just that whoever is doing the math acknowledges that the AC variable is set by the DM, and is not necessarily going to match up to the value assumed to enable any math being done, so that the result of the math is (as your most recent math I've seen seems to be) telling a DM at what point the performance peaks and what peak performance is like in practice so that they can use that information to determine if they personal are fine with that peak performance, or wish to avoid it, and how they can avoid it without doing anything beyond their normal activities as a DM.

It's just the "this math shows the feat to be universally broken" folks, I've got an argument against. (And I will note that said folks do seem to be, slowly, changing their arguments over time.)

I've not seen Sharp Shooter at my table yet, so I've not really formed an opinion of it.

I would have been handy, then, if you had made those arguments to the people making the arguments you say you were responding to instead of to me, who did not make those arguments.

Still, it's good that this is now behind us and we seem to have been in agreement this whole time: the math is useful to provide DMs a good tool to better understand how the feats work so they can make their own choices.

 

[AaronOfBarbaria]

I would have been handy, then, if you had made those arguments to the people making the arguments you say you were responding to instead of to me, who did not make those arguments.

I told you explicitly that my argument against your statements was one of connotation.

 

[Ovinomancer]

I told you explicitly that my argument against your statements was one of connotation.

A connotation you brought with you. I've always been perfectly fine with the idea of DMs choosing encounters to offset the feat if they see that as a good reason. There's nothing negative in there than you don't bring with you.

 

[shoak1]

I would have been handy, then, if you had made those arguments to the people making the arguments you say you were responding to instead of to me, who did not make those arguments.

Gotta say Ovinomancer, that's a real head-scratcher there......



On a side note, are there any other L7s out there unhappy w/their title? "Waghalter" - it sounds like some kind of poodle dog breed.... Do you know how hard it is to get taken seriously w/such a pansy title?...... Especially when there's dudes rocking monikers like "Grandmaster of Flowers" and such.....

 

[Ovinomancer]

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On a separate note, are there any other L7s out there unhappy w/their title ("Waghalter")? I wanna be something cool like Trailblazer, or Savant, or Sgt. Major....Waghalter sounds like a dog breed. I mean, crimeny, L7s a respectable level right? Do you know how hard it is to get taken seriously w/such a pansy title? Especially when there's dudes rocking titles like "Grandmaster of Flowers" and such..... I wonder if title for L8 is any better....... Maybe I could just work on getting promoted.....

:shrug: The person I addressed it to seemed to have understood it. I did accidentally leave the 't' off the initial 'It', but that's not a hard guess, is it?

 

[AaronOfBarbaria]

The person I addressed it to seemed to have understood it.

But was that because of the words you used and the meanings they carry, or because I added some meaning to the words that wasn't otherwise (at least potentially) present?

Because apparently you think it's possible for me to do that, given that you said I gave the words you chose to use a connotation.