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Message: <blockquote data-quote="FormerlyHemlock" data-source="post: 7045946" data-attributes="member: 6787650">If players are having to cast Bless and use Precision Attack to mitigate the effects of Shield (which comes into play as early as CR 2 on a Githzerai zerth--AC 22 when Shielding IIRC) then that's a pretty meaningful decision that Sharpshooter introduces--do I spend my concentration on Bless to help the Sharpshooter do marginally better damage than a non-Sharpshooter, or do I spend my concentration on something else like Confusion?If the players feel they have to crack the Nycaloth's Darkness spell with Dispel Magic before they can meaningfully Sharpshooter it with their weapons, that's interesting too. Nope. I'm responding to the suggestion that Sharpshooter homogenizes the game because nothing has AC over 20 and so using Sharpshooter's power attack all day every day is a dominant strategy. My experience is that this isn't the case. Fighting over advantage/disadvantage is perhaps the most important thing you can do in combat. The important/difficult combats, anyway--in easy straightforward combats you can do whatever you want and it turns out okay, but I presume we're not talking about those because those fights are supposed to be boring and easy.I run a combat-light game where combat is intended to be an emotionally-significant event when it happens, so if the players have the enemy pinned down by a Sharpshooter in a hopeless position like you seem to be worrying about, my goal is the same as the monsters'--to end the combat as soon as possible by surrendering or fleeing. Boring fights shouldn't take up table time, unless the players are having fun and don't want to end it yet. (In that case, clearly only the DM is bored.)Clearly it isn't.Nevertheless, drow happen, if you go in the Underdark; and dragons happen, if you go in a dragon's lair.Sure, but there's a huge difference between "your default mode should be X" and "X is always the right choice." It's an especially huge difference if X turns out to be useless in all of the hardest scenarios (and some of the medium ones, like githzerai).Something which makes easy things easier (and some types of hard things easier too) isn't something which concerns me as a DM. Sharpshooter has a niche but it's not game-warping. The way I run my game already means that Sharpshooter isn't disruptive.Edit: I forgot to add, even something as simple as a prone hobgoblin (AC 18 + disadvantage) is a bad target for Sharpshooter. Does that mean hobgoblins will always drop prone against Sharpshooters? No, that would be metagamey. For the most part they won't even know they're facing a Sharpshooter, so if they're at long range already they'll have no reason to suspect that they're not safe, until they start dying. Eventually they will catch on in one way or another--either because they've heard of Sharpshooters before, or because they think it's a new, longer-ranged weapon. It's the players' job to make the most of the time between the fight starts and when the hobgoblins find an effective countertactic.But an argument says "Sharpshooters are too strong/not interesting because monsters will NEVER do the right thing" is not resting on a strong foundation.And yes, this is an example of something my hobgoblins actually do when they're taking missile fire. My hobgoblins are basically a cross between Romans and Mongols.</blockquote>

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