Making Great Weapon Master weaker is the entire point of this change, as it and Sharpshooter (as well as Polearm Master) clearly outshine other feats in terms of power. With this change, both feats would scale with proficiency (a concept WotC seems to like), allowing their power to increase as the PC gains levels.This would be a pretty weak feat unless you allowed it to be used by characters who did not have proficiency in the weapon they were using (for example a greatsword-wielding cleric). In that case it would be a huge boon for those classes and extra damage without any penalty.
For most martials though or people proficient in martial weapons this would not be worth taking and logically would drive even more people towards dex builds that are already more powerful.
GWM and Sharpshooter are reasonably balanced feats on their own. The problem is that they become turbocharged when you stack them with accuracy boosters (Reckless Attack, Archery fighting style, etc.).Making Great Weapon Master weaker is the entire point of this change, as it and Sharpshooter (as well as Polearm Master) clearly outshine other feats in terms of power. With this change, both feats would scale with proficiency (a concept WotC seems to like), allowing their power to increase as the PC gains levels.
Heavy Armor Master would probably benefit from a similar approach.
It didn't come up as often as we thought it would but we were all glad we didn't have to hear the paladin ask "Does that count as magical?" anymore.Heavy Armor Master suffers from a different problem.
From levels 1-5 It's amazing and nets tons of HP. But exactly 1 race can take it from levels 1-3, the rest get it at 4+, so it's a real limited window.
By level 5 you're seeing more and more magic weapons/monsters with attacks that count as magic etc. so the usefulness really drops off (in many campaigns, certainly not all).
Frankly, I think it would be fine to just drop the "nonmagical" part and just have any weapon attack qualify - but I haven't seen that tested.
It didn't come up as often as we thought it would but we were all glad we didn't have to hear the paladin ask "Does that count as magical?" anymore.
My change is to add the following line to the dual-wielder feat:
- While you are wielding a separate melee weapon in each hand you can choose to make your additional off hand attack as part of the Attack action.
please yes...5.5 needs this from 4eCritical hit: Max damage plus roll another set of dice.
I would go with 15 min...but also good"A short rest, which can be taken no more than twice in 24 hours, is a period of downtime, at least1 hour5 minutes long, during which a character does nothing more strenuous than eating, drinking, reading, and tending to wounds."