So, you mean the designers should be absolved from any responsibility? Whatever imbalance or wonkiness that comes out of oversights or mistakes or plain carelessness, you're okay with WotC not needing to own up to it, to acknowledge it, to fix it; and that the responsibility is quarely put upon the DMs shoulders?That's the DMs responsibility.
Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
Against hordes of really weak enemies, the GWM will do better than in the numbers I gave, but at level 11 how often do you face groups of enemies that all die in 1 hit. This isn't 4e with its minion rules afterall.
As to prone enemies, the crossbow fighter encourages enemies to use that behavior. The crossbow archer also gets advantage to his attacks while in melee range, so benefits just as much as the great weapon fighter. The trick to playing the crossbow archer is to play it like a melee fighter who just happens to have a 120 foot range.
Why should the designers own up to/acknowledge/fix something I have not found to be imbalanced/wonky/an oversight/a mistake/plain careless?So, you mean the designers should be absolved from any responsibility? Whatever imbalance or wonkiness that comes out of oversights or mistakes or plain carelessness, you're okay with WotC not needing to own up to it, to acknowledge it, to fix it; and that the responsibility is quarely put upon the DMs shoulders?
Ashkelon, I sincerely believe going into exact detail is not helping your case. It is simply far too easy to derail your core message by questioning individual statistics if you do.Battlemaster is the best for damage overall. But EK is best for utility (both in and out of combat), and defense (mage armor, shield, etc).
The build only needs 2 feats to to work. So level 8 is the earliest point when it can have them and a 20 main stat as a human. Level 12 for a non human. Of course in a game where rolling for stats happens frequently, you only need a to roll a single 16 to have this combination available to any race with a +2 DEX by level 8. That will occur in over 60% of games where rolling is the preferred method used for character creation.
Of course, until the point where you have a 20 DEX, either scale male or a breastplate can serve just fine. At a fraction of the cost of plate armor, they are much easier to come by. Both provide an AC of 16 which is the same as a fighter would have in chainmail. Either way, the archer will lag behind the melee fighter by 1 AC for the first few levels (assuming the melee fighter can get his hands on splint armor reasonably early).
You keep saying that the archer is a champion one second and an EK the next. I have only ever used champion in relation to hemlock's analysis for ease of compution. Assume when I talk about the archer, I am never talking about the champion.
So..you are gimping your damage even more by taking defensive fighting style? Further putting archery in the lead for dealing damage. I thought you already thought a 20% damage disparity was large. Take out the great weapon fighting style and the disparity jumps to over 30%.
Of course the melee fighter is welcome to trade off his offense for defense if he so desires, but the comparison I am making is using two warriors who are putting their resources toward a similar goal. It would be disingenuous to compare two fighters who are devoting their resources in drastically different ways toward different goals and then try and make a meaningful comparison between the two. That is why the comparisons I have been making are using two characters both devoting the entirety of their available character options toward achieving their goal.
On top of that, due to the fact that PC AC scaling doesn't really exist in 5e, the one or two extra AC won't make much of an impact at high level. When monsters have +15 to hit you, it will matter very little if your AC is 20 (they hit you 80% of the time) or 18 (they hit you 90% of the time). At that point, a 2 AC difference means you take about 12% more damage from attacks against AC.
And let us not forget the defensive advantage the archer already has innately due to having a higher Dexterity. He has better initiative, meaning he is more likely to start the battle in an advantageous position or to kill enemies before they get a chance to attack as frequently. He has better Dex saving throws, meaning he takes less damage from some of the most common spells and monster abilities.
As a melee fighter, I would gladly trade 2 AC for for 30% increased damage and +5 to both initiative and Dex saves.
Let me stop you right there Guachi, because this is the root of your inability to see the power play here.I don't know if others have replied to this or not as I haven't read posts past this one. I can't tell if you intentionally butchered the math or not to make ranged look better. But here's the actual correct math:
A hand-crossbow using crossbow expert/sharpshooter shooting five times and using the -5/+10 portion of the feat does a maximum of (1d6+15)*5 =92.5 damage
The featless sword and shield user, who undoubtedly took dueling fighting style, does (1d8+7)*4 = 46 damage, not 30 damage.
The difference is 2x not 3x and the sword/shield guy still has a bonus action and two feats to play with. And we haven't taken hit chance into effect. So let's do so.
The archery style handcrossbow user has +12 to hit reduced to +7 if he uses -5/+10. Against AC18 he'll hit on an 11 or higher, or exactly 50% of the time. The sword/shield user has +10 to attack and hits on an 8 or higher, or 85% of the time. The crossbow user's damage is now reduced to 46.25 and the sword/shield reduced to 29.9.
The bow user's advantage is now only 50%, not 200% like in your example.
I'm afraid I need to ask you to offer your suggestions on how to put your bonus action to better use.This isn't true.
Crossbow Expert is a relatively poor use of your bonus action (in addition to being cheesey if done with a single crossbow).
Then you have my apologies. Long wild thread and all that.If you follow the chain of quotes by clicking on the arrow button you will find that that isn't what was being discussed at all. That was a response to "I keep saying crossbow archers can fight in melee just as well as dedicated melee warriors because it is true. No example has been given that proves otherwise."
Yes.The trick to playing the crossbow archer is to play it like a melee fighter who just happens to have a 120 foot range.
Sorry but this is an example illustrating how easy it is to derail the subject.If your crossbow fighter is running into melee to get advantage on his attacks just like the GWM guy, then he's losing just as many rounds Dashing as the GWM guy is. I didn't see that featured in your analysis.
Playstyle matters. Teamwork matters too. Combined arms FTW.