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Helping melee combat to be more competitive to ranged.
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<blockquote data-quote="FormerlyHemlock" data-source="post: 6987618" data-attributes="member: 6787650"><p>Well, there's the fairly obvious case of an endless horde of weak creatures, e.g. Witherlings, especially when both sides have magic weapons. GWM Fighter with +3 greatsword and Crossbow Expert Sharpshooter with +3 hand crossbow (which, incidentally, is much rarer by the DMG weapon tables) will both get the same five attacks per round every round, but a GWM Fighter (2d6+8 damage) can kill a 12 HP AC 12 witherling in one blow 92% of the time IIRC even without power attacking, so he scores 5 * 0.92 * 0.95 = <strong>4.37 kills per round</strong>, whereas the Crossbow Expert Sharpshooter (d6+8 damage) kills one only 50% of the time unless headshotting, so he scores max(5 * 0.92 * 0.95, 5 * 1.00 * (0.95 - 0.25)) = <strong>3.5 kills per round</strong>. Computing the DPR from KPR is a hassle so I won't do it, but KPR is a slightly better metric anyway, it's just usually intractable to compute in the general case.</p><p></p><p>In any scenario where higher base damage matters, where the +2 from Archery style isn't significant, and where the GWM is highly likely to get his bonus action on an attack, GWM will outperform Crossbow Expert Sharpshooter once he engages with the enemy. (But again, I think spending your bonus action on an attack is a relatively poor choice, and DPR or KPR is usually the wrong thing to optimize in 5E.) That's a fairly narrow niche (and BTW, it hints at another potential rules fix: improve Great Weapon Fighting to be more relevant) but it does lead you straight to easy examples of GWM superiority, if that's what you're looking for.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="FormerlyHemlock, post: 6987618, member: 6787650"] Well, there's the fairly obvious case of an endless horde of weak creatures, e.g. Witherlings, especially when both sides have magic weapons. GWM Fighter with +3 greatsword and Crossbow Expert Sharpshooter with +3 hand crossbow (which, incidentally, is much rarer by the DMG weapon tables) will both get the same five attacks per round every round, but a GWM Fighter (2d6+8 damage) can kill a 12 HP AC 12 witherling in one blow 92% of the time IIRC even without power attacking, so he scores 5 * 0.92 * 0.95 = [B]4.37 kills per round[/B], whereas the Crossbow Expert Sharpshooter (d6+8 damage) kills one only 50% of the time unless headshotting, so he scores max(5 * 0.92 * 0.95, 5 * 1.00 * (0.95 - 0.25)) = [B]3.5 kills per round[/B]. Computing the DPR from KPR is a hassle so I won't do it, but KPR is a slightly better metric anyway, it's just usually intractable to compute in the general case. In any scenario where higher base damage matters, where the +2 from Archery style isn't significant, and where the GWM is highly likely to get his bonus action on an attack, GWM will outperform Crossbow Expert Sharpshooter once he engages with the enemy. (But again, I think spending your bonus action on an attack is a relatively poor choice, and DPR or KPR is usually the wrong thing to optimize in 5E.) That's a fairly narrow niche (and BTW, it hints at another potential rules fix: improve Great Weapon Fighting to be more relevant) but it does lead you straight to easy examples of GWM superiority, if that's what you're looking for. [/QUOTE]
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