D&D 5E Homebrew modification of Sharpshooter: reasonably within line?

Al2O3 · May 27, 2020

Background: Today a one-shot turned into the start of a campaign. My character is a kensei monk with sling as the ranged kensei weapon. Since 30 ft is a rather short range I want to ignore the long range penalty, and dealing with partial cover just slows down play. However, the whole extra damage part of Sharpshooter did not interest me, especially compared to +1 Dex mod.

Changes to the feat: remove the -5 to hit/+10 to damage part. Instead give increase the dexterity score by 1, to a maximum of 20.

Question: Is this new feat way over- or underpowered compared to plain ability score increase or other feats? Basically, have I forgotten something important when designing the change?

TwoSix · May 27, 2020

It's probably the single most common way I've seen to houserule Sharpshooter, which gets houseruled a lot since it's pretty controversial. It's totally fine.

Al2O3 · May 28, 2020

Thanks!
It was pretty quick during the session, but hearing that others have come to the same conclusion without problems removes any concerns I had

tommybahama · May 28, 2020

We had a halfling battle master with sharpshooter doing 17 damage with a short bow per hit around level 8. I'd guess he hit 75% of the time. How much damage will your Kensai monk do in comparison?

TwoSix · May 28, 2020

tommybahama said:
We had a halfling battle master with sharpshooter doing 17 damage with a short bow per hit around level 8. I'd guess he hit 75% of the time. How much damage will your Kensai monk do in comparison?

Almost certainly less, removing the -5/+10 portion of Sharpshooter is a nerf in most common situations.

jgsugden · May 28, 2020

If I were your DM, I'd save you the trouble by introducing a magic sling that has extended range.

MostlyHarmless42 · May 28, 2020

In all honesty the most broken part of sharpshooter is not the extra damage bit, it's that:
1) You can combine the part about ignoring cover WITH the fighting style (it's what makes the damage bit too strong)
2) You can combine all the elements of the feat, i.e. a 4th level archer can fire at a castle guard hiding behind an arrow slit of a castle tower (which normally has +5 AC) from 300ft away with NO penalty, except for a -3 (assuming they have the archery fighting style) for the 10 extra damage. It's really only this fringe case that is absurd.

In the past I've ruled the following:
1) You pick ONE of the options each time you fire an arrow, i.e. ignoring cover OR ignoring the range penalty OR doing the extra damage. Not all three.
1.a) The other option here is ruling that Archery Fighting Style instead "Ignores half cover with ranged attacks". It's the reason why the fighting style is +2 to attach as it's intended to counter the +2 cover bonus for firing into melee regularly and frankly is what the fighting style SHOULD have been in the first place. It also means the feat no longer stacks to reduce the penalty.

2) I've also houseruled in the past for both Sharpshooter and Great Weapon Master that the damage bonus is instead -Proficiency Bonus off the attack roll for +2x Proficency damage. I.e. it starts at -2/+4 and eventually scales to -6/+12. I've found this change makes the feat actually usable at lower levels and reduces the absurd spike damage enough that it keeps the feat from being unreasonable. We've playtested this change accross more than 6 characters across three DM's within our tables and haven't had too many complaints about the change yet.

GlassJaw · May 28, 2020

Another common change is make the +/- damage equal to your proficiency: -2/+2, -3/+3, etc.

GlassJaw · May 28, 2020

MostlyHarmless42 said:
2) I've also houseruled in the past for both Sharpshooter and Great Weapon Master that the damage bonus is instead -Proficiency Bonus off the attack roll for +2x Proficency damage. I.e. it starts at -2/+4 and eventually scales to -6/+12. I've found this change makes the feat actually usable at lower levels and reduces the absurd spike damage enough that it keeps the feat from being unreasonable. We've playtested this change accross more than 6 characters across three DM's within our tables and haven't had too many complaints about the change yet.

I wouldn't do this. The math makes this even better than the static -5/+10.