D&D 5E Nerfing Great Weapon Master

[Zardnaar]

vengeance paladin with this feat, used his paladin adv power and/or bless to negate the penalty, did more damage than the rest of the party. Game folded as a result. later played another game with vengeance paladin, modified the feat, no issues.

We have used it with
Bless
Bard dice
Rogue: Mastermind granting advantage
Barbarian advantage getting
Paladin avenger focus
Greater Invisability
Any debuff granting advantage (hold person)

The big problem is a PC going nuts with it vs other martial types who did not take it do not. Apparently the average AC of the MM is 14.5, I have seen it used reliably up to AC 18. Hell the 1st AP for 5E has a +2 weapon in it.

 

[Fanaelialae]

How about these assumptions instead?

75% base hit chance (before -5)
Advantage
Reroll 1's
Superiority dice, bless, inspiration etc

End result: fighter reliably hits even AC 18 with GWM/CE four times each round for 40 more damage than otherwise possible.

Note: not armchair theory; actual play experience.

End result: players without the feat feel *completely* inadequate since there is nothing else in the game that can be powergamed to a similar extent.

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75% seems a bit high IME.

IIRC from our previous discussions, your group likes to not only optimize their characters but rather optimize the party itself. The game isn't calibrated for that. If it were, the casual group I recently joined would get TPK'd in every fight.

Seriously, they're just... in the last fight I tried to kite the boss out of the room he was in (because there was a bottleneck) and the paladin ends up leaping over the pit and sticking himself right in the bottle neck so that no one else could attack. This was after I said to the entire group, lets kite him out into the hallway. The bard not only doesn't have bless, he took cure wounds instead of healing word! When I finally got the second entrance to the boss' room open, the archer ranger ran ahead of my melee rogue/monk and stuck herself directly behind the boss and bottlenecked him from there too! The only reason we won that fight was because the boss couldn't roll above a 10 to hit. They're great role players, but their tactics are so bad it pains me. Point is, the converse of your group exists out there.

For an optimized group like yours, I'd recommend increasing monster ACs by up to 3. That's less than a full CR worth of potency, so you don't need to change the XP you give out, but it will change the calculus on something like power attack.

vengeance paladin with this feat, used his paladin adv power and/or bless to negate the penalty, did more damage than the rest of the party. Game folded as a result. later played another game with vengeance paladin, modified the feat, no issues.

If he's casting bless then he's giving up his first round of attacks (not to mention wasting smites, and were you remembering to have him make a concentration save every time he got hit). He can use his channel divinity once per short rest against one enemy. I feel like I'm missing something.

 

[TwoSix]

If he's casting bless then he's giving up his first round of attacks (not to mention wasting smites, and were you remembering to have him make a concentration save every time he got hit). He can use his channel divinity once per short rest against one enemy. I feel like I'm missing something.

Sure, but he might be getting bless from another source. Or he simply might not be in melee range in the first round (very common in our games). As a paladin, his saves are high enough that concentration spells don't fail often (especially with bless!). And having bless provide a bonus to turn even one GWM miss into a hit is better damage than the 2d8 of a 1st level smite.

I don't think it's gamebreaking or anything, but GWM/Sharpshooters do crazy good at-will damage. My primary concern with those two feats is that they sideline Sword and Board and Dual-Wielding more than they already are.

 

[Mistwell]

Nope, it was immediately clear to everyone around the table how this was a singularly disruptive and ill-conceived source of bonus damage.

And that's all before you consider how imbalanced it is.

My reply was to the OP who seemed to focus on the wrong half of the mechanism. It isn't the -5 that needs tweaking, it's the +10 that needs to be removed.


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So you immediately theorycrafted about it without actually trying it out. Which is what I suspected.

 

[Mistwell]

It's not about martials vs. magicans, but about martials who actually dislike GWM but feel preassured into using it anyway since it just outperforms any other option. It's not about being overshadowed by the wizard, but by your fellow fighter who took the feat when you did not.

It's as if the greatsword would deal 2d12 and crit on 19-20 and be the only weapon like that and everybody would be "stop complaining, just take the great sword. Who wants to be an axe or hammer fighter anyway?"

So again, do wizards feel the same pressure if they don't choose fireball? All you're describing is the high end of the power scale, not brokeness. Remove the high end, and you just get another high end to replace it. There is always a high end, unless it's a game like 4e where they flatten everything in the name of balance.

 

[cmad1977]

So unnecessary. But whatever works.


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[Mirtek]

So again, do wizards feel the same pressure if they don't choose fireball?

Even if they did, it's just one of many spells for them. Going GWM on the other hand is dominating your action for the majority of the time. If wizards only had one level 3 spells and were forced to cast firebally 3/4 of their spellcasting or become overshadowed by the other PCs, it would be a problem.

All you're describing is the high end of the power scale, not brokeness. Remove the high end, and you just get another high end to replace it. There is always a high end, unless it's a game like 4e where they flatten everything in the name of balance.

Exactly, there will always be a high end option, the important factor is how much better this is than the second and/or third best options. If it's just 5% better than the 2nd and 10% better than the third it's not as much a problem as when it easily leaves #2 far behind. Flattening everything is a good thing, as it allows more diverse choices without being unable to hold a candle to the best choice

 

[jgsugden]

This argument is so old. So very old. Nobody is going to change their spots. However, the following are known truths about the -5/+10 elements of GWM:

1.) The design of GWM was intentional.
2.) It functions as the designers intended. You can wail on low AC enemies, but attacking so recklessly against high AC enemies is less efficient, if not inefficient.
3.) Damage per strike (or per round) is not a great tool by itself for evaluating the efficacy of this feature of the feat as it does not account for overkill, loss of 'on hit' benefits when you miss, etc...
4.) The designers see no need to change it.

The discussion of this feat always reminds me of the first Mystic Theurge release. When it was released, people raised bloody murder. They swore that having a spellcasting class that had access to all wizard and cleric spells was going to break the game beyond repair. There were huge numbers of people that evaluated it, saw it as insanely overpowered and then cursed WotC for ruining the game. Then people tried playing it and found out that their views of the feat were ... flawed. They had not anticipated that the delayed access to higher level spells was a major loss in that edition of the game. It was not vastly overpowered, but was in fact fairly underpowered.

Here, people see the high damage being dealt when they hit and say, "Too much damage per strike". They don't feel all of those misses as much. Further, they're not accounting for the luck factor - You're drastically increasing the change of an unlucky streak that allows an enemy to get ahead of the party on the damage curve when you increase the chance of misses. They're clearly seeing the benefits but underestimate the detriments that offset those benefits. The difference between the Theurge is that playing the game doesn't show you those hidden detriments in this case...

 

[hejtmane]

This argument is so old. So very old. Nobody is going to change their spots. However, the following are known truths about the -5/+10 elements of GWM:

1.) The design of GWM was intentional.
2.) It functions as the designers intended. You can wail on low AC enemies, but attacking so recklessly against high AC enemies is less efficient, if not inefficient.
3.) Damage per strike (or per round) is not a great tool by itself for evaluating the efficacy of this feature of the feat as it does not account for overkill, loss of 'on hit' benefits when you miss, etc...
4.) The designers see no need to change it.

The discussion of this feat always reminds me of the first Mystic Theurge release. When it was released, people raised bloody murder. They swore that having a spellcasting class that had access to all wizard and cleric spells was going to break the game beyond repair. There were huge numbers of people that evaluated it, saw it as insanely overpowered and then cursed WotC for ruining the game. Then people tried playing it and found out that their views of the feat were ... flawed. They had not anticipated that the delayed access to higher level spells was a major loss in that edition of the game. It was not vastly overpowered, but was in fact fairly underpowered.

Here, people see the high damage being dealt when they hit and say, "Too much damage per strike". They don't feel all of those misses as much. Further, they're not accounting for the luck factor - You're drastically increasing the change of an unlucky streak that allows an enemy to get ahead of the party on the damage curve when you increase the chance of misses. They're clearly seeing the benefits but underestimate the detriments that offset those benefits. The difference between the Theurge is that playing the game doesn't show you those hidden detriments in this case...

Funny I have someone straight fighter has maxed main stat (we do rolled stats), polearm + gmw and the way every one acts on this boards you think they just steam roll my fights but nope because it is all about encounter building. He looks great against a big single mob but when I start adding multiple mobs with about 40 HP's haha the evocation wizard makes them look weak or the cleric/scorer were he can max lighting damage once per long rest and he drops chain lighting with that yea talk about making the melee feel weak.

I get so tired about this argument and someone going to get mad at me because I think the issue resides with the DM's not realizing how to encounter build or do simple things and up the ac on a few mobs add extra HP you are the DM that is what you are suppose to do as the DM. Then the retort is that is meta gaming meta gaming blah blah blah.

To each their own but in my opinion it is all on the DM.

 

[Warmaster Horus]

I'd rather find a way to nerf DMs who like to tinker with fantasy-adventure games because of perceived 'balance' and 'realism' issues.