D&D 5E Observations

[Celtavian]

I would agree with that...-5 is a significant penalty. We had a player who played with our group for a couple of sessions and he had the sharpshooter feat, and he used the -5 option all the time trying to do massive amounts of damage. At the level they were at, I think his to hit bonus was +8. So he was taking over a 50% attack bonus cut.

I remember watching so many of his rolls fall into that 5 point differential, and they would have been hits, but instead were misses. Those moments were brutal.

For some, it's better to have a strong chance to do 12 damage rather than a slim chance to do 22. I'm no math whiz, but over time, the numbers are probably not as different as we might think.

I find those feats most useful when an enemy is shown to be easy to hit because it has low AC, or for when you have advantage on attacks. But under normal circumstances against a foe with a medium AC IT's risky, and against a strong AC it's bordering on foolish.

I think that the accuracy factor seems to be a bit overlooked. -5 is a big penalty.

GWM and Sharpshooter have been discussed at length. The problem with both feats comes online at higher levels when fully buffed due to Bounded Accuracy. At low level they are generally fine.

 

[Psikerlord#]

Flanking = Advantage is an optional rule at the back of the DMG.

Tthis optional rule breaks the game, imo. Makes damage and HP even more important than they already are, while further decreasing the value of AC.

We tried it and went back to (houserule) flanking gives +1 hit.

 

[Psikerlord#]

I would agree with that...-5 is a significant penalty. We had a player who played with our group for a couple of sessions and he had the sharpshooter feat, and he used the -5 option all the time trying to do massive amounts of damage. At the level they were at, I think his to hit bonus was +8. So he was taking over a 50% attack bonus cut.

I remember watching so many of his rolls fall into that 5 point differential, and they would have been hits, but instead were misses. Those moments were brutal.

For some, it's better to have a strong chance to do 12 damage rather than a slim chance to do 22. I'm no math whiz, but over time, the numbers are probably not as different as we might think.

I find those feats most useful when an enemy is shown to be easy to hit because it has low AC, or for when you have advantage on attacks. But under normal circumstances against a foe with a medium AC IT's risky, and against a strong AC it's bordering on foolish.

I think that the accuracy factor seems to be a bit overlooked. -5 is a big penalty.

This has been hashed out in other threads, but once you add magic weapons, bless, adv, high rolled stats, and so on, the -5 is well past nullified. It's just pure bonus 10 dmg every hit at that point. That's what breaks things.

 

[Sacrosanct]

This has been hashed out in other threads, but once you add magic weapons, bless, adv, high rolled stats, and so on, the -5 is well past nullified. It's just pure bonus 10 dmg every hit at that point. That's what breaks things.

Again, really only that significant at higher levels. And how many players play at the upper teen levels? Not all that many, so it doesn't really break the game for the vast majority of actual gaming time. And even then, it's still subjective as to whether or not it actually breaks it.

 

[hawkeyefan]

GWM and Sharpshooter have been discussed at length. The problem with both feats comes online at higher levels when fully buffed due to Bounded Accuracy. At low level they are generally fine.

Sorry, I haven't been involved in those discussions.

I do see that it is less of a deal at higher levels, but I think it still matters. Not nearly as much when the other resources the party can bring to bear are greater and can help mitigate the loss.

But that's kind of a given, no? I mean, a wizard's low HP is worse for him at lower levels, but later on isn't as big a deal because the cleric and the bard can heal him more often. But I don't think that anyone would ever say the wizard's low HP aren't a weakness at all.

This has been hashed out in other threads, but once you add magic weapons, bless, adv, high rolled stats, and so on, the -5 is well past nullified. It's just pure bonus 10 dmg every hit at that point. That's what breaks things.

I don't know if you can ever say a -5 is nullified. Not when the same level fighter who doesn't use one of the -5/+10 feats doesn't have it. I understand that the impact of -5 is less at higher levels than it is at lower, of course, but I think it's significant enough at any level to be a factor.

I haven't seen those feats in high level play yet, though, so I am admittedly going off what I would expect. If I feel the same way as you guys at that point in my campaign, then I'll likely mitigate it in another way...adding to AC or increasing HP seem simple enough solutions to the issue, and the players wouldn't really be any the wiser.

 

[Greenstone.Walker]

3) Both spellcasters in the group (one Light Cleric, one Lore Bard; both sporting the Fireball spell) clearly think control spells are too heavily nerfed in this edition. (We don't do trivial fights, so our fights clearly take more than three rounds to play out; blocking a foe one or two rounds is subsequently not as valuable). Except a few spells (such as Sleep) they struggled to justify casting control spells when they got much better results simply causing damage and thus directly helping the melees.

Not meaning to be rude, but they are doing something wrong. In D&D, there are no penalties for fighting while wounded. A monster with 1 HP hits just has hard and just as often as when it had 100 HP. Unless your spellcaster can kill a foe with one spell, locking it down is better.

Using fireball to take half the HP away from six targets means there are six attacks incoming. Using poison cloud on the same six targets, with half of them failing their save, now means there are three attacks incoming.

Using magic missile to kill one archer in a group of eight means there are now seven arrows incoming. Using fog cloud between the archers and you means there are now zero arrows incoming, giving you breathing space to deal with the melee combatants and then set up an ambush for the archers as they come through the cloud.

For example, in a game I GM'd earlier this week, I locked down three quarters of the party with two spells - grease and darkness. The enemy spellcaster hid behind an illusory wall of stone, making him untargetable. The only thing that swayed the battle in favour of the PCs was their use of another spell - silence. All the melee characters could do was make attacks at spiders in the darkness (at disadvantage!) and make DEX saves to stay standing.

The battle could have gone much, much worse if the spellcaster was a warlock instead of a wizard. Warlocks can see through their own magical darkness.

For example, in a level 10 game I was in three weeks ago, one of the monsters let off all the fireballs on a necklace of fireballs. Two fireballs went off, getting everyone in the party save my character. We went "huh" and continued fighting. Essentially, the monsters action was wasted. The amount of damage didn't make us any less effective in the battle at all.

 

[FormerlyHemlock]

Against that enemy, not counting advantage or anything outside or regular hits, power attacking is of little actual benefit. Out of 10 attacks, in regular mode you would score 5 hits for 12 avg. damage each or 60 damage. Power attacking on average grants either 2 or 3 hits for 22 avg. damage each , so either 44 or 66 damage. That is a lot of risk to gain only 6 extra points of damage.

Okay, I did the math. Without power attacking, average DPR over three attacks against AC 19 is 21.375. With power attacking, average DPR is... 21.375. AC 19 is one of the breakpoints where power attack makes no difference to the expected damage, in this scenario.

Math available on request.

P.S. Note to self for future reference: if you use one attack to kick the attacker prone, DPR for the remaining two attacks increases to 24.49. So if I were approximately 100% certain I'd win the Athletic contest, I should have kicked him prone again and then power attacked.

 

[Celtavian]

Sorry, I haven't been involved in those discussions.

I do see that it is less of a deal at higher levels, but I think it still matters. Not nearly as much when the other resources the party can bring to bear are greater and can help mitigate the loss.

But that's kind of a given, no? I mean, a wizard's low HP is worse for him at lower levels, but later on isn't as big a deal because the cleric and the bard can heal him more often. But I don't think that anyone would ever say the wizard's low HP aren't a weakness at all.

The idea behind Bounded Accuracy is that ACs will never be that high (false for heavy armor users with magic, true for almost everyone else). With lower ACs damage output is so high that monsters will chew through higher hit points quickly to match groups of players. A level 15 wizard with a 16 Con will have 107 hit points. A high level deadly monster should be able to nearly kill him in a round and two rounds at the most. Cleric healing is weak for a reason, though with pop-up healing it is generally not relevant how many hit points are healed. As long as you can get the PC back up to do damage for a round, you don't lose that PC's damage output.

GWM and Sharpshooter greatly increase PC damage output to exceed the calculation they use for monsters. I feel DMs should take it into account when designing high level monsters to maintain their potency.

 

[bedir than]

you can get at most one GWM cleave in a round.

That's true anyway. page 189 of the PHB makes that clear since you can only get one bonus action in a round.

 

[Mephista]

Not meaning to be rude, but they are doing something wrong. In D&D, there are no penalties for fighting while wounded. A monster with 1 HP hits just has hard and just as often as when it had 100 HP. Unless your spellcaster can kill a foe with one spell, locking it down is better.

To be fair, we're not at the table, and its hard to see what exactly the situation is. If the fireball spells are killing off a host of goblin archers, then, yes, it was a good use of the spell. Part of the reason that spells are so varied is that you need to be able to match a spell to the situation. If the situation is consitantly where a fireball is the best option, then, well, its the best option.

Though, I agree on the issue that the Light Cleric and Lore Bard might be looking at things wrong (at least, the way the OP is describing them). They're both classes that specialize in buffing others primarily, and battlefield control secondary. Though, that might be deliberate. Bless and Bardic Inspiration are both great for letting GWM work. So, the players may have picked the Light and Lore characters specifically because they wanted to min-max the two front line warriors. So, its no wonder that the melee characters are doing so well - they effectively have the power of two PCs being channeled into one. The down side is that, as a buffer, you're not left with much to do once the warriors come on line, so you're basically just killing time.

Another issue might be the case of the OP's insistance that melee warriors should/need high AC to survive. Providing that extra AC or temp HP is one of the functions of the Bard and Cleric. Heroism, a signature spell of the Bard, is huge with temp HP for the party; Vicious Mockery and the Lore's spend-inspiration-to-make-monster-miss ability also plays a huge factor in protecting the party through debuffs. Divine Shield and the light cleric's flashes of defenisve light are two on the cleric's side.