D&D 5E (2014) Observations

[FormerlyHemlock]

delete the "no disad shooting in melee" part of SS feat.

There is no such disadvantage in the PHB, and no such removal of disadvantage in Sharpshooter. So deleting a non-existent exception to a non-existent rule equals... ???

 

[Baumi]

There is no such disadvantage in the PHB, and no such removal of disadvantage in Sharpshooter. So deleting a non-existent exception to a non-existent rule equals... ???

It falls under the Cover Rule. The other Players might give the enemies Cover if they stand between you and your target and since the Feat lets you ignore Cover, it lets you shoot into a melee without worring where anyone stand exactly.

But I never heard that this is a problemtic Part of the Sharpshooter feat .. in fact if you negate the -5/+10 part AND cover, you only have the bonus of not having disadvantage on long shots, which rarely happens in my Experience. That would make the Feat worthless.

 

[CapnZapp]

We haven't had such imbalance problems in our game so far. There's no GWM or PM feat fighter in our group, though

Word.

 

[CapnZapp]

Melee guys in 5E need all the help they can get not to wind up on the short end of the stick. They have good damage once they finally close, but terrible survivability and they don't scale. Once the difficulty level goes above the Deadly threshold they really struggle, not to mention the problems they have with mobile opponents like dragons--so if you're building a GWM melee specialist, make sure you've got some kind of a backup plan like cantrips or a good longbow.

Possibly several assumptions here...

a) if you by "Melee guys" mean average vanilla fighterish types, then yes, that would support my suspicion that regular hp and AC 16-17 simply won't cut it. Before my players ended up with their melee gods we had a PC death caused simply by initiative timings: first guy in the room, then most monsters, RIP first guy in room.

Creating an AC 21 character and a double HP character was a direct response to the realization that regular tanks aren't tanky enough to withstand even a single round if all foes are "forced" to focus fire on that single character.

b) you might feature lots and lots of ranged opponents in your game, but that is simply not the expected norm. Not for the Monster Manual and not for the fantasy genre in general. If your players can't make mighty bare-chested barbarians that manly wade into melee combat work, then you might want to dial down on the number of foes with effective ranged weapons and/or mobility greater than the party. Alternatively, you and all your players love that more modern "hide and snipe" feeling, and there is no problem. (But it did sound as if you have an issue with "melee guys" having "terrible survivability", amirite?)

c) Your point about "they don't scale" I don't even understand? Scale how? And who is scaling much better? Archers? Spellcasters?

(If you mean spellcasters, that's great. I would love to hear about spellcasters reclaiming their turf at mid to high levels, because at levels 1-8 they really are support characters in the melee guys story)

In a beer-and-pretzels game where *YANK*

Gonna stop you right there before you manage to set up a possibly condescending straw man...


Cheers,
Zapp

 

[Celtavian]

The issues some of us have with GWM and Sharpshooter are well documented. Once you hit the sweet spot against many ACs and have a bunch of buffs with debuffs on the enemy, they become all bonus damage that adds a huge amount of extra damage to attacks. This really stands out like a sore thumb in a coordinated min-maxer group, apparently not so much in groups that don't min-max and don't play in a coordinated manner eliminating the negatives of both feats.

I'm finding monsters are fairly weak in 5E. It feels intentional in the same way it felt intentional when WoW made raiding and obtaining high end loot very easy for casual players. D&D seems to have been made very easy for a more casual type of player not interested in a game that requires a lot of system mastery. As a DM I haven't quite figured out how tough I can make a monster to make it a true challenge for the PCs without killing them. I'm erring on the side of caution at the moment. I've been bumping hit points roughly a 150% for solo encounters. I might push it to 200% soon. I've constructed a powerful legendary creature with healing capabilities as well as offensive capabilities to see if mitigating some of the damage with healing abilities will increase the ability the monster to challenge the PCs. My players become slightly disengaged with the game when fights are too easy. They don't want to die a bunch either. Since I don't care for resurrection, I'd rather not kill them unless it occurs naturally from bad rolls or lucky hits by the monster rather than overwhelming force due to creating an encounter far too strong for them to fight.

I've left Sharpshooter and GWM alone and worked on this from the encounter design end. I feel if you allow feats and magic items, you'll have to modify the game to account for both. A DM can best do that behind the screen.

 

[CapnZapp]

Out of interest CapnZapp, why did your campaign end?

Thanks for asking!

It ended very amicably - the heroes had saved Icewind Dale and stopped Hedrun the Witch, so ...

In short: I was out of adventure material, and I got a bit fatigued by having to come up with all the stats myself. Looking forward to run the upcoming Demons/Underdark thingy soon, where I can pay money for ready made stats all the way to level 15!

Cheers

 

[Psikerlord#]

It falls under the Cover Rule. The other Players might give the enemies Cover if they stand between you and your target and since the Feat lets you ignore Cover, it lets you shoot into a melee without worring where anyone stand exactly.

But I never heard that this is a problemtic Part of the Sharpshooter feat .. in fact if you negate the -5/+10 part AND cover, you only have the bonus of not having disadvantage on long shots, which rarely happens in my Experience. That would make the Feat worthless.

Sorry I meant Crossbow Expert feat - that's the one that gets rid of disad when shooting in melee.

 

[Dragonsbane]

Overarching question is: why include squishy spellcasters in the team at all?

Role-play. My players usually come up with a concept and don't worry that much about numbers, at least at first. Also, I didn't see any info on the use of social skills, which play heavily into some games.

Great report for a combat-style game, but I would be curious about other styles (sneaky game, game with social/NPC rolls, etc).

 

[fuindordm]

Double post

 

[fuindordm]

As a DM I haven't quite figured out how tough I can make a monster to make it a true challenge for the PCs without killing them. I'm erring on the side of caution at the moment. I've been bumping hit points roughly a 150% for solo encounters. I might push it to 200% soon. I've constructed a powerful legendary creature with healing capabilities as well as offensive capabilities to see if mitigating some of the damage with healing abilities will increase the ability the monster to challenge the PCs.

I've run a few solos and I find that legendary creatures make a much more entertaining and challenging fight than a non-legendary creature of any CR. HPs are not the issue so much as actions, and the extra actions do wonders not just to keep pressure on the PCs but also to move the creature into positions where they can't be easily attacked by all PCs on a given round.

So moving forward, I think I'll just give any solo encounter legendary actions, a few minions, or both. But I don't feel the need to boost their HP.

Ben