D&D (2024) Sharp shooter/Great Weapon Mastery

[Chaosmancer]

Leaving aside my views on the archery fighting style, the key difference here for me is that those are happening during combat, where every character is going to acting in differing ways and with differing abilities, and having to make choices based on position, type of enemies, environment, and etc. And if an entire party chooses to be fighters, rangers, and paladins with shields, then there are a myriad of things that they will face that will not be aided by those shields.

Conversely, guidance's main usage is outside of combat, where it can very often be employed sequentially, without consideration, and continually. "But being support means I can't do other things" doesn't often apply out of combat except in unusual circumstances; in fact you can even cast guidance (it lasts a minute), and then use the help action for a double bonus to the aided character. Or you can cast guidance on another character then go off to climb a rope, talk to someone, pick a lock, or eat some bread.


Hey, I'm all for additional meaningful support choices being available to many classes -- that would be great! 4e as an example included support for supporting for many classes. But for me, Guidance 2014 as written doesn't function in game as meaningful choice of support.

So is the solution to nerf out of combat support into the ground, or is it to offer more types of things we can do out of combat to contribute?

I think what you are noticing is the fact that there is only a single system in place for every single thing out of combat. Roll a d20 and add modifiers. Nothing else matters, nothing else is tracked, unlike combat where there are multiple types of dice and multiple factors to success. And when you have a very simple system, anything that can be leveraged to aid that system is very simple as well.

If we are dead set on not wanting a +modifer to skill checks at-will, the only other thing would be to give advantage. Those are the only two factors to skill checks. Modifier and the d20. But I don't think it is realistic to propose overhauling the entire skill system into something more complex that can handle multiple different types of bonuses. I think that is too ambitious, but I also don't want to see out-of-combat support not exist.

 

[Willie the Duck]

Guidance spam has never been a problem in our games, the spam part just doesn't happen.

I have a hard time understanding how there aren't fictional consequences for a character spending nearly every second of his waking life casting guidance. And those consequences are typically going to make the decision to cast it or not a more tactical choice in many situations.

At the same time, I've seen several rollicking reddit debates where people act incredulous that anyone else believes someone couldn't (and wouldn't) have guidance going every waking moment except maybe stealth situations*. I think that divergence is likely what the devs are responding to -- if part of the gaming population thinks of it as effectively a static always-on +1d4 to most skill checks and others think of it as a clutch-time boost, there might be room for improvement in how the spells works.
*social situations the argument being along the lines of 'why would anyone find it odd if a religious individual says a little prayer before entering a negotiation?'

yes fictionally its quite silly. So the idea of altering the mechanics so that Dms don't have to add in those little narrative fixes I am all for.

I mean, that's it. This is a playtest for modifying the game. This is the perfect time for looking at anything that is giving trouble and saying 'I find the way this is working to be silly/disruptive/unrealistic/overpowered/underpowered/stepping on some other characters toes/anything else. Instead, can we get the same broad concept (and maybe same name, to make clear that this is replacing that), but with a different implementation.

 

[Bill Zebub]

Sorry for being a bit of a pendant, but this triggers me every single time.

Actually…it’s “pedant”.

(That one was irresistible.)

 

[Bill Zebub]

As for Archery fighting style, it would be comparable if it affected everyone in the party, but only if the player blurted out “I cast Archery style!” every time somebody took a shot.

 

[Stalker0]

Sorry for being a bit of a pendant, but this triggers me every single time.

Why wouldn't you cast guidance for climbing a rope? Because you don't roll an ability check for climbing a rope. Unless the rope is covered in grease, you should never roll to climb a rope. Rolling to climb is for extreme climbing situations only.

Why wouldn't you cast guidance to swim across a body of water? Because unless it is a rapid current, you never need to roll a check to swim. IF you are trying to swim across a lake whipped up by a storm, with serious waves, then you roll. If it is just a lake, you don't roll.

Sure, replace rope with mountain climb, replace calm lake with weird oily viscous liquid, etc etc. The point is still made, there are many checks that PCs make that they can spam guidance on.

Guidance remains one of the best cantrips in the game, and I'd argue the best spells because of its ubiquity. Even this new version I would always take with my cleric, not even a question.

 

[Bill Zebub]

In general out-of-combat abilities are harder to design (design well, anyway) because in-combat there is always the minimum trade-off of the opportunity cost. Even the fully buffed and optimized rogue with no expendable resources has to choose to attack instead of doing something else.

Out of combat, if a player’s rationalization is “I might as well…no harm in trying” and game mechanics are invoked as a result, in my opinion something either wasn’t designed well or isn’t being used correctly. (YMMV, no need for anybody to explode in righteous indignation.)

 

[UngainlyTitan]

Sure, replace rope with mountain climb, replace calm lake with weird oily viscous liquid, etc etc. The point is still made, there are many checks that PCs make that they can spam guidance on.

Guidance remains one of the best cantrips in the game, and I'd argue the best spells because of its ubiquity. Even this new version I would always take with my cleric, not even a question.

I would take this version also but I would not bother with the fiddly restriction, I do not see the need to fuss about spamming it. Worse things could be done.

 

[Bill Zebub]

I would take this version also but I would not bother with the fiddly restriction, I do not see the need to fuss about spamming it. Worse things could be done.

Is “worse things could be done” a good reason to not talk about ways things could be even better?

IMO anything less than awesome is worthy of being tinkered with. It’s the sputtering outrage I don’t understand.

(And I realize in this case what you are saying is that you’ll take spam over fiddly as the lesser of two evils.)

 

[UngainlyTitan]

Is “worse things could be done” a good reason to not talk about ways things could be even better?

IMO anything less than awesome is worthy of being tinkered with. It’s the sputtering outrage I don’t understand.

(And I realize in this case what you are saying is that you’ll take spam over fiddly as the lesser of two evils.)

This is a proposal for a game test. I never saw guidance spam in games I played but by all means give you feedback in the playtest. Guidance is not even on topic for the thread and not worth the amount of bandwidth and electrons spent on it. IMHO and YMMV and all that .

 

[Kobold Stew]

Has it been suggested that the loss of -5/+10 to the GWM and SS feats is because this is now going to be a default ability, either in combat generally, or for the Warrior class specifically?

Maybe they're planning on letting anyone do this, without needing a feat, and that's why it's not in the playtest. I think we just don't know enough about DD1 yet to know for sure.