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Message: <blockquote data-quote="FrogReaver" data-source="post: 7554100" data-attributes="member: 6795602">(Ignoring Critical Hits)The relative impact of advantage on an attacks accuracy weighted damage is simple to calculate.  For example if you have a 60% chance to hit without advantage then your relative increase in damage will be 100%-60% = 40%.  This same calculation works for any accuracy value.I think most characters have somewhere around a 50%-70% (avg 65%) chance to hit on most attacks, so in general I'd estimate advantage increasing attack damage by 35%.  Shield Master only has a chance to knock an enemy prone.  Assuming Shield Master having a 50% chance to knock an enemy prone that's an average of a 17.5% increase in damage.  Assuming an 80% chance to knock an enemy prone that's an average of a 28% increase in damage.  Now sometimes you may have advantage anyways in which case shield master doesn't help any.  Sometimes you might fight a foe too large to knock prone with shield master causing it not to help any.  If I had to estimate a single number as my shield master average for increasing damage I'd lean toward the low end of the damage range listed above.  Thus, I think 17.5% damage increase would be the best estimate you can get without looking at campaign specifics.  Now, that's going to be a potential 17.5% damage increase for all your melee allies.  However, prone causes ranged allies to have a lower chance to hit.  Thus, I'd lower that 17.5%.  Assuming 3 of 5 party members use melee attacks I would estimate about a 10% increase in party damage from shield master.  So the answer to the question IMO is about 17.5% increase in your individual damage and about 10% increase in party damage.  GWM tends to increase individual damage a lot more.  It doesn't lower ranged allies damage and if it even increases your DPR by 50% then it's party damage increase is also about 10%.  Personally I think it's easier to optimize GWM at that point and push it higher than a 50% individual damage increase which starts making it be much better than shield master.  Also PAM works with GWM giving you the opportunity to have 2 damage feats as opposed to a single one.IMO, shield master is not a bad feat but it requires a melee heavy party, ways to increase athletics and some luck on fighting enemies of the proper size category before it starts mechanically performing anywhere near GWM combos.</blockquote>

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