What makes Great Weapon Master and Sharpshooter so good?

[Mistwell]

We should bring back the old PvP arena we used to do here for 3e

 

[The Crimson Binome]

Sure, on "any given Sunday" anything can happen. Just because the best team in the NFL in a given season can get beaten by the worst on any given Sunday doesn't mean we can't know which team is better with a reasonable degree of certainty. The same thing applies here. Just because there are enough variables present that some combination of them can allow the defensive option to be better at a specific time doesn't mean there isn't a reasonable degree of certainty about which option/team is generally better.

Okay, but how would you go about actually proving it - either way - without resorting to specific-case scenarios that may never occur during play? If I play through an entire campaign where the greatsword fighter routinely goes down in the first round, and the paladin is the star of every major encounter due to sheer defensive prowess, then your generalization is going to seem unfounded.

 

[FrogReaver]

We should bring back the old PvP arena we used to do here for 3e

As with any game PvP builds are different than PvM builds

 

[FrogReaver]

Okay, but how would you go about actually proving it - either way - without resorting to specific-case scenarios that may never occur during play? If I play through an entire campaign where the greatsword fighter routinely goes down in the first round, and the paladin is the star of every major encounter due to sheer defensive prowess, then your generalization is going to seem unfounded.

It's weird you ask me how to prove it without resorting to specific-case scenarios and then you provide a specific case scenario. Anyways, the general principles that lead to this conclusion are fairly simple.

1. Enemy HP tends to quickly outpace the amount of damage a PC will do in a single attack as PC's level. Why is this significant? Because the more trials (*attacks) you have before the enemy is defeated the less variance there will be in the number of turns required to defeat the enemy. This makes average damage be a very good predictor of how many rounds an enemy will last.

2. Killing monsters faster means they make less attacks against you.

All that said, you can contrive a specific example that this general advice will not follow for but that's an "any given Sunday" type of example, not actually an argument about which option is better.

 

[FrogReaver]

Except I haven't found defensive builds to be vastly inferior.

Generally, it's 2 AC for the shield, 1 AC for the fighting style (because the offensive builds take the offensive fighting style), and shield master (because feat for a feat). If we include feats and fighting styles for offensive forms then we include feats and fighting styles for defensive forms. A magical shield increases that gap if it's included. The evasion like ability that comes with shield master is much better than not evasion type abilities.

I don't disagree that there's a lot of damage out of GWM and SS. That's why I had a house rule to improve TWF as a style if a fighter wanted to go that route. If the argument is that "not all fighting styles are created equal" then I support that argument.

In my experience, S&B is viable in 5e. Try a high level dex fighter with shield master. If he's champion he can have defense and dueling fighting styles. Dueling has the same benefit of bonus damage through multiple attacks (even if it's a smaller bonus, tbf) as other abilities. If you want, skip shield master and use defensive duelist instead. 2-3 AC difference plus prof bonus to AC once per turn if as needed is better than the 1-2 AC to which you referred.

One issue: the consensus when using GWM is that Defensive Style is better than Great Weapon Style. I'm not sure if their is a consensus on duelist vs defensive style but I would tend to take duelist in that scenario. So I would say it's the opposite. The offensive focused builds generally take defense styles and the "defense" focused builds generally take offense styles.

 

[FrogReaver]

Thank you. Actually I do believe that gwm is a strong feat. So I wxpect a slight damage bump at the cost of more volatility.

I've got an initial barrage of data if I can just figure out how to nicely post it.

AC	GWM version	+2 Str version	%DPR of GWM/+2 Str
11	20.21	13.49	1.5
12	19.09	13.27	1.44
13	17.85	12.99	1.37
14	16.49	12.64	1.30
15	15.02	12.24	1.23
16	13.43	11.77	1.14
17	11.71	11.24	1.04
18	9.89	10.64	.93
19	8.63	9.88	.86
20	7.91	9.27	.85

This is with Crits included and the crit portion of GWM included. The GWM column includes calculations for using the better of -5/+10 and not using it against the specific target AC. Both columns include rage damage bonus and reckless attack.

I have the numbers for Both with Beserker but it will take a bit to get them posted.

 

[The Crimson Binome]

It's weird you ask me how to prove it without resorting to specific-case scenarios and then you provide a specific case scenario. Anyways, the general principles that lead to this conclusion are fairly simple.

It's not a specific scenario, though. It's the aggregate of hundreds of hours of play, where defense consistently wins over offense. And sure, that aggregate is made up of several dozen specific scenarios, but when it happens consistently, I start to notice a trend.

And maybe you're in a different game, where that doesn't happen, and you start to notice your own trend. At this point, we don't have enough data to suggest a clear winner in a general case, except to say that it's going to vary between campaigns.

 

[FrogReaver]

It's not a specific scenario, though. It's the aggregate of hundreds of hours of play, where defense consistently wins over offense. And sure, that aggregate is made up of several dozen specific scenarios, but when it happens consistently, I start to notice a trend.

And maybe you're in a different game, where that doesn't happen, and you start to notice your own trend. At this point, we don't have enough data to suggest a clear winner in a general case, except to say that it's going to vary between campaigns.

I don't think you are taking the "any given Sunday" analogy far enough.

Anything can be true of any given encounter within a campaign while not being true of most encounters in the campaign.
Anything can also be true of any given campaign while not being true of most campaigns.

So you saying, "in my campaigns defense is better" really only goes back to telling us what we already know and agree upon and that is "on any given Sunday" defense may very well be better but that still isn't an argument for it actually being better.

I am curious as to what kind of circumstances come up commonly enough in your campaign that end up making defense be better as you claim.
Maybe most of the enemies target the Fighter/Barbarian and ignore the rest of the party?
Maybe you usually fight creatures with really low hp totals?
Maybe the rest of your party has really focused on damage meaning that the parties damage is really high regardless of what you do?
Maybe your cleric refuses to heal any front line fighter that doesn't have at least an 18 AC?
Maybe your DM really hates the GWM feat and always focus fires down any PC that decided to take it and doesn't make enemies behave that way when a PC does not have said feat?
Maybe you find magic items that really help defensive but not magic items that really help offensive ones?

Care to give us any thoughts on this part?

 

[The Crimson Binome]

Maybe most of the enemies target the Fighter/Barbarian and ignore the rest of the party?

Melee enemies will target whoever they can reach without provoking an opportunity attack, favoring easy targets and effective (high damage, or spellcasting) targets.

Maybe you usually fight creatures with really low hp totals?

Bounded Accuracy means that goblins and orcs remain a viable threat at almost any level, and groups of enemies are common at any level.

Maybe the rest of your party has really focused on damage meaning that the parties damage is really high regardless of what you do?

It's not like a warlock has many alternatives. There's very little point in focusing on defense when you're far enough away that very few attacks are directed against you in the first place.

Maybe your cleric refuses to heal any front line fighter that doesn't have at least an 18 AC?

Maybe there's no cleric.

Maybe your DM really hates the GWM feat and always focus fires down any PC that decided to take it and doesn't make enemies behave that way when a PC does not have said feat?

Maybe the DM is role-playing the NPCs based on what makes sense for them, and that means they attack the guy with the big sword who can't defend himself instead of the lady with the shield that they can't seem to hurt.

Maybe you find magic items that really help defensive but not magic items that really help offensive ones?

In this specific campaign, the great-weapon wielder lucked into a very powerful greatsword around level 10, while the rest of the party was left to make do with an assortment of odds and ends. This actually exacerbated the problem somewhat, as the great-weapon wielder became even more accurate and even greater of a threat, without becoming substantially tougher in any way.

This is just one combination of factors, granted, but none of the individual bits is unreasonable or terribly improbable. This combination of factors is as valid as any other, and this combination of factors is one where a shield-based fighter-type contributed more to the team than the great-weapon fighter-type did.

 

[5ekyu]

Melee enemies will target whoever they can reach without provoking an opportunity attack, favoring easy targets and effective (high damage, or spellcasting) targets.Bounded Accuracy means that goblins and orcs remain a viable threat at almost any level, and groups of enemies are common at any level.It's not like a warlock has many alternatives. There's very little point in focusing on defense when you're far enough away that very few attacks are directed against you in the first place.Maybe there's no cleric.Maybe the DM is role-playing the NPCs based on what makes sense for them, and that means they attack the guy with the big sword who can't defend himself instead of the lady with the shield that they can't seem to hurt.In this specific campaign, the great-weapon wielder lucked into a very powerful greatsword around level 10, while the rest of the party was left to make do with an assortment of odds and ends. This actually exacerbated the problem somewhat, as the great-weapon wielder became even more accurate and even greater of a threat, without becoming substantially tougher in any way.

This is just one combination of factors, granted, but none of the individual bits is unreasonable or terribly improbable. This combination of factors is as valid as any other, and this combination of factors is one where a shield-based fighter-type contributed more to the team than the great-weapon fighter-type did.

Two things...

I love when claims like how this option puts all the others to shame so others are not used much at all wind up working in that intelligent enemies being aware of the potential and threat and target those weapon users somehow involves GM bias.

Second, i love again the notion that somehow average damage on paper equates to dropping foes faster in play like the enemies just stand there and let you wail on the like the white room excel sheets do.

Once fights get more complicated than how fast do we beat our way thru a stationary sack of hit points a lot of options become a lot more desirable.