What makes Great Weapon Master and Sharpshooter so good?

[Tony Vargas]

Yes, the choice of a given maneuver or fighting style can reduce that penalty, but that also means not taking a different maneuver or fighting style (which could benefit a different set of circumstances)

The maneuver in question is arguably one of if not /the/ best maneuver, before taking GWM into account. If you're taking Sharp Shooter, it's pretty darn likely you're deeply committed to archery already, and have the Archery style if it's available to your class. Those combos are intuitive - almost inevitable, really, there's not a lot of chaff to sort through.

Yes, a cleric casting Bless can reduce that penalty as well

It's a bonus, anyway, so it's really not mitigating the penalty, you're still taking a -5, if you weren't, you'd be +1-4 from the bless, which is nothing to sneeze at.

Take a Battlemaster Fighter for example. He gets +2 hit from archery style and precision attack. (Precision attack is basically a +2/+3 bonus to hit over the whole course of a standard adventuring day). This basically completely negates the -5 penalty and he is left with +10 damage. End of explanation.

Or, you can just enjoy that approximate/hypothetical +5 to hit without using the feat.

Others have replied.

Again: it is about balance within a party.

Also balance at the choice point of an ASI/Feat.

With GWM you can no longer compete in the "bloke with sword" niche without it. Dealing half as much damage as the other guy is seriously erasing game fun for many players.
Maybe not for you, but now at least you know why it is considered so broken.

OTOH, 'bloke with a sword' is more competitive with it included. OTOOH, it's optional...

 

[Caliban]

D&D doesn't care if you just barely hit the target's AC, or if you hit AC+10. You do the same damage regardless...unless you have GWM/SS. In that case, if you can hit AC+5 regularly, then you get +10 damage.

The feats reward you for having a very high attack bonus in comparison to the target's AC, and no other feats reward you in that way. It makes your character more efficient, converting excess attack bonus in to damage. And if the target has a high AC, you can just forgo the extra damage and effectively get +5 to your attack (assuming your default is using the -5/+10).

But for it to be broken, you have to have that excess attack bonus vs AC against most of your opponents. Which comes down to how the DM adjusts the game to deal with feats.

(In my current home campaign, none of the players have GWM or SS - and I still regularly add 50 HP to 100 HP to the "boss" monsters to get them to last another round or two...)

 

[Mistwell]

AC is often good enough.

Damage is where the game is at.

Your experience differs from mine. Particularly if you are a melee combatant as opposed to a ranged combatant, a point of AC outranks two points of damage...particularly since damage is wasted in an overkill more often than AC is wasted in damage prevention (damage prevented is usually far more in quantity than the damage you would have done to them). AC is tied much more to bounded accuracy in this game than damage is tied to it. There are nearly limitless ways to increase damage, but a very finite number of ways to increase AC. On-balance, I personally rank AC higher for melee combatants.

 

[devincutler]

My problem stems solely from Sharpshooter. I don't have a problem with GWM because the practitioner has to get up close and personal and subject himself to damage. Additionally, there are fewer ways to mitigate the penalties that should be associated with the feat.

Sharpshooter has the benefit of allowing the PC to be super effective at very long distances, making even less chance that a missile user will take damage or be put in danger. Shooting at full attack from 600 feet pretty much puts the Sharpshooter out of range of every spell in the game, even with the SPELL SNIPER feat up. Of course, you can argue that dungeons rarely allow for a 600 foot shot, but many encounters take place out of doors, and if the Sharpshooter eventually can fly (not difficult with a 5th level wizard in the party), then he can rise 600 feet above the fray and rain unanswerable death down on foes, and really how many foes have the Spell Sniper feat? So in practice the longest effective range of spells is 150 feet (e.g. fireball). The Sharpshooter can stand back at 200 feet and fire at full effectiveness.

Sharpshooters can take the fighting style that allows them a +2 to hit. This is the ONLY fighting style that provides a bonus to hit. Sharpshooted also completely ignore the cover penalty that is inherent in ranged weapon attacks and is, IMO, a tradeoff for standing off and out of danger.

Finally, the combined effect of all 3 of the Sharpshooter abilities put together is simply stupid ont he face of it. From 600 feet away (2 American football fields), the Sharpshooter can put an arrow through an arrow slit JUST AS EASILY as hitting a target 10 feet away with no cover. And he can not only put the arrow through that slit from 200 meters, but he can hit a vital spot to cause +10 damage. It's insane.

My homebrew says that a Sharpshooter gets all of the RAW abilities, but can only utilize one of them at a time.

 

[devincutler]

The average AC in the MM being 14.5 (apparently).

Not sure if I was the 1st to call out these feats in 2014, I was one of the early ones anyway. HotDQ had a +2 Greatsword, found out the hard way a +2 bow/handcrossbow is worse.

Yep. When I ran HotDQ a PC had the fighting style to grant a +2 to hit with ranged weapons and received a +2 longbow. HIs Dex was 20 (16 Dex +2 for elf +2 for ASI at 4th level). That was all she wrote. Using Sharpshooter, the dragons what were supposed to be scaring the crap out of the party were being brought down like rain from the sky.

 

[mpwylie]

My homebrew says that a Sharpshooter gets all of the RAW abilities, but can only utilize one of them at a time.

So first, I think that is a great homebrew solution. I myself have absolutely no issue with GWM but feel SS gives too much for a single feat. I have never had enough of an issue with sharpshooter to bother changing it but I have always felt it would have been better split into 2 separate feats. I think your solution is even better.

Sharpshooter has the benefit of allowing the PC to be super effective at very long distances, making even less chance that a missile user will take damage or be put in danger. Shooting at full attack from 600 feet pretty much puts the Sharpshooter out of range of every spell in the game, even with the SPELL SNIPER feat up. Of course, you can argue that dungeons rarely allow for a 600 foot shot, but many encounters take place out of doors, and if the Sharpshooter eventually can fly (not difficult with a 5th level wizard in the party), then he can rise 600 feet above the fray and rain unanswerable death down on foes, and really how many foes have the Spell Sniper feat? So in practice the longest effective range of spells is 150 feet (e.g. fireball). The Sharpshooter can stand back at 200 feet and fire at full effectiveness.

So as far as this, I see this argument a lot. There is a very simple solution to this issue. First, don't build encounters on an endless, flat, featureless plane. Put your bad guys in the woods, in a camp, in an outpost, in an area with shubbery and/or a natural trench in the terrain. Second, any intelligent creature is going to be well smart enough to not stand there taking arrows in the face. Even the less intelligent creatures living in the world, if they have lived long enough for your characters to encounter them, must have at least some survival instinct. Heck, my one dog used to make a loud fart and run and hide not smart enough to realize it was him that made the noise and even he as smart enough to run and hide on the porch as soon as I would fire the first bolt from my crossbow when target practicing. And lastly, I usually add 1 extra monster to my outdoor encounters as I know one is going to die immediately, if not from ranged attacks, then because my party snuck up and inst-gibbed one in the surprise round.

If my players start firing from 600ft or decided to fly up 600ft and rain down arrows, once the first monster was hit they would have nothing left to shoot at. The monsters would dive behind/under cover, whether that is a rock wall lining the area, a cart, a tree, a building, or whatever else was appropriate for the setting, even one of them with the ability to cast fog cloud works. Never even once have my characters been able to stand back and kill an encounter from 600ft.

 

[Zardnaar]

So first, I think that is a great homebrew solution. I myself have absolutely no issue with GWM but feel SS gives too much for a single feat. I have never had enough of an issue with sharpshooter to bother changing it but I have always felt it would have been better split into 2 separate feats. I think your solution is even better.



So as far as this, I see this argument a lot. There is a very simple solution to this issue. First, don't build encounters on an endless, flat, featureless plane. Put your bad guys in the woods, in a camp, in an outpost, in an area with shubbery and/or a natural trench in the terrain. Second, any intelligent creature is going to be well smart enough to not stand there taking arrows in the face. Even the less intelligent creatures living in the world, if they have lived long enough for your characters to encounter them, must have at least some survival instinct. Heck, my one dog used to make a loud fart and run and hide not smart enough to realize it was him that made the noise and even he as smart enough to run and hide on the porch as soon as I would fire the first bolt from my crossbow when target practicing. And lastly, I usually add 1 extra monster to my outdoor encounters as I know one is going to die immediately, if not from ranged attacks, then because my party snuck up and inst-gibbed one in the surprise round.

If my players start firing from 600ft or decided to fly up 600ft and rain down arrows, once the first monster was hit they would have nothing left to shoot at. The monsters would dive behind/under cover, whether that is a rock wall lining the area, a cart, a tree, a building, or whatever else was appropriate for the setting, even one of them with the ability to cast fog cloud works. Never even once have my characters been able to stand back and kill an encounter from 600ft.

I don't sharpshooter gets around the cover thing and if you start metagming against the PCs all the time to counter sharpshooter the problem is really the sharpshooter feat.

 

[devincutler]

So first, I think that is a great homebrew solution. I myself have absolutely no issue with GWM but feel SS gives too much for a single feat. I have never had enough of an issue with sharpshooter to bother changing it but I have always felt it would have been better split into 2 separate feats. I think your solution is even better.



So as far as this, I see this argument a lot. There is a very simple solution to this issue. First, don't build encounters on an endless, flat, featureless plane. Put your bad guys in the woods, in a camp, in an outpost, in an area with shubbery and/or a natural trench in the terrain. Second, any intelligent creature is going to be well smart enough to not stand there taking arrows in the face. Even the less intelligent creatures living in the world, if they have lived long enough for your characters to encounter them, must have at least some survival instinct. Heck, my one dog used to make a loud fart and run and hide not smart enough to realize it was him that made the noise and even he as smart enough to run and hide on the porch as soon as I would fire the first bolt from my crossbow when target practicing. And lastly, I usually add 1 extra monster to my outdoor encounters as I know one is going to die immediately, if not from ranged attacks, then because my party snuck up and inst-gibbed one in the surprise round.

If my players start firing from 600ft or decided to fly up 600ft and rain down arrows, once the first monster was hit they would have nothing left to shoot at. The monsters would dive behind/under cover, whether that is a rock wall lining the area, a cart, a tree, a building, or whatever else was appropriate for the setting, even one of them with the ability to cast fog cloud works. Never even once have my characters been able to stand back and kill an encounter from 600ft.

The problem is that no amount of cover beyond total cover works against Sharpshooter. Yeah, you can take cover under trees. Won't matter. You can jump into a trench. Won't matter. Remember, someone who is flying has the wherewithal to come at the target from a 180 degree angle.

 

[Rossbert]

My problem stems solely from Sharpshooter. I don't have a problem with GWM because the practitioner has to get up close and personal and subject himself to damage. Additionally, there are fewer ways to mitigate the penalties that should be associated with the feat.

Sharpshooter has the benefit of allowing the PC to be super effective at very long distances, making even less chance that a missile user will take damage or be put in danger. Shooting at full attack from 600 feet pretty much puts the Sharpshooter out of range of every spell in the game, even with the SPELL SNIPER feat up. Of course, you can argue that dungeons rarely allow for a 600 foot shot, but many encounters take place out of doors, and if the Sharpshooter eventually can fly (not difficult with a 5th level wizard in the party), then he can rise 600 feet above the fray and rain unanswerable death down on foes, and really how many foes have the Spell Sniper feat? So in practice the longest effective range of spells is 150 feet (e.g. fireball). The Sharpshooter can stand back at 200 feet and fire at full effectiveness.

Sharpshooters can take the fighting style that allows them a +2 to hit. This is the ONLY fighting style that provides a bonus to hit. Sharpshooted also completely ignore the cover penalty that is inherent in ranged weapon attacks and is, IMO, a tradeoff for standing off and out of danger.

Finally, the combined effect of all 3 of the Sharpshooter abilities put together is simply stupid ont he face of it. From 600 feet away (2 American football fields), the Sharpshooter can put an arrow through an arrow slit JUST AS EASILY as hitting a target 10 feet away with no cover. And he can not only put the arrow through that slit from 200 meters, but he can hit a vital spot to cause +10 damage. It's insane.

My homebrew says that a Sharpshooter gets all of the RAW abilities, but can only utilize one of them at a time.

I tend to not even think about sharpshooter due to the small group size I have. My main non-AL game has four PCs and we tend to have overlapping but not matching roles. If the character with a d10 hit die and possibly the only one with heavy armor decides he wants to stay 600 feet away from danger, the healer (anything from a cleric to a sorcerer) may have words with them, not to mention the now far more obvious target spellcaster (likely a wizard, sorcerer or warlock) especially if they are buffing with a Fly spell or similar.

It doesn't invalidate your concern but may illustrate why it has never crossed my mind.

 

[Rossbert]

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