Many archers in my game have wasted shots by playing conservative with their magical ammunition. I rarely want my players to feel obliged to build weakened characters. • Your ranged weapons ignore half cover and three-quarters cover. In particular, Fireball is a catch all room clearer that is clearly powered up relative to its level. As monsters emerge, the players wonder what other surprises wait. You can switch targets without having to move. At the end of the day, ammunition is just an irritation, not a nerf. DM Thomas Christy has hosted as many online D&D games for strangers as anyone. When was the last time any of them kept enforcing ammo limits after a player pointed out any sufficiently-woodsy character could make new arrows in their spare time? You’ve got the math a bit wrong. Wizards bend reality, Paladins smite the world to ash, ranged fighters/rangers/whatever use arrows to rain hell upon the enemies. In any other edition of D&D, a feat as overpowered as Sharpshooter would not even rate on a list of the system’s flaws. I’d rather build my encounters based on the setting and circumstance, rather than compensate for a (somewhat) poorly designed system. Uhm ok.. use fast monsters that close the distance?? Stealth dash sneak attack repeat untill rouge engages melee provoking repeated oportunity attacks if enemy continues to flee.
Overall, i don’t think this article really has a good enough justification to give two feat the guilty verdict.
Also remember, if your pcs are taking feats, a monster may have one as well. One of the DM’s greatest tools for balancing powergamers, minmaxers, and other nonsense is the “what’s good for the goose is good for the gander” ploy. Not every class can do everything. When you attack from a distance, melee attackers can’t hit you. Fireball can kill, but Slow can save lives. Crossbow expert by itself is not nearly as centralizing. Ranged attacks can also use darkness to gain advantage. Next week, I’ll explain how to build a good one. More importantly, it can’t be done consistently unless you are only using a hand crossbow, you need a free hand to reload due to the Ammunition property. Because they should be. I love 13th Age, it’s my favorite d20 variant system. That hopeless, sub-optimal backstabber gains places to dash, disengage, and reasons to engage. But when compared to feats like war caster, sentinel, magic initiate or mage slayer and the other powerful character options I’ve listed above, you can become more strong EARLIER before you even pick up those aforementioned feats. That said, it does not paint AD&D 5E as “good”. Choose the Samurai archetype. He says, “I have actually had players complain in game and out about how it seemed like they did not need to be there.” In a Todd Talks episode, Jen Kretchmer tells about asking a player to rebuild a crossbow expert.
Start by adding total cover to your encounters, and then play creatures with the good sense to duck between their turns. First, this gives some total cover. But, you bring up CBE allowing users to be a ‘front-line tank’ when that’s completely wrong. Melee rogues almost never get to attack while hidden, but at least backstabbers can sneak attack without advantage when an ally stands next to a target. With Hoard Breaker and Volley, I serve my party best by doing a small amount of damage to multiple enemies at a time, but it’s usually one of our spellcasters doing the heavy damage. If you follow the rules for this it actually works pretty well and makes sense. This goes double for enemies immune/resistant to non-magic. At that point both the damage bonus to SS as well as GWM will already be completely useless. That usually works. This makes the strongest monster an easy target for focused fire. I’ve been playing since Basic/Expert and currently play and DM 5e. But rangers and fighters—the classes most likely to take Sharpshooter—can also opt for the Archery fighting style, which grants a +2 bonus to attack rolls with ranged weapons.
Plus, by using a hand crossbow, the feat allows an additional attack. I agree with the point the OP was trying to make.
Yeah. You should know your parties average DPR. I didn’t know the horrid beast I was creating back at the start of 5E! “When you make a weapon attack roll against a creature, you can expend one superiority die to add it to the roll.”, Samurai gain 3 or more uses of Fighting Spirit. Spike Growth requires the enemy to move and can be very difficult to place without friendly fire unless you’re in a flat, featureless plane and see the enemy coming from far enough away that you could all just kite them to death by moving away and making ranged attacks anyway. Someone with Polearm Master is exceptionally good at doing that, especially combined with Sentinel (which stops enemies from moving when they are hit), whereas the someone using Crossbow Expert has virtually no ability to control enemy movement, as they can’t even make opportunity attacks. The Sharpshooter is a master of ranged combat. For example, a Battlemaster Fighter gets Riposte, which is one of their most efficient maneuvers in terms of damage output. If you have a Sharpshooting XbowXpert nonsense character, then the party starts finding other such characters fighting against THEM – and those enemy machine-gun snipers shoot for the archer first. At level 4, take Sharpshooter. Slow ranged attackers. It’s not even busted. But how many encounter happen outside on an open field. They were stupid enough not to have shield on their spell book. Oh, and your sneak attack just went up a die (two attacks, for a total of 4d6+Dex damage (7-27 damage). Sure, none of these are RAW, but if you’re not playing Adventurer’s League (and you shouldn’t be), who cares? I believe that can’t happen, because Crossbow Expert says that the bonus action is an attack with a LOADED hand crossbow. Feats. An interesting conversation is when people can agree or disagree and discuss civilly their thoughts. If foes move next to you, then your attacks suffer disadvantage and you stop being immune to their melee attacks. Basically, your ranged formula is completely discounting how long it takes to do the awesome, which is something worked into EVERY class. Traps, corners, secret doors, etc can all be used to punish characters who hang back too much. Toughen the monsters. You seem to not take into account the wearher effects in your scenarios, as a real life user of a bow sharpshooter can be hindered by wind , rain, humidity and even cold. Or, even Sentinel in general allows melee to be an extremely powerful /actual/ front-line tank by disallowing enemy movement towards backline by with their 10f threat range. Most of your offensive spells are just not that good. But rangers and fighters—the classes most likely to take Sharpshooter—can also opt for the Archery fighting style, which grants a +2 bonus to attack rolls with ranged weapons. (well, except for the ammo bit, unless if you go with the artificer’s repeating shot).
Overall, i don’t think this article really has a good enough justification to give two feat the guilty verdict.
Also remember, if your pcs are taking feats, a monster may have one as well. One of the DM’s greatest tools for balancing powergamers, minmaxers, and other nonsense is the “what’s good for the goose is good for the gander” ploy. Not every class can do everything. When you attack from a distance, melee attackers can’t hit you. Fireball can kill, but Slow can save lives. Crossbow expert by itself is not nearly as centralizing. Ranged attacks can also use darkness to gain advantage. Next week, I’ll explain how to build a good one. More importantly, it can’t be done consistently unless you are only using a hand crossbow, you need a free hand to reload due to the Ammunition property. Because they should be. I love 13th Age, it’s my favorite d20 variant system. That hopeless, sub-optimal backstabber gains places to dash, disengage, and reasons to engage. But when compared to feats like war caster, sentinel, magic initiate or mage slayer and the other powerful character options I’ve listed above, you can become more strong EARLIER before you even pick up those aforementioned feats. That said, it does not paint AD&D 5E as “good”. Choose the Samurai archetype. He says, “I have actually had players complain in game and out about how it seemed like they did not need to be there.” In a Todd Talks episode, Jen Kretchmer tells about asking a player to rebuild a crossbow expert.
Start by adding total cover to your encounters, and then play creatures with the good sense to duck between their turns. First, this gives some total cover. But, you bring up CBE allowing users to be a ‘front-line tank’ when that’s completely wrong. Melee rogues almost never get to attack while hidden, but at least backstabbers can sneak attack without advantage when an ally stands next to a target. With Hoard Breaker and Volley, I serve my party best by doing a small amount of damage to multiple enemies at a time, but it’s usually one of our spellcasters doing the heavy damage. If you follow the rules for this it actually works pretty well and makes sense. This goes double for enemies immune/resistant to non-magic. At that point both the damage bonus to SS as well as GWM will already be completely useless. That usually works. This makes the strongest monster an easy target for focused fire. I’ve been playing since Basic/Expert and currently play and DM 5e. But rangers and fighters—the classes most likely to take Sharpshooter—can also opt for the Archery fighting style, which grants a +2 bonus to attack rolls with ranged weapons.
Plus, by using a hand crossbow, the feat allows an additional attack. I agree with the point the OP was trying to make.
Yeah. You should know your parties average DPR. I didn’t know the horrid beast I was creating back at the start of 5E! “When you make a weapon attack roll against a creature, you can expend one superiority die to add it to the roll.”, Samurai gain 3 or more uses of Fighting Spirit. Spike Growth requires the enemy to move and can be very difficult to place without friendly fire unless you’re in a flat, featureless plane and see the enemy coming from far enough away that you could all just kite them to death by moving away and making ranged attacks anyway. Someone with Polearm Master is exceptionally good at doing that, especially combined with Sentinel (which stops enemies from moving when they are hit), whereas the someone using Crossbow Expert has virtually no ability to control enemy movement, as they can’t even make opportunity attacks. The Sharpshooter is a master of ranged combat. For example, a Battlemaster Fighter gets Riposte, which is one of their most efficient maneuvers in terms of damage output. If you have a Sharpshooting XbowXpert nonsense character, then the party starts finding other such characters fighting against THEM – and those enemy machine-gun snipers shoot for the archer first. At level 4, take Sharpshooter. Slow ranged attackers. It’s not even busted. But how many encounter happen outside on an open field. They were stupid enough not to have shield on their spell book. Oh, and your sneak attack just went up a die (two attacks, for a total of 4d6+Dex damage (7-27 damage). Sure, none of these are RAW, but if you’re not playing Adventurer’s League (and you shouldn’t be), who cares? I believe that can’t happen, because Crossbow Expert says that the bonus action is an attack with a LOADED hand crossbow. Feats. An interesting conversation is when people can agree or disagree and discuss civilly their thoughts. If foes move next to you, then your attacks suffer disadvantage and you stop being immune to their melee attacks. Basically, your ranged formula is completely discounting how long it takes to do the awesome, which is something worked into EVERY class. Traps, corners, secret doors, etc can all be used to punish characters who hang back too much. Toughen the monsters. You seem to not take into account the wearher effects in your scenarios, as a real life user of a bow sharpshooter can be hindered by wind , rain, humidity and even cold. Or, even Sentinel in general allows melee to be an extremely powerful /actual/ front-line tank by disallowing enemy movement towards backline by with their 10f threat range. Most of your offensive spells are just not that good. But rangers and fighters—the classes most likely to take Sharpshooter—can also opt for the Archery fighting style, which grants a +2 bonus to attack rolls with ranged weapons. (well, except for the ammo bit, unless if you go with the artificer’s repeating shot).