Power Attack Guide for Sharpshooter and Great Weapon Master in Dnd 5e! - Advanced guide 

Like a kobold, this quest is short.

But Kobold. You're... a kobold. Isn't Great Weapon Master practically forbidden to you, due to lack of practicality?

@@LucanVaris Pack Tactics :3

@@robinthrush9672 Is the entire pack holding up the sword, in an attempt to negate the Heavy feature? XD

@@LucanVaris Poke in the butt so the massive, slow Dark Souls swing lands

This is a great tip. Another is to highlight each term as you talk about what it means.

Even just color coding certain variables so I can better see where each thing fits and reuse in my own scenarios. Dnd math is game theory math and that’s hard

That's a good idea! I'll try to keep that in mind next time!

as an student, i can confirm

@@PackTactics I'm told colorblind coloring is a thing, so if you're doing accessibility you should look into it.

That also makes sense with if it's a longer round of combat, several power attacks hitting equals doing a lot more bonus damage. Hitting 8 times with power attack vs hitting 1 time with power attack. A combat that only lasts a round or two likely has low-health enemies and it's better to focus on finishing them off rather than go for extra damage that may not even be needed.

Standard deviation doesn't really matter for rolling one d20, though, because the chance of each result is the same. If you roll multiple dice and create a nonlinear distribution of result chances, then yes a difference in standard deviation is worth considering. Spoilers, the standard deviation of more dice becomes smaller. But he did factor the math into the power attack's DPR - the chance to hit is properly simulated by a simple % chance, the standard deviation doesn't matter. As he showed with his math, for all but the most extreme AC's, you're best off doing the power attack because the only moderate chance to hit reduction is worth the insane damage boost. +10 damage is about equivalent to one more attack with a big weapon or two small weapons.

@@monsieurdorgat6864 The average DPR is only an expression of what it will trend towards over an infinite number of turns. For a finite number of turns, whiffing all of your attacks and doing nothing could be an expected result within the standard deviation. So even with a DPR bump, if that DPR bump isn't significant, the trade-off in consistency is likely not worth it over a small number of turns.

@@INTCUWUSIUA It doesn't have to be infinite, just a moderate number of turns. I guess you might have a point for one-shot games, which may only have one or two combat encounters with 3-6 rounds? Even so, any combat encounter that would challenge the combat capabilities of your character would make the statistical tradeoff worthwhile. Still, that standard deviation doesn't change between rolling normally and rolling with a penalty (still 1d20), so the proportionate value of making power attacks is still linearly adjusted via the creature's AC and not disproportionately affected. This is roughly equivalent to gambling $10 with a 75% chance to earn $50 vs. guaranteeing getting $15. Yes, you could miss out on your one chance, but the stats point to the fact probably best off just taking the gamble, even if once. The payoff is large enough to worth risking relative to its chance of success.

@@monsieurdorgat6864 I think the two of you are debating different things. One is looking at the results in any given combat, and the other is looking at expected total output over an entire campaign. Over a campaign, yes, power attacking will give a better average result. But, on an encounter-to-encounter basis, it may not be superior. You have to read the room right after you kick down the door.

Embrace the Kobold.

Surely tge dagger is a melee weapon with the thrown, Light and finesse properties. It isn't a ranged weapon.

It's not CURRENTLY in the plans, but y'know. Stretch goals.

You'd be surprised! Their extra d8 only adds a few points of damage and that's really all they get. Their other damaging abilities like Blood Curse of the Marked or Blood Curse of Exposure are either extremely limited in uses, or very niche. Paladins eventually also get a free d8 eventually, have divine smite, AND like fighters have a pool of healing rather than sacrificing dozens of HP over an adventuring day.

@@Scarygrim that is true but most campaigns don’t get that far and blood hunters have this at level 2, I did the math and a sword and board fighter at level 20 has less then a level 5 bloodhunter with great weapon master and polearm master against the same enemy. Clocking in at a total of 44.64 dpr, with that you have to hit cr 7 before a creature that you can’t kill in 3 turns or less shows up and by cr 10 there is only 1 enemy you can’t kill in 4. And if you just happen to get lucky you’ll be killing most of those enemies 1 turn faster They definitely fall of pretty hard after that compared to other martials but I think below level 11 they really may be the optimal melee attackers in terms of dpr. But ghost slayer can offset this a lot vs the right enemies and lycan is very good in most situations even with less dpr. Mutant also allows a lot of strong options and makes you more adaptable. It’s definitely weaker than fighter or Paladin but you can be outperforming rangers, monks, rogues, and barbarians for damage. Plus you really don’t need to sacrifice much hp as a bloodhunter, blood cureses are niche enough that amplification should probably be rare and so really the main ability you need to spend hp on is your one time use of crimson rite per day

Blood Hunter is a pretty weak class overall tbh. I'd put it around monk's power level, below the good monk subs.

@@Scarygrim Then again, having a 22 dex as a mutant at level 4 with point buy is nothing to scoff at. If only because larger to hit bonuses disproportionately improve the DPR of power attacks

@@haenhaen4282 I agree that it’s week overall but early game below level 11 id say the damage it puts out is quite frankly absurd being able to nearly match the damage output of a 20th level sword and board fighter (though that’s not a damage optimized strat but still) Also most of the blood hunter subclasses are actually really good, personally I’d consider them better than most monk ones. The ghost hunter jsut decemates undead and even against other enemies the single target dps they have is insane, the lycan basically makes you a pseudo barbarian with a bit more damage. The mutant finally is like insane, because while most mutagens are situational some like getting +4 to a stat are insane, and the negative on this (for the strength one it’s disadvantage on dex saves) is offset by having a pseudo aura of protection. Plus compared to many martials the bloodhunter has additional out of combat utility when compared to most of them

I'm not sure that works. For both sharpshooter and great weapon master it has to be a weapon you are proficient with. Its only at DM discretion if an improvised weapon is similar enough to a melee weapon to allow proficiency. I don't think the heavy crossbow counts for that, but ymmv.

​@@jiminkpen9750 It's only at DM discretion to determine if an improvised weapon is similar enough to a melee weapon to allow you to apply proficiency with a certain actual weapon. However, "improvised weapon" is its own thing with which you can get proficiency. Consider: the Tavern Brawler feat. "You are proficient with improvised weapons." That's right, there's a way to get improvised weapon proficiency as well! No problem. No clue if there's any other way to get this proficiency though. (Reminder that, before anyone complains that this is silly or unreasonable or inefficient, I know, it's all just goofin. All I care is that it's technically allowed.)

if yer gonna attempt it, consider Champion and any source of Advantage in the game, with how low your attack bonus is the "all critical hits are automatic hits" system might come into play more often, and then advantage becuase obviously you need that. One could also greatly benefit from the attack roll boosting battle master manuver, bless, peace clerics, even theoretically Alchemist Artificers if you have an entire second person willing to help you

@@defensivekobra3873 Champion would be an extra great idea, since fighters get extra ASIs, and you'll need all the ASIs/Feats you can get.

If you get lucky enough a divination wizard can do that as well as soon as Lv2. Although the build probably won't be as impressive at that point, considering you will have at most a first level smite.

@@maximocaseres2526 The thing is, chronurgist is reliable, provided you know the AC is something you need to crit.

I can do that but there's no audience.

I square the chance to miss. Lets say 65% to hit. To make it advantage you do 0.35x0.35 = 0.1225. Then from there you do 100-12.25 = 87.75% to hit. I usually just round it up to 88% to hit because its easier but that's how you normally find the advantage.

Piercer lets you reroll a damage roll, not an attack roll.

@@silvinity4939 yeah my bad on that part.

For context I've got a 20 strength. My Dm has also given me 2 magical two-handed weapons so those are going to stay my primary methods of attack and I'm unlikely to switch to dual wielding. The fey touched hunting marks adds a lot of utility with the misty step and additional tracking from hunters mark (very niche, but it actually might have helped last session lol). As well as being able to add that 1d6 damage to any ranged attacks that may come up.

... ... ... Crap.

Reddit got upset over a ; reading that had a disclaimer… lol. Who gives a shit if it’s right or not now? People shouldn’t have been that dramatic over a ;. Normal people don’t do that.

@@brianmyklebust9924 Literally his whole channel is based around being as accurate as possible lol, and I don't use Reddit if that's what you're getting at. You write like such a fucking imbecile that I can barely even understand what you say. I obviously understand that people can be wrong, and if it was just once, and he actually corrected his mistake, I would never have written this comment. The problem, is that he did it 3 times, and that people can use them for malicious purposes to break the game. Having spells that do what he thought they did would completely break a DnD campaign, and in a game where new players are always needed, it's about the worst thing you could do to ruin it for them with said spell logic. it would only create what he talks against, which is a less fun environment, and because that is the only real goal in DnD, it only makes it that much worse. The biggest problem I have, which I didn't even mention out of kindness, is that they're still up. From now on, anyone could view those videos and still get the exact same misconstrued meaning from it. I have the same gripe with pretty much all of social media, where seemingly everybody forgets that their posts can still be viewed by new people until they remove them. And by the way, the semicolon shouldn't be there. It's meant to break up a sentence, but continue the idea, acting as a sort of in-between from a comma and period; that being said, it acts mostly like a period, just that you can still continue along with the idea you wrote before it, as I just did. A semicolon and another form of punctuation should never be right beside each other in a sentence, and that applies for any form of punctuation.

@@brianmyklebust9924 Reading this back, I understand it a bit better, but my reason for saying this is because he's had 3 shorts that completely misconstrued the way spells are written, and ignored the written rule of "specific beats general," *which he has said he follows on multiple occasions.*

Melee usually needs advantage to keep up, but it's easier for them to get it than ranged attackers (reckless attack, attacking prone enemies, etc.)

Except melees have other adv such as way easier way to generate advantage for the attacks

@@Shnauften Very DM dependent. Not my experience. Reckless attacks are only for Barbarians (and usually not worth it), and enemies very rarely get proned unless that same melee martial is using that shield bash feat or Battlemaster Fighter. Otherwise, it's not that much more likely that melee users get advantage. Most games I've been in where these feats aren't banned, the archer just dominates combat because it's 10 free damage on every hit, since you were gonna hit them anyway (doubly so now that cover doesn't matter). Only way this will ever be countered is if the DM literally spawns monsters in the player's face - which still isn't a problem because then they can still just deal normal ass damage with their already solid finesse weapon options. WotC just hates melee. Spellcasters and archers just make this game a shooting gallery.

@@monsieurdorgat6864 If you as a player can't get advantage easy as a melee character, that's not up to your DM, and reckless is 100% worth it almost every time.

@@Shnauften Reckless is only really worth it against bosses, who were going to hit you anyway with their +8 or more to hit and you're just DPS racing at that point. Not worth it to get chipped by small enemies, or if you're in a crowd of enemies who ALL get advantage against you just so you could hit ONE mook you were going to hit anyway. Besides Reckless Attack and Prone, what are the other guaranteed options available to your martial character that don't waste your turn? Kind of curious, because you seem to have purely emotional opinions about a lot of this stuff.

The bar for spamming power attacks was already pretty low... Especially with Sharpshooter, which literally lets you avoid the only potential counter (bonus AC from cover) and almost always synergizes with martial classes that get bonus to hit anyway (rogues get hiding advantage, rangers and fighters get +2 from Fighting Style)

Honestly, if you take sharpshooter stealth and tactics don't need to enter the equation anymore. Just spam the power attack, know you'll hit every time, deal much higher bonus damage for free, from range, no cover tactics to complicate anything. If your party stood a chance against that monster at all, they'll melt pretty quick to your DPS and you never even needed to waste an action to hide. Because you know what's way better than 10 more guaranteed damage on a rogue attack? 20 or 30 guaranteed bonus damage on ranged fighter attacks.

@@monsieurdorgat6864 Yes, that's common knowledge. I was talking about comparing sharpshooter to eg skulker on a stealth character, not comparing stealth to eg fighter on a character with sharpshooter.

@@saltypork101 I think we're making the same point - sharpshooter is a feat ubiquitously useful to any character who uses ranged weapons. It's better than just about any other feat for those characters. As you can tell, I really don't like overly-centralized feats lol

@@monsieurdorgat6864 It's a problem, but there's lots of lovely homebrew that directly addresses that.

@@saltypork101 Yeah, my typical homebrew is either to just ban sharpshooter or nerf it. The worst offending part of it, for me, is the anti-cover ability. At least if the game is shaped around cover, there's SOME kind of strategy to things.

@@Mr1991bbk proficiency

@@Mr1991bbk proficiency bonus is always the same at level 5 lol, stop hating

Sharpshooter no longer adds 10 damage in 5.5.

they shouldn't, and they dont@@AlohaKIG

You will have to go war cleric to make up for that penalty lmao.

Sharpshooter is insane Especially if you're a Samurai -5 to hit? Who cares when you have on demand advantage! I suppose you could also tack on Elven Accuracy for true absolute overkill

Sharpshooter is the most brainless feat in the game. No real choices need to be made - you always do the power attack, never have to consider cover. It's the ultimate feat for "brain off, roll dice, win game".

So just plus proficiency

@@imhulki463 Also if the weapon is a plus weapon.

@@Nyghtking damn true, ranged martial is stronk

@@imhulki463 theyre not :D

Funny thing: Fighting Spirit gives advantage on all weapon attacks made until the end of the turn. It doesn't make a distinction between melee and ranged...meaning with Sharpshooter (and Archery fighting style), you can attack with advantage multiple times from up to 600 ft away, ignoring all but full cover, hit with much greater frequency, have a higher initiative average due to Dex focus, and deal +10 damage on every attack *and* have access to certain Dex/ranged only perks like Bracers of Archery and Elven Accuracy. Tbh GWM feels almost necessary just for Str/melee to keep pace with the benefits Dex/ranged have, and even then the ranged version of GWM immediately closes that gap on top of giving more benefits. (And honestly, GWM should have had an extra line to give a benefit to non-heavy melee weapon attacks since the first line doesn't even exclude you from using a one-hander to get the bonus action)

GWM has greater synergy with Reckless Attack is what I get from the guy above me

If you're playing as an Elf, your 6th level ASI could be turned into the Elven Accuracy feat for the triple advantage.

@@Battleguild the beautiful triple advantage only applies to everything that isn't strength. You have triple advantage if you have advantage on an attack roll using dexterity, intelligence, wisdom or charisma. So, just another feat to give the range based fighter.

@@Mrryn Ah yes, Zen Archery returns I see...

I've got a geogebra(free math software) sheet doing exactly that if you want it

That's going to depend on information that you as a player are unlikely to have - namely, what sort of enemies and tactical situations are you going to face until your next ASI. If you expect to face high-AC enemies with no cover and within your weapon's short range, then you're better off capping your dexterity. If you expect to face low-AC enemies who often have cover and/or are within your weapon's long range, you're better off taking Sharpshooter.

@@kclubok That's a good point. Even more reason why a look at "in general" taking a boost to your Dex vs sharpshooter or Str vs GWM would be interesting.

i can tell you right now: crossbow expert, sharpshooter, polearm master, great weapon master, and lucky are the 5 full feats that are going to be more powerful than an ASI. i don’t have the literal math available as proof with percentages and everything, but i know people have done it in the past. i do however, understand the concept, which is this: polearm master and crossbow expert are more powerful because they let you make more attacks. this means each round, you have another chance to hit your enemy and deal more damage. an ASI would make you 5% more likely to hit for each attack, and deal 1 more damage if you do, but getting another attack essentially doubles your chance of hitting, because you get to go twice. the fact that the damage dice are slightly smaller doesn’t matter, it’s still way more damage. by similar logic, lucky is more powerful than an ASI as well. of all the d20 rolls you make over a long rest with your best ability, only 5% of them are going to be changed from a miss to a hit or a fail to a success. you deal another point of damage on average each time, but unless you frequently do barely enough damage to kill a monster, you probably won’t notice it. lucky lets you get another chance to hit with an attack 3 times per long rest, which is probably more than 5% of your attacks, and it crucially doesn’t have to be used on attacks: if rerolling an enemy’s crit, a failed stealth check, or a con save against petrification will save your life, you are going to be dealing way more potential damage as an alive person than a dead person. great weapon master and sharpshooter are the hardest to prove, because we (usually) have no way of predicting what the AC of the monsters are going to be. unless you’re in a setting or adventure where you know what kind of enemies you’re going to be fighting most often, and you know what their armor looks like (an enemy wearing plate mail obviously has a higher AC than a zombie or gelatinous cube), you won’t be able to know how often power attack comes in handy. but, we can look at the expect monster AC for each CR in the DMG and do some math off of that, and we can also look at the other two features in our two feats: GWM gives us another attack on a critical hit (about 5% of our attacks!) or when we kill an enemy. sound familiar? an asi would also give us another attack’s worth of damage 5% of the time. SS lets us ignore cover and outrange our opponents, which translates to a 10-25% better chance of hitting (some of the time) and a way to force enemies have disadvantage, which is like having +4-5 AC or waste turns getting closer (some of the time). those two things are both pretty good when compared to the ASI. if this doesn’t convince you, then i encourage you to go online and find some nerds who are good at math. find formulas, find averages, do whatever it is you need to have peace of mind. but i hope i was able to raise some interesting points, if nothing else.

@@Hazel-xl8in That was very informative! Thank you very much for you time to answer a question~

I scrolled way too long to find this. This comment needs more engagement.

I would argue that yes that point is ignored but killing the enemy quicker in situation with multiple enemies and therefor reducing incoming damage makes more than up for the fact of overkill, as you can also easily overkill without powerattacks.

@@Velatus5978 you don't kill them quicker if you miss. The point being made here is that sometimes it is possible to know with near certainty that a simple attack will do the job. In such circumstances, when a player fails to use the information available to them and blindly goes for the power attack, they waste 25% success chance for no benefit.

If we are just looking at average value, yeah that's something to consider. But also remember that without power attack, you could roll low on the damage dice and not kill that round. So for instance, +9 vs AC 17 dealing 1d8 damage and the enemy has 6 hp. 8/20*8/8 for power attack vs 13/20*3/8 without, Power attack has a 40% chance to kill, No power attack has a 24.4% chance (actually 26.7% including crit, but the math for that is obnoxious to write out), so power attack wins. However, at 4 hp, not power attacking has a 40.6% (42.3% actually technically) chance of killing, so its slightly better. It obviously varies based on the situation and you aren't going to know AC and current hp, but the point is just cause it overkills doesn't mean its worse.

Yes! 100 damage to an orc is actually only 15 damage. I get it, dead is the best condition to inflict against an opponent, but there is a LOOOOOOT of middle ground between dead and dead plus 8.

It might not do more DPR, but its sure gonna deal emotional damage to the poor sucker clobbered by a crossbow

Funny, but the language isn't clear and likely any reasonable DM would only allow it out of sheer amusement. At the very least, you'll need the Tavern Brawler feat to gain proficiency in improvised weapons because you must be proficient to power attack. 🥴

@@RisingChaos This is the only flaw I directly see. Requiring 3 feats though means if a player wants to do this I will absolutely allow it at my table.

It's no longer a ranged weapon if you use the crossbow as a club.

And a feat to supplement it, with crossbow expert/sharp shooter and the polearm master/great weapon master, the only viable weapons are hand crossbow or halberd/glaive. Really limits your options to be honest. I think another dual wield feat, a sword and board, and a dualist (one weapon and "open" hand) would greatly fix that.

Yip yip yip!

the synergy is that you can use the GWM 10+ dmg bonus on your 1d4 bonus action attack so you can get a potential +30 to your damage every turn (Attack 1d10 glaive die+10 GWM+4 str, extra attack 1d10+10+4, bonus action 1d4+10+4) Once in a while, you get to use the full damage dice of your glaive/halberd instead of the 1d4 so a small dmg bump (+3 damage on average) (1d4 becomes 1d10 when you knock down an enemy to 0 hp with your first two attacks) Getting the bonus action attack is worth the reduction in damage dice because it is on average one point of damage lower but you get 4+ damage in return and also can take advantage of the reach property to save yourself from opportunity attacks

It is an Improvised Weapon at that point, not a ranged weapon

Your read is spot on. A dual wielder using daggers has a ranged weapon in each hand as the dagger is listed as having the ranged property. Who needs crossbow expert for that bonus attack with sharpshooter power bonusses.

@@jeffdietz630 dagger doesnt have the ranged tag, only the thrown tag the dart however is a 1d4 piercing weapon that has the thrown and ranged properties

Same with a hexblade

@@thecharmer5981 Hexblade specifies that the weapon can't be two handed

@@humungachip4710 unless you have pact of the blade

@@thecharmer5981 didn't know that, thanks

@@humungachip4710 if you grab improved pact weapon you can even use it with a bows and crossbows

Or even better, make it so you don’t have disadvantage while attacking when prone?

@@nicholass5621 Eh, I'm not a big fan of that, but mostly because dropping prone is free. Sure, standing up costs half your movement, but since you move at half speed while prone anyway you can just as easily stand up, fire a shot and drop prone again. There are caveats, I'm sure, but it's less generally applicable, I think.

Brute is a UA subclass that was kinda left to the wayside. In part it’s a shame because brute is an interesting subclass archetype that probably could have been improved upon in some ways, but on the other hand there’s a lot of overlap with barbarian.

That's ok. You just throw another encounter right after that.

> rolls initiative > rides away on phantom steed faster than the enemy can dash > pulls out longbow > calls out "checkmate" > gain xp, move to next encounter

KOBOLDS RISE!

Yes. That's called Bowsmash. Its a meme build, it was originally in the video but I scrapped it.

Why should you do that? :D the power attack is not limited in its usages per turn

The RAI is that it isn't considered a ranged weapon when it is being used as an Improvised Weapon

My first system was Pf1 like 12 years ago.

Or use it when 10*(hit chance with power hit) > (expected damage without power hit)*(hit chance without - with power attack) For given example: 10*0.5>(1d6+4)(0.75-0.5)--> 5>3.75, which is true so use sharpshooter here.

It's my preferred system, so every major release I make has a PF1/3.5 version.