Dealing 20 damage in two hits is pretty much strictly superior than doing 0 damage in 1 miss and 20 damage in 1 hit a round later; it does just as much damage to single targets, while also minimizing wasted overkill damage on injured opponents, letting you clear the board faster (and as OG says, "dead is always better"). So yes, building for TWF Crits as your damage source rather than 'miss, miss, HIIITTTTTT, miss, miss' is quite good in practice.
Is there any thought to the idea of trying to get more crits through multi-weapon fighting or multi-targeting (through Ranger/Horde breaker or similar) rather than trying to go for the 'one big hit' philosophy? In the CoStrahd game I was in a couple of years back our Horde Breaker Ranger with twin swords and a wizard with Haste was like a buzzsaw. We did the usual AoE stuff (fireball and Spirit Guardians) and the Ranger would bat cleanup.
I know the folks here do much better math than me so I wondered if anyone had tried that route.
There a few ways to get more crits.
1. More attacks. Also means more damage even if you don't crit.
2. Attack with advantage. Also means more damage even if you don't crit.
3. Increase the crit range through things like Improved Critical or a Hexblade curse. Only adds more damage if you roll a 19, and that will happen 5% of the time.
4. Re-rolls with things like the Lucky Feat. Also means more damage even if you don't crit.
Short of running through some published campaigns encounters in parallel, I’m not really sure how to reconcile this split between “just take GWM” perspective and “just max Str.” It isn’t that I dispute your math, it’s that I dispute the desirability of the result you show. Doubling your damage at the cost of being 35% less accurate than your peers is not something I think is desirable for the fighter/Barb/ranger/Paladin themself, let alone for their group. I don’t agree that the feat is the character concept, using a polearm or greataxe/sword without the feat is precisely the same concept.
Again… agree to disagree I guess but I really feel like recommending for inexperienced players that they start off using great weapon master before they’ve brought their strength up is a trap, pure and simple. Dunking on AC 12 opponents is not the standard in difficult encounters at any tier, building around that assumption is like building for Fireball against 20 tightly packed goblins, it’s solving a problem that doesn’t exist.
Adding +2 to strength turns a miss into a hit once per twenty attacks. How are you getting 35% less accurate? It's literally 5%.
Dealing 20 damage in two hits is pretty much strictly superior than doing 0 damage in 1 miss and 20 damage in 1 hit a round later; it does just as much damage to single targets, while also minimizing wasted overkill damage on injured opponents, letting you clear the board faster (and as OG says, "dead is always better"). So yes, building for TWF Crits as your damage source rather than 'miss, miss, HIIITTTTTT, miss, miss' is quite good in practice.
This is my thought as well after seeing our Rogue warm up her Sharpshooter/Sneak attack thing and then roll a 3 to hit. As much as the BIG hit feels very cathartic, I'd rather hit with SOMETHING than put all my eggs in one basket.
I imagine some of this is situational in a game-by-game basis as well. Our DM like to have a fairly good-sized group of mooks plus a lieutenant or boss when we fight. In a game where most of the enemies are bigger/more HP, I imagine different tactics work better. There's less chance of gross overkill, more chance for GWM's ) HP proc to activate, etc.
No one fight philosophy will cover every scenario.
Dealing 20 damage in two hits is pretty much strictly superior than doing 0 damage in 1 miss and 20 damage in 1 hit a round later; it does just as much damage to single targets, while also minimizing wasted overkill damage on injured opponents, letting you clear the board faster (and as OG says, "dead is always better"). So yes, building for TWF Crits as your damage source rather than 'miss, miss, HIIITTTTTT, miss, miss' is quite good in practice.
This is my thought as well after seeing our Rogue warm up her Sharpshooter/Sneak attack thing and then roll a 3 to hit. As much as the BIG hit feels very cathartic, I'd rather hit with SOMETHING than put all my eggs in one basket.
I imagine some of this is situational in a game-by-game basis as well. Our DM like to have a fairly good-sized group of mooks plus a lieutenant or boss when we fight. In a game where most of the enemies are bigger/more HP, I imagine different tactics work better. There's less chance of gross overkill, more chance for GWM's ) HP proc to activate, etc.
No one fight philosophy will cover every scenario.
TBF a rogue should not really be using sharpshooter IMO....one and done shots do not need a -5 to hit when you class gives you almost no way to adjudicate the hit (No archery style/Precision Die)
Overall the Battlemaster will be better for this philosophy anyway as you can use maneuvers to control the battlefield more so than the champion can....
So regardless of philosophy (versatility vs. pure damage) Battlemaster wins out.
Dealing 20 damage in two hits is pretty much strictly superior than doing 0 damage in 1 miss and 20 damage in 1 hit a round later; it does just as much damage to single targets, while also minimizing wasted overkill damage on injured opponents, letting you clear the board faster (and as OG says, "dead is always better"). So yes, building for TWF Crits as your damage source rather than 'miss, miss, HIIITTTTTT, miss, miss' is quite good in practice.
This is my thought as well after seeing our Rogue warm up her Sharpshooter/Sneak attack thing and then roll a 3 to hit. As much as the BIG hit feels very cathartic, I'd rather hit with SOMETHING than put all my eggs in one basket.
I imagine some of this is situational in a game-by-game basis as well. Our DM like to have a fairly good-sized group of mooks plus a lieutenant or boss when we fight. In a game where most of the enemies are bigger/more HP, I imagine different tactics work better. There's less chance of gross overkill, more chance for GWM's ) HP proc to activate, etc.
No one fight philosophy will cover every scenario.
First, it's worth noting that you're right. Hitting less often feels worse, and nobody likes taking their turn hand having nothing happen. A swing and a miss, or the enemy makes their save against Hold Person, etc.
But what we're debating is what is objectively more effective. What Chicken compared was two things that are numerically equal, but that's a false analogy. Compare, two attacks:
A: First attack misses, second attack does 30 damage.
B: First attack does 10 damage, second attack does 10 damage.
Option B might feel better and give you more fun, and that's your choice to make. Nothing wrong with that. But the actual comparison we are discussing is even more extreme.
Let's say at level 4 you choose an ASI +2 to your strength, which gives you a +1 to your attack and damage role. Compared to: Polearm Master, which gives you double the number of attacks. PAM is more effective and it's not even close.
Dealing 20 damage in two hits is pretty much strictly superior than doing 0 damage in 1 miss and 20 damage in 1 hit a round later; it does just as much damage to single targets, while also minimizing wasted overkill damage on injured opponents, letting you clear the board faster (and as OG says, "dead is always better"). So yes, building for TWF Crits as your damage source rather than 'miss, miss, HIIITTTTTT, miss, miss' is quite good in practice.
This is my thought as well after seeing our Rogue warm up her Sharpshooter/Sneak attack thing and then roll a 3 to hit. As much as the BIG hit feels very cathartic, I'd rather hit with SOMETHING than put all my eggs in one basket.
I imagine some of this is situational in a game-by-game basis as well. Our DM like to have a fairly good-sized group of mooks plus a lieutenant or boss when we fight. In a game where most of the enemies are bigger/more HP, I imagine different tactics work better. There's less chance of gross overkill, more chance for GWM's ) HP proc to activate, etc.
No one fight philosophy will cover every scenario.
TBF a rogue should not really be using sharpshooter IMO....one and done shots do not need a -5 to hit when you class gives you almost no way to adjudicate the hit (No archery style/Precision Die)
Overall the Battlemaster will be better for this philosophy anyway as you can use maneuvers to control the battlefield more so than the champion can....
So regardless of philosophy (versatility vs. pure damage) Battlemaster wins out.
Correct, and also the math works out that sneak attack severely diminishes the value of the extra SS damage. You probably understand the reason, but I'll provide an extreme example that explains why.
Just suppose without the SS damage you do 1000 hit points of damage.
Without SS Damage: Normal Roll = 1000 damage
Compared to -
With SS damage: Minus 5 to hit = 1010 damage
The higher your normal base damage, the less value you get from SS or GWM +10/-5 damage adder. It may even reduce your damage output depending on some variables.
If you're fighting goblins, the reason you take GWM is for the bonus action attack, not the -5/+10. On the other hand, against orcs, -5/+10 is easily worth it, because it changes you from "kill in two hits" to "kill in one hit".
If you're fighting goblins, the reason you take GWM is for the bonus action attack, not the -5/+10. On the other hand, against orcs, -5/+10 is easily worth it, because it changes you from "kill in two hits" to "kill in one hit".
Exactly...you do not HAVE to take the -5 swing but when you can and its in your favor you go back to the first philosophy in DnD Combat: Dead is Better
Exactly...you do not HAVE to take the -5 swing but when you can and its in your favor you go back to the first philosophy in DnD Combat: Dead is Better
Not precisely. Either way, you have an end goal of 'dead', it's just that with GWM you're taking an average of 2.5 attacks to accomplish the goal, without it you're taking an average of 3.
Exactly...you do not HAVE to take the -5 swing but when you can and its in your favor you go back to the first philosophy in DnD Combat: Dead is Better
Not precisely. Either way, you have an end goal of 'dead', it's just that with GWM you're taking an average of 2.5 attacks to accomplish the goal, without it you're taking an average of 3.
Which means your party is likely finishing the creature off before it gets another round...always a good thing!
Incidentally, in tier 1 I would either use no feat (use two weapon style, retrain at level 4 or 6 per TCoE) or polearm mastery; both substantially outperform GWM in tier 1.
Incidentally, in tier 1 I would either use no feat (use two weapon style, retrain at level 4 or 6 per TCoE) or polearm mastery; both substantially outperform GWM in tier 1.
Incidentally, in tier 1 I would either use no feat (use two weapon style, retrain at level 4 or 6 per TCoE) or polearm mastery; both substantially outperform GWM in tier 1.
That sounds right. Let's do the math.
What we're comparing:
2 L1 TCL Fighters with Str 16. One has a greatsword and GWM, the other has a glaive and PAM. This is on-turn DPR, so I'm not mucking about with weird OA assumptions. The target dummy is AC 13 and has infinite hit points.
Attack Bonus is +5, with a +3 damage modifier.
Greatsword GWM: 8.7675 base, 14.797043 with Advantage.
9.3975 with GWF.
Glaive PAM: 9.5 base, 13.065 with Advantage
10.41 with GWF.
Yup, confirmed! You need consistent access to Advantage in Tier 1 (e.g. by being a Barbarian) for GWM to outperform PAM (or for your bonus action to be too busy to be used for DPR). For the curious:
Heavy Crossbow SS+Archery: 9.525
10.075 with a Musket.
Hand Crossbow CBE+Archery: 10.1
So the same holds true for a T1 archer, although I ignored the SS bullet of ignoring half cover, which might not be valid in practice.
I agree that PAM is better for the same reason that I would rather run an archer that gets to shoot lots of things than a Fighter or Barb who gets big hits once in a while.
If you have more attacks vs fewer but heavier attacks, you can always shoot at the same target more than once. Just because you HAVE Volley from Horde Breaker doesn't mean you HAVE to use it after all.
As for the comment about SA versos SS, I agree there also that there is a diminishing return point. We were lvl 15 when we ended CoStrahd. Both of the Rogues used bows but the Assassin/Gloomstalker had Sharpshooter. The other went straight Rogue. The damage bonuses far outweighed the damage die to the point where the DM would offer to let them take the average for SA, add their Dex bonus and then ask how much it was. If it was enough to drop the target, he declared it a kill to save on dice rolling. The one with SS typically would only use it on the first round of the fight since she had a second attack that round. As an Assassin with Alert she also went first as likely as not so she had advantage.
Is there any thought to the idea of trying to get more crits through multi-weapon fighting or multi-targeting...rather than trying to go for the 'one big hit' philosophy?...I know the folks here do much better math than me so I wondered if anyone had tried that route.
Depends on whether you're actually gaining damage with those extra attacks or just breaking up the same amount of damage into smaller chunks.
As a simple example, there's no difference in expected damage between a 2d6 + STR greatsword attack and (1d6 + STR) + (1d6 + 0) TWF with two shortswords. Yes, you're getting twice as many chances to crit with TWF, but the additional crit damage is worth half as much. And if you added Haste into this scenario, the greatsword user wins out because they're gaining another 2d6 + STR while the TWF character only gets 1d6 + STR.
For Fighters, TWF becomes progressively weaker relative to two-handed weapons as they get more attacks due to TWF Fighting Style not scaling with your number of attacks.
Dealing 20 damage in two hits is pretty much strictly superior than doing 0 damage in 1 miss and 20 damage in 1 hit a round later; it does just as much damage to single targets, while also minimizing wasted overkill damage on injured opponents, letting you clear the board faster (and as OG says, "dead is always better"). So yes, building for TWF Crits as your damage source rather than 'miss, miss, HIIITTTTTT, miss, miss' is quite good in practice.
I understand what you're trying to say here but you've oversimplified the comparison to the point that it's misleading. There's many possibilities you're not taking into account.
Yes, you're right that 2 attacks beat 1 attack when any hit will kill. If the enemy has 5 HP and you've got a 60% hit rate, two attacks have an 84% chance to finish them off (you'd have to miss twice to do 0 damage). But what happens when the enemy has 15 HP? Now the two attack setup has two chances to fail because you need both hits to kill. The chance to kill becomes 36%, while the single hit setup still has 60%.
Something similar happens with crits. Let's say crits double your damage to make things simple (I know they don't, but it makes the math easier.) If the enemy has 35 HP, the 20 damage setup has a 5% chance to do 40 damage and kill with a crit. The two hit setup again needs two consecutive successes to do the same thing, dropping the chances of that happening to 5% * 5% = 0.25%. To be clear, that's 1/4th of 1%.
So no, the two hit setup doesn't always have the upper hand, and you can't predict which of the two situations you'll end up in. You generally don't know the enemy's HP and even if you did, you can't control whether everyone else will hit or miss, or whether they'll roll damage high or low. Then there's the fact that opportunity attacks, Haste, and Action Surge are heavily skewed in favor of more single hit damage. Obviously the other side of that coin is that per-hit damage bonuses favor the multi-hit setup, but my point is that there's still situations where the big hit scenario clearly wins.
What about all the times your chance of scoring the kill is 0%? You keep fixating on the cases where the single hit setup misses first, but they're equally likely to hit and then miss. 20 damage now is better than half now, half later. It could mean the difference between somebody else finishing the monster this round or not killing it at all. In a group of 4+, monsters are being killed by someone else more often than they're being killed by you.
Even if you're fighting nothing but goblins, GWM's bonus attack on a kill or the DMG's optional rule for cleaving through enemies will both even the odds.
tl;dr don't worry about overkill and all the corner cases, just figure out the average damage. Higher is almost always better. Dice rolls are games of chance, all you can do is pick the strategy with the highest payoff and hope for the best.
TBF a rogue should not really be using sharpshooter IMO....one and done shots do not need a -5 to hit when you class gives you almost no way to adjudicate the hit (No archery style/Precision Die)
It's definitely a lot more situational for rogues because Sneak Attack and Sharpshooter are at odds with each other, but there's still scenarios where it can make sense. If they've got at least 2 attacks, it's possible to not take the -5/+10, hit on the first try, apply Sneak Attack, and take the gamble on the second try now that you're no longer risking your SA damage.
In extreme examples like two attacks + Elven Accuracy, even with the -5 penalty on all hits, your odds of failing 6 d20 rolls is still basically 0. In fact, it's possible to get your hit rate so high that you're actually better off not applying your Sneak Attack early because you've got a ~15% chance of scoring a crit on the next attack but only a 1-2% chance to miss. You'll cash in on the crit far more often than you fail to apply Sneak Attack.
Incidentally, in tier 1 I would either use no feat (use two weapon style, retrain at level 4 or 6 per TCoE) or polearm mastery; both substantially outperform GWM in tier 1.
Polearm Master and Crossbow Expert are definitely the better all-around options in tier 1, though it's worth pointing out GWM still performs comparably when advantage is available. People tend to value aesthetics so they may not want to use a polearm even if it's stronger.
I've already crunched the numbers on most of the 1st level Fighter builds, if you want to compare.
What InquisitiveCoder posted is very concise and accurate. Great explanations 👍
I will only add that you should be cognitive of whether your character makes wide use of your bonus action already. For example, a lot of Rangers have spells and abilities that use their bonus action. They might be better off using a longbow with Sharpshooter, and foregoing CBE.
InquisitiveCoder, but those after effects are a reality, and those are impossible to accurately quantify, because the dynamics change from game to game.
And as you pointed out, Brewksy is conveniently adding after effects damage (which is impossible to quantify accurately) of the Crusher feat to help the Champion, but conveniently ignoring those things for the BM.
It wasn't "conveniently ignored", it was purposefully ignored so you could compare Apples to Apples, and apply your decision making to decide whether the Battlemaster Techniques overcame the difference in damage per round. I literally wrote this in the post, which you "conveniently ignored".
Decimals over dozens of rounds is not relevant to player decisionmaking, and swallowed entirely by the randomness of actual dice.
How is it that people have created complex spreadsheets of DPR using decimals to compare, they're used to compare classes, you constantly see posts that calculate their class' DPR... and yet you call it irrelevant to player decision making? Also, it's not "swallowed" by the randomness of actual dice - if anything, the randomness of actual dice actually proves those decimal point differences correct.
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Again...math
Yes. 10+10=20. 20 damage over two attacks = 20 damage over two attacks. Math, very good.
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I'm going to make this way harder than it needs to be.
Many people have tried to express how wrong that approach to the math is but it seems to have fallen on deaf ears.
I hope you enjoy playing whatever build brings you joy!
There a few ways to get more crits.
1. More attacks. Also means more damage even if you don't crit.
2. Attack with advantage. Also means more damage even if you don't crit.
3. Increase the crit range through things like Improved Critical or a Hexblade curse. Only adds more damage if you roll a 19, and that will happen 5% of the time.
4. Re-rolls with things like the Lucky Feat. Also means more damage even if you don't crit.
That's all I can think of.
Adding +2 to strength turns a miss into a hit once per twenty attacks. How are you getting 35% less accurate? It's literally 5%.
This is my thought as well after seeing our Rogue warm up her Sharpshooter/Sneak attack thing and then roll a 3 to hit. As much as the BIG hit feels very cathartic, I'd rather hit with SOMETHING than put all my eggs in one basket.
I imagine some of this is situational in a game-by-game basis as well. Our DM like to have a fairly good-sized group of mooks plus a lieutenant or boss when we fight. In a game where most of the enemies are bigger/more HP, I imagine different tactics work better. There's less chance of gross overkill, more chance for GWM's ) HP proc to activate, etc.
No one fight philosophy will cover every scenario.
TBF a rogue should not really be using sharpshooter IMO....one and done shots do not need a -5 to hit when you class gives you almost no way to adjudicate the hit (No archery style/Precision Die)
Overall the Battlemaster will be better for this philosophy anyway as you can use maneuvers to control the battlefield more so than the champion can....
So regardless of philosophy (versatility vs. pure damage) Battlemaster wins out.
First, it's worth noting that you're right. Hitting less often feels worse, and nobody likes taking their turn hand having nothing happen. A swing and a miss, or the enemy makes their save against Hold Person, etc.
But what we're debating is what is objectively more effective. What Chicken compared was two things that are numerically equal, but that's a false analogy. Compare, two attacks:
A: First attack misses, second attack does 30 damage.
B: First attack does 10 damage, second attack does 10 damage.
Option B might feel better and give you more fun, and that's your choice to make. Nothing wrong with that. But the actual comparison we are discussing is even more extreme.
Let's say at level 4 you choose an ASI +2 to your strength, which gives you a +1 to your attack and damage role. Compared to: Polearm Master, which gives you double the number of attacks. PAM is more effective and it's not even close.
Correct, and also the math works out that sneak attack severely diminishes the value of the extra SS damage. You probably understand the reason, but I'll provide an extreme example that explains why.
Just suppose without the SS damage you do 1000 hit points of damage.
Without SS Damage: Normal Roll = 1000 damage
Compared to -
With SS damage: Minus 5 to hit = 1010 damage
The higher your normal base damage, the less value you get from SS or GWM +10/-5 damage adder. It may even reduce your damage output depending on some variables.
If you're fighting goblins, the reason you take GWM is for the bonus action attack, not the -5/+10. On the other hand, against orcs, -5/+10 is easily worth it, because it changes you from "kill in two hits" to "kill in one hit".
Exactly...you do not HAVE to take the -5 swing but when you can and its in your favor you go back to the first philosophy in DnD Combat: Dead is Better
Not precisely. Either way, you have an end goal of 'dead', it's just that with GWM you're taking an average of 2.5 attacks to accomplish the goal, without it you're taking an average of 3.
Which means your party is likely finishing the creature off before it gets another round...always a good thing!
Incidentally, in tier 1 I would either use no feat (use two weapon style, retrain at level 4 or 6 per TCoE) or polearm mastery; both substantially outperform GWM in tier 1.
Yup. PAM is much better there
That sounds right. Let's do the math.
What we're comparing:
2 L1 TCL Fighters with Str 16. One has a greatsword and GWM, the other has a glaive and PAM. This is on-turn DPR, so I'm not mucking about with weird OA assumptions. The target dummy is AC 13 and has infinite hit points.
Attack Bonus is +5, with a +3 damage modifier.
Yup, confirmed! You need consistent access to Advantage in Tier 1 (e.g. by being a Barbarian) for GWM to outperform PAM (or for your bonus action to be too busy to be used for DPR). For the curious:
So the same holds true for a T1 archer, although I ignored the SS bullet of ignoring half cover, which might not be valid in practice.
I agree that PAM is better for the same reason that I would rather run an archer that gets to shoot lots of things than a Fighter or Barb who gets big hits once in a while.
If you have more attacks vs fewer but heavier attacks, you can always shoot at the same target more than once. Just because you HAVE Volley from Horde Breaker doesn't mean you HAVE to use it after all.
As for the comment about SA versos SS, I agree there also that there is a diminishing return point. We were lvl 15 when we ended CoStrahd. Both of the Rogues used bows but the Assassin/Gloomstalker had Sharpshooter. The other went straight Rogue. The damage bonuses far outweighed the damage die to the point where the DM would offer to let them take the average for SA, add their Dex bonus and then ask how much it was. If it was enough to drop the target, he declared it a kill to save on dice rolling. The one with SS typically would only use it on the first round of the fight since she had a second attack that round. As an Assassin with Alert she also went first as likely as not so she had advantage.
Depends on whether you're actually gaining damage with those extra attacks or just breaking up the same amount of damage into smaller chunks.
As a simple example, there's no difference in expected damage between a 2d6 + STR greatsword attack and (1d6 + STR) + (1d6 + 0) TWF with two shortswords. Yes, you're getting twice as many chances to crit with TWF, but the additional crit damage is worth half as much. And if you added Haste into this scenario, the greatsword user wins out because they're gaining another 2d6 + STR while the TWF character only gets 1d6 + STR.
For Fighters, TWF becomes progressively weaker relative to two-handed weapons as they get more attacks due to TWF Fighting Style not scaling with your number of attacks.
I understand what you're trying to say here but you've oversimplified the comparison to the point that it's misleading. There's many possibilities you're not taking into account.
Yes, you're right that 2 attacks beat 1 attack when any hit will kill. If the enemy has 5 HP and you've got a 60% hit rate, two attacks have an 84% chance to finish them off (you'd have to miss twice to do 0 damage). But what happens when the enemy has 15 HP? Now the two attack setup has two chances to fail because you need both hits to kill. The chance to kill becomes 36%, while the single hit setup still has 60%.
Something similar happens with crits. Let's say crits double your damage to make things simple (I know they don't, but it makes the math easier.) If the enemy has 35 HP, the 20 damage setup has a 5% chance to do 40 damage and kill with a crit. The two hit setup again needs two consecutive successes to do the same thing, dropping the chances of that happening to 5% * 5% = 0.25%. To be clear, that's 1/4th of 1%.
So no, the two hit setup doesn't always have the upper hand, and you can't predict which of the two situations you'll end up in. You generally don't know the enemy's HP and even if you did, you can't control whether everyone else will hit or miss, or whether they'll roll damage high or low. Then there's the fact that opportunity attacks, Haste, and Action Surge are heavily skewed in favor of more single hit damage. Obviously the other side of that coin is that per-hit damage bonuses favor the multi-hit setup, but my point is that there's still situations where the big hit scenario clearly wins.
What about all the times your chance of scoring the kill is 0%? You keep fixating on the cases where the single hit setup misses first, but they're equally likely to hit and then miss. 20 damage now is better than half now, half later. It could mean the difference between somebody else finishing the monster this round or not killing it at all. In a group of 4+, monsters are being killed by someone else more often than they're being killed by you.
Even if you're fighting nothing but goblins, GWM's bonus attack on a kill or the DMG's optional rule for cleaving through enemies will both even the odds.
tl;dr don't worry about overkill and all the corner cases, just figure out the average damage. Higher is almost always better. Dice rolls are games of chance, all you can do is pick the strategy with the highest payoff and hope for the best.
It's definitely a lot more situational for rogues because Sneak Attack and Sharpshooter are at odds with each other, but there's still scenarios where it can make sense. If they've got at least 2 attacks, it's possible to not take the -5/+10, hit on the first try, apply Sneak Attack, and take the gamble on the second try now that you're no longer risking your SA damage.
In extreme examples like two attacks + Elven Accuracy, even with the -5 penalty on all hits, your odds of failing 6 d20 rolls is still basically 0. In fact, it's possible to get your hit rate so high that you're actually better off not applying your Sneak Attack early because you've got a ~15% chance of scoring a crit on the next attack but only a 1-2% chance to miss. You'll cash in on the crit far more often than you fail to apply Sneak Attack.
Polearm Master and Crossbow Expert are definitely the better all-around options in tier 1, though it's worth pointing out GWM still performs comparably when advantage is available. People tend to value aesthetics so they may not want to use a polearm even if it's stronger.
I've already crunched the numbers on most of the 1st level Fighter builds, if you want to compare.
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What InquisitiveCoder posted is very concise and accurate. Great explanations 👍
I will only add that you should be cognitive of whether your character makes wide use of your bonus action already. For example, a lot of Rangers have spells and abilities that use their bonus action. They might be better off using a longbow with Sharpshooter, and foregoing CBE.
It wasn't "conveniently ignored", it was purposefully ignored so you could compare Apples to Apples, and apply your decision making to decide whether the Battlemaster Techniques overcame the difference in damage per round. I literally wrote this in the post, which you "conveniently ignored".
How is it that people have created complex spreadsheets of DPR using decimals to compare, they're used to compare classes, you constantly see posts that calculate their class' DPR... and yet you call it irrelevant to player decision making? Also, it's not "swallowed" by the randomness of actual dice - if anything, the randomness of actual dice actually proves those decimal point differences correct.