Who says champs and barbs don't need to be good at math? Or that they have to take GWM or magic to do tons of damage?
Start with a half-orc and 9 lvls of barb (berserker). Add 4 lvls of champ with Great Weapon Fighter style. Yes it's a high level build but it's a smooth ride all the way there. Take Orcish Fury, Savage Attacker, and Piercer in whatever order you want. You now have an 18 str, 16 dex and con. If you frenzy recklessly with a lance, you're looking at 3 attacks per round doing 3d12+21, with advantage. With the champ crit range, your chance of getting a crit each round is 3/5. If you do you're looking at an additional 1d12 savage attacker (half orc) 1d12 piercer 1d12 brutal crit (barb) and you should throw in your one time 1d12 from orcish fury which now becomes 2d12. You get to reroll all 1s and 2s (heavy weapon mastery). You get to reroll the whole crit if the average is less than 6.5 per die (savage attacker feat).
To get this next part of the math I took values of 1 2 3 4 all the way up to 12, replaced the 1s and 2s (gwf), or everything up to 6 (sa), with a 6.5, then added them up and divided by 12 to get the new averages:
3x6.5+21 + 0.83x3 (great weapon fighting) +1.5 (piercer) +1.5 (savage attacker) + 0.6 crit chance x (5x6.5 + 1.5x4 (savage atkr -1 time because factored in earlier) +0.83x5 (gwf) ) = 72.67 dpr, until he uses up his orcish fury die on a crit, then he drops to 67.37 dpr. Without frenzy I guess cut all that stuff by 1/3. Oh and I forgot the piercer reroll so add another 1.5 dpr I think. It's all very fuzzy math but it gives you some idea of the power the dice hold. By comparison, a similar GWM build would be around 70.5 dpr (more depending on the extras).
Here's the FUN part: the gwm build is working with a -5 to hit. GWM can definitely do more damage against low AC enemies with the right build. But the higher the AC of the enemy the farther our half-orc pulls ahead. In fact at infinity AC where we only hit with a 20 it becomes 13.2 dpr not counting orcish fury vs 9 for the GWM. Now, monsters don't generally have super high ACs, except dragons of course. But humans in plate mail do. Pretty appropriate build for an orc, no?
Yes the GWM build could have a full 20 str, all kinds of extras to pump it up. My point is simply this: the other feats actually do balance it out pretty well if you stack them right. It's just hard to see the math for all those rerolls. And make no mistake: they might be boring for the other players to watch, like when you watch the mage messing with all their dice, but much like the mage it's not boring to play because it's COMPLICATED. Be sure to remember to describe the gory crit as you one-shot enemies!
...oh and I forgot, a lance is great for riding your polymorphed friend into battle.
Its not unplayable to use other feats, but the math will still favor GWM builds here.
But crit fishing builds are notoriously unimpressive once you run the numbers. There are two reasons for this:
First, GWM + PAM is considered so much stronger than any other martial build is because of its consistency. The minus 5 to hit is entirely mitigated by all the means of generating advantage in the game, magic weapons, buffs from bards/clerics, etc.
Second, AC among published monsters basically taps out at 20, which is actually not that high in the later levels when you have a plus 11 to hit or more and advantage. Increased Crit range doesn't increase the odds of landing a hit, cause anyone will hit on a roll of 19 or 18, even a wizard with a dagger.
It comes down to how bounded accuracy works in the game. Its a limitation on game design that I hope gets addressed in one dnd, but it looks like the answer they've chosen is just to nerf GWM rather than a more creative solution, like making other fighting styles better. But we'll see what comes with the martial play test.
Yeah I think they handled bounded accuracy wrong by not upping AC's of baddies at the upper levels... the PCs are still getting their stats to 20, their prof bonus is going up, and they're finding magic weapons. So no bounds there. On the other hand you have interesting bosses like liches ac17, beholders ac18, dragons ac19+... and if your DM has a villain with magic and didn't give them Shield they're not even trying. Then there's big bad demons and devils and, well all the stuff nobody ever gets around to in their campaign. Yes a fighter with GWM and someone else to cast faerie fire or something to give him advantage is probably still better. On the other hand getting anything with legendary saves to fail against faerie fire is a pretty big ask. OR you could let your barb go reckless and just focus on buffing and healing them. Hey look no saves involved, and the lvl 6 berserker is immune to fear and charm while raging so there goes the DM's main tool for messing up the tank character.
I mean, there are saving throw proof buffs to hitting too, like Bless and Bardic inspiration, Silvery Barbs and all the other subclass advantage handout abilities.
Lol I haven't seen a table actually allow an unnerfed silvery barbs but mebbe that's just me... and yeah Bless is great for everybody including this char. I also forgot to mention if you take dual wielder instead of piercer, and dual weapon style, this build lets you take TWO weird powerful magic weapons you found with weird crit powers and fish with them. High level one shots are tons of fun for this kind of char. Also I'm not advocating attacking a king and his roomful of plate and shield guards... but this orc is perfectly designed to do it. Anyway, the point is not that crit fishing and dice rerolling is better than GWM, simply that it's ALMOST as good so if you want to look cool by not using GWM, you totally can.
Really creative and effective way to explore class features and crits.
The problem is that a similar build as Fighter 11 (Battlemaster) / Barbarian 2 with STR 20, PAM and GWM would have a superior DPR mainly because you doubled down resources to mitigate the -5 with Reckless Attack and just need to use Precision Strike when it’s needed.
Hey thanks man! One problem I've noticed with GWM PAM builds that seldom comes up is unless the weird magic weapon you found is a pike or halberd, your fighter doesn't want to USE it.
Hey thanks man! One problem I've noticed with GWM PAM builds that seldom comes up is unless the weird magic weapon you found is a pike or halberd, your fighter doesn't want to USE it.
All the more weapon choice for the rest of the party then.
Hey thanks man! One problem I've noticed with GWM PAM builds that seldom comes up is unless the weird magic weapon you found is a pike or halberd, your fighter doesn't want to USE it.
Don't you love how all he campaigns and all the fights are always out in wide open areas with no obstacles or cover, and the enemies are always bunched together for this to work too?
Hey thanks man! One problem I've noticed with GWM PAM builds that seldom comes up is unless the weird magic weapon you found is a pike or halberd, your fighter doesn't want to USE it.
This is usually because very few magic longswords give you more benefit than a silvered pike with GWM and PAM, which is a testament to how strong those feats are.
Heheh... my dms have been loving their VTTs so we're usually boxed into elaborate maps. A couple weeks ago one tried putting us in an arena and we just sat in our corner and shot everything down. What made me think of crit fishing in the first place was we played through White Plume Mountain a year ago as a one shot, it is in Tales From the Yawning Portal, and our buddy made a minotaur barb just for fun that wasn't GWM based. We were amazed to discover that adventure contains a trident named Wave, a war hammer named Whelm, and a sword named Blackrazor, ALL of which are better than gwm pam especiallly Blackrazor. There are no magic polearms in the module :D
...the trident: You gain a +3 bonus to attack and damage rolls made with this magic weapon. If you score a critical hit with it, the target takes extra necrotic damage equal to half its hit point maximum.
1) Your OP mentions frenzying recklessly with a lance. I'm hoping that this is a typo for several reasons A) Fighting with a lance means you're at Disadvantage when the target is within 5'. You don't REALLY expect all of your targets to remain at a distance for your sake, do you? B) A lance requires two hands if you're not mounted (not really a problem because great weapons and polearms do too). I'm just clarifying that the number of times you're going to be fighting from a mount will not be as high as you might think.
2) Frenzy inflict the Exhausted condition on you which means Disadvantage on skill checks after the first combat, half speed after the second, and so on. One of the reasons Berzerker is the least-popular Barb subclass is because you need a magic item or a friend with Greater Restoration hanging around to keep you from being useless after the first fight of the day.
Just want to underscore the point made here about bounded accuracy. They stuck to it when designing monsters, but not so much when designing PC progression. So when you graph out average damage while factoring in hit chance with GWM, at high levels you get to the point where your hit rate - and thus your damage - is still very high even with the -5. At these levels you are most limited by your damage ceiling, which GWM increases consistently and significantly in a way that nothing else does.
I’m not so sure it’s even just a late level thing. Since enemies have lower AC at earlier CRs and parties still have ways of giving advantage or buffing to hit chances, the -5 to hit never creates much real difficulty at any level.
It's true, they will totally walk up to you and get within 5' if you use a lance, also using both hands non mounted is kind of a bonus otherwise GWF style doesn't work;) However when that happens you have a few options: 1. hit somebody who is still 10' away, 2. back up and provoke an opportunity attack which probly won't hurt much if you're raging, 3. drop the lance and switch to your trusty backup pike for 1d10 or just use the pike going in if there's not much room (why does a pike work fine in confined spaces? don't ask just take it), or whatever weird magic weapon you found, 4. use an attack to shove them back 5' or prone them then back up and eat a disadv opportunity attack then hit em w adv (no need to use reckless that round), 5. go in with two shortswords so your bonus action gets some love if you're not going to frenzy in that fight anyway.
As to the exhaustion downside of frenzy, yes, you would want to rage normally in a non frenzy manner until the big fight right before you rest. Like how the mage has to save their best spells for the big fight. Or in a pinch do it twice and just accept you won't be shoving anybody. This build is not a beginner fighter, it requires a lot of watching the dice, understanding math, switching weapons, and using different tactics. If you forget to constantly use your rerolls you lose half your power. Even then, you are deliberately sacrificing some gwm damage you could use to squish weak mobs. All you get in exchange is the ability to walk up to bosses and completely wipe the floor with em with the most powerful weapon the party has found constantly setting off its special crit ability, while the gwm is reduced to using normal attacks just to hit them (but hey that pam attack still helps a little). Personally I find it more fun.
As to people saying high ACs don't come up at any level... I guess you don't fight dragons, greater demons, avatars of gods, or humans who wear plate mail. My gwm char had trouble with all those things.
As to people saying high ACs don't come up at any level... I guess you don't fight dragons, greater demons, avatars of gods, or humans who wear plate mail. My gwm char had trouble with all those things.
At early levels? Maybe a knight in plate mail, but the other 3 aren't low level opponents. And a knight is even a cr 3 enemy, so no one is fighting him with any tricked out build.
I agree generic npcs are suspiciously underequipped compared to previous editions, but splint mail and a shield will run you 210 gold for an ac 19. I don't know what idiot decided town guards wouldn't wear that as it perfectly nerfs gwm happy murder hobos (they're using their free hand to prone em while their buddy grapples em, then drag em off to the gaol, the longsword stays in the scabbard as long as you're nice).
If the DM needs to homebrew higher AC enemies for an encounter to challenge the build, then the build is noticeably stronger than the base game design really accounts for.
Or maybe both gwm and crit fishing are well balanced to mop up mooks vs squish big bads, but then somebody flubbed the design of town guards and thugs (srsly why not wear ring or chain mail for same AC 20 gp cheaper or 2 higher AC for 10 gp more?)... and now everybody thinks gwm and crit fishing are the broken pieces. I find it absurd that npcs wouldn't make the same intelligent choices with their armor as pcs. It feels like a sop to murder hobos with bad stats which is an unforgiveable combination and if you do it you are asking for your pc to die. Fortunately, npc villains seem to have no such qualms and almost always have high ACs. I like my fighters to be able to take them on instead of bodyguarding the mage and rogue while they do it. ...however I have been playing a lot of spelljammer lately maybe I've just been seeing a higher baseline AC what with the thrikreen and well equipped npcs everywhere.
No one thinks crit fishing is broken, its numerically worse than just being a basic battlemaster fighter.
And even this discussion of higher AC doesn't amount to much. With all the ways to increase hit chance available, high AC isn't much more frustrating for a GWM user as opposed to anyone else. I don't even get why pretending town guards are the most common enemy with armor makes any sense.
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Who says champs and barbs don't need to be good at math? Or that they have to take GWM or magic to do tons of damage?
Start with a half-orc and 9 lvls of barb (berserker). Add 4 lvls of champ with Great Weapon Fighter style. Yes it's a high level build but it's a smooth ride all the way there. Take Orcish Fury, Savage Attacker, and Piercer in whatever order you want. You now have an 18 str, 16 dex and con. If you frenzy recklessly with a lance, you're looking at 3 attacks per round doing 3d12+21, with advantage. With the champ crit range, your chance of getting a crit each round is 3/5. If you do you're looking at an additional 1d12 savage attacker (half orc) 1d12 piercer 1d12 brutal crit (barb) and you should throw in your one time 1d12 from orcish fury which now becomes 2d12. You get to reroll all 1s and 2s (heavy weapon mastery). You get to reroll the whole crit if the average is less than 6.5 per die (savage attacker feat).
To get this next part of the math I took values of 1 2 3 4 all the way up to 12, replaced the 1s and 2s (gwf), or everything up to 6 (sa), with a 6.5, then added them up and divided by 12 to get the new averages:
3x6.5+21 + 0.83x3 (great weapon fighting) +1.5 (piercer) +1.5 (savage attacker) + 0.6 crit chance x (5x6.5 + 1.5x4 (savage atkr -1 time because factored in earlier) +0.83x5 (gwf) ) = 72.67 dpr, until he uses up his orcish fury die on a crit, then he drops to 67.37 dpr. Without frenzy I guess cut all that stuff by 1/3. Oh and I forgot the piercer reroll so add another 1.5 dpr I think. It's all very fuzzy math but it gives you some idea of the power the dice hold. By comparison, a similar GWM build would be around 70.5 dpr (more depending on the extras).
Here's the FUN part: the gwm build is working with a -5 to hit. GWM can definitely do more damage against low AC enemies with the right build. But the higher the AC of the enemy the farther our half-orc pulls ahead. In fact at infinity AC where we only hit with a 20 it becomes 13.2 dpr not counting orcish fury vs 9 for the GWM. Now, monsters don't generally have super high ACs, except dragons of course. But humans in plate mail do. Pretty appropriate build for an orc, no?
Yes the GWM build could have a full 20 str, all kinds of extras to pump it up. My point is simply this: the other feats actually do balance it out pretty well if you stack them right. It's just hard to see the math for all those rerolls. And make no mistake: they might be boring for the other players to watch, like when you watch the mage messing with all their dice, but much like the mage it's not boring to play because it's COMPLICATED. Be sure to remember to describe the gory crit as you one-shot enemies!
...oh and I forgot, a lance is great for riding your polymorphed friend into battle.
Its not unplayable to use other feats, but the math will still favor GWM builds here.
But crit fishing builds are notoriously unimpressive once you run the numbers. There are two reasons for this:
First, GWM + PAM is considered so much stronger than any other martial build is because of its consistency. The minus 5 to hit is entirely mitigated by all the means of generating advantage in the game, magic weapons, buffs from bards/clerics, etc.
Second, AC among published monsters basically taps out at 20, which is actually not that high in the later levels when you have a plus 11 to hit or more and advantage. Increased Crit range doesn't increase the odds of landing a hit, cause anyone will hit on a roll of 19 or 18, even a wizard with a dagger.
It comes down to how bounded accuracy works in the game. Its a limitation on game design that I hope gets addressed in one dnd, but it looks like the answer they've chosen is just to nerf GWM rather than a more creative solution, like making other fighting styles better. But we'll see what comes with the martial play test.
Yeah I think they handled bounded accuracy wrong by not upping AC's of baddies at the upper levels... the PCs are still getting their stats to 20, their prof bonus is going up, and they're finding magic weapons. So no bounds there. On the other hand you have interesting bosses like liches ac17, beholders ac18, dragons ac19+... and if your DM has a villain with magic and didn't give them Shield they're not even trying. Then there's big bad demons and devils and, well all the stuff nobody ever gets around to in their campaign. Yes a fighter with GWM and someone else to cast faerie fire or something to give him advantage is probably still better. On the other hand getting anything with legendary saves to fail against faerie fire is a pretty big ask. OR you could let your barb go reckless and just focus on buffing and healing them. Hey look no saves involved, and the lvl 6 berserker is immune to fear and charm while raging so there goes the DM's main tool for messing up the tank character.
I mean, there are saving throw proof buffs to hitting too, like Bless and Bardic inspiration, Silvery Barbs and all the other subclass advantage handout abilities.
Lol I haven't seen a table actually allow an unnerfed silvery barbs but mebbe that's just me... and yeah Bless is great for everybody including this char. I also forgot to mention if you take dual wielder instead of piercer, and dual weapon style, this build lets you take TWO weird powerful magic weapons you found with weird crit powers and fish with them. High level one shots are tons of fun for this kind of char. Also I'm not advocating attacking a king and his roomful of plate and shield guards... but this orc is perfectly designed to do it. Anyway, the point is not that crit fishing and dice rerolling is better than GWM, simply that it's ALMOST as good so if you want to look cool by not using GWM, you totally can.
Really creative and effective way to explore class features and crits.
The problem is that a similar build as Fighter 11 (Battlemaster) / Barbarian 2 with STR 20, PAM and GWM would have a superior DPR mainly because you doubled down resources to mitigate the -5 with Reckless Attack and just need to use Precision Strike when it’s needed.
Hey thanks man! One problem I've noticed with GWM PAM builds that seldom comes up is unless the weird magic weapon you found is a pike or halberd, your fighter doesn't want to USE it.
All the more weapon choice for the rest of the party then.
Don't you love how all he campaigns and all the fights are always out in wide open areas with no obstacles or cover, and the enemies are always bunched together for this to work too?
Blank
This is usually because very few magic longswords give you more benefit than a silvered pike with GWM and PAM, which is a testament to how strong those feats are.
Heheh... my dms have been loving their VTTs so we're usually boxed into elaborate maps. A couple weeks ago one tried putting us in an arena and we just sat in our corner and shot everything down. What made me think of crit fishing in the first place was we played through White Plume Mountain a year ago as a one shot, it is in Tales From the Yawning Portal, and our buddy made a minotaur barb just for fun that wasn't GWM based. We were amazed to discover that adventure contains a trident named Wave, a war hammer named Whelm, and a sword named Blackrazor, ALL of which are better than gwm pam especiallly Blackrazor. There are no magic polearms in the module :D
...the trident: You gain a +3 bonus to attack and damage rolls made with this magic weapon. If you score a critical hit with it, the target takes extra necrotic damage equal to half its hit point maximum.
A few points I want to make:
1) Your OP mentions frenzying recklessly with a lance. I'm hoping that this is a typo for several reasons A) Fighting with a lance means you're at Disadvantage when the target is within 5'. You don't REALLY expect all of your targets to remain at a distance for your sake, do you? B) A lance requires two hands if you're not mounted (not really a problem because great weapons and polearms do too). I'm just clarifying that the number of times you're going to be fighting from a mount will not be as high as you might think.
2) Frenzy inflict the Exhausted condition on you which means Disadvantage on skill checks after the first combat, half speed after the second, and so on. One of the reasons Berzerker is the least-popular Barb subclass is because you need a magic item or a friend with Greater Restoration hanging around to keep you from being useless after the first fight of the day.
Just want to underscore the point made here about bounded accuracy. They stuck to it when designing monsters, but not so much when designing PC progression. So when you graph out average damage while factoring in hit chance with GWM, at high levels you get to the point where your hit rate - and thus your damage - is still very high even with the -5. At these levels you are most limited by your damage ceiling, which GWM increases consistently and significantly in a way that nothing else does.
My homebrew subclasses (full list here)
(Artificer) Swordmage | Glasswright | (Barbarian) Path of the Savage Embrace
(Bard) College of Dance | (Fighter) Warlord | Cannoneer
(Monk) Way of the Elements | (Ranger) Blade Dancer
(Rogue) DaggerMaster | Inquisitor | (Sorcerer) Riftwalker | Spellfist
(Warlock) The Swarm
I’m not so sure it’s even just a late level thing. Since enemies have lower AC at earlier CRs and parties still have ways of giving advantage or buffing to hit chances, the -5 to hit never creates much real difficulty at any level.
It's true, they will totally walk up to you and get within 5' if you use a lance, also using both hands non mounted is kind of a bonus otherwise GWF style doesn't work;) However when that happens you have a few options: 1. hit somebody who is still 10' away, 2. back up and provoke an opportunity attack which probly won't hurt much if you're raging, 3. drop the lance and switch to your trusty backup pike for 1d10 or just use the pike going in if there's not much room (why does a pike work fine in confined spaces? don't ask just take it), or whatever weird magic weapon you found, 4. use an attack to shove them back 5' or prone them then back up and eat a disadv opportunity attack then hit em w adv (no need to use reckless that round), 5. go in with two shortswords so your bonus action gets some love if you're not going to frenzy in that fight anyway.
As to the exhaustion downside of frenzy, yes, you would want to rage normally in a non frenzy manner until the big fight right before you rest. Like how the mage has to save their best spells for the big fight. Or in a pinch do it twice and just accept you won't be shoving anybody. This build is not a beginner fighter, it requires a lot of watching the dice, understanding math, switching weapons, and using different tactics. If you forget to constantly use your rerolls you lose half your power. Even then, you are deliberately sacrificing some gwm damage you could use to squish weak mobs. All you get in exchange is the ability to walk up to bosses and completely wipe the floor with em with the most powerful weapon the party has found constantly setting off its special crit ability, while the gwm is reduced to using normal attacks just to hit them (but hey that pam attack still helps a little). Personally I find it more fun.
As to people saying high ACs don't come up at any level... I guess you don't fight dragons, greater demons, avatars of gods, or humans who wear plate mail. My gwm char had trouble with all those things.
At early levels? Maybe a knight in plate mail, but the other 3 aren't low level opponents. And a knight is even a cr 3 enemy, so no one is fighting him with any tricked out build.
I agree generic npcs are suspiciously underequipped compared to previous editions, but splint mail and a shield will run you 210 gold for an ac 19. I don't know what idiot decided town guards wouldn't wear that as it perfectly nerfs gwm happy murder hobos (they're using their free hand to prone em while their buddy grapples em, then drag em off to the gaol, the longsword stays in the scabbard as long as you're nice).
If the DM needs to homebrew higher AC enemies for an encounter to challenge the build, then the build is noticeably stronger than the base game design really accounts for.
Or maybe both gwm and crit fishing are well balanced to mop up mooks vs squish big bads, but then somebody flubbed the design of town guards and thugs (srsly why not wear ring or chain mail for same AC 20 gp cheaper or 2 higher AC for 10 gp more?)... and now everybody thinks gwm and crit fishing are the broken pieces. I find it absurd that npcs wouldn't make the same intelligent choices with their armor as pcs. It feels like a sop to murder hobos with bad stats which is an unforgiveable combination and if you do it you are asking for your pc to die. Fortunately, npc villains seem to have no such qualms and almost always have high ACs. I like my fighters to be able to take them on instead of bodyguarding the mage and rogue while they do it.
...however I have been playing a lot of spelljammer lately maybe I've just been seeing a higher baseline AC what with the thrikreen and well equipped npcs everywhere.
No one thinks crit fishing is broken, its numerically worse than just being a basic battlemaster fighter.
And even this discussion of higher AC doesn't amount to much. With all the ways to increase hit chance available, high AC isn't much more frustrating for a GWM user as opposed to anyone else. I don't even get why pretending town guards are the most common enemy with armor makes any sense.