Ruling on reach and multiple targets

[Quoxis]

I've been watching way too much anime these days, mainly because of links and recommendations by commenters in this forum, and i couldn't help but notice that many anime fights are showing the badassery of the fighters by making them take on groups of opponents without breaking a sweat, mostly ending half the attacker's lifes with one swing of their weapon of choice.

Not to sound like a weeb now, this is a common trope for many movies, comics and games of the western world, maybe not as over-the-top, but still.

Now of course i thought how one would implement that in a DnD character; AoE spells aside most attacks, magic or martial, are single target ones. I know, there are twinned spell metamagic and other tricks for the magic aspect, but i want to focus on weapons now.

The usual way of hitting multiple attacks is using multiple attack actions, simple as that, but you burn your actions by doing so.

I mainly want to ask if the following would work:

Picture a lvl 6 character, 3 levels both in the fighter and the ranger class, subclasses battle master and hunter.

Battle master grants the "sweeping attack" maneuver (basically: while attacking, if there's another opponent within reach and within 5ft of the original attack's target, roll the sup. die and if the original attack could've hit the new target, it takes damage equal to the die's roll) with which you can attack another target without using a (bonus-) action.

Hunter grants the "horde breaker" feature (once per turn, when you make a weapon attack, you can make another attack against another target within reach and within 5ft of the original target), which doesn't use a (bonus) action either.

1) So if you're swarmed by two or three enemies, you can potentially hit all of them at least once per attack action, at least according to my theory. With multiple attack actions, you could use the horde breaker feature just for one of them, but you could still attack 5 times (on at least 2 targets and with varying damage) with two attack actions. Is that correct?

2) The same should apply to opportunity attacks (enemy running away, entering your reach if you got the polearm master feat etc.)

3) Using a reach weapon (+5ft reach) like a glaive, you should be able to also hit enemies hiding behind others as i read it. Am i right?

So that way, if you were to build such a character, give them a reach weapon and the polearm master feat, you have a guy that hits and hits and hits, like a monk's flurry of blows but with a weapon and without using a bonus action.

It doesn't seem op, but in the right situation (obviously horde battles) i think it would be viable.

Sorry if i'm asking obvious questions, if this is a totally obvious and common build etc., but i couldn't find anything about it. Thanks in advance!

[Malifice]

Or you could just go a PAM Ranger 6 and make 4 attacks each round with hoard breaker, factoring in your bonus action and extra attack.

Plus another attack as a reaction when dudes enter your reach for a total of 5 each turn.

With Hunters mark applied to the damage.

Does the same thing, just better, quicker and more elegantly.

[Leith]

Yeah... a battle master at 6 can nova off his superiority dice and action surge combined w/ second weapon or GWM and attack 5 times in one turn hitting a potential 9 separate targets.

[Quoxis]

I take that as a "yes, all of it works".


Or you could just go a PAM Ranger 6 and make 4 attacks each round with hoard breaker, factoring in your bonus action and extra attack.
[...]
Does the same thing, just better, quicker and more elegantly.

The idea was to get as many weapon attacks as possible, ideally on many targets around you. With your idea you can attack twice via attack action + horde breaker, once via extra attack once via polearm master bonus attack, correct?
I see your 4 hits (3d10+1d4) and raise you 10 of them (5d10+4d8*+1d4):

Attack action + horde breaker + sweeping attack,
(at higher levels: extra attack + sweeping attack,)
Second attack action (from action surge) + sweeping attack,
(at higher levels: Second extra attack (from action surge) + sweeping attack if fighter lvl7)
bonus action polearm attack +sweeping attack

It eats up all of your initial superiority dice, but you can potentially deal a good amount of damage to two or a lesser one to more opponents in one turn.
Average damage with hordebreaker hunter alone: 3d10+1d4=18+2=20
Average damage with my speculatory build: 4d10+4d8+1d4=30+20+2=52**

If you factor in hunter's mark, hitting more often is also a considerable bonus.

I hope i calculated this correctly...

*d10 at 10th level
** NOVA, available once per long rest

[Quoxis]

Yeah... a battle master at 6 can nova off his superiority dice and action surge combined w/ second weapon or GWM and attack 5 times in one turn hitting a potential 9 separate targets.

Dang, totally forgot about action surge. Shame on me.
Edited it.

[Theodoxus]

I take that as a "yes, all of it works".



The idea was to get as many weapon attacks as possible, ideally on many targets around you. With your idea you can attack twice via attack action + horde breaker, once via extra attack once via polearm master bonus attack, correct?
I see your 4 hits (3d10+1d4) and raise you 10 of them (5d10+4d8*+1d4):

Attack action + horde breaker + sweeping attack,
extra attack + sweeping attack,
Second attack action (from action surge) + sweeping attack,
Second extra attack (from action surge) + sweeping attack
bonus action polearm attack (+sweeping attack if you get to fighter lvl 7)

It eats up all of your initial superiority dice, but you can potentially deal a good amount of damage to two or a lesser one to more opponents in one turn.
Average damage with hordebreaker hunter alone: 3d10+1d4=18+2=20
Average damage with my speculatory build: 4d10+4d8+1d4=30+20+2=52**

If you factor in hunter's mark, hitting more often is also a considerable bonus.

I hope i calculated this correctly...

*d10 at 10th level
** NOVA, available once per long rest

3/3 Fighter/Ranger doesn't have extra attack. You're looking at an 8th character min, and at that level, it's kinda meh.

[Quoxis]

3/3 Fighter/Ranger doesn't have extra attack. You're looking at an 8th character min, and at that level, it's kinda meh.

Thaaaat is right. I'll edit it.

Edit: Edited it.

How does the 8th level pure ranger increase their damage though?

If you go 3 fighter + 5 ranger, you have one 3rd level spell slot fewer and know one spell less than the pure ranger, you're one ASI/feat behind, and you lose some features like land's stride. Weapon damage wise meanwhile you're far ahead, as that doesn't really change after the extra attack, or am i forgetting something? (this is all speculation, i've never played beyond a 5th-level character ^^")

[Theodoxus]

Well, I was meaning more in general, there are better ways to get PBAOE damage by 8th level than that. However, your plan does look like fun, even if it's nova and rest dependent.

Also, it appeared up thread that Hunter's Mark would affect everyone you hit, increasing the AOE damage - but that's not true either. HM only affects the target at it is on, and lasts until disrupted or the target dies (or I guess the duration runs out, but I've never experienced that).

[Vogonjeltz]

Right... And if you miss by one you have 100% chance of success.

Yes, I mentioned that for the average value to be higher it requires the miss to be by no more than 4 points. You could wait until there was a miss by 1 point, but that's less likely than a critical hit, so you might end up not expending all your dice, which would be a significant drop in total output.

As the rate of near-misses is equivalent to the rate of critical hits, the damage is actually spaced out substantially (42 rounds), and since there's still the possibility of missing if the miss is by 2+ points, the actual value is decreased from a full hit, i.e. there's a 25% chance if you're down 3 that the roll will result in 0 damage, so the total is .75 of an attack, if the miss is by 2 it's .875 of an attack and if the miss is by 1 its 1 attack. If it's down by 4 that's half an attack. If the attack is 2d6+3 that nets: 11.3333 for an attack it's netting 8.854153125 on average.

This is worse than using that same die for Riposte if the Fighter would normally hit 6 times and crit 1 time (i.e. targeting AC 13 after subtracting any to hit bonuses. If the target is normally any easier to hit than that, it's, relatively speaking, less worthwhile to spend the die on Precision attack than it is to save it for Riposte. The lower the AC the less valuable it is to expend a die trying to turn a miss into a hit instead of saving it for just another attempt.

Battlemaster might not end up using their dice at all if they're waiting 7 rounds for optimal conditions, and then that removes their one real advantage, choosing when to use the dice.

[Malifice]

I take that as a "yes, all of it works".



The idea was to get as many weapon attacks as possible, ideally on many targets around you. With your idea you can attack twice via attack action + horde breaker, once via extra attack once via polearm master bonus attack, correct?
I see your 4 hits (3d10+1d4) and raise you 10 of them (5d10+4d8*+1d4):

Attack action + horde breaker + sweeping attack,
(at higher levels: extra attack + sweeping attack,)
Second attack action (from action surge) + sweeping attack,
(at higher levels: Second extra attack (from action surge) + sweeping attack if fighter lvl7)
bonus action polearm attack +sweeping attack

It eats up all of your initial superiority dice, but you can potentially deal a good amount of damage to two or a lesser one to more opponents in one turn.
Average damage with hordebreaker hunter alone: 3d10+1d4=18+2=20
Average damage with my speculatory build: 4d10+4d8+1d4=30+20+2=52**

If you factor in hunter's mark, hitting more often is also a considerable bonus.

I hope i calculated this correctly...

*d10 at 10th level
** NOVA, available once per long rest

The build concept was 6th level. I was simply saying that you can consistently get more attacks per round via a simple single class Ranger.

[Tanarii]

Not to edition war, but I feel like 4e might better represent the ideal an anime or wuxia martial warrior.

Also the Whirlwind Ranger (Hunter) class feature might be what you're looking for.

[Quoxis]

Not to edition war, but I feel like 4e might better represent the ideal an anime or wuxia martial warrior.

Also the Whirlwind Ranger (Hunter) class feature might be what you're looking for.

Let me guess... UA? I never looked into those, most dm's i had only allow phb (+scag and ee).

[Quoxis]

Well, I was meaning more in general, there are better ways to get PBAOE damage by 8th level than that. However, your plan does look like fun, even if it's nova and rest dependent.

Also, it appeared up thread that Hunter's Mark would affect everyone you hit, increasing the AOE damage - but that's not true either. HM only affects the target at it is on, and lasts until disrupted or the target dies (or I guess the duration runs out, but I've never experienced that).

Hunter's mark does indeed only affect one target, but by 8th level you're hitting that one target up to 6 times per round for an additional 6d6 damage, and if it dies before you've delivered all your attacks you can trade your bonus action to switch the mark to the second guy you've hit so far. Especially useful against 3 enemies standing close to each other.

Also, what are the better ways of AOE damage? I'm here to learn :^D

Ps.: this build is not meant to be optimized or able to take on an optimized character. I just thought about how many weapon attack hits on different targets you could score in theory without magical help.

[RickAllison]

Let me guess... UA? I never looked into those, most dm's i had only allow phb (+scag and ee).

Basic PHB (though it was part of the Revised Ranger UA, as all of the PHB ranger stuff was). Whirlwind Attack is a level 11 ability for the Hunter subclass that allows for a single sweeping melee attack that hits everyone around the user. And it has been clarified that yes, the attack is uniquely a single attack that hits multiple creatures and has multiple attack rolls.