Compare Crossbow Expert Sharpshooter vs. Defensive Duelist in a cage match

[MaxWilson]

Let's both of us make 12th level fighters using PHB rules and put them in a 10'-wide Forcecage with your choice of an Earth Elemental (Medium fight) or a Death Slaad (1.5xDeadly). You make a crossbow archer. I'll make a melee fighter. Dollars to donuts you take more damage killing the Slaad than I do.

Edit: okay, make that a 20' Forcecage so that the Earth Elemental can actually fit inside with the fighter. :-)

Response:


Lol, sure.

Make them both champions (to remove spell or maneuver choice from affecting the outcome). Give the melee fighter Great Weapon Master and Polearm Master to maximize his damage. Give the archer Crossbow Expert and Sharpshooter. Give them both +1 weapons and full plate. And run a simulation of the outcome of the combatants trading blows back and forth in the most boring of duels ever 1000 times.

I'm fairly certain the crossbow archer wins out simply because they have about 10% higher DPR, but I would love to see your analysis of the situation.

[I]I didn't agree to Ashkelon's proposed GWM/PM build because I didn't think it was a good build, but I did make my own build and code up a simulation in F#. Here is what I wrote:

I haven't finished writing the Death Slaad, because it's more complicated to simulate the various spells, etc., and I haven't coded Action Surge, but aside from that here's the result against an earth elemental:

https://repl.it/EyQy/0

It takes quite a while to run 100 combats in the online emulator (just hit the Run button) so you might want to decrease the number of runs (on line 281 of the script) before running it, but here's a typical output when run against an earth elemental:

Rufus the Archer wins 100 out of 100 matches, with 81.120000 HP remaining (65.419355% of total)
Brutus the Tank wins 100 out of 100 matches, with 107.400000 HP remaining (86.612903% of total)


Details of the combats are in the source code and combat logs, but basically what happens is that Brutus the Tank grabs the elemental with one hand and slams it to the ground on his first turn and then beats it to death with his magic rapier at advantage while it futilely tries to attack him back at disadvantage--and half the time, when it does hit him, he parries it with Defensive Duelist. Rufus the Archer just does the boring "shoot it every round" strategy.

Both of them can take on a single earth elemental (Medium Fight) but obviously Brutus is about twice as good at it.

It's simple to model a spell-less Death Slaad (still a Deadly encounter), and if I comment out the Fireball/Cloudkill/etc. options so it only has Multiattack and run:

compare deathScuzz [shooter; stabber]

I then get the following output:

Rufus the Archer wins 14 out of 100 matches, with 4.180000 HP remaining (3.370968% of total)
Brutus the Tank wins 93 out of 100 matches, with 45.020000 HP remaining (36.306452% of total)


As you can see, Brutus is almost guaranteed to be able to defeat a CR 10 Death Slaad in a close-quarters cage match (although it is a tough fight), but Rufus is almost guaranteed to lose the fight without Action Surge (which I haven't coded yet).

If you would like to make any tweaks to Rufus the Archer's build or tactical AI, just let me know. I want you to have the chance to run your archer as effectively as possible.

Read more: http://www.enworld.org/forum/showthread.php?513171-Crossbow-Expert-Sharpshooter-vs-Defensive-Duelist-in-a-cage-match#ixzz4UHSVaRn0

[Gignere]

I don't even know if this is useful first off in most real game situations closing in and grappling might not even be realistic in the first round, very few fights are in a 20 feet white room. The archer will almost always be able to hit and maneuver to avoid damage for a round or two. Because unless the monster has good range ability it will try to close to melee.

Also against any creature bigger than large your strategy wouldn't even work, can't grapple or shove a creature that big. Yes you have more survivability in a one on one scenario but in a party you won't be the only one being targeted so having DPR can help the squishies survive or take less hit. Not saying DPR is the be all and end all, like your simulation shows there are situations that being tankier can be better but there are just as many situations like shooting behind a leomund's hut that having good range DPR is phenomenal as well.

Basically i think both builds are useful but you are comparing apples and oranges since they satisfy different roles.

[MaxWilson]

Full Disclosure: the original results referred to above had a serious bug which gave everyone (including the monsters) the benefit of Defensive Duelist, which was disproportionately hard on Rufus because he didn't have advantage.

Correcting the bug (https://repl.it/EyQy/8), fixing Second Wind to not go off until you're below 80% health, and adding Action Surge support yields much better results for Brutus and especially for Rufus. Rufus has almost even odds of living through the fight now.

Rufus the Archer wins 100 out of 100 matches against Gronk the Earthling, with 103.480000 HP remaining (83.451613% of total)
Brutus the Tank wins 100 out of 100 matches against Gronk the Earthling, with 114.440000 HP remaining (92.290323% of total)
D'Artagnan the Swashbuckler wins 100 out of 100 matches against Gronk the Earthling, with 107.340000 HP remaining (86.564516% of total)

Rufus the Archer wins 48 out of 100 matches against Black Beastie, with 20.010000 HP remaining (16.137097% of total)
Brutus the Tank wins 100 out of 100 matches against Black Beastie, with 72.620000 HP remaining (58.564516% of total)
D'Artagnan the Swashbuckler wins 76 out of 100 matches against Black Beastie, with 39.800000 HP remaining (32.096774% of total)


Read more: http://www.enworld.org/forum/showthread.php?513171-Crossbow-Expert-Sharpshooter-vs-Defensive-Duelist-in-a-cage-match#ixzz4UHg73Yog

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I don't even know if this is useful first off in most real game situations closing in and grappling might not even be realistic in the first round, very few fights are in a 20 feet white room. The archer will almost always be able to hit and maneuver to avoid damage for a round or two. Because unless the monster has good range ability it will try to close to melee.

Also against any creature bigger than large your strategy wouldn't even work, can't grapple or shove a creature that big. Yes you have more survivability in a one on one scenario but in a party you won't be the only one being targeted so having DPR can help the squishies survive or take less hit. Not saying DPR is the be all and end all, like your simulation shows there are situations that being tankier can be better but there are just as many situations like shooting behind a leomund's hut that having good range DPR is phenomenal as well.

Basically i think both builds are useful but you are comparing apples and oranges since they satisfy different roles.

I agree that they satisfy different roles, and that in a real game you're likely to not be in a cage match. The context of the discussion was to examine a claim that even in melee, ranged specialists lose nothing because crossbow expert lets them still have full DPR. I wanted to illustrate one of the advantages that melee specialization gives you, which is better physical control capabilities. I believe that ranged specialization is dominant in 5E, but it's still nice to have at least one guy in the party who is built to tank.

Huge and Gargantuan creatures aren't all that common, and when they are encountered they can frequently be dealt with using ranged strategies like kiting instead of melee strategies. Huge creatures can also be grappled using the Enlarge spell if necessary.

To be clear: I am not advancing a claim that melee or grappling is a panacea in 5E. I'm making a narrow claim that it does have a niche, and that you get some nice things by having a melee specialist (or a ranged/melee generalist like a paladorlock) in the party.

Also, I wanted to invite people to play around with the script if they want. I keep meaning to write up a full combat simulator that people can play with withing having to tweak any code, but in the meantime at least people can play with the script, compare builds vs. different monsters, etc. It's a pretty crude tool but it's better than pure DPR analysis.

[Gignere]

Who would make the asinine argument that just because you don't have disadvantage in melee with CE + Sharpshooter that it is better than all melee builds?

Anybody with a passing familiarity of the rules and combat options should realize that there are certainly going to be times that grappling and shoving is the best thing you can do. I have seen that first hand especially before we found a magic weapon for our tank. There were many fights where he would just rage grapple and just hold the monster so it can't get to the squishy. His DPR contribution was nil but it was still his actions that preserved the party's resources.

[Vaz]

Edit; not getting into this. These are hilarious, i'm just gonna watchn