Do DPS builds rule and any other builds drool?

[Dalebert]

Did this edition make dealing dmg and killing things fast too easy to the point of making combats boring while trivializing any other build?

This edition has many exploits for dishing crazy dmg considering things like Crossbow Expert and Sharpshooter combos or GWF and Polarm Master, particularly paired up with certain melee class features. I have a friend with a kobold battlemaster who ALWAYS uses -5/+10 and almost never misses thanks to adv and supplementing with battlemaster dice as needed. Warlocks with EB+Hex+cha are also arguably competitive.

I tend to favor casters but avoid evocation-heavy builds in favor of things like utility, defense, and crowd control. My first AL character and one of my favorites is a monk, but I enjoy him because he's spread out with some utility and defensive tactics like mobility and a two level dip in warlock to do the darkness/devil's sight trick. The one-trick pony of just dishing out tons of dmg really fast is just boring to me. But dang if it isn't effective in this edition!

Inevitably, I find much of my boyscout planning for any situation to be wasted. DPS builds take enemies down fast in most situations and hog all the glory. Simply landing lots of kills is both satisfying and impressive. I took my extremely versatile sorcerer on an adventure with some extremely optimized for dmg characters. Their saying was "Killing things fast is the best crowd control." and they seemed to be right. Spending a turn to do anything other than dish a lot of dmg seems like a wasted turn when most combats last three rounds. My shadow monk's darkness trick is great but rarely worth it when you consider he gives up an entire round of dmg to start it. If the enemies don't look terrifying, we're usually just better off to start the killin' up right away and most of his survivability-while-fighting tricks like Mobile seem like half measures compared to tanks who just charge in and do crazy dmg and are tough enough to take the few hits they allow their enemies to make before killing them.

Thoughts?

[Coranhann]

First: In the most friendly of ways: You, my good sir, participate in a series of recent click-baity titles!

Now, to answer your question:

I've seen several "DPS" comparison tables, and I find that this edition keeps it surprinsingly together when compared to AD&D or D&D 3.5 (Almost no experience with 4).

So, we may feel this way, because build A does 44.4 when build B does 60.3 ... but it's still better than the previous "Build A does 187 while build B does 60" (random numbers, I don't have them in memory anymore).

[Specter]

I don't believe so; I find it more satisfying and more overkill to end an encounter early with things like Hypnotic Pattern or a wall than to deal damage. But of course, sometimes offense is the best defense.

[Dalebert]

build A does 44.4 when build B does 60.3 ...


Consider this. My kobold friend as a level 5 fighter with a +2 hand crossbow was doing a minimum of 16 dmg per hit with his crossbow and he rarely misses so usually was doing a minimum of three times that (48). We'll disregard for now that he soon got bracers that add 2 dmg to each hit. A wizard built for crowd control, defense, and/or utility tossing out a firebolt would do an average of 11 dmg in a turn.

And that's the thing. With that kind of dmg output, most of the time, that's all the wizard should do. It's not worth blowing limited resources to do more. WHat happens is the wizard will occasionally shine. Maybe some mobs will be clustered together and he'll hit four with a fireball doing an avg of 28 each. Probably won't kill them but weakens them so the kobold can then finish them off even faster. Or maybe he'll finally be useful in the boss fight when maybe some kind of crowd control might actually make the fight even easier.

In those cases, the party might kind of remember the wizard is there when he's been overshadowed 90% of the time. Non-DPS builds just seem to be waiting around hoping for an opportunity to shine and snag a brief moment of glory.

[some guy]

It depends, if a fireball can kill all enemies in 1 round, then yes, that's the best option. But if it can't, a control spell could be better.

I'm playing a lvl 8 druid in Princes of the Apocalypse right now, my dps is the lowest of the group, but thanks to my mix of buffs, control, utility and summoning I feel the most powerful.

I guess it also depends on the group lay-out. If your group has no trouble reaching goals but combats tend to take some time, then damage is the best path to take. If your group is constantly hindered by obstacles, but combat lasts at most 3 rounds, that group could need some utility.

[PeteNutButter]

Yes. Damage is king in 5e, because there aren't lots of monsters rolling around with 30+ ACs, nearly everyone in the party can hit fairly reliably, and monsters don't have loads of hps until very high CR. Also most monsters of appropriate CR aren't even deadly if given a round or two of actions.

The bottom line is 5e as written is really too easy. CC becomes more powerful whenever the monsters are so strong that they could one-shot multiple PCs in a round. As long as you can take their hits, its easy to just blast em with the martial abilities and at will spells.

So unless you have a crazy DM that throws things well beyond your CR at you, or you are the only one in the party optimized, just stick to dealing and taking damage.


Consider this. My kobold friend as a level 5 fighter with a +2 hand crossbow was doing a minimum of 16 dmg per hit with his crossbow and he rarely misses so usually was doing a minimum of three times that (48). We'll disregard for now that he soon got bracers that add 2 dmg to each hit. A wizard built for crowd control, defense, and/or utility tossing out a firebolt would do an average of 11 dmg in a turn.

And that's the thing. With that kind of dmg output, most of the time, that's all the wizard should do. It's not worth blowing limited resources to do more. WHat happens is the wizard will occasionally shine. Maybe some mobs will be clustered together and he'll hit four with a fireball doing an avg of 28 each. Probably won't kill them but weakens them so the kobold can then finish them off even faster. Or maybe he'll finally be useful in the boss fight when maybe some kind of crowd control might actually make the fight even easier.

In those cases, the party might kind of remember the wizard is there when he's been overshadowed 90% of the time. Non-DPS builds just seem to be waiting around hoping for an opportunity to shine and snag a brief moment of glory.

Any time you see someone complaining about the damage of GWM/SS it inevitably starts with the PC with the +2 weapon...

An item taking away 40% of the drawback of an already very powerful feat is tough. Throw near permanent advantage on top of that and you have a tough time not destroying everything. DM should at least be throwing sunlight on lots of encounters to try and balance it.

[Dalebert]

I guess it also depends on the group lay-out.

That's true. If your party isn't built with lots of DPS optimization in mind, you will probably be able to be useful with a non-DPS build. But that requires a party that thinks like you do, i.e. str8 DPS, while optimal, is boring. THey have to be willing to take a non-optimal path. You get 2 or 3 DPS-optimized characters and I find that's going to be a boring game for me.

[Contrast]

Consider this. My kobold friend as a level 5 fighter with a +2 hand crossbow was doing a minimum of 16 dmg per hit with his crossbow and he rarely misses so usually was doing a minimum of three times that (48). We'll disregard for now that he soon got bracers that add 2 dmg to each hit. A wizard built for crowd control, defense, and/or utility tossing out a firebolt would do an average of 11 dmg in a turn.

And that's the thing. With that kind of dmg output, most of the time, that's all the wizard should do. It's not worth blowing limited resources to do more. WHat happens is the wizard will occasionally shine. Maybe some mobs will be clustered together and he'll hit four with a fireball doing an avg of 28 each. Probably won't kill them but weakens them so the kobold can then finish them off even faster. Or maybe he'll finally be useful in the boss fight when maybe some kind of crowd control might actually make the fight even easier.

In those cases, the party might kind of remember the wizard is there when he's been overshadowed 90% of the time. Non-DPS builds just seem to be waiting around hoping for an opportunity to shine and snag a brief moment of glory.

So +2 weapon and archery style for another +2 meaning +4 on top of whatever they're getting from prof and stat which the wizard should hypothetically be equal on (in fact they've had to take Sharpshooter and Crossbow Expert to get this online so you should be ahead in stats). So with sharpshooter thats -1 to hit compared to the wizard. I don't think you can really justify handwaving away saying 'he rarely misses' at that point. Even if he only needs a 7+ to hit, suddenly he's missing one attack a turn and that drops the expected damage significantly.

Meanwhile there are things you can achieve that he simply can't, be it fireball for a large group, hypnotic pattern, invisibility, etc.

Choosing when to expend spell slots is an important part of being a caster and when done well, you will be more influential to combats than a straight DPS machine. Done poorly, you'll feel ineffectual.

[PeteNutButter]

So +2 weapon and archery style for another +2 meaning +4 on top of whatever they're getting from prof and stat which the wizard should hypothetically be equal on (in fact they've had to take Sharpshooter and Crossbow Expert to get this online so you should be ahead in stats). So with sharpshooter thats -1 to hit compared to the wizard. I don't think you can really justify handwaving away saying 'he rarely misses' at that point. Even if he only needs a 7+ to hit, suddenly he's missing one attack a turn and that drops the expected damage significantly.

Meanwhile there are things you can achieve that he simply can't, be it fireball for a large group, hypnotic pattern, invisibility, etc.

Choosing when to expend spell slots is an important part of being a caster and when done well, you will be more influential to combats than a straight DPS machine. Done poorly, you'll feel ineffectual.

How does your kobold friend, a level 5 character have two feats? He can't be using CE and SS unless the DM gave out an extra feat for free. Note that feats help martials more than casters, so if so it is another thing making you weaker by comparison.

[Rhaegar]

A lot can depend on your DM and how the build encounters for you. If you have a lot of dps and no utility, and the DM throws a lot of CC/utility spells against you with no way to counter, you could find yourself in trouble. Those counterspells, hold persons, polymorph, slow spells and the like, in a given encounter could make/break an encounter.

[Sirdar]

Did this edition make dealing dmg and killing things fast too easy to the point of making combats boring while trivializing any other build?

This edition has many exploits for dishing crazy dmg considering things like Crossbow Expert and Sharpshooter combos or GWF and Polarm Master, particularly paired up with certain melee class features. I have a friend with a kobold battlemaster who ALWAYS uses -5/+10 and almost never misses thanks to adv and supplementing with battlemaster dice as needed. Warlocks with EB+Hex+cha are also arguably competitive.

I tend to favor casters but avoid evocation-heavy builds in favor of things like utility, defense, and crowd control. My first AL character and one of my favorites is a monk, but I enjoy him because he's spread out with some utility and defensive tactics like mobility and a two level dip in warlock to do the darkness/devil's sight trick. The one-trick pony of just dishing out tons of dmg really fast is just boring to me. But dang if it isn't effective in this edition!

Inevitably, I find much of my boyscout planning for any situation to be wasted. DPS builds take enemies down fast in most situations and hog all the glory. Simply landing lots of kills is both satisfying and impressive. I took my extremely versatile sorcerer on an adventure with some extremely optimized for dmg characters. Their saying was "Killing things fast is the best crowd control." and they seemed to be right. Spending a turn to do anything other than dish a lot of dmg seems like a wasted turn when most combats last three rounds. My shadow monk's darkness trick is great but rarely worth it when you consider he gives up an entire round of dmg to start it. If the enemies don't look terrifying, we're usually just better off to start the killin' up right away and most of his survivability-while-fighting tricks like Mobile seem like half measures compared to tanks who just charge in and do crazy dmg and are tough enough to take the few hits they allow their enemies to make before killing them.

Thoughts?

It is easy for a DM to design appropriate encounters when the party has a lot of high DPS characters and very few combat control characters. It is much harder when It is the other way around. I think a good DM should have no problem at all to thwart the pure damage dealers less subtle style so the versatile characters can shine as well. A well placed enemy caster here, a trap there and monsters that target them with cool abilities etc. I hope your DM adjusts the encounters so you can enjoy the game as well.



Personally I would never use a combo that only affects me and needs a one turn setup before it is online unless I can prepare it in advance. Cast Faerie Fire the first turn in combat so everyone in the party can get advantage, sure. Cast Armor of Agathys that way - never, only precast AoA before an expected fight. I don't remember the Shadow Monks darkness trick. Can it be used in another way in combat so it doesn't 'waste' your first turn?

[Belltent]

It depends on the DM and the game.

Are the majority of encounters just a bag of HP vs a bag of HP? Then yes, DPR is probably most important. If there is an equal mix of social encounters, skill challenges, and combat encounters with objectives, then no, not really.

I ran a bunch of vanilla kobolds against 3 lvl 9 barbs and 1 AT the other day. The kobolds had a goal. The barbs had no options other than hitting hard. The kobolds completed their objective before the barbarians could roll enough numbers. A caster or maybe the mobility and control of a monk could've shut half of the encounter down in short order.

[mephnick]

Barbarian doing a million damage a hit with a great weapon suddenly loses a lot of effectiveness if there are 12 monsters in the combat opposed to 3. That's when AoE and controll characters get to shine. Dms just need to mix up numbers, terrain and tactics and the obsession with DPS dries up pretty quick

[strangebloke]

A: as others have noted, THE KOBOLD HAS A +2 CROSSBOW. A +2 weapon would be better than expected for a fifth level party in 3rd edition Eberron. For a fifth level fighter it's straight up broken. Added to his +2 damage bracers its just stupid.

B: He has two feats at fifth level. DM is generous with feats which helps Mr. Kobold here.

C: If your GM doesn't counter the Kobold cheese with occasional bits of sunlight, ('ARGH! that goblin knocked my hat off!') he's being far too generous.

Secondly, as far as combat is concerned, I'd use this hierarchy:

Buffing > Damage > Debuffing/Control > Summoning > Healing

In 3rd it was probably something more like:

Summoning > Buffing > Debuffing/Control > Damage > Healing

It's all about breaking the action economy. Buffs, when used in conjunction with divination, can be pre-cast before combat. In this scenario, the Wizard could cast haste and be 'dealing' over 25% of the Kobold's damage for the low low cost of zero turns. Meanwhile, he can do things that the fighter simply can't, like burning fifteen goblins in a single fireball.

Control/Debuff/Healing spells also get way better the longer your adventuring day is. if you have 5+ encounters a day, an abjuration specialist, say, will be able to massively increase the ability of the party to keep fighting. Hypnotic pattern will reduce damage taken and achieve the same thing.

And this is all ignoring, of course, that Kobold fighter kid here has low utility out of combat. And probably doesn't have great AC considering he's skipping out on ASI's. And that he requires an ally in melee to give him pack tactics. And that he has sunlight sensitivity, which makes him potentially useless in a fair number of encounters. Also: low wisdom save.

He overpowered? Yeah, definitely. But blame your GM, not the game.

[qube]

I took my extremely versatile sorcerer on an adventure with some extremely optimized for dmg characters. Their saying was "Killing things fast is the best crowd control." and they seemed to be right.I agree with Belltent

"Killing things fast" isn't going to do much when you need to calm down a bunch of villagers. Nor will it help you with puzzles, etc ...

[strangebloke]

A: as others have noted, THE KOBOLD HAS A +2 CROSSBOW. A +2 weapon would be better than expected for a fifth level party in 3rd edition Eberron. For a fifth level fighter it's straight up broken. Added to his +2 damage bracers its just stupid.

B: He has two feats at fifth level. DM is generous with feats which helps Mr. Kobold here.

C: If your GM doesn't counter the Kobold cheese with occasional bits of sunlight, ('ARGH! that goblin knocked my hat off!') he's being far too generous.

Secondly, as far as combat is concerned, I'd use this hierarchy:

Buffing > Damage > Debuffing/Control > Summoning > Healing

In 3rd it was probably something more like:

Summoning > Buffing > Debuffing/Control > Damage > Healing

It's all about breaking the action economy. Buffs, when used in conjunction with divination, can be pre-cast before combat. In this scenario, the Wizard could cast haste and be 'dealing' over 25% of the Kobold's damage for the low low cost of zero turns. Meanwhile, he can do things that the fighter simply can't, like burning fifteen goblins in a single fireball.

Control/Debuff/Healing spells also get way better the longer your adventuring day is. if you have 5+ encounters a day, an abjuration specialist, say, will be able to massively increase the ability of the party to keep fighting. Hypnotic pattern will reduce damage taken and achieve the same thing.

And this is all ignoring, of course, that Kobold fighter kid here has low utility out of combat. And probably doesn't have great AC considering he's skipping out on ASI's. And that he requires an ally in melee to give him pack tactics. And that he has sunlight sensitivity, which makes him potentially useless in a fair number of encounters. Also: low wisdom save.

He overpowered? Yeah, definitely. But blame your GM, not the game.

[Creyzi4j]

There's also the issue on survivability.
If 3 monsters are hitting that Kobold every turn (and Ao forbid, one of them has legendary actions), then most likely the Kobold will not be able to survive until turn 2/3.

He'll be rolling fate dies instead of dmg rolls.

[BeefGood]

I'm familiar with DPR, damage per round, but what is DPS? Damage per strike? Damage per shot?

[Dalebert]

I messed up a little. The full crazy didn't come online until level 6. Believe he took Sharpshooter first and Xbow Expert at 6th for a 3rd attack. Point remains, I think if you compare them at 6th.


So with sharpshooter thats -1 to hit compared to the wizard. I don't think you can really justify handwaving away saying 'he rarely misses' at that point. Even if he only needs a 7+ to hit, suddenly he's missing one attack a turn and that drops the expected damage significantly.

I'm not just speaking from odds. I've played with this character a lot and speaking from experience. It's rare enough everyone is shocked when it happens. Consider usually having advantage and when the rare miss happens, he can almost always close the gap with a superiority die.

[KorvinStarmast]

Consider this. My kobold friend as a level 5 fighter with a +2 hand crossbow was doing a minimum of 16 dmg per hit with his crossbow and he rarely misses so usually was doing a minimum of three times that (48).
Show your work.

[KorvinStarmast]

A lot can depend on your DM and how the build encounters for you. If you have a lot of dps and no utility, and the DM throws a lot of CC/utility spells against you with no way to counter, you could find yourself in trouble. Those counterspells, hold persons, polymorph, slow spells and the like, in a given encounter could make/break an encounter. This is correct.

The bottom line is 5e as written is really too easy.
So unless you have a crazy DM that throws things well beyond your CR at you Not so much. How many sessions have you played?

It depends on the DM and the game.

I ran a bunch of vanilla kobolds against 3 lvl 9 barbs and 1 AT the other day. The kobolds had a goal. The barbs had no options other than hitting hard. The kobolds completed their objective before the barbarians could roll enough numbers. A caster or maybe the mobility and control of a monk could've shut half of the encounter down in short order. Thinking DM makes it a TTRPG rather than a video game. yay. :smallbiggrin:

Barbarian doing a million damage a hit with a great weapon suddenly loses a lot of effectiveness if there are 12 monsters in the combat opposed to 3. That's when AoE and controll characters get to shine. Dms just need to mix up numbers, terrain and tactics and the obsession with DPS dries up pretty quick This.

A: as others have noted, THE KOBOLD HAS A +2 CROSSBOW. A +2 weapon would be better than expected for a fifth level party in 3rd edition Eberron. For a fifth level fighter it's straight up broken. Added to his +2 damage bracers its just stupid. {snip} Yeah, definitely. But blame your GM, not the game. Indeed.

[Breashios]

So my group has figured this out. They no longer try to sneak into a dungeon. The makeup is a little different than a balanced group: Two wizards, a sorcerer, a moon druid, an arcane trickster and a paladin. What they do is hit the gate hard with low level spells, let one or more defenders get away and wait for the response. They keep the aoe casters back beyond 60’ to avoid counterspell and blast the main contingent of the dungeon with said aoe, then mop up the remainder of the dungeon at their leisure. Obviously I don’t always play to their SOP, but I have to play the defenders based on what the defenders would know. They have several ways of setting up similar conditions. If the opponents don’t mass up a response at some point they just cantrip/talk/fight their way along until they are really hurt and the paladin is out of smites and then leave (but only if they run out of healing, which hasn’t happened for a while now).

Still they are having fun. So what if I can’t make a challenging encounter for them any more. As long as the encounters are fun, right?

[Dalebert]

Show your work.

Sharpshooter (+10), Dex (+3), magic crossbow (+2)
Dmg = 15+d6

After getting bracers, dmg = 17+d6

[Rhaegar]

So my group has figured this out. They no longer try to sneak into a dungeon. The makeup is a little different than a balanced group: Two wizards, a sorcerer, a moon druid, an arcane trickster and a paladin. What they do is hit the gate hard with low level spells, let one or more defenders get away and wait for the response. They keep the aoe casters back beyond 60’ to avoid counterspell and blast the main contingent of the dungeon with said aoe, then mop up the remainder of the dungeon at their leisure. Obviously I don’t always play to their SOP, but I have to play the defenders based on what the defenders would know. They have several ways of setting up similar conditions. If the opponents don’t mass up a response at some point they just cantrip/talk/fight their way along until they are really hurt and the paladin is out of smites and then leave (but only if they run out of healing, which hasn’t happened for a while now).

Still they are having fun. So what if I can’t make a challenging encounter for them any more. As long as the encounters are fun, right?

That can get really dangerous for the party if they don't know what's in the dungeon. If they're casters are more than 60' back to avoid counterspell, than they're to far back to counterspell enemy casters as well.

A well placed wall of stone, wall of fire, sleet storm, or darkness spell, can do well to isolate a party, that spreads out to far. If word of their SOP gets out, enemies will learn to counter them.

[Contrast]

I'm not just speaking from odds. I've played with this character a lot and speaking from experience. It's rare enough everyone is shocked when it happens. Consider usually having advantage and when the rare miss happens, he can almost always close the gap with a superiority die.

How does he usually have advantage at range? Only things I can think of off the top of my head are hiding (which he either needs to give up an action for which isn't worth it or multiclass rogue which I assume he hasn't done as a level 5 character with two feats...) or require spell support (in which case the buffer deserves some credit for all that damage).

And the point I was making wasn't that he doesn't do a lot of damage, he does (after all thats what his character is specifically specialised in doing). It was that even a single miss then brings his turn by turn damage down to the region that you can inflict with a fireball if you hit a single target. You should be hitting many targets with your fireball. Now sure he can do that all day long, but sometimes you need to take down 15 guys at once and thats when you need a wizard.

There are a dazzling array of things in the game that can't be easily defeated by shooting them one at a time in the face with crossbow bolts.

Edit - Seeing as the original question wasn't martials vs casters lets reframe the question. Does a rogue who hasn't optimised for damage have a place in a party of specialised DPS builds. I think rogues pick up more than enough other features to compensate (though I am biased as rogue is my favourite class in 5E). And importantly, even if you haven't specced for damage, you'll do alright.

Edit 2 - sorry just remembered kobold. I assume you DM is hand waving away sunlight sensitivity in some fashion. All I can really say here is that your DM made a very specific bed for you and the other players to lie in :smalltongue:

[KorvinStarmast]

Sharpshooter (+10), Dex (+3), magic crossbow (+2)
Dmg = 15+d6

After getting bracers, dmg = 17+d6 Thanks for the detail:
You didn't show in this answer how a 5th levl fighter has three attacks per round (crossbow mastery is my guess?) and how the -5 to hit is hand waved into the void. DPS when calculated typically accounts for the number of times you hit against the number of times you miss.

Beyond that, thank you for pointing out why +2 Crossbow and bracers of archery combined are a bit stronger than lvl 5 challenges warrant. Then again, for about 40 years the Monty Haul/Monty Hall style of campaign where magic items fall faster than in a video game dungeon crawl (like Diablo series) have hardly been the measure of game play.

Bracers of Archery
Wondrous item, uncommon (requires attunement)
While wearing these bracers, you have proficiency with the longbow and shortbow, and you gain a +2
bonus to damage rolls on ranged attacks made with such weapons.

[Hrugner]

I'm familiar with DPR, damage per round, but what is DPS? Damage per strike? Damage per shot?

They're importing an MMO term. Damage per second, a different damage/time equation. So I guess it would be DPR/6, but there's no reason for that type of granularity.

[strangebloke]

Thanks for the detail:
You didn't show in this answer how a 5th levl fighter has three attacks per round (crossbow mastery is my guess?) and how the -5 to hit is hand waved into the void. DPS when calculated typically accounts for the number of times you hit against the number of times you miss.


He's a kobold, and thus has advantage if another party member is within five feet of the target, which certainly does counter the -5 (along with the +2 from the bow) He's probably still falling behind the wizard in accuracy due to having lower stats, but... it's probably less than 10%.

I never have played a game with plentiful +1 item christmas trees, FYI. It always seemed gimmicky as heck.

[KorvinStarmast]

He's a kobold, and thus has advantage if another party member is within five feet of the target, which certainly does counter the -5 (along with the +2 from the bow) Aha, a Volo's kobold, thanks. (Since I do not care for the NH-PCs in Volos, I'd not paid close enough attention).

[Dalebert]

Yes, sunlight sensitivity occasionally dampens his crazy to-hit potential a bit but that usually just means he blows through more superiority dice. Still, it's not as common as you might think. He plays mainly in various AL modules that are sometimes outside but it's called Dungeons and Dragons for a reason. It's not a situation where there is always the same DM contriving adventures specifically with punishing the kobold in mind.

[Theodoxus]

I'm familiar with DPR, damage per round, but what is DPS? Damage per strike? Damage per shot?

Damange per second - it's a CRPG term, specifically for MMOGs to determine if your character is adequate to participate in a group function like raiding. Both DPR and DPS are largely unnecessary stats, used by elitist jerks to feel superior.

Both tend to lead to overkill, which is just a waste of time/energy/resources. A 30 point hit on a 6 HP goblin has the same effect as a 7 point hit on a 6 HP goblin. Since 90% of the game, from my experience, has been against foes with fewer than 30 HPs, all that extra damage means squat. There's no carry over, no blow-through... so... meh.


So my group has figured this out. They no longer try to sneak into a dungeon. The makeup is a little different than a balanced group: Two wizards, a sorcerer, a moon druid, an arcane trickster and a paladin. What they do is hit the gate hard with low level spells, let one or more defenders get away and wait for the response. They keep the aoe casters back beyond 60’ to avoid counterspell and blast the main contingent of the dungeon with said aoe, then mop up the remainder of the dungeon at their leisure. Obviously I don’t always play to their SOP, but I have to play the defenders based on what the defenders would know. They have several ways of setting up similar conditions. If the opponents don’t mass up a response at some point they just cantrip/talk/fight their way along until they are really hurt and the paladin is out of smites and then leave (but only if they run out of healing, which hasn’t happened for a while now).

Still they are having fun. So what if I can’t make a challenging encounter for them any more. As long as the encounters are fun, right?

In such a manner of play, I cringe for the time your players get teleport. Then they go halfway into a dungeon, deplete resources and 'port out to rest up and 'port right back to chew more bubblegum...

One of my weaknesses as a DM is minion control... I inevitably boost a boss, sometimes into the deadly category, rather than just giving him 5-10 more minions. I'm trying to work on it though.

[BRC]

Yes, Damage builds are the way to go in 5e, at least as far as Combat goes (utility builds are still a thing for non-combat scenarios).

And, do you know what, I LIKE that. I think that's the best thing for the game.


Here's the thing, utility spells/tricks often fall under the "Save or Lose" category. "I Paralyze this opponent" "I blind this foe so he can't see us". This isn't a total rule, but it was a serious trend. In battle, you were either dealing damage as a Blaster, casting Support spells to boost your teammates, or throwing around Crowd Control Save or Lose spells.

Such powers either fail completely (Thus wasting the caster's turn) OR trivialize the encounter with a single spell. And that's not fun. Sure, it's great the first few times it works, but if the trick is reliable, it gets boring.

When fights are just throwing damage at each other, everybody is contributing. The entire party feels like they helped bring down the foe.

When a Save-or-Lose spell takes out an enemy, you have a few options.

Option 1: Enemy is basically out of the fight before the rest of the party gets a chance to touch them.

Option 2: Enemy gets after taking a bit of a pounding from the Fighters. But, the Fighters might as well not have bothered. The enemy would have gone down regardless of how much damage they'd taken.

Option 3: Enemy is almost out when the Save or Lose takes them down. Caster might as well have saved a spell slot and let the Fighter finish it off.

Even if, say, the enemy is just blinded or paralyzed, and the Fighters are the ones doing the actual damage, everybody knows that the fight is trivialized because of the Caster's spell.


The fact is, Crowd Control characters and DPS characters have two different win conditions for an encounter. Whichever win condition is achieved first invalidates the other one.

Every class can Blast, so DPS is a more accessible win condition. In 5e,a CC character can usually take one enemy out of the fight for a few rounds, which is a fine way for them to contribute without overshadowing the rest of the party.

[Mith]

On a note about kobolds: My read of the Player Race Kobolds is that it only gives advantage once per round. At least that is how I read the line "You get advantage on an attack roll if at least one of your allies is within 5' of the creature and the ally is not incapacitated."

[TheTeaMustFlow]

On a note about kobolds: My read of the Player Race Kobolds is that it only gives advantage once per round. At least that is how I read the line "You get advantage on an attack roll if at least one of your allies is within 5' of the creature and the ally is not incapacitated."

Your reading is incorrect - the 'an' is not exclusionary. And any abilities that work once per round are explicitly stated as such - compare, for example the wording for sneak attack.

[Specter]

I have a friend with a kobold battlemaster who ALWAYS uses -5/+10 and almost never misses thanks to adv and supplementing with battlemaster dice as needed.

Wait a sec...

DEX = 3 (he took two feats)
Proficiency = 3
Weapon = 2

+8 to hit, right? So with a bonus of +3 and a situational +d8, , he 'almost never misses'? What kind of witchcraft is this, other than giving a 6-level-old a +2 weapon?

[KorvinStarmast]

He plays mainly in various AL modules that are sometimes outside but it's called Dungeons and Dragons for a reason. It's not a situation where there is always the same DM contriving adventures specifically with punishing the kobold in mind. On the other hand, on GiTP forums we get a lot of posts about white rooms and dragons. :smallbiggrin: :smallcool: (ducks)



DPS

FWIW, it is displayed on the character screen for Diablo III and isn't a bad indicator of how fast you can handle some monsters.

[Dradka]

Sharpshooter (+10), Dex (+3), magic crossbow (+2)
Dmg = 15+d6

After getting bracers, dmg = 17+d6

So first off that +2 weapon on a level 5 or 6 character is super powerful in this edition with the bounded accuracy system. Which probably means your DM didn't think about how that will affect the game play. When he hits which will be pretty common he will deal a lot of damage but as the AC of the creature you are facing goes up the expected damage per round the kobold will have goes down. Also since half of every adventure is outside and the other half is inside he would only be extremely powerful inside and less so outside. There are also other factors that can be involved that will change this as well.

Also if you read the bracers carefully it says that you become proficient with short and long bows as well as gain +2 to damage with such weapons. So that +2 damage only applies to the short and long bow not to crossbows. If your DM is waving that which I personally say they shouldn't since crossbow expert more then makes up for it.

Now then utility characters will typically have a higher degree of damage output then pure damage characters. This is more true for larger parties since with one spell you help out more people so any increase to their damage from that spell is actually yours since without you they would not have had it. You also have the ability to mitigate damage more which helps out everyone. Utility characters when played right actually make the largest contribution to the team since they are doing more with less which was stated earlier.

Edit: Also another way to make it seem like the kobold isn't as powerful is you can consider anytime the kobold attacks a target next to someone some of the damage is also their damage since they are taking hits for the kobold.

[solidork]

Wait a sec...

DEX = 3 (he took two feats)
Proficiency = 3
Weapon = 2

+8 to hit, right? So with a bonus of +3 and a situational +d8, , he 'almost never misses'? What kind of witchcraft is this, other than giving a 6-level-old a +2 weapon?

Theres also archery fighting style, presumably.

Is the GM taking into consideration cover provided to your enemies by your allies? It's not hard to make sure you have a clear line of sight, but it's also not something that is always possible.

[KorvinStarmast]

Also if you read the bracers carefully it says that you become proficient with short and long bows as well as gain +2 to damage with such weapons. So that +2 damage only applies to the short and long bow not to crossbows. If your DM is waving that which I personally say they shouldn't since crossbow expert more then makes up for it.
Nice catch, I glazed right over that distinction.

While wearing these bracers, you have proficiency with the longbow and shortbow, and you gain a +2 bonus to damage rolls on ranged attacks made with such weapons.
Bracers of Archery As my brother in law would say "Cross bows are not archery." (He does his deer hunting with a bow).

[Theodoxus]

Theres also archery fighting style, presumably.

Is the GM taking into consideration cover provided to your enemies by your allies?

Doesn't matter - sharpshooter negates all but full cover, which, oddly, no matter what size difference there is between you and your opponent, players never provide...

[Floopay]

I haven't played 5e yet. My first session is going to be Wednesday.

However, I have played almost every other system; excluding 4e. So I will put this here.

I have destroyed more enemies, ended more combats, and avoided more creatures with utility characters than any other DPS build.

In fact, I would say I've easily pushed myself into being the go-to party character for everything, despite having the lowest "Damage-Per-Round" ratio of any other character. The same goes for my brother, my dad, and the people who taught me to play D&D growing up.

My brother and his friends entered a maze, and thought they had met an end in their "survival" type campaign. The first session in the maze, my brother was absent. The party could easily destroy anything they came across; because most of them were combat focused. However, by the second session they were convinced the party was going to meet it's end (they had a particularly cruel DM). But when my brother got there, he had shown them that a simple item his character had purchased was going to be the tool to their success. It was chalk, and a buttload of it. All he did, was trace the paths as he walked to mark which turns they had taken, and which they hadn't. Soon enough, they were out of the maze and onto the next disaster. This was 3.5e btw.

And this is basically how him and I have operated. Our characters aren't "useless" in combat; but we generally aren't game enders either. But it doesn't matter. If you can end combat before it starts, or avoid it altogether, you can easily be more useful than any other character. I find this stayed true through almost every style of D&D.

I've stopped hordes of monsters from killing parties with the wall spell, or a chain/metal spike on a heavy door. I've dropped party-ending bosses into portable holes, and trapped them inside (Jarlaxle and Athrogate style ;-P). Speaking of portable holes, I've made a dragon pee itself by threatening to drop a portable hole into a bag of holding if it didn't give me what I wanted, or if it even thought about breathing in my direction.

My brother's character promised a demon "Rain over a kingdom for a week" in return for information. The DM assumed he meant "reign", and the party got what they wanted for nothing more than a week's worth of casting the "Change Weather" spell.

I had a wizard who probably got an assist on 75% of the kills in one campaign, despite never really dealing any direct damage with his spells. He greased a bag of marbles and dumped them down a hallway at a group of charging gnolls; who were then butchered by the party mercilessly. He once used the shatter spell to break the chain holding a heavy gate up, and dropped it on top of a pretty nasty ogre.

So the moral of the story is, any build works if you know what you're doing. DPS, Turtle, Utillity, Smooth Talker, whatever. I would say DPS is the EASIEST build to make shine. As there are a thousand different ways to do it. But that doesn't make it better, just shinier.

Thanks for reading,
Floopay

[Breashios]

That can get really dangerous for the party if they don't know what's in the dungeon. If they're casters are more than 60' back to avoid counterspell, than they're to far back to counterspell enemy casters as well.

A well placed wall of stone, wall of fire, sleet storm, or darkness spell, can do well to isolate a party, that spreads out to far. If word of their SOP gets out, enemies will learn to counter them.

Obviously there is a lot more variation and details I did not believe were necessary to make my point.

For instance: They now have arcane eye, the arcane trickster often did have one of the wizards cast invisibility on him before venturing in, the Abjurer does often start in the front line and backs out only when necessary. They typically have more counterspells at their disposal then any set encounter in the published adventure and will move forward to get in range - for turn 2 denial if that is going to be an issue.

I about triple the CR they face in number by both beefing and increasing the number of minions. I generally don't up the boss more than two levels of spells, HD, etc. Sleet Storm did cause an issue in early battles for them, but now they just buff themselves (with potions or such since they can't cast any spell that requires they see a target) until the druid dispels it on his action (usually). The enemy teams don't share intel too much, so SOP does not really get out. I assume a couple of battles have been watched remotely by the leaders that are left, but I still have to think about what they would see and how they can mitigate it. (Knowing doesn't mean they have a particularly good counter to the tactic.) At this point not much they can do but race to get their ultimate evil plan done before the heroes get to them.

[Pex]

For the spellcaster perspective:

I don't care which class or which build will get the most average damage per round which proves nothing anyway, but it has been my actual play experience the players care more about damage. Playing a spellcaster I try to stay away from damage spells on purpose but I will prepare them, yet the other players want the blasting. With my wizard I relented and took Fireball at 5th level instead of Hypnotic Pattern. When other players play spellcasters, while not everyone is an evoker it's still all about the damage spells. Other spells are cast too from time to time, but blasting it prime.

As for why this is it could be players want the flashy stuff with no further nuance. Thinking in meta, I think 5E highly encourages it. Buffing is almost useless because it takes concentration and players don't want to deal with that. Unless the spell inherently buffs more than one character, like Bless, it's not worth the cost except maybe to buff yourself. Debuff spells are worse. Not only is it concentration but the opponent gets to keep making saves and end the spell. It will buy a round of action economy of that opponent not doing anything or not doing it well, but players who are not Forum participants aren't seeing value in that or know it should be of value. To get more than two rounds is a miracle, and even then concentration prevents them from debuffing another opponent, so all they do is blast and feel giddy when they finally realize they can concentrate and still cast a non-cantrip blast spell. Since they're always blasting even if it's just a cantrip, eventually that's all that matters.

[GlenSmash!]

It's usually much more effective to maximize party tactics over a single characters DPR.

For example, if your party Necromancer has summoned a small army of skeletons to fight an encounter with zombies, it would be better for the party Ranger to Cast Spike growth and slow those zombies down (while damaging them all) and let the Skeletens have more time to shoot them with arrows, than try and shoot as many as he can with Sharpshooter/Crossbow Expert.

[MaxWilson]

Did this edition make dealing dmg and killing things fast too easy to the point of making combats boring while trivializing any other build?

*snip*

Thoughts?

Yes, 5E combats (in published modules and many DMs' homebrew) are generally too easy to be interesting. Typically the enemy is outnumbered and outgunned, and it can be quite difficult for the DM to rationalize the fact that they are fighting the PCs at all, especially if they realize what the PCs are instead of mistaking them for regular 0th level humans.

IMO, 5E fights don't start to get interesting until you crank the difficulty up to at least triple-Deadly; 6x to 10x Deadly is "too much" in the sense that it generally means the PCs are outnumbered and outgunned, and now the DM's dilemma is to find ways to make them stick around and fight instead. But 3x to 4x Deadly is a pretty good sweet spot IMO. It's tough enough that the PCs are actually challenged, but still very beatable if they are smart.

And BTW, DPR builds fare poorly vs. 3x or 4x Deadly challenges, so the issue with DPR tends to solve itself.

[Geeknamese]

As stated by previous posters, this is more a result of GM fail than a problem with the game. Kobold with hand-waiving of sunlight sensitivity, ridiculous magic items for level, incorrect reading of magic item properties, mediocre encounter builds, etc.

First of all, magic items should be rare. Secondly, even when they are found, they're more likely to be of the more generic varieties if your GM is running a game that's immersive and anything at all realistic. What that means is if you do find magic items, the majority of the combat ones will most likely be the more common weapon types, i.e. spears, shortswords, longswords, battleaxes, maces, bows etc. The Monty Haul GM is the culprit in ruining the play experience. A hand crossbow is typically an uncommon item in the first place and handing the PC a +2 magic item version of it at level 5 is just flat out fail.

Secondly, your GM should be creating dynamic and challenging encounters. If he's just putting bags of HPs on one side and you guys on the other side to whittle away at each other, that's just boring. In a dungeon, battles can cause adds, enemies can come from multiple sides so there is no hanging far back at range safe to fire at ranged for too long. If the Kobold is depending on darkvision, even with the uber range granted by Sharpshooter, the Kobold will have disadvantage on anything outside of 60 feet due to heavily obscured. That will wash with any pack tactics unless any of your pals have the ability to cast light (which may be unlikely as it seems they're heavy min-maxers and worrying about light isn't very dps-worthy). Fighter can spend all his superiority dice to guarantee hits but with that many attacks, he should be blowing his wad of superiority dice pretty fast. But seeing as the GM is a little wet behind the ears in encounter/adventure design, he's probably not running enough encounters per day or allowing the party too many short rests without any consequences.

[Breashios]

As stated by previous posters, this is more a result of GM fail than a problem with the game.

...In a dungeon, battles can cause adds, enemies can come from multiple sides so there is no hanging far back at range safe to fire at ranged for too long. If the Kobold is depending on darkvision, even with the uber range granted by Sharpshooter, the Kobold will have disadvantage on anything outside of 60 feet due to heavily obscured. That will wash with any pack tactics unless any of your pals have the ability to cast light (which may be unlikely as it seems they're heavy min-maxers and worrying about light isn't very dps-worthy). Fighter can spend all his superiority dice to guarantee hits but with that many attacks, he should be blowing his wad of superiority dice pretty fast. But seeing as the GM is a little wet behind the ears in encounter/adventure design, he's probably not running enough encounters per day or allowing the party too many short rests without any consequences.

Except I do not believe it is GM fail or a problem with the game. I just realize it is the game. You can always make a game do what you want if you control the world well enough. But if your group has a agreement that they will play RAW in a published adventure, you just have to live with the reality. The game can still be fun and the players can attack the module from any number of directions. If they choose to do it by damage, however, there is less (still some things, but less) a DM can do to change the reality from one where the battles are quick and often boring (from the DM's view). No matter how boring I find the one sided fights the group I DM for, they find them exciting and fulfilling. They apparently WANT to crush everything. That is fun for them. (We also have a lot of role-playing, but that is almost entirely in the social realm of the campaign.)

Can I send an assassin after one of them while they are relaxing in an inn that they believe is safe? Of course I can, but am I going to do it in a perfectly effective manner if it is not already in the adventure - NO WAY. That would not be fun for them, nor fair. We had an agreement.

And as for the darkvision vs sharpshooter issue, within published adventures there are very few indoor/dungeon encounters where there is more than 60' in any dimension. So that is not a thing.

And don't argue against published adventures. As official products they guide expectations of a norm. Nobody has to go by that norm at all, but for those that do, it is not a sin.

[Psikerlord]

Did this edition make dealing dmg and killing things fast too easy to the point of making combats boring while trivializing any other build?

This edition has many exploits for dishing crazy dmg considering things like Crossbow Expert and Sharpshooter combos or GWF and Polarm Master, particularly paired up with certain melee class features. I have a friend with a kobold battlemaster who ALWAYS uses -5/+10 and almost never misses thanks to adv and supplementing with battlemaster dice as needed. Warlocks with EB+Hex+cha are also arguably competitive.

I tend to favor casters but avoid evocation-heavy builds in favor of things like utility, defense, and crowd control. My first AL character and one of my favorites is a monk, but I enjoy him because he's spread out with some utility and defensive tactics like mobility and a two level dip in warlock to do the darkness/devil's sight trick. The one-trick pony of just dishing out tons of dmg really fast is just boring to me. But dang if it isn't effective in this edition!

Inevitably, I find much of my boyscout planning for any situation to be wasted. DPS builds take enemies down fast in most situations and hog all the glory. Simply landing lots of kills is both satisfying and impressive. I took my extremely versatile sorcerer on an adventure with some extremely optimized for dmg characters. Their saying was "Killing things fast is the best crowd control." and they seemed to be right. Spending a turn to do anything other than dish a lot of dmg seems like a wasted turn when most combats last three rounds. My shadow monk's darkness trick is great but rarely worth it when you consider he gives up an entire round of dmg to start it. If the enemies don't look terrifying, we're usually just better off to start the killin' up right away and most of his survivability-while-fighting tricks like Mobile seem like half measures compared to tanks who just charge in and do crazy dmg and are tough enough to take the few hits they allow their enemies to make before killing them.

Thoughts?

Short answer is yes. One partial solution, which has no doubt been raised before, is turning the -5/+10 feats into a +1 stat instead - ie turning them into half feats. The -5/+10 is quite broken, for the reasons you outline above. Even without the +10, paladins with smite and warriors with action surge etc still do amazing damage. Just not broken damage.

[solidork]

Doesn't matter - sharpshooter negates all but full cover, which, oddly, no matter what size difference there is between you and your opponent, players never provide...

Yeah, I was lying down for my nap when I suddenly realized that I forgot about sharpshooter negating cover.

[Geeknamese]

And don't argue against published adventures. As official products they guide expectations of a norm. Nobody has to go by that norm at all, but for those that do, it is not a sin.

So there are a lot of discrepancies in the OP's post which I don't understand. I've got no problems with published adventures but if that is the case, there are no published adventures granting +2 hand crossbows and bracers of archery to 5th level PCs. There are no AL games that give that type of gear at that level as well and the OP said this Kobold is played in AL. Something doesn't make sense.

[PeteNutButter]

So there are a lot of discrepancies in the OP's post which I don't understand. I've got no problems with published adventures but if that is the case, there are no published adventures granting +2 hand crossbows and bracers of archery to 5th level PCs. There are no AL games that give that type of gear at that level as well and the OP said this Kobold is played in AL. Something doesn't make sense.

There is a +2 hand crossbow in a tier 2 mod, sadly. Also if cheaty DMs fudge rolls on random rolls in certain hardcovers people can potentially get insane gear. :smallmad:

If it is AL though, there should be no hand waiving of things. If he is using bracers of archery with his crossbow, it should be corrected. The whole point of AL is no house rules or hand waiving.

Overall if you have an optimized party even if the DM runs the mods at the "very strong" level they will be a cake walk, especially if you have a full table. Experienced DMs make the fights even more difficult in those situations. They are "suggestions" after all.

[furby076]

Damange per second - it's a CRPG term, specifically for MMOGs to determine if your character is adequate to participate in a group function like raiding. Both DPR and DPS are largely unnecessary stats, used by elitist jerks to feel superior.



Elitist jerks? That's a bit harsh, bud. In mmos (e.g., world of warcraft, warhammer online, etc), dps is important. Yes, people are proud about it, but more importantly you need certain level of dps to get into groups/raids. Its just not about "ur dps suckz, lolz, u suckz, diaf n00b"...its about "the dungeon calls for x dps and you cant do that. Your a nice guy, but if you cant do at least x, then taking you will make the night pointless"...but you knew that.


My paladin, with polearm master, quarterstaff+1 with thunder stone (+d6 dmg), is demolishing things. Interesting enough, when i built him i had defense in mind...trip and trip and trip. Dm gets annoyed with my tripping, so i minimize it. I will have to remind him to start throwing more smaller critters vs fewer larger critters

[JAL_1138]

Personal anecdote, but my bard—also a crossbow expert+sharpshooter with a +2 crossbow (traded a Rare item at Fai Chen's), a level of fighter for Archery style—encounters a lot of situations where Hypnotic Pattern, Silence, or Heat Metal (for example) has been a much better use of an action than attacking, even if he does do reasonably high damage for a 10th-level character. Chance to leave a half-dozen tough enemies standing there stupefied for a full minute with hypnotic pattern > chance to maybe kill one or two with between 54-63 damage if I get lucky and hit all three times (EDIT: I often don't land every attack, particularly against stronger enemies, so it's usually quite a bit less).

[Theodoxus]

Elitist jerks? ...but you knew that.

Yes, which is why I called them out specifically, as in, the Elitist Jerks website - I don't know if they're still all the rage or not, but back in the heyday, if you wanted to maximize your DPS, you followed their cookie cutter plan.

Now, more often than not, the content is gated in such a fashion, you can't even get in, until your gear is sufficiently high in ilevel that you can literally faceroll your keyboard and produce enough deeps to at least do LFR garbage runs.

And even then, it's pretty hard, once sufficiently geared and halfway knowing the fights, to true fail at bringing bosses down. In my experience, it's never been lack of DPS that brings failure, but not groking the mechanics in the first place. DIAF is all the rage. :smallwink:


But in D&D, DPR isn't the deciding factor for whether you suffer a TPK or not. You're not in a race against a single overwhelming mob who, after 10 rounds, rages hard, hits for 300 points of damage and one shots your tank... In nearly every TPK I've suffered, it was overwhelming mobs; unlucky streaks of rolls; stubbornness borne of "it's just a game" to keep fighting on despite the very obvious party kill on the horizon; or the lack of foresight to realize that yeah, the dragon overhead keeps following the party, but seems pretty chill... oh, you attack it? It eats your face... (or similar encounter where you could easily skip the fight, but poke the bear instead.)

DPR is fun and sexy, but it isn't the only Victoria's Secret model on the block... it's not even the super hot asian one...

[lperkins2]

That seems like a fairly silly question. In a fight, are the 'builds' which are the best at killing the best at doing what you do in a fight (killing)?

That said, it will entirely depend on the nature of the campaign. If the focus is on lots of long combats, or multiple short combats a day, then the 'builds' which can sustain high damage output the longest will dominate. If the focus is anything more interesting, they will usually sit around doing nothing useful lots of the time. If the campaign has few combats, and they are relatively short, the highest burst damage characters will rule. If the campaign has few combats, mostly focusing on investigation, sneaking past overwhelming enemies, or diplomacy, the non-combat characters will do the best. If you think the combat optimized characters are getting too much time in the spotlight, you might see if you can mix up the type of campaign some.

[Kane0]

I reckon its a similar situation as Uberchargers in 3.X and most other one-trick pony setup.

Under the right conditions you can plough through the opposition and win with little to no effort, but on the other hand you have specialised. There will come times where that specialisation is not required and you will have to either adapt or hand the reins to someone else who does not share your specialisation. Such is the nature of a social, group based game.

The thing is that sometimes you come up to a game where there isn't that variation and so you end up always being able to do your thing or, even worse, never being able to.

[Decstarr]

Most has been said already, I'd just like to add the thought of talking about it to your DM. He made the character super powerful and as a result, you (and maybe others?) feel impotent with their characters, so the DM should adjust to that and give you opportunities to shine. He could easily work around it by using different kinds of monsters that aren't straight forward hitters but more sneaky hit&run style or maybe blasters. After all, your Kobold will be useless if he's attacked by enemies he can't see or suffers debuffs like blind etc at the start of the combat. A good DM should always cater to what the players enjoy, so while handing out extra feats and +2 weapons that early is indeed potentially dangerous, I don't see it as a problem as long as everyone involved enjoys the game. My level 15 dual wield battlemaster is wielding a sunblade and acquired vorpals in the last session, he'll be hitting like a madman. But he's the only martial character in the group and they tend to be fighting a lot of flying enemies so often he's just standing around doing nothing, while the casters either try to ground the enemies or manipulate the battlefield in a way he could reach them. You should talk to your DM and ask him to create more situations in which your character can also shine.

And yes, to your click bait title: If the DM isn't trying hard to create engaging and strong encounters, martial DPR builds and nova builds will always outshine the utility builds.

[CaptainSarathai]

There's such a huge variation even among how you deal your damage. And even then, this is all very DM dependent.

When I DM, I make use of skills and saves a lot, and I like to "target" my save-or-suffer effects so that usually someone will fail and someone else will be alright. Make them save on Strength; Bard is hosed, Barbarian just laughs it off, etc.
I use skills heavily. It goes against what people usually tell you about DMing well, but I don't allow "good RP" to replace a roll. I let good RP get you a point of Inspiration, maybe. Maybe advantage on a roll. But you still roll.
It also helps if DMs understand the point of encounters (burn resources) and understand how to use skills as encounters.
"Oh, you have Comprehend Languages and want to burn a spell slot on it? Cool, it lets you bypass the trap on that door, by reading the warning written in some ancient weird dialect. Otherwise, the Rogue would have eaten some damage and either finished the day down HP, or burned up Healing from the party."

And then there's the damage itself.

First, high "single target" damage is vastly overrated and becomes almost comical, after a point. If you can do 24 damage per attack, but only throw 2 attacks, that only kills 2 creatures at most. If you deal 12 damage per attack, but swing 4 times - you've just killed 4 creatures maybe.

Second, outside of white rooms, "Nova" rounds are overrated. If your DM telegraph's the big fight and you know that you can save your Nova for the correct boss, then great. But I, and many other DMs, like to mix it up. Sometimes I put the boss some time *before* the last encounter, so that they aren't sure if perhaps there's something even bigger around the next corner. Then, they either don't use their Nova when they could have, or they blow it on the "boss henchman," rather than the actual head-honcho.
For this reason, I prefer having a consistent damage per round, all day, every day.

[Mith]

Your reading is incorrect - the 'an' is not exclusionary. And any abilities that work once per round are explicitly stated as such - compare, for example the wording for sneak attack.

Thank you for your reply. It's been bugging me for a while. I would have thought it would have said "all attacks made with an ally in 5 feet".

[Vaz]

Is that one ally or any allies?

[DeAnno]

One thing I'd like to mention is that the tendency for the biggest boss Monsters to all have Legendary Resistance 3/day is part of what encourages this. In 5e it's tricky to do much controlling without allowing a save, so these sorts of bosses tend to be pretty much uncontrollable and you need to attack their HP instead. Of course, the caster can try buffs instead, but once their concentration is spent their actions decline in value a lot against a boss.

This is why I tend to like my castery types with a strong damage vs. AC option in their pocket, such as Bard/Sorc's multiclass Warlock Eldritch Blast or Mystic's Animate Weapon. It's important to avoid falling into situations where you are casting weak cantrips not because you want to conserve resources but because your toolbox isn't suited to the (possibly deadly) situation.

[Ninja-Radish]

Simple answer: No.

[Rhaegar]

One thing I'd like to mention is that the tendency for the biggest boss Monsters to all have Legendary Resistance 3/day is part of what encourages this. In 5e it's tricky to do much controlling without allowing a save, so these sorts of bosses tend to be pretty much uncontrollable and you need to attack their HP instead. Of course, the caster can try buffs instead, but once their concentration is spent their actions decline in value a lot against a boss.


These legendary resistances are largely there so that you can't completely trivialize a boss encounter. It's there because those utility spells can be overpowering against boss creatures. Yes your first few tries at saving throw spells against the boss may miss because of his resistance, but once his resistance is down, you can completely own him. A hold person spell landing on a boss for even one round can be game over. If you only have one party member that can break his legendary resistance, then perhaps it's not a great strategy, but if you have multiple people who can all work to break his legendary resistance, than you can get your control spells on him much faster.

[Positiveimpact3]

Consider this. My kobold friend as a level 5 fighter with a +2 hand crossbow was doing a minimum of 16 dmg per hit with his crossbow and he rarely misses so usually was doing a minimum of three times that (48). We'll disregard for now that he soon got bracers that add 2 dmg to each hit. A wizard built for crowd control, defense, and/or utility tossing out a firebolt would do an average of 11 dmg in a turn.

And that's the thing. With that kind of dmg output, most of the time, that's all the wizard should do. It's not worth blowing limited resources to do more. WHat happens is the wizard will occasionally shine. Maybe some mobs will be clustered together and he'll hit four with a fireball doing an avg of 28 each. Probably won't kill them but weakens them so the kobold can then finish them off even faster. Or maybe he'll finally be useful in the boss fight when maybe some kind of crowd control might actually make the fight even easier.

In those cases, the party might kind of remember the wizard is there when he's been overshadowed 90% of the time. Non-DPS builds just seem to be waiting around hoping for an opportunity to shine and snag a brief moment of glory.

This is the difference between someone trying to make the most dps optimized character vs someone just making a standard build - it's an edge case. The dm should be giving out similarly powerful loot to everyone else to help keep the party balanced and if not they are likely playing favorites. The DMG suggests not giving out +2 weapons until lvl 9-10+ for a reason.

The kobold player would need 2 feats to pull off the build (SS + Xbow Master) and he's only lvl 5 - is the DM just handing out feats? The other thing to note is that it is one of the DM's jobs to make sure the party is balanced so that players don't feel useless or out shined most of the time. It sounds like the DM needs to give more power to the wizard and design encounters (and not just combat encounters) that will allow each character to shine - not just the kobold. When I run games I add that the -5/+10 attacks can only be used once per round because they seriously jack with 5e math.

single target DPS builds are very useful but they aren't everything. They shine best when in the company of other builds. Tanks to take blows, healers for recovery, controllers for buffs and debuffs, AOE abilities for large mobs, utility abilities for out of combat situations etc. That being said I am sure there is plenty of fun to be had in an all single target dps party.