Flame Tongue vs Hand Crossbow in Dnd 5e!

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Kobold reading a scroll art by Novatonix:

[SirEliteGrunt]

Why did you not compare great weapon master? That is the same -5 to hit for +10 damage. I’m just curious how it would effect the average damage

[MegaGrip]

Thank god for flame tongue short swords, eh? Now you can hand crossbow AND flame tongue.

[timelordomega]

The easy solution to this debate is shooting flame tongue daggers with a hand crossbow

[havocsheart]

I love the Kobold & Gator dynamic so much.

[jeffjefforson]

I feel like this is less comparing the power of a Magic Greatsword VS Hand-crossbow and more comparing the power of Melee vs Ranged in general.

Ranged more or less wins everytime based on the Archery fighting style giving it an extra 10% hit chance compared to any melee build. That combined with bounded accuracy means it’s always gonna win in the longrun.

Melee has GWM, ranged has Sharpshooter, Melee has Polearm-master, ranged has Crossbow-Expert, Melee has X, ranged has Z
The major disparity is the fighting style

[blubbernibble]

This is honestly the main reason why I despise that Dexterity completely overtakes the meta in this game, making any build that doesn’t have good Dexterity obsolete by default. The only exception to this is Fighters, Paladins and *maybe* Barbarians if they go for heavy armor and medium armor for the Barbarian respectively. You’re in melee so you need the higher AC, otherwise you’re gonna get your ass kicked by anyone and everyone that has melee attacks, ranged attacks and spell, while ranged characters can comfortably sit in the back without caring about what’s going on over 100 feet away. Retaliation with ranged attacks? Just go behind cover and then proceed to ignore cover with crossbow expert because screw the DM for wanting to have any sort of positioning matter at all. Dynamic battle maps may as well just be a flat chess board when crossbow expert comes into play. It doesn’t help that any Strength fighters are effectively crammed to being MAD if they don’t wear heavy armor, because you can’t have a negative Dexterity or you’ll be a punching bag. Melee characters already need good Strength, Dexterity and Constitution, while Dexterity fighters only need Dexterity and Constitution to be good in combat, and they can afford to wear light or medium armor, which is much less expensive than plate armor. This game punishes you for ever wanting to go into melee without some busted gimmick (like Sentinel Polearm master) because of how prevalent they made ranged attacks and AoEs. In previous editions, you still needed Strength to deal extra damage with ranged and finesse weapons, giving people a reason to care about Strength, but not anymore.

[robertstromgren]

I actually really loved hearing more of these comedic bits! They were really well delivered and charming, I hope you keep at it!

[MoonBoi]

Counterpoint: a handcrossbow isn't as rad a firesword, so there is that to consider

[ababababaabaaba]

If you don't use GWM, just pick up the longsword with dueling instead of greatsword and use your other hand to take a shield or something, the damage lost would be about 1 point per hit.

[JonathanMandrake]

Bonus of Flame Tongue: It helps against normal darkness

[anoobindisguise]

unfortunately 5e martials have to be fixed with magic items, and melee martials even more so. so i usually try to give players hybridized magic weapons, such as a +2 flametongue or slottable gems/runes that bestow properties like Vicious and give out lots of loot early. such as a goblin chieftain with a +2 club at very low levels. the fact that flametongue barely matches a generic handxbow and is melee is distressing but with enough buffs i can attempt to wrestle WotC's silly design choices into something resembling balance.

[PiroMunkie]

This video basically boils down to "Archery fighting style is really good."

Ranged and melee all have ways to add extra damage to their attacks or grant advantage on their attacks, but only one of them gets an extra baseline 10% hit chance. It's not the flashiest feature, but it matters a lot more in the long run.

[NexusCrux]

Flame Tongue is actually a big help when dealing with magical darkness since, at least darkness created by the Darkness spell, only magical light created by a 2nd level or lower spell gets distinguished in the darkness. Magic items aren't based on spell levels for their effects so a Flame Tongue created an 80ft radius area of magical light that overlaps Darkness.

[butterflysrage]

"Gator plays way too much minecraft"
*my husband, playing minecraft at 12:30am* "HEY!"

[neb]

Fighting at range is without question more optimal than melee (as it should be since that's generally the way it is in real life), buuuut I find that way more people enjoy the fantasy of being a melee warrior over being an archer.

[zacherylahti]

I think this is the first theory video of yours I can’t get behind. Yes, the flame tongue itself is kinda a trap item, but if you’re comparing archery and melee, it seems dishonest to discount other melee builds that use GWM and polearm master, hell, even a two level dip in barbarian - or magic intimate for an owl familiar - to counteract some of GWM’s downsides.
In short: I agree ranged combat typically hoses down melee, but comparing one of the worst options without its major draw feat to an incredible option will always skew results.

[theunaimedarrow]

The other missing component is that in 4 rounds of combat there's a chance that the melee combatant will not be in a position to attack for a round, while the hand x-bow will likely be able to target anyone.

[XtacticalPheNoM]

At level 8 the flame tongue user could pick up gwm tho and still have 20 strength. why wasn't this brought up?

[Kinaro]

But Kobold, Flame Tongue no need bolts to fire! your crossbow would run out of ammo!. . . . also Flame Tongue could be used to cook the foods when you attack so get nice cooked meat at the end of the fight! owo

But I guess raw meat kebabs are not too bad eather <w<

[WolframYouTube]

5:46
You didn't account for extra Reaction attacks Sentinel could give you here. Of course, this would require you to not get targeted down, and/or that you have another ally in melee so you can reliably activate the reaction. Even if you assume that you get to use your Sentinel attack on like half of the turns it could be used on, it should still be a decent bump to your DPR rather than none at all.