Power Attack Guide for Sharpshooter and Great Weapon Master in Dnd 5e! - Advanced guide

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[PackTactics]

Thank you very much Kobold Quest for sponsoring this video!
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[MrHeatsetfreak]

Tipp from a math teacher: Colour-code the formulas. It makes it easier to see where each part comes from for someone who might be a bit overwhelmed by the formula.

[RainbowRandolf]

To note: things like Bless and most Magical Weapons give you more to hit, which will put you in a much better space to power attack to your heart's content.

[pumpkinzz]

One thing I feel is worth mentioning is that due to fighting styles, ranged power attacks, with rare exceptions, deal more damage per individual attack than melee attacks (assuming the same number of feats, attack mods, magic weapon mods, etc.) Power Attacks make the weapon’s damage die much less impactful than your accuracy, which synergizes incredibly well with Archery fighting style.

[saltypork]

Sharpshooter is one of the best stealth feats in the game, because only full cover counts against you, and when the enemy takes full cover you can always hide from them.

[silvinity]

The breaking point for ac on power attacks is something I've run into on my current sharpshooter character The theoretical damage output is close to 500 or so at level 20, the only problem is that every monster in the game with enough HP for that to matter also has too high of an AC for power attacking to be worth it, thus about 80-100 damage is lost. This results in a situation where I can't kill the really big things this damage was meant for, and also all my damage features are just overkill for anything they would actually work on. This is the issue of just crunching the numbers in a vacuum. I could deal 500 damage, but everything that I could deal 500 damage to dies before that 500 damage is dealt.

[clarkside]

We NEED guides like these! You're doing good work, Pack Tactics.

[jimmyjazz]

Thank you for reminding me that Sharpshooter has two other amazing features besides its power attack feature.

[Nyghtking]

Whats funny about sharp shooter is that if you're a fighter with bow specialization and a 16 dex you take a -0 on the roll instead of a minus 5, without factoring in any additional bonuses.

[Snowil]

I love your videos, one thing I find really helpful and visual is to graph both power attack and normal attack where one axis is ac and the other axis is average damage. It was very helpful to me at least.

[marvintg]

I just recently discovered the very good combination of great weapon master and Samurai Fighter's Fighting Spirit: at level 5, that's potentially 4 power attacks at advantage! throw in the Great Weapon Fighting fighting style, and you're looking at a character that can nuke even medium-AC targets.

[roberthornyak]

But Kobold, why didnt you mention you can use both feats at the same time making a melee attack with a heavy crossbow, taking a -10 to hit to get +20 damage? It would probably be an improvised weapon attack at that point, but then you could take tavern brawler to have proficiency still. Probably not practical but it could be fun and thematic.

[INTCUWUSIUA]

You should also take standard deviation into account. The standard deviation on a single d20 roll is quite high, so for short combats it's probably not worth power attacking due to the high variance inherent to a d20 roll. However the longer a combat is, the more worth it it is to power attack throughout, as the more times you roll the smaller the standard deviation is and the closer your in practice results are likely to be to the calculated avarage.

Basically, if you think combat will only last a round or two, don't bother power attacking.

[ikkiville]

I love how all this math is a roundabout way of calculating THAC0 <3

[Chopthemonions]

Woooo! We love Packtactics at my table! Keep up the good work Kobold King!

[mikecarson]

Thank you for sharing with numbers and equations. Your video is easy and fun to follow. I especially liked when Gator jumped in there to cast "shield".

[vayne-animae]

I saw the notification of the video
I click and having a good time in front and suddenly
KABOOM !!!!
an announcement for a kobold adventure kickstarter???!!!!
I turned off youtube
turn on my pc

and I threw everything I could into the campaign xD

can't wait to have it in my hands

[bert_MH]

The only thing Id add to this video is that context matters. If I'm attacking a 7hp goblin with a greatsword and 18 STR, I kill it as long as I hit and don't roll snake eyes. In this case, youd definitely take the better hit chance.

In another perhaps more subtle situation, if you're up with GWM on a single enemy with ~12 HP left, GWM would guarantee a kill if you hit. However, if another martial is next to it who maybe doesn't have GWM, it might be better to make a normal attack.

For example, 15 AC with a +8 to hit on both martials means that for both of you to hit you'd need a 7 or better on the d20, which is basically the odds of rolling at least a 7 with disadvantage. Thats 49% on the disadvantage table shown in the video. At 12 HP left you guarantee a kill if both of you hit with greatswords since the minimum damage roll is a 6.

However, with GWM, you need to roll at least a 12 on the d20 to hit, which is 45%. If you hit, sure its guaranteed to die, but if you miss, there's no way the other martial can kill it and it will get another round of attacking you.

It seems like taking two normal attacks has an additional 4% chance of ending the encounter over a GWM attack, even though the GWM attack has better DPR.

This is all a long winded way of saying that since enemies die when their HP hits zero regardless of your overkill damage, and enemies can hurt you only when their HP is not zero, going off best DPR is not always going to result in the best outcome for a combat encounter. Things like turn order and what your allies are capable of will affect whether or not its correct to go for the all-in attack in addition to just DPR calculations

[zoeyzeebra]

There really needs to be a one-handed weapon power attack feat.

[batangbatugan]

My own personal experience with a Hexblade with Crossbow Expert and Sharpshooter is that taking a level in Fighter and taking the Archery fighting style gave me a big boost in accuracy almost negating the penalty from Sharpshooter.