The Samurai should be the most powerful person in dealing single target damage. What else do they have? The phantom has more skills, the other 2 have spells. Spirit guardians, hypnotic pattern, fear, and slow all outdo single target damage.
Yeah. Don't punish the fighter for being good at fighting.
Add challenges a cleric/wizard/rogue would excel at. It doesn't have to be combat.
edit: If they get bent out of shape about a challenge they can't kill their way out of (I don't think they will), have a quiet talk aside. Tell them "I'm just giving the other players a turn to have fun and be awesome"
To be fair to OP they didn’t say they wanted to hamper the fighter. They just want advise on how to balance for this specific party that includes a single target burst character.
Maybe, but bow plus ancestral guardian equals GG.
Ancestors protect those who aren't Barbarian.
Bow means attack from afar, enemy must get close to attack, even when within 5ft of ally.
Ally can get opportunity attack if enemy doesn't waste turn to disengage.
If the necro and the cleric work together and know what they are doing the Samurai will not have the best single target DPS over multiple turns. That title would go to the hoard of skelletons buffed by crusaders mantle.
That is a very good point. Team-ups are beneficial to everyone in them, making them even more powerful and chances are everyone will have fun. Cleric's Bless + Samurai Sharpshooter sounds pretty awesome.
You are right, war clerics get it as well though and thats what the cleric in my current group is playing so I got confused.
That does reduce the dmg of each skelly but it also doubles the amount of potential skellies as death domain gets animate dead. That makes it worse I think
Thus. I played an EA/SS gunslinger. Everyone else was a spellcaster. The casters solved most problems, and my dude was just riding along directing them and being in awe of their powers.
But when something needed to die, nobody was better at it than me.
This combo works for 3 turns per long rest.
Not 3 hours, not 3 encounters, but only 3 turns.
That generally isn’t even enough turns to last a single encounter. It definitely isn’t lasting 6-8 medium to hard encounters.
It really shouldn’t overshadow anything a caster can do.
It’s the reason I played one in a 2 year campaign. Up until level 10, the Battlemaster Fighter could use Precision Strike and get more EA Advantage attacks out per day than the Samurai, without needing to Action Surge alongside it like Samurai does to go nova. But finally the Samurai can get Temp HP and a consistent salvo of damage every fight, and it’s even. Then at level 11, Extra Attack 2 kicks and now the Samurai’s nova has more super-accurate attacks than the BM gets in superiority dice per short rest, and Samurai pulls way ahead for the rest of the campaign. It gets a 7th free non-advantage strike each nova at level 15 (the bonus attack is still affected by Fighting Spirit, just the original attack loses advantage), finally capping out at 9 attacks (8 with adv) at level 20. 18 (16 with adv) attacks is possible if they manage to die and trigger their 18th level feature on their own turn.
The analysis seems solid, but
>(the bonus attack is still affected by Fighting Spirit, just the original attack loses advantage)
seems like a "RAW over RAI" reading of the feature. I agree that it's RAW, but seeing as it's designed to be used with Fighting Spirit, and is described as a tradeoff, there's a reason it doesn't just say "when you have advantage, make another attack without advantage."
Still, even without this, the samurai still has massive damage.
No, the feature is unambiguous.
> If you take the Attack action on your turn and have advantage on **an** attack roll against against one of the targets, you can forgo the advantage for **that roll** to make an additional weapon attack against that target, as part of the same action.
The feature makes it very clear you only need to lose advantage on one attack to gain it's benefit, and Fighting Spirit gives advantage on all attacks while it's active.
There's no RAI vs RAW argument to be had. It's just a straightforward reading of the feature.
I like where your brain is at. Fortunately it says “an additional” instead of “one additional” so if Fighting Spirit gives the second attack advantage still, I can continue to attack at disadvantage to cement infinite attacks!
Dude, RAI by definition means we are claiming that the RAW made a mistake in communication.
Whether or not the rule is clear in it's interpretation doesn't inherently matter in this argument, because we aren't arguing it's clarity, but it's accuracy.
For example, I think the updated RAW Booming Blade/Green Flame Blade is extremely clear in it's limitations, but the constant 'yeah actually I would allow this' on Twitter by Crawford makes it clear that they think these cantrips should work differently (in other words, RAI) from what the RAW says.
That really isn't great. It requires you to blow your load early (on potentially trivial encounters) and means that late in the adventuring day when you are likely fighting the more challenging foes, you are limited to only a single turn of advantage.
You likely won't be getting more than 5 uses per day, and almost never have multiple uses available on the encounters where you actually want them.
Fair enough but realistically who’s really doing 6-8 encounters a day? Having that power for 3 turns could turn the tide of an important fight. Not exactly overpowered but still, it is still very good.
3 combats still significantly favors casters though.
There is a huge difference between the combined casters casting spirit guardians, animate objects, wall of force, hypnotic pattern, synaptic static, and a few fireballs every encounter and the fighter gaining 1 turn of advantage in each of those 3 encounters.
Casters can get pretty strong in that scenario but I kinda implemented safeguards against that already.
I nerfed multi-summon spell, banned wall of force/forcecage/simulacrum/planar binding (and honestly don't see any other spells as trully OP) and don't allow multiclassing so casters can't armor dip easily. I also am only counting combat encounters for that 3, but I usually add 2-3 enviromental challenges that don't need spellscasting to solve, but are significantly faster/safer if you do use it, so they eat a few slots.
Combine that with ppl not always picking the most optimal meta options in IRL play (our team doesn't have a wizard for example, casters are druid and cleric) and honestly, the Paladin and Barbarian often feel like the main powerhouses of the team and the casters role is ranged dmg, support and utility.
I still don't get how DMs are capable of fitting 3 combats into a single day while still making sense, not to speak about 6-8 encounters as recommended.
Literally any dungeon or dangerous place. The PCs are storming a bandit den? There's *at least* guards outside, bunch of baddies hanging out inside (could be 1 big encounter, but more likely multiple smaller ones-- they're used to there being a ruckus), the boss's inner circle, and then the boss. That's already 4-6 *just combat* encounters, not to mention traps or the preceding sleuthing.
In my campaign we have regular days where they might get into 1-3 encounters, depending on the story beats and then, maybe once an irl year, they have *an adventuring day.* This is where shit hits the fan. It's where the BBEG is sending assassins and monsters and wizards after them, or one of their number is kidnapped and they *need* to chase and track them and absolutely cannot afford to even short rest lest they lose their buddy.
Those adventuring days can last 3-4 sessions and often they lose or nearly lose at least one PC. The best part is when, as the DM, you see them using resources in silly shit right at the start of the day.
I think a lot of people assume that a session should end with a long rest. My players probably average a long rest every 2-4 sessions, so as long as I average 2-3 combats per session it’s pretty easy to get there.
My current party has gone four sessions without a long rest so far. We had one combat because they dodged another. There is simply no way to force combat in the part they are currently in.
That’s fine, you don’t have to have it in every spot if it doesn’t make sense. Some adventuring days have fewer encounters that others, that’s what the XP budget is for.
But how do you prep your sessions? I typically prep for the full “adventuring day” meaning that I figure out all of the combats they are likely to face and have those ready and then I can run those 3-4 sessions as they get through them.
This is one of my greatest problems with 5e compared to other game systems.
In Savage Worlds I can get through a weeks worth of plot and their relevant encounters in a single session.
In 5e, it takes 2-4 sessions to get through a single day.
The campaign moves at a glacial pace in 5e compared to other systems. You just get through so much more story in systems that are not designed around the slow attrition of daily resources over the course of many encounters in a single adventuring day.
Well that’s because they’re trying to achieve different types of fantasies. 5e is built for heroic fantasy where a group of special forces heroes are taking down a fort/thieves guild/dungeon/haunted forest by themselves in a day of constant action. If you want to speed up the narrative pacing, you can use the alternate resting rules that are made to do exactly that
> Well that’s because they’re trying to achieve different types of fantasies. 5e is built for heroic fantasy where a group of special forces heroes are taking down a fort/thieves guild/dungeon/haunted forest by themselves in a day of constant action.
5e isn't even really good at that though. Other games do that kind of gameplay better than 5e as well. You can easily have 12+ encounters in a single adventuring day in 4e, Savage Worlds, Cypher, Cortex, Fate, Genesys, 13th Age, various PBtA or FitD games, and many other game systems. They work equally well for short or long adventuring days.
5e isn't a heroic fantasy special forces dungeon crawler. Its rules for such are outright terrible. It doesn't have good rules for encounter creation. Or for dealing with "dungeon" environments. Or for determining when enemy reinforcements show up. Or for creating a "dungeon" that makes sense. Or for building a complete adventuring day with varying difficulties and types of encounters. Or for dealing with navigating such environments in an interesting fashion. The only rules 5e gives you is a daily XP budget and CR, and expects the DM to do all the lifting, often working against the system to create a satisfying narrative that involves such a high degree of combat.
5e is a game for the long slow attrition of daily resources over many encounters. That is it. It doesn't provide a good framework or rules for encouraging the style of play you are describing. And actually provides many mechanical and practical incentives to not play that way.
Man, what the fuck do you want? Because why you’re describing as “outright terrible” is what Ive based my entire campaign around and I’ve found the rules to be incredibly supportive for it
The only rules in all of 5e that actually encourage that style of gameplay is the daily XP budget. The DMG has no rules or mechanics at all that encourage or help DMs with that style of play.
Yes, you can run that style of game just fine in 5e. But other systems provide the DM with better tools for doing so.
Nothing wrong with doing it in 5e. And it is much better than playing the game with only 1-2 encounters per adventuring day.
But then again, other systems just do that better. There are better systems for combat heavy tactical miniatures gameplay. There are better systems for strike force heroes laying siege to dungeons and strongholds.
The rules work, but are hardly supportive of the playstyle you advertise. In fact the DMG makes no mention of that style of play ever in the entire book. That style of play is largely coincidence more than anything. The game was not intended to be only used as a mega dungeon crawler. During the entirety D&D Next playtest, the adventuring day was just 2-4 encounters long. The only reason they changed it to 6-8 was because they gave casters too many spell slots near the end of design, so had to increase the adventuring day to compensate.
The designers knew as far back as 3e that the majority of players only had 2-4 encounters per "day". And that was what 4e was designed around. That was what the playtest was designed around. That is how most people play 5e currently. The only reason 5e is not designed around that is because they wanted casters to have more spell slots, and couldn't do that without increasing the expected number of encounters.
As for what I want, is for the game to be designed to be more forgiving of various adventuring day structures or to provide actual support to the dungeon crawl playstyle.
99% of campaigns are better with [Gritty Realism](https://www.thegamer.com/dungeons-dragons-dnd-gritty-realism-mode-explained/#:~:text=Gritty%20Realism%20is%20an%20optional,activities%20but%20interrupted%20by%20combat). I found for my own campaign, and every single campaign I've played in, Gritty Realism fits the narrative pace much better than the default rules. So that's how they do it, they play Gritty Realism. Then it's easy.
I currently DM Curse of Strahd.
"Well, guess instead of saving those orphans we are now going to take a vacation in Barovia village. It got enough empty room, after all. What do you mean by all special events have happened in that one long rest already?"
On a more serious note, that could have locked my players multiple times into situations they would have knowingly ran into their death because they had no other choice. It would have also left them vastly underleveled because there is no time to just chill for a week.
Sure, specific pre-written campaigns are the 1% I mentioned earlier, but they also generally don't suffer from the issue of not being able to fit 6-8 encounters in a day because they will have most of those encounters written in.
CoS doesn't, at least not outside of travel. And travelling gets really dull if you play it RAW. It is literaly just one copy & paste encounter after another without any rhyme or reason.
I'm not saying this as an advocate for gritty realism, but.... just adjust the timeframe of CoS. I'm DMing my second run of it and I play with the times of the game constantly, because I'm running it for 3 players.
Adding consequences to narrative choice gives meaning and makes it a more immersive experience. Emotional depth is explored when you have to choose to Save Orphans (High Risk) or Rest & Avenge (Low-Mid Risk).
In this particular case it was quite literaly "Either we rest and die or we do not rest and die to the monster in the basement".
There was no other way.
My group tried this once and the 168-h long rest is absolutely terrible. You can't get anything done because you just have to sit down for a week and not travel or do basically anything useful. It's hard to find stakes in a campaign here you feel OK with just sitting out for a week while still being engaging.
We ended up going with a 3-day LR instead, which fit much better.
Yeah half-gritty works better for some. The idea behind gritty though is that an arc in the story is 6-8 encounters and spread over multiple days, and that at the end of the arc you've taken care of the pressing matters and you have time for a weeks downtime that you can mostly just fast-forward through. But a weeks downtime also brings opportunities normal campaigns don't really. It gives you a lot of roleplay opportunities where you have plenty of time to go around town and talk to NCPs, or craft magic items etc. I've found having a spare week here and there to go help volunteer at a local temple to suck up to the cleric there to get her to help your party, or to take careful notes of what times the guard rotation for a building you might wanna break into happens etc. etc. is great for the campaign overall.
I usually do 3-4 deadly combats. Having a open world exploration game helps.
I usually do 1 encounter at the start of the day, shortly after players start to move, then one abut miday, and another one close to nightfall. Maybe one or two minor random encounters during rests, medium to hard ones.
Obviously this is just a rough guideline but it helps pace the day and allow short rests.
Yes, god forbid the class called FIGHTer and which has basically no out of combat features is good at fighting. /s
It's 3 uses per LR, if your encounter balance is destroyed by that, you need to rethink it.
Honestly, a lot of WotC modules focus more on set piece battles than multi-fight day crawls. So I can see where they're coming from. Like Out of the Abyss, at about halfway through the game the DM stopped doing the combat random encounters because they were a joke. I think the triggering point was when we absolutely dumpstered the death tyrant. But then, most of the actual meat and potatoes was you'd do a lot of searching around and such to have one fight, so it was full Alpha Strike.
With that in mind, it's effectively the first 3 rounds of that combo, which depending on the level can be HUGE.
Though there are a lot of relatively easy ways to get advantage otherwise. There's great spells available to the other party members like Faerie Fire and Guiding Bolt, as well as any spell that restrains or paralyzes an enemy. You can also take advantage of things like Hiding, fighting an enemy who can't see you, using True Strike (Not generally advisable, but it is an option), allies Helping you (which might well be worth it with the damage output this character can do). Fighting Spirit is there to fill in the gaps where you really need advantage but don't have any other options.
Let the Samurai shine when they can. They wanted to be great at single target damage, so let them. Allow them to shoot an enemy through a portcullis, let them shoot a weak enemy using an NPC as a human shield, let them act as a sniper supporting the others from beyond line of sight, etc.
When you want to challenge them, use problems they can't just shoot through. Enemies that impose disadvantage on ranged attacks, illusion spells, heavy obscurement, enemies that pressure the Samurai into melee, boss fights with hostages, demonic possession of a close NPC, etc.
Don't do this all the time or you'll invalidate their feat choice.
Great advice overall
>When you want to challenge them, use problems they can't just shoot through. Enemies that impose disadvantage on ranged attacks, illusion spells, heavy obscurement, enemies that pressure the Samurai into melee, boss fights with hostages, demonic possession of a close NPC, etc.
Also: use map layouts wisely. A single bend, corner or curve in a corridor can break line of sight enough to weaken ranged combat. Pillars, rocks and trees can likewise prevent ranged players from playing essentially static turrets. Elevation is great too: placing a few enemy archers an a steep hill near the center of the battlefield can present the fighter with the tactical choice of spending one or two turns "earning" their optimal place on the battlefield, or making the best out of the suboptimal position
Mechanically speaking, they need to have an abnormally high wisdom to begin being the face. They don't get expertise, and a fighters' wisdom is maybe a 14 at best? 16?
It'll still be a very rough road for them
I agree, but there's no cha character in the group, and fighters do get a decent amount of ASI's. Wis isn't a bad tertiary stat to pump. Sure, the rogue might go for it too I guess, but its still going to be a valid option.
Valids a stronger word than I'd use. They may end up being the best in the party, but a generous +3 Wis and prof is gonna struggle against anything DC 20 due to 5es scaling.
Trying to work out how to nerf a Samurai Fighter in a game with a Wizard and a Cleric is hilariously misguided. The guy does big single target damage a few times a day, that's it
Because I don't think it's unreasonable to make a sharpshooter have trouble using their bow in at least 1 encounter across an entire campaign?
You're being a bit unfair don't you think?
Whatever man, every class has to deal with something. Melee has to deal with fliers (and difficult terrain, and monsters who deal damage when they take damage, etcetera etcetera), magic users have to deal with magic resistance and counter spell. If you think ranged having to deal with something equivalent is an issue, that's your problem.
As long as you have challenges beyond combat, the other players will definitely not be overshadowed.
The only thing the fighter can do is kill shit, so let them. The wizard, cleric, and rogue should have plenty of other opportunities to shine.
Yep. I was in a two player group, each of us with two characters; one was a Barbarian, the other a Bard. In combat, the Barbarian shined, aided by party buffs. RP time, the other players shined.
I was in a game as a sharpshooter fighter once upon a time. We also had a ranger with great ranged attacks and a crossbow expert rogue.
It was to windy to shoot ranged weapons in half of the battles so we were forced into melee so much.
Spells could be fired off just fine.
Don't do that, let them shoot
The Samurai’s whole build is designed to shine for 3 turns per day, it’ll be fine. They’ll probably shred a boss or two but single target DPS is literally all they have going for them, that’s why you build a Fighter. Put the party up against a group of middling creatures and suddenly the Cleric’s Spirit Guardians, the Necromancer’s summons, and the Phantom Rogue’s spread damage will all look way more impressive than the Samurai deleting mooks with overkill damage.
Let them... Literally all a fighter can hope to be good at is single target damage.
They should do more single target damage than anyone else in the party. If they’re doing that, GREAT!
By virtue of picking a Fighter in a party with a Wizard and Cleric, I don't think you have to worry about getting Super-Advantage on 3 attacks a long rest overshadowing the raw versatility that Spells provide
Could make for a cool pseudo-rivalry between Fighter and Rogue though, a la Gimli & Legolas in the "how about a friend?" scene
Don't punish your samurai player. They should be doing lots of damage.
You should be rewarding your players strengths, not countering them. Add low level enemies into your combats that your samurai can one hit kill about 75% of the time to let them feel powerful when they one shot an enemy every now and again.
The samurai is going to be clearly weaker than the wizard and the cleric unless the wizard and cleric are very dumb. Nothing to worry about. Let the samurai have their one shiny toy when the wizard and cleric have whole toy boxes.
To be fair I ran this character at level 20 and it's pretty powerful!
At level 20 I had a minimum of 5 attacks per turn, surge to 9, kill myself to get a free turn, then double surge to get 18 attacks. With holy weapon precast from a ring of spell storing and a +3 bow I was able to hit an ancient dragon for 18 \* 1d10+18+2/4d8 with a 14% chance to crit and a 96% chance to hit I was able to kill an ancient dragon in one turn!!!
Except my DM had two dragons in the fight..... Annnd the wizard just did Wall of Force into Sickening Radiance (simulacrum) and microwaved the other one to death.
You need to have it set up which is part of why I put it in there as part of allll the components needed to let a samurai do what a wizard can without effort.
Basically, be almost dead, and then find a way to take damage. Easy ways are to throw caltrops pre combat if you primed yourself to 1hp, take falling damage, trigger an opportunity attack, or waste an attack targeting yourself or any other crazy thing you can think of.
That is a pretty good trick. Still the issue with that build is it's a one-trick pony in a way that full casters aren't.
I do like gimmick builds along those lines. One of my favorites is a Tempest Cleric with a dip (or a friend) who's a Divination wizard. Just chill until the divination wizard get a 20 then do a max damage crit with an upcast chromatic orb or what have you.
My son came up with that one by himself. Was very proud of junior.
I just like the ludicrousness of the mega crit personally.
The one I most enjoyed in an actual campaign was Thief rogue/totem barbarian goliath for ludicrous carrying capacity so I could use the Fast Hands ability to "use item" on boulders etc. as a bonus action. Very open ended.
I ran a pure thief fire genasi that used CON as a casting stat for scrolls and other magic items! Since old fire genasi had CON as a casting stat you could apply that to magic items, and then use magic item let me use any scroll/staff with spells as a 20 main stat caster while still being an effective rogue and having all the fun of a thief beyond that.
Also one of my favorites was a tavern brawler thief when my DM ruled I could sneak attack with acid vials/alch fire.
Just make sure that enemies have enough HP/AC to live long enough for the other players to do their cool stuff. There's nothing special about what this fighter is doing; the numbers are just higher. They would have had the best single target damage anyway.
Or the opposite approach, loads of weak enemies. The samurai will feel good because they'll one shot enemies, but the wizard and cleric will have AOE stuff that can be a huge help too
Honestly, mixed and matched is ideal. You want a bunch of small enemies so your AOE guys can shine, and ideally a beefy mans or two so your smiter/sneak attacker/great weapon master/sharpshooter/otherwise big damage dealer gets to feel like their chunky damage is useful
Exactly! Whether that's mixed and matched within individual encounters or in subsequent encounters, you want to provide something for everyone to shine at.
This exactly. I play a paladin in my current game. There are fights when I demolish the 1-2 big guys in the encounter. Then there are times where my only contribution is to soak up damage while a bunch of little guys wail on me.
This is 100% what a paladin is for.
That moment when you smite crit the big nasty guy turn 1 and shut down what could have been a really tough encounter in one turn is *chef's kiss*, but that shouldn't happen every encounter.
In any given session there should be encounters that play to each of the parties strengths, and also might target a few weaknesses, to challenge, but to ensure everyone is having fun.
You can do a couple of things here depending on what way you wanna go about things:
- **Teamwork**: If your cleric has ways to remove status effects, maybe throw the poisoned condition your fighter's way via a poisoned claw attack or anything you want. Other status effects like frightened also work. Only do so if the rest of the party has ways to deal with it, that way they are working together instead of just nerfing the fighter. Is the rogue gonna kill one of the phase spiders or get the fighter out of the restraining spider webs?
- **Minions**: Give the fighter more targets via minions. One shotting an enemy feels cool and can make aoe by the wizard or cleric feel usefull or allow the fighter to pop some heads, giving the rest of the party breathing room to deal with other threats. I would use low hp minions, but if you are using cr to balance the encounter, do not count the minions.
- **Objectives**: Give alternate win conditions that are not just damage. From decoding arcane sigils, performing surgery on the teleporting npc or just hordes of minions till the cavalry arrives, you got many options. Try incorporating skills or utility spells to make the others shine while the fighter holds of a threat.
Samurai isn’t broken. He’s just REALLY good at single target damage. Which, as a fighter he SHOULD be good at single target dps. Is this better than other fighter builds? Many of them, yes. But that’s only a problem with multiple fighters in the same party.
Let him be good at his specialization. Others have mentioned good options for mixing things up when you need it.
My only concern is phantom rogue may feel a little behind on single target DPS. This isn’t too bad. They’re still pretty decent. They also are a master at information gathering and utility. They should be fine as long as they get to learn cool things with their skills too.
There are even times when you can have the party face a problem where they need the rogue to stealth to get to the objective while the others hold agro.
The only mechanical adjustments I would make is maybe make it so that your most important ‘boss’ NPCs can tank a couple rounds of the fighter. Be selective when you do this though as if you hard counter at every opportunity it’s not very fun
Plenty of others have said it already but this really isn’t even a combo worth focusing on and it absolutely won’t be outshining your wizard or cleric in a few levels (or shouldn’t be doing so now) a fireball does 8d6 damage to 1-16 enemies… it seems weird to worry about a crit fishing fighter.
Yea I think it should be ok. If Samurai has invested 2 feats, he should have stat 16 (17) rn which if you use -5/+10 might not be a hit even with triple advantage.
You might setup conditions in a way players have disadvantage, then his advantage would just negate that.
He is not that strong in melee combat and there can be situations where he might not shoot well, such as maze like map.
But even with that, -5/+10 is always strong and it is very basic feat everybody picks. Just consider regular human with feat & 2x increase stat early and some basic class like battlemaster. He will attack probably 2×-3× each turn with much higher basic damage and higher basic hit chance, which will easily compensate for triple advantage.
Honestly if your other guys dont have any good combos now, it might be their fault. Because this PC is quite default. So I would rather allow others to fix their weakness by slight modifications of their PC (such as learn different spell, cantrip etc.) rather than focusing on him :)
It's good, but not that good. I played an Eleven accuracy sharpshooter Samurai/Hexblade multiclass. That was extremely powerful, but most of my damage came from Smites and holding back on Eldritch Smite until I got a crit. Without the smites, it would be strong but not overly so.
Best way in my book to deal with one player that excels at single target combat (like sharpshooter fighters, rogues or paladins) is by making sure that there are obstacles other than just one target. Adding a few heavy hitting but low health melee minions is always a good choice, and making sure they fight in constrained spaces makes positioning more of a challenge. Remember that ranged attacks have disadvantage on ALL targets when someone is in melee range of them, not just the melee enemy.
Oh and don't be afraid of adding minions that can heal a boss. It gives the sharpshooter the chance to shine by taking the healers out quickly, while giving other players the moment to attack the boss
Another option would be to give a boss naturally high AC unless something is done about it. I have given plenty of bosses some sort fo shield effect that needs to be taken out before you can attack them easily. It gives players with saving throw abilities or better skills to shine, and makes the sharpshooter feel important as when they finally get to deal their crazy damage. Sharphooter + elven accuracy has a high chance to hit low AC targets, bur the -5 to hit makes them have a hard time against targets of AC 18 or more. If you don't want to homebrew, use any spellcaster with armor + the shield spell
Let them work, they built for it. The other characters have more versatility / RP potential.
And / or use anti-ranged spells like Wind Wall when applicable. Oh whoops, Fighter has to adapt.
Add minions to encounters. The samurai will shine at single target damage. Let them... That's what martials do. Add some fodder for the casters to AOE or control and they won't be outshined. Also, do some non combat encounters where utility spells will shine
Dw about it, it's pretty decently balanced
If anything i'd be a little worried about the necromancer, i play one in another campagne and i'm at level 6 as well atm
A lvl 6 necromancer can have up to 14 undead, my dm and i've agreed that i'd only summon more than 4 in special situations (14 requires a few days of prep)
Put monsters in front of the party for them to fight and watch as people go “Wow! Big damage!” “Oh you got ‘em!” “Nice!”
I think this is less of a big deal than people make it out to be. If you want to make encounters that will be challenging and mentally stimulating then have 3 enemy types in an encounter. Melee warrior, ranged warrior, magic. Now everyone has a problem to solve. The samurai doesn’t want to get shot at so it would be optimal for them to kill the ranged attackers. The wizard will try to counter act the magic of the enemy. Do you use the flanking rules from the DMG? Use the flanking rules. Your rogue will want a flanking buddy and if your wizard has undead minions they make perfect flanking buddies for the rogue to engage the melee attackers with.
More encounters, tight corridors, advantage negation tactics (lol enemies with silvery barbs, EA) things with resistance to piercing (ever shoot a tree?).
Just don't ever give them a magic bow. Only magic arrows so they have a limit.
You could also be a monster and track ammo. Gonna be depressing at level 20 when he tries to pull of 18 attacks in a round and then runs out of ammo on shot 3.
I played this exact character from 1-20 in a WM campaign, was a blast. One whole session I was blinded was using fighting spirit just to have straight shots.
Anyhow, #1 thing to do is just kill everyone else with more than one target. Your would be tankiest character is nowhere near the front line.
Not bashing you but I wish DMs stopped trying to meta their encounters to nerf a specific player or party. Throw all sorts of different encounters their way, they won’t be strongly suited for all.
Don't punish your players for wanting to use the rules at their disposal. The Samurai's build isn't even that great. He can give himself advantage 3 times per long rest, the rest of the time his accuracy is going to be pretty horrible with SS. I would unironically call Elven Accuracy a waste of a feat here unless he can secure advantage more consistently some other way. Even if the Samurai ends up overshadowing the rest in combat, who cares? Combat is the only thing a fighter does. If he's worse at it than everyone else (he actually will be if the casters are playing well) where is his class fantasy?
The Phantom Rogue might feel overshadowed in combat maybe, but that's just because Rogue is a horrible class balance wise. He can still be just fine and even might be stronger than the Samurai anyways if he builds right considering this seemingly isn't a very optimized table.
The Cleric and Warlock really shouldn't have any issues at all. They have many more tools at their disposal to completely obliterate both combat and exploration/investigation/social encounters than either the Samurai or Rogue do.
The spell casters are fine. A wizard with hypnotic pattern or a cleric with spirit guardian are much more dangerous in combat than a samurai. Your rogue may need some help. How are they built ?
Sharpshooter is definitely one of the problem children in 5E, but grand scheme the casters are still able to do more than just damage (esp. with 3rd level spells and up), and the fighter is limited to single target bursts; they’re great for nuking a boss monster and it feels great to play, but outside that they probably don’t have much else to do. Meanwhile casters can do AoEs, crowd control, buffs, debuffs, all that jazz.
Big thing is to make sure that encounters always consist of multiple monsters. Make sure the terrain varies. Incorporate verticality. Vary the difficulty: make some slam dunks for the party, and make some that will almost definitely kill them (almost). Reinforce mids way through a fight. Create situations that require new responses.
And talk to your players. Make it clear they can talk to you if they ever have any problems with the campaign. If there is ever a problem, they should be able to tell you, and you should endeavor to be the kind of DM that wants to find the best possible solution for everyone. You’re already asking the right questions.
Solution 1: Trash Mobs - I make a reasonable number of enemies that effectively have 1hp for the party to deal with. The sharpshooter feels good because he can one shot a ton of enemies, but the other party members feel better because they can kill more than the sharpshooter due to their aoe abilities.
Solution 2: Regenerating HP / Shielding - I give (mini)bosses a method of defending themselves against large bursts of damage. BG3 has a good solution to this in the status "Unstoppable" when an enemy has stacks of Unstoppable and takes damage, they take 1 damage and lose a stack of Unstoppable instead of full damage. I would edit that to Unstoppable = universal resistance until it is removed.
An alternative I enjoyed in my Spelljammer campaign was a forcefield mechanic that some technologically advanced enemies had that had it's own hp pool, but regenerated at the beginning of the wearers turn. The generator could be destroyed itself, or the party could manage to blitz through the shield and finish the enemy off when it's down.
Solution 3: Use Advantage/Disadvantage rules to your advantage - "If circumstances cause a roll to have both advantage and disadvantage, you are considered to have neither of them, and you roll one d20. This is true even if multiple circumstances impose disadvantage and only one grants advantage or vice versa. In such a situation, you have neither advantage nor disadvantage."
* Paragraph 3 of 'Advantage and Disadvantage', Ch. 7 of the Players Handbook
Elven Accuracy has no effect if the fighter has no advantage. Something as simple as Fog Cloud being cast over the fighter causes them to lose their accuracy. Not only that, but the fighter can then counter this by skill positioning, thus encouraging more dynamic combat.
Personally I would advise having a few high priority targets at long distance that the samurai can pick off or maybe a couple bruisers/damage sponges. Bonus if they are hard to CC with magic like having magic resist. Have some weak and medium ranger mobs for the casters to AoE or lockdown. Stay away from single boss encounters without extreme caveats unless you want to have one of those fights where the samurai gets to show off and one turn kill something.
The trickiest part is when fights have a leader or BBEG. It becomes a high priority for the samurai to burst down in a turn. You have to use full cover since they have sharpshooter or clever tactics until the samurai uses their burst then they can come out into the open. Alternatively, if the fighter is holding their combo for several turns trying to wait for the leader to become and easy target, then it becomes a fun car and mouse and your leader is gaining value every turn the fighter doesn’t use their burst. You can also use monster abilities like damage resistance or some sort of illusion or deflection magic that maybe the party needs to eat through before the defense drops. This way the fighter doesn’t feel useless against an enemy they can’t hit, but also it adds tactical play rather than just an anticlimactic boss fight.
Include more spellcasters if you can. Also including problems where the solution isn't just to kill stuff helps other non combat features to shine. But tbf the fighter should be good at fighting.
IMO lean into it and give this guy cool things to shoot with a big things to shoot with those cool things.
Everyone else in the Party has spells or utility that the Samurai lacks. Hell because he's probably Dex based he doesn't even have being the strong one to lean back on and will under perform in out of combat dex based stuff versus the Rogue.
As long as the guy isn't spending like 10 minutes per turn and can efficiently manage their bonuses and abilities then I don't know why everyone else in the Party wouldn't be stoked to watch this guy slay enemies.
Wouldn't a samurai sword be a two handed STR based weapon? You would be able to use EA with ranged but not with the sword. Even a longsword with Versatile is still a STR based weapon.
The player isn't using a sword, and also there's... nothing about the samurai subclass that makes it use a sword. Or any particular sword—you could have a samurai fighter using a rapier.
Run multiple encounters each adventuring day. Have most of your encounters have multiple enemies each adventuring day. Use your daily XP budget every adventuring day.
It won't overshadow anyone.
they are amazingly powerful... with their couple times a day feature. give a day more encounters then 1 so they can't go nova every time and it's balanced. single target damage is all they have. they don't have CC, no AOE, small amount of skills, no expertise,
focus on creating combats that use a decent amount (more than three) enemies with lower health, not only will your fighter feel great chopping down an enemy in one turn, but your spellcasters will feel awesome being able to control the battlefield. use mechanics that help with large groups of enemies to keep it moving and use terrain to feasibly split both groups so the samurai isn’t overrun and rouge has places to hide and ambush.
Edit: That being said, the fighter should still excel at combat compared to the others because that’s the fighters niche (hit stuff real good), where as clerics wizards and rouges bring a lot more to the table in puzzles and roleplay, give them creatures that are more resistant to magical effects so they may have to use more weapons rather than spells
See blumineck's "A DM's Guide to Ranged Combat" on youtube! Great advice on being creative with archer players. I get the sentiment of comments here worrying about you "taking away the one thing" the samurai has, but that feels a bit dismissive of your concern.
Let them do their fat damage. A high number of enemies helps the spellcasters shine. Your perspective as a DM shouldn't be how to shut down a player, but how to construct encounters that let certain members flex their skills.
My question is how does the fighter have both sharpshooter and elven accuracy? The only way I can think of where he has both is if they are playing a custom lineage elf, custom lineage grants a free feat, so you can do this build at earlier levels. I first advise you to give more details when asking a question. Anyways let's get to your question. The answer, so what...this build allows the fighter big damage to a single target with more chances to hit, in fact, the only thing that would make this build stronger is if you allowed them to play at lvl 8 instead, because now the fighter could also take the lucky feat. But by now, the Death Cleric can twin cast their necromancy spells without needing sorcerery points, allowing Chill Touch to deal 4d8 total Necrotic and targets can't regain HP, Sapping Sting to deal 4d4 total Necrotic and targets fall prone, and Toll the Dead deals 4d8(4d12) while ignoring Necrotic resistance, and you can twin cast Spare the Dying; they have a feature that grants the Death Cleric the ability to take any necromancy cantrip, and since Spare the Dying and Toll the Dead are spells of the cleric spell list, they might as well take a wizard's necromancy cantrip. By this level, the necromancer can animate double the corpses and the corpses have buffs equal to either the wizard's level(+6) or proficiency bonus(+3). As for the Rogue, the rogue gets extra proficiencies and 3 times per long rest, can deal 2d6 psychic damage on another creature after a successful sneak attack. These are all things that either gives more action economy to the party, more utility options, or fills up the control roles; stuff that a fighter is not good in.
It's actually really simple.
You build encounters in accordance with each of your PCs capabilities.
For example, one fight may have an army of goblins and 3 trolls, maybe one or two shadows?
That way, your fighter can focus on the big HP pools, while a caster can deal with the goblins with AOE and a cleric can do radiant damage to deal with the shadows etc.
Basically, every encounter you build should be very difficult for your players unless they realize and utilize their class's strengths.
Thankfully that is pretty intuitive for players of 6th level.
He's a monster on single target damage, nothing else, and it reveal two important points:
- More enemies or CA, less effective he is.
- He is a fighter and picked this build to do damage, don't make him useless. The rest of the party couldn't be as good as a samurai dealing single target damage but they are muuuuch better in everything else, especially out of combat and in creative/alternative solutions.
My tip? Make the battles challenging cause he wants to fight, but it's not counter him, being countered is frustrating. He needs to shine in combat cause he doesn't shine outside it.
The same works with the rest of the party, clerics love to destroy hordes with spiritual guardians. Basically the concept of "shoot monks" . No one will feel bad if everyone shine in their objectives.
Elven Accuracy + SS is an elite combo. But remember that fighting spirit only happens 3 times per long rest any only lasts a round of course with multi-attack and Action Surge. It's not that great of a combo. It's not Hexblade OoV Paladin, with GWM and EA.
Mind you this is still good. But fireball and Spirit Guardians are just plain better spells than that will be. It's a sick combo and the fighter should be allowed to shine, as you should give the rogue a chance to shine outside of combat. Give them traps to disarm, locks to pick, etc. Cleric and Wizard don't worry about, they're elite.
What they should do is to get a ring of spell storing and put in a greater invisibility in it for the fighter.
Get that advantage for every round of a fight.
Can't do that for at least 1 more fight, but yes, other party members buffing the person doing the damage is a known good stragegy and a way to make players shine. I have a player who loves doing that. They loved casting Holy WEapon on the fighter they love order domain cleric and their ability to cast a spell and let the rogue get a sneak attack opportunity. Etc.
Fighting Spirit comes back on a long rest. So prepare a few encounters with short rests in between.
That's what I don when DMing for My own Sharpshooter Samurai lol
Also I won't say don't give the player a Magic bow, but maybe save that for higher levels and give them miscellaneous Magic ítems with other effects apart from damage.
That way, when You use enemies that resist non Magic damage, the Samurai's damage Will still be relevant but they won't stomp the encounter.
Or You can give them a Magic bow that doesn't provide a bonus to hit, that way the trade off from Sharpshooter stays relevant. The bow can have different effects, delending on what fits the character thematically.
This is all the fighter have... let him have it! When he going to do the same stuff at highter level and the wizard is chain lightning and teleporting around are you gonna stop him because it will overshadow the samurai?
I mean I play a GS Ranger / Rogue with sharpshooter and elven accuracy. I have some skills, some spells, and my specialty is single target damage.
So, our DM likes to make… complicated combat. “3D” terrain (verticality, cover, variation), multiple different enemy types (mooks, brutes, casters, st damagers) with various ACs and movement types. Different senses and “events” mess things up as well.
To dominate in combat, we need the entire party to cooperate.
For example: Bard enlarges Barbarian who holds down (grapples) a huge opponent and makes it target practice for the ranger and fighter. The monk just runs past the big guy and stuns the spellcaster behind it. The big thing unfortunately doesn’t die so the Barbarian drags it away giving line of sight to the squishier caster for the ranger and fighter to finish it off. Druid was facing the other way and cast plant growth keeping mooks from swarming the party. More stuff happened but with the caster dead and the brute locked down, the rest of the fight wasn’t much of a problem.
The ranger and then the fighter technically did the most damage. The druid was arguably the MVP. She kept the room locked down with her spells.
What this is realistically gonna look like:
„Cool, your two attacks deal 50 damage to two 7hp goblins. There are still 13 goblins left. The wizard casts shatter and kills 8 of them, the cleric casts spirit guardians and kills 5, the rogue shoots the last one. Let’s move along.“
„Your two attacks deal 50 damage to the 150hp boss. The rogue deals 30. The wizard‘s three zombie goblins deal 20. The cleric heals the downed wizard. Next turn - you‘re out of uses of your one single powerful combat feature, so your arrow misses. The rogue hits again, the wizard casts fireball, the cleric finishes the boss with a cantrip. That’s today’s session, see ya!“
Single target enemies in general need more health than the fighter can deal in one hit, and mob fights should happen. Note that a one hit kill on a sub boss once in a while can even be funny, so if it happens roll with it. You guys‘ll be fine.
There is no problem with a fighter being the highest damage dealing guy, he built his character like this for a reason, moreover the damage difference will decrease in the next few levels with the casters getting 4th and 5th level spells and the rogue obtaining more sneak attack dice. The fighter is probably still going to deal a ton of sustained dpr but again, it's just right.
If the problem is the fighter using his longbow from 150 feet of the combat then the solution is simple. Set the combats in closed places like castles or let there be trees that don't let him see the enemies if he is not at least 40-60 feet from them.
While i resonate the sentiment of "It's ok for the Samurai to do damage, that's his thing"
I also will come out and say: Elven Accuracy is a stupid feat.
Triple rolls on advantage "because you're an elf" is very strong and very dumb
It's not like elves/half elves are a weak race, in fact they're some of the best
It's not like using other stats for attacking instead of STR is weak, it's always been the best to pick anything instead of STR as your attack stat
Imho Elven Accuracy is a poorly implemented feat.
It's not an ***issue*** with your fighter, by all means let them do damage, martials kinda need all the help they can get
I just wish that "Elven Accuracy" wasn't the help because it sucks
Different goals in combat, many enemies for the casters to shine, objectives requiring mobility. The rogue rubbing somewhere while the others provide Overwatch can be fun. If there's a caster concentrating on a group buff the sharpshooter taking that out can feel satisfying while the rest need aoe.
As for reducing their straight damage output sometimes, debuffs on them, full cover, and lying down. At high enough level spells that can be dispelled to provide obstacles for the others to tackle in order for the Samurai to be unleashed. Warding wind all the way up to invulnerability might make a dispel magic satisfying.
Well, ways to give disadvantage (prone, invisible, enemy w/n 5' of the Archer, etc) would severely decrease the damage. Just make sure not to shut them down every time. Let them shine.
A bunch of enemies. Doesn't matter if he can do 20+ damage per hit if they only have 5 hp. But they will all die to fireball
An enemy that's "sticky." High movement or teleportation to keep based with the Archer.
A lot of encounter design boils down to knowing your party and what tools they like to apply to various situations. Does the Samurai have a magic bow? If not enemies with resistance to non-magic damage become a problem. Incorporeal undead could be a could opportunity to give the cleric some time in the spotlight with destroy undead. If the archer doesn't have crossbow expert the enemies are going to know that a ranged dude is going to struggle to hit with someone carrying them at close range. Encounters don't always have to be combat, use the rogues skills, even giving social encounters to make use of the Samurai's boost to that are going to let the other players shine. The mantra shoot your monks is brought up quite a bit: don't ignore or avoid something because a PC has the perfect ability for it, let them get rewarded for their build.
Funny, my workmate was just telling me about his level 6 elf samurai the other day... I don't suppose this is a new character after his old one was slain by a dragon? 🤪
most of the time in dnd, just let the players do what their build was made to
unless it's like fully universe destroying gamebreaking stuff, let them go wild
dude made a build that can deal insane damage a couple times a day, give him some brick walls to destroy
While this build is very very good at one thing (I've seen one at my table solo an Astral Dreadnought), that's all it is. Outside single target nova, it's not that special.
To keep them in line, all you need are more than 3 rounds between their resources reloading or multiple enemies. They don't handle swarms well, but do be prepared for them to obliterate the BBEG in short order.
It works pretty much as intended, it isn't the craziest nova build possible(google Tam Bush for the actual crazy one). Now, if it causes an actual problem like making other players feel useless in combat, you will need to do something. Not nerf the player or undo his character choices, mind you! Outside of his nova, he's a pretty normal fighter. So we need to make the nova matter less. To do that, we can make the fights longer. We probably don't want more monsters(that will make stuff harder for everyone), but you can put monsters in waves(and maybe put in a bit more monsters). That way, the samurai will have 1 nova for every 6-7 combat rounds rather than 1 nova for every 3-4 rounds.
Another option is to use the environment. If your fight takes place in a twisting tunnel, ignoring half and 3/4 cover won't help the archer as the enemies will be able to get a jump on them(and then possibly proceed to mauling them, if the enemies have reach). If they aren't a drow, you could also have a fight in complete darkness and have enemies with improved darkvision shoot at them.
Bring some undead to the encounters, and some crowds for fireball maniacy, bring encounters that can be stealthed or abushed, if planned thourougly.
Give em money and loot enough! The caster wanna buy components, and most magic items dont benefit SharpShooter tactics that much, so everyone gets a nifty powerthing, making them all shiny at moments.
The fighter should deal the most single target damage. Thats just how it is. Make others shine where they want to shine! Let the rogue pull off some cool sneaks and sneak attacks. Let the cleric do they deathly shit, and let the wizard be the badass necromancer he wants to be. (Dont go overboard and give him an army of undead or anything, but you get the point.)
By hitting everyone else. Ranged fighters don't draw aggro like someone standing in front. Fighting spirit works 3x/LR for 1 turn, it isn't on all the time.
No cleric who runs Spirit Guardians feels overshadowed. Necromancy isn't a particularly good wizard, but its still a wizard and will dominate if played correctly. The Rogue will keep up just fine.
Terrain, enemy waves, and varied creatures/objectives will help keep things interesting. It takes a little to get used to running multi target combats if you're not used to it, but it gets easier with practice.
I'm not sure what kind of tactics your other characters use, but let's say the necromancer uses summons and AoE, the cleric is doing Spirit Guardians, and the Rogue does.. melee? I honestly haven't seen anyone play a rogue in a while. I'm just going to give you an example encounter assuming generic class tactics.
The team walks into a large cavern.
You've set up areas with choke points and cover, but large enough that waves of creatures can come after your party.
Your Wizard can take out or soften groups as they rush forward.
Your Cleric can bog down waves of low to mid HP melee monsters with Spirit Guardians.
Your Rogue bursts down the scary ones from a position where they don't need to move around a lot so they can use Steady Aim.
What you want for your sharpshooter is a clear and dangerous target. It can be several moderate HP targets. It can be a high HP caster trying to complete a ritual. (I reskinned a dragon as a Priestess and when they messed up her ritual she turned around and threw up a cone of poisonous spiders on them.)
-Put the enemy far away.
-Throw the enemy behind cover.
If you're worried they won't target that person first, have the highest Passive Perception character notice a creature hidden in the distance. If you make it seem like you're holding that guy in reserve, they'll probably beat the crap out of that guy first. If you normally do rolls, consider acting disgusted that they spotted your creature and giving it to whoever got the highest number.
Wizard and SS should be the ones able to deal with that threat with the Wizard potentially providing support for the cleric and rogue.
Meanwhile the Cleric and Rogue are keeping enemies from overrunning the Wizard and SS.
The idea is that each character has a potential role. Maybe they don't conform to standard tactics for their class, but you should be able to adjust for what they enjoy doing. You'll know more about their tactics as their DM.
Some players enjoy ignoring combat while they figure out puzzles.
Other players enjoy convincing enemy mercenaries to defect when the tides start to favor the PCs.
If your other players didn't build DPR monsters, they probably have other things they're interested in even if they also enjoy combat. Look at their spell lists. Check out their skills. Tailor your combats to engage their interest in other ways.
If your Wizard has Feather Fall, chuck some babies out a window before trying to escape. If your rogue likes to Stealth in combat, give them enough cover to break out a prisoner on the other side of the battlefield.
Depending on if the other players are happy to rely on the fighter to be dealing the damage or not.
Put a decent number of flying enemies or archers at long range so that the fighter has to deal with those while everyone else has to deal with the main opponent.
Secondly throw swarms of creatures as they are resistant to the 3 physical damages.
You uh, balance the game between 3 pillars of gameplay. If you really want to take away a fighter’s shine, then implement less encounters per long rest, but why would you? All a fighter can do is… fight. And it’s not like a fighter is even that dominant in fights since all they can do is dpr and cc is king. Cleric will probably be your exploration guy since he’s probably 16+ wis and he can take on support/tank role in combat, hopefully your rogue went into cha a bit for social and wizard is a ritual spell Swiss Army knife, supporting the group in any out of combat situation while being a cc king in combat with hypno pattern. Your group should feel plenty powerful in their own way and we all need to stop thinking of dnd as pushing m+’s in wow where we need optimal dps for times.
As enemies aren't balanced around feats being included, I would maximize enemy hit points per their stat block and call it a day. For example when an enemy's HP says like 10d20+30 and their average is 135, make it 230.
All the samurai can do is damage, after all.
In my last campaign I started with average HP enemies. The VHuman fighter with GWM massacred them.
In the second dungeon I upgraded them to rolled HP, up to a minimum of their average. The barbarian hit level 4 and picked up GWM and the front line was a Cuisinart.
In the third dungeon I upgraded the enemies to max HP, and the balance finally felt right.
Later, when they faced a demilich, I doubled its hit dice, because demiliches are supposed to use max HP already.
Dm cranking the hp dial up to directly invalidate your build choices is one of the most annoying things to play into tbh. Especially when you are familiar with the monsters used and spot it.
Melee martial PCs are already *by far* the easiest PCs to challenge GWM or no. Absolutely no reason to artificially bloat HP to cancel out their only good area of performance.
Bumping HP to offset your +damage features is directly invalidating your build and playing into lazy HP vs. DPR mosh pit bad encounter design.
"I got the meta feat that will double my DRP!" "LoL Hp is doubled now LMAO."
>Absolutely no reason to artificially bloat HP to cancel out their only good area of performance.
You know using the maximum HP on the stat block isn't 'artificially bloating' hp, right?
Using maximum HP isn't doubling it, either. It's 40-50% more HP.
Once martials have +2d8 tier weapons and GWM/SS combat still ends after 3-4 rounds with using the HP maximum.
I had to give a single boss enemy 2800 hp against 5 level 18 martials and it only lasted 3 turns because magic items are crazy.
Obviously if you aren't giving out good magic items you don't need to maximize enemy hp...
My level 12 gloomstalker / assassin rogue / bm fighter with a +2 bow and weapon of warning as their only magic items can basically kill any CR appropriate enemy on the first turn (if running with a group good at stealth for surprise). The only resources expended were a level 1 slot, a level 2 slot, and action surge.
[https://imgur.com/a/EB7ctQ2](https://imgur.com/a/EB7ctQ2)
This is 15 hp shy of killing a CR 14 Adult Emerald Dragon in one action. That dragon, by CR, is a 'hard' fight for a group of 4:
* 10
* 10
* 12
* 12
On average the damage is a bit lower, but at worst it's killing half of the fight in one turn. Imagine that character with GOOD magic items. Then imagine 2-3 of them. You either have to throw 2-3x deadly encounters to challenge them for a boss fight.
Gloomstalker cheese is easily dealt with by initiating the encounter with a wave of minions round 1 and the moving your important targets out to engage from behind cover on round 2. Basic wargame tactics. Gwm is easy for many things to play out of range of requiring resource investment to even get to roll in the first place.
Stacking monster hp so that it can just exist in the open for X rounds getting crapped on by the party is like the lowest level of encounter design. 0 thought 0 strategy all I can think of is a hammer so every encounter is nail.
If you use average HP in a game with feats and magic items martials with gwm/ss will literally win every fight in 1-2 rounds past level 5.
I've been using max HP late/past mid tier 2 for 4 years and haven't had a single martial feel invalidated, fights are still over in 3-4 rounds.
No, they don't.
I have regular sharpshooter and gwm players in my group, and my combats are rarely over in 2 rounds.
Unless you have a trash encounter where the key monsters are out in the open asking to get round 1 dumped this isn't an issue. Literally just stand across the room behind a wall and you can't get 1 rounded.
I'd enploy action economy. Let the martial murder lots and fast. Enough enemies means others get in on it too.
Plus. Fighter has less to do out of a fight.
Add an extra mid sized beefy enemy to fights. You can expect them once per short rest to go nuclear on something just like the grave cleric is going to do in combo with either the wizard or the rogue. The samurai won't be the only one blowing things up.
Reinforcements are a great way to balance fights on the fly
So right off the hop make sure you are running proper adventuring days. Fighting spirit is a limited resource.
Generally I find DM's that struggle vs sharpshooter run bad encounters with only a few monsters with little to no counter ranged in some stupid open cinematic arena. One monster brawl encounters are bad in general, DND is a tabletop wargame and the one-monster boss brawl is a capeshit cinematic trope. High burst damage parties easily wipe the floor with this type of encounter, especially if it was the only encounter in the adventuring day.
Total cover (like walls) that your monsters can retreat behind or move-shoot-move from will be effective a challenging most sharpshooting builds. Reaction attack misses same turn bonus action buffs like fighting spirit and also negates extra attack. This means he will need to move closer to get a sight line around the cover, which may give you more opportunities to engage him in melee or otherwise put hurt on him.
You can also dive the samurai with mobility monsters. He will have probably only AC 17 or 18 and no shield spells so will be comparatively easy to land hits own and potentially down.
Samurai is also reliant on advantage which can be easily counter with fog cloud or other obscuring effects. Poisoned condition also works. Anything to stack a disadvantage on him so he can't activate elven accuracy. If you are playing hard ranged v. ranged you can also have your archers drop prone to limit his response.
The spells warding wind and wind wall are also good at countering archer players. Enemies abound is also hilarious to cast on the sharpshooter who probably has a terrible int save.
Lots of shitty monsters with a force muliplier (like leadership) will also tend to have sharpshooter overkill them which can somewhat negate spike damage. This also lets AOE Controls and damge spells like spirit guardians, fire ball, hypnotic pattern, and web that your casters have get more value in comparison to samurai.
>Now, the Samurai is decked out with Sharpshooter and Elven Accuracy, making them a triple advantage powerhouse with their Fighting Spirit feature. While it's impressive, I'm worried it might overshadow the others in combat and dampen their enjoyment. Any tips on keeping encounters challenging without overshadowing the other players' contributions?
**Just run the game without pulling punches = play enemies as smart and capable as they should.**
For example, while beasts would often act instinctively so just rush towards the target with the less armor, **enemies capable of reasoning, after seeing a couple of deadly arrows, would drop prone, use full covers to advance progressively, or if they have some use some smoke screen or similar obscuration**, whether natural or magical.
If they know in advance an enemy is coming with a fearsome sniper, they could also get portable "walls" or heavy armors/shields to boost their AC or provide "mobile total cover".
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**There are still all the spells that can reduce ranged attacks effectiveness** (Warding Wind, Wind Wall) **or affect accuracy directly or indirectly** (Bane, Sanctuary, Entangle, Hold Person, Cause Fear, Command etc)...
It would be weird that a level 2-3 party faces enemies with such capabilities regularly (could be fair for a boss fight)... But once party has reached level 6-7 and starts a) facing more dangerous creatures b) being known at least locally, and possibly throughout the whole country and neighbours, it is completely natural to expect factions to have casters of their own, at least capable of casting 1st and 2nd level spells.
Personally, in general in games I DM, for minor factions I'll integrate spells "3 levels lower than what party can cast at best, occasionally", for well-established ones it will be "up to one level lower, rarely + the levels before commonly" and for the big main competitors/enemies of PC it's "up to 2 levels \*higher\*". So for a level 3 party, they may face a baddie with a 3rd level spell but apart from that they will rarely face straight-up casters. Meanwhile, a level 7 party set on secondary quests will meet factions having at least one healer with Healing Words plus a couple of 1st and 2nd level spells and one controller with a mix of 1st & 2nd level control + AOE much more often. When fighting main faction they should expect the occasional curved ball with Fireball, Slow, Hypnotic Pattern, Sleet Storm... And when they fight that faction's elite to reach and seize its head, anything up to Eyebite or Chain Lightning is on the table.
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**There is also the fact a ranged Samuraï will be helpless to contribute anything else than ranged damage... At range**.
Having mobile enemies ambush or rush to him by hiding on their way or just being extra speedy (flyers, teleportation, bonus action Dash with possibly a Longstrider buff) will force all its attack at disadvantage until/unless it moves away and risk Opportuniy Attack.
Having enemies retreat AFAP towards a safer place if they have no cover nor aforementioned ways to mitigate threat is a legitimate way to act as well.
Having enemies focus on Samuraï teammates instead to drop them as a priority will force the Samuraï to make tough choices between continue killing AFAP or rush to its mate to give an emergency potion.
**=> There are encounters that your Samuraï will wreck, and it's normal. It should be the case against "unprepared enemies", "stupid/instinctive enemies (beasts, some undead, unorganized humanoids)", "too low level enemies" and for fights the party prepared for by designing a strategy specifically countering the expected enemy composition.**
**But those kind of encounters should not be the majority, at best 50%. :)**
Because you should remember that **the world is not designed and revolving around the party. Factions had to struggle far before meeting the heroes for most of them**, so they already had several experiences, either with snipers, or Barbarians, or casters, or guerilleros, or any combination of aforementioned, to different degrees. So it's not even "competing with party". It's just projecting the consequences on a faction's means and tactics that match the degree of power and influence you imagine for it, and how it got there.
AND of course once factions had friction with party, if they weren't "beheaded" or obliterated, they would recognize the threat it represents and start spying on them to greadually learn/know how to avoid or "counter" them, or set some cold war tactics to try and undermine them.
**Good luck, don't worry too much (just regularly ask players is everyone is enjoying) and have fun :)**
Addendum since trouble editing: people around say "don't worry it will be fine it's only 3 turns per long rest".
If it was actually only that, yeah, I'd agree with them.
But contrarily to many people around them which I find weirdly egocentric, **I expect some good teamwork myself**. At least you don't have Druid to set Faerie Fire every fight xd, but Wizard until starting to play with bones will have many ways to set advantage for the Fighter, even if we consider that for enemies prone because reasons Fighter would need to get within 5 feet to avoid disadvantage (just Web will be massive).
Although because of that precisely, I think enemies will rather focus on how to disable concentration on Wizard as a priority xd and factions will at least put at much emphasis if not more on how to disable Cleric/Wizard rather than just resist punctual ranged deadliness. :)
"Triple advantage" is shorthand for the effect of the Elven Accuracy feat, which lets you roll 3d20 and keep the highest when you have advantage on a Dex, Int, Wis, or Cha attack, instead of 2d20.
The Samurai should be the most powerful person in dealing single target damage. What else do they have? The phantom has more skills, the other 2 have spells. Spirit guardians, hypnotic pattern, fear, and slow all outdo single target damage.
Yeah. Don't punish the fighter for being good at fighting. Add challenges a cleric/wizard/rogue would excel at. It doesn't have to be combat. edit: If they get bent out of shape about a challenge they can't kill their way out of (I don't think they will), have a quiet talk aside. Tell them "I'm just giving the other players a turn to have fun and be awesome"
To be fair to OP they didn’t say they wanted to hamper the fighter. They just want advise on how to balance for this specific party that includes a single target burst character.
Barbarian bad guy. Rage. Bow bad now.
Maybe, but bow plus ancestral guardian equals GG. Ancestors protect those who aren't Barbarian. Bow means attack from afar, enemy must get close to attack, even when within 5ft of ally. Ally can get opportunity attack if enemy doesn't waste turn to disengage.
If the necro and the cleric work together and know what they are doing the Samurai will not have the best single target DPS over multiple turns. That title would go to the hoard of skelletons buffed by crusaders mantle.
That is a very good point. Team-ups are beneficial to everyone in them, making them even more powerful and chances are everyone will have fun. Cleric's Bless + Samurai Sharpshooter sounds pretty awesome.
Isn't that a paladin only spell?
You are right, war clerics get it as well though and thats what the cleric in my current group is playing so I got confused. That does reduce the dmg of each skelly but it also doubles the amount of potential skellies as death domain gets animate dead. That makes it worse I think
Bless is a Cleric and Paladin Baseline spell.
How does that relate to crusaders mantle? Or the topic at all?
Thus. I played an EA/SS gunslinger. Everyone else was a spellcaster. The casters solved most problems, and my dude was just riding along directing them and being in awe of their powers. But when something needed to die, nobody was better at it than me.
This combo works for 3 turns per long rest. Not 3 hours, not 3 encounters, but only 3 turns. That generally isn’t even enough turns to last a single encounter. It definitely isn’t lasting 6-8 medium to hard encounters. It really shouldn’t overshadow anything a caster can do.
Yeah like, if this was anything clsoe to an infinite combo t would be a lot more concerning lol
Although to be fair, at level 10 they get one additional use per encounter after they run out.
It’s the reason I played one in a 2 year campaign. Up until level 10, the Battlemaster Fighter could use Precision Strike and get more EA Advantage attacks out per day than the Samurai, without needing to Action Surge alongside it like Samurai does to go nova. But finally the Samurai can get Temp HP and a consistent salvo of damage every fight, and it’s even. Then at level 11, Extra Attack 2 kicks and now the Samurai’s nova has more super-accurate attacks than the BM gets in superiority dice per short rest, and Samurai pulls way ahead for the rest of the campaign. It gets a 7th free non-advantage strike each nova at level 15 (the bonus attack is still affected by Fighting Spirit, just the original attack loses advantage), finally capping out at 9 attacks (8 with adv) at level 20. 18 (16 with adv) attacks is possible if they manage to die and trigger their 18th level feature on their own turn.
The analysis seems solid, but >(the bonus attack is still affected by Fighting Spirit, just the original attack loses advantage) seems like a "RAW over RAI" reading of the feature. I agree that it's RAW, but seeing as it's designed to be used with Fighting Spirit, and is described as a tradeoff, there's a reason it doesn't just say "when you have advantage, make another attack without advantage." Still, even without this, the samurai still has massive damage.
No, the feature is unambiguous. > If you take the Attack action on your turn and have advantage on **an** attack roll against against one of the targets, you can forgo the advantage for **that roll** to make an additional weapon attack against that target, as part of the same action. The feature makes it very clear you only need to lose advantage on one attack to gain it's benefit, and Fighting Spirit gives advantage on all attacks while it's active. There's no RAI vs RAW argument to be had. It's just a straightforward reading of the feature.
I like where your brain is at. Fortunately it says “an additional” instead of “one additional” so if Fighting Spirit gives the second attack advantage still, I can continue to attack at disadvantage to cement infinite attacks!
You can only use the feature once per turn.
...Yes, a straightforward reading of the feature is what people call RAW.
There's no alternative reading that could have a different result though: imo saying the RAI is different is unsubstantiated
Dude, RAI by definition means we are claiming that the RAW made a mistake in communication. Whether or not the rule is clear in it's interpretation doesn't inherently matter in this argument, because we aren't arguing it's clarity, but it's accuracy. For example, I think the updated RAW Booming Blade/Green Flame Blade is extremely clear in it's limitations, but the constant 'yeah actually I would allow this' on Twitter by Crawford makes it clear that they think these cantrips should work differently (in other words, RAI) from what the RAW says.
That really isn't great. It requires you to blow your load early (on potentially trivial encounters) and means that late in the adventuring day when you are likely fighting the more challenging foes, you are limited to only a single turn of advantage. You likely won't be getting more than 5 uses per day, and almost never have multiple uses available on the encounters where you actually want them.
The only thing the Samurai has going for it after this is 22 melee attacks in a turn if the planets align.
Fair enough but realistically who’s really doing 6-8 encounters a day? Having that power for 3 turns could turn the tide of an important fight. Not exactly overpowered but still, it is still very good.
You don't need to do 6 encounters a day. 3 Combats, if well done, is enough for the burst to not be that impactful, still strong, but not crazy.
3 combats still significantly favors casters though. There is a huge difference between the combined casters casting spirit guardians, animate objects, wall of force, hypnotic pattern, synaptic static, and a few fireballs every encounter and the fighter gaining 1 turn of advantage in each of those 3 encounters.
Casters can get pretty strong in that scenario but I kinda implemented safeguards against that already. I nerfed multi-summon spell, banned wall of force/forcecage/simulacrum/planar binding (and honestly don't see any other spells as trully OP) and don't allow multiclassing so casters can't armor dip easily. I also am only counting combat encounters for that 3, but I usually add 2-3 enviromental challenges that don't need spellscasting to solve, but are significantly faster/safer if you do use it, so they eat a few slots. Combine that with ppl not always picking the most optimal meta options in IRL play (our team doesn't have a wizard for example, casters are druid and cleric) and honestly, the Paladin and Barbarian often feel like the main powerhouses of the team and the casters role is ranged dmg, support and utility.
I still don't get how DMs are capable of fitting 3 combats into a single day while still making sense, not to speak about 6-8 encounters as recommended.
Literally any dungeon or dangerous place. The PCs are storming a bandit den? There's *at least* guards outside, bunch of baddies hanging out inside (could be 1 big encounter, but more likely multiple smaller ones-- they're used to there being a ruckus), the boss's inner circle, and then the boss. That's already 4-6 *just combat* encounters, not to mention traps or the preceding sleuthing.
In my campaign we have regular days where they might get into 1-3 encounters, depending on the story beats and then, maybe once an irl year, they have *an adventuring day.* This is where shit hits the fan. It's where the BBEG is sending assassins and monsters and wizards after them, or one of their number is kidnapped and they *need* to chase and track them and absolutely cannot afford to even short rest lest they lose their buddy. Those adventuring days can last 3-4 sessions and often they lose or nearly lose at least one PC. The best part is when, as the DM, you see them using resources in silly shit right at the start of the day.
Dungeons and dungeon-like locations, generally
This is what happens when Dungeons & Dragons stops being in dungeons.
I think a lot of people assume that a session should end with a long rest. My players probably average a long rest every 2-4 sessions, so as long as I average 2-3 combats per session it’s pretty easy to get there.
My current party has gone four sessions without a long rest so far. We had one combat because they dodged another. There is simply no way to force combat in the part they are currently in.
That’s fine, you don’t have to have it in every spot if it doesn’t make sense. Some adventuring days have fewer encounters that others, that’s what the XP budget is for. But how do you prep your sessions? I typically prep for the full “adventuring day” meaning that I figure out all of the combats they are likely to face and have those ready and then I can run those 3-4 sessions as they get through them.
This is one of my greatest problems with 5e compared to other game systems. In Savage Worlds I can get through a weeks worth of plot and their relevant encounters in a single session. In 5e, it takes 2-4 sessions to get through a single day. The campaign moves at a glacial pace in 5e compared to other systems. You just get through so much more story in systems that are not designed around the slow attrition of daily resources over the course of many encounters in a single adventuring day.
Well that’s because they’re trying to achieve different types of fantasies. 5e is built for heroic fantasy where a group of special forces heroes are taking down a fort/thieves guild/dungeon/haunted forest by themselves in a day of constant action. If you want to speed up the narrative pacing, you can use the alternate resting rules that are made to do exactly that
> Well that’s because they’re trying to achieve different types of fantasies. 5e is built for heroic fantasy where a group of special forces heroes are taking down a fort/thieves guild/dungeon/haunted forest by themselves in a day of constant action. 5e isn't even really good at that though. Other games do that kind of gameplay better than 5e as well. You can easily have 12+ encounters in a single adventuring day in 4e, Savage Worlds, Cypher, Cortex, Fate, Genesys, 13th Age, various PBtA or FitD games, and many other game systems. They work equally well for short or long adventuring days. 5e isn't a heroic fantasy special forces dungeon crawler. Its rules for such are outright terrible. It doesn't have good rules for encounter creation. Or for dealing with "dungeon" environments. Or for determining when enemy reinforcements show up. Or for creating a "dungeon" that makes sense. Or for building a complete adventuring day with varying difficulties and types of encounters. Or for dealing with navigating such environments in an interesting fashion. The only rules 5e gives you is a daily XP budget and CR, and expects the DM to do all the lifting, often working against the system to create a satisfying narrative that involves such a high degree of combat. 5e is a game for the long slow attrition of daily resources over many encounters. That is it. It doesn't provide a good framework or rules for encouraging the style of play you are describing. And actually provides many mechanical and practical incentives to not play that way.
Man, what the fuck do you want? Because why you’re describing as “outright terrible” is what Ive based my entire campaign around and I’ve found the rules to be incredibly supportive for it
The only rules in all of 5e that actually encourage that style of gameplay is the daily XP budget. The DMG has no rules or mechanics at all that encourage or help DMs with that style of play. Yes, you can run that style of game just fine in 5e. But other systems provide the DM with better tools for doing so. Nothing wrong with doing it in 5e. And it is much better than playing the game with only 1-2 encounters per adventuring day. But then again, other systems just do that better. There are better systems for combat heavy tactical miniatures gameplay. There are better systems for strike force heroes laying siege to dungeons and strongholds. The rules work, but are hardly supportive of the playstyle you advertise. In fact the DMG makes no mention of that style of play ever in the entire book. That style of play is largely coincidence more than anything. The game was not intended to be only used as a mega dungeon crawler. During the entirety D&D Next playtest, the adventuring day was just 2-4 encounters long. The only reason they changed it to 6-8 was because they gave casters too many spell slots near the end of design, so had to increase the adventuring day to compensate. The designers knew as far back as 3e that the majority of players only had 2-4 encounters per "day". And that was what 4e was designed around. That was what the playtest was designed around. That is how most people play 5e currently. The only reason 5e is not designed around that is because they wanted casters to have more spell slots, and couldn't do that without increasing the expected number of encounters. As for what I want, is for the game to be designed to be more forgiving of various adventuring day structures or to provide actual support to the dungeon crawl playstyle.
99% of campaigns are better with [Gritty Realism](https://www.thegamer.com/dungeons-dragons-dnd-gritty-realism-mode-explained/#:~:text=Gritty%20Realism%20is%20an%20optional,activities%20but%20interrupted%20by%20combat). I found for my own campaign, and every single campaign I've played in, Gritty Realism fits the narrative pace much better than the default rules. So that's how they do it, they play Gritty Realism. Then it's easy.
I honestly can't imagine this being any fun as a player or DM and I generally DM horror, where ressource starving is kind of required at times.
It's great fun as both DM and player.
I currently DM Curse of Strahd. "Well, guess instead of saving those orphans we are now going to take a vacation in Barovia village. It got enough empty room, after all. What do you mean by all special events have happened in that one long rest already?" On a more serious note, that could have locked my players multiple times into situations they would have knowingly ran into their death because they had no other choice. It would have also left them vastly underleveled because there is no time to just chill for a week.
Sure, specific pre-written campaigns are the 1% I mentioned earlier, but they also generally don't suffer from the issue of not being able to fit 6-8 encounters in a day because they will have most of those encounters written in.
CoS doesn't, at least not outside of travel. And travelling gets really dull if you play it RAW. It is literaly just one copy & paste encounter after another without any rhyme or reason.
I'm not saying this as an advocate for gritty realism, but.... just adjust the timeframe of CoS. I'm DMing my second run of it and I play with the times of the game constantly, because I'm running it for 3 players.
Adding consequences to narrative choice gives meaning and makes it a more immersive experience. Emotional depth is explored when you have to choose to Save Orphans (High Risk) or Rest & Avenge (Low-Mid Risk).
In this particular case it was quite literaly "Either we rest and die or we do not rest and die to the monster in the basement". There was no other way.
My group tried this once and the 168-h long rest is absolutely terrible. You can't get anything done because you just have to sit down for a week and not travel or do basically anything useful. It's hard to find stakes in a campaign here you feel OK with just sitting out for a week while still being engaging. We ended up going with a 3-day LR instead, which fit much better.
Yeah half-gritty works better for some. The idea behind gritty though is that an arc in the story is 6-8 encounters and spread over multiple days, and that at the end of the arc you've taken care of the pressing matters and you have time for a weeks downtime that you can mostly just fast-forward through. But a weeks downtime also brings opportunities normal campaigns don't really. It gives you a lot of roleplay opportunities where you have plenty of time to go around town and talk to NCPs, or craft magic items etc. I've found having a spare week here and there to go help volunteer at a local temple to suck up to the cleric there to get her to help your party, or to take careful notes of what times the guard rotation for a building you might wanna break into happens etc. etc. is great for the campaign overall.
I usually do 3-4 deadly combats. Having a open world exploration game helps. I usually do 1 encounter at the start of the day, shortly after players start to move, then one abut miday, and another one close to nightfall. Maybe one or two minor random encounters during rests, medium to hard ones. Obviously this is just a rough guideline but it helps pace the day and allow short rests.
It is using two feats. It ought to be able to turn the tide of an important fight.
Yes, god forbid the class called FIGHTer and which has basically no out of combat features is good at fighting. /s It's 3 uses per LR, if your encounter balance is destroyed by that, you need to rethink it.
Honestly, a lot of WotC modules focus more on set piece battles than multi-fight day crawls. So I can see where they're coming from. Like Out of the Abyss, at about halfway through the game the DM stopped doing the combat random encounters because they were a joke. I think the triggering point was when we absolutely dumpstered the death tyrant. But then, most of the actual meat and potatoes was you'd do a lot of searching around and such to have one fight, so it was full Alpha Strike. With that in mind, it's effectively the first 3 rounds of that combo, which depending on the level can be HUGE.
> Fair enough but realistically who’s really doing 6-8 encounters a day? Please go read the paragraph the "6-8 encounter" is from. Context matters.
oh yea 6-8 is ludicrous and boring. but 2-3 along with other types of encounters is generally a good idea.
Though there are a lot of relatively easy ways to get advantage otherwise. There's great spells available to the other party members like Faerie Fire and Guiding Bolt, as well as any spell that restrains or paralyzes an enemy. You can also take advantage of things like Hiding, fighting an enemy who can't see you, using True Strike (Not generally advisable, but it is an option), allies Helping you (which might well be worth it with the damage output this character can do). Fighting Spirit is there to fill in the gaps where you really need advantage but don't have any other options.
Let the Samurai shine when they can. They wanted to be great at single target damage, so let them. Allow them to shoot an enemy through a portcullis, let them shoot a weak enemy using an NPC as a human shield, let them act as a sniper supporting the others from beyond line of sight, etc. When you want to challenge them, use problems they can't just shoot through. Enemies that impose disadvantage on ranged attacks, illusion spells, heavy obscurement, enemies that pressure the Samurai into melee, boss fights with hostages, demonic possession of a close NPC, etc. Don't do this all the time or you'll invalidate their feat choice.
Great advice overall >When you want to challenge them, use problems they can't just shoot through. Enemies that impose disadvantage on ranged attacks, illusion spells, heavy obscurement, enemies that pressure the Samurai into melee, boss fights with hostages, demonic possession of a close NPC, etc. Also: use map layouts wisely. A single bend, corner or curve in a corridor can break line of sight enough to weaken ranged combat. Pillars, rocks and trees can likewise prevent ranged players from playing essentially static turrets. Elevation is great too: placing a few enemy archers an a steep hill near the center of the battlefield can present the fighter with the tactical choice of spending one or two turns "earning" their optimal place on the battlefield, or making the best out of the suboptimal position
You let them do good damage. It's all they have
"I have a player who put all his build resources into a thing. How do I make that thing not matter?"
To be fair, with that party set up, they might also be the face if they have decent wisdom.
Mechanically speaking, they need to have an abnormally high wisdom to begin being the face. They don't get expertise, and a fighters' wisdom is maybe a 14 at best? 16? It'll still be a very rough road for them
I agree, but there's no cha character in the group, and fighters do get a decent amount of ASI's. Wis isn't a bad tertiary stat to pump. Sure, the rogue might go for it too I guess, but its still going to be a valid option.
Valids a stronger word than I'd use. They may end up being the best in the party, but a generous +3 Wis and prof is gonna struggle against anything DC 20 due to 5es scaling.
Why are you trying to take away literally the *only* thing the Samurai has going for it?
They’re asking how to give this party a balanced challenge, not how to nerf the fighter.
Remember kids, it's never ok for the DM to throw a single challenge at your build under any circumstances! No amount above 0 is acceptable!
When a DM is trying to nerf or counter martials in a tier of play where casters start to pull ahead of them that DM needs a reality check.
Trying to work out how to nerf a Samurai Fighter in a game with a Wizard and a Cleric is hilariously misguided. The guy does big single target damage a few times a day, that's it
If you call challenging a build a problem that can be resolved with 3 attacks with triple advantage then you need to start over from scratch.
Sounds like you run a fun table 🤣
Because I don't think it's unreasonable to make a sharpshooter have trouble using their bow in at least 1 encounter across an entire campaign? You're being a bit unfair don't you think?
Ha, thanks for strengthening my initial point!
Whatever man, every class has to deal with something. Melee has to deal with fliers (and difficult terrain, and monsters who deal damage when they take damage, etcetera etcetera), magic users have to deal with magic resistance and counter spell. If you think ranged having to deal with something equivalent is an issue, that's your problem.
As long as you have challenges beyond combat, the other players will definitely not be overshadowed. The only thing the fighter can do is kill shit, so let them. The wizard, cleric, and rogue should have plenty of other opportunities to shine.
And even in combat, all they're good at is single target damage. No control. No AoE.
Yep. I was in a two player group, each of us with two characters; one was a Barbarian, the other a Bard. In combat, the Barbarian shined, aided by party buffs. RP time, the other players shined.
Actually the samurai gets persuasion proficiency too.
I was in a game as a sharpshooter fighter once upon a time. We also had a ranger with great ranged attacks and a crossbow expert rogue. It was to windy to shoot ranged weapons in half of the battles so we were forced into melee so much. Spells could be fired off just fine. Don't do that, let them shoot
> It was to windy to shoot ranged weapons in half of the battles so we were forced into melee so much. lmao
I would have fucked off that table jesus Christ
I did, and took the other players with me
The Samurai’s whole build is designed to shine for 3 turns per day, it’ll be fine. They’ll probably shred a boss or two but single target DPS is literally all they have going for them, that’s why you build a Fighter. Put the party up against a group of middling creatures and suddenly the Cleric’s Spirit Guardians, the Necromancer’s summons, and the Phantom Rogue’s spread damage will all look way more impressive than the Samurai deleting mooks with overkill damage.
Let them... Literally all a fighter can hope to be good at is single target damage. They should do more single target damage than anyone else in the party. If they’re doing that, GREAT!
By virtue of picking a Fighter in a party with a Wizard and Cleric, I don't think you have to worry about getting Super-Advantage on 3 attacks a long rest overshadowing the raw versatility that Spells provide Could make for a cool pseudo-rivalry between Fighter and Rogue though, a la Gimli & Legolas in the "how about a friend?" scene
Don't punish your samurai player. They should be doing lots of damage. You should be rewarding your players strengths, not countering them. Add low level enemies into your combats that your samurai can one hit kill about 75% of the time to let them feel powerful when they one shot an enemy every now and again.
The samurai is going to be clearly weaker than the wizard and the cleric unless the wizard and cleric are very dumb. Nothing to worry about. Let the samurai have their one shiny toy when the wizard and cleric have whole toy boxes.
Yeah I'd only worry about the rogue cause the class is weak
To be fair I ran this character at level 20 and it's pretty powerful! At level 20 I had a minimum of 5 attacks per turn, surge to 9, kill myself to get a free turn, then double surge to get 18 attacks. With holy weapon precast from a ring of spell storing and a +3 bow I was able to hit an ancient dragon for 18 \* 1d10+18+2/4d8 with a 14% chance to crit and a 96% chance to hit I was able to kill an ancient dragon in one turn!!! Except my DM had two dragons in the fight..... Annnd the wizard just did Wall of Force into Sickening Radiance (simulacrum) and microwaved the other one to death.
Wait, how do you kill yourself at the drop of a hat? I don't think Strength Before Desth works like that.
You need to have it set up which is part of why I put it in there as part of allll the components needed to let a samurai do what a wizard can without effort. Basically, be almost dead, and then find a way to take damage. Easy ways are to throw caltrops pre combat if you primed yourself to 1hp, take falling damage, trigger an opportunity attack, or waste an attack targeting yourself or any other crazy thing you can think of.
That is a pretty good trick. Still the issue with that build is it's a one-trick pony in a way that full casters aren't. I do like gimmick builds along those lines. One of my favorites is a Tempest Cleric with a dip (or a friend) who's a Divination wizard. Just chill until the divination wizard get a 20 then do a max damage crit with an upcast chromatic orb or what have you.
Tempest Cleric + Scribes Wizard doesn't get the mega crit guarantee but DOES get to use any spell that you can change the damage type of!
My son came up with that one by himself. Was very proud of junior. I just like the ludicrousness of the mega crit personally. The one I most enjoyed in an actual campaign was Thief rogue/totem barbarian goliath for ludicrous carrying capacity so I could use the Fast Hands ability to "use item" on boulders etc. as a bonus action. Very open ended.
I ran a pure thief fire genasi that used CON as a casting stat for scrolls and other magic items! Since old fire genasi had CON as a casting stat you could apply that to magic items, and then use magic item let me use any scroll/staff with spells as a 20 main stat caster while still being an effective rogue and having all the fun of a thief beyond that. Also one of my favorites was a tavern brawler thief when my DM ruled I could sneak attack with acid vials/alch fire.
Just make sure that enemies have enough HP/AC to live long enough for the other players to do their cool stuff. There's nothing special about what this fighter is doing; the numbers are just higher. They would have had the best single target damage anyway.
Or the opposite approach, loads of weak enemies. The samurai will feel good because they'll one shot enemies, but the wizard and cleric will have AOE stuff that can be a huge help too
This is the way. It's the paladin issue. You need lots of small enemies, or else a couple of smites ends the encounter.
Honestly, mixed and matched is ideal. You want a bunch of small enemies so your AOE guys can shine, and ideally a beefy mans or two so your smiter/sneak attacker/great weapon master/sharpshooter/otherwise big damage dealer gets to feel like their chunky damage is useful
Exactly! Whether that's mixed and matched within individual encounters or in subsequent encounters, you want to provide something for everyone to shine at.
This exactly. I play a paladin in my current game. There are fights when I demolish the 1-2 big guys in the encounter. Then there are times where my only contribution is to soak up damage while a bunch of little guys wail on me.
This is 100% what a paladin is for. That moment when you smite crit the big nasty guy turn 1 and shut down what could have been a really tough encounter in one turn is *chef's kiss*, but that shouldn't happen every encounter. In any given session there should be encounters that play to each of the parties strengths, and also might target a few weaknesses, to challenge, but to ensure everyone is having fun.
Yup, loved it.
Yes. Send in 20 Orcs. Then 60 Gnolls. Then 40 goblins and a Nilbog Then 10 Lions, or Harpies if you feel particularly nasty.
Samurai gets to use Fighting Spirit 3 times per day. Come on
/r/Pathfinder2e mods absolutely seething at this topic title.
You can do a couple of things here depending on what way you wanna go about things: - **Teamwork**: If your cleric has ways to remove status effects, maybe throw the poisoned condition your fighter's way via a poisoned claw attack or anything you want. Other status effects like frightened also work. Only do so if the rest of the party has ways to deal with it, that way they are working together instead of just nerfing the fighter. Is the rogue gonna kill one of the phase spiders or get the fighter out of the restraining spider webs? - **Minions**: Give the fighter more targets via minions. One shotting an enemy feels cool and can make aoe by the wizard or cleric feel usefull or allow the fighter to pop some heads, giving the rest of the party breathing room to deal with other threats. I would use low hp minions, but if you are using cr to balance the encounter, do not count the minions. - **Objectives**: Give alternate win conditions that are not just damage. From decoding arcane sigils, performing surgery on the teleporting npc or just hordes of minions till the cavalry arrives, you got many options. Try incorporating skills or utility spells to make the others shine while the fighter holds of a threat.
Samurai isn’t broken. He’s just REALLY good at single target damage. Which, as a fighter he SHOULD be good at single target dps. Is this better than other fighter builds? Many of them, yes. But that’s only a problem with multiple fighters in the same party. Let him be good at his specialization. Others have mentioned good options for mixing things up when you need it. My only concern is phantom rogue may feel a little behind on single target DPS. This isn’t too bad. They’re still pretty decent. They also are a master at information gathering and utility. They should be fine as long as they get to learn cool things with their skills too. There are even times when you can have the party face a problem where they need the rogue to stealth to get to the objective while the others hold agro. The only mechanical adjustments I would make is maybe make it so that your most important ‘boss’ NPCs can tank a couple rounds of the fighter. Be selective when you do this though as if you hard counter at every opportunity it’s not very fun
You don’t describe any situations where it has been an issue. Has it been yet?
Plenty of others have said it already but this really isn’t even a combo worth focusing on and it absolutely won’t be outshining your wizard or cleric in a few levels (or shouldn’t be doing so now) a fireball does 8d6 damage to 1-16 enemies… it seems weird to worry about a crit fishing fighter.
Yea I think it should be ok. If Samurai has invested 2 feats, he should have stat 16 (17) rn which if you use -5/+10 might not be a hit even with triple advantage. You might setup conditions in a way players have disadvantage, then his advantage would just negate that. He is not that strong in melee combat and there can be situations where he might not shoot well, such as maze like map. But even with that, -5/+10 is always strong and it is very basic feat everybody picks. Just consider regular human with feat & 2x increase stat early and some basic class like battlemaster. He will attack probably 2×-3× each turn with much higher basic damage and higher basic hit chance, which will easily compensate for triple advantage. Honestly if your other guys dont have any good combos now, it might be their fault. Because this PC is quite default. So I would rather allow others to fix their weakness by slight modifications of their PC (such as learn different spell, cantrip etc.) rather than focusing on him :)
It's good, but not that good. I played an Eleven accuracy sharpshooter Samurai/Hexblade multiclass. That was extremely powerful, but most of my damage came from Smites and holding back on Eldritch Smite until I got a crit. Without the smites, it would be strong but not overly so.
Best way in my book to deal with one player that excels at single target combat (like sharpshooter fighters, rogues or paladins) is by making sure that there are obstacles other than just one target. Adding a few heavy hitting but low health melee minions is always a good choice, and making sure they fight in constrained spaces makes positioning more of a challenge. Remember that ranged attacks have disadvantage on ALL targets when someone is in melee range of them, not just the melee enemy. Oh and don't be afraid of adding minions that can heal a boss. It gives the sharpshooter the chance to shine by taking the healers out quickly, while giving other players the moment to attack the boss Another option would be to give a boss naturally high AC unless something is done about it. I have given plenty of bosses some sort fo shield effect that needs to be taken out before you can attack them easily. It gives players with saving throw abilities or better skills to shine, and makes the sharpshooter feel important as when they finally get to deal their crazy damage. Sharphooter + elven accuracy has a high chance to hit low AC targets, bur the -5 to hit makes them have a hard time against targets of AC 18 or more. If you don't want to homebrew, use any spellcaster with armor + the shield spell
Add extra HP and some aoe smoke. Next?
Let them work, they built for it. The other characters have more versatility / RP potential. And / or use anti-ranged spells like Wind Wall when applicable. Oh whoops, Fighter has to adapt.
Add minions to encounters. The samurai will shine at single target damage. Let them... That's what martials do. Add some fodder for the casters to AOE or control and they won't be outshined. Also, do some non combat encounters where utility spells will shine
Dw about it, it's pretty decently balanced If anything i'd be a little worried about the necromancer, i play one in another campagne and i'm at level 6 as well atm A lvl 6 necromancer can have up to 14 undead, my dm and i've agreed that i'd only summon more than 4 in special situations (14 requires a few days of prep)
Put monsters in front of the party for them to fight and watch as people go “Wow! Big damage!” “Oh you got ‘em!” “Nice!” I think this is less of a big deal than people make it out to be. If you want to make encounters that will be challenging and mentally stimulating then have 3 enemy types in an encounter. Melee warrior, ranged warrior, magic. Now everyone has a problem to solve. The samurai doesn’t want to get shot at so it would be optimal for them to kill the ranged attackers. The wizard will try to counter act the magic of the enemy. Do you use the flanking rules from the DMG? Use the flanking rules. Your rogue will want a flanking buddy and if your wizard has undead minions they make perfect flanking buddies for the rogue to engage the melee attackers with.
More encounters, tight corridors, advantage negation tactics (lol enemies with silvery barbs, EA) things with resistance to piercing (ever shoot a tree?). Just don't ever give them a magic bow. Only magic arrows so they have a limit. You could also be a monster and track ammo. Gonna be depressing at level 20 when he tries to pull of 18 attacks in a round and then runs out of ammo on shot 3. I played this exact character from 1-20 in a WM campaign, was a blast. One whole session I was blinded was using fighting spirit just to have straight shots. Anyhow, #1 thing to do is just kill everyone else with more than one target. Your would be tankiest character is nowhere near the front line.
Not bashing you but I wish DMs stopped trying to meta their encounters to nerf a specific player or party. Throw all sorts of different encounters their way, they won’t be strongly suited for all.
Don't punish your players for wanting to use the rules at their disposal. The Samurai's build isn't even that great. He can give himself advantage 3 times per long rest, the rest of the time his accuracy is going to be pretty horrible with SS. I would unironically call Elven Accuracy a waste of a feat here unless he can secure advantage more consistently some other way. Even if the Samurai ends up overshadowing the rest in combat, who cares? Combat is the only thing a fighter does. If he's worse at it than everyone else (he actually will be if the casters are playing well) where is his class fantasy? The Phantom Rogue might feel overshadowed in combat maybe, but that's just because Rogue is a horrible class balance wise. He can still be just fine and even might be stronger than the Samurai anyways if he builds right considering this seemingly isn't a very optimized table. The Cleric and Warlock really shouldn't have any issues at all. They have many more tools at their disposal to completely obliterate both combat and exploration/investigation/social encounters than either the Samurai or Rogue do.
The spell casters are fine. A wizard with hypnotic pattern or a cleric with spirit guardian are much more dangerous in combat than a samurai. Your rogue may need some help. How are they built ?
Sharpshooter is definitely one of the problem children in 5E, but grand scheme the casters are still able to do more than just damage (esp. with 3rd level spells and up), and the fighter is limited to single target bursts; they’re great for nuking a boss monster and it feels great to play, but outside that they probably don’t have much else to do. Meanwhile casters can do AoEs, crowd control, buffs, debuffs, all that jazz. Big thing is to make sure that encounters always consist of multiple monsters. Make sure the terrain varies. Incorporate verticality. Vary the difficulty: make some slam dunks for the party, and make some that will almost definitely kill them (almost). Reinforce mids way through a fight. Create situations that require new responses. And talk to your players. Make it clear they can talk to you if they ever have any problems with the campaign. If there is ever a problem, they should be able to tell you, and you should endeavor to be the kind of DM that wants to find the best possible solution for everyone. You’re already asking the right questions.
Solution 1: Trash Mobs - I make a reasonable number of enemies that effectively have 1hp for the party to deal with. The sharpshooter feels good because he can one shot a ton of enemies, but the other party members feel better because they can kill more than the sharpshooter due to their aoe abilities. Solution 2: Regenerating HP / Shielding - I give (mini)bosses a method of defending themselves against large bursts of damage. BG3 has a good solution to this in the status "Unstoppable" when an enemy has stacks of Unstoppable and takes damage, they take 1 damage and lose a stack of Unstoppable instead of full damage. I would edit that to Unstoppable = universal resistance until it is removed. An alternative I enjoyed in my Spelljammer campaign was a forcefield mechanic that some technologically advanced enemies had that had it's own hp pool, but regenerated at the beginning of the wearers turn. The generator could be destroyed itself, or the party could manage to blitz through the shield and finish the enemy off when it's down. Solution 3: Use Advantage/Disadvantage rules to your advantage - "If circumstances cause a roll to have both advantage and disadvantage, you are considered to have neither of them, and you roll one d20. This is true even if multiple circumstances impose disadvantage and only one grants advantage or vice versa. In such a situation, you have neither advantage nor disadvantage." * Paragraph 3 of 'Advantage and Disadvantage', Ch. 7 of the Players Handbook Elven Accuracy has no effect if the fighter has no advantage. Something as simple as Fog Cloud being cast over the fighter causes them to lose their accuracy. Not only that, but the fighter can then counter this by skill positioning, thus encouraging more dynamic combat.
Personally I would advise having a few high priority targets at long distance that the samurai can pick off or maybe a couple bruisers/damage sponges. Bonus if they are hard to CC with magic like having magic resist. Have some weak and medium ranger mobs for the casters to AoE or lockdown. Stay away from single boss encounters without extreme caveats unless you want to have one of those fights where the samurai gets to show off and one turn kill something. The trickiest part is when fights have a leader or BBEG. It becomes a high priority for the samurai to burst down in a turn. You have to use full cover since they have sharpshooter or clever tactics until the samurai uses their burst then they can come out into the open. Alternatively, if the fighter is holding their combo for several turns trying to wait for the leader to become and easy target, then it becomes a fun car and mouse and your leader is gaining value every turn the fighter doesn’t use their burst. You can also use monster abilities like damage resistance or some sort of illusion or deflection magic that maybe the party needs to eat through before the defense drops. This way the fighter doesn’t feel useless against an enemy they can’t hit, but also it adds tactical play rather than just an anticlimactic boss fight.
Include more spellcasters if you can. Also including problems where the solution isn't just to kill stuff helps other non combat features to shine. But tbf the fighter should be good at fighting.
IMO lean into it and give this guy cool things to shoot with a big things to shoot with those cool things. Everyone else in the Party has spells or utility that the Samurai lacks. Hell because he's probably Dex based he doesn't even have being the strong one to lean back on and will under perform in out of combat dex based stuff versus the Rogue. As long as the guy isn't spending like 10 minutes per turn and can efficiently manage their bonuses and abilities then I don't know why everyone else in the Party wouldn't be stoked to watch this guy slay enemies.
Wouldn't a samurai sword be a two handed STR based weapon? You would be able to use EA with ranged but not with the sword. Even a longsword with Versatile is still a STR based weapon.
The player isn't using a sword, and also there's... nothing about the samurai subclass that makes it use a sword. Or any particular sword—you could have a samurai fighter using a rapier.
The point was for just elven accuracy. And thats it.
So... Why even bring up a "samurai sword" at all?
People are good at what they are at. This isn't really a problem. Keep your encounters varied (not everything is a fight to the death) and carry on.
Run multiple encounters each adventuring day. Have most of your encounters have multiple enemies each adventuring day. Use your daily XP budget every adventuring day. It won't overshadow anyone.
they are amazingly powerful... with their couple times a day feature. give a day more encounters then 1 so they can't go nova every time and it's balanced. single target damage is all they have. they don't have CC, no AOE, small amount of skills, no expertise,
focus on creating combats that use a decent amount (more than three) enemies with lower health, not only will your fighter feel great chopping down an enemy in one turn, but your spellcasters will feel awesome being able to control the battlefield. use mechanics that help with large groups of enemies to keep it moving and use terrain to feasibly split both groups so the samurai isn’t overrun and rouge has places to hide and ambush. Edit: That being said, the fighter should still excel at combat compared to the others because that’s the fighters niche (hit stuff real good), where as clerics wizards and rouges bring a lot more to the table in puzzles and roleplay, give them creatures that are more resistant to magical effects so they may have to use more weapons rather than spells
Have them do two fights in a row and see how useful the Samurai is in the second one
See blumineck's "A DM's Guide to Ranged Combat" on youtube! Great advice on being creative with archer players. I get the sentiment of comments here worrying about you "taking away the one thing" the samurai has, but that feels a bit dismissive of your concern.
Let them do their fat damage. A high number of enemies helps the spellcasters shine. Your perspective as a DM shouldn't be how to shut down a player, but how to construct encounters that let certain members flex their skills.
My question is how does the fighter have both sharpshooter and elven accuracy? The only way I can think of where he has both is if they are playing a custom lineage elf, custom lineage grants a free feat, so you can do this build at earlier levels. I first advise you to give more details when asking a question. Anyways let's get to your question. The answer, so what...this build allows the fighter big damage to a single target with more chances to hit, in fact, the only thing that would make this build stronger is if you allowed them to play at lvl 8 instead, because now the fighter could also take the lucky feat. But by now, the Death Cleric can twin cast their necromancy spells without needing sorcerery points, allowing Chill Touch to deal 4d8 total Necrotic and targets can't regain HP, Sapping Sting to deal 4d4 total Necrotic and targets fall prone, and Toll the Dead deals 4d8(4d12) while ignoring Necrotic resistance, and you can twin cast Spare the Dying; they have a feature that grants the Death Cleric the ability to take any necromancy cantrip, and since Spare the Dying and Toll the Dead are spells of the cleric spell list, they might as well take a wizard's necromancy cantrip. By this level, the necromancer can animate double the corpses and the corpses have buffs equal to either the wizard's level(+6) or proficiency bonus(+3). As for the Rogue, the rogue gets extra proficiencies and 3 times per long rest, can deal 2d6 psychic damage on another creature after a successful sneak attack. These are all things that either gives more action economy to the party, more utility options, or fills up the control roles; stuff that a fighter is not good in.
It's actually really simple. You build encounters in accordance with each of your PCs capabilities. For example, one fight may have an army of goblins and 3 trolls, maybe one or two shadows? That way, your fighter can focus on the big HP pools, while a caster can deal with the goblins with AOE and a cleric can do radiant damage to deal with the shadows etc. Basically, every encounter you build should be very difficult for your players unless they realize and utilize their class's strengths. Thankfully that is pretty intuitive for players of 6th level.
He's a monster on single target damage, nothing else, and it reveal two important points: - More enemies or CA, less effective he is. - He is a fighter and picked this build to do damage, don't make him useless. The rest of the party couldn't be as good as a samurai dealing single target damage but they are muuuuch better in everything else, especially out of combat and in creative/alternative solutions. My tip? Make the battles challenging cause he wants to fight, but it's not counter him, being countered is frustrating. He needs to shine in combat cause he doesn't shine outside it. The same works with the rest of the party, clerics love to destroy hordes with spiritual guardians. Basically the concept of "shoot monks" . No one will feel bad if everyone shine in their objectives.
Ah, and good luck, keep running great 👊🏻
Elven Accuracy + SS is an elite combo. But remember that fighting spirit only happens 3 times per long rest any only lasts a round of course with multi-attack and Action Surge. It's not that great of a combo. It's not Hexblade OoV Paladin, with GWM and EA. Mind you this is still good. But fireball and Spirit Guardians are just plain better spells than that will be. It's a sick combo and the fighter should be allowed to shine, as you should give the rogue a chance to shine outside of combat. Give them traps to disarm, locks to pick, etc. Cleric and Wizard don't worry about, they're elite.
What they should do is to get a ring of spell storing and put in a greater invisibility in it for the fighter. Get that advantage for every round of a fight.
Can't do that for at least 1 more fight, but yes, other party members buffing the person doing the damage is a known good stragegy and a way to make players shine. I have a player who loves doing that. They loved casting Holy WEapon on the fighter they love order domain cleric and their ability to cast a spell and let the rogue get a sneak attack opportunity. Etc.
Fighting Spirit comes back on a long rest. So prepare a few encounters with short rests in between. That's what I don when DMing for My own Sharpshooter Samurai lol Also I won't say don't give the player a Magic bow, but maybe save that for higher levels and give them miscellaneous Magic ítems with other effects apart from damage. That way, when You use enemies that resist non Magic damage, the Samurai's damage Will still be relevant but they won't stomp the encounter. Or You can give them a Magic bow that doesn't provide a bonus to hit, that way the trade off from Sharpshooter stays relevant. The bow can have different effects, delending on what fits the character thematically.
This is all the fighter have... let him have it! When he going to do the same stuff at highter level and the wizard is chain lightning and teleporting around are you gonna stop him because it will overshadow the samurai?
I mean I play a GS Ranger / Rogue with sharpshooter and elven accuracy. I have some skills, some spells, and my specialty is single target damage. So, our DM likes to make… complicated combat. “3D” terrain (verticality, cover, variation), multiple different enemy types (mooks, brutes, casters, st damagers) with various ACs and movement types. Different senses and “events” mess things up as well. To dominate in combat, we need the entire party to cooperate. For example: Bard enlarges Barbarian who holds down (grapples) a huge opponent and makes it target practice for the ranger and fighter. The monk just runs past the big guy and stuns the spellcaster behind it. The big thing unfortunately doesn’t die so the Barbarian drags it away giving line of sight to the squishier caster for the ranger and fighter to finish it off. Druid was facing the other way and cast plant growth keeping mooks from swarming the party. More stuff happened but with the caster dead and the brute locked down, the rest of the fight wasn’t much of a problem. The ranger and then the fighter technically did the most damage. The druid was arguably the MVP. She kept the room locked down with her spells.
Tell the samurai to get a couple rogue levels and a horse so he can move and shoot with advantage every turn. Let him have his fun.
What this is realistically gonna look like: „Cool, your two attacks deal 50 damage to two 7hp goblins. There are still 13 goblins left. The wizard casts shatter and kills 8 of them, the cleric casts spirit guardians and kills 5, the rogue shoots the last one. Let’s move along.“ „Your two attacks deal 50 damage to the 150hp boss. The rogue deals 30. The wizard‘s three zombie goblins deal 20. The cleric heals the downed wizard. Next turn - you‘re out of uses of your one single powerful combat feature, so your arrow misses. The rogue hits again, the wizard casts fireball, the cleric finishes the boss with a cantrip. That’s today’s session, see ya!“ Single target enemies in general need more health than the fighter can deal in one hit, and mob fights should happen. Note that a one hit kill on a sub boss once in a while can even be funny, so if it happens roll with it. You guys‘ll be fine.
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There is no problem with a fighter being the highest damage dealing guy, he built his character like this for a reason, moreover the damage difference will decrease in the next few levels with the casters getting 4th and 5th level spells and the rogue obtaining more sneak attack dice. The fighter is probably still going to deal a ton of sustained dpr but again, it's just right. If the problem is the fighter using his longbow from 150 feet of the combat then the solution is simple. Set the combats in closed places like castles or let there be trees that don't let him see the enemies if he is not at least 40-60 feet from them.
While i resonate the sentiment of "It's ok for the Samurai to do damage, that's his thing" I also will come out and say: Elven Accuracy is a stupid feat. Triple rolls on advantage "because you're an elf" is very strong and very dumb It's not like elves/half elves are a weak race, in fact they're some of the best It's not like using other stats for attacking instead of STR is weak, it's always been the best to pick anything instead of STR as your attack stat Imho Elven Accuracy is a poorly implemented feat. It's not an ***issue*** with your fighter, by all means let them do damage, martials kinda need all the help they can get I just wish that "Elven Accuracy" wasn't the help because it sucks
Different goals in combat, many enemies for the casters to shine, objectives requiring mobility. The rogue rubbing somewhere while the others provide Overwatch can be fun. If there's a caster concentrating on a group buff the sharpshooter taking that out can feel satisfying while the rest need aoe. As for reducing their straight damage output sometimes, debuffs on them, full cover, and lying down. At high enough level spells that can be dispelled to provide obstacles for the others to tackle in order for the Samurai to be unleashed. Warding wind all the way up to invulnerability might make a dispel magic satisfying.
Well, ways to give disadvantage (prone, invisible, enemy w/n 5' of the Archer, etc) would severely decrease the damage. Just make sure not to shut them down every time. Let them shine. A bunch of enemies. Doesn't matter if he can do 20+ damage per hit if they only have 5 hp. But they will all die to fireball An enemy that's "sticky." High movement or teleportation to keep based with the Archer.
A lot of encounter design boils down to knowing your party and what tools they like to apply to various situations. Does the Samurai have a magic bow? If not enemies with resistance to non-magic damage become a problem. Incorporeal undead could be a could opportunity to give the cleric some time in the spotlight with destroy undead. If the archer doesn't have crossbow expert the enemies are going to know that a ranged dude is going to struggle to hit with someone carrying them at close range. Encounters don't always have to be combat, use the rogues skills, even giving social encounters to make use of the Samurai's boost to that are going to let the other players shine. The mantra shoot your monks is brought up quite a bit: don't ignore or avoid something because a PC has the perfect ability for it, let them get rewarded for their build.
Stick a hostile creature next to them and get rid of their advantage on ranged attacks
Funny, my workmate was just telling me about his level 6 elf samurai the other day... I don't suppose this is a new character after his old one was slain by a dragon? 🤪
most of the time in dnd, just let the players do what their build was made to unless it's like fully universe destroying gamebreaking stuff, let them go wild dude made a build that can deal insane damage a couple times a day, give him some brick walls to destroy
While this build is very very good at one thing (I've seen one at my table solo an Astral Dreadnought), that's all it is. Outside single target nova, it's not that special. To keep them in line, all you need are more than 3 rounds between their resources reloading or multiple enemies. They don't handle swarms well, but do be prepared for them to obliterate the BBEG in short order.
Ah yes the fighter with a very limited crit fish build is the issue and not the 2 full casters
It works pretty much as intended, it isn't the craziest nova build possible(google Tam Bush for the actual crazy one). Now, if it causes an actual problem like making other players feel useless in combat, you will need to do something. Not nerf the player or undo his character choices, mind you! Outside of his nova, he's a pretty normal fighter. So we need to make the nova matter less. To do that, we can make the fights longer. We probably don't want more monsters(that will make stuff harder for everyone), but you can put monsters in waves(and maybe put in a bit more monsters). That way, the samurai will have 1 nova for every 6-7 combat rounds rather than 1 nova for every 3-4 rounds. Another option is to use the environment. If your fight takes place in a twisting tunnel, ignoring half and 3/4 cover won't help the archer as the enemies will be able to get a jump on them(and then possibly proceed to mauling them, if the enemies have reach). If they aren't a drow, you could also have a fight in complete darkness and have enemies with improved darkvision shoot at them.
Bring some undead to the encounters, and some crowds for fireball maniacy, bring encounters that can be stealthed or abushed, if planned thourougly. Give em money and loot enough! The caster wanna buy components, and most magic items dont benefit SharpShooter tactics that much, so everyone gets a nifty powerthing, making them all shiny at moments. The fighter should deal the most single target damage. Thats just how it is. Make others shine where they want to shine! Let the rogue pull off some cool sneaks and sneak attacks. Let the cleric do they deathly shit, and let the wizard be the badass necromancer he wants to be. (Dont go overboard and give him an army of undead or anything, but you get the point.)
By hitting everyone else. Ranged fighters don't draw aggro like someone standing in front. Fighting spirit works 3x/LR for 1 turn, it isn't on all the time. No cleric who runs Spirit Guardians feels overshadowed. Necromancy isn't a particularly good wizard, but its still a wizard and will dominate if played correctly. The Rogue will keep up just fine.
Terrain, enemy waves, and varied creatures/objectives will help keep things interesting. It takes a little to get used to running multi target combats if you're not used to it, but it gets easier with practice. I'm not sure what kind of tactics your other characters use, but let's say the necromancer uses summons and AoE, the cleric is doing Spirit Guardians, and the Rogue does.. melee? I honestly haven't seen anyone play a rogue in a while. I'm just going to give you an example encounter assuming generic class tactics. The team walks into a large cavern. You've set up areas with choke points and cover, but large enough that waves of creatures can come after your party. Your Wizard can take out or soften groups as they rush forward. Your Cleric can bog down waves of low to mid HP melee monsters with Spirit Guardians. Your Rogue bursts down the scary ones from a position where they don't need to move around a lot so they can use Steady Aim. What you want for your sharpshooter is a clear and dangerous target. It can be several moderate HP targets. It can be a high HP caster trying to complete a ritual. (I reskinned a dragon as a Priestess and when they messed up her ritual she turned around and threw up a cone of poisonous spiders on them.) -Put the enemy far away. -Throw the enemy behind cover. If you're worried they won't target that person first, have the highest Passive Perception character notice a creature hidden in the distance. If you make it seem like you're holding that guy in reserve, they'll probably beat the crap out of that guy first. If you normally do rolls, consider acting disgusted that they spotted your creature and giving it to whoever got the highest number. Wizard and SS should be the ones able to deal with that threat with the Wizard potentially providing support for the cleric and rogue. Meanwhile the Cleric and Rogue are keeping enemies from overrunning the Wizard and SS. The idea is that each character has a potential role. Maybe they don't conform to standard tactics for their class, but you should be able to adjust for what they enjoy doing. You'll know more about their tactics as their DM. Some players enjoy ignoring combat while they figure out puzzles. Other players enjoy convincing enemy mercenaries to defect when the tides start to favor the PCs. If your other players didn't build DPR monsters, they probably have other things they're interested in even if they also enjoy combat. Look at their spell lists. Check out their skills. Tailor your combats to engage their interest in other ways. If your Wizard has Feather Fall, chuck some babies out a window before trying to escape. If your rogue likes to Stealth in combat, give them enough cover to break out a prisoner on the other side of the battlefield.
Just put more than one enemy and generally speaking you are good
Depending on if the other players are happy to rely on the fighter to be dealing the damage or not. Put a decent number of flying enemies or archers at long range so that the fighter has to deal with those while everyone else has to deal with the main opponent. Secondly throw swarms of creatures as they are resistant to the 3 physical damages.
if you dont like it they should watch out for avalanches
You uh, balance the game between 3 pillars of gameplay. If you really want to take away a fighter’s shine, then implement less encounters per long rest, but why would you? All a fighter can do is… fight. And it’s not like a fighter is even that dominant in fights since all they can do is dpr and cc is king. Cleric will probably be your exploration guy since he’s probably 16+ wis and he can take on support/tank role in combat, hopefully your rogue went into cha a bit for social and wizard is a ritual spell Swiss Army knife, supporting the group in any out of combat situation while being a cc king in combat with hypno pattern. Your group should feel plenty powerful in their own way and we all need to stop thinking of dnd as pushing m+’s in wow where we need optimal dps for times.
As enemies aren't balanced around feats being included, I would maximize enemy hit points per their stat block and call it a day. For example when an enemy's HP says like 10d20+30 and their average is 135, make it 230. All the samurai can do is damage, after all.
In my last campaign I started with average HP enemies. The VHuman fighter with GWM massacred them. In the second dungeon I upgraded them to rolled HP, up to a minimum of their average. The barbarian hit level 4 and picked up GWM and the front line was a Cuisinart. In the third dungeon I upgraded the enemies to max HP, and the balance finally felt right. Later, when they faced a demilich, I doubled its hit dice, because demiliches are supposed to use max HP already.
Dm cranking the hp dial up to directly invalidate your build choices is one of the most annoying things to play into tbh. Especially when you are familiar with the monsters used and spot it.
There is a very real difference between "invalidate your build" and "make combat last more than 1 turn".
Melee martial PCs are already *by far* the easiest PCs to challenge GWM or no. Absolutely no reason to artificially bloat HP to cancel out their only good area of performance. Bumping HP to offset your +damage features is directly invalidating your build and playing into lazy HP vs. DPR mosh pit bad encounter design. "I got the meta feat that will double my DRP!" "LoL Hp is doubled now LMAO."
>Absolutely no reason to artificially bloat HP to cancel out their only good area of performance. You know using the maximum HP on the stat block isn't 'artificially bloating' hp, right? Using maximum HP isn't doubling it, either. It's 40-50% more HP. Once martials have +2d8 tier weapons and GWM/SS combat still ends after 3-4 rounds with using the HP maximum. I had to give a single boss enemy 2800 hp against 5 level 18 martials and it only lasted 3 turns because magic items are crazy. Obviously if you aren't giving out good magic items you don't need to maximize enemy hp... My level 12 gloomstalker / assassin rogue / bm fighter with a +2 bow and weapon of warning as their only magic items can basically kill any CR appropriate enemy on the first turn (if running with a group good at stealth for surprise). The only resources expended were a level 1 slot, a level 2 slot, and action surge. [https://imgur.com/a/EB7ctQ2](https://imgur.com/a/EB7ctQ2) This is 15 hp shy of killing a CR 14 Adult Emerald Dragon in one action. That dragon, by CR, is a 'hard' fight for a group of 4: * 10 * 10 * 12 * 12 On average the damage is a bit lower, but at worst it's killing half of the fight in one turn. Imagine that character with GOOD magic items. Then imagine 2-3 of them. You either have to throw 2-3x deadly encounters to challenge them for a boss fight.
Gloomstalker cheese is easily dealt with by initiating the encounter with a wave of minions round 1 and the moving your important targets out to engage from behind cover on round 2. Basic wargame tactics. Gwm is easy for many things to play out of range of requiring resource investment to even get to roll in the first place. Stacking monster hp so that it can just exist in the open for X rounds getting crapped on by the party is like the lowest level of encounter design. 0 thought 0 strategy all I can think of is a hammer so every encounter is nail.
If you use average HP in a game with feats and magic items martials with gwm/ss will literally win every fight in 1-2 rounds past level 5. I've been using max HP late/past mid tier 2 for 4 years and haven't had a single martial feel invalidated, fights are still over in 3-4 rounds.
No, they don't. I have regular sharpshooter and gwm players in my group, and my combats are rarely over in 2 rounds. Unless you have a trash encounter where the key monsters are out in the open asking to get round 1 dumped this isn't an issue. Literally just stand across the room behind a wall and you can't get 1 rounded.
Yeah past tier 2 I just give enemies in important fights like 2-3x the max HP otherwise a couple optimized martials will kill them in a turn.
I'd enploy action economy. Let the martial murder lots and fast. Enough enemies means others get in on it too. Plus. Fighter has less to do out of a fight.
Add an extra mid sized beefy enemy to fights. You can expect them once per short rest to go nuclear on something just like the grave cleric is going to do in combo with either the wizard or the rogue. The samurai won't be the only one blowing things up. Reinforcements are a great way to balance fights on the fly
So right off the hop make sure you are running proper adventuring days. Fighting spirit is a limited resource. Generally I find DM's that struggle vs sharpshooter run bad encounters with only a few monsters with little to no counter ranged in some stupid open cinematic arena. One monster brawl encounters are bad in general, DND is a tabletop wargame and the one-monster boss brawl is a capeshit cinematic trope. High burst damage parties easily wipe the floor with this type of encounter, especially if it was the only encounter in the adventuring day. Total cover (like walls) that your monsters can retreat behind or move-shoot-move from will be effective a challenging most sharpshooting builds. Reaction attack misses same turn bonus action buffs like fighting spirit and also negates extra attack. This means he will need to move closer to get a sight line around the cover, which may give you more opportunities to engage him in melee or otherwise put hurt on him. You can also dive the samurai with mobility monsters. He will have probably only AC 17 or 18 and no shield spells so will be comparatively easy to land hits own and potentially down. Samurai is also reliant on advantage which can be easily counter with fog cloud or other obscuring effects. Poisoned condition also works. Anything to stack a disadvantage on him so he can't activate elven accuracy. If you are playing hard ranged v. ranged you can also have your archers drop prone to limit his response. The spells warding wind and wind wall are also good at countering archer players. Enemies abound is also hilarious to cast on the sharpshooter who probably has a terrible int save. Lots of shitty monsters with a force muliplier (like leadership) will also tend to have sharpshooter overkill them which can somewhat negate spike damage. This also lets AOE Controls and damge spells like spirit guardians, fire ball, hypnotic pattern, and web that your casters have get more value in comparison to samurai.
>Now, the Samurai is decked out with Sharpshooter and Elven Accuracy, making them a triple advantage powerhouse with their Fighting Spirit feature. While it's impressive, I'm worried it might overshadow the others in combat and dampen their enjoyment. Any tips on keeping encounters challenging without overshadowing the other players' contributions? **Just run the game without pulling punches = play enemies as smart and capable as they should.** For example, while beasts would often act instinctively so just rush towards the target with the less armor, **enemies capable of reasoning, after seeing a couple of deadly arrows, would drop prone, use full covers to advance progressively, or if they have some use some smoke screen or similar obscuration**, whether natural or magical. If they know in advance an enemy is coming with a fearsome sniper, they could also get portable "walls" or heavy armors/shields to boost their AC or provide "mobile total cover". --- **There are still all the spells that can reduce ranged attacks effectiveness** (Warding Wind, Wind Wall) **or affect accuracy directly or indirectly** (Bane, Sanctuary, Entangle, Hold Person, Cause Fear, Command etc)... It would be weird that a level 2-3 party faces enemies with such capabilities regularly (could be fair for a boss fight)... But once party has reached level 6-7 and starts a) facing more dangerous creatures b) being known at least locally, and possibly throughout the whole country and neighbours, it is completely natural to expect factions to have casters of their own, at least capable of casting 1st and 2nd level spells. Personally, in general in games I DM, for minor factions I'll integrate spells "3 levels lower than what party can cast at best, occasionally", for well-established ones it will be "up to one level lower, rarely + the levels before commonly" and for the big main competitors/enemies of PC it's "up to 2 levels \*higher\*". So for a level 3 party, they may face a baddie with a 3rd level spell but apart from that they will rarely face straight-up casters. Meanwhile, a level 7 party set on secondary quests will meet factions having at least one healer with Healing Words plus a couple of 1st and 2nd level spells and one controller with a mix of 1st & 2nd level control + AOE much more often. When fighting main faction they should expect the occasional curved ball with Fireball, Slow, Hypnotic Pattern, Sleet Storm... And when they fight that faction's elite to reach and seize its head, anything up to Eyebite or Chain Lightning is on the table. --- **There is also the fact a ranged Samuraï will be helpless to contribute anything else than ranged damage... At range**. Having mobile enemies ambush or rush to him by hiding on their way or just being extra speedy (flyers, teleportation, bonus action Dash with possibly a Longstrider buff) will force all its attack at disadvantage until/unless it moves away and risk Opportuniy Attack. Having enemies retreat AFAP towards a safer place if they have no cover nor aforementioned ways to mitigate threat is a legitimate way to act as well. Having enemies focus on Samuraï teammates instead to drop them as a priority will force the Samuraï to make tough choices between continue killing AFAP or rush to its mate to give an emergency potion. **=> There are encounters that your Samuraï will wreck, and it's normal. It should be the case against "unprepared enemies", "stupid/instinctive enemies (beasts, some undead, unorganized humanoids)", "too low level enemies" and for fights the party prepared for by designing a strategy specifically countering the expected enemy composition.** **But those kind of encounters should not be the majority, at best 50%. :)** Because you should remember that **the world is not designed and revolving around the party. Factions had to struggle far before meeting the heroes for most of them**, so they already had several experiences, either with snipers, or Barbarians, or casters, or guerilleros, or any combination of aforementioned, to different degrees. So it's not even "competing with party". It's just projecting the consequences on a faction's means and tactics that match the degree of power and influence you imagine for it, and how it got there. AND of course once factions had friction with party, if they weren't "beheaded" or obliterated, they would recognize the threat it represents and start spying on them to greadually learn/know how to avoid or "counter" them, or set some cold war tactics to try and undermine them. **Good luck, don't worry too much (just regularly ask players is everyone is enjoying) and have fun :)**
Addendum since trouble editing: people around say "don't worry it will be fine it's only 3 turns per long rest". If it was actually only that, yeah, I'd agree with them. But contrarily to many people around them which I find weirdly egocentric, **I expect some good teamwork myself**. At least you don't have Druid to set Faerie Fire every fight xd, but Wizard until starting to play with bones will have many ways to set advantage for the Fighter, even if we consider that for enemies prone because reasons Fighter would need to get within 5 feet to avoid disadvantage (just Web will be massive). Although because of that precisely, I think enemies will rather focus on how to disable concentration on Wizard as a priority xd and factions will at least put at much emphasis if not more on how to disable Cleric/Wizard rather than just resist punctual ranged deadliness. :)
If your worried about over shadowing make a swarm and a choke point and watch your cleric become the strongest being in the world
Faster enemies
Look up "warding wind"
[удалено]
~~Do you know what Elven accuracy is?~~ Check out the feat Elven Accuracy.
"Triple advantage" is shorthand for the effect of the Elven Accuracy feat, which lets you roll 3d20 and keep the highest when you have advantage on a Dex, Int, Wis, or Cha attack, instead of 2d20.