D&D 5E Great Weapon Master

[Grimstaff]

I'm thinking of house ruling this to include all strength based melee weapons. Mainly because there just aren't any feats for your regular Longsword-wielding guy.

Does this house rule have any immediately noticeable problems / issues?

 

[Unwise]

Not really no, however it would let you use shield mastery and GWM at the same time. It would also get rid of some of the distinctiveness of the 2 hander. As it is, I think that greatweapons need all the help they can get. As a rule, getting d2/d4 more damage for the loss of 2 AC is a pretty bad deal, GWM goes some way to towards fixing that.

Viewing it another way, shield mastery is really the longsword feat.

Personally I would prefer to homebrew a feat for 1-handed weapons. What I would steer clear of is making something that is just for swords or axes or maces etc. I did not like the way that 4e kind of pigeon holed people into using the one weapon their whole life. It would be good if it kept a more distinct flavour from GWM. Shield mastery and duelist are not bad, but something a little more offensive could be interesting, as could something that aided in opportunity attacks.

 

[Saeviomagy]

Only the "bonus action on dropping/critting someone" benefit doesn't apply to all melee. Seems to me that it should.

Oh, and also that both the -5 hit/+10 damage feats need to have that part removed (or at least dropped to -5/+5)

 

[Paraxis]

I don't see the issue with the -5/+10 feats. The damage increase is nice sure but the -5 to hit is huge unless you have advantage on the attack. The +10 is good but doesn't go up on a critical, idk just doesn't seem to bad to me, one of my players uses it constantly and misses often because of it, I imagine his average damage over the course of multiple fights might be the same or a little higher than other characters but some of those big +10 damage hits land on targets which have already been beaten so low in h.p that they would die without it.

 

[Cernor]

On your turn, when you score a critical hit with a melee weapon or reduce a creature to 0 hit points with one, you can make one weapon attack as a bonus action.

If you're looking for something that can help out a longsword wielder, this is it. If you're using a sword and shield, you're still able to use this part of the feat (although it's admittedly the weaker part of the feat). It also allows shenanigans like throwing your sword to kill a kobold at 60 feet (using it as an improvised thrown weapon: technically you'd kill it with a melee weapon so your bonus action attack would trigger), then dropping your shield, drawing your maul, and using the -5/+10 to splatter a kobold in front of you.

Before you make a melee weapon attack with a heavy weapon that you are proficient with, you can choose to take a -5 penalty to the attack roll. If the attack hits, you add +10 to the attack's damage.

This is by far the more powerful part of the feat (and one which has led to many arguments which I have no interest in rekindling). I think that if you allow this to be used on any Strength-based melee weapon (attack? All melee weapons are strength-based by default) it would take away the feat's niche of being mainly for 2-hand weapon users, so dual-wielders would be able to use its benefits as well as sword-and-board PCs.

The stereotypical longsword user can use a lot of feats to increase her combat capabilities: Notable examples are Heavy Armour Master, Mage Slayer, Sentinel, the aforementioned Shield Master... If the longsword user wants power (and insists on using a longsword) then they can always put their shield away and use it in two hands.

 

[Saeviomagy]

I don't see the issue with the -5/+10 feats. The damage increase is nice sure but the -5 to hit is huge unless you have advantage on the attack.

There are a lot of ways to get advantage if you look for it.
There are ways to game your hit bonus too.

+10 to damage per attack is a huge bonus to get for doing those things, especially when other ways of boosting your damage are relatively limited.

 

[Cernor]

There are lots of ways to get advantage or increase your hit bonus... But those come at the cost of resources. If you're a paladin with the choice of spending a first-level spell slot on bless near the beginning of a long day (and being able to reliably hit for +10 damage for one fight) or saving that same spell slot for cure wounds later in the day (especially if there are meaningful penalties for being dropped to 0HP), the choice becomes a lot more difficult. Since attack bonuses increase faster than AC, at higher levels I agree that the -5 becomes far less of a significant penalty... But you also need to increase your damage to keep pace with spellcasters, who can hit more targets for more damage per hit with their spells.

 

[aarduini]

There are a lot of ways to get advantage if you look for it.
There are ways to game your hit bonus too.

+10 to damage per attack is a huge bonus to get for doing those things, especially when other ways of boosting your damage are relatively limited.

I play a Human Variant Barbarian with this feat. It seems I'm a little OP but that is only because I'm fighting creatures with less than 20 hps. One you start fighting creatures with a lot of HPs, it becomes more of a necessity than OP. I also have to use reckless attack when I do it, and that opened me up for a lot of hits. When we fought the Green Dragon in Lost Mines, I couldn't use it because the dragon had an 18 AC. I ended up having to use reckless attack without dropping my attack roll by 5 just to hit the thing.

I don't agree that the feat is OP.

 

[Dausuul]

I don't see the issue with the -5/+10 feats. The damage increase is nice sure but the -5 to hit is huge unless you have advantage on the attack. The +10 is good but doesn't go up on a critical, idk just doesn't seem to bad to me, one of my players uses it constantly and misses often because of it, I imagine his average damage over the course of multiple fights might be the same or a little higher than other characters but some of those big +10 damage hits land on targets which have already been beaten so low in h.p that they would die without it.

The -5/+10 for Great Weapon Mastery is very strong. Statistically, it's almost always worth using (unless, as you say, there is a chance of blowthrough). However, you should get a decent boost out of a feat slot, and it's not so potent as to unbalance the game.

-5/+10 for Sharpshooter crosses the line IMO. Ranged weapons do lower base damage, so +10 is bigger as a percentage of the total; more importantly, the Archery fighting style mitigates the attack penalty. When you combine it with Crossbow Expert and dual wield hand crossbows, it's grotesque.

I would house rule -5/+8 for Sharpshooter and leave GWM as is. Applying GWM's -5/+10 option to non-heavy weapon attacks... I wouldn't dismiss the idea out of hand, but I'd want to give it a lot of thought.

 

[Eejit]

Just make the -5/+10 only be successfully triggerable once per turn, like Sneak Attack. It'll still be worth using, but toned down a bit and you won't get stupid Action Surge nova rounds.