Edit: A lot of people say, that GWM needs a melee weapon attack, but they miss Jesses point: While GWM requires a melee attack with a heavy weapon, Sharpshooters only criteria is an attack with a ranged weapon (not a ranged weapon attack). Jesse bases his claim on the fact, that a crossbow is still a ranged weapon, even if used as an improvised weapon for melee combat. That’s why it deals 1d4(!)+20 damage. (It works with any ranged, heavy weapon btw., so Longbow qualifies too.) Of course Jesse is playing the devils advocate here and of course, no somewhat sane Walter will allow this in any campaign ever, as it’s obviously not the intention behind these feats. But you could read it that way and that’s Jesses (paperthin) point. Besides: he finds the image of a barbarian running around recklessly smashing a crossbow over everyone’s head to just be hilarious.
Of course. It is a joke, but also a valid commentary on the weakness of WotC’s meta rules system. This is an area Paizo excels at.
I have to say that so many of the complaints about WotC rules writing come down to willfully ignoring context and similar phrasing. Yes, they should be more consistent and clear and mot name general ranged feats with weapon specific names or contradict themselves in their rules “clarifications.”
A sentence out of context is not the gotcha that people seem to think it is though, and that joke is old and played out.
I’d disagree, for example in the specific case of the sharpshooter feat a thrown dagger is a ranged weapon attack, but not an attack with a ranged weapon- so, per Jeremy Crawford, the first two parts of the feat apply when throwing a dagger but not the third.
That doesn’t ignore the context of being a ranged attack though, and something being true doesn’t mean the inverse situation is automatically true.
