D&D 5E Ranged party member keeps running off the map

CapnZapp said:

This doesn't sound like fantasy gaming to my ears. More like X-Com or Cyberpunk. But hey, if it works for you...

Myself, I like it when a game system makes you choose between slow brutal killing machine and fast but kind of only annoying. We'd all love to play fast killing machines, but what's so special about that if everybody can do it...

In other words, if the system doesn't reward you for rolling up a slow axe dwarf you risk ending up like Gimli. Tossed on the scrap heap.

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What a strange response. what does "not fantasy gaming" even mean?

That is rhetorical. I don't want to know what you mean by that.

CapnZapp said:

D&D supports the notion of ranged characters. Not "snipers".

Of course a ranged character could and should stay out of the center spotlight. But that's not what we're discussing here. We're discussing a character that is effectively removing himself from the camera angle altogether. That is bad, because there will come times when you will need to present your own flesh and blood as a distraction for the monsters. Perhaps block a crucial movement so the monster doesn't bite the spellcaster when the tank is momentarily overwhelmed. Follow the party when the battlescene unexpectedly shifts. Etc

Not to mention the heroic angle. Why should the rest of the party accept that one character is always hundreds of feet away, and thus in relative safety? Especially since none of your abilities actually require that. Staying out of trouble? Yes. Being far away. There is no reason.

Why? Because there aren't any snipers in D&D! All this talk about "snipers" make you think D&D is actually about that stuff.

Let me assure you that playing a "sniper" in D&D is a thoroughly suboptimal tactic. And it isn't well supported by the game either.

While it can be a fun character archetype to play, it really should not be encouraged in D&D. Best save it for a modern-era game. Especially with a newbie DM.

Now, you might think I'm accusing you of playing the game badwrongfun. I'm really not. I just need to ask you to stop labeling ranged characters "snipers" to the OP. It really gives off the wrong connotations. It justifies the behavior of that gunsmith of his. Based on what?

Other than the rule of cool - nothing. Again, nothing wrong with sniper player characters. Just save them for another game than D&D

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Yeah, stop telling me what belongs in DnD and what doesn't. That is ridiculous.

Certainly don't try to tell me what terms to use. A long distance, hidden, ranged combatant, is a sniper. The feat that lets casters engage in similar behavior is called Spell Sniper. Your hang up about the term is your own, and shouldn't lead you to nit pick at me about what terms I use.

Hemlock said:

Fundamentally the sniper superiority issue is mostly caused by the fact that 5E makes movement too slow and ranged fire at moving targets too accurate--it makes 5E combats favor ranged combat even more heavily than the real world.

To mitigate this in an outdoor scenario, you can either create monsters with a wider variety of movement speeds and modes, e.g. boosting quadrupedal movement speeds by a factor of three and flying movement speeds by a factor of ten, or you can stick within the existing rules and stack blocks and find other ways to increase closing rates, such as exploiting zero-duration "falling" as dive-bombing.

I'm telling you, dude, dive-bombing is where it's at for killing archers. Four or five gryphons "falling" from 1000' range to melee in one round--melee-specialized dudes will eat that up, because that's exactly the threat profile they are specialized for, and they can even grapple the gryphons to the ground and pin them if they want to. But a sniper will hate it.

You don't have to make every enemy a dive-bombing gryphon/dragon/peryton/whatever. All you have to do is, if it's an outdoor scenario and you don't want the sniper getting too far from the main party, have a flock of flying enemies circling over his head to threaten his flank. He'll catch up to his melee buddies fast enough.

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Totally agree with your assessment. Disagree with the dive-bombing approach because it's as absurd as the long-range accuracy of 5e. However, unless you're going to modify the rules (as I did), you might have to rely on techniques such as that.

But overall, I think that terrain and tactics are the best defense. If 5e ranged combat is that good, then it's that good for the NPCs and monsters too. And anybody that has any sort of tactical brains will understand that and be armed appropriately and make use of cover.

Gonna parrot the line here. Terrain is your friend. PC removes himself, say, 100 feet? Well, trees, bushes, even small rises and falls in the terrain pretty much negate that advantage.

And, even in an open field, that's an easy thing to do. Grass is 4 feet high, which provides total concealment to anything that kneels. Put a couple of rises on your map and now virtually everything at that range has partial or 3/4 cover. One of the bigger problems is that battlemaps, almost always, neglect any verticality. There's the map with absolutely no rise and fall to it. I understand why. It's easier to draw. But, realistically, ground is almost never flat.

As far as slow monster speeds go, I'm not sure that's really true. Lots of creatures have moments of 40-50 feet. It's not that hard for one or more of the baddies to break off and challenge the ranged shooter, if they choose to. Or, better yet, fall back to get out of sight lines.

But, to answer the OP, the easiest solution here is just to use bigger maps. Add a bit more area to play in.

As far as sending that one tank up while the rest of the party kites, that's a pretty easy thing to solve. The baddies just ignore the dodging heavy armor fighter and rush past him. Sure, they might eat an OA on the way by, but, who cares? One monster might get tagged for a single attack while the other three or four rush past unopposed. There is no "stickiness" to defenders in 5e. Why am I bothering wasting a bunch of attacks on this guy when I can just ignore him (he's not attacking after all) and go eat the squishy guys in the back?

The solution to kiting is the same as the real world solution - use terrain to your advantage. One guy up front with dancing lights? Move away from him. Problem solved.

Then again, I almost always use larger numbers of smaller monsters, rather than one big one, so, kiting is never really an issue.

Hemlock said:

Fundamentally the sniper superiority issue is mostly caused by the fact that 5E makes movement too slow and ranged fire at moving targets too accurate--it makes 5E combats favor ranged combat even more heavily than the real world. To mitigate this in an outdoor scenario, you can either create monsters with a wider variety of movement speeds and modes, e.g. boosting quadrupedal movement speeds by a factor of three and flying movement speeds by a factor of ten, or you can stick within the existing rules and stack blocks and find other ways to increase closing rates, such as exploiting zero-duration "falling" as dive-bombing.

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3e and, to a lesser extend, 4e had these same problems. While 4e shrunk the ranges of bows, 100 & 200 feet were also pretty darn far away.

Hemlock said:

I'm telling you, dude, dive-bombing is where it's at for killing archers. Four or five gryphons "falling" from 1000' range to melee in one round--melee-specialized dudes will eat that up, because that's exactly the threat profile they are specialized for, and they can even grapple the gryphons to the ground and pin them if they want to. But a sniper will hate it.

You don't have to make every enemy a dive-bombing gryphon/dragon/peryton/whatever. All you have to do is, if it's an outdoor scenario and you don't want the sniper getting too far from the main party, have a flock of flying enemies circling over his head to threaten his flank. He'll catch up to his melee buddies fast enough.

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I'll have to keep that in mind.

Ilbranteloth said:

Totally agree with your assessment. Disagree with the dive-bombing approach because it's as absurd as the long-range accuracy of 5e. However, unless you're going to modify the rules (as I did), you might have to rely on techniques such as that.

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It's not really as absurd as all that. By real-world physics, six seconds is enough to attain a falling velocity of 193 feet/second (131 miles per hour), and to fall 579 feet starting from at-rest. That's not an absurd velocity. It's slightly implausible that a large creature like a dragon could instantly shed all that velocity without breaking its wings, but that's implausibility on the same order as not decreasing longbow range when firing straight up--it keeps the game playable without a physics textbook, without materially changing the actual gameplay. In other words, if you did all the physics computations, gameplay would (I think) come out similar, except that "out of longbow range" would decrease to 250' or something and feasible dive-bombing distance would likewise decrease to something comparable. So it would be different, but not actually different, just a lot more work.

All I'm really doing by dive-bombing is acknowledging that 5E movement rates are really slow compared to real-world phenomena, including falling, and letting them fall at realistic speeds instead of the 8-16 mph the MM lets them move at.

But overall, I think that terrain and tactics are the best defense. If 5e ranged combat is that good, then it's that good for the NPCs and monsters too. And anybody that has any sort of tactical brains will understand that and be armed appropriately and make use of cover.

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Just be warned: it can make players of melee characters like Barbarians feel kind of sad and left out. Be prepared for them to switch PCs.

Just use terrain to get him closer to a shot.

In dense forest beyond 50-60 feet there is no angle of attack that you can shoot an arrow through the all the trees.

In dungeons corridors are rarely longer than 50ft, maybe few open caverns but they wont be larger than 200ft.

Also for that kind of engagement you don't need a map, just say he is 300ft away from the border, grid is not scripture for D&D combat.

As others stated on a open plains, he is the champion of that terrain, say as a barbarian with expertise in athletics is best in close quarters combat with superior grappling or a shapeshifting druid in underwater combat.

Players should feel powerfull in their area of expertise, but now and then you can surprise them just so they don't get the "god complex".

I would typically assume that "off the map" means "not in line of sight", unless eg this is a prepared ambush spot where the PC climbed a tree or otherwise found somewhere suitable in advance. If that's the case then sure, snipe away.

Ilbranteloth said:

If 5e ranged combat is that good, then it's that good for the NPCs and monsters too.

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I will never get this sentiment. Have you even looked at the monsters in Monster Manual?!

5e monsters are heavily geared towards melee and monsters generally have much more limited access to the ranged tools available to player characters.

Sure you can hand pick the few monster types with decent, good and stellar attack modes that work at long range; but in my opinion most DMs and pre-written campaigns won't.

Other than that, ranged combat is only that good to NPCs and monsters with class levels, and many DMs will go entire campaigns without using even one of those.

So no, just because something is good for the players does not mean it's good for the monsters as well. This is not a symmetrical game.

Most peasants and goblins and umber hulks and whatnot would kill for the awesome abilities available to player characters. But they will never get them in most campaigns.



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There's a wyvern-riding Eagle barbarian IMC who loves scooping up enemy squishies from the battlefield, raking/hitting them and then dropping them from a great height. If you're finding long distance snipers on open battlefields to be a problem, I'd suggest that is a reasonable monster counter measure.