Is Ranged really better than Melee?

S'mon said:

From https://5thsrd.org/combat/cover/ I can't see why cover wouldn't apply to melee attacks.

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It does but the cover would have to be between you and who you are attacking so that means the target would have to be 10’ away, so only applies to reach weapons. Cover is different in melee as the weapon is always attached to you and you are in all parts of the 5’ square and it is assumed you are reaching and attacking from different angles.

In the situation where a wall or something say 3’ high but only 1’ thick is between 2 adjacent creatures fighting each other in melee I would play it by ear.

In ranged the weapon leaves your space on a vector and that vector won’t change barring outside interference.

As far as ranged combat in general, I would only make a few changes:

1. You can equip yourself with strength bows. Bows with higher draw strengths increase velocity and damage. This applies at all ranges.

2. Dexterity to damage should only apply at a limited range. The range should be a flat amount also, say 60’. Dexterity is an accuracy component, DEX to damage implication is that you are aiming for a weak spot. After a certain range your ability to see that weak spot is limited. This used to be the point blank range in earlier editions. Actually I wouldn’t mind the PC having to make a knowledge check to see if they even know where the weak spots are for a strange creature the PCs haven’t seen before. Remember Legolas had to tell the Elves where the weak spots were on the Orcs armor; the implication being clearly they didn’t know it

3. Dex to damage and Str to damage should stack if possible. More accurate with more power and velocity should mean something.

4. All bows should be martial weapons and all crossbows should be simple weapons. The reason the crossbow became widespread is it was cheap, simple and easy to use and requires little training, archery is very much a learned and practiced skill.

5. Crossbow damage should be changed. Hand crossbow I would make a d4, heavy crossbow I would make a d12.

6. The archery style bonus should be a damage bonus, not an accuracy bonus. In a BA environment accuracy bonuses shouldn’t be given out like that. The Archer is essentially under a permanent bless spell, that’s way to powerful. It also makes little practical sense that a longbowmen with SS at 600’ shooting at a target %75 covered by a wall is more accurate then a skilled dueler standing next to you.

7. SS damage bonus only works at short range for your weapon. Actually I never got this damage bonus anyway, the implication is that you will attempt to throw or shoot a ranged projectile with more velocity then usual. For bows I get it sort of, implying max draw, but for a crossbow it’s always max draw and you don’t short arm a thrown projectile.

I get that it’s a fantasy game. But with these changes that I use we still have archers and crossbowmen. They hit a little less but do more damage as no one dumps strength and everyone (once they get money) gets a Str bow, and the heavy crossbow actually gets used all the time and it means something.


They stay in combat range more and get rewarded for it.

I play a lot of miniature skirmish games - favorites right now are Frostgrave and Blood Eagle. Most of these skirmish games call for a table full of terrain. If the space is to wide open ranged attacks are too easy and tend to dominate. I like my D&D games full of terrain as well.

ClaytonCross said:

First if you shoot someone ...

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Guns were not introduced to combat people in chainmail. The most common armor in the Renaissance was not chainmail but a breastplate. Peasant levies also don't wear armor; archers don't wear armor. Longbows and crossbows could penetrate armor as well. The need for a weapon to puncture armor was not nearly as important as the ability to field masses of ranged weapons. Plate armor was proofed against arrows, bolts, and bullets. However, only a very few could afford such armor.

You are arguing a position that has been debunked time and time again.

Guns were an economic solution, not a military one. A peasant could be trained to use a firearm in a few weeks, which allowed larger armies to be fielded and so forth.

Ok... I am from the south... I know people with the silencer legally (I am not a licensed gun owner) and we have gone to the range where I have stood beside them while firing.

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LOL. I am from the Southwest and own many guns and go to the range quite often. So what?

… They are in fact quite enough to provide a level of stealth when you are at range. Sure standing beside the gun you hear it but you don't generally use a ranged weapon for melee combat so range is to be expected and if your not listening for a silencer and its being fired at 200 ft from a target and your not seeing the flash your in trouble. Because the military DOES use silencers for cover missions and its not for hearing protection.

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Silencers have never been a bit part of military missions outside of very carefully planned special operations that take into account their use. They are useful on raids.

Here is a good article of use in stealth missions:
https://www.shootingillustrated.com/articles/2010/10/26/the-truth-about-suppressors/

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Except that the article isn't about stealth missions at all. It defines when a suppressed weapon can be useful and under what conditions with very many caveats surrounding it.

.And another one where the point out that making no sound is not required to be useful for as a stealth weapon. The implication being that in combat, a noise decoy typically of a deliberately loud assault from the front without silencers is used to cover the more quite silenced weapons in flanking positions picking off enemies from behind their cover without alerting combatants to their location. Having weapons that are half as loud means that they are easily down out and enemies are picked off without know where the real threat is.

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And my point still stands.

So despite your condescending personal attack... the use of silencers in actual combat as a stealth weapon is 100% a real thing.

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It wasn't a condescending personal attack, it was a lighthearted comment that you chose to be offended by. I guess I needed to put a smiley on it for you? My comment was mostly made so that others didn't misconstrue that silencers were anywhere near what Hollywood portrays them to be. Perhaps you need more fiber in your diet?

I never claimed that silencers were not useful only that they actually aren't silent. Again a silenced weapon is louder than a barking dog. The weapons used on the Osama Bin Laden raid were M4s with a AAC M4-2000 suppressor which is a great silencer. It reduces the report by about 34 db, so still louder than a barking dog. (It also has an MSRP of $800 which is about the cost of a cheap AR.) However, the supposed advantage was negated due to the noise entry of the raiders. Even without the helicopter crash, the entry was noisey. The main advantage it allows the team to fire their weapons without defeaning themselves.

The conditions for the use of a silenced weapon could mostly be filled by a non-silenced weapon. Concealment and range apply to both. Snipers don't bother with suppressors because they take advantage of concealment and range.

I personally agree with your Shooting Illustrated author that silencers shouldn't be regulated by the 1934 act for the same reasons. At the ranges I shoot at with my pistol, I much prefer shooting with a silencer and I still use ear protection. It is also nice for longer ranges as you only need to protect one ear so the other ear can hear the sound of the iron pig when it is hit.

If you really want a silent weapon use a crossbow. Most Renaissance cities created ordinances against them since they were truly silent. Otherwise, there are very few (as in a super tiny amount) of situations where a suppressed weapon cannot be heard compared to a normal weapon. A subsonic round fired from a silencer also has very little stopping power. That shot has to be extremely accurate or the target is going to still be active. There is a place for silencers in the military, but only under scenarios with very tight constraints. They are completely useless on the battlefield.

It is the same argument about flash suppressors as well (which you also seem to think do something they don't). A flash suppressor doesn't hid the flash of a gunshot to anyone actually looking in the direction of the barrel. The flash suppressor keeps the flash from affecting the shooters night vision. They are practically useless during the day. Again there is a place for them, but not a widespread case.

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To sum it up from your original post, silencers have always been a corner case and not a widespread reason or advantage for firearms -- at least not to the extent you are implying. Especially since they weren't even invented unit the early 1900s.

FrogReaver said:

But most importantly, CE + SS + Precision is not a "typical" ranged build when compared with others in the game. So I'm really not sure what kind of importance it's existence really has on the discussion about melee vs ranged.

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I think it is useful to have pillar archetypes in a system: they help define the space for viable strategies. The question that CEx SS poses for me is whether it was a design error, or a pillar? I believe many would agree that it was a frank mistake, but why?

Perhaps for many groups, the melee character who discards defense to go all in with the heaviest weapon they can wield, fits their narrative in regard to repeatable massive damage to single-targets. So if that is the pillar, one really wants to see ranged doing less than that. The pillar for ranged could be the Archer Ranger, or the Agonizing Warlock. Maybe both.

But... if the thesis is that ranged damage is equal to melee damage (i.e. ranged has no intrinsic advantage over melee), then clearly CEx SS could with as much justice take over that system pillar for repeatable massive damage to single-targets. It turns out not to be a design mistake, but a boundary. That would be its importance. For me, that causes dissonance: it sounds wrong. Therefore I think that contrary to the original thesis, it must be the case that ranged damage has some ratio advantage over melee.

Oh lord is this thread really devolving into a Battle of Pedants about military history?

I guess most of them do.

One more thought (or set of thoughts) on this topic:

When you choose to focus on melee, either as a tank or a damage-dealer, or some blend of both, you recognize that there are some pretty common situations where you are going to be useless.

When you choose to focus on ranged damage, you also know there are going to be some situations where you are useless, but those situations are far less common. And while that could in theory be addressed by the DM, the solutions...because of the overly generous rules for ranged...feel much more contrived.

With some tweaks to ranged rules (such as the ideas I offered earlier: that it's harder to hit moving targets at long range at your full attack speed, and that ranged attacks draw AoO's from enemies within reach) it would be more common, without contrivance, for ranged attackers to have to do something other than pewpew at full efficacy.

Elfcrusher said:

Oh lord is this thread really devolving into a Battle of Pedants about military history?

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Is it?

Joy!

ClaytonCross said:

[A ranged group] can work more effectively then melee in a group containing only one or the other...

I mean this is all displayed in the real world were when guns became able to punch through armor, melee became a back up fighting style, and when we gained the ability to fire more than once without reloading it all but vanished with the exception of stealth... then we made silencers, making range preferred all around unless your trying to save precious ammo. If your still not convinced then consider one question... where are our melee plains and tanks? I know its a game but the tactical advantages are still their and to balance that the would have to make melee supper powered compared to ranged and they didn't.

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Yes, at the inflection point where combatants with missile weapons can reliably kill or disable combatants with shock weapons before the latter close in, the utility of shock weapons declines dramatically.

WaterRabbit said:

Guns appeared due to ease of training. A couple of months versus decades for a longbowman. Also did not have the disadvantages of a crossbow as seen at Crecy. And guns were not able to "punch through armor" until well past the disuse of melee weapons.

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This is correct, though I could quibble about gunpowder weapons and armor penetration a bit; early firearms had higher muzzle velocity at close ranges than modern firearms do but, like crossbows and longbows, they couldn't reliably penetrate armor. I would also point out that melee weapons never went out of use. Napoleonic soldiers had their bayonets, as did WW2 soldiers, as do US marines--that doesn't meaningfully change the gist of the argument, though. Economic efficiency, not technological sophistication, was why European armies started using gunpowder weapons.

ClaytonCross said:

First if you shoot someone in chain mail it will absolutely pierce it. Don't believe me? Do any research into why plate armor died out and they all say the same thing. Plate armor able to stop arched shots at range and effective against swords was not sufficient to stop firearms so the had to improve the armor to protect against firearms but that also made it more expensive. So they striped arms and legs to make it cheaper and lighter in favor or mobility over stopping penetration. That practice continues today in modern military with the armor plated flack vest and Kevlar helmet.

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These points about armor and firearms are a common pop-historical argument that describes past events but misunderstands their causality. Armor did change to cope with gunpowder weapons, just as it had changed to cope with other weapon systems. Early guns, though, were horribly inaccurate, ineffective beyond close range, and, since common methods of maintenance changed the size of a gun's bore over its lifetime, varied greatly in stopping power. They were not adopted for the purpose of penetrating armor, and plate armor remained in use long after arquebuses had become common. The linked Wikipedia article claims that leg protection in plate armor started disappearing in the 18th century... well yes, but that would leave about a 250 year period of guns and plate armor coexisting. 250 years is longer than the United States has been a country.

WaterRabbit said:

Guns were not introduced to combat people in chainmail. The most common armor in the Renaissance was not chainmail but a breastplate. Peasant levies also don't wear armor; archers don't wear armor. Longbows and crossbows could penetrate armor as well. The need for a weapon to puncture armor was not nearly as important as the ability to field masses of ranged weapons. Plate armor was proofed against arrows, bolts, and bullets. However, only a very few could afford such armor.

You are arguing a position that has been debunked time and time again.

Guns were an economic solution, not a military one. A peasant could be trained to use a firearm in a few weeks, which allowed larger armies to be fielded and so forth.

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Also correct. I'm inclined to quibble further about common renaissance armor and the prevalence of peasant levies, but this post is tangential enough as it is.

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On topic:

Yes, ranged has more overall utility than melee.

This is why:

Yardiff said:

Dex bonus to damage.

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This is a good solution:

UngeheuerLich said:

*if you are more than 30ft away, you don´t benefit from attribute bonus to damage or sneak attack.

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UngeheuerLich said:

If you are more than 30ft away, you don't benefit from attribute bonus to damage or sneak attack.

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I missed this earlier. I like this. A lot.

Although I might add: "...against enemies that are engaged in melee combat."

I'm ok with archers retaining all their bonuses against unsuspecting targets and other archers/casters.

squibbles said:

I would also point out that melee weapons never went out of use. Napoleonic soldiers had their bayonets, as did WW2 soldiers, as do US marines--that doesn't meaningfully change the gist of the argument, though.

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No disagreement on this from me. Calvary charges with sabers were still present at the start of WWII. However, the primary weapon of engagement has been firearms since their widespread introduction, with melee weapons relegated to backup or specialized missions.

Melee weapons fell out of use as primary weapons from at least the mid-18th century forward with few exceptions (7 Years War, American Revolution, Napoleonic wars, etc.). And also cannons started dominating the battlefield as well.
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To me, what I find most fascinating about D&D is that there isn't a technological progression in most settings -- especially with regards to magic. The traditional trope is that in the past magic was much more powerful. But then there really isn't a Dark Ages equivalent for magic.

The reason to me this is fascinating is in a world where magic is common place, like the Forgotten Realms, one would expect to see something more akin to modern squad tactics. One could see fielding wizards, but it would be far more effective to have wizards making fireball wands and seeding squads with apprentices to fight in battles. Massed armies get decimated against skirmish tactics with pocket artillery. Magic missile wands then become more useful than bows/crossbows since they hit unerringly.

If we toss aside the hit point assumption and assume that for regular folks a hit with a weapon is sufficient to remove them from the battlefield (if not kill them outright).

Spells like cloudkill are the fantasy equivalent of mustard gas and can be used by skirmish troops to easily wipe out masses of orcs or whatnot.

Spell research would go toward making these spells have longer ranges and greater areas of effect.

Ultimately, the assumptions for D&D combat are based upon small groups using infiltration tactics. It would be cool to see a well-thought out D&D setting that really thinks about how magic affects economic, social, and military aspects.

Going back to firearms replacing melee weapons because of economics. You could see a major innovation of a magical technological break through that allows mundanes to use wands of magic missile that could be produced like early firearms were done. Perhaps they don't have the unerring property but have greater range (40 yards is fairly short compared to the longbow's 200 yards). [It is also of note that D&D sets a longbow's range to its effect range and not its actual maximum range which is closer to 400 yards.]

Also correct. I'm inclined to quibble further about common renaissance armor and the prevalence of peasant levies, but this post is tangential enough as it is.

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You quibbles are quite correct. I was trying to be brief.

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The point about dexterity being added to the damage is the major change I see from 3e to 5e and what makes archery more effective.

I am not sure that removing the damage bonus for ranges greater than 30' will fly with most tables, but it is an understandable choice. Frankly the problem is that archery needs the SS feat to stay competitive, but then also become a bit overpowered because it gives too much.

To me it should give either the -5/+10 option or the ability to ignore cover not both. It is why SS and GWM feel overpowered is that they give two really good abilities when most of the other feats only give one.

In my game, we’ve found that ranged combat can be the better option, but only if the DM really lets it be so.

The encounter site and terrain are huge factors. So are enemy behavior and tactics. If the enemies just stand around fighting the tank while getting peppered with arrows from afar, then aure, ranged is superior. If the enemies are played as if theyhave half a brain and a normal level of self preservation, then this is less of a problem. Most enemies, especially mobs of enemies, should have ranged capability of their own.

And they should be just as capable of using tactics as the PCs. Have a couple of archers ready actions to attack the party ranger when he steps out of cover to make a shot. Have others take cover and then step out to shoot. Have these two groups alternate to minimize the attacks of the party’s ranged combatants. Pretty straightforward, and there are plenty of other ways for them to strategize.

So, I guess the answer to the question is that it could be superior. But there are so many factors that come into it that I’d never say it must be so.