Ranged Options for All Classes

Oofta · Feb 8, 2019

DM Dave1 said:
I dunno. It's kinda right there staring at you at the beginning of the PHB (pg 7)
[SECTION]Every character is different, with various strengths and weaknesses, so the best party of adventurers is one in which the characters complement each other and cover the weaknesses of their companions. The adventurers must cooperate to successfully complete the adventure.[/SECTION]

Which to me sounds an awful lot like "if you don't play the way I think you should, you're playing wrong".

Would the party in the game I mentioned have been more effective if the wizard had been more tactically oriented and cooperative? Probably. Do I think strength based characters should have nothing effective to do in a significant percentage of encounters? Nope.

Swarmkeeper · Feb 8, 2019

Oofta said:
Which to me sounds an awful lot like "if you don't play the way I think you should, you're playing wrong".

Would the party in the game I mentioned have been more effective if the wizard had been more tactically oriented and cooperative? Probably. Do I think strength based characters should have nothing effective to do in a significant percentage of encounters? Nope.

Second point first: Who is saying strength based characters should not have something effective to do in a significant percentage of encounters? Good for you for fighting against that bogeyman! As DMs, I should hope we all strive for setting up encounters so that ALL characters can have effective things to do almost every time.

And back to your opening snipe: Interpret it however you like. Whatever. The player who doesn't play cooperatively at the table may soon find themselves without a table to play at. I've seen it. That act gets old very quickly.

Happy gaming.

Oofta · Feb 8, 2019

DM Dave1 said:
Second point first: Who is saying strength based characters should not have something effective to do in a significant percentage of encounters? Good for you for fighting against that bogeyman! As DMs, I should hope we all strive for setting up encounters so that ALL characters can have effective things to do almost every time.

And back to your opening snipe: Interpret it however you like. Whatever. The player who doesn't play cooperatively at the table may soon find themselves without a table to play at. I've seen it. That act gets old very quickly.

Happy gaming.

With the current edition if you are fighting a flying creature, you frequently have no choice but ranged attacks. So DM can either provide strength based characters better attack options, never run flying creatures, or run flying creatures as being suicidal and landing for no reason.

Anyway, this has gotten far off the OP's question. I've mentioned my options for his issues, I just don't think "have the spell caster do something to enable the strength based character" is a good answer.

Have a good one.

Lord Twig · Feb 9, 2019

So to reiterate the situation that brought this issue up for me. I was running a published adventure for an adventurer's league game and had fast forwarded the game a bit to get to the end because a new season was starting. The players are generally younger and less experienced. While a more seasoned group in a more traditional game would usually make sure they had all of their bases covered, this group just plays with whoever shows up that night.

So that night we had a devotion paladin, a berserker barbarian, 2 eldritch knights, a thief rogue and a moon druid. The person who usually played a sorcerer didn't make it that night. So yeah. The paladin and barbarian where the most screwed. The group did have some ranged capabilities, and I managed to make it work, but it just highlighted how incredibly melee focused the paladin and barbarian were. The same probably would have been true for the fighters if they hadn't been eldritch knights.

Again, a more experienced, regular group would have been better prepared. And if I had been designing the adventure instead of reading it out of a book I could have put in other options. As it was I didn't realize the problem until I had already set the scene and they were in battle.

I guess the point is, a little system mastery is still required in 5e if you want to make an effective group. If you just "pick what's cool" and don't think ahead, you can screw yourself a bit in certain circumstances.

LordEntrails · Feb 9, 2019

Lord Twig said:
So to reiterate the situation... The players are generally younger and less experienced. While a more seasoned group in a more traditional game would usually make sure they had all of their bases covered, this group just plays with whoever shows up that night.

And this is how they get experience. If every fight they have is planned or tweaked so that it is all melee, then they will never learn to provide for ranged power.

You did an acceptable things as DM, and adapted the encounter. Hopefully you did so in a way in which they still learned the lesson, min/max characters are min in something!

... but it just highlighted how incredibly melee focused the paladin and barbarian were. The same probably would have been true for the fighters if they hadn't been eldritch knights.

Yep, and you think a paladin should be ranged focused or balanced? The paladin has always been melee dominant class. When a player picks paladin, they need to accept that they are going to suck at range.

Again, a more experienced, regular group would have been better prepared. And if I had been designing the adventure instead of reading it out of a book I could have put in other options. As it was I didn't realize the problem until I had already set the scene and they were in battle.

But, imo, it wasn't a "probem". And it certainly wasn't a problem in adventure design, if anything the "problem" was that the players chose (through inexperience) not to be versatile or flexible in their character design. Hopefully they learned their lesson.

Besides, failing to kill a BBEG doesn't have to be a bad thing.

I guess the point is, a little system mastery is still required in 5e if you want to make an effective group. If you just "pick what's cool" and don't think ahead, you can screw yourself a bit in certain circumstances.

Yep. Good thing too. Otherwise if your choices have no drawbacks, then their is no reason to make any choices is there and you might as well just through out the rules and all tell a joint story that the players always get what they want.

UngainlyTitan · Feb 9, 2019

ChameleonX said:
If the Barbarian is raging, they can throw rocks, dead (or alive) enemies, or even a Gnome or Halfling party member. Imagine throwing a Halfling Rogue at a Dragon's face as it flies by. I'd rule that a Sneak Attack for sure.

Did that once in an actual game, my barbarian Donk threw the gnome paladin at the bad guys.

LordEntrails · Feb 10, 2019

ardoughter said:
Did that once in an actual game, my barbarian Donk threw the gnome paladin at the bad guys.

Just don't tell the elf!

Paul Farquhar · Feb 11, 2019

Oofta said:
Except that strength based characters have no effective range options in many cases. At all. Throw one javelin a short distance per round doesn't hack it at higher levels or if the BBEG is more than 20 ft away (and seriously, if they're less than 20 ft away you probably have other options). More than 40 ft away? Sucks to be you.

Bows? Sure. Unless you have a lousy dex and doing 4.5 reduced by your dexterity penalty damage per hit. If you hit, which you probably won't because you're at a negative.

This is garbage. No competently built barbarian has less than 14 dex, and they get martial weapon prof at level 1 and Extra Attack at level 5, class abilities which improve ranged attacks. So they should be doing around 13 points of ranged damage per round, not 4.5.

Oofta · Feb 11, 2019

Paul Farquhar said:
This is garbage. No competently built barbarian has less than 14 dex, and they get martial weapon prof at level 1 and Extra Attack at level 5, class abilities which improve ranged attacks. So they should be doing around 13 points of ranged damage per round, not 4.5.

Tone it down, dude. First, you don't get to decide what and how I build characters. Second, not all strength based characters are barbarians. Third, not all barbarians are built according to your specifications. Last but not least, if you use a longbow and don't add dex you get average 4.5 damage per hit modified by your dexterity adjustment.

Therefore if I'm a paladin or a fighter in heavy armor with an 8 dex (or lower if you roll for stats) my average damage per hit is 3.5 with a long bow. At ... I don't know ... 5th level I'm a +2 to hit after adjustments. So an average AC of 16, I'm going miss 70% of the time. While I was talking about damage per hit, the average damage for this guy per round is a sad and pathetic 2 points of damage.

So thanks for pointing out that it's even worse than what I was saying by misrepresenting my words.

But let's assume for a moment that I don't even bother with strength for my barbarian. Max out the dex and ignore strength because you're running around naked so you never have to worry about encumbrance. True, you won't be using that two-handed weapon but you're more than compensated by higher initiative, better AC, ranged attack options, getting good numbers for one of the most common save in the games. Throw in two-weapon fighting with rapiers and you'll be on par for damage vs the two-handers until sometime after 10th level (and even then it's only a couple of points).

So yeah. Total and complete "garbage". A 14 dex barbarian is playing wrong, their dex should be far higher.

Paul Farquhar · Feb 11, 2019

Oofta said:
Tone it down, dude. First, you don't get to decide what and how I build characters. Second, not all strength based characters are barbarians. Third, not all barbarians are built according to your specifications. Last but not least, if you use a longbow and don't add dex you get average 4.5 damage per hit modified by your dexterity adjustment.

Therefore if I'm a paladin or a fighter in heavy armor with an 8 dex (or lower if you roll for stats) my average damage per hit is 3.5 with a long bow. At ... I don't know ... 5th level I'm a +2 to hit after adjustments. So an average AC of 16, I'm going miss 70% of the time. While I was talking about damage per hit, the average damage for this guy per round is a sad and pathetic 2 points of damage.

So thanks for pointing out that it's even worse than what I was saying by misrepresenting my words.

But let's assume for a moment that I don't even bother with strength for my barbarian. Max out the dex and ignore strength because you're running around naked so you never have to worry about encumbrance. True, you won't be using that two-handed weapon but you're more than compensated by higher initiative, better AC, ranged attack options, getting good numbers for one of the most common save in the games. Throw in two-weapon fighting with rapiers and you'll be on par for damage vs the two-handers until sometime after 10th level (and even then it's only a couple of points).

So yeah. Total and complete "garbage". A 14 dex barbarian is playing wrong, their dex should be far higher.

Sure, you could build a barbarian with dex as a dump stat, if you wanted to emulate that famous hero Conan the Klutz, and be lousy at melee as well as ranged, due to poor AC and initiative. Hell, you can make your strength 8 too. The point is, player decisions are supposed to have consequences. You seem to want to eliminate any meaning to player decisions to the point where you might as well roll a d20 and if the score is greater than 1 the monster dies!

It seems to me that you are unaware of the martial ability: Extra Attack. This works with bows!!!! Thus ALL martial classes (even monks) have at least twice as many ranged attacks as non-martial characters*! *(warlocks excepted)

As for fighters, sure, a heavy armour fighter might dump stat dex, but they could just as easily be an outstanding archer. Player choice has consequences. The system does not force a fighter to be poor at range, the player has to choose it. And even a dex 8 fighter can gain abilities to help in ranged combat: an Eldritch Knight can learn a ranged damage cantrip, keying of intelligence; many Battle Master manoeuvres work with ranged weapons; the Champion's improved critical applies to both melee and ranged attacks and they get an extra fighting style at level 10.

As for paladins, they have so many spells and support abilities that there is always something they can usefully be doing. I'm surprised you even bring them up.

Ranged Options for All Classes

Oofta

Legend

Swarmkeeper

Hero

Oofta

Legend

Lord Twig

Adventurer

LordEntrails

Hero

UngainlyTitan

Legend

LordEntrails

Hero

Paul Farquhar

Legend

Oofta

Legend

Paul Farquhar

Legend

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