D&D (2024) Why is wotc still aiming for PCs with 10 *real word* feet of range? W/o vision range penalty/limit rules for the GM?

[Hussar]

And, really, it's not like it has to happen all the time that long range combat is blocked. It's perfectly plausible that you won't have 600 foot LOS in every single encounter. Right? We can all agree there?

So, brass tacks here, how often are we ACTUALLY talking about this happening? AFAIC, there are very few terrains where this is an issue:

1. Spelljammer.
2. Naval engagements (note, though, while these ranges are certainly possible, it's not guaranteed - lighting, weather, even waves are going to reduce sight lines.
3. Salt plains. - not exactly the most common adventuring environment.

That's about it. Anything else and you have too many things that can block sight. Even short grass plains aren't flat enough. There's a VERY good reason that militaries don't engage beyond about 300 meters and that's with rifles. Sure, your shots can go much, much farther than that. 7.62 can reach out damn near a kilometer. Can't hit anything at that range, but, the rounds actually will travel that far. But, it almost never happens. You don't engage in wide open, flat planes with no cover. That's just blindingly suicidal.

 

[Digdude]

Some of you have clearly never pissed off a party of Elves from Birthright and it clearly shows...

 

[Hriston]

Gorice's actual statement was "This is the kind of thing that would have been really useful in the DMG." You asked why its' location mattered. I made a case for why rule placement matters and thus why Gorice had a point. What tetrasodium or anyone else here does, knows about, or is capable of, is beside the point.

That said, beside the point or not, I agree. tetrasodium and everyone else here are widely experienced and invested gamers and perfectly capable capable of utilizing material from anywhere including supplemental products, homebrew, and forum suggestions. As I just said, "By the time you get to the level of investment most of us have in the game, we barely need rules at all, much less care if the core books have [more or less than we need]."

Well, I asked how the table's location affects its utility, but your response seems to be about the utility of the DMG. I agree that the DMG is probably less useful for not including an encounter distance table, but the table retains its utility on the DM's screen and is probably more accessible there as well, for use, you know, in an actual game.

OP certainly hasn't tied it to their own table experience strongly*. They do provide a few hypotheticals and in-adventure module examples, and Stalker posits a scenario. If we accept in-good-faith/for-the-purpose-of-argument that everyone complaining about the status quo have experiences similar to the hypotheticals brought up*, it paints a picture of groups where encounters start at sizable distances and the archery-based characters duke it out for many rounds before the melee combatants can engage (effectively determining the outcome, to a lessor or greater degree), making the players of those melee-characters feel dissatisfied with their lot in the game. Also something about the size of the effective battlescape when mapped 5'=1" that was a primary subject of the Original Post, but seems to have gotten dropped**.
*and at least once argued that individual tables were not the best unit of observation, to which I disagree (issues that occur at actual game tables are the only ones worth concerning ourselves).
**and that most people in that camp have similar complaints, a less reasonable assumption but one that can be addressed by individual clarification
***or at least I couldn't see much response to people's solutions like TotM, special notation, etc.

Right, so it would seem that limiting encounter distance would solve these problems. Procedures for determining such distances are part of the earliest editions of D&D. I think they haven't been included in this edition (except for the optional chart on the screen) because of a move away from procedures that might be seen to constrain the DM, so that the default method is for the DM to decide the distance, any procedure being supplemental to that decision making. Nevertheless, the DM needs to make a decision, and the latitude granted to the DM gives rise to the possibility of an inappropriate distance being chosen. There could probably be better guidance for this in the rulebooks, in a section on encounter design. Without that, I would say it's simply a matter of DM skill that is likely to develop in response to running into these issues.

 

[tetrasodium]

There can't be trees all the time? While this is an easy situation to fix at the encounter level, what about at a world-building level? If the party consistently only fights enemies when there is terrain to prevent long-ranged attacks, someone might start to wonder why anyone bothered to make really long ranged weapons in the first place, lol.

Personally, if players want to invest in distance attacks, I say let them, but the rules shouldn't assume every DM is ready for that. It seems like a pretty easy thing to add in a "DM Troubleshooting" section of a DMG to discuss things like this that could come up.

This so much. Using the tower example I'd be thrilled if bob has a longbow & wants to push for a shadowrun style ranged support/cover sniper fire for the g up close & personal portion of the group with the action in need of that support/cover. The rules are written the other way around though as if the primary design goal was to ensure that one player can "but but but the rules say..." in order to override the GM when try try to use unobtrusive fiat to stop bob from turning the rest of the group into thumb twiddling spectators. Someone's going to cry foul after a given GM plonks down the N'th hedge wall style forest even if it's the first hedge wall style forest of this campaign with these PCs... Worse, players are going to notice the tricks & start building PCs in a way that ignores the GM's efforts after they've seen it a few times across campaigns.

@Hriston if these ranges are so extreme that they require a secondary rule that imposes a secondary limit to just sever the range to a reasonable limit because... It's a pretty clear indication that those ranges are unreasonable unless the design goal is one that assumes a hostile GM the players need a shield to stop.

 

[Hriston]

@Hriston if these ranges are so extreme that they require a secondary rule that imposes a secondary limit to just sever the range to a reasonable limit because... It's a pretty clear indication that those ranges are unreasonable unless the design goal is one that assumes a hostile GM the players need a shield to stop.

I have no idea what much of this means. The DM deciding the encounter distance isn’t a “secondary rule”. It's step two of the combat step-by-step. If you’re doing combat, this should be happening, but it isn’t just “because”. The idea is there are reasons in the fiction having to do with features of the landscape interrupting line of sight that it is the DM’s job to imagine and express to the players. Audible distance can also be a factor in situations with poor visual conditions. The DM can set the distance to whatever they like because the fiction is supposed to come first. All sorts of conditions can be imagined, but if the group is regularly having combat at distances too large for a reasonably sized battlemat or for characters to close to melee before the battle is over, then I think it’s worth examining why combat is being imagined as happening in a vast expanse free of any intervening terrain, and I think the DM would do well to imagine situations that bring the distance down to a reasonable range. I don’t believe this is a mechanical problem. I think it’s a problem with the fiction.

 

[Reef]

@tetrasodium, of course the players are going to react and adjust to the world the DM presents (although I’d object to the idea that the world has trees is somehow a agency-robbing trick). I’d expect no less.

If the DM presents a world that is a giant flat, featureless plain (which they can, but is 100% a choice they are consciously making), where encounters are routinely detected at extreme ranges, then yes, the longbow will be king. Just like in the real world. And like in the real world, the fictional characters will adapt. Everyone will use the longest range weapon they have access to. The casters will prioritize long range spells. They’ll get super creative in ways to avoid detection.

Just like if the game features a huge amount of travel and combat on airships. Suddenly Fly spells and Rings of Featherfall become the default choice. Or in an ocean campaign, where people live and die by their water breathing spells.

None of this requires special rules. It would be like saying that an ocean based campaign unfairly affects classes reliant on heavy armour, and favours players that use light armour and/or are dex based. Which is true, but doesn’t mean the rules regarding swimming in plate armour needs to be changed. Nor do I think there needs to be special rules telling players that the DM is allowed to put them in the middle of an ocean. Of course, I’d expect a DM to talk to the players ahead of time if that was going to be an issue. I certainly wouldn’t expect players to claim it was unfair that they were drowning “but the rules say I can wear plate mail!!”.

@tetrasodium, earlier in the thread I made the mistake of assuming this was a problem you were encountering constantly. You corrected me, and said it wasn’t even happening on a regular basis. If this is a rare occurrence for you, why are you so set on officially changing the rules to deal with it?

 

[tetrasodium]

I have no idea what much of this means. The DM deciding the encounter distance isn’t a “secondary rule”. It's step two of the combat step-by-step. If you’re doing combat, this should be happening, but it isn’t just “because”. The idea is there are reasons in the fiction having to do with features of the landscape interrupting line of sight that it is the DM’s job to imagine and express to the players. Audible distance can also be a factor in situations with poor visual conditions. The DM can set the distance to whatever they like because the fiction is supposed to come first. All sorts of conditions can be imagined, but if the group is regularly having combat at distances too large for a reasonably sized battlemat or for characters to close to melee before the battle is over, then I think it’s worth examining why combat is being imagined as happening in a vast expanse free of any intervening terrain, and I think the DM would do well to imagine situations that bring the distance down to a reasonable range. I don’t believe this is a mechanical problem. I think it’s a problem with the fiction.

This is not worth addressing if you can't express why those extreme ranges belong in the system. Stop praising a table from 2e (at least) that got added to the 5e gm screen as space filler absent the rules it worked with and justify the excessive ranges that it limits and justify those ranges.

@tetrasodium, earlier in the thread I made the mistake of assuming this was a problem you were encountering constantly. You corrected me, and said it wasn’t even happening on a regular basis. If this is a rare occurrence for you, why are you so set on officially changing the rules to deal with it?

Same question. Justify those ranges. That shouldn't be hard If those have a purpose other than providing a shield of ruleslawyering to obstruct the GM's efforts to restrain those ranges to reasonable limits,

 

[Reef]

This is not worth addressing if you can't express why those extreme ranges belong in the system. Stop praising a table from 2e (at least) that got added to the 5e gm screen as space filler absent the rules it worked with and justify the excessive ranges that it limits and justify those ranges.



Same question. Justify those ranges. That shouldn't be hard If those have a purpose other than providing a shield of ruleslawyering to obstruct the GM's efforts to restrain those ranges to reasonable limits,

So what ranges do you want that don’t need justifying?

Half longbow range to 300’? Still need to dash 5 rounds to get into melee range.

200’? Still dashing 3 rounds.

100’? Okay, fits on a small battlemap, melee characters still have to dash 1-2 rounds, but now you have the opposite problem and the players you have been saddled with want you to justify why your bows only shoot 100’.

And you ignore question: how often is this causing problems in your game to justify changing the rules?

 

[Digdude]

Maybe eliminate bow ranges and make the weapon ranges past short range (30-60 feet) limited to the max visible range of the encounter (Decided either randomly or by the dm). This was the DM can keep it fair for all and the bow peeps dont get hosed.

 

[James Gasik]

That leads into a bigger problem; the game was made for dungeon exploring, and so it doesn't really want people seeing clearly beyond a certain point, even with darkvision, you're typically at disadvantage to see things out to 60'. But on a clear day, you can see very far if there's nothing in particular blocking your vision. I live in a Midwestern state, and within 5 minutes I can drive out of town and be confronted by empty fields of nothing for miles around.

Reading this thread, outside of a dungeon, I get the impression everything needs to be forest primeval or full of big rocks to hide behind for melee combat to even exist. Nobody would dare travel down a road that is anywhere near straight, for fear of being mowed down by arrows, lol.

Every monster and enemy must have a piece of terrain they can spring out of to ambush the player characters, or be sniped down!

Oh and flying enemies apparently are impossible to ever encounter during the daytime, since you'd be able to see them coming long before they could ever get into melee. Might as well take all of them out of the Monster Manual!