Recent content by thecasualoblivion

And the enemy isn't attacking at all when hiding. I'll take that trade any day of the week.

Charge is one of the worst feats in 5E. You really aren't speaking from a perspective of anything resembling system mastery, here or anywhere in this thread.

Sharpshooter feat ignores everything but 100% cover. Failing that, you can ready an action to shoot when they leave cover.

Strangely enough, when looking at optimization at a party level, as opposed to character level a lot of the gap disappears. Ranged has the option to avoid enemy contact, but at a party level I find this is a net negative. The melee characters end up taking too much damage, get knocked below zero...

Archery Fighting Style is also key. The +2 to attack rolls from it goes a long way to offset the -5 to attack from Sharpshooter. Polearm/Greatweapon builds have nothing like it.

As I said, there is little penalty for spending all my resources there. Being in melee changes virtually nothing for me. Ammo? Our Fighter carries 3 or 4 cases of crossbow bolts on his person. Our Bard has a bag of holding, there are 10+ cases of bolts in that. The farthest he can shoot is 120...

A variant Human Fighter with the Crossbow Expertise feat will out damage pretty much anything. A Variant Human Fighter can have Crossbow Expertise, Sharpshooter, and 20 Dexterity by level 8, while sporting 17-18 AC, second wind, and a mountain of HP. A Crossbow Expert can fire in melee without...

If I'm a single classed Fighter using a hand crossbow with crossbow expertise, there is no penalty for putting all my eggs in that basket.

My Paladin dealt 2d6+str, rerolling 1s and 2s once, with my greatsword and could add Paladin's Smite on a hit. With a javelin I dealt 1d6+str, and no smite.

The main disadvantage to melee IMO is being subject to greater abuse from enemies. There really aren't a lot of personal resources to deal with that beyond the default(lay on hands, second wind, uncanny dodge, and such) and melee PCs are still at a disadvantage even when you figure those in IMO...

Thrown weapons are a 2nd or 3rd tier option for any Strength based character. It's almost impossible in 5E to optimize both melee and ranged, one of them will usually be the lesser option.

Disarm is very DM dependent. As written, it doesn't say where the weapon goes, and you can pick it back up as a free action. You also can't disarm a caster. As far as I'm familiar with grapple, I don't think it really offers any particular advantage against ranged that it doesn't also give...

When playing a Paladin, I carried a bunch of javelins and I threw them. It was not as effective as smithing things with a greatsword. I was only at my best when engaged in melee playing that character. It was a case of taking half a turn, as opposed to losing my turn entirely.

The moment a melee PC spends a turn without attacking they are at a disadvantage.

A well built ranged character isn't at that much of a disadvantage in melee. Somebody with the Crossbow Expert feat doesn't care if an enemy is engaging them. Two levels of Rogue and you can disengage as a bonus action at will. A spellcaster has disadvantage with ranged attack rolls, but save or...