Is Ranged really better than Melee?

[ClaytonCross]

That's what kiting is...

I know what kitting is, my point is that if your shooting an enemy attacking an ally who is not moving closer the lost of kitting is none existent because the point of kitting is being met by you melee ally holding the target in combat at a safe range. Different tactic but its the same effect so their is no break down.

#1 Not having any other character in attack range does tend to focus enemy attacks on the guy in their range.

Well then your enemies are being silly because they are choosing to pointlessly chase someone and do no damage instead of doing damage. That's bad GM tactics because ranged class I know has the ability to distance themselves for most enemies and shoot them from safety.

#2 It's not really true that multiple melee characters allow for easy focus fire. OA's and melee ally positioning tend to keep most melee focus firing from occurring. Also it's much easier for a DM to justify the melee guys attacking both available targets than always focusing on only guy in their reach.

lol, But's that just dumb fighting. Not a range vs Melee argument. GMs deliberately spread damage to prevent party wipes when the party is not using good tactics or got in over their head. As players, we always focus fire when possible because eliminating enemy numbers quickly can result in quick strategic shift in our favor by ether eliminating their numbers advantage or creating out own. Don't get me wrong I do that a GM too if it looks like my players are going to die or if I am running stupid enemies like zombies but even dogs, lions, really any pact hunters know how to focus there attacks.

#1 It's actually hard to do massive in battle heals. For most of the game you get cure wounds and healing word for single target in combat healing. Healing word being the only ranged heal option really doesn't restore that much hp even on a good day. It's easier to keep multiple allies healed up just enough not to drop when the incoming damage is being split between them.

So you have one healer your tank drops and you heal the archer because you healed the thank last turn... No sorry, if you use healing word every turn on the same target to bring them back on their feet while the rest of the party is just staying away from damage you are more likely to all survive because if the damage spreads you can only healing word one target so if two drop you can't bring them both back and the attackers will auto-crit kill the downed ally you didn't heal unless your GM is being kind.

I have seen it time and time again as well. Being the only melee in a party of ranged guys sucks. You take all the damage and they worry more about saving their behind than yours. Don't get me wrong, my ranged sharpshooter wood-elf rogue follows a similar concept to yours and I feel nearly invincible. But that doesn't keep my party members from dying. Having 3-4 attacks directed my way in many of those fights may very well have been the difference in my ally surviving and him dying.

Your not wrong heal but at the same time the if the wood-elf rogue goes down because he is involved and the healer has to choose who to heal one of you is going to die because the healer could not focus healing on a single target. That's a double edged sword until you get AoE heals in which case you likely get one of the massive heal upgrades too. Then that falls away from Melee vs Ranged to "are you and effective healer?"... on this topic its better to focus healing as a rule because if you don't the healer can't keep up but their are spells that make that no longer an issue so that's situational.

It really does break it down. If your goal is to not have the melee character die and for him to actually be able to play his character in melee as opposed to holding your 20 quivers of arrows then it really does negate nearly all the ranged advantages on the party scale. Individually you are still the same, but party wise your worse off than if you had instead been a melee character as well.

Not true. If your going to be the Melee fighter up front, that's how you decide to play then you as the melee player need to build for defense. Higher AC, HP, and damage mitigation is the best way to keep the "tank" alive. Then you can take it. If you build a low HP, low AC, character that runs toward death... no amount of healing will keep you up and no amount of melee ranged standing semi close will take enough damage to save you. So you have turned the away from the Melee vs Ranged argument again to argue melee characters survival dependent on damage sharing, which is not something ranged has to deal with pointing to their tactical superiority for one but two, in my group we have 2 melee fighters as I mentioned.. one is tank and one is not, the one that is not does not share damage with the tank if he can help it because he is not built for it and when he tries he goes down every time. Instead he runs in attacks and runs back out or behind the tank to shield him... he is a monk and can do that. Just like rogue we had that did that my last game. When the Monk tries to "hold the line" our healer always says "Stand their if you want but I can't heal the tank AND you successfully, so if you die you die, I am keeping the tank up because he is protecting the rest of us"

 

[Guest 6801328]

Could someone explain to me how the ranged attacker has better damage, or even comparable damage, to the melee attacker? All the melee dudes in my party right now are rockin' the greatsword or maul with the 2d6 damage, and most have Great Weapon Fighting Style and/or barbarian Frenzy, increasing that damage even further. So I'm confused how ranged damage can even come close. Yes, you could pick up Sharpshooter, but the melee folks can get Heavy Weapon Mastery for the same price. What am I missing?

Sharpshooter + Archery style is better than GWM + GWF style, in my opinion, because the +2 helps counteract the -5.

Anyway, my impression is that the damage is in the same approximate range, and (I can't speak for others) my beef is that archery is just too easy: you get to largely ignore defense, with no real downside. With a long bow and sharpshooter you stay REALLY FAR AWAY and suffer no penalties whatsoever, neither in accuracy nor rate of fire. Not against a moving target engaged in melee with your buddies. It's just silly.

Archery should largely be reserved for attacking enemies at range, before they close. Once enemies are in melee combat with your friends its utility should drop way, way, way down. (Maybe not against really big targets.)

Maybe the rule should support "You can shoot fast, shoot far, or shoot accurately. Pick two."

 

[Leatherhead]

Could someone explain to me how the ranged attacker has better damage, or even comparable damage, to the melee attacker? All the melee dudes in my party right now are rockin' the greatsword or maul with the 2d6 damage, and most have Great Weapon Fighting Style and/or barbarian Frenzy, increasing that damage even further. So I'm confused how ranged damage can even come close. Yes, you could pick up Sharpshooter, but the melee folks can get Heavy Weapon Mastery for the same price. What am I missing?

At the beginning of 5e, I thought they were the same and mostly balanced. I was wrong. GWM is still fine in my eyes, but Sharpshooter is crazily overpowered.

Sharpshooter works with the Archery Fighting Style, for a +2 bonus on attack rolls.
Sharpshooter negates Cover. Cover is either a +2 or a +5 bonus to AC, depending on how much you have. And yes, Cover applies to Melee attacks as well (just not quite as often)
Sharpshooter negates disadvantage for long range.

All these accuracy bonuses stack, and the -5 penalty for doing 10 extra damage drops down to an effective -1 most of the time (and sometimes it's totally negated or overwritten.)

However, it does not stop there:

Sharpshooter works with Crossbow Expert, which gives you an additional attack per round at your full damage bonus (and no penalty when firing at melee range). Sure it's with hand crossbows, which have an entire die less damage than a greatsword, but you are looking at 4d6+30 damage VS, 3d6+45 damage (with significantly higher accuracy)

Furthermore, Ranged builds can stack Magic (cross)Bows and Magic Ammunition. Magical Ammo is a consumable, and typically comes in a quiver of 20, so it is far more common than most people realize.

 

[Guest 6801328]

Sure it wasn't them that won the fight by keeping the blame things off you?

Yeah, sure, of course. I'm not saying that a bunch of archers could have killed the worms without help (although...they could have). It's teamwork: the tanks take the damage and the dps I mean dpr wear them down. But if I had chosen to be a melee ranger I would have been only a fraction as effective AND I would have been a target for the worm. (By the way, this is all without Sharpshooter, which I skipped just because it's so cheesy and overused.)

I understand the model, I just think there should be more downsides to choosing archery.

To make an analogy (sort of): imagine if there were a "tank" build such that you didn't do any damage, but it was easy to hold monsters and they couldn't really hurt you. One of those and one archer and you're set.

I think the game should be more interesting than that.

 

[ClaytonCross]

I'm not saying that melee makes ranged worse. I'm saying that an all-ranged party has options open to them that a party with one or more melees won't tend to pursue because it would sideline the melee character(s), which isn't polite or fun.

I am curious what that might be because I can't think of one. Could you give an example? (I will promise to look at the intend knowing that examples are often flawed). What I usually see is that the same options usually come up they just try to add a plan for the melee fighter. Hide them by the side of the road so when they spring a trap they can engage right away or cover them while they make ground to engage. Usually its the melee characters trying to limit the ranged. For example the fighter/barbarian wants run into a small building melee them out of line of sight but the ranged want him to draw them out so they can cover from a distance. The range would want the distance anyway but the fighter is wanting to attack in away that limits ranges ability to aid. If the melee charges in any way it hurts the group but knocking on the door and hiding around the corner could draw them out and when they engage the fighter then range supports... so team work vs trying to "Murder Hobo" by yourself.

 

[Horwath]

Yea, the main problem with ranged superiority is that you need an all-ranged party to really take advantage of it, and let's fact it, 99.9% of D&D parties aren't going to optimize to that degree.

As soon as you have 1 party member that wants to be in melee, the ranged plan to kite enemies, use terrain to your advantage, and never engage starts to break down.

Sword&board life cleric and sword&board paladin, both with heavy armor mastery with 3 ranged party members do quite fine.

Enemies can either lose time chasing ranged characters or try to hit on tanks in melee.

 

[Vexacia]

One thing I've noticed is that if I use the variant encumbrance rules (as I do in dungeon runs), players abandon Dex-based builds and thus ranged attack reliant characters. They seem to value moving normally and carrying supplies/treasure more than how far away they are when they attack in these scenarios.

But this is the total opposite of correct play from your players - heavy armor weighs so obscenely much that Dexterity reigns utterly supreme under variant encumbrance. The weight difference between heavy and light armor is so great that it dwarfs the additional carryweight having a higher strength gives you. A 10 Strength player in Studded Leather can actually carry 2lbs more than a 20 strength player in Plate.

(sidebar: variant encumbrance is an incredibly badly designed optional rule)

And yes, Cover applies to Melee attacks as well (just not quite as often)

No it doesn't.

Sharpshooter works with Crossbow Expert,

GWM works with PAM, and 1d10 PAM/GWM builds outperform 2d6 GWM builds in the same fashion that 1d6 SS/XBE outperforms 1d8 SS.

Comparing hand crossbow SS/XBE to solely GWM is fraudulent. You must compare it apples to apples with glaive/halberd GWM/PAM.

Furthermore, Ranged builds can stack Magic (cross)Bows and Magic Ammunition

Most DMs are awfully reluctant to throw around either magical hand crossbows or magical ammunition, let alone both.

 

[Bitbrain]

Reply to OP.

You know, aside from my dad (who only enjoys playing Bards, Druids, Monks, and Rangers), nobody in my group actually focuses too much on ranged combat.

Admittedly, it might have something to do with the fact that I doubled the movement speed of most every monster in the Monster Manual . . .

 

[Sadras]

Admittedly, it might have something to do with the fact that I doubled the movement speed of most every monster in the Monster Manual . . .

(a) Out of interest is this only when they full on run? (b) And does this apply to PCs too?

 

[Bitbrain]

(a) Out of interest is this only when they full on run? (b) And does this apply to PCs too?

No. Most of the monsters have their base speed doubled. PCs and humanoids have their speed remain the same.