Hawk Diesel
Adventurer
Hey all. So I know that thrown weapons use your strength modifier for attacks and damage at range unless they have the finesse property (like daggers). Thrown weapons are also typically bigger, meaning without a magic item you can only carry a few at a time. For example, I don't see a character realistically carrying more than 4 javelins at a time. So based on this, how impactful would it be on the game to treat thrown weapon attacks as melee attacks rather than ranged attacks?
A few immediate and obvious changes this would have involve are the barbarian, paladin, and great weapon master. A barbarian could apply rage damage and reckless attack to a thrown weapon, a paladin could smite with a thrown weapon, and a great weapon master could benefit from select attacks at range.
Obviously this could cause issues, since these abilities don't seem to have been designed to allow them to work at range. Ranged attacks are already fairly powerful in 5e, and I am reluctant to give it even more power with the above proposed change.
But I'm also leaning towards trying this in my game, specifically because the natural logical limit on the number of thrown weapons that can be held. Technically you also need an object interaction to pull a weapon without the dual wielder feat, which limits it to effectively once per round regardless of the number of attacks a character has.
Additionally, what sparked this was a recent game that I play in where I play a paladin 8/barbarian 1 (I know, weird combo but it was more of an RP choice than anything). We got to the boss fight, who was very mobile. Most of the other players (actually now that recall, all the other players) are spellcasters. So it didn't affect them too much, but I felt like I spent multiple turns doing nothing but trying to move into position only for the boss to move away. This not only caused my rage to expire (did not have any javelins to use) but was also very frustrating in a fight that should have been more fun. So it got me thinking about everything presented above, and that someone in a similar position could still feel like a part of the fight.
What do other people think? Is this a feature rather than a bug? Are there other unintended consequences such a change might have that I haven't considered?
A few immediate and obvious changes this would have involve are the barbarian, paladin, and great weapon master. A barbarian could apply rage damage and reckless attack to a thrown weapon, a paladin could smite with a thrown weapon, and a great weapon master could benefit from select attacks at range.
Obviously this could cause issues, since these abilities don't seem to have been designed to allow them to work at range. Ranged attacks are already fairly powerful in 5e, and I am reluctant to give it even more power with the above proposed change.
But I'm also leaning towards trying this in my game, specifically because the natural logical limit on the number of thrown weapons that can be held. Technically you also need an object interaction to pull a weapon without the dual wielder feat, which limits it to effectively once per round regardless of the number of attacks a character has.
Additionally, what sparked this was a recent game that I play in where I play a paladin 8/barbarian 1 (I know, weird combo but it was more of an RP choice than anything). We got to the boss fight, who was very mobile. Most of the other players (actually now that recall, all the other players) are spellcasters. So it didn't affect them too much, but I felt like I spent multiple turns doing nothing but trying to move into position only for the boss to move away. This not only caused my rage to expire (did not have any javelins to use) but was also very frustrating in a fight that should have been more fun. So it got me thinking about everything presented above, and that someone in a similar position could still feel like a part of the fight.
What do other people think? Is this a feature rather than a bug? Are there other unintended consequences such a change might have that I haven't considered?
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