A few months back I ran the climactic battle for an official D&D adventure path and found a fatal flaw. The BBEG appeared on the opposite side of the room filled with lava, up on a balcony. This is a great cinematic scene, but on the first turn it immediately became apparent that the only characters that were going to be able to participate in this battle were the spell casters and those martial characters that specialized in a bow. The barbarian, paladin and sword and board fighter were relegated to spectating after throwing their few javelins (at disadvantage because of range). I quickly changed up the BBEG tactics by having him summon a hoard of fodder and teleporting to the other side of the room. This was a stupid thing for the highly intelligent antagonist to do, but it made the game a lot more fun for the players.
Now I am deciding on a character to make for a game and I realized I didn't want to be useless at range. This makes playing a barbarian, paladin and monk almost out of the question. As well as a large number of fighter builds and even quite a few ranger and rogue builds.
So is there a way to make primary melee classes not completely suck at range strait out of the box? Or will it require house rules?
Now I am deciding on a character to make for a game and I realized I didn't want to be useless at range. This makes playing a barbarian, paladin and monk almost out of the question. As well as a large number of fighter builds and even quite a few ranger and rogue builds.
So is there a way to make primary melee classes not completely suck at range strait out of the box? Or will it require house rules?