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?

[Thomas Shey]

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!

Eh. Honestly, the great truth is that barring things like flat arid plains, visibility of human sized targets is more constrained than people realize, because it very quickly can be confused by random background clutter. Just things like small rises and occasional brush can make it hard to pick out, say, three random people moving. Its not much good for hiding armies, but people vastly overstate the functional and reliable visibility of most area pretty severely.

This does not mean you can't get some extended archery exchanges outside of forests and mountainous terrain, but its not a given in all kinds of terrain. I wouldn't even count on it in farmland, and a lot of that clutter has been deliberately removed there.

This is starting to look really like Tetrasodium doing the thing he does a lot where he blames D&D 5e for the fact some players will push back sometimes and it doesn't give him a big enough club to hammer them down with.

 

[Willie the Duck]

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.

There's Bloom County 'subsidy system paying farmers not to grow anything' joke in here. Why is there no crops in the fields? :-D

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!

I'm honestly not sure which position you are trying to paint as ridiculous.

There's plenty of opportunity for gaming to happen in dungeons and short line-of-sight valleys and urban environments where conflict starts within reasonable charging distance. There's plenty of opportunity for gaming to happen in rolling hills and tall-grass prairies and light wooded areas where you don't see people coming upon you until they are fairly close (without it being primeval woods or boulder fields). Likewise, there's plenty of opportunity for archers to have their day in the spotlight when manning sniper positions overlooking flat, obstruction-less cleared terrain or going up against flying enemies.

If anything, I think the thread has landed (correctly, IMO) on the notion that DM guidance on this matter is the spot were 5e could use help. I'd also add that one thing previous editions had was fewer dedicated melee/dedicated ranged builds. In B/X, AD&D, or 3E if you were in a flatland hundreds of feet apart, all the martials pulled out bows and started firing, since most of your to-hit was level-based and everyone wanted both Strength and Dexterity, etc.

 

[Digdude]

Right, I'd much rather see effective range rather than maximum range listed in the Players Handbook.

 

[tetrasodium]

There's Bloom County 'subsidy system paying farmers not to grow anything' joke in here. Why is there no crops in the fields? :-D

Have you lived near or driven past farmland before? Most non-grain crops are relatively short compared to an average human & around knee height or less. F/ex Tomatoes, cotton, potatoes, lettuce, cabbage, cucumber, onion, brussel sprouts, carrots, pumpkin, etc are all examples of these short crops. It's not until you start getting into grains (wheat/corn/etc) where the crops start getting much above knee or maybe waist high, Even then wheat is only going to be about 2-4 feet tall (oats too). Farmers like being able to see across a field to make sure herbivorous animals like deer are not eating the crop, not every crop can be expected to grow several feet tall like corn.

 

[James Gasik]

Well it depends on the season. I was speaking about right now, where there's not much visible on the fields. By August, however, sure, there's corn everywhere. But after harvest, it'll be right back to empty fields where an enemy would stand out like a sore thumb, and let's not even get into winter, where a non-white thing moving on a white background stands out even worse.

*Unless we're saying every enemy encountered during winter is a Snow Ninja, of course.

And back to my previous post, what about air encounters? Griffons fly high over plains and forests and have a fly speed of 80 ft..

If we're traveling across the plains, the only cover a Griffon would have is a cloud or straight out of the direction of the sun (assuming a Griffon is flying over 6500 ft. or so to hide in a low-flying cloud); and people traveling across Griffon-infested plains would know this.

So given that it cannot Hide without obscurement, at some point, the party sees the Griffon. It has two ways to close the gap, it can Dash to move 160 ft., or it can dive to drop 300 ft.. This still means that in most conditions, a Griffon cannot ambush on plains, and bow users get two full turns of attacks against it before it can reach anyone.

One has to assume anyone traveling in Griffon country would have ranged weapons out and ready (and even if not, if the playtest rules go live, people will be able to quickly swap weapons before making attacks). Given it's AC of 12 and it's average of 59 hit points, it appears that Griffons would never attack armed humanoids on plains, and thus will never be an encounter (save for a large group), so maybe we should remove them from the Monster Manual, or change their ecology to only be encountered in forests?

 

[Thomas Shey]

If anything, I think the thread has landed (correctly, IMO) on the notion that DM guidance on this matter is the spot were 5e could use help. I'd also add that one thing previous editions had was fewer dedicated melee/dedicated ranged builds. In B/X, AD&D, or 3E if you were in a flatland hundreds of feet apart, all the martials pulled out bows and started firing, since most of your to-hit was level-based and everyone wanted both Strength and Dexterity, etc.

Yeah, I mentioned earlier I'm starting to wonder how hard 5e leans on people who are focused on melee not to be good at ranged and vice versa. I played a Champion in PF2e all the way up to 20th level, and while he was very much focused on melee, he carried a longbow and was far from helpless if something stayed out of his easy close-up range.

 

[Hussar]

Well it depends on the season. I was speaking about right now, where there's not much visible on the fields. By August, however, sure, there's corn everywhere. But after harvest, it'll be right back to empty fields where an enemy would stand out like a sore thumb, and let's not even get into winter, where a non-white thing moving on a white background stands out even worse.

*Unless we're saying every enemy encountered during winter is a Snow Ninja, of course.

And back to my previous post, what about air encounters? Griffons fly high over plains and forests and have a fly speed of 80 ft..

If we're traveling across the plains, the only cover a Griffon would have is a cloud or straight out of the direction of the sun (assuming a Griffon is flying over 6500 ft. or so to hide in a low-flying cloud); and people traveling across Griffon-infested plains would know this.

So given that it cannot Hide without obscurement, at some point, the party sees the Griffon. It has two ways to close the gap, it can Dash to move 160 ft., or it can dive to drop 300 ft.. This still means that in most conditions, a Griffon cannot ambush on plains, and bow users get two full turns of attacks against it before it can reach anyone.

One has to assume anyone traveling in Griffon country would have ranged weapons out and ready (and even if not, if the playtest rules go live, people will be able to quickly swap weapons before making attacks). Given it's AC of 12 and it's average of 59 hit points, it appears that Griffons would never attack armed humanoids on plains, and thus will never be an encounter (save for a large group), so maybe we should remove them from the Monster Manual, or change their ecology to only be encountered in forests?

You mean a predator, alone, would not attack a group of armed humanoids in broad daylight in clear weather? The hell you say.

And you’re comparing modern farms which absolutely dwarf the ones you would see in a DnD world. A single Midwest American farm is likely larger than the arable land for an entire kingdom.

 

[James Gasik]

You mean a predator, alone, would not attack a group of armed humanoids in broad daylight in clear weather? The hell you say.

And you’re comparing modern farms which absolutely dwarf the ones you would see in a DnD world. A single Midwest American farm is likely larger than the arable land for an entire kingdom.

A predator that's a challenge for a party of 4 level 2 player characters? Yeah people get attacked by those all the time in games, lol.

 

[Thomas Shey]

A predator that's a challenge for a party of 4 level 2 player characters? Yeah people get attacked by those all the time in games, lol.

On the other hand, predators that are up to attacking humans probably learn about bows right quick. At least if they're even as smart as wolves or big cats.

(That said, flying predators can do the trick of coming in out of the Sun. That's a bugger to shoot into even if you notice the problem quick.)

 

[Hussar]

A predator that's a challenge for a party of 4 level 2 player characters? Yeah people get attacked by those all the time in games, lol.

Note I said nothing about them not attacking. It’s the broad daylight on a clear day.

Not a whole lot of predators do that- flung or not. Some do. Sure. But generally they’re hunting very small prey.

A predator with dark vision that is half lion probably isn’t hunting in broad daylight on clear days.