And now you are no longer an archer and lose attack bonus (no Archery style), damage (no Sharpshooter feat), plus the odds are pretty decent that your rapier isn't as good as your bow. Oh, and since you aren't set up as a tank you probably don't have any appreciable damage mitigation abilities. Good luck.
D&D 5E Helping melee combat to be more competitive to ranged.
A handful of problems here...
First, your attempts to extrapolate leave me wanting. Yes, I spoke to my last session because it was fresh in my mind from the night prior. No, I never commented on how often OAs happen in the countless sessions leading up to that. Second, I did not identify, numerically, how many times in that same session, a creature's (be it PC or NPC) action choice was influenced by threat of a potential OA. Let's just say it was numerous times, since it would be tough to count them all. Again, that is the significant point being made here. Not the actual times the threat went unheeded and an OA was taken (BTW, one of the two that night was a critical by a yuan-ti pitmaster for 53 points of damage on our 9th-level wood elf archer ranger!).
We are already aware that your table's playstyle weighs encounters significantly towards benefiting ranged attackers. This is not news. The problem here, is that you attempted to equate the number of OAs from one of *my* group's sessions to how many attacks *your* fighter misses in yours. Since we are at too different tables, playing the game significantly differently, these values are incomparable. There is zero basis for relating the two in any way. Want to know how many attacks our melee fighters missed out on in that same session involving two OAs? Zero. I can't think of a single instance of a melee fighter missing out on taking an attack, due to range, the other night. Yet, I cannot stress enough, how potent (tactically) our rogue and paladin were in locked an enemy down, or shielded access to our squishier PCs, with the threat of an OA. Same for several monsters last night forcing *us* to make less than ideal tactical decisions, or put ourselves at risk.
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You keep saying this as if its true. In spite of the multiple times several of us have pointed out its inaccuracy. Behavior like this puzzles me.
FormerlyHemlock
Hero
Not great, obviously. I never claimed otherwise. I just responded to (nitpicked really) a claim about what happens "at least once in every combat."
And I don't have a "side". I don't believe in taking sides. I do have a perspective.
Losing Archery to-hit is usually preferable to disadvantage. The "magic bow" thing, well, that will vary by campaign. In a game that I run, your bow is likely to be nonmagical, and so is your rapier, so no difference there.
Tankiness is not relevant to my comment (you were already assuming the archer was in melee), but for the record, high AC is pretty tanky. Mage Armor + Dex 20 is AC 18, +Shield is AC 23, +an actual shield would be AC 25 although it takes an action to don one. Plus Second Wind. I have never noticed archers who off-tank having any particular problems engaging in melee. (This is one of the many reasons why I am not a fan of Crossbow Expert--it seems unnecessary as well as cheesey.)
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hawkeyefan
Legend
I don't know....I think shields are a pretty big deal. Anything that raises your AC by 2 at almost all times is a solid option. However, it comes at the cost of some damage potential because it limits you to one handed weapons. So it is a trade off....and one that would seem to always be classified as a negative in this discussion because the end point seems to always boil down to DPR and only DPR.
There is the Shield Master feat, which is pretty cool. It allows you to use a bonus action to shove a creature when you attack, which either knocks them back 5 feet or knocks them prone. That's a pretty solid option since all your attacks after that would have advantage on that target as long as the shove worked. Then it also allows you to add your shield's AC bonus to Dex saves. And it also allows you to use your reaction to take no damage on a successful Dex save when you would otherwise take half damage (like a fireball or lightning bolt).
The sad thing is that such a feat may be a great option for a melee combatant. But because we can't easily calculate the increase in the amount of damage that it may lead to, it won't even be considered in these discussions.
I don't think they are at all. I don't think that you're realizing or at least acknowledging how they actually affect play. [MENTION=1560]Corwin[/MENTION] summarizes it pretty well. Keeping enemies at bay and helping dictate who they focus their attacks on is a huge factor.
I agree with you there, if specific feats are taken by the archer. I would expect that the melee fighter would have other feats that will boost his performance in another aspect of play. DPR isn't everything. But yes, archers are not as limited in melee as melee is limited at range, assuming certain feats, in a comparison of DPR.
However, let's say that the melee fighter has taken the Heavy Armor Master and Tough feats. So he's taking 3 points less damage per hit than the archer is taking (assuming non-magic weapons), and has more HP to spare. He is more capable of taking damage than the ranged specialist, and therefore, at less risk while in melee. Comparing the amount of damage each can take instead of how much they can dish out paints a different picture. Especially if the melee fighter also uses a shield and has selected his other abilities to compliment these choices.
Damage output is a big factor. I would never deny that. But it's hard to really examine things when it's the only metric used to gauge the already subjective "effectiveness" of a character.
Variant humans, I bet. Allows this effective build to take place much sooner in the game than it likely should. The earlier in the game an archer has both of these feats, the more imbalanced it will seem compared to other approaches to combat.
True but then the person is either limited to a hand crossbow for less damage, or to one round of OAs if they wield a heavy crossbow or bow. Right? Wouldn't he have to use his item interaction to stow the sword next round? So basically, it seems like every other round he'd be able to have it out and ready for an OA.
I think DM judgment would likely play a big part in this.
So you are assuming an Eldritch Knight fighter archer? Just on the off-chance that you are forced in melee?
Every other discussion about fighter archers I've seen seems to assume a Battlemaster Archer or Champion Archer.
Apparently it's Schroedinger's archer. Your Archtype changes to suit the situation.
And apparently there are no Ranger or Rogue archers in these games either. Whatever.
My point is that you don't need all these weird edge-case scenarios to show that Archery has an advantage over Melee in this edition. You can show that using very vanilla scenarios. I just don't think it is as big a deal as some people. You don't need to change the basic mechanics of the game, the problem is the feats.
If you don't allow feats, then Archery is fine. If you allow feats, then it becomes overpowered (and not necessarily even then, depending on how the DM sets up encounters and how players build their characters). If it is an issue, I favor making a couple of small changes to mitigate it rather than overhauling the entire combat system.
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FormerlyHemlock
Hero
There are a number of reasons I am biased in favor of Eldritch Knights: the ability to damage weapon-resistant monsters with Magic Weapon; better kiting via Expeditious Retreat; better eventual mobility with that 15th level teleportation; ability to make your own meat shields with Animate Dead; and yes, a better melee fallback via Shield and possibly Blur. I DM more than I play so I've never yet played a high-level fighter as a PC, but when it's my turn to create an NPC fighter I wind up with something like this LG Human Baker/Retired soldier named Degalus.
Battlemasters are boring and DPR-oriented, not survivability-oriented. Champions, well, they take some house ruling to make them entertaining. My rule is that Remarkable Athlete stacks with proficiency for a kind of half-Expertise; but on Internet forums there's not much point in talking about your houserules. So I tend to avoid talking about Champions here on Enworld.
I can't help the fact that other people have different opinions.
Apparently it's Schroedinger's archer. Your Archtype changes to suit the situation.
Degalus wasn't created for this thread. Neither was Sparrowhawk, or Jack, or Lord Whatsisname the NPC Scro warlord. (It's been a while since that campaign so I've forgotten his name.) I'm 90% sure I've never created a Battlemaster in the two years I've been running and playing 5E, because I find them gimmicky and boring. Not all of the above are archers, but all of them were Eldritch Knights.
You think Rogues don't have tanking abilities? You're wrong.
Rangers tank by generating hordes of animal meat shields.
From a tactical perspective, ranged combat specialization is still a dominant strategy even in a featless game. The main effect of featlessness is to make fighters boring and encourage more multiclassing and more spellcasters, since fighters rely on feats for much of their differentiation, and since cantrips scale with caster level. Just look at how much more boring Degalus would be if you removed his six feats and replaced them with +6 to Con and +6 to Int.
hawkeyefan
Legend
So you are assuming an Eldritch Knight fighter archer? Just on the off-chance that you are forced in melee?
Every other discussion about fighter archers I've seen seems to assume a Battlemaster Archer or Champion Archer.
Apparently it's Schroedinger's archer. Your Archtype changes to suit the situation.
And apparently there are no Ranger or Rogue archers in these games either. Whatever.
My point is that you don't need all these weird edge-case scenarios to show that Archery has an advantage over Melee in this edition. You can show that using very vanilla scenarios. I just don't think it is as big a deal as some people. You don't need to change the basic mechanics of the game, the problem is the feats.
If you don't allow feats, then Archery is fine. If you allow feats, then it becomes overpowered (and not necessarily even then, depending on how the DM sets up encounters and how players build their characters). If it is an issue, I favor making a couple of small changes to mitigate it rather than overhauling the entire combat system.
I agree with just about everything you've said here. I just want to point out though that the Eldritch Knight was offered as an example of the archer build. And I don't think @Hemlock cited a specific build so much as pointing out what is possible.
Edited: I see that while I was posting, [MENTION=6787650]Hemlock[/MENTION] did indeed commit to the Eldritch Knight as his example. hahaha that teaches me for assuming.
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I don't doubt that Hemlock has an Eldritch Knight fighter archer. But until this discussion, just about every other Fighter Archer build I've seen used as an example has been a Battlemaster (frequently with a hand crossbow and Crossbow Expert) so they can use their dice to increase their attack bonus when using Sharpshooter or damage on a crit, etc.
I just found it odd that when the topic turned to AC, it was suddenly a fighter archer with mage armor and shield instead of the damage focused fighter archer usually used as examples in these discussions. Turns out it was just a coincidence.
I keep saying crossbow archers can fight in melee just as well as dedicated melee warriors because it is true. No example has been given that proves otherwise.
Again, here are the examples people have used to say archers cannot fight well in melee:
1) If the enemy has total cover from one side and is over 30 feet away, both the crossbow archer and the melee fighter cannot attack.
2) If the enemy is less than 30 feet away and has total cover from one side, both the archer and the melee fighter can move to close combat and attack.
3) If the enemy is prone and within 30 feet, both the archer and the melee warrior can engage to within 5 feet and make attacks with advantage.
In all those examples, both the archer and the melee fighter are equally capable in each of those scenarios.
Now the archer can also attack in the following scenarios mostly unhindered while the melee fighter cannot.
1) an enemy is over 30 feet away
2) an enemy is within 30 feet but has partial cover
3) an enemy is flying at least 10 feet up
4) a choice enemy target is behind a wall of meat shields
Finally, there has been quite a lot of talk about opportunity attacks. Now a number of posters have said they are exceedingly rare in terms of actual use, but their threat is what keeps enemies at bay. Well, given that the archer fighter can fight up close and personal equally as well as a great weapon fighter, the archer can use daggers to threaten OAs and shoot from the front lines. Their OA with a dagger is still almost as effective as the great weapon fighters.
Note that if the fighting space is cramped enough (which it must be if no enemies are ever 30 feet apart), an enemy won't even need to provoke an OA to attack units in the back, since a creature can run circles around a melee unit without ever triggering an OA. The tank effectively needs to be 10 feet in front of the back lines in order for his OAs to be an actual threat. Nevermind the fact that OAs become progressively less powerful as you level (monster HP tends to grow at a steady rate, but the effectiveness of an OA in relation to an Attack action only decreases).
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