D&D 5E Helping melee combat to be more competitive to ranged.

[Cap'n Kobold]

If the strength fighter *isn't* dumping dex, as you suggest, then he should be just fine shooting a longbow at ranged targets. Since, getting back on track, that seems to be the bulk of the OP's concern. Even a melee-focused fighter, with just a decent dex, can be quite effective with a ranged weapon. Thanks, Bounded Accuracy! You're the best!

Quite possibly. I have a houserule that bows can use either Str or Dex, so there is less specialisation in style there.

 

[Prism]

In our group we don't allow the extra attack from crossbow expert to come from the same crossbow used for the primary attacks - mainly because that's not what we believe is the intent of the feat (from its wording). Once you remove that ability the dpr drops and the feat becomes harder to justify taking. Without the feat you can't (as easily) use a ranged weapon in melee. I would say this levels the playing field a bit between ranged and melee. For every time a melee fighter can't get into melee, there is a time that the ranged fighter needs to disengage.

 

[guachi]

The extra bonus action attack coming from the same crossbow is the intent of the feat. The wording is fairly clear on the matter.

 

[CapnZapp]

The extra bonus action attack coming from the same crossbow is the intent of the feat. The wording is fairly clear on the matter.

Well, not to disagree, but it took me a fair while to see how you could use the same crossbow for both your attack(s) and your bonus attack. At first, I had something like this in mind:



Now, that would be cool!

Sadly, this sh*tty sh*tty feat can't even do that, since (with errata) you need a hand free despite the hand crossbow not being a two-handed weapon (and a light weapon to boot).

So, all that remains is breaking the game completely by using the feat with a single hand crossbow, because you can't use it for anything else.

Sure you could consider the RAI to be to use "a one-handed weapon" (such as the scimitar in the picture above) and then to shoot once with your hand crossbow. Except not being able to reload the X-bow makes that combo suck with a capital S.

How cool wouldn't it have been if the PHB contained gnomish repeating hand crossbows so you could use this feat in a non-broken way (with a melee weapon as main, and the hand crossbow as bonus potshots)...!

Sigh.

So while you are correct Guachi, I kind of wish you weren't, and that Prism was not only not wrong, but actually right!

 

[Corwin]

The extra bonus action attack coming from the same crossbow is the intent of the feat. The wording is fairly clear on the matter.

"Fairly clear"? If that is indeed a fact, especially given your opinion that is even the "intent of the feat", what is it you are saying about Prism?

 

[guachi]

Yes, it's fairly clear from reading the text of the Crossbow Expert feat that you can use the bonus action attack with the same hand crossbow you used in your attack action.

Features of Crossbow Expert:
1. Doesn't apply here.
2. Doesn't apply here.
3. You fulfill the first requirement by using your one-handed hand crossbow in the Attack action. And, as long as you have a free hand to actually draw ammunition and load your hand crossbow (barring some other magical or automatic reloading) you can grab a piece of ammunition as part of the attack.

The hand crossbow has the "ammunition" property. One feature of that is "drawing the ammunition from a quiver, case, or other container is part of the attack"

Nowhere in the rules does it actually define what "loaded" actually means. But if drawing the ammunition is part of the attack, then "loading" (for a crossbow) must also be part of the attack (if you have this feat) and "nocking" for a bow must be part of the attack or you'd never be able to use a crossbow or bow more than once.

You'd end up with players saying "the rules saw you can draw an arrow (ammunition) but it never says you can nock an arrow. The word "nock" appears nowhere in the PHB. So you could argue that you can't ever fire your bow! But this is, of course, stupid.

So by extension of the rule that "drawing the ammunition from a quiver, case, or other container is part of the attack" and that loading/nocking must be part of this you can use the bonus action of a hand crossbow with the same hand crossbow you used in the Attack action.

EDIT: To clarify, the removal of the "loading" property is completely irrelevant to using your bonus action to fire the same hand crossbow. The "loading" property only limits you to one shot on your action, bonus action, or reaction. And you're only firing once on your bonus action.

If you can fire and hand crossbow (or and crossbow or bow) that is unloaded/unnocked at the time you declare your Attack action, you can fire a hand crossbow that is unloaded at the time you declare your Bonus action.

 

[guachi]

The feat is somewhat open-ended with part three of the feat only requiring the use of a one-handed weapon in the Attack action. If they had meant only one-handed melee weapon, they would have said so. But it very specifically only says "one-handed weapon" and they didn't errata it like they did in declaring "unarmed strike" not a weapon.

Alternatively, you could hold a short sword (or any other one-handed weapon) in one hand and use that for your Attack action and then fire your hand crossbow with the other hand during the bonus action. In this case, assuming you are still had the short sword in your hand, the hand crossbow would already have to be loaded as you have no free hand to get ammunition.

This is would be pretty cool. Since you can ignore disadvantage for being within 5 feet of a hostile creature, you can shoot that bad guy in the face after stabbing him or even stab the bad guy and shoot some other baddie across the room - all with no disadvantage!

I'm not certain how easy it would be to carry multiple loaded hand crossbows around, but you could fire one in the first round, drop it, draw another, shoot it, drop it, etc. And in that case you'd not need an extra hand (at least in combat) to load the hand crossbow as you had already done it before hand.

 

[Celtavian]

Start encounters 20-40' away. In dungeons preferably.

It works for me.

What if your players scout ahead using high stealth and perception with the intent of using ranged attacks to their advantage? Do you prevent them from doing this? And if so, in what percentage of encounters do you disallow this option?

 

[Celtavian]

Then:

1) Kill it.
2) Set up critters with higher Stealth check results than its passive perception (11).
3) Hit the party from the sides/ rear/ above/ below. Bulettes, Ankhegs etc bursting from the ground. Wyverns etc flying in from above. Things coming at them from the sides. While its off scouting the SE, monsters come in from the NW.

I mean come on.



Thats not your players fault. Its the DMs. You designed the encounters knowing the Imp was there.

If your party are getting the jump on your monsters, its by your own design.



Dim light imposes disadvantage on perception checks. Thats a -5 right there. Plus only dedicated scouts get to apply passive perception (see the exploration rules). And even then, the range they get to apply that passive perception is up to the DM.



It cant fly everywhere at once. Its stealth is only +5. Even while invisible, thats far from assuring it cant be noticed. Heck the first thing it flies past with scent (advantage to smell the thing, even invisible) and it gets eaten.

Just kill it. Often. It takes time to resummon it. When your party are running against the clock to complete their task and have... oh wait.

Plus, the thing probably doesnt want to be sent off as an expendable thing to die. It's evil remember. Roleplay it. Have it screw with the party and not tell them, or otherwise subvert its masters orders (all while trying to lay the blame elsewhere).



No, your DMing style encourages this kind of behaviour from your group, and you have no counter to it (which is why they do it). Dont blame your players. If they nova strike or rely on one tactic above all othrs its because you let them.

Kill the Imp. Have it subvert its orders and lead the PCs into a trap for fun. Unless given incredibly complex orders, it's always going to have wiggle room to do something mischevious. And the more complex the orders, the more loopholes you should be able to find. Its a devil for gods sake.

Of course, sometimes it should locate the ambush and bail out the party. Its a class feature, and the Warlock should be rewarded for using it.

Its just your job as DM to not let that happen all the time.



Look man, try me.

Ive offered a billion times, but there is no party (optimised or otherwise) I couldnt run a game for. Feel free to present to me a party, and I'll happily stat it up 6-8 medium-hard encounters (and a reason to engage in those encounters) to challenge the crap out of it.

I use the same rules that you do, but our DMing styles differ. Thats why we get different results playing the exact same game. Its also why my advice to you is generally 'DM differently' instead of 'Invent a whole slew of house rules to deal with the problem; a problem you probably created yourself as DM'.

How often do you do this? How often do you in essence use DM caveat to render their character choices moot and thus disempower the players and the choices they made? What percentage of the time? If a rogue or bard build to be highly stealthy or the wizard/warlock uses their owl or invisible imp to scout ahead, how often do you come up with an encounter option to overcome it? I would probably only do this 10 to 20% of the time at most. I don't want to make my players feel as though their character choices don't matter.

Please don't forget that your way of defeating a powerful party was to design an environment they couldn't overcome with their own power. Then when said party (parties) still crushed your encounters, to tell the people they ran it wrong and explain how you would have ran it. Which in your mind would have automatically succeeded, even though it was proven quite clearly that your method if successful (meaning missed saves and such) would have resulted in only a marginal difference in the result, still quite easily defeated by the party. I don't call mindlessly claiming rightness to be a matter of DM style. Your encounters were beaten quite easily, except the very last one. That last encounter against the Shadow Dragon in a vast open area was not easy and likely to kill quite a few parties.

I do admit it was a cool encounter set up. And the end encounter was a monster. Most of the earlier encounters were easy and did not take the level of resources you claimed. Nor did it work well on a battlemat, which people like CapnZapp and myself play with. When you use a battlemat, players expect you to use the rules for a battlemat meaning they get to use their Perception and Stealth abilities at very good range and all the time, for every single combat. I do give you credit for creativity. You're a very creative DM that makes up interesting encounters. They're not near as tough as you make them out to be, but they are interesting.

If you were running some of our parties and players, you've already stated you would have quit those parties because you don't like min-max players that focus heavy on mechanics and demand the DM play a certain way. Well, I don't know for sure about CapnZapp, but my players do not tolerate DMs automatically putting them in bad situations when they take active measures to scout and put themselves in advantageous positions against the opponents. I can maybe do this 10 to 20% of the time for specific end game encounters. For most of the encounters in a given scenario, they crush those and I let them use smart tactical play to gain advantages. Scouting is a powerful player tool I don't punish players for using.

I'm not going to rehash all this garbage with you. You still don't understand what CapnZapp and I are dealing with campaign after campaign after campaign. It's not DM style. You can give us a hard time for sticking by our respective groups and their play style. I don't feel like changing groups. I've known these guys twenty plus years and I'll keep doing what I have to do to challenge their mechanical min-max focus. I wish 5E gave me more out of the box tools for doing so. This much rewriting so soon is annoying. It's like I have to add Perception to nearly every creature to compete with the double proficiency bonus Stealth I know every party will have. 5E supporters like you won't even admit that the Stealth versus creature Perception is highly skewed in favor of the players 90% of the time following Monster Manual creatures and modules. Even when the math of a double proficiency stealth versus creatures without Perception skill or with a low wisdom shows a huge advantage when sneaking up on creatures. If a person can't admit such an obvious mechanical player advantage exists with baseline 5E, then you can't debate period because there is no admission of a mathematical fact of the game design.

 

[Celtavian]

The thing is, even if ranged combat *is* better, you couldn't have everyone in a party attacking at range. Someone has to soak up the melee attacks. So for every ranged character that is "better", they should realise that without melee guys there to smash things, they're sunk.

So - I think melee combat is still extremely valuable and doesn't need to be changed. If a character sits out at range, there is more chance that their allies are going to be taken down in melee without them there to help share the HP load.

Not really the case in 5E. ACs are very close in this game. You can make a heavy armor archer with good hit points. Ranged attackers don't have to be soft targets in 5E.