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

[CapnZapp]

You take me off ignore to be insulting? Classy. Also, your response is a complete strawman. Double classy.

I don't have you on ignore, Corwin.

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[CapnZapp]

I'd like to point out that I never said a system can't be balanced. Even very well balanced. It just can't mandate, nor enforce, parity. Again, only those playing it can do that.

Sure, but that's neither an argument for nor against having a rules system that properly makes sure to uphold genre conventions.

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[Corwin]

I don't have you on ignore, Corwin.

Yes, I see that now. Thanks.

 

[hawkeyefan]

Not claiming ownership. And didn't try to prevent your forcecage fight from running it's course.

Am claiming the OA discussion is a sideshow to the greater topic of the thread, though.

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Forcecage fight wasn't me.

Opportunity attacks being available to melee combatants but not to ranged ones is off topic in a discussion about the comparative strengths of the two?

Hm. Okay.

 

[Corwin]

Sure, but that's neither an argument for nor against having a rules system that properly makes sure to uphold genre conventions.

You had me up until "uphold." Then you lost me.

 

[Ashkelon]

That's interesting. Regardless of playstyle, you say? I had not ever seen that high a number thrown around before. I'm not saying you are wrong, but can you show your maths? Seems higher to me than I previously considered. I mean, 20% is huge.

Sure thing. At level 11, a greatsword fighter with a +1 weapon deals this much damage per attack: ACC * (5+1+10+8.3333333)+0.05 (8.33333333) where ACC is the likelihood of a hit. The 5 is from Strength, the 1 from weapon, the 10 from great weapon master, and the 8.33333 from 2d6 reroll 1s and 2s once. Against a 16 AC foe, his ACC is 50%. Against an 18 AC foe his ACC is 40%. With 3 attacks per round, his DPR is 37.75 vs the 16 AC foe or 30.45 vs the 18 AC foe. The great weapon fighter can also get a bonus action attack on a crit. For the 16 AC foe this adds 1.79 DPR and for the 18 AC foe it adds 1.45 DPR. Total DPR is 39.54 vs 16 AC, and 31.9 vs 18 AC.

The level 11 hand crossbow fighter deals this much damage per attack: ACC * (5+1+10+3.5)+0.05*3.5 Because of his archery fighting style, he has 60% ACC vs the 16 AC foe and 50% ACC vs the 18 AC foe. Because of crossbow expert, he makes 4 attacks per round instead of the great weapon fighter's 3. His DPR vs the 18 AC foe is 47.5 and his DPR vs the 16 AC foe is 39.7.

47.5 is 20.1% more DPR than 39.54
39.7 is 24.4% more DPR than 31.9

The problem is even more pronounced at lower levels, because the bonus action attack of the crossbow expert provides a much larger boost when the fighter has only two attacks. At level 6 for example, against AC 13 and 15 foes, the crossbow expert deals roughly 35% more damage than the greatsword fighter.

Well GWM allows for extra attacks as well, lets not forget those. As frequent? Of course not. But they happen, irregardless. And a greatsword would be rolling twice as many d6s as your hand crossbow, per hit (with rerolling of 1s and 2s). That's not nothing, either. Are you *sure* about 20%?

Yep, included all that in my numbers.

As for accuracy, that +2 didn't do squat if you missed by more than 2 or hit by 2 or more. So its not always applicable. And given BA, that happens a lot more than I think you are willing to admit. At our table, we have a wood elf archer ranger. The rest of us still hit quite often, even without that extra +2 he gets for his fighting style. Oh, and he still misses occasionally.

Everyone misses. Especially great weapon fighters and sharpshooters because the -5 for +10 is such a huge boost to damage. Missing is mitigated by making extra attacks. The more accuracy bonuses your party can squeeze out the better. Bless and Faerie Fire are ridiculously powerful spellls for any party with a great weapon fighter or crossbow expert because they can mostly negate the the -5 to hit penalty.

+2 to hit in a game with bounded accuracy is huge. In my level 11 example, the great weapon fighter hits AC 18 40% of the time. The archer 50% of the time. The archer is hitting his target 25% more often.

I'm not sure how many more times its going to take, but here we are again trying to explain to you that the triggering of the OA is not the only important aspect of that rule. That you *threaten* is enough to influence a creature's decision making. That is a tactical benefit. And that benefit is greater than 'zero', no matter how many times you keep trying to apply that incorrect value in your casual analysis.

You do realize that the crossbow archer can threaten OAs too. If you are in a situation where such tactics are needed, he can wade into the melee, fight his enemies at point blank range, and threaten OAs nearly as well as the greatsword fighter.

How many melee weapons does your archer need to carry around to reliably pull off that cheese? Having focused on Dex, what's your carry capacity looking like? Lemme guess, your table doesn't pay much attention to that either? And you say playstyle is not an issue here...

Mage armor + 20 DEX is 18 AC, same as plate but without any weight. With a 12 Strength, he has 120 lbs for gear, plenty to carry around a few daggers and 2 rapiers.

And you say playstyle is not an issue here...


Are you working on nerdy standup? It's a little rough, but I think the humor is there if you just polish up the routine a bit.


He says as he tears into same said ruleset for being so imbalanced...

I gave an example of the core 5e combat rules are balanced. it is the optional rules (AKA Feats) that remove this balance. In a game with no feats, the archery dominance disappears. Archery builds are still very worthwhile even with the checks placed upon them (15% less damage than the greatsword and disadvantage at shooting when within 5 feet of an enemy). But they are not the clearly superior choice.

 

[cmad1977]

I'm not Ashkelon, but my beef is with people saying "the game doesn't need changing because I have no problems".

Saying "I don't need to change the game is fine".

But the game doesn't work for people that focus on building optimal characters.

If the game were to be changed, it would start to work for these people.

But it would highly likely still work just fine for people that aren't having this focus.

I find it highly unlikely that anyone's satisfaction depends directly on those areas that prove so troublesome and which a small number of posters defend so desperately.

So: just fix these bugs already.

That's the DMs responsibility.


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[Corwin]

Mage armor + 20 DEX is 18 AC, same as plate but without any weight. With a 12 Strength, he has 120 lbs for gear, plenty to carry around a few daggers and 2 rapiers.

You had your Schrodinger's archer in plate armor earlier, is all, if I'm not mistaken. And he was a champion until he needed to be an EK for mage armor. It's hard to keep up with this mercurial archer and his countless perfect builds for any given situation.

 

[Corwin]

I gave an example of the core 5e combat rules are balanced. it is the optional rules (AKA Feats) that remove this balance.

...in your games.

Funny how we use MC and feats in our games. Have been since 5e came out. Even some of these UAs have made an occasional appearance. Yet we have not seen these so-called issues as you present them. It must be *us* playing it wrong, I guess?

 

[Ashkelon]

You had your Schrodinger's archer in plate armor earlier, is all, if I'm not mistaken. And he was a champion until he needed to be an EK for mage armor. It's hard to keep up with this mercurial archer and his countless perfect builds for any given situation.

The optimal choice is eldritch knight. It is hands down above and beyond the other options. I was merely pointing out that the there is a crossbow archer build that can have the same AC as plate for none of the weight.

The champion example was only used for simplicity's sake. (And even then only for Hemlock's analysis). I would never play a champion though. I have also never used one in my examples of actual game play. That is all you.

Finally, 20 Dex and studded leather armor is still 17 AC, just one point behind the AC of plate. So the champion or battlemaster can simply use that. One less AC isn't that big of a deal given the other benefits the archer has.