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

[Satyrn]

Gronk - "Hey guys I brought a friend for tonight's game. Everybody, this Gronk."
Gronk - "Hi, Gronk"
Gronk - "Gronk, this is Gronk."
Gronk - "Hey."
Gronk - "Hi, Gronk"
Gronk - "and, this is Gronk."
Gronk - "Hey."
Gronk - "Hi, Gronk"

 

[CapnZapp]

That's the DMs responsibility.


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So, you mean the designers should be absolved from any responsibility? Whatever imbalance or wonkiness that comes out of oversights or mistakes or plain carelessness, you're okay with WotC not needing to own up to it, to acknowledge it, to fix it; and that the responsibility is quarely put upon the DMs shoulders?

I hope you don't mean that, but then I can't see what you did mean.

 

[FormerlyHemlock]

Against hordes of really weak enemies, the GWM will do better than in the numbers I gave, but at level 11 how often do you face groups of enemies that all die in 1 hit. This isn't 4e with its minion rules afterall.

As to prone enemies, the crossbow fighter encourages enemies to use that behavior. The crossbow archer also gets advantage to his attacks while in melee range, so benefits just as much as the great weapon fighter. The trick to playing the crossbow archer is to play it like a melee fighter who just happens to have a 120 foot range.

That's exactly the point. It's not "regardless of playstyle." It matters very much whether your DM is the sort to throw hordes of screaming cannibals at you at level 11. Mike Mearls' UA encounter-building guidelines say there should be twelve CR 1/2 orcs or cannibals per PC if you extrapolate; the DMG guidelines say that even fewer is fine for a Medium fight: 16-23 orcs for a group of four level 11 PCs, 4-6 orcs per PC.

If your DM prefers to hit you with a single CR 11 Efreet instead of 23 screaming cannibals, the math shifts dramatically and GWM becomes less attractive.

If your crossbow fighter is running into melee to get advantage on his attacks just like the GWM guy, then he's losing just as many rounds Dashing as the GWM guy is. I didn't see that featured in your analysis.

Playstyle matters. Teamwork matters too. Combined arms FTW.

 

[Corwin]

So, you mean the designers should be absolved from any responsibility? Whatever imbalance or wonkiness that comes out of oversights or mistakes or plain carelessness, you're okay with WotC not needing to own up to it, to acknowledge it, to fix it; and that the responsibility is quarely put upon the DMs shoulders?

Why should the designers own up to/acknowledge/fix something I have not found to be imbalanced/wonky/an oversight/a mistake/plain careless?

 

[CapnZapp]

Battlemaster is the best for damage overall. But EK is best for utility (both in and out of combat), and defense (mage armor, shield, etc).

The build only needs 2 feats to to work. So level 8 is the earliest point when it can have them and a 20 main stat as a human. Level 12 for a non human. Of course in a game where rolling for stats happens frequently, you only need a to roll a single 16 to have this combination available to any race with a +2 DEX by level 8. That will occur in over 60% of games where rolling is the preferred method used for character creation.

Of course, until the point where you have a 20 DEX, either scale male or a breastplate can serve just fine. At a fraction of the cost of plate armor, they are much easier to come by. Both provide an AC of 16 which is the same as a fighter would have in chainmail. Either way, the archer will lag behind the melee fighter by 1 AC for the first few levels (assuming the melee fighter can get his hands on splint armor reasonably early).


You keep saying that the archer is a champion one second and an EK the next. I have only ever used champion in relation to hemlock's analysis for ease of compution. Assume when I talk about the archer, I am never talking about the champion.



So..you are gimping your damage even more by taking defensive fighting style? Further putting archery in the lead for dealing damage. I thought you already thought a 20% damage disparity was large. Take out the great weapon fighting style and the disparity jumps to over 30%.

Of course the melee fighter is welcome to trade off his offense for defense if he so desires, but the comparison I am making is using two warriors who are putting their resources toward a similar goal. It would be disingenuous to compare two fighters who are devoting their resources in drastically different ways toward different goals and then try and make a meaningful comparison between the two. That is why the comparisons I have been making are using two characters both devoting the entirety of their available character options toward achieving their goal.

On top of that, due to the fact that PC AC scaling doesn't really exist in 5e, the one or two extra AC won't make much of an impact at high level. When monsters have +15 to hit you, it will matter very little if your AC is 20 (they hit you 80% of the time) or 18 (they hit you 90% of the time). At that point, a 2 AC difference means you take about 12% more damage from attacks against AC.

And let us not forget the defensive advantage the archer already has innately due to having a higher Dexterity. He has better initiative, meaning he is more likely to start the battle in an advantageous position or to kill enemies before they get a chance to attack as frequently. He has better Dex saving throws, meaning he takes less damage from some of the most common spells and monster abilities.

As a melee fighter, I would gladly trade 2 AC for for 30% increased damage and +5 to both initiative and Dex saves.

Ashkelon, I sincerely believe going into exact detail is not helping your case. It is simply far too easy to derail your core message by questioning individual statistics if you do.

I would advise you to simply stick to the basics.

It's much better to control the discussion.

Example: If you're a fighter, and you get, say 12 levels to build a "slayer of monsters" (that is, a primarily damage-dealing fighter) what results do you get by picking
- a sword and shield
- a greatsword
- a hand crossbow

The intent, of course, is to highlight two things:
1) that the sword and shield guy falls hopelessly behind in games with feats, but not in games w/o feats
2) that the ranged guy gets almost the same DPR as the greatsword gal (or even better!), yet has overwhelmingly superior range, can dump Strength, and all this for no drawbacks (other than the single extra feat) - again in games with feats only.

This way the discussion can focus on this state of affairs. This very much indefensible state of affairs, I might add. This way, the is little for the apologists to distract you with.

Obviously, the reason to argue this way is to get to the end goal quicker - the state of acceptance of our message, so the forum can move over to the truly interesting part, where we suggest interim solutions until WotC offers permanent errata.

 

[CapnZapp]

I don't know if others have replied to this or not as I haven't read posts past this one. I can't tell if you intentionally butchered the math or not to make ranged look better. But here's the actual correct math:

A hand-crossbow using crossbow expert/sharpshooter shooting five times and using the -5/+10 portion of the feat does a maximum of (1d6+15)*5 =92.5 damage

The featless sword and shield user, who undoubtedly took dueling fighting style, does (1d8+7)*4 = 46 damage, not 30 damage.

The difference is 2x not 3x and the sword/shield guy still has a bonus action and two feats to play with. And we haven't taken hit chance into effect. So let's do so.

The archery style handcrossbow user has +12 to hit reduced to +7 if he uses -5/+10. Against AC18 he'll hit on an 11 or higher, or exactly 50% of the time. The sword/shield user has +10 to attack and hits on an 8 or higher, or 85% of the time. The crossbow user's damage is now reduced to 46.25 and the sword/shield reduced to 29.9.

The bow user's advantage is now only 50%, not 200% like in your example.

Let me stop you right there Guachi, because this is the root of your inability to see the power play here.

If you continue past this stage, you're making the same mistake the design team probably made - they simply assumed the player would not mitigate the -5 part of the feat.

Let me simply assure you that is not the case in actual play.

Now, please, continue by all means. You are after all taking the argument seriously - the only way to argue the CE/SS combo isn't unbalanced is after all to show how there are many other equally powerful combos (and they certainly don't need to match the DPR; just come within striking distance while offering other benefits).

I mean, even if you succeed in convincing me, we still have the problem of the MM seemingly not being written to cope with DPR twice or thrice that of the "baseline" fighter's 30 DPR.

Now to let you continue your showcase of alternative competitive builds...

Regards,
Zapp

 

[CapnZapp]

This isn't true.

Crossbow Expert is a relatively poor use of your bonus action (in addition to being cheesey if done with a single crossbow).

I'm afraid I need to ask you to offer your suggestions on how to put your bonus action to better use.

(The "it's cheesy" part I wholeheartedly agree to)

 

[CapnZapp]

If you follow the chain of quotes by clicking on the arrow button you will find that that isn't what was being discussed at all. That was a response to "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."

Then you have my apologies. Long wild thread and all that.

 

[CapnZapp]

The trick to playing the crossbow archer is to play it like a melee fighter who just happens to have a 120 foot range.

Yes.

Any* enemy that prefers to drop prone rather than to close to melee only reinforces the ranged build.

Either all enemies stay at range = a win (even if at disadvantage)
Or some enemies stay at range = party attacks those that is close up, a win (since now the party doesn't need to fight all foes at once)


*) Obviously there are monsters with good or even superior ranged attacks

 

[CapnZapp]

If your crossbow fighter is running into melee to get advantage on his attacks just like the GWM guy, then he's losing just as many rounds Dashing as the GWM guy is. I didn't see that featured in your analysis.

Playstyle matters. Teamwork matters too. Combined arms FTW.

Sorry but this is an example illustrating how easy it is to derail the subject.

Why would a party with ranged builds run into melee?

The playstyle line - I call relativism.

[MENTION=6774887]Ashkelon[/MENTION], my advice is to stick to the basics. I don't see how the pit fight against Gronks can help people see the validity in the "ranged trumps melee" claim. I have realized it's come out of a "ranged does melee just as good melee". But truthfully, all we can say is that ranged does melee good enough, meaning "without any significant disadvantages". Obviously a mele-specific build can do stuff a CE/SS fighter can only dream of.

The path out of that pit fight is to focus on the fact that a ranged party will have much fewer pit fights, and that the Gronks of the Monster Manual will dish out exactly zero damage* while they are not in melee.

The point transcends simpler DPR calculations. It's more the realization that ranged combat kind of breaks the game. The MM is clearly designed on the assumption that melee combat will be commonplace. By not running with this assumption you can essentially shortcircuit the model of the game.

A ranged party can almost always focus their entire firepower on the same foe. This effiency simply doesn't come up in any DPR calculation, no matter how detailed.

A ranged party sustains, as I said, much less damage. This efficiency factors even less into DPR, yet has a huge impact on play and percieved party power.

If you want to object that sounds close to cheating, I am the first to agree. It feels exactly like cheating.

It's akin to "don't bring a sword to a gunfight". Bringing ranged tactics to a melee fight is essentially cheating - it's using the modern genre to break the fantasy genre.

*) Going purely by the name here; not sure what race your Gronks are...