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

[CapnZapp]

Yes, I do think it's better to approach 5E with a gunfight mentality. I've been saying so for what, two years now?

Then congratulations is in order.

I might be naive or conservative or simply unimaginative, but I envision D&D as a game that favors the mighty barbarian in loincloth that calmly awaits the orc hordes holding his trusty axe/sword, and then builds a small hill out of their dead bodies.

 

[CapnZapp]

The proposed rule does two things: makes archers want to stay out of melee to avoid disadvantage (they already do, but it removes one way to avoid it), and substitute Str for Dex static mod to damage. Rogues don't care about the static mod to damage because most of their damage comes from sneak attack; and Rogues can also use Cunning Action to either Dash away from combat or Disengage out of it before shooting. So Rogues (and Fighter/Rogues, Sorlocks, etc.) become relatively more attractive as archers, and yet all of the logic for why ranged combat is attractive still applies: you can maintain mutual support amongst all the party elements while still gaining the defensive advantages of being out of range of the bad guys, and you can also force the enemy into a Hobson's Choice. (E.g. if you have a ranged-heavy party with a Mobile Shadow Monk in it, the enemy can't engage you at range, but he also can't afford to hole up in a cave and wait you out or else the shadow monk will kill him. The countermeasures for one are the sweet spot for the other.)

There's a number of things you could do to try to fix the problem (if you think the status quo is a problem). Pick one or more of:

(1) Allow dropping prone as a reaction against missile fire (imposes disadvantage on ranged attacks and rewards a combined-arms approach with both melee and ranged elements, so the melee elements pin the enemy down with fire until the melee dudes can get there and clean up);

(2) Impose disadvantage on ranged fire if you use more than half your movement on that turn (makes it harder/less rewarding to kite);

(3) Making a ranged attack ends your movement for the turn (makes it even harder to kite, eliminates shoot-and-scoot tactics);

(4) Remove range limitations on monster abilities like Tarrasque fear and Medusa visage (eliminates a major defensive advantage of ranged combat);

(5) Disallow magic bows with nonmagical arrows from bypassing weapon immunities, and use more weapon-immune monsters (makes melee the only choice besides magic against these monsters; peasant mobs and archery won't work; magic still needs to be dealt with separately e.g. by introducing old-style Magic Resistance that lets you ignore spells);

(6) Halve the number of ranged attacks made (both cantrips and arrows) on the grounds that flicking a sword across a throat is quicker than nocking, aiming and firing an arrow into a throat;

(7) Use more monsters and more fast/mobile monsters like gryphons and dragons and earth elementals.

I was playing Master of Magic over last weekend and I noticed that it does #3 and #6 (melee units get twice as many attacks, and shooting ends your movement) and that as a result, while ranged units are powerful when they reach a certain critical mass, only heroes mounted on horses can kite truly effectively, and a ranged unit which gets into melee range of a melee unit is in bad trouble.

(8) disallow the -5/+10 mechanism, at least for sharpshooters.

The combination of no Dex single-ability dependency, no ranged fire in melee, and no way to gain double damage, is - I hope - enough to sufficiently discourage ranged-only builds into a position where fighters might still employ ranged weapons, but where they no longer rely on them exclusively.

 

[FormerlyHemlock]

I might be naive or conservative or simply unimaginative, but I envision D&D as a game that favors the mighty barbarian in loincloth that calmly awaits the orc hordes holding his trusty axe/sword, and then builds a small hill out of their dead bodies.

Like AD&D, 5E is really friendly to rules modifications. (See: the DMG rules variants like different initiative systems, tactical maneuvers like marking, and spell points.)

Any given game will only support a fraction of the possible fiction-space, and by default 5E isn't particularly friendly to the game you just described any more than it is friendly to the Mighty Wizard paradigm a la Malazan Book of the Fallen--but you can make your 5E game more friendly to the orc-fighting barbarian by tweaking the rules. I'm pretty sure this thread is chock-full of ideas for you to mine.

Good luck!

P.S. Or, you could just give the orc hordes a cultural bias in favor of melee and possibly single combat too. For example, "ranged combat is dishonorable because then no one can prove who really got the kill." Then your barbarian can play Horatio At The Bridge without changing any rules at all.

 

[FormerlyHemlock]

As I said, it depends on a range of factors.

The two most important, to my mind, are (1) how much are party hp a constraint on the "adventuring day", and (2) how boring is combat going to be if you stretch it out by reducing hit rates?

(1) seems extremely table dependent, because contemporary D&D defaults very strongly to the GM having almost total control over pacing should s/he choose to exercise it.

(2) was clearly an issue for some 4e tables, but perhaps 5e is fast enough at most tables that it doesn't matter?

It's also possible to speed 5E up significantly by embracing an alternate initiative system. The trouble with cyclic initiative is that it leaves 50-80% of the players at a time sitting around with nothing to do; according to the rules, they're not really even encouraged/allowed to talk to the DM when it's not their turn. If you use more of an old-style system like "everybody declares, then everybody rolls their dice and resolves their actions" (per the 2nd edition PHB) you minimize that sitting around time. In that case the main constraint becomes the DM's ability to process information at the same time he is planning monster tactics, but even there you can speed it up some more if necessary by enlisting one of the players to be the declaration tracker who makes sure everybody declares an action each round.

Cyclic initiative is the worst thing about vanilla 5E.

Besides, the length of combat is tied to the number of decisions made during it, not the number of attack rolls. I've seen a first-level Barbarian fight an Ogre in a (gladiatorial) fight that went on for about ten rounds; it was over in about ninety seconds because they just took turns swinging at each other until someone went down. Attack rolls are fast.

 

[FormerlyHemlock]

How does #3 interact with a ranged attacker being on a vehicle?

If you're asking me for a ruling, I'd rule that "shooting ends your move" represents the fact that you spend the whole round carefully aiming and shooting, and that moving less distance means you were moving slower (e.g. so you don't wind up at long range). By that logic, it doesn't matter whether you're using a vehicle or a mount or spending your own move; either way, your shooting effectively takes place from wherever it is that you end your move. No shoot and scoot allowed--although I can imagine a "Parthian shot" feat or class feature which would change that, if the DM wanted it to be an option.

How would you rule it?

 

[Argyle King]

If you're asking me for a ruling, I'd rule that "shooting ends your move" represents the fact that you spend the whole round carefully aiming and shooting, and that moving less distance means you were moving slower (e.g. so you don't wind up at long range). By that logic, it doesn't matter whether you're using a vehicle or a mount or spending your own move; either way, your shooting effectively takes place from wherever it is that you end your move. No shoot and scoot allowed--although I can imagine a "Parthian shot" feat or class feature which would change that, if the DM wanted it to be an option.

How would you rule it?

To be honest, I'm not sure. From the perspective of feeling that ranged combat is a little too good in 5E, I start to feel like I'd like to change something, but the changes I'd like to make would require changing a lot of things about 5E. I don't feel confident enough about tinkering with the system to attempt those changes.

From the perspective of the house rules in question, I suppose I'd rule that the ranged attacks only use your own movement if #3 were part of the game. I'd rule that way because ruling otherwise creates some situations which bother me.

If I'm an archer on a wagon being driven by someone else, do I become an anchor which prevents the other person from moving?

Does playing something like a Mongolian horse-archer become impossible?

Does a flying creature plummet from the sky because it makes a ranged attack or does it just sorta pause in mid-flight?

Personally, I'm inclined to say 'no' to all of those.

 

[Rhenny]

About a year ago, I was playing both 5e and Pathfinder on different nights, and personally, I hated the inferiority (no bonus to missile weapon damage) of Pathfinder. I bet that a lot of what WoTC did when designing 5e was based on feedback from playtesters that expressed a desire for more powerful ranged options.

And, as [MENTION=6787650]Hemlock[/MENTION] and others have mentioned, it is very easy to modify the default settings for 5e to limit the power of ranged attacks.

 

[cmad1977]

Then congratulations is in order.

I might be naive or conservative or simply unimaginative, but I envision D&D as a game that favors the mighty barbarian in loincloth that calmly awaits the orc hordes holding his trusty axe/sword, and then builds a small hill out of their dead bodies.

Funny how the DM had the power to make both versions totally viable.


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[seebs]

Hmm. So when you talk about "mitigating" the -5 part of the -5/+10 things, how are you contrasting this with "what you'd get if you used those same tactics to gain plusses, and didn't offset them with the -5 to hit"?

Say you have a tactic which allows you to get +5 to hit, precisely offsetting the -5. Is taking the -5/+10 necessarily better than keeping the +5?

 

[Argyle King]

I think, instead of -5/+10, the feat would work better if it were based upon proficiency in some way.

"Take a penalty to your attack roll that may be up to your proficiency bonus. If the attack hits, you deal extra damage equal to twice that penalty."