D&D 5E "Why don't you just shoot it?"

[Eltab]

Looking at it from the other end of the telescope...

I've DM'ed a dragon against the party. OF COURSE he took flight asap. He flew right over the party and used Frightful Presence to scatter them. He stayed 15 feet in the air so his Reach attacks could hit but their melee attacks could not. He taunted the Barbarian - whose player didn't want to use bow-and-arrow - and smacked her once or twice. (She picked up a bow in the very next town.) I did everything I could to make them miserable and kill them all.
I got about half-way to success. Then the Bard max'ed out a Staff of Healing and everybody began turning the dragon into a pincushion.

And some older advice:

Every Fighter should carry a variety of weapons. A two-handed weapon, one-handed plus a shield, spears to throw, a dagger for close-in work. And an extra for each, in case it is dropped / sundered / stolen.

 

[Tony Vargas]

I see this argument all the time. "Oh, you can't reach an enemy in melee, why don't you have a bow?"

It annoys me because yes, you can use a bow to attack enemies at long range, but if you're a melee character, this might not be as easy or effective as it sounds.

5e, like 4e, and unlike all prior eds, makes it easy for a primarliy-ranged-weapon using (high DEX) character to attack with basic effectiveness when using a melee weapon, and for a melee (STR) character to resort to thrown weapons.

5e also makes it trivially easy for non-weapon-using ranged characters (casters) to just keep casting in melee, and, possible, with feats in use, for ranged weapons, too. That's more the crux of the issue, ranged types forced into melee may be in greater danger, but they don't necessarily lose any effectiveness, while melee types unable to close, do. That'd be OK, if, say, melee were relatively more versatile or powerful in some ways, but optimal ranged builds take the DPR crown, and casting is vastly more versatile than melee.

 

[Maxperson]

Like, when a player says "I spent a whole combat frightened and unable to engage in melee", rather than responses like "what idiot doesn't carry a longbow", why aren't more people willing to accept that while it is A solution, it's not a great one?

Why do all solutions have to be great ones? I can't count the number of times over the years that a monster has been down to single digits in hit points, but someone didn't want to shoot a bow because it would only do a d6 hit points, and as a result, the party was royally screwed up. Had they fired during the combat, the monster would almost certainly have died before it could do the tremendous damage that it did. On the flip side, I have been the one plinking away at a d6 or d8 hit points with a sub-opimal bow, only to be told by the DM that after I did 3 points of damage, the monster that was about to wreck us died.

 

[ArchfiendBobbie]

Small party- we barely outnumbered the dragons. The odds of both getting distracted enough to lose track of him for the entire time it would have taken to make that climb approach zero.

Pfft. That just indicates a lack of creativity.

Seriously, distracting dragons isn't hard. Now, it's hard to do without derailing the entire game because the DM is too flabbergasted to pay attention to what they're doing, but it's not hard to distract a dragon or six.

Insulting the dragon tends to distract it quite well. Taking off your pants and threatening to stab it to death works better! Remember they are intelligent beings, and intelligent beings can be insulted quite easily.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

Pfft. That just indicates a lack of creativity.

Someone clearly shouldn't let their Gluteus Maximus attempt oratory...

The caster was lobbing such spells as he had. My PC had grown in size and was doing a great job of damaging them using her polearm, tagging them many extra times by virtue of capitalizing on the many AoOs they triggered.

That left the knight. He DID challenge them verbally; they ignored his goading.

 

[Maxperson]

Insulting the dragon tends to distract it quite well. Taking off your pants and threatening to stab it to death works better! Remember they are intelligent beings, and intelligent beings can be insulted quite easily.

When you were 12, it was quite easy to insult you into losing control or distraction. At 20 it was much harder. At 30(if you aren't there already), it will be much harder still. At 47 I'm tremendously hard to distract or get angry that way, especially if you are a stranger. At 100's to 1000's of years old, it would be nearly impossible for you to do it to a dragon.

 

[ArchfiendBobbie]

Someone clearly shouldn't let their Gluteus Maximus attempt oratory...

The caster was lobbing such spells as he had. My PC had grown in size and was doing a great job of damaging them using her polearm, tagging them many extra times by virtue of capitalizing on the many AoOs they triggered.

That left the knight. He DID challenge them verbally; they ignored his goading.

You're right. You shouldn't let your Gluteus Maximus attempt oratory. Because so far, all I'm hearing is, "we put in a basic effort with no real attempt at being creative, and it didn't work." Gee, no wonder it didn't work.

I mean, really, did he tell the dragons they were less than his dung? Insult their mothers? Imply their hoards are too small? Threaten to leave them alive and make them watch as he destroyed their treasure? Whip off his pants and say his, ahem, was bigger than their's? Start singing about the joys of cooking and eating a dragon's corpse? Offer to make one of them his mount if they settle down and behave?

And, challenge them... Did he throw things at them? Offer to duel them? Threaten to cook and eat their young in front of them? Offer them a chance to surrender before he was forced to beat them into submission with his weak hand? Laugh at their attempts at attacking and imply they are pitiful gnats that should feel grateful the PCs deign to pretend they are worth fighting? Pull out his, ahem, and say that was all he needed to beat such obviously weak lizards into submission?

Or did he just shout something like, "Come down here and fight me!" and watch them ignore him?

When you were 12, it was quite easy to insult you into losing control or distraction. At 20 it was much harder. At 30(if you aren't there already), it will be much harder still. At 47 I'm tremendously hard to distract or get angry that way, especially if you are a stranger. At 100's to 1000's of years old, it would be nearly impossible for you to do it to a dragon.

Which is complete and utter BS.

People get distracted every day. Ever nearly been run off the road by someone distracted by their cell phone? And it's not just teens that do this, but people as old as forty. And anyone is easily distracted if you surprise them with something utterly random.

Dragons are creatures of pride and power. That should make them even easier to distract, since all you have to do is target the pride and pick at it until you find an opening... and then hit that opening with everything you've got.

 

[Yunru]

When you were 12, it was quite easy to insult you into losing control or distraction. At 20 it was much harder. At 30(if you aren't there already), it will be much harder still. At 47 I'm tremendously hard to distract or get angry that way, especially if you are a stranger. At 100's to 1000's of years old, it would be nearly impossible for you to do it to a dragon.

Unless you're a frenchman.

 

[Maxperson]

Which is complete and utter BS.

People get distracted every day. Ever nearly been run off the road by someone distracted by their cell phone? And it's not just teens that do this, but people as old as forty. And anyone is easily distracted if you surprise them with something utterly random.

Straw, meet man. I didn't claim distraction was impossible. Only nearly impossible, and specifically with regard to age vs. insults. Jeebus man. That was a bad one.

 

[Maxperson]

Unless you're a frenchman.

Sacre bleu! He's on to me.