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

[Lost Soul]

Ranged weapons should be hell a inaccurate against moving targets. Especially if you aren't taking your time to aim. I'm talking below 10% of the shots made finding their target at mid distances even if trained.
Also I'm sure you can make more stabs in a 6 second round that you can fire arrows.
In fact melee disparity with ranged should be so big that while safe. Playing ranged should be downright unfun in terms of effectiveness.
Melee attacks should be much more brutal when they land. And should have many more effects than mere HP.

The Mongols would disagree with you that its hard to shoot a moving target with pre-gunpowder weapons. Crossbows are ridiculously easy to fire at moving targets. You can definitely swing more times with a melee weapon. It can also be dodge, parried, blocked or absorbed much easier than a ranged shot. Melee attacks should not have additional effects besides damage unless it is due to a magical effect. Most monsters are melee based as has been pointed out in various posts in this thread. If you assign PC damage and effects you have to add it to the monsters and they have to be FAR more devastating! A giant striking you with his great sword or a gargantuan red dragon biting you would cause horrific damage. There is a reason that most monsters do not have an rider on their damage because it is not needed and would make combats too deadly.

 

[guachi]

It is unrealistic because you are not factoring in fatigue. If you included the exhaustion mechanic with rules for one level of exhaustion for the run in light or medium armor and 2 for heavy armor then I would be fine with the run option.

Any Rogue of level two can already do this with no levels of exhaustion. Further, there is no universe where running 10.2 mph for six seconds would entail exhaustion that would require 8 hours of rest (barring someone carrying an incredibly heavy weight).

A reasonably fit person can run for 10.2 mph for six minutes (60 rounds) and need no more than 10 minutes rest). I'm not even very fit and I can run 10.2 mph for six seconds and not be remotely exhausted. I ran 8.43 mph today for a distance of 1.5 miles (10:40 or 107 rounds) and I daresay I didn't gain a level of exhaustion (at least, I was fine after about 30 minutes).

The idea you'd gain a level of exhaustion for running for six seconds is preposterous. Heck, I've run in full pack and body armor and not gained the equivalent of a level of exhaustion after six seconds. Perhaps I (in game terms) might have had to make an Athletics (Con) check to see if I could do it again to simulate temporary fatigue, but not anything remotely resembling needing 8 hours of rest. That's absurd.

 

[Caliban]

This is poorly thought out.

Yes, your rebuttal is.

 

[Lhynn]

Yes, your rebuttal is.

A single point in extra AC will give you armor 20 with a heavy armor or a dex 20 + studded leather. So dex becomes an even better option. Which as the best attribute in the game it doesnt need.

 

[Lhynn]

The Mongols would disagree with you that its hard to shoot a moving target with pre-gunpowder weapons.

So every dex character is now a mongol archer at their prime? And lets not forget that hit ratio to kill in military engagements (or any kind of fight, really) in the last 50 years is still embarrassingly low in combat situations.

Crossbows are ridiculously easy to fire at moving targets.

Only if the moving target is heading straight towards you, or running from you in a straight line.

You can definitely swing more times with a melee weapon. It can also be dodge, parried, blocked or absorbed much easier than a ranged shot.

Any melee attack that finds its target once will find it again easily.

Melee attacks should not have additional effects besides damage unless it is due to a magical effect.

Melee attacks stagger, they leave you open more more attacks. they dont just poke a hole, they break your bones and destroy your organs. If melee attacks were as deadly as they should be the game would also be unfun tho, or fun for just a very particular kind of player.

Most monsters are melee based as has been pointed out in various posts in this thread. If you assign PC damage and effects you have to add it to the monsters and they have to be FAR more devastating! A giant striking you with his great sword or a gargantuan red dragon biting you would cause horrific damage. There is a reason that most monsters do not have an rider on their damage because it is not needed and would make combats too deadly.

Sure, my point exactly. To even hint at ranged being deadlier in real life shows a disconnect with reality that is fairly impressive, even for a forum dweller.

 

[Ilbranteloth]

You misunderstand. I didn't say it was completely redundant. Which is why it still gives +2 AC for heavy armor. I just think it the amount of relative protection it gives would (in theory) be even greater if you didn't have a lot of armor on. A lot of blows that are completely stopped by the shield would have also been stopped by your armor, if you were wearing heavy armor (i.e. the shield was redundant in those cases). But if you are lightly armored (or not armored at all), it's just the shield stopping them, so it's not redundant.

If you don't agree, it's OK. This isn't actually a rule. You don't need to get up in arms about it.

I also don't know where you get attacks that "penetrate the shield" in D&D. That would mean the shield is taking damage, and that doesn't happen in D&D. You don't throw your shield away after a couple of fights.

And likewise, if you don't agree, that's cool too.

I didn't think I was "up in arms about it," just commenting that I don't think your premise makes sense.

I don't think the amount of protection a shield provides changes at all, regardless of what armor your wearing. Either it stops the attack, it slows the attack down (absorbs some of the blow), or it doesn't. If it stops the attack or doesn't is the same no matter what you're wearing. If it absorbs some of the blow, then you'll still be more protected if you're wearing heavier armor since that will absorb more of the energy/attack that wasn't blocked by the shield. That's all.

Oh, and damage to equipment does happen in D&D, it's part of some settings (like Dark Sun), and has existed in optional rules in most editions, and is easy enough to implement in any campaign. It happens less in RAW in 5e, but it does still exist even there, such as a rust monster attack. It's part of our campaign, even though it happens relatively rarely, because we like the idea that an object that is getting hit repeatedly will eventually wear out. Proper care and maintenance matters, but even then it will eventually reach an end to its useful life.

 

[Ovinomancer]

The Mongols would disagree with you that its hard to shoot a moving target with pre-gunpowder weapons.

Not really. As skirmishers, the Mongols would force an enemy to set their position to fight back. This let the Mongols ride past at range firing volleys until the enemy broke or was severely reduced. This is why the typical Mongol horse archer carried a complement of 60-90 arrows. Then they'd ride past at very close range for aimed shots. For fleeing targets, they'd use their horses to match direction and velocity, reducing the relative movement as much as possible before firing. A target moving across their engagement range would still be extremely hard to hit.

Mongols were very good at firing while moving, but they had the same issues as everyone else at hitting moving targets.

Crossbows are ridiculously easy to fire at moving targets.

Sure, so are arrows, slings, rocks, fireworks, rubber bands, and Nerf guns. It's the hitting that's still really hard.

Let's all agree that a modern military issue firearm is superior in all ways to a crossbow. That stipulated, the best method to avoid being hit aside from full cover is to move, at speed, laterally to the shooter, varying your step as unpredictably as possible. Why is that? Because hitting a moving target is hard.

You can definitely swing more times with a melee weapon. It can also be dodge, parried, blocked or absorbed much easier than a ranged shot.

Well, no. Just because there are more words to describe defeating a melee attack (parried isn't often used for defeating a ranged attack) doesn't mean it's easier. Heavy armor was proof against most ranged attacks, up to and including ball musket firearms (read up on late plate armor still being highly effective defensively even after units of musketeers were in common usage). With arrows and other muscle powered weapons, armor was fantastic. It's why, historically, you didn't commit your archers at heavy infantry or cavalry but instead at skirmishers or light infantry. And even light infantry was a hard target for archers if they could raise shields.

Missile fire wasn't a huge component of medieval and ancient warfare because, at the end of the day, it was the heavy infantry that ruled the day. This changed only once manufacturing processes became capable of creating ranged weapons that weren't strength powered. Even the famed English longbow only had a brief window of importance before being replaced with cranked crossbows and firearms. The necessary strength and training to operate the massive yew longbow wasn't sustainable (and archers had short service careers and generally crippling complications from being archers). The advent of non-strength powered missile weapons allowed for untrained massed fire that could punch through light and medium armors. As a force multiplier, it was fantastic. But, even then, melee troops were still the ruler of the battlefield until firearms became so ubiquitous that all troops could be issued a firearm that doubled as a melee weapon (the reason bayonets and bayonet drills were a core part of all military training through WWI). You'd shoot, reload, shoot, and, if the enemy advance wasn't broken, then it was into melee. Cannon was really the death of melee troops on the battlefield, not personal ranged weaponry.

Even today, ranged accuracy on the battlefield is shockingly low.

Melee attacks should not have additional effects besides damage unless it is due to a magical effect. Most monsters are melee based as has been pointed out in various posts in this thread. If you assign PC damage and effects you have to add it to the monsters and they have to be FAR more devastating! A giant striking you with his great sword or a gargantuan red dragon biting you would cause horrific damage. There is a reason that most monsters do not have an rider on their damage because it is not needed and would make combats too deadly.

And these are very valid game points -- we're playing a game that should be fun, not recreating historically accurate warfare, which is very much not fun. The key here is that the game only loosely adopts the forms of historical combat tropes, it doesn't mimic them. Real world missile weapons were hard to employ effectively across the vast majority of the history of warfare.

 

[Caliban]

A single point in extra AC will give you armor 20 with a heavy armor or a dex 20 + studded leather. So dex becomes an even better option. Which as the best attribute in the game it doesnt need.

Which has nothing to do with with the point I was making. Damn, people can't read these days.

I was talking about a theoretical change to reflect how I believe shields work in real life. I never said it would be balanced. I also never mentioned the specifics, because it would have to be something more than just adding AC (if you did want it to be balanced with the rest of the system).

It's something I'm toying with as more of a thought problem - the D&D AC system is to abstracted to accurately reflect real life combat, armor or shields.

Making any change to the system to make it more realistic tends to snowball into a whole series of changes that make combat more complicated and slower. (Damage reduction from armor that varies by armor and attack type, active defenses like parrying, dodging, blocking, etc, etc.)

All of which is mostly unrelated to the topic of melee vs ranged.

 

[Cap'n Kobold]

So every dex character is now a mongol archer at their prime?

Hardly The mongols used warbows capable of killing a soldier.
The average couch-potato-level, Str 8, Dex-build character probably couldn't even draw one halfway, let alone fully, and in a controlled enough fashion to hit a target.

I don't think the amount of protection a shield provides changes at all, regardless of what armor your wearing. Either it stops the attack, it slows the attack down (absorbs some of the blow), or it doesn't. If it stops the attack or doesn't is the same no matter what you're wearing. If it absorbs some of the blow, then you'll still be more protected if you're wearing heavier armor since that will absorb more of the energy/attack that wasn't blocked by the shield. That's all.

A more exact (but less efficient) way to represent a shield might be two separate ACs that the attacker rolls separately to beat. A 'Shield AC' of 8+Str/Dex +Prof bonus maybe. With an additional bonus vs missile fire that you're facing.
Then an 'Armour AC' based on the armour the target is wearing.
Thus, the shield will provide greater effective protection to someone with less armour than someone with heavier, but it still helps someone in heavier.
I don't think that the dash of realism that this would supply would be worth having to make two attack rolls however.

Let's all agree that a modern military issue firearm is superior in all ways to a crossbow. That stipulated, the best method to avoid being hit aside from full cover is to move, at speed, laterally to the shooter, varying your step as unpredictably as possible. Why is that? Because hitting a moving target is hard.

Particularly if, unlike firearms, your opponent's projectile actually takes an appreciable time to cover the distance. You're probably not going to actually dodge it if they're shooting at less than a hundred foot or so, but if you're in melee with someone else for example, they're going to have issues because your essentially random movement takes place after they have loosed. No matter how well they aimed, if the target isn't there by the time the time the arrow arrives, its not going to hit it.

Or have a shield, like most battlefield combatants did. It vastly reduces your chance of being hit with missile fire from a known direction.

 

[Lost Soul]

So every dex character is now a mongol archer at their prime? And lets not forget that hit ratio to kill in military engagements (or any kind of fight, really) in the last 50 years is still embarrassingly low in combat situations.



Only if the moving target is heading straight towards you, or running from you in a straight line.



Any melee attack that finds its target once will find it again easily.



Melee attacks stagger, they leave you open more more attacks. they dont just poke a hole, they break your bones and destroy your organs. If melee attacks were as deadly as they should be the game would also be unfun tho, or fun for just a very particular kind of player.




Sure, my point exactly. To even hint at ranged being deadlier in real life shows a disconnect with reality that is fairly impressive, even for a forum dweller.

1)

Yes, every dex primary character is probably better than 90% of Mongols alive unless you are stating that every real life Mongol has a 16+ dexterity. I don't know about you but most Mongols I have seen tend to represent stereotypical strength over dex if attributed to a D&D character. Most Mongols would be lucky to have a 12 dexterity as D&D NPC world population is in the 10-12 range for attributes. About average to very slightly above.
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2)

That tends to be the standard formation in large battles and even in a skirmish, the fastest direction from point A to point B is a straight line. ​

3)

Not if that strike is against heavy armor or a shield. It is especially not applicable to fantasy combat since fatigue is never taken into account​

4)

Ranged attacks take you out of combat immediately. Melee attacks most often do not. There are verifiably accounts of people being stabbed over 20 times and surviving. No record I am aware of where someone has survived being a pin cushion. Most people died of infection and disease than actual melee combat.
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5)You obviously don't know history too well. What do you say about Mongols, Samurai (who were known for being better horse archers than swordsman) or Native American Plains Indians who were amazing horse archers even though they only got metal arrowheads from European traders and had horses for only about 150 years at best since horses are not native to either North or South America.