Level Up (A5E) Strength vs Dexterity imbalance cannot be solved without addressing the Melee vs Ranged Imbalance.

[Asisreo]

It's probably the easiest thing to counter ranged attacks. Barring cover (which has a procedure that I doubt anyone uses to determine cover), any enemy can go prone for free and have give the enemy disadvantage on all ranged attacks. Meanwhile, they can keep approaching with dashes until they're in melee where they can probably take you on better, even if you have your own melee defenses, getting out in melee as a ranged-focused character will suck.

 

[ThatGuySteve]

The 3.5 ranged combat was much more thought out with many well understood dials. You can't even think about things like "giving martial characters more options in combat, maneuveres beyond "I attack twice" until you address the elephant in the room created by all of the changes 5e made to ranged combat as part of a whole system rather than ialone & n isolation as wotc seems to have done. With regards to eldritch blast, why might it work on strength? easy, the alternative is to acknowledge that a d8 hit dieclass with full caster level progression that gets this
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is pants on head what the holy heck were they thinking when compared to this
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It's also important to accept that there is no sane path that leads to the 5e warlock & eldritch blast from

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even if you add

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and things only get worse when you factor in the bizarrely over the top & obvious problematic elements it causes if the goal was anything other than trying to build a multiclasscombo where abusing the rest mechanic is the number one design goal. Why strength? Personally I think eldritch blast should go back towards what it was instead of the 5e best of everything worst of nothing that it is now but cha to hit str for damage similar to dex/str how bows used to be might work if EB must otherwise remain munchkinized as is.

Eldrich Blast is a whole different topic to deal with compared to Str vs Dex, you seem to be trying to use one tool to solve every problem. I can't fathom the reason Str would have anything to do with EB.

In 3.5, it was much easier to have multiple high stats than 5e. You could pick up a lot more bonuses to damage rolls than your stat bonus. There were chains of feats to support different fighting styles in a way 5e doesn't come close to. These were all contributing factors. To say that using Str for the damage roll was what made it work is pointless.

 

[CapnZapp]

I believe I have met my hyperbolic match.

 

[Phoebasss]

Im inclined to say that this can be addressed with some combination of martial maneuvers, a die size increase to all martial strength weapons, and/or returning to 3.5 and 4e saves.

Martial Maneuvers are pretty self-explanatory. We know they're coming, and it makes sense that melee and ranged would have different maneuvers, so just allot more power to the melee maneuvers.

Well, 4e didn't use saves, but grouping Str Con, Dex Wis, and Int Cha into 3 saves helps to solve the problem of how powerful dex is. Strong and weak saves were a mistake, and its better to take the time to fix that and see how much more adjustment needs to be done.

The die size increase obviously doesn't work for the Greataxe, but I think it can be given an increased crit range or something like that. In general a tag based weapon system with melee-only tags or a higher point total allotment for melee would be an elegant way of solving this I think.

If those three really aren't enough I think the game could stomach a blanket +1 AC to all Strength-based armors. But I'd rather do these, partly because I think the top two need to be done anyway, playtest that, and then see if we've fixed the problem. I'd give good odds that it goes most of the way there.

 

[Phoebasss]

Better magical support.

Please! Self-buff swordfighters deserve to be a thing in 5e. It would also help make Eldritch Knight not feel like soggy toast.

 

[tetrasodium]

Eldrich Blast is a whole different topic to deal with compared to Str vs Dex, you seem to be trying to use one tool to solve every problem. I can't fathom the reason Str would have anything to do with EB.

In 3.5, it was much easier to have multiple high stats than 5e. You could pick up a lot more bonuses to damage rolls than your stat bonus. There were chains of feats to support different fighting styles in a way 5e doesn't come close to. These were all contributing factors. To say that using Str for the damage roll was what made it work is pointless.

None of which justifies 5e choosing to:

• Remove range increments from ranged weapons
• Remove the penalty for firing into melee
• remove the -5/-10/-15/etc penalty from second/third/etc attack while ignoring how the two prior penalties work to dramatically reduce effective range & total damage output by butting a curb on extra attacks & moving the first into something on par with the second if unpenalized
• allowing +dex to both hit and damage to allow optimum SAD ranged builds.
• Not doing any meaningful damage adjustments to offset the impact if those last three changes.

There is so much so blatantly wrong with warlock & eldritch blast that they deserve mention & consideration whenever changing systems that would help bring them inline comes up because solutions should probably come from a combination of things rather than a couple massive warlock specific things that make compatibility difficult. The fact that fixing ranged combat as being discussed can be leveraged as @CapnZapp originally raised to both improve range/melee and wrench some of warlock's problematic elements towards a more reasonable state with th small extension of swapping +cha to +str makes a strong case for why it should probably be done.

5. Better magical support. Yes swift quiver I am looking at you and the 10 lvl bards with 4 longbow attacks

Please! Self-buff swordfighters deserve to be a thing in 5e. It would also help make Eldritch Knight not feel like soggy toast.

i agree & disagree. Part of the reason full casters have a lot of problems with how they fill any role other than blaster & not so glassy* cannon. "Better magical support" needs to include both what a gish like an EK or AT can cast on themselves & others as well as what a full caster has in their toolbox for buffing the martial characters around them. Even though a full caster might choose to cast one or more of those same gish spells on an ally they should have more powerful spells in their toolbox that make learning/preparing those lesser gish spells unlikely

*compared to when they were actully & truly glass cannons is that wotc changed how magic works & the balance of all the spells to fit the needs of every in combat casting gish rather than making separate spells & spell lists for that sort of extreme

 

[Kozos]

Another point that I want to raise that is more a matter of personal preference from a design perspective is that I would rather see weaker options empowered vs strong ones nerfed. I hate to take things away. I hate to make perfectly valid builds not valid. I prefer to increase the options, not decrease them.

 

[tetrasodium]

Another point that I want to raise that is more a matter of personal preference from a design perspective is that I would rather see weaker options empowered vs strong ones nerfed. I hate to take things away. I hate to make perfectly valid builds not valid. I prefer to increase the options, not decrease them.

There are a lot of things in 5e like this thread where simplicity for the sake of simplicity created such a boneheaded & completely foreseeable multilayered problem that wotc just dove into accelerating that there is just not enough room to bring something up without rebuilding everything else. Sometimes things like "we removed all of this stuff, just ignore the problems" can only be fixed by putting it back & adjusting the involved bits that need rebalancing arthings around the return

 

[ThatGuySteve]

There are a lot of things in 5e like this thread where simplicity for the sake of simplicity created such a boneheaded & completely foreseeable multilayered problem that wotc just dove into accelerating that there is just not enough room to bring something up without rebuilding everything else. Sometimes things like "we removed all of this stuff, just ignore the problems" can only be fixed by putting it back & adjusting the involved bits that need rebalancing arthings around the return

Is the problem not more due to a single feat removing all the limits?

Bring back range increments by changing Disadvantage to have more levels of granularity. Multiple increments mean more layers of Disadvantage.

Firing into melee can still be hindered by cover from other creatures. What if ignoring cover was a maneuver? You need to expend a resource to do it, while a melee combatant is using the same resource to knock prone, push, deal extra damage, etc.

 

[Guest 6801328]

Hot take: The ranged vs. melee imbalance exists for a reason, the same reason that no one in modern warfare uses melee weapons.

And yet look at how so many action movies feature melee weapons anyway. (Quick example recently released: "The Old Guard".)

Why? Because it's just cool. D&D rules should emphasize cool over realism.