D&D 5E Are ranged attacks too good in 5e?

[Horwath]

I've always used the "firing into melee" inflicts disadvantage, without some sort of feat or ability. And, I always will. Probably because I've done so much archery in my own life.

Though I would like to see Dex removed from adding to initiative and ranged damage. Mechanically, I wouldn't mind Strength being the only ability that modifies weapon damage, and tying ANY ability score to Initiative just has issues. Save the latter for feats at best, maybe a class ability here or there.

adding dex to bow damage is a must, because how attacks and HP abstraction work.

having high dex in dnd means precision and precision means more damage. A 1 damage bow hit is not precise. Now if you have dex 20, then your min damage of 6 could be considered precise.

As I stated before, if you want STR to matter in bow damage, it should matter in base damage of the weapon.

now when you think about it, all weapons should have min str score, just like all armors should have.

 

[UngeheuerLich]

I added a point blank range of 30 ft.
Outside point blank, you don't add attribute bonus to damage.
That nerf is bothways, for enemies and PCs alike, as noone can hang around 120 ft away from melee and deal vasts amounts of damage...
I don't enforce the rule in every group, but I have noticed, that with that rule in place, melee and ranged are better balanced vs each other.
(Note that this change does not nerf crossbow experts at all if they don't also take sharp shooter, as crossbow normal range is 30 ft anyway).

 

[Ancalagon]

No, ranged attacks are not "too good." We can prove this with simple subtractive design.

If ranged attacks didn't exist, mundane melee martials would still underperform. Especially against monsters who have any kind advanced movement options, even something so simple as a monster having a measly 40' of movement speed. So the answer is the same as it's always been: "Mundane Melee is bad."

I'm sure this post is clear to you, but ... I can't parse it.

The question is "are ranged weapons too good vs martial melee". You can't "prove" that's not the case with your argument as presented. What you've basically said is "Is Red too good vs Blue? No, because if Red didn't exist, Blue would still suck, therefore Red is not too good vs Blue"...

 

[Ancalagon]

No.

Sharpshooter is too good.

Ranged isn't. There are serious downsides to using ranged attacks. A party all specializing in ranged attacks is going to have a very hard time with quite a lot of encounters. They will obliterate some encounters but then get TPK'd by others.

A party properly specialized in ranged combat will have control spells and summoning spells to keep the melee foes at bay, and, as I said previously, there are certain archer designs that work quite well in melee too.

Rogue, Kensai Monk, dex built battlemaster, druid. We did fine

 

[Ancalagon]

I added a point blank range of 30 ft.
Outside point blank, you don't add attribute bonus to damage.
That nerf is bothways, for enemies and PCs alike, as noone can hang around 120 ft away from melee and deal vasts amounts of damage...
I don't enforce the rule in every group, but I have noticed, that with that rule in place, melee and ranged are better balanced vs each other.
(Note that this change does not nerf crossbow experts at all if they don't also take sharp shooter, as crossbow normal range is 30 ft anyway).

This rule is realistic - ranged weapons (even bullets!) loose energy and damage as they travel.

This is off topic, but you also have to consider "non martial" ranged combatants. In one game I'm playing now, we have 2 tanks - barbarian and paladin, and 3 "ranged characters" - a star druid, a fathomless warlock and a artificer artillerist. The amount of damage we can send at range is ... quite something.

 

[Flamestrike]

While thinking about things being said in another thread, a common point of debate when it comes to the non-caster classes is their inability to fly without a magic item. But then I considered, why not just use ranged weapons?

The Fighter can be built to use a longbow, gain a fighting style that lets him effectively ignore soft cover (and get a +2 to hit targets not behind said cover). If he or she is a Battlemaster, they can use their maneuvers just as well from range. They can engage targets at any distance, be Dex-based, and if Feats are on the table, can fire in melee.

The only downside is you can't use a shield. I mean, there is a damage loss compared to a greatsword (4.5 vs. 7 average damage) but that seems a small price to pay for the versatility of being able to attack from anywhere on the battlefield without needing to move that much (and force enemies to move more to close with you, perhaps).

The Rogue is likely better as a ranged attacker than a melee combatant (barring debates about two weapon fighting to guarantee getting your sneak attack in, I guess- when I played a Fighter/Rogue archer, I missed so rarely, especially as a Halfling, that I was once told to make all attacks at disadvantage for a fight due to high winds, and because the DM didn't say otherwise continued to do so for the next two encounters and didn't miss once).

So this has me wondering- compared to being a melee martial, well, the thread title says it all.

The problem tends to be if your meatshield is hanging back shooting things, he's not acting like a meatshield.

 

[Bill Zebub]

The only place the strength of archery bothers me is with rogues. If you want to build a ranger or fighter with Dex and take the archery fighting style, fine. But a rogue, without any feats, doesn't have any particular bonuses for ranged vs. melee, but still, all else being equal, it's preferable to stay at range and snipe. Even more so now with Tasha's options. And I think that kind of sucks, because narratively I prefer the image of the rogue sneaking up and stabbing baddies.

I might even go so far as to say that ranged sneak attack simply cannot be used against targets that are both in combat and within 5' of an enemy.

 

[Stalker0]

Long distance engagements certainly aren't limited to white-room scenarios. In a campaign with a lot of outdoor adventuring, it's more or less inevitable that some encounters will fall into that category, which means multiple rounds of unanswered attacks by ranged combatants about melee combatants.

I think this is one of those things were DMs often start combats sooner for convenience (can be as simple as your battlemat doesn't cover such distances), but yes I agree. There are many encounters outdoors were its very reasonable to sight an enemy many hundreds of feet away, and you if you have the range and they don't....your going to trounce.

 

[ad_hoc]

A party properly specialized in ranged combat will have control spells and summoning spells to keep the melee foes at bay, and, as I said previously, there are certain archer designs that work quite well in melee too.

Rogue, Kensai Monk, dex built battlemaster, druid. We did fine

Are you sure you weren't just fighting zombies on featureless planes?

Ranged groups will demolish many encounters but there are also ones they have a really hard time with.

The creatures are built to have very good movement and terrain often works against the party.

 

[loverdrive]

It's not ranged attacks. It's just DEX being a god stat. Since cool feat pairs (GWM+PAM or SS+XE) are basically identical, and DEX is better than STR, of course ranged fighters win.