D&D (2024) How to simply balance ranged weapons.

[Gorck]

Ranged Attacks with bows use strength for damage.

This always made sense to me. DEX to aim the bow, STR to draw the string back further for more damage.

 

[James Gasik]

The thread is how to SIMPLY balance ranged weapons. Stop throwing in more complicated good ideas!

I don't think any finesse weapon should have strength bonuses to damage but otherwise yeah.

Sorry! I'll try better next time!

Even though I suggested it in my first post beyond short range, with further thought I realized removing damage bonuses from ranged weapons has some side effects: things like dragons, who aren't particularly rewarded by landing, and thus you might need decent ranged attacks to fight.

 

[James Gasik]

This always made sense to me. DEX to aim the bow, STR to draw the string back further for more damage.

Yeah, find me a bow archer who doesn't have decent arm muscles.

 

[Clint_L]

Deleted

 

[Staffan]

We don't send soldiers into battle with swords today. But when the available ranged weapons were bows or renaissance era firearms, people absolutely went into battle with melee weapons. The same is true in the fantasy D&D seeks to emulate (albeit with more swords and fewer polearms). To support that fiction, the DM should work to ensure that melee and ranged weapons are similarly viable options. But if an encounter where the combatants see each other across a quarter mile of open pasture is incompatible with that goal, I'd argue the rules are doing a poor job of supporting the DM.

IRL, there were two main reasons militaries kept focusing on melee weapons until fairly recently, and both had to do with money/logistics.

1. Training good archers takes a really really long time.
2. Making good bows requires scarce resources and also takes a long time. The English longbow was made from yew, and England building an army around the use of the longbow depleted the supply of suitable yew across all of Europe over the course of ~250 years.

Neither of those things is really a factor for a wealthy single elite warrior (e.g. a PC).

 

[Pauln6]

Sorry! I'll try better next time!

Even though I suggested it in my first post beyond short range, with further thought I realized removing damage bonuses from ranged weapons has some side effects: things like dragons, who aren't particularly rewarded by landing, and thus you might need decent ranged attacks to fight.

I'm in favour of anything that makes Dragons harder to kill. In our last encounter, our Warlock used dimension door to grab on the dragon and stabbed it in the back. Plus, the Hobbit made it quite clear that arrows are useless at killing dragons. ;-p

 

[Stalker0]

I'm in favour of anything that makes Dragons harder to kill. In our last encounter, our Warlock used dimension door to grab on the dragon and stabbed it in the back. Plus, the Hobbit made it quite clear that arrows are useless at killing dragons. ;-p

The might appreciate what @dave2008 added to his high level dragons in the monstrous compendium: D&D 5E - 5e Updates: Monstrous Compendium

Dragon Scales. The dragon has resistance to all damage from an attack or effect that originates 60 feet or more from the dragon. Additionally, the dragon is immune to all damage, except psychic damage, unless the attack or effect inflicts more than 5 hit points of damage, in which case it takes damage as normal.

 

[W'rkncacnter]

???
Str vs Dex in Pathfinder 2e has the same AC, same to-hit, and it has dex based melee weapons.

iirc heavy armor can have better AC then light/medium if you get plate, and dex isn't the default initiative stat (that would be wisdom, with perception).

 

[Horwath]

This always made sense to me. DEX to aim the bow, STR to draw the string back further for more damage.

one can argue that mode DEX means more precision and with that more damage. Ah, yes, the abstraction of HPs...

but, I agree, more STR could mean better bows.

I.E.

min STR 8, d4 damage
min STR 10, d6 damage
min STR 12, d8 damage
min STR 16, d10 damage
min STR 20, d12 damage

add DEX normally to attack and damage.

This way if you want "default" longbow, you will have to invest at least 12 in STR(no more dumping), and with decent DEX, now high STR characters have a better bow option.

 

[Staffan]

iirc heavy armor can have better AC then light/medium if you get plate, and dex isn't the default initiative stat (that would be wisdom, with perception).

Heavy armor in PF2 has a combined item bonus and max dex-bonus of +6 (either +5/+1 or +6/+0), while other armors have a total of +5 (ranging from +0/+5 for Explorer's Clothing through +4/+1 for chain mail or breastplate).

Medium armor in PF2 basically means "We expect you to be a Strength-based melee warrior, and here's some armor that doesn't force you to spend a whole lot of stat buffs on Dexterity to have a decent AC."