D&D (2024) Why is wotc still aiming for PCs with 10 *real word* feet of range? W/o vision range penalty/limit rules for the GM?

[Stalker0]

another aspect of this is the loss of run speeds.

In 3e, you could run at 120 feet (barring heavy armor slowing you down, which could be corrected with magic). so encounters in the 300-500 range could be bridged in a 3-4ish rounds. Now that's not ideal by any means, but it is an option. Now in 3e you could get insane with distance bows and the like, but again meleers at least had a bit more options in most circumstances.

In 4e, you had the ability to add +10 to speed on all movement, so could move 80 feet a round. Longbows at 200 feet were the longest thing in the game I believe range wise, so 3 rounds to close.

In 5e, your at 60 feet speed, so 5-8 rounds to close the big distances, a pretty big increase.

 

[UngainlyTitan]

The battle map that has been on the table since session start and was there before the players said "wait no, we want to back up and..."? Remember, it's a flick of the mouse & a couple of clicks nt fetishized minis & terrain. Eventually the gm resisting this will either crash into puppetry of PCs or mevsdungeon shaped outdoors & we are still talking about a system that provides players with multiple ways to state "but I have a thing that let's me ignore cover."

You my friend has a communication issue. We are seven pages into a thread on a topic you posted and people are not clear on what the issue actually is.
If your verbal style matched your written one, I can see why there is not a meeting of minds between you and your players.

That paragraph above makes no actual sense.
What was the scenario presented? Use short sentences and small word. Act like I am a 5 year old.
What did they want to back up on?
What are "fetishzied minis & terrain"?
What is the gm resisting? The backing up?
What is this thing that ignores cover? Any thing in 5e, that I am aware of, that ignores cover does not work if there is no line of sight. No line of sight no targeting.

 

[Willie the Duck]

Looking at the 1e link....no it clearly says: "RANGES (in feet):"

AD&D 1E PHB, Page 39: "For purposes of the game distances are basically one-third with respect to spell arid missile range from outdoors to indoors/underground situations."

I recognize we have gone around the circle on this topic a lot, so I’ll make this final point. WOTC saw fit to reign in the ranges of magic spells in the interest of game improvements (fireball went from ~550 feet in 3e to 150 ft now), so it’s not like they have just used history to set all the values, but made adjustments where it makes sense. Reigning in bow range is really no different

Fundamentally, we keep going round in circles because when the 'D&D used to be different' line is shown to be incorrect, you switch to realism. When people point out that realism isn't necessarily a goal (or which realism is important, in the case of battlefield vs Olympic target shooting), it switches to gamist concerns. It's been a one long case of chasing the goal posts all over the field, all of which ends in this they've-changed-other-things,-why-not-bows type response that doesn't fix that the case for needing the fix is where the contention lies.

That's fair, but I think armies and sieges and the like are pretty archetypical elements of D&D.

Absolutely, and if one does make a game with shorter effective ranges, the ability or bows to shoot greater distances in massed-armies situations is something that should be mentioned. While we're thinking that way, I'd love it if 5e pikes were re-named longspears (probably with weight reduction) and actual (18 lb, ~20') pikes listed in non-weapon equipment with a description something like "very long polearm used in formations, not really usable in PC-style situations (opponents can too easily get around an individual point)."

And if we look at ways that pcs are so much better than real world humans, I think allowing them a decent chance at landing a long range shot with a bow is far less egregious than letting them walk away from a 100' fall without even being seriously wounded. And in a setting with any kind of magical scholarship, I can't see longer range/siege magic not develop eventually.

Yeah, by any reasonable standard even mid-tier martial PCs are probably already beyond olympic-athlete levels of prowess, and magical weapons would outperform even modern-day equivalents.

This is always the question with games that don't really have a set 'power-fantasy' level -- is a D&D fighter supposed to be a IRL medieval soldier (just in a world with magic and dragons), a low-extraordinary hero like Robin Hood or Jon McClain, or an epic hero of myth and legend. D&D has seemed to try really hard to have it all ways with regards to those questions.

 

[tetrasodium]

You my friend has a communication issue. We are seven pages into a thread on a topic you posted and people are not clear on what the issue actually is.
If your verbal style matched your written one, I can see why there is not a meeting of minds between you and your players.

That paragraph above makes no actual sense.
What was the scenario presented? Use short sentences and small word. Act like I am a 5 year old.
What did they want to back up on?
What are "fetishzied minis & terrain"?
What is the gm resisting? The backing up?
What is this thing that ignores cover? Any thing in 5e, that I am aware of, that ignores cover does not work if there is no line of sight. No line of sight no targeting.

Yes yes we know. You don't belive there is a problem my friend. Yes yes you have made it clear that any player who merely reacts with any sort of resistance is a problem player who needs to find another table.

 

[Reef]

Look at it this way. Ever hear a player say words along the lines of "well if I had known that I would have done [something different] instead" or "well I have $reason, I should have seen that & not knowing it changes what I would have done"? I don't think I've ever been in or had a group for any length of time longer than a session or two where phrases along those lines didn't come up at some point. Those phrases are friction for the GM to deal with & they are the entirely predictable result of the GM needing to shrink down a 20 foot radius circle for abilities with ranges amounting to ten feet of tablespace.

When players have abilities that expand out to ten feet of real world table space & technology comes along to shrink that down into a lightweight & portable device that fits on the table with ease it's still a bunch of abilities spanning excessive ranges the problems & miscommunications coming from shrinking it down don't simply go away.

Some players will want to see the map instead & it places a huge burden on the GM to manage so much mapspace because of these abilities. Other players will be ok but feel more justified in saying those "well if I had known..." statements with the expectation of replaying the ToTM bit back in one of two ways...

• Either the player engages in retcons & expects the opponents to behave exactly as they did the first time (ie run into a web they can clearly see or whatever)
• -OR- both the player & the opponents start engaging in retcons as the entire ToTM segment is replayed in the grueling grid map covering ten feet of tablespace that just now happens to scroll in a 20ish inch box. So Alice casts web wall of fire blade barrier or whatever obvious thing in the gigantic span between her and the opponents but the opponents move around it causing bob to say "well I would have seen that and done [this] instead"

Either way the GM faces this friction & either avoids it by doing it in the grid start to finish with out of place "terrain" that coincidentally turns the great outdoors into a dungeon/puppets the PCs/etc or they just shut down all of those friction generating statements with something like "but you didn't (because I refused to show you what I could have trivially shown)" & that underlined bit starts straining the social contract if anything goes bad because it's too unreasonable to say yet known to be true for everyone at the table

Then I’d say your players have unrealistic expectations. Expecting you to map out to that extent is not reasonable. I use VTTs all the time, and preparing that amount of mapping isn’t as easy as you say (unless you are literally scribbling on the fly).

The players experience the world through the DM, whether description or drawing, and it’s never going to be perfect. So, of course I’ve heard “oh, if I knew that, I wouldn’t have…”. I’m sure we all have. In which case the DM says, “that’s fair, what would you have done”, or the player just needs to accept that communication isn’t perfect and the game moves on. Again, I guess if you are playing with strangers, there is less incentive for them not to be belligerent.

Anyway, I love making maps for my players. But if they expected the level of maps yours seem to, I’d have burnt out long ago. Or switched to a game that doesn’t use maps at all…

 

[Reef]

Yes yes we know. You don't belive there is a problem my friend. Yes yes you have made it clear that any player who merely reacts with any sort of resistance is a problem player who needs to find another table.

I’m sorry, but any player who acts with the level of resistance that you describe kind of is a problem player.

 

[Stalker0]

Fundamentally, we keep going round in circles because when the 'D&D used to be different' line is shown to be incorrect, you switch to realism. When people point out that realism isn't necessarily a goal (or which realism is important, in the case of battlefield vs Olympic target shooting), it switches to gamist concerns. It's been a one long case of chasing the goal posts all over the field, all of which ends in this they've-changed-other-things,-why-not-bows type response that doesn't fix that the case for needing the fix is where the contention lies.

With respect, I made corrections to that argument once my errors were presented to me. Your right that I would have used that as a basis for my argument, but that was not valid, so I dropped it in favor of the other arguments I had been presenting.

That's not going around in circles, that is actually having an open mind and listening to those who debate me.

As for realism and gamist concerns, yes I'm using the arguments together....because I think they fit together. To me that's why its a win/win. The gamist in me knows that 600 foot range encounters are horrible to run, and just plain unfun. So reducing the risk that anyone would run such a thing is a win. The realist in me knows that 600 foot bow ranges for shooting a moving target are so hilariously wrong that reducing it would create better immersion (of course to what level depends on people's preferences). Using both of these arguments isn't a form of "flip flop" its adding ammunition to my case by presenting arguments that appeal to different areas of the game people care about. That is just good debate.

 

[UngainlyTitan]

Yes yes we know. You don't belive there is a problem my friend. Yes yes you have made it clear that any player who merely reacts with any sort of resistance is a problem player who needs to find another table.

Oh, I believe there is a problem and that the problem is in the realms of communications.

 

[UngainlyTitan]

Never seen open plains before?

View attachment 283589


Don't let our modern cities and boxed in houses fool you, there are tons of areas on earth that are sprawling, nigh featureless, tracts of land as far as the eye can see.

Or we could just take from our own DMG, I quote:

"
Chapter 8 of the DMG; Visibility Outdoors:


So yes, in many types of terrain, 600 feet is frankly a short distance to see other things.

This looks like farmed land, in the natural state there would be more brush and trees along the river banks.
The grasses would be taller for much of the year also. So you could be in this location see people pop over the ridge line in the distance and simply duck down in the grass and evade their contact.
Similarly, someone in the nearest tree line on the right might see some moving in the camera's location but lose sight of them when they enter the low ground by the river.
All of this could be run ToM and none of it has anything to do with longbow ranges.

 

[MGibster]

Even modern infantry warfare very, very rarely begins engagements at 200 yards. Effective range for an M-16 is 300 yards and most combat occurs at much, much shorter ranges than that. Armored combat and of course airplane combat is a whole different beast. But infantry combat? 100 yards or less most of the time.

The US Army conducted a lot of analysis on their soldiers during World War 2 and discovered the maximum practical distance the infantry could engage the enemy was about 300 meters. Your M-1 Garand might have an effective range of 500 meters, but you're probably not going to have the enemy in view until they're much closer than that. (These same studies showed that units made up of soldiers who hated Germans were more effective at killing them than those who had no strong feelings about Germans.)

Environment plays a big part in what your effective range might be. I like to hike through the woods a lot, and you're not shooting an arrow at many targets that are 100 meters or more away. Not only might it be difficult to even see the target, good luck making sure the arrow doesn't hit any branches or leaves as it flies through the air. I can easily hit a target with my deer rifle from 300 meters away, but I've never shot a deer that was farther than 70-80 meters away from me simply because I often can't get a direct bead on one when they're farther away.