Zardnaar
Legend
I like this list. A few more.
Thief w/healer feat.
Life Cleric 1/Land Druid XYZ
Life Cleric 1, Lore Bard 6+
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D&D 5E Assuming no GWM/SS, are different fighting styles roughly balanced?
- Thread starter TwoSix
- Start date
I like this list. A few more.
Thief w/healer feat.
Life Cleric 1/Land Druid XYZ
Life Cleric 1, Lore Bard 6+
Casters don't get Agonizing Blast. That's a warlock class feature.
(In case it wasn't clear: Warlocks aren't casters. The warlock is an archer in caster clothing.)
TwoSix
Dirty, realism-hating munchkin powergamer
TwoSix
Dirty, realism-hating munchkin powergamer
This is an excellent list, and exactly the kind of thing I was looking for. Thanks for posting it.
CapnZapp
Legend
But... but that's precisely what you would do armed with a single hand crossbow
(I believe we agree, my confusion is because you come across as making objections that somehow diminish or invalidate the build choice... Why emphasize this so hard when it isn't a restriction that matters?)
Sorry, my build advice is never geared toward PC on PC combat.
I compare different builds, but only as so far how they compare in killing monsters, never each other.
I now understand more of where you're coming from.
Still, the reason I objected so strongly is because "gimping" to me is a strong negative.
And to be honest, going without a shield only makes combats more exciting, since the poor monsters will be given an extra +10% on their feeble attacks.
My main point is that each time you get to make even a single attack the round before you would have, had you gone melee, that is enough to win the DPR race all by itself.
Killing the monsters is by far the best strategy. The best defense is offense.
You could almost say that any defensive measure you take is the wrong approach, assuming you chose it over a offensive measure of roughly equal stature. The probably most famous example revolves around in-combat healing: it is almost always better to deal N points of damage to the monsters than to heal your allies N points of damage. Any combat medic would probably be better off using attacks to do his job - this is very far from games like WoW, where combat heals are designed to be necessary.
Returning to measures in general, the WotC design team have put a very small cost on perhaps the biggest offensive measure of all, the ability to project force at a hundred feet away instead of merely five.
Moreover, they have reduced said cost considerably compared to any previous edition you choose.
Tony Vargas
Legend
Well, I suppose you could give 'em all broken feats, too.
Melee-range imbalance includes caster imbalance, because spells, and even cantrips, can be ranged attacks.
5e clearly has the LFQW disease less severely than 3.x or AD&D, we're talking a mere Spanish Flu rather than or Bubonic Plague or Smallpox, but it could surely do with some supportive therapy before we worry about the relative hangnail of how martials balance vs eachother.
Kudos to all those DMs who have already fixed or obviated the issue, though.
AoOs for ranged attacks in melee would be a start. Advantage for melee attacks vs 'unarmed' humanoids, with using a ranged weapon as an improvised melee weapon carrying a significant risk of the weapon being destroyed, perhaps? A ceiling on the RoF of crossbows might help...
Beefing melee up could also be good. Putting back the Charge action, for instance, would make melee types better-able to cope with more spread-out enemies. Even easing up on thrown weapons & object interaction might help, that way, a tad.
A round of applause for CapnZapp...
...heck, since the topic is ranged, five rounds rapid!
The same way the party of 11th GWM beatsticks are: by failing at most of them.
Simplistic. Not wrong, but not the whole story.
clearstream
(He, Him)
DMs need to keep the ammo rule in mind because it imposes a couple of constraints that are worth having now that WotC have thrown away so many. One is that the CE/SS Hand Crossbow wielder can't fire four times then change weapon or switch to shield, because they lack a free interaction to do it with. They can't haul out a potion of healing and quaff it. If they are falling back, they can't open any doors. I will admit this is all kind of clutching at straws, but then... it is in the existing rules so why not use it?But... but that's precisely what you would do armed with a single hand crossbow
(I believe we agree, my confusion is because you come across as making objections that somehow diminish or invalidate the build choice... Why emphasize this so hard when it isn't a restriction that matters?)
Likewise. Years ago I started finding vanilla monsters insufficiently interesting opponents (to my taste, I'm not knocking the tale of heroes fighting back monstrosities). It gives a DM a lot more tools to counter this sort of malarkey, I can tell you
Agreed with respect to monsters, they're kind of hapless. Against character-class equivalents I find that the choices I can make instead of taking 11 levels of fighter and investing two feats allows that foe to reliably close without in many cases even being hit. Even using vanilla monsters, I believe a diversified party will be overall more successful. One problem for DMs is whether they will hold their optimisers to account? By which I mean, when the four archers reach that door that they simply cannot open or the Duchess that they cannot persuade, do you allow them to go around or do you say - yes, this line of adventure ends here.
clearstream
(He, Him)
The post so nice I posted it twice...
CapnZapp
Legend
Ancalagon
Dusty Dragon
I may argue with some minor points, but overall you are entirely right that ranged combat has been very significantly buffed in 5e.
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