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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Benjamin Olson" data-source="post: 8598808" data-attributes="member: 6988941">My vote would be "yes, but not in a gamebreaking way". Having ranged be the beneficiary of the strongest fighting style (ie: the one with a to hit bonus) is fair enough if you are actually using cover. But between tables that don't really bother with half or three quarters cover (the sin is with the designers for making the +2 and +5 AC bonuses a completely arbitrary thing that requires rote memorization) and having a feat that eliminates partial cover, and having so little use of basic damage resistances that being married to piercing damage isn't a big deal, it does feel a little too strong for the guy who also gets to stay back from the front line, gets the most choice in targets, almost never has to waste a turn getting into position or being stuck somewhere away from targets, and gets to laugh at any enemy who thinks flight will keep them safe.But, in actual gameplay I don't really see it that way. First off there are more abilities that work with melee damage, including some extremely powerful ones like Paladin smites and Barbarian Reckless Attacks. Sure some theoretical Ranged Battlemaster may do better than some theoretical Melee Battlemaster, but if the latter is optimizing with multiclass dips things start looking real different real fast. Secondly it is a lot easier to make a melee character not married to a particular weapon, which increases the likelihood of a melee character having the best possible magic weapon available in actual gameplay. Mileage will vary, of course, based on the DM and the campaign, but if your game ever involves magic weapons that aren't 100% intended for a particular PC the melee character is more often than not going to be better equipped than the ranged character, at least if they let the character develop with the campaign. Meanwhile if you're married to a handcrossbow, sure you'll get that +1 handcrossbow you want fairly early on probably, but you probably can't reasonably expect a lot more incremental upgrade handcrossbows to come your way at most tables.But most importantly, ranged may, once feated up, do more damage than melee, but melee also forms the frontline that makes all that ranged damage possible. I don't like the term "tank" because it evokes a lot of cheesy tactics for gaming MMO AI that don't really apply with most DMs, but you generally need at least one person regularly in melee with the enemy, and another person at least sometimes in melee with the enemy to lock down enemies and keep them from going wherever they want on the battlefield and gobbling up your spellcasters. Doing the most damage is not the only measure of usefulness. I've played ranged fighters and rangers, and sometimes those characters have been the ones consistently doing the most damage, but they've never been a character whom anyone would vote MVP of their party or who otherwise felt particularly powerful or important. Right now I'm playing an Arcane Archer in a campaign where we started at level 8 with our pick of magical items on a healthy budget. Between a +3 bow, bracers of Archery, a 20 dexterity, and the Sharpshooter feat, he can do a flat +20 to damage, and with curving shot can usually turn his misses into hits. So damage-wise he packs a wallop. But the character is basically useless for anything other than doing damage (and the occasional dex-based abilty check). And if I'd known how often our poor Rogue was going to not get set up for sneak attack I'd have played something melee.</blockquote>

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