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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Majoru Oakheart" data-source="post: 6543119" data-attributes="member: 5143">Ranged weapons in the chart certainly do use Dex modifier to hit and damage.  There's certainly something to be said that maybe the logic was that in order to do sneak attack damage the weapon had to be "precise", which means you are using your Dex mod to hit.  But RAW, you can use a Rapier with your 18 strength, 8 dex rogue and still do sneak attack damage because the weapon is a finesse weapon.The answer from Mike Mearls above implies that the reason they chose ranged weapons and finesse weapons was the easily restrict sneak attacks to low dice damage weapons to prevent people from sneak attacking with 2d6 greatswords and getting huge damage.I guess my major question is that if you asked someone on the street who hadn't read the 5e rules whether they'd consider a thrown axe to be a "Ranged weapon" if they'd say yes(which I imagine the vast majority of people would) then why are they not ranged weapons?  I certainly have not seen a line in the book that says "Thrown Weapons are not ranged weapons".  In fact, the book says that ranged attacks can be made with bows, thrown weapons or even spells.  Now, spells are not weapons so I can see restricting them from sneak attack but there doesn't seem to be a reason to stop people from using thrown weapons to sneak attack.  The only argument I can really see as to why they aren't ranged weapons is that they don't use dex and they don't appear under the "ranged weapons" chart in the equipment section.I know I've already ruled that the Sharpshooter feat can be used with thrown weapons since they seem ranged to me.The problem is when a rules item uses a world that already has an english meaning.  Monte Cook wrote about this in an article a while back.  He said he hated when classes were named things like "Fighter" because then every time you used the word "Fighter" in the book or when running the game, everyone assumed you were referring to the class when you might have just been referring to someone who was fighting.I think the same problem applies here.  There are "Ranged Weapons" which are weapons that use Dex to hit and cannot be used in melee.  Then there are "Ranged Weapons" which are any weapons that are being used at range.  When the book refers to one, it might be referring to either.  The problem is that we can't really know which one they are referring to because they are named the same thing.I'm willing to accept the answer from Mearls means that in this case they meant the latter rather than the former.</blockquote>

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