D&D 5E Evaluating Range versus Damage (SS vs GWM) - putting a price on range

[Mistwell]

If a game is taking place primarily in a dungeon or similar enclosed space (building, set of caverns, the burrowed tunnels of a creature inside the skull of a deceased god floating on the Astral plane, whatever), then I think melee is often more powerful than ranged. However if your game is taking place primarily in the wilderness of similar open space, then I think ranged is often more powerful than melee.

I find quite often the power of melee isn't the damage it deals, though that is certainly relevant. It's the standing next to foes, drawing their attention, and focusing their fire on you (with your higher AC and higher HPs) rather than on the squishier members of your party (with lower ACs and lower HPs). And despite that being an extremely common tactic which was so prominent it even got a name for it in at least one prior edition of the game, it's a harder element to place a number on it to assign some value to it. So, it often gets left out of mathematical analysis.

It's not that D&D analysis is unique in this respect. Sports analysis often suffers from this same problem. For example, the value of a player in the NBA who constantly is clogging the open lanes while they are on defense is extremely high but also extremely difficult to assign a value to that tactic. They might be the best player on the court that night, but because they're neither making a basket nor passing a ball nor stealing a ball nor rebounding a ball nor ever really touching the ball, it's often left out of common analytics. Nevertheless everyone who knows anything about the sport knows it's very valuable, and will try to come up with some sort of way of measuring it (like figuring out if the other team is scoring fewer points while that player is out on the court - a very imprecise measurement but at least it's something).

Bottom line - melee combatants getting in the face of foes and drawing their fire is often a very valuable but difficult to measure quality of melee combat. At least, in dungeon-like environments it is.

 

[guachi]

I'm not certain how, in the in-game fiction, you'd know someone had the Sentinel feat until you used it.

It appears, by the wording of the Sentinel feat, that you and the ally you are protecting can't both have this feat and trigger Sentinel.

When a creature within melee range of you makes an attack against a target other than you (and that target doesn’t have this feat), you can use your reaction to make a melee weapon attack against the attacking creature.

The first use of "target" is your buddy and the second use of "target" also appears to be referring to your buddy. So, strangely, you can't protect your Sentinel-using allies with Sentinel. Thus, you can't stop the DM ganging up on you using Sentinel by having your ally also take Sentinel.

But if the DM is going to do such shenanigans like having telepathic enemies that know you have Sentinel, then you have to come up with other things to do to reduce the likelihood you are attacked like cast mirror image or blur. Or be a Battle Master/Rogue and take Riposte to make them pay no matter whom they attack. Or, like I said earlier, use a whip so you can Sentinel at 10 feet and stand behind your buddies. Or stand at the end of a 3-person battle line and your whip to Sentinel a foe 10 feet from you that can't reach you (unless he has 10 foot reach as well)

That being said, I have no good in-game evidence for how often people get to use Sentinel. But if I had a party member with aSentinel that averaged 12.60 per attack, I'd work hard to get him to use it. It's a resource-less ability.

 

[ro]

I'm trying to compare those Champion 11 builds, and this is what I've got against AC 17 with hand crossbows for crossbow experts and heavy crossbows for other ranged, greatsword for melee:

Melee: GWF+GWM+Str+Str = 31.9 DPR
Ranged: Arch+SS+Dex+Dex = 28.4 DPR
Ranged: Arch+SS+Dex+XbE = 28.6 DPR
Ranged: Arch+SS(Max 1 per round)+Dex+Dex = 24.9 DPR
Ranged: Arch+SS(Max 1 per round)+Dex+XbE = 22.4 DPR

Taking SS down to only once per round makes XbE a notably worse choice than an ASI. At this level, normal SS make XbE vs. ASI a wash. Melee does 12% more damage than ranged under RAW and 28% to 42% more with a once per round limitation.

 

[clearstream]

damage on your turn breaks down like this:
Weapon:15.40
GFB Primary target: 6.30
GFB Secondary target: 6.95
Sneak Attack: 6.62

Okay so I get the following against AC 17, +9 to attack

Rapier attack (made with GFB cast) = 7.7
Sneak Attack (90% of the time) = 8.2
GFB to target = 5.9
GFB bounce (50% of the time) = 3.3
= average ~25 damage in your turn

Out of your turn, a third of the time
Rapier = 7.7
Sneak Attack (95% of the time) = 9.1
= average ~6 damage out of your turn

= about ~31 damage compared with about ~36 damage from PHB SS/CEx from 120' away

 

[CapnZapp]

If a game is taking place primarily in a dungeon or similar enclosed space (building, set of caverns, the burrowed tunnels of a creature inside the skull of a deceased god floating on the Astral plane, whatever), then I think melee is often more powerful than ranged. However if your game is taking place primarily in the wilderness of similar open space, then I think ranged is often more powerful than melee.

I find quite often the power of melee isn't the damage it deals, though that is certainly relevant. It's the standing next to foes, drawing their attention, and focusing their fire on you (with your higher AC and higher HPs) rather than on the squishier members of your party (with lower ACs and lower HPs). And despite that being an extremely common tactic which was so prominent it even got a name for it in at least one prior edition of the game, it's a harder element to place a number on it to assign some value to it. So, it often gets left out of mathematical analysis.

It's not that D&D analysis is unique in this respect. Sports analysis often suffers from this same problem. For example, the value of a player in the NBA who constantly is clogging the open lanes while they are on defense is extremely high but also extremely difficult to assign a value to that tactic. They might be the best player on the court that night, but because they're neither making a basket nor passing a ball nor stealing a ball nor rebounding a ball nor ever really touching the ball, it's often left out of common analytics. Nevertheless everyone who knows anything about the sport knows it's very valuable, and will try to come up with some sort of way of measuring it (like figuring out if the other team is scoring fewer points while that player is out on the court - a very imprecise measurement but at least it's something).

Bottom line - melee combatants getting in the face of foes and drawing their fire is often a very valuable but difficult to measure quality of melee combat. At least, in dungeon-like environments it is.

I'm not sure how to respond. You're just making things up. The real "power of melee" is that people like playing melee heroes. It's a cornerstone of fantasy, manly striding into combat using brave man to man tactics, instead of cowardly or sneaky ranged shots. Everything in fantasy rpg combat revolves around making the melee hero viable, because in real-life he sure ain't (remember, adventurers comprise small-scale skirmishes, and any battlefield comparisons are off). Starting with the very concept of hit points in itself (the idea that you remain perfectly capable as long as you're not dead, greatly diminishing the value of striking first)

I don't see anything that makes a comparison to american sports relevant. If D&D had had an aggro mechanism, something that would give the player some control over monster behavior, and this being much better for melee builds, I could have seen it. But you're just making up this "power of melee". It might be there in basket, I wouldn't know, I know next to nothing about sports. But if I'm not mistaken, basket players aren't allowed to cast Spike Growth or Wall of Fire, so interfering with the opposing team's tactics is much better handled with battlefield control spells in D&D than actually being there yourself.

Other than that, you should try playing a party which denies the monsters their melee attacks sometimes. It's real easy: just stay out of their reach. Of course, it helps if you don't only do dungeon bashes where you never spot monsters more than 30 ft away, and where the DM actively prevents you from scouting ahead. You should find that this considerably reduces the threat of perhaps 90% of Monster Manual entries. If monsters are reduced by, say, a third, that amounts to the party being boosted 50%, and no melee build can match a party-wide +50% buff.

Even if ranged fire was only half as damaging as melee, the advantage would still go to range, considering how much easier it is for a party to focus ranged fire (remember how hp makes a monster just as effective at 1 hp?) than melee fire.

TL;DR: There is no "power of melee", only "power of ranged".

5th edition forgot that the dominance of melee, a staple of the fantasy genre, only exists as long as the game enforces it.

 

[GameOgre]

Huh? Why is there no sneak possibility? There are a few neat ways to get it from range. Hide and fire. Hide and fire and have Skulker. Have Superior Darkvision and fire in darkness from outside their torchlight or Darkvision range.

I must misunderstand what you mean?

He was just listing the damage if you didn't have sneak attack.

That said sneak attacked is by no means as easy as it is for melee.

While you can indeed use Hide to get it at range it is not always easy to do so. Most DM's don't let players use hide as some sort of mmo hide button. You can't hide if you are being observed. In the last four games I played in even breaking line of sight and hiding by itself wasn't good enough. It took effort and time(time spent doing no damage).

Frankly it was just a pain in my arse if I was solo. Lucky for me I always fought with my party or at least my best budd the Barbarian and so just about sneak attacked every round.

It was still not as good as melee though because of the whole sneak attack on Attacks of opportunity thing.

So for the most part I melee.

*Have Superior Darkvision and fire in darkness from outside their torchlight or Darkvision range.* I'm halfling so..don't even have Darkvision. Would be nice to have a set of those goggles but so far no luck.

 

[ro]

You can't hide if you are being observed. In the last four games I played in even breaking line of sight and hiding by itself wasn't good enough. It took effort and time(time spent doing no damage).

Frankly it was just a pain in my arse if I was solo. Lucky for me I always fought with my party or at least my best budd the Barbarian and so just about sneak attacked every round.

I feel like Hiding just by ducking out of line of sight for a second seems weird, but maybe it could be done with a successful contested check: the observer's perception vs. the hider's stealth (with advantage for the hider if the observer is being attacked/distracted in any way).

 

[guachi]

Huh? Why is there no sneak possibility? There are a few neat ways to get it from range. Hide and fire. Hide and fire and have Skulker. Have Superior Darkvision and fire in darkness from outside their torchlight or Darkvision range.

I must misunderstand what you mean?

If you're a melee character, you want to get into melee as fast as possible. Hiding and firing as an EK/Rogue means you have a move of 30 (for standard movement rates). If you're our EK/rogue you can dash with your Cunning Action and move 60. I'd rather move 60 and get into melee faster. So there may be no sneak attack because you've intentionally chosen not to hide.

 

[Tony Vargas]

The real "power of melee" is that people like playing melee heroes. It's a cornerstone of fantasy, manly striding into combat using brave man to man tactics, instead of cowardly or sneaky ranged shots.

So, what's the 'power' of that? It's a display of courage, an ability to stand up to danger that most cannot. The hero gets others to rally around him and fight on. The hero draws the ire of the greatest enemies. The hero breaks the morale or coordination of the enemy.

If D&D had had an aggro mechanism, something that would give the player some control over monster behavior, and this being much better for melee builds, I could have seen it. But you're just making up this "power of melee".

Other editions have had more of it. Combat Reflexes + Reach in 3e, or Combat Challenge/Superiority in 4e.

5th edition forgot that the dominance of melee, a staple of the fantasy genre, only exists as long as the game enforces it.

Or it just isn't going for that...

 

[GameOgre]

I feel like Hiding just by ducking out of line of sight for a second seems weird, but maybe it could be done with a successful contested check: the observer's perception vs. the hider's stealth (with advantage for the hider if the observer is being attacked/distracted in any way).

I argued the same thing and thought I had one. Then the next fight the half orc barbarian/rogues we were fighting used the tactic against us with devastating results. They used movement to place a large tree between us and hide and then crit sneak attacked us. It was indeed kinda stupid so we just gave up and agreed that it shouldn't be that way.

It's easy enough to get sneak attack damage anyway so.....yeah whatever.

BTW that is when I discovered half orc rogues were the BOMB!