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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Xetheral" data-source="post: 7233863" data-attributes="member: 6802765">While you have mentioned that "combats can vary wildly", I think the extent of that variation may doom your analytical approach....In addition to variation within a campaign, campaigns themselves can vary wildly, particularly in regards to whether they emphasize <a href="http://www.enworld.org/forum/showthread.php?317715-Very-Long-Combat-as-Sport-vs-Combat-as-War-a-Key-Difference-in-D-amp-D-Play-Styles" target="_blank">combat-as-war or combat-as-sport</a>.In a campaign emphasizing combat-as-sport, encounter distances are usually determined by the DM and (IME) often tend to be relatively short. Here, the extra value of ranged damage is somewhat limited, both by reducing the benefit of extra-long ranges and decreasing the ability of the ranged combatants to avoid melee.In a campaign emphasizing combat-as-war, encounter distances are limited by the environment, but within that constraint are determined either by the aggressors to favor their strengths (in the case of one group attacking another unawares) or by the interaction of two hostile groups each simultaneously manuevering to maximize their own advantages (in the case of two groups aware of each other). When the PCs are on defense the DM may still be choosing the encounter distance (subject to the perceptive abilities of the PCs), but it's a very different calculus than in the combat-as-sport case, where the decision is akin to picking a venue, rather than the result of roleplaying the agressors.Further complicating matters is that this isn't a strict dichotomy... many campaigns are a blend of both styles. The ultimate point is that encounter distances can vary wildly both within and among campaigns, and encounter distance is critical to determining the relative value of ranged damage over melee.If that were the only issue, an analytical approach might still be possible in the combat-as-sport context, where encounter distances tend to be more constrained. Unfortunately there is an additional factor that will create wild differences between campaigns: how does the DM roleplay antagonists in combat? If antagonists tend to individually deal with the most immediate threat to them personally, then melee PCs tend to be "sticky", increasing the value of ranged damage. If instead antagonists tend to optimize their strategy at the group level, then it's more likely that individual antagonists will bypass the melee PCs to attack the ranged PCs, decreasing the value of ranged damage.Given these differences between campaigns, I don't know that a fixed figure (e.g. 30%) can ever be meaningful for analysis, even in the abstract.</blockquote>

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