D&D (2024) How to simply balance ranged weapons.

[Horwath]

Which is in and of itself just means 'can't use ranged weapons' but enforced with violence.

one is,
you can try it with complete incompetence,

other is,
you are competent in the action, but it will cost you. Similar to barbarians reckless attack.

 

[Amrûnril]

Most of these hypothetical scenarios don't apply to the game as it is actually played. In actual games, the two main ranged classes are not considered that great, and you don't really need a ranged specialist in your party, not the way you need a tank, a caster, and a healer. Or if you do, it's not for their ranged attacks but for their scouting abilities. I run plenty of wilderness encounters and long range archery duels just don't happen. Nor do you see many scenarios that favour ranged attacks in published materials, especially when compared to the number of encounters that are built around melee battles.

The reality of encounters in D&D is that they overwhelmingly take place in tight quarters with lots of obstacles available. Long range is seldom a factor for bows/x-bows, and in general you wouldn't want any party members to be that far away from the fight anyway. Hypothetical arguments aside, ranged attacks are not a problem in the game as it is currently designed. Unless you are designing encounters just to favour ranged attackers, in which case, do less of that.



"Absent terrain/visibility restrictions" - okay, so basically never. Parties have outdoor encounters all the time and melee characters do just fine. Excellent, even. No DM ever sets up an encounter where the PC has no choice but to endure 6 rounds of ranged attacks to get into combat. The only way that happens is if the DM is being malicious, or the players are choosing to do something idiotic.

If the DM presented me with a situation where my fighter had to charge for six rounds through wide open terrain in order to reach a ranged attacker, I am going to assume that the message is "find another way." And we would retreat and figure out a plan, look for the secret entrance that is no doubt nearby, use an invisibility spell, circle around to behind the archer, or whatever. If I just Leroy Jenkins it, I deserve what happens.

In internet tier lists, Rogues and Rangers are considered not that great. In actual games, multiple people in this thread have said they find long range attacks to problematic.

The ability to attack for multiple rounds when your adversaries can't is a game-warping advantage. This doesn't require encounters happening in some sort of featureless plain. It just requires a few hundred feet of visibility and for most of the available cover to be partial rather than full. This is a scenario that has plenty of reason to arise naturally unless the DM goes out of their way to prevent it.

 

[Horwath]

In internet tier lists, Rogues and Rangers are considered not that great. In actual games, multiple people in this thread have said they find long range attacks to problematic.

more classes than those two can use ranged weapons.

I would not want to be on receiving end of elven fighter(samurai) with Elven accuracy and Sharpshooter with 3 rounds of unloading Fighting spirit + 1 round of action surge.

The ability to attack for multiple rounds when your adversaries can't is a game-warping advantage. This doesn't require encounters happening in some sort of featureless plain. It just requires a few hundred feet of visibility and for most of the available cover to be partial rather than full. This is a scenario that has plenty of reason to arise naturally unless the DM goes out of their way to prevent it.

players as DMs should avoid open plains if they are not ranged specialist. If they are, then players should seek open plains battles.

 

[UngeheuerLich]

That unarmed attack change feels less like a deliberate upgrade than a convenient side effect they resulted from unfairly offloading the work for supporting the old multiattack needs full round action and anything more than single sttaxj/some soells limits to a 5 ft step onto the shoulders of the gm without actually bringing that back. I don't think that the impact will be as meaningful to making tactical grid combat matter though & think it will just be one more thing on the pile of empty excuses to blame the gm for system level breakdowns.

Please rephrase that. I can't make anything out of that.

 

[GMMichael]

I'm not sure what you're saying here; the encounter that lets bows dominate shouldn't ever be happening in the first place, so it's not a problem that DM's avoid it like the plague? Lol.

That's a...creative interpretation. I was saying that bandits without large shields shouldn't linger around where they get peppered with arrows.

Or what cavalry has to do with a typical D&D encounter, this isn't the same as real battlefield conditions.

D&D has horses, when last I checked.

As for armor...once you get into the later Tier 2 and Tier 3 and enemies have +11 to hit and up, even the heaviest armor stops providing huge benefits in defense over the Dex 20 guy in leather. AC 21? You're hit on a 10, the archer is hit on a 6, so that's 20% less protection; noticeable, but overwhelming. At this point, it becomes all about the hit points, and a melee Fighter doesn't have dramatically more of those than a ranged one.

Once the game gets flooded with hit points, aren't most of the realism (i.e. bows should suck in melee) complaints out the window anyway?

And as far as arrows running out, we are talking about a game where 1 point of Strength lets you carry 15 shots, you're not carrying any single item heavier than your leather armor or bow itself, and you get back half the arrows that miss.

I'm picturing an archer with a quiver hung over each shoulder, and one dangling from each hip. I'd guess it's totally (5e) legal, but as a DM who's allowed to make - what were those called - adjudications, I wouldn't let any one character (archer, bard, what-have-you) get out of control.

 

[Vaalingrade]

D&D has horses, when last I checked.

So does Charleston racetrack, doesn't make it a cavalry.

D&D just chokes and dies when you try to employ military units.

 

[tetrasodium]

Please rephrase that. I can't make anything out of that.

It has to do with a grouping off 3.5 mechanics that had a big impact on tactical grid combat. If you look at 3.5 phb pg141 (tsble 8-2) actions in combat you will see the individual bits. The specific ones are"

• Full attack Full round action that consumed your standard action & move action but allowed a single 5 ft step in addition to your full attack chain.
• Standard attack. A standard action that does not inhibit your movement or move action but you only get one attack no matter how many your BaB might grant.

Combined with movement through a threatened square with more than a 5ft step* it meant that melee (on both sides of the screen )were sticky with a wide impact from their positioning choices. Sure A could completely ignore B to go smash the squishies but doing so meant potentially taking a bunch of AoOs (it wasn't hard to get multiple AoOs & I'm sure there were more ways than that one) and only getting to make a single attack when you got to the soon to flee squishy. 5e got rid of that & made it so AoOs were generally not a meaningful concern in tactical grid combat while a full attack chain could always be taken even with significant movement between each swing.

The unarmed change feels like it's trying to generate that sort of impact on tactical combat choices but it's accomplishing that by dumping responsibility onto the GM to actively maintain an ideal they can't make solid use of rather than supporting the GM with a passive rule or set of rules to handle it automatically. They can't make use of it because if the GM had every monster lock down players all the time it would cause the GM to be called adversarial or something while such a thing is perfectly ok for players.

* Later called "shift" in 4e

 

[UngeheuerLich]

It has to do with a grouping off 3.5 mechanics that had a big impact on tactical grid combat. If you look at 3.5 phb pg141 (tsble 8-2) actions in combat you will see the individual bits. The specific ones are"

• Full attack Full round action that consumed your standard action & move action but allowed a single 5 ft step in addition to your full attack chain.
• Standard attack. A standard action that does not inhibit your movement or move action but you only get one attack no matter how many your BaB might grant.

Combined with movement through a threatened square with more than a 5ft step* it meant that melee (on both sides of the screen )were sticky with a wide impact from their positioning choices. Sure A could completely ignore B to go smash the squishies but doing so meant potentially taking a bunch of AoOs (it wasn't hard to get multiple AoOs & I'm sure there were more ways than that one) and only getting to make a single attack when you got to the soon to flee squishy. 5e got rid of that & made it so AoOs were generally not a meaningful concern in tactical grid combat while a full attack chain could always be taken even with significant movement between each swing.

The unarmed change feels like it's trying to generate that sort of impact on tactical combat choices but it's accomplishing that by dumping responsibility onto the GM to actively maintain an ideal they can't make solid use of rather than supporting the GM with a passive rule or set of rules to handle it automatically. They can't make use of it because if the GM had every monster lock down players all the time it would cause the GM to be called adversarial or something while such a thing is perfectly ok for players.

* Later called "shift" in 4e

Ok. I understood you correctly the first time and hard disagree.

 

[Clint_L]

In internet tier lists, Rogues and Rangers are considered not that great. In actual games, multiple people in this thread have said they find long range attacks to problematic.

The ability to attack for multiple rounds when your adversaries can't is a game-warping advantage. This doesn't require encounters happening in some sort of featureless plain. It just requires a few hundred feet of visibility and for most of the available cover to be partial rather than full. This is a scenario that has plenty of reason to arise naturally unless the DM goes out of their way to prevent it.

Your argument seems to be about ranged weapons in general - like, in real life. Yes, in real life ranged weapons are hugely advantageous, which is why we no longer give soldiers swords. In the game dungeons and dragons, the DM controls the world to create a fantasy scenario in which swords and axes can compete not just with ranged weapons but with all manner of spells, monstrous abilities, etc. That’s why the fundamental issue is how well it works in game.

I take the general consensus of the vast player base quite a lot more seriously than I do a few opinions on this forum, if we are talking about making design changes to OneD&D. Frankly, there are some prominent voices on this forum whose position seems to be “buff melee, fighters specifically, nerf everyone else.” On the other hand, if we are not talking about OneD&D but just changes for people’s home games, then by all means do whatever you want with ranged attacks. Your game is your game!

 

[Amrûnril]

Your argument seems to be about ranged weapons in general - like, in real life. Yes, in real life ranged weapons are hugely advantageous, which is why we no longer give soldiers swords. In the game dungeons and dragons, the DM controls the world to create a fantasy scenario in which swords and axes can compete not just with ranged weapons but with all manner of spells, monstrous abilities, etc. That’s why the fundamental issue is how well it works in game.

I take the general consensus of the vast player base quite a lot more seriously than I do a few opinions on this forum, if we are talking about making design changes to OneD&D. Frankly, there are some prominent voices on this forum whose position seems to be “buff melee, fighters specifically, nerf everyone else.” On the other hand, if we are not talking about OneD&D but just changes for people’s home games, then by all means do whatever you want with ranged attacks. Your game is your game!

We don't send soldiers into battle with swords today. But when the available ranged weapons were bows or renaissance era firearms, people absolutely went into battle with melee weapons. The same is true in the fantasy D&D seeks to emulate (albeit with more swords and fewer polearms). To support that fiction, the DM should work to ensure that melee and ranged weapons are similarly viable options. But if an encounter where the combatants see each other across a quarter mile of open pasture is incompatible with that goal, I'd argue the rules are doing a poor job of supporting the DM.