Is Ranged really better than Melee?

[cmad1977]

/facepalm.
No it isnt

 

[WaterRabbit]

I mean this is all displayed in the real world were when guns became able to punch through armor, melee became a back up fighting style,

Guns appeared due to ease of training. A couple of months versus decades for a longbowman. Also did not have the disadvantages of a crossbow as seen at Crecy. And guns were not able to "punch through armor" until well past the disuse of melee weapons.

and when we gained the ability to fire more than once without reloading it all but vanished with the exception of stealth... then we made silencers, making range preferred all around unless your trying to save precious ammo.

Someone has watched too many Hollywood depictions of silencers. A silencer does not make a firearm silent. In general they reduce the noise such that you can fire one without hearing protection and risking damage to the ears. Basically a drop from about 160 decibels to 120 decibels -- still louder than a barking dog. Even a suppressed .20 caliber weapon is still above 100 decibels.

 

[WaterRabbit]

What I find odd about this discussion is that it seems to discount magic and monster abilities. Both of these have a profound affect regarding range vs. melee.

As a DM, I work to make sure that ranged attackers are not invincible by using flying creatures and spellcasters frequently enough that the party needs to be well rounded. Flying creatures prioritize ranged attackers over melee since only ranged can hurt them. Once ranged attackers are down, fliers can just drop big rocks if they want.

Also non-corporeal undead can really affect ranged attackers as well. Frankly as a DM, I find it trivial to threaten ranged characters if that were my sole objective. But as a DM you want every player's build to shine and every player's build to be challenged over time to prevent players from having rote combat.

It is far better for a party to have a balance of the different combat roles when possible. Especially since spells like Wind Wall can completely shutdown an archer. Warding Wind is another spell that makes live difficult on an archer. Monk with Deflect Missiles can also be a problem. In fact, the role of a monk is specifically to kill ranged attackers.

Finally, GWF+GWM deals so much more damage than Archery + SS in Tiers 3 & 4, there is no comparison. SS is a requirement for Archery to be even competitive with GWF in Tier 2, much less GWM.

What I will say is that 5e did make an archery build viable compared with 3e in which archery was a fairly mediocre choice.

 

[Leatherhead]

No it doesn't.

It's time to reread the cover rules!

Walls, trees, creatures, and other obstacles can provide cover during combat, making a target more difficult to harm. A target can benefit from cover only when an attack or other effect originates on the opposite side of the cover.

There are three degrees of cover. If a target is behind multiple sources of cover, only the most protective degree of cover applies; the degrees aren't added together. For example, if a target is behind a creature that gives half cover and a tree trunk that gives three-quarters cover, the target has three-quarters cover.

Note the glaring omission of a "ranged attacks only" clause. The only requirement for cover to work, is that the attack starts on the other side of something else. There are two easy to imagine scenarios where this would happen for a melee character:

1. Someone flips a table on it's side, and you have to attack around it. Tables aren't 5' thick, so they don't take up a full square when on their side, allowing someone to bring the pain over the top of it, albeit at a penalty.
2. Someone is using a reach weapon and attacking to/from the second row of combat. Trying to maneuver a glaive around one moving body to hit the target behind it is more difficult than attacking something right in front of you.

GWM works with PAM, and 1d10 PAM/GWM builds outperform 2d6 GWM builds in the same fashion that 1d6 SS/XBE outperforms 1d8 SS.

Comparing hand crossbow SS/XBE to solely GWM is fraudulent. You must compare it apples to apples with glaive/halberd GWM/PAM.

Context is important: 77IM was asking how a Ranged Damage build could do comparable or better damage to a player using a greatsword and GWM.

But if anyone is interested, comparing just SS+CBE VS GWM+PAM is 55.5 VS 58.5. (assuming two attacks, and ignoring accuracy)

Most DMs are awfully reluctant to throw around either magical hand crossbows or magical ammunition, let alone both.

I know I am! And that's because Ranged builds get out of control if you do.

 

[Satyrn]

Part of the challenge of the dungeon scenario in my view is the balance between what you carry in and what you carry out. To that end, Strength really matters, enough to see a shift in ranged to melee characters. And any solutions the players come up with to mitigate encumbrance are always quite creative and come with trade-offs (needing to protect hirelings holding their stuff, for example) and that's something I really like to have in my games.

That carry-in/carry-out decision is proving to be quite fun in my megadungeon. I'm most happy with the result of my rule tying food and water consumption directly to rests. Like, If the player can't tick off a ration he can't tick off any hit dice, either.

 

[Mistwell]

I find ranged attacking is overrated.

First, let's assume you're using published adventures. Not everyone does of course, but it's one objective baseline to draw from, and we don't have sufficient data on homebrew campaigns to draw any objective data. That said:

1) Published adventures on average tend to emphasize dungeons, and in particular dungeons which do not offer the ability for everyone to stay outside of 30' from foes for very long without running into another room which is also occupied by foes.
2) Published adventures on average tend to emphasize magic weapons which are melee weapons, and in particular longswords. They also tend to have magic shields to be found in treasure. As the baseline of the game is that magic stores do not exist, the ability to use magic items you find is extremely helpful.
3) Given the commonality of dungeon settings, and the commonality that someone in the party will be melee and often several someones, cover comes into play. A target with half cover has a +2 bonus to AC and Dexterity saving throws, and those targets gain that half cover by being next to a creature, even if the creature is a friend.
4) Given the commonality of magical longswords and shields in published adventures, this tends to result in more frequent sword and board melee fighters. Which tends to lead to the Shield Mastery feat being used to knock foes down so that other melee combatants gain advantage against the foe and the foe cannot move as well...which also gives disadvantage to the ranged combatants.
5) Melee fighters tend to have better AC, since they can use plate armor and shield. AC will come into play regardless of your strategy - you will be attacked at some point, and your AC will be a target DC for the attack, and having higher AC will come into play in your game.

The overall effect I find to be, in practice, ranged attacking is at a slight disadvantage to melee attacking. And I emphasize in practice. I know in theory, with white room planning, ranged looks better on paper. But after years of experience in many games involving published adventures, I find in actual practice melee comes out slightly ahead.

 

[UngeheuerLich]

Anecdotes, data, plural, etc., but last night we were fighting purple worms and my Gloomstalker archer pretty much won the fights while the melee acted like meat shields for him. The +2 from fighting style is huge.

A few things I would do to fix ranged
1. You should draw attacks of opportunity if you try to shoot an arrow within reach of an enemy
2. Ranged sneak attack should only be possible with Surprise or at very close range. Getting sneak attack from 100' against a medium sized target engaged in a sword fight with your ally is...ridiculous.
3. In general, ranged penalties should kick in at shorter ranges.

None of which would have reduced my ranger's effectiveness last night, of course.

We introduced point blank range at 30 feet*. That alone was enough to balance melee and range and also helped the player likewise against enemy focus fire.

*if you are more than 30ft away, you don´t benefit from attribute bonus to damage or sneak attack.

 

[BookBarbarian]

I find ranged attacking is overrated.

First, let's assume you're using published adventures. Not everyone does of course, but it's one objective baseline to draw from, and we don't have sufficient data on homebrew campaigns to draw any objective data. That said:

1) Published adventures on average tend to emphasize dungeons, and in particular dungeons which do not offer the ability for everyone to stay outside of 30' from foes for very long without running into another room which is also occupied by foes.
2) Published adventures on average tend to emphasize magic weapons which are melee weapons, and in particular longswords. They also tend to have magic shields to be found in treasure. As the baseline of the game is that magic stores do not exist, the ability to use magic items you find is extremely helpful.
3) Given the commonality of dungeon settings, and the commonality that someone in the party will be melee and often several someones, cover comes into play. A target with half cover has a +2 bonus to AC and Dexterity saving throws, and those targets gain that half cover by being next to a creature, even if the creature is a friend.
4) Given the commonality of magical longswords and shields in published adventures, this tends to result in more frequent sword and board melee fighters. Which tends to lead to the Shield Mastery feat being used to knock foes down so that other melee combatants gain advantage against the foe and the foe cannot move as well...which also gives disadvantage to the ranged combatants.
5) Melee fighters tend to have better AC, since they can use plate armor and shield. AC will come into play regardless of your strategy - you will be attacked at some point, and your AC will be a target DC for the attack, and having higher AC will come into play in your game.

The overall effect I find to be, in practice, ranged attacking is at a slight disadvantage to melee attacking. And I emphasize in practice. I know in theory, with white room planning, ranged looks better on paper. But after years of experience in many games involving published adventures, I find in actual practice melee comes out slightly ahead.

So far in SKT I've only had one combat were I could reach a bad guy in the first turn of combat without dashing. Even on my Zealot Barbarian, 9/10 combats have started with me hurling a Javelin, about 7/10 have needed with me hurling a javelin at the last guy I couldn't get to in one round either.

Tonight's session I'm buying a Longbow for my Barbarian, because there are just too many circumstances were I can't reach foes, even with Javelin range even in this Published adventure.

Still I took GWM at level 4, as I said. I'd rather wreck face than be optimally effective.

 

[ClaytonCross]

Guns appeared due to ease of training. A couple of months versus decades for a longbowman. Also did not have the disadvantages of a crossbow as seen at Crecy. And guns were not able to "punch through armor" until well past the disuse of melee weapons.

First if you shoot someone in chain mail it will absolutely pierce it. Don't believe me? Do any research into why plate armor died out and they all say the same thing. Plate armor able to stop arched shots at range and effective against swords was not sufficient to stop firearms so the had to improve the armor to protect against firearms but that also made it more expensive. So they striped arms and legs to make it cheaper and lighter in favor or mobility over stopping penetration. That practice continues today in modern military with the armor plated flack vest and Kevlar helmet.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plate_armour#Early_Modern_period

Someone has watched too many Hollywood depictions of silencers. A silencer does not make a firearm silent. In general they reduce the noise such that you can fire one without hearing protection and risking damage to the ears. Basically a drop from about 160 decibels to 120 decibels -- still louder than a barking dog. Even a suppressed .20 caliber weapon is still above 100 decibels.

Ok... I am from the south... I know people with the silencer legally (I am not a licensed gun owner) and we have gone to the range where I have stood beside them while firing. … They are in fact quite enough to provide a level of stealth when you are at range. Sure standing beside the gun you hear it but you don't generally use a ranged weapon for melee combat so range is to be expected and if your not listening for a silencer and its being fired at 200 ft from a target and your not seeing the flash your in trouble. Because the military DOES use silencers for cover missions and its not for hearing protection.

Here is a good article of use in stealth missions:
https://www.shootingillustrated.com/articles/2010/10/26/the-truth-about-suppressors/

And another one where the point out that making no sound is not required to be useful for as a stealth weapon. The implication being that in combat, a noise decoy typically of a deliberately loud assault from the front without silencers is used to cover the more quite silenced weapons in flanking positions picking off enemies from behind their cover without alerting combatants to their location. Having weapons that are half as loud means that they are easily down out and enemies are picked off without know where the real threat is.

https://www.militarytimes.com/news/...-suppressors-will-change-battlefield-tactics/

So despite your condescending personal attack... the use of silencers in actual combat as a stealth weapon is 100% a real thing. Your applying your "everyone thinks silencers are silent but they are not" rant to me but that was not what I said...What I was saying is that we made silencers and stopped using melee attacks as our go to for stealth because we could then fire at ranged with enough sound reduction to within the weapons effective range of fire and attack targets without giving away our position (so stealth) and still be with in effective charge range to close on objectives before further defenses hear and respond. Special forces don't use silencers for their target... the bullets are for that, they use them because with out the silencer the patrol on the other end of compound also know they are their and where they are at. Your talking about it like stealth is only complete invisibly, but stealth is broader than that, even reducing presence, hiding your position, and reducing awareness of presence are forms of stealth. We simply changed how stealth is done when switching to guns because you don't have to get in and out without anyone knowing you were there, you just have to get in and out before they can figure out where you are... were.

 

[Yardiff]

There wouldn't be a debate if it wasn't for the 5e feature that I dislike the most. Dex bonus to damage.

Just my opinion.