D&D 5E L&L December 1st design finese. Part 2

[TwoSix]

But you're missing half the point: it's not just for archers, it's for clumsy weapons optimized for striking at a certain distance, like lances or lonspears.

And I'm ok with an attack penalty: you need extra room to pull out your arrow, place it on the bow and draw the string with enough force to release it at a target; or you need room to swivel your spear into position and jab it forward. If your target is too close, you'll have a hard time (not impossible, mind you) to line in a decent shot. All this adds to make the target harder to hit.

An option would be to halve the damage of these weapons when used in a 5-foot range.

The problem with penalties is that they add to DM overhead. Even if you trust your players, there's still that little voice saying "Isn't there some rule I should be looking at...". So the trick would be to start attacks at a lower state, and then let the players tack on bonuses when they fulfill the optimal attack requirements of whatever weapon they're using.

 

[Cyberen]

Quite the contrary, I could see it apply to these weapons, too!

My understanding of the Concentration mechanic is that it is similar to 4e's "sustain" keyword, but doesn't take an action, and if the user takes damage, the effect might end. You can't use two things that need Concentration at the same time, either. I don't have the 5e docs in front of me and it's been a while since I last peeked at them, so I don't know if this reflects the current RAW or not.

So, say, Haste. Cast it and as long as you keep Concentration, your ally is hasted, but if you take damage, the spell might falter (I don't know if there's any check involved to mitigate the falter, but for the sake of a thought experiment, lets go with "no," and say it just ends the spell). Can't use Haste on two people at once.

Anything you need space to use -- anything someone getting up in your face and beating you about the head and shoulders might disrupt -- might use a mechanic something like this:

[COLOR=#FFA07Z]Concentration
Certain weapons and spells take concentration to use, and are more difficult to use if you are under attack and taking damage. If you have taken damage since your last turn, you cannot take actions that require concentration. You can only use one action that requires concentration on your turn. [/COLOR]
​

That's not meant to be a final rule or anything, just a starting point that accomplishes the goal in a simple way (I'm already imagining CON checks to do it anyway). And it's more thought experiment than serious suggestion. But I kind of like the cut of that jib.

You want to use a lance or a longspear? Or a whip? You're going to need time. Balance. Bracing. Aiming. It's not like a sword or an axe that you can just swing and hack with, these are weapons of precision. That's why you get the guy with the shield in front of you, or ride up fast on a horse, or strike from a distance -- if something disrupts your momentum, you're not going to be able to strike with it.

Heck, that's a flexible enough mechanic to apply to a host of things. A rogue ability a la sneak attack ("Ignore me, and I'll stab ye in the kidneys!") or Hide In Plain Sight ("You take your eyes of that halfling for one second....!"). Most forms of winged flight. Magic item use. Wizard spellcasting, but maybe not Sorcerer spellcasting (really gets at the distinction of cautious, academic magic vs. instinctive, natural magic!).

At the very least, having a unified mechanic for this pursues the "elegance" that Mearls & Co. are supposedly enshrining as The Real Goal, in that it eliminates rules, solves a problem on multiple fronts, and reflects how you'd expect the world to work. It's also a lot easier to look up and remember one rule than it is to remember 2-3 sub-rules that all ultimately kind of do the same thing (that is, stop people from taking actions that require some precision when you're in the midst of a drawn-out melee).

Brilliant !
I would be careful with the "if you take damage" condition, though. Either put a damage threshold, a scaling DC tied to damage for the mitigation of the disruption, or include/exclude damage categories from this effect, to avoid some weird interactions with continuous damage, or DoaM, or "morale and luck damage", or whatever.

 

[Gadget]

As for the idea of giving ranged attackers disadvantage in melee, I suppose that's an acceptable compromise, at least from a purely mechanic perspective. I just keep thinking of that scene in the Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring where the fellowship is walking through the woods and suddenly several elves pop out of the trees and have bows pointed at them at point blank range. Should those elves have been 5 feet further away?

yes

Were they stupid to be so close?

yes

On the contrary, it seems to me like having an arrow pointed at someone that's right in front of you would make it pretty hard to miss!

It also makes it pretty hard for the arrow to accelerate to a high velocity as well. It does make it easier to frame a scene for the camera though. Pretty much every depiction of fighting and especially tactics in those movies was pretty borked though.

 

[Balesir]

At the very least, having a unified mechanic for this pursues the "elegance" that Mearls & Co. are supposedly enshrining as The Real Goal, in that it eliminates rules, solves a problem on multiple fronts, and reflects how you'd expect the world to work. It's also a lot easier to look up and remember one rule than it is to remember 2-3 sub-rules that all ultimately kind of do the same thing (that is, stop people from taking actions that require some precision when you're in the midst of a drawn-out melee).

Oh, but you are forgetting "all rules should be local"...

 

[I'm A Banana]

Oh, but you are forgetting "all rules should be local"...

Hahaha, kind of. It's still local to the people who have to worry about stuff that can't be done without concentration. Just happens to be a LOT of those in D&D. Your great-sword-wielding barbarian is just fine, though!

I'm not sure how they reconcile that goal with things like Advantage and HP and ability scores, but I'm just some jerk on the internet, what do I know?

 

[Texicles]

yes...
It also makes it pretty hard for the arrow to accelerate to a high velocity as well.

Agree that the elves in question should have had more space. The reason for this is that the archer's sight picture must travel many more degrees of arc to maintain the same point of aim on a target 5' away, moving around in a 5' square, than that archer's sight picture would have to travel to maintain the same point of aim on a target of increasing distances away, moving around in a 5' square. Because geometry.

Pedantically, I disagree about acceleration. Once an arrow exits the the bow, the only acceleration it experiences is gravity. Though it is worth noting the colloquial "archer's paradox," which refers to a properly spined arrow wobbling in flight to become more stable, and therefor accurate, as opposed to an arrow that remains rigid in flight, which has poor accuracy. Thus, some distance for stabilizing the wobbly flight of a properly tuned arrow benefits accuracy.

As far as melee weapons, I can tell you for a fact that facing a blade-wielding attacker is more dangerous at the end of their reach than well within it. Combatives doctrine bears out the fact that you're better off grappling with a guy who has a knife than you are at the end of his arm. Another example is your buddy trying to snap a wet towel on you in the locker room. Move away, get popped, but charge him and he's lost weapon efficacy. A 10' spear is really no different in principle.


As for the rules, I got the biggest AoO gripe I had covered when they applied it to moving out of reach only. I abhorred AoOs for moving but staying within reach. Beyond that, I wouldn't be opposed to some mechanical means to help simulate weapons that are "unwieldy" up close, as (hopefully some of my above explanations describe) they are a thing, and not some construct of imagined reality.

 

[Falling Icicle]

It also makes it pretty hard for the arrow to accelerate to a high velocity as well. It does make it easier to frame a scene for the camera though. Pretty much every depiction of fighting and especially tactics in those movies was pretty borked though.

I wasn't aware that arrows accelerate in flight. It would seem to me, at least as far as I understand Newton's laws of motion, that an arrow's speed is greatest at the moment it is first shot, and then slows down after that as it encounters air resistance. In space, where there is no air, it would just fly at the same speed forever, or until it hit something or got caught in some gravitational pull. But in no case, ever, would an arrow accelerate in flight unless something pushed it to make it go faster. If someone here is an expert in physics, they can correct me if I'm wrong about that.

You can criticize LotR as cinema, that's fine. But it's not just LotR where shooting people at point blank range comes into play. People in real life hold hostages with guns put right to their head all the time. Should they get disadvantage on their attack roll? It seems to me that being close to a target actually makes it a heck of a lot easier to hit with a ranged weapon, not harder. That doesn't meant that fighting someone with a ranged weapon in melee is a always a good idea, though. But that is because you have nothing to block with, and an opponent has a chance to disarm your weapon, not because shooting people that are 5ft away is hard.

 

[pemerton]

I disagree about acceleration. Once an arrow exits the the bow, the only acceleration it experiences is gravity.

I wasn't aware that arrows accelerate in flight.

<snip>

You can criticize LotR as cinema, that's fine. But it's not just LotR where shooting people at point blank range comes into play. People in real life hold hostages with guns put right to their head all the time.

I think the issue with the bows in LotR is that the elves have their bows drawn with the arrow tips very close to their targets. Therefore, if the bows were released the arrows could not in fact accelerate.

A bow is not like a gun. The bullet from a gun accelerates near-instantaneously as a result of the explosion. By the time it comes out the barrel it is only going to slow down. But an arrow accelerates over a significant distance in space, as the string moves from taut to slack. The arrow will be projecting quite a way beyond the bowshaft by the time it has reached its maximum velocity.

Hence, you have to hold the bow at least far enough away from the target to enable the arrow to accelerate as it moves forward as it is pushed by the string as the tension leaves the string. I'm not sure how many centimetres this would be, because I've only got a rough mental picture of the legnth of a longbow arrow and of the horizontal distance through which a taut bowstring has been pulled, but I'm guessing it's well into the double digits rather than the single digits.

 

[Mistwell]

I wasn't aware that arrows accelerate in flight.

Technically, they do. It's just that the acceleration takes place very close to the point where it is released.

 

[Falling Icicle]

I think the issue with the bows in LotR is that the elves have their bows drawn with the arrow tips very close to their targets. Therefore, if the bows were released the arrows could not in fact accelerate.

A bow is not like a gun. The bullet from a gun accelerates near-instantaneously as a result of the explosion. By the time it comes out the barrel it is only going to slow down. But an arrow accelerates over a significant distance in space, as the string moves from taut to slack. The arrow will be projecting quite a way beyond the bowshaft by the time it has reached its maximum velocity.

Hence, you have to hold the bow at least far enough away from the target to enable the arrow to accelerate as it moves forward as it is pushed by the string as the tension leaves the string. I'm not sure how many centimetres this would be, because I've only got a rough mental picture of the legnth of a longbow arrow and of the horizontal distance through which a taut bowstring has been pulled, but I'm guessing it's well into the double digits rather than the single digits.

Technically, they do. It's just that the acceleration takes place very close to the point where it is released.

Well, yes. If someone were so close to the arrow that it didn't have room to be propelled by the string, then it would be pretty ineffective. But we're talking about just being within 5 ft. of the target, not within a few inches. A bow would obviously be pretty useless in a grapple, but against someone just 5 ft. away I suspect it would be very effective.