D&D 5E Range/Move Redux

[Corwin]

No one said anything about avoiding fighting. The scout is the spotter so the enemies don't get close. Once he spots enemies he lets the archers know and they keep their distance and lines of sight open. If the scout gets ambushed then hes fast enough to outrun the enemies...

I didn't realize tactics and logical behavior was limited to player characters. I generally allow my NPCs a modicum of common sense. I seldom just have them frantically spinning around in circles, while arrows fly at them from far away, waiting for sweet death.

 

[Corwin]

Again, an assumption that used to be true but no longer is: the assumption that just because you build a ranged character you can't be a meatshield.

Given that you use feats, and enjoy exploiting them no less, I find this statement confusing. Its like you intentionally ignored the other builds' benefits while congratulating ranged specialists' build benefits using the same resource investments.

 

[FrogReaver]

Okay, the topic is kinda about "fixing" melee versus range. That's great, but the set-up for that discussion was preceded by a topic that wholly distracted me and prompted an initial response.
You buried the lead.

Okay, ranged versus melee.
This isn't a 5e issue. Archers are really strong in both 3e/PF and 4e. The ranger was the king of damage in 4e. (And likely earlier, with 2e, but my memories of strong tactics in that game are far, far fuzzier.)
The ability to attack at a distance and let the enemy approach you is always going to be stronger than potentially spending a turn or two getting into range. Being able to attack first and reduce the number of combatants is always going to be a winning strategy.
This has come up in the very similar thread about combatants running off the battlemap.


How do you fix this?


Dropping archer AC or the ability to negate the firing in melee penalty aren't fixes. Because if the archer is even in melee they've failed. Negating the bonus to damage doesn't help either, because the strongest part of Sharpshooter is negating cover and the range penalty.

Reducing range weapon damage one dice step is a possibility. As would reducing ranged weapon ranges across the board. Make long distance accuracy tricky.
Bringing back the Charge action as a default action and adding bonus damage would encourage people to rush into melee.

I think you are right and the problem is the ranges. 300ft means the average enemy will take 5/6 turns to get to the archer. In a game where 4/5 turns is all the fights usually last that's a problem. If the archer is in the position to kite back as he fires then that 5/6 turns becomes 10-12 turns.

Even an archer 100ft away will cause an average monster to use 2 of its 4 turns just to get beside him (still not attacking him yet). If he kites back 30ft the monster will take 3 turns to get beside him but will be able to attack him on its 3rd turn.

When fights last 4 or 5 rounds having the archer be half the fight away is to much. (and that's just at 100ft away).

The world I envision is one where the archer typically has 1 turn to fire before monsters are upon him. And they attack him the second round. I don't think 5e rules allow this to happen and I think it would be very hard to get them to allow this to happen. I also think it needs to be easier to switch from a bow to a melee weapon.

The issue is that in 5e terms there is no range where an archer can be gotten to and attack on turn 2 that he could not be reached on turn 1. At least when considering enemies with movement equal to his.

Start him 60 ft away and the enemy wins initative its on top him. Start him 65 ft away and the archer wins initiative and shots then kits back 30 ft he's now 95 ft away. The enemy runs towards him 60ft. 35 ft away. The archer shoots and kites back again and is 65 ft away. The enemy still can't reach him and its been 2 full turns...

Similarly if they are 65 ft away and the enemy wins iniative then the enemy can get just outside melee range. The archer then moves back 30 ft and shoots. The enemy then runs up beside the archer and does nothing. In other words there's no point that the archer is guaranteed to get 1 shot off but is likewise guaranteed to still be hit on the 2nd turn. It can happen depending on initiative.

Maybe we just need archers to not be able to move and shoot and have shorter max ranges. Nothing over 150 ft. Maybe nothing over 90 ft.

 

[FrogReaver]

I didn't realize tactics and logical behavior was limited to player characters. I generally allow my NPCs a modicum of common sense. I seldom just have them frantically spinning around in circles, while arrows fly at them from far away, waiting for sweet death.

Hey Bob I'm going to hide behind this tree here. They can't shoot through trees. Sounds good i'll hide behind the one besides you. All the while the archers are continuing their cautious approach and fanning out so they can flank the trees from up to 300ft away. (That's like 5 rounds of movement to even get to a non kiting long bow archer). The archers flank and the enemies either stand still and get shot to death by the flanking archers or they break their cover and open themselves up to being shot by all the archers. Yea.... they can use tactics I guess.....

 

[Corwin]

Hey Bob I'm going to hide behind this tree here. They can't shoot through trees. Sounds good i'll hide behind the one besides you. All the while the archers are continuing their cautious approach and fanning out so they can flank the trees from up to 300ft away. (That's like 5 rounds of movement to even get to a non kiting long bow archer). The archers flank and the enemies either stand still and get shot to death by the flanking archers or they break their cover and open themselves up to being shot by all the archers. Yea.... they can use tactics I guess.....

Well, at least you included two trees in the middle of your infinite white-room. That was an unexpected plus.

 

[Jester David]

I think you are right and the problem is the ranges. 300ft means the average enemy will take 5/6 turns to get to the archer. In a game where 4/5 turns is all the fights usually last that's a problem. If the archer is in the position to kite back as he fires then that 5/6 turns becomes 10-12 turns.

Even an archer 100ft away will cause an average monster to use 2 of its 4 turns just to get beside him (still not attacking him yet). If he kites back 30ft the monster will take 3 turns to get beside him but will be able to attack him on its 3rd turn.

When fights last 4 or 5 rounds having the archer be half the fight away is to much. (and that's just at 100ft away).

The world I envision is one where the archer typically has 1 turn to fire before monsters are upon him. And they attack him the second round. I don't think 5e rules allow this to happen and I think it would be very hard to get them to allow this to happen. I also think it needs to be easier to switch from a bow to a melee weapon.

The issue is that in 5e terms there is no range where an archer can be gotten to and attack on turn 2 that he could not be reached on turn 1. At least when considering enemies with movement equal to his.

Start him 60 ft away and the enemy wins initative its on top him. Start him 65 ft away and the archer wins initiative and shots then kits back 30 ft he's now 95 ft away. The enemy runs towards him 60ft. 35 ft away. The archer shoots and kites back again and is 65 ft away. The enemy still can't reach him and its been 2 full turns...

Similarly if they are 65 ft away and the enemy wins iniative then the enemy can get just outside melee range. The archer then moves back 30 ft and shoots. The enemy then runs up beside the archer and does nothing. In other words there's no point that the archer is guaranteed to get 1 shot off but is likewise guaranteed to still be hit on the 2nd turn. It can happen depending on initiative.

Maybe we just need archers to not be able to move and shoot and have shorter max ranges. Nothing over 150 ft. Maybe nothing over 90 ft.

4e tried this, limiting longbows to 20/40 (or 100 to 200 feet). The problem was, historically English longbows could easily hit 100 to 200 yards, so it was a pretty hefty reduction of "realism" for the sake of game balance and making other tropes viable. It was nerfing Legolas so Gimli would be "balanced".

Adding an "aim" action might be one way to have balance. Slashing bow range when firing-on-the-run.
So you can make a snapshot at a close target at point blank range (within 60 feet) and then move. But if the target is farther away you need to stop an aim, which prevents movement (let's say within 200 feet). And any farther away and aiming is an action, as the arrow takes time to fly and you need to adjust for their movement during that time.

(Switching from bow to melee is easy, as you can hold the bow in one hand, and then draw a sword as your object interaction. Switching from melee to bow is harder as you need to drop that weapon.)

 

[Cap'n Kobold]

Any character with great mobility (speed of 40 or 50 ft or more) needs to be considerably more fragile than the slower counterpart.

Including melee characters? Once they're toe-to-toe, that extra move isn't going to stop them getting hit.

Any character with great range (more than 30 ft, definitely) needs to be considerably more fragile or at the very least severely disadvantaged in melee.

You might want to clarify this. I can't off the top of my head think of a single player character, even a melee-focused one, who didn't have a range option better than 30ft once they had opportunity to pick one up. Even if it was just a dagger or javelin or two.
Even outside of a game with my houserule allowing either Dex or Str to be used with bows, many melee-focused fighter-types carried longbows.

Now, I hear you saying "but the game DOES give tanky shield fighters the highest AC in the game". Problem is, even ranged fighters get enough AC.

5th edition is sufficiently easy that you never need that extra boost of AC. Once you have AC 18, you're fine. Getting to AC 21 already at low levels is overkill.

On the contrary, due to the bounded accuracy, increasing your AC from 18 to 21 very significantly reduces incoming physical damage. More than the step from 15 to 18 AC will for example.

Not to mention counter-productive. After all, there aren't any real "stickiness" to D&D tanks, no aggro mechanism for instance. So if one of the heroes sport an almost-impossible AC 21 maybe the monsters simply attack somebody else..., especially if AC guy is slow and immobile? Which would be completely opposite why the fighter put on his armor in the first place!

I would imagine that most fighters put on their armour in the hope that it would stop them getting hit. If its working, its not the opposite reason.
While they only get one attack of opportunity a round, few monsters intelligent enough to recognise their chances of hitting the heavily-armoured character want to be the one to provoke it. The situation however, also can contribute to this. If the DM runs a lot of encounters in open plains rather than cave systems, buildings, forests or urban areas for example, the setting can affect the most common tactics adopted by both sides.

Let me say straight away I won't argue for a return to the days of 20 ft Speed in heavy armor. I fully understand why that was scrapped - it IS overly frustrating to have no less than 50% less speed than the "norm".

What is the "norm" and how was it determined?

Based on my observation that none of the Fighters go Strength and Heavy Armor (precisely because Dex + mobility + range is so superior), we probably need to take down Light armor a notch but perhaps not Medium, since we've already concluded a min-maxer will choose either light or heavy: going "in-between" never leads to optimal results, and medium armor is probably only optimal for the Barbarian and that's a special case.

Where was that observation made, and what was the sample size? IIRC a single run of OotA is probably a bad sample set because the situation and environment encourage stealth and make it quite hard to obtain heavy armour.

a) remove Studded Leather entirely

I support this.

I would love to increase Shields to +3 or even +4 to properly compensate for the loss of versatility (no two-handed weapons like greatsword or bow)

I'd certainly support this idea from a realism standpoint.

Based on my observation that none of the Fighters go Strength and Heavy Armor (precisely because Dex + mobility + range is so superior),

I don't disagree. I am well aware not everyone makes characters based on optimisation reasons.

But that's not the topic here

No, but it seems to be a claim that you have made.

 

[FrogReaver]

Well, at least you included two trees in the middle of your infinite white-room. That was an unexpected plus.

Oh please. White room LOL. Outside of tight caves and tight dungeons and some castles/keeps there is almost no tactical or logical behavior that NPC's can use against a group of long range archers.

Yes there are environments where long range doesn't play as big of a role. But saying NPC's can still challenge the group of archers with tactics is funny. The only challenge the archers will have are very fast enemies and very tight spaces.

Even then that means it only takes maybe 1-2 to function as a tank and block the hallway while the other archers shoot whatever is being blocked...

 

[Corwin]

Oh please. White room LOL. Outside of tight caves and tight dungeons and some castles/keeps there is almost no tactical or logical behavior that NPC's can use against a group of long range archers.

Other than, as I responded initially to your theory, going the other way? You know, leave?

 

[FrogReaver]

Other than, as I responded initially to your theory, going the other way? You know, leave?

Maybe when you get around to telling us about some of those marvelous NPC tactics for dealing with long range archers.....