D&D 5E Ranged attacks and disadvantage in melee

[Mannahnin]

News flash: if you're using a sword instead of a bow, your opponent is trying to bat that away, too.

They are categorically different. As is apparent to anyone who's wielded them or watched people do so. ¯\(ツ)/¯

So what is OP to do? Auburn2's ruling #2 is pretty legitimate; someone with no eyes clearly can't see his opponent, so the disadvantage rule is not satisfied. Blindsight doesn't count; "perceiving" is not seeing. Further, the first example of a blindsight user is an ooze, and I'm pretty sure that an ooze isn't batting your bow away while you're trying to shoot it. Nor is it dodging your aim.

Someone with no eyes clearly can't see, but someone with the game ability "Blindsight" can "see" for combative purposes.

I concur that if you want to be more heavily simulationist than 5E assumes, you could certainly say that slow-moving Oozes don't threaten the area around them the way other creatures do, and thus perhaps rule that they don't impose disadvantage on Ranged attackers adjacent to them or make opportunity attacks. On the other hand, you could equally easily just envision oozes as having quick-lashing pseudopods to justify them having the same rules for those things as other creatures under the RAW.

Mannahnin suggests using an Opportunity Attack (instead of disadvantage?). That's a decent solution if you want to show that an ammunition-using fighter is likely to take (more) damage while using it near a melee-weapon fighter.

Intended not as a suggestion but just as an example of an alternative rule to simulate the vulnerability of ranged fighters engaged with melee fighters, and the unsuitability of ranged weapons for defending from same. The one used in 3.x.

Those are arguments explaining why it's better to be a ranged combatant, not why melee should be rewarded over ranged combat. Except for the dumpstat argument, that's a different story.

One could argue-

• because melee is cooler than ranged fighting, or
• D&D is equally about stabbing and shooting, or
• the 5e rules are unfairly biased toward ranged fighters,

but if ranged fighting is simply better than melee, then you should choose to fight at range instead of demanding rewards for melee. /sidetrack

Right; here you accurately identify that folks are talking about (at least) three different reasons to retain the 5E limitation on use of Ranged attacks in melee. One is based on game balance, another on fiction emulation, a third on simulating real world dynamics of missile combatants vs. melee combatants.

 

[Asisreo]

but if ranged fighting is simply better than melee, then you should choose to fight at range instead of demanding rewards for melee.

That is precisely why melee should be rewarded. Because otherwise no one will choose to fight in melee which can run counter to even the most popular character archetypes in the game. Commanders, Knights in shining armor, Paladin, Swordmages, Punching guy.

If ranged is as good as it is in real life compared to melee, we'll devolve into people rarely choosing the characters that rely heavily on melee. Just like in real life if you want to train to be in life-or-death conflicts, you may learn some CQC but you're always much better learning how to handle a gun and stay in cover.