Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="FormerlyHemlock" data-source="post: 7106518" data-attributes="member: 6787650">However: low monster movement speeds, and short range on most monster attacks, results in ranged superiority without any feat investment at all.Consider this: an Iron Golem is ostensibly a Deadly threat for a party of three 8th level PCs. Let's make them all Champion fighters for simplicity. If they are all melee fighters with AC 20 (meaning Sword & Shield), then they'll take 34.55 points of damage per round on average, from the Iron Golem's two sword attacks; and once in a while they'll eat 90-135 points of damage in a single round when it breathes on them (depending how high their Con rolls are). However, if they were engaged in ranged combat, two of them could attack the Iron Golem in any given round while the third Dashed away, taking only a single opportunity attack in the process. Call it AC 18 because they're holding bows instead of shields, which means the Iron Golem does only 19.63 points of damage per round to them on average, and it never breathes gas on them (because it never gets to use its action to do anything except Dash).Even using just the 5E Basic rules and standard array stats instead of full PHB rules, that's still the difference between taking 300(ish, depending on Con saves) HP of damage over the six and a half rounds it takes you to kill the Iron Golem in melee, vs. only taking 126 HP of damage over a similar six and a half rounds to kill it in ranged combat. Ranged combat is over twice as efficient as melee combat in this scenario--even moreso if you have a larger party that would get hit by the Iron Golem's AoE.Don't even get me started on the mounted combat rules which result in killing the Iron Golem without taking opportunity attacks at all. The only thing killing it would cost you is whatever walking time it took to get to the killing area, plus maybe 2 gp on arrows for your magic bow(s).</blockquote>

Verification