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Message: <blockquote data-quote="FormerlyHemlock" data-source="post: 6858896" data-attributes="member: 6787650">I'm not at all certain what it is you think here is Hemlock's play goal. My observation on the superiority of missile combat is, in my mind, almost totally unrelated to playstyle at all. Playstyle is a player thing. The superiority of missile combat is an observable fact of the PCs' universe, observable to NPCs as well as PCs. It is in fact the answer to the question, "Why are there even any humans left? Why haven't they all been eaten by bulettes and purple worms and dragons?" Answer: missile weapons and horses and Bounded Accuracy. At least, at my table that is the case.I do have a player who has in the past expressed some distress at the fact that melee combat (e.g. barbarians) has turned out to be a bit of a chump game instead of awesome like he was expecting. I tried to help him out with some tactical advice (use stealth, fight at night, etc.) but the fundamental reality of the situation is that melee really is just kind of bad. Unless I'm willing to distort the entire universe to cater to this player's desires (I'm not) he's left with the choice to either adapt (do things that are effective in the 5E ruleset, either changing tactics or changing characters) or lower expectations ("I'm bringing a knife to a gunfight, but it's a biiig knife and I hope I get to stick it in someone!") If you want a game where melee is good, you'll want to follow AD&D's example: create a large number of monsters from elementals to werewolves which can only be effectively engaged in melee or by expending memorized spells. I.e. get rid of at-will cantrips, and make magical bows require magical ammunition to pierce weapon resistance, and vastly bump up the number of monsters which require magical or +1 or +2 weapons to damage them. 5E is not that game.In terms of play goals and the 8 kinds of fun, my observation is tied most closely to Fantasy: the desire to experience a living, breathing world to interact with. Thinking through the implications of the 5E ruleset and the kinds of societies that result from it is part of Fantasy, not powergaming. I do enjoy powergaming as a player (seeing the math comes very naturally to me), and for that reason I like challenging scenarios (Deadly or harder) and I absolutely hate the tedium of playing through or running easy encounters (but I do it anyway when necessary because my players are not necessarily like me)... but there are in-character reasons too. Even a big beefy Str 16 Dex 11 Paladin who just happens to have been born big is still better off much of the time picking up and using a bow instead of charging into melee. Because I'm a natural powergamer, if that's my Paladin he's probably going to multiclass and learn some attack cantrips--but even if I were playing in a totally relaxed, non-powergaming style and were planning on sticking with pure Paladin all the way to level 20, he'd still prefer missile combat to melee against most foes just because it makes sense from an in-character perspective. Opposable thumbs for the win!</blockquote>

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