Does taking away ranged attacks affect CR much?

[tchntm43]

For example, a Bugbear with 2 Goblin henchmen facing 5 level 1 characters. According to the MM, that's CR 1 for the Bugbear and CR 1/4 for each Goblin, which according to the DMG would rate as beyond Deadly (200+50+50 XP, multiply total by 2 because 3-6 monsters total, Deadly for level 1 characters is 100 XP each or 500 total for 5 characters). But both the Bugbear and Goblins come standard with ranged attacks. If I have this particular group spawn without their ranged weapons, it should be an easy fight, right? I want an easy fight here, but after the first adventure of just fighting puny Goblins, I wanted to add something a bit more visually intimidating. I know the Bugbear can still hit pretty hard, but I'm anticipating that he takes some ranged damage (and possibly spell damage) before being able to engage in melee. I suppose if it is still too hard, I could make the Bugbear an Orc instead. That would reduce the encounter difficulty to Hard (again, it should be even lower difficulty if I take away the ranged weapons, right?).

[dmteeter]

It will change it but not enough. That bugbear is capable of one shot drops on your casters and any low CON characters.

[dmteeter]

In my experience building encounters based of CR from the book is tricky. cockatrice is like a 1/4 challenge rating but i just had one last weekend drop my lvl 2 barbarian who somehow blew the con save of 11....

My advice is to play test all of your encounters by yourself before the game session and adjust accordingly.

I have copies of all of my players sheets that i update after each session for exactly this reason.

[PhoenixPhyre]

Only the most effective 3 rounds count. So if ranged weapons are a backup (doing less damage than melee), removing them does not affect formal CR at all.

The effect on actual difficulty, however, can be large (depending on terrain, tactics on both sides, and other factors).

[Unoriginal]

For example, a Bugbear with 2 Goblin henchmen facing 5 level 1 characters. According to the MM, that's CR 1 for the Bugbear and CR 1/4 for each Goblin, which according to the DMG would rate as beyond Deadly (200+50+50 XP, multiply total by 2 because 3-6 monsters total, Deadly for level 1 characters is 100 XP each or 500 total for 5 characters). But both the Bugbear and Goblins come standard with ranged attacks. If I have this particular group spawn without their ranged weapons, it should be an easy fight, right? I want an easy fight here, but after the first adventure of just fighting puny Goblins, I wanted to add something a bit more visually intimidating. I know the Bugbear can still hit pretty hard, but I'm anticipating that he takes some ranged damage (and possibly spell damage) before being able to engage in melee. I suppose if it is still too hard, I could make the Bugbear an Orc instead. That would reduce the encounter difficulty to Hard (again, it should be even lower difficulty if I take away the ranged weapons, right?).

Removing the ranged attack doesn't affect CR unless the ranged attack is the main source of damage.

Keep in mind that a group of 5 lvl 1 PCs should be about to face about 3 Deadly lvl 1 encounters in one day.

Now if you want something more visually impressive than a goblin but less deadly than a Bugbear, I would advise you to go for an hobgoblin.

[tchntm43]

My advice is to play test all of your encounters by yourself before the game session and adjust accordingly.

I like this idea a lot, I think I will try that.


Now if you want something more visually impressive than a goblin but less deadly than a Bugbear, I would advise you to go for an hobgoblin.
Yeah, Hobgoblin would also make more sense than an Orc since (like the Bugbear) it's a goblinoid and distantly related to the 2 goblins.

[Man_Over_Game]

The major advantage with ranged attacks are the ability to focus fire, and level 1 players can't take much of a hit. The major advantage of melee combat is that it's very disruptive against ranged characters, and prevents free movement on the opposing side.

If you don't want this fight to be one sided, make sure your enemy team doesn't have enough range or damage to take out a player before the main engagement occurs. You can either do this by having them choose different targets at range, or by making sure only 1-2 of the units have a ranged attack, and be incapable of downing a player within a single round with only ranged.

My recommendation is to have the goblins have ranged attacks that they just shoot whoever seems best, and the beefy one is able to command them to attack a specific target. A bugbear would focus down the weak (whoever's at the lowest life), where a Hobgoblin would focus down a cheater (like a concentrating mage who's buffing the Paladin who is engaged with the Hobgoblin).

The goblins, with 2 ranged attacks should nearly down a character. With a third attack, they should be able to down a character. With this set up, with the goblins naturally being dumb on their turn, but being told to focus fire at the command of the leader, makes them a pretty apt threat at low levels that adds an additional level of strategy.

If you take out the ranged attacks, this will take away a lot of the dynamics of this fight, effectively making it a mosh pit. The only way I'd say that'd be a good idea to do is if the leader was distracting the party while the other two try to sneak around to flank the back line. The leader should be dodging during this time, until the real engagement starts, to avoid being taken down quickly by ranged attacks.

[Lunali]

Assuming the melee attacks are similar in damage, removing ranged attacks doesn't affect CR at all. That said, CR is only a rough gauge of the resources required for the most simplified version of the fight and doesn't include any additional factors like surprise, terrain, range, party makeup, tactics, etc.