Where Are the High-CR Ranged Weapon Users?

[Unoriginal]

Hi folks,

I was thinking about 5e's monster and NPC design, and I realized something that is, to me, puzzling: aside from rock-throwing Giants and the occasional named NPC, there is next to no foe above CR 6 that use ranged weapons, be it bows, crossbows, guns, thrown weapons, or anything else.

Non-weapon-based ranged attacks, be it rays, blasts, breaths, gazes or the like, can be found aplenty at higher CR (even if it's often brought up that many high-CR beings lack strong ranged attacks), but ranged weapon users kind of become rarer and rarer. The Solar, as a CR 21 being with a devastating longbow (and flying sword), is an exception that confirms there is no mechanical reasons justifying that lack of high-CR ranged weapon users.

What do you think are the reasons for that state of affairs?

[sun_flotter]

Hi folks,

I was thinking about 5e's monster and NPC design, and I realized something that is, to me, puzzling: aside from rock-throwing Giants and the occasional named NPC, there is next to no foe above CR 6 that use ranged weapons, be it bows, crossbows, guns, thrown weapons, or anything else.

Non-weapon-based ranged attacks, be it rays, blasts, breaths, gazes or the like, can be found aplenty at higher CR (even if it's often brought up that many high-CR beings lack strong ranged attacks), but ranged weapon users kind of become rarer and rarer. The Solar, as a CR 21 being with a devastating longbow (and flying sword), is an exception that confirms there is no mechanical reasons justifying that lack of high-CR ranged weapon users.

What do you think are the reasons for that state of affairs?

There's also the Erinyes (CR 12) with their longbows, but I can't really think of any reason why there's so little ranged weapons at higher CR.

My best bet would be that the higher you go in CR, the less non-magic creatures you find, so relying on ranged weapons isn't as useful? Plus, for the most part, the number of creatures go down as the CR goes up (there's a lot less CR 12 creatures than there are CR 6 for instance), so even if the proportions of ranged weapons users stayed the same (which they don't but hey), there would still be a significant difference?

[Sparky McDibben]

My guess is that the devs couldn't make high-level ranged combat fun, and therefore didn't design monsters for it.

[Chronos]

How many high-CR creatures are there with manufactured melee weapons? Some of the fiends, maybe, but even in those cases, it seems to me that the weapons are largely just for show, and they're nearly as effective with their claws or whatever.

[qube]

What do you think are the reasons for that state of affairs?- Ask me a good guy, and I'll give you Robin Hood, William Tell, Odysseus, Straight from the memory.
- Ask me bad guy, and honestly, I can't really think of one.

Because, in my humble oppinion, the flavor of the archer - of the ranged warrior - doesn't stroke that well with "high level villian".
- The dragon with the fire breath ... the all planning wizard ... these seem typical ranged bad guys.
- The full plated black knight ... typical warrior bad guy.

And while there might be exceptions, there are only so many monsters in a MM. For every popular trope, you'd wantt o be able to give low, medium, and high CR .

[Mastikator]

Most high CR monsters don't use weapons at all.

[MoiMagnus]

What do you think are the reasons for that state of affairs?

Because weapon vs non-weapon is not that relevant design-wise, while melee VS ranged matters a lot.

And since magic users are almost exclusively ranged combatants, you need a lot of melee fighters to compensate.

This explain why it is normal that there are significantly more melee weapon users, and why the designers might not feel the need to have many ranged weapons users.

Obviously "not many" does not mean "none", but something that isn't a priority often get forgotten.

[PhoenixPhyre]

Ok, lets' do a little data work here. First, we need to decide what "high CR" means. Data set: all monsters in the MM, Volos, and MToF. Total: 694.

If we set it arbitrarily at CR 11+, there are 131 monsters in the data set. Of those, the number of total weapon users (those with a manufactured weapon at all) in the set by CR are:

11: 8 / 18. That includes all 4 genie.
12: 6 / 15. The Archmage and Archdruid are both in this set and both have ranged attacks...but not ranged weapon attacks. And if those are using weapons...something's wrong.
13: 7 / 16. Some of those are questionable.
14: 4 / 10.
15: 1 / 7. The green abishai.
16. 5 / 12.
17: 3/ 9.
18: 2 /4.
19: 3/3!
20: 2/6
21: 3/8
22: 1/3
23: 3/8 (I think)
24. 2/4
25: 0 / 1
26: 3/3 (all named fiends)
30: 0 / 1
Total weapon'd individuals: 53

So the first thing to notice is that there just aren't that many CR 11+ monsters[1]. The second thing to notice is that less than half of those actually have manufactured weapons at all. The third thing to notice is that natural ranged weapon attacks are...rare. Most of the ranged "natural weapons" are save-based. The fourth thing is that as you go higher, the more it's dominated by two things: dragons (no manufactured weapons) and named fiends (most of whom do have weapons, but they're named melee ones).

Thematically, ranged weapons have long had the cultural niche as "supporter" or "weapons of the weak" (despite that being nonsense). The Heros and the Villains (capitalized to mean the important protagonist/antagonists) rarely use ranged weapons[1]. In western culture, swords have this outsized place as "Important Weapons". In other cultures spears often work that way. But only very rarely bows. And guns don't fit well into "classic D&D", so most of the modern heroes who use guns aren't represented. Effectively, ranged weapons are for mooks and for the hero's helpers.

[1] Robin Hood and his Merry Men are the classic exception here, but even then they're mostly just harassing people hit-and-run style, not engaging in epic battles. Bard (from the Hobbit) is a lower-case-hero who uses a bow, but really only in a supporting role. He's there, and then he kinda fades out while the story follows Bilbo and the dwarves. Legolas is a supporter figure. Aragorn is most known for his sword, despite he and Boromir most often using their bows early on. Culture's weird, yo.

[JackPhoenix]

Thematically, ranged weapons have long had the cultural niche as "supporter" or "weapons of the weak" (despite that being nonsense). The Heros and the Villains (capitalized to mean the important protagonist/antagonists) rarely use ranged weapons[1]. In western culture, swords have this outsized place as "Important Weapons". In other cultures spears often work that way. But only very rarely bows. And guns don't fit well into "classic D&D", so most of the modern heroes who use guns aren't represented. Effectively, ranged weapons are for mooks and for the hero's helpers.

The way bows are used in battle (mass combat rather than individual duels) and the fact that using a proper bow requires the character to stand in the open instead of moving around from cover to cover like in a shootout involving guns means bows don't look cool in movies, which doesn't help. With guns, you can have a hero and a villain fight at a distance for a while without killing each other, and the enviromental damage caused by bullets to their will look cool. With bows, having both combatants surrounded by missed arrows sticking out everywhere would look stupid and make both of them look really bad at hitting their target.

Bow is a weapon used to shoot mooks or to snipe someone like a coward while they're distracted (Boromir's death scene), maybe to shoot at some big monster, not something you'll bring to an exciting climactic fight.

From a gameplay perspective, the PCs either move into melee, so the bow user is screwed, or he manages to keep at a distance, and melee PCs (which describes about 1/3 of the available classes) are screwed.

[Joe the Rat]

It's a tough search. The highest CR "no wand up their butts" Humanoid weaponers are the Warlord (12) and Champion (9) - and the Warlord is substantially more effective with troops. Both have weapons, but are designed primarily for melee. You could probably adapt them to be more ranged-effective, but that's as high as is given without a supernatural component.
Higheset effective ranged attacker would probably be Assassin, but that's about poison and sneaks.

Just about everything else with ranged attacks at high CR, including the not-necessarily-spell types, are typicall involving saves.

[Tanarii]

Because ranged weapons are the weapons of weak puny mooks who attack from hiding an in large numbers.

Use a (couple of) dozen hobgoblins, or better yet goblins, if you need ranged weapon enemies. Or if you just hate your players. :smallamused:

[PhoenixPhyre]

Because ranged weapons are the weapons of weak puny mooks who attack from hiding an in large numbers.

Use a (couple of) dozen hobgoblins, or better yet goblins, if you need ranged weapon enemies. Or if you just hate your players. :smallamused:

Even better: quaddrones. 4 shortbow attacks per creature, even at low modifiers, means you don't need nearly as many. And they fly.