Ranged DPR is Terrible

[MaxWilson]

I'm mostly just thinking about how it works really well with SS while doing absolutely nothing for GWM. You also have to consider that it's kinda immaterial how easy or hard it is to get advantage on ranged attacks "normally" — if you're in a position where you're taking Sharpshooter and Elven Accuracy, you've probably also figured out some way of reliably getting the advantage you crave when you need it.

It works fine with GWM via Hexblade 1 instead of Str. (However, then you can't rely on Reckless Attack.)

Anyway, GWM and advantage is obviously better than SS and straight attack rolls. IMO the bigger offender here is Great Weapon Fighting. If a player wants to claim +2 to hit with two handed melee weapons instead of rerolls on 1s and 2s, who am I to say no? There's no deep fundamental reason for GWF to be tied specifically to damage rerolls.

[LudicSavant]

Frankly, the fact that the melee guys don't have backup ranged weapons is pretty irksome. Why is this fight starting at extreme distances with one side being entirely melee? Did the archers ambush them? If so, that's fine, but otherwise....

I couldn't tell you -- Asisreo chose those parameters, not I.

What I can tell you is that changing up the variables isn't going to suddenly make prone the silver bullet that asisreo wants it to be, because the principle of "attacking with Disadvantage > not attacking at all" will continue to be true.

Likewise, "attacking with Disadvantage with your primary schtick > attacking with Disadvantage with your backup weapon" is also true. And of course, reduces the mobility from 1.5x move speed to 0.5x.

Either way, you face a DPR loss in those rounds. Fiddling with the variables only alters the size of the DPR loss from these prone rounds, it doesn't make it so that there isn't one.

[Eldariel]

It works fine with GWM via Hexblade 1 instead of Str. (However, then you can't rely on Reckless Attack.)

Anyway, GWM and advantage is obviously better than SS and straight attack rolls. IMO the bigger offender here is Great Weapon Fighting. If a player wants to claim +2 to hit with two handed melee weapons instead of rerolls on 1s and 2s, who am I to say no? There's no deep fundamental reason for GWF to be tied specifically to damage rerolls.

GWF is indeed horrible; 0,8333 DPR in the best case scenario is just an embarrassment. I get what they're trying to do: heavy weapons should be about landing telling blows and since they already have dice, they went with making the most of those dice but the way GWF is written, it's obviously terrible with anything but two-die weapons (it should be percentile; reroll dice that are under half your weapon's die). It's also mechanically cumbersome and slow. I think some kind of Cleave-rule (if you drop an enemy, you can do the rest of the damage to another enemy; or if you drop an enemy, you get a free attack that doesn't take your bonus action against another enemy in range) could be thematic and solid for great weapon fighting.

But yeah, EA working on everything but Str-based attacks is another unfortunate thing - well, it's mostly because EA is the only actual to-hit booster in the game. This makes Elves obviously the only game in town if you wanna do damage (at least it means Vuman/Custom Lineage/flying race isn't always the optimal choice) and means Str-based damage dealing isn't actually a comparable option. Thematically I get it but there should be some comparable benefits for heavy weapons - and obviously hiding the top tier option behind a racial limitation kinda sucks.

OTOH Hexblade using EA with a two-hander doesn't really make sense thematically. Tho small correction: you need Hexblade 3, not Hexblade 1 (Hexblade 1 is restricted to not picking a two-handed weapon) to use EA with heavy weapons...and even then you're still fighting an uphill battle because you don't have a fighting style so archery still wins out comparatively (though Hexblade opens up Eldritch Smite which at least gives two-handers some burst damage - but that's restricted to 2/SR until level 11 and means you can't use your cool spells and can't be used with non-Warlock slots so it's not exactly amazing either).


Part of the flaw lies with GWM too though. The Cleave-part is pretty weak (since PAM already exists and does it so much more reliably) and it only has two abilities. I'm totally on board with Power Attack for heavy weapons (not so much with power attack for bows) but SS has 3 strong abilities while GWM has 1 strong (though not as strong as SS due to lacking Archery style) and 1 average/weak ability. The difference is obvious.

Of course, the real victim here is TWF, which doesn't even get to be brought to the discussion since its support is so horrid. Archery > Heavy >>> TWF. S&B is different enough thanks to Shield Master and shields in general that it isn't really a problem. I actually really like what they did with Shield Master though I also allow applying the reaction defense to adjacent allies and vs. any AOE damage (since many Dragon Breaths for example are Con-based and it feels kinda arbitrary that you can't protect yourself from a poison cloud but can from a fire cloud).

[Rukelnikov]

If the ranged archer guy is backpedaling 30' for 3-4 rounds until the melee enemy catches up, and the attacker is moving 45' per round after accounting for prone, then the attacker started out 75'-105' away (75' if the goal is to make a melee attack on round 4, 105' if the goal is just to impose disadvantage andmake an opportunity attack), which means the melee ally is missing zero rounds or one round of combat Dashing while the archer backpedals, not 3-4.

True, but note that if Melee Guy is sticking to "bunny hopping" towards Ranged Guy, and Ranged Guy has more than 1 round distance, then he can just take the Dash action the turn before Melee Guy would reach him, forcing Melee Guy to either lose some of the gained distance or take the attacks without the "advantage" of being prone.

Personally I don't think "you can drop prone at the end of your every turn" is viable argument as to why Melee vs Ranged is balanced, just because it makes no sense narratively. Rules should be there to represent the narrative being created by the Players and GM. Adopting this method of "combat" would be a clear case of rules driving the narrative. And while, frankly, that is largely impossible to avoid, I think there are different degrees of impact.

A spell like Spiritual Weapon is a noticeable pull for most Clerics, one may not have pictured their character having a spiritual representation of their deity's weapon fighting alongside them, but I'd bet most of the times, it doesn't enter into conflict with the idea one has of the character, and, ultimately, it only affects the character in question.

Now, melee combatants, or just everybody, because rangeds can do the same if they are not on the run, going prone every couple seconds to avoid enemy fire seems clowny, and only works in a turn based scenario. Narratively the character moved a straight line and randomly decided to go prone a couple times, he's not ducking out of the way of the arrows, he's full prone.

And if that becomes a semi-standard strategy for moderately "intelligent" foes, then combat suddenly starts looking very different from what I'd wager most people imagine when they think medieval fantasy combat. That is a clear sign that rules are geeting in the way.

(snip)

But yeah, EA working on everything but Str-based attacks is another unfortunate thing - well, it's mostly because EA is the only actual to-hit booster in the game. This makes Elves obviously the only game in town if you wanna do damage (at least it means Vuman/Custom Lineage/flying race isn't always the optimal choice) and means Str-based damage dealing isn't actually a comparable option. Thematically I get it but there should be some comparable benefits for heavy weapons - and obviously hiding the top tier option behind a racial limitation kinda sucks.

(snipe).

While I agree with most of what you said, I disagree with this part. Gating a "top choice" behind a racial limitations is good design, it lets different races shine at different things, and also if its available for everyone and THE "top choice" then its no choice at all, it becomes a tax, like Agonizing Blast.

The problem is that currently there are only 3 types of "top choice", those you listed, Extra Feat, Flying movement, Elven Accuracy. While I get the impression flying races are not commonly allowed at low levels of play, that made Vhuman mechanically superior to most other choices for the most played portions of the game. It would be nice if other races had comparable pulls towards them, either innate or attainable by feats.

[Eldariel]

While I agree with most of what you said, I disagree with this part. Gating a "top choice" behind a racial limitations is good design, it lets different races shine at different things, and also if its available for everyone and THE "top choice" then its no choice at all, it becomes a tax, like Agonizing Blast.

That could be true, but in this case we're talking about the primary way about 50% of the classes can contribute in the game. Such a broad area of bestness is certainly an issue in that it limits racial choice rather than enhance it. Further, this brings us right back to the pre-Tasha's where you can't pick the race you want for roleplay purposes but you pick the race you need for mechanical purposes because if you want your character to be good at The Thing, there's no alternative for the racial benefits. If there were different ways to reach similar results or the racial mastery domain were more restricted, that could be different, but as it stands, if I literally just want to make a damage dealer I should make it an Elf because Elven Accuracy.

Doesn't even matter what kind of damage dealer, advantage is a universal mechanic and the Only Game In Town for reaching decent weapon-based damage output and thus EA interacts with everything and makes you better at damage dealing regardless of your approach to dealing damage (other than spellcasters who don't use attack rolls, obviously, but even there the game has enough attack roll spells to make EA very lucrative - but at least you have options like Empowered Evocation + Magic Missile and various AOEs if you wanna do something other than EA).

[Rukelnikov]

That could be true, but in this case we're talking about the primary way about 50% of the classes can contribute in the game. Such a broad area of bestness is certainly an issue in that it limits racial choice rather than enhance it. Further, this brings us right back to the pre-Tasha's where you can't pick the race you want for roleplay purposes but you pick the race you need for mechanical purposes because if you want your character to be good at The Thing, there's no alternative for the racial benefits. If there were different ways to reach similar results or the racial mastery domain were more restricted, that could be different, but as it stands, if I literally just want to make a damage dealer I should make it an Elf because Elven Accuracy.

Doesn't even matter what kind of damage dealer, advantage is a universal mechanic and the Only Game In Town for reaching decent weapon-based damage output and thus EA interacts with everything and makes you better at damage dealing regardless of your approach to dealing damage (other than spellcasters who don't use attack rolls, obviously, but even there the game has enough attack roll spells to make EA very lucrative - but at least you have options like Empowered Evocation + Magic Missile and various AOEs if you wanna do something other than EA).

I understand what you are saying, but this very thread is about how SS/XBE is "OP" and how to compare as a melee you need PAM/GWM, those are 2 feats each, getting EA on top of those means you need 3 ASI's and you still haven't maxed your main stat, vs a Vhuman who would require 1 less feat AND gain 1 more feat.

I think extra feat builds are better in the lower tiers of play, and EA builds are better in the latters (talking about "same" build with or withaout EA), which again I consider good design, neither is the best at all tiers of play, and even when the usual on these and most forums is to make 20th level builds, most characters I've played went to around 7-13th level.

So I understand the problem of having choices that outclass the rest, but before the release of EA I actually felt like I needed to either ban Vhuman or give everyone an extra feat at lvl 1 to even the playing field. So in my eyes the superior choices grew from 1 to 2, which is not that great tbh, but the playing field was already uneven before EA, and even now I still consider Vhuman (or CL) to be the safer choice unless you are starting at higher levels (I still wouldn't allow flying races in low level games because I think they are totally broken).

[Amechra]

Personally I don't think "you can drop prone at the end of your every turn" is viable argument as to why Melee vs Ranged is balanced, just because it makes no sense narratively. Rules should be there to represent the narrative being created by the Players and GM. Adopting this method of "combat" would be a clear case of rules driving the narrative. And while, frankly, that is largely impossible to avoid, I think there are different degrees of impact.

Honestly, this isn't actually that weird. Sprinting in spurts and then throwing yourself behind whatever tiny scraps of cover you can find is pretty much how you'd cover a big open space under covering fire. Like, I can clearly visualize a scene from a war movie here.

Anyway, GWM and advantage is obviously better than SS and straight attack rolls. IMO the bigger offender here is Great Weapon Fighting. If a player wants to claim +2 to hit with two handed melee weapons instead of rerolls on 1s and 2s, who am I to say no? There's no deep fundamental reason for GWF to be tied specifically to damage rerolls.

Again, I think that you're ignoring the fact that people aren't going to bother to pick up SS+EA if they don't have a way to generate advantage when they need it. That's why people bring up the combination in the context of Samurai Fighters and the like. So it's only going to be GWM w/ advantage vs. SS w/o advantage against mooks.

As for which one is the bigger offender... they're both pretty bad, but EA was just the straw that broke the camel's back for me. It doesn't help that it basically enshrines elves as The Best Archers, regardless of what your particular campaign does with them.

[Rukelnikov]

Honestly, this isn't actually that weird. Sprinting in spurts and then throwing yourself behind whatever tiny scraps of cover you can find is pretty much how you'd cover a big open space under covering fire. Like, I can clearly visualize a scene from a war movie here.

Yes, but this isn't that case, its not ducking behind cover, which definitely is the expected thing to do. Its an open field, they are moving in a straight line, and still doing that.

[Eldariel]

I understand what you are saying, but this very thread is about how SS/XBE is "OP" and how to compare as a melee you need PAM/GWM, those are 2 feats each, getting EA on top of those means you need 3 ASI's and you still haven't maxed your main stat, vs a Vhuman who would require 1 less feat AND gain 1 more feat.

I think extra feat builds are better in the lower tiers of play, and EA builds are better in the latters (talking about "same" build with or withaout EA), which again I consider good design, neither is the best at all tiers of play, and even when the usual on these and most forums is to make 20th level builds, most characters I've played went to around 7-13th level.

So I understand the problem of having choices that outclass the rest, but before the release of EA I actually felt like I needed to either ban Vhuman or give everyone an extra feat at lvl 1 to even the playing field. So in my eyes the superior choices grew from 1 to 2, which is not that great tbh, but the playing field was already uneven before EA, and even now I still consider Vhuman (or CL) to be the safer choice unless you are starting at higher levels (I still wouldn't allow flying races in low level games because I think they are totally broken).

I agree, but that's just a problem fixing another problem. Instead of having one obvious top tier choice (Vuman/CL is overpowered due to design issues, i.e. ASI sparsity and relative expense combined with the high amount of highly desirable ASIs/feats for most characters) now there's two top tier choices, which is better but far from the desirable point where all races would have their ups and downs and to play a given character archetype you wouldn't be racelocked but each race would just offer its own version of the same setup.

Of course, giving a bonus feat on 1 to everyone (two to Vuman) helps as does decoupling ASIs and feats or allowing 16-18 on point buy/rolling but that breaks many other expectations of the game (e.g. being able to start with 20 Dex means that armor proficiencies basically don't matter if you go Dex-heavy), and it punishes classes whose special thing those extra ASIs are (so Fighter and Rogue). I ultimately think it's still preferable that way: I prefer having excess ASIs to put into various stats to customise the character (so it's totally okay to have a charismatic fighter who can be every bit as charismatic as the Bard) instead of just using all ASIs on the obligatory power buffs and extra feats to make way for the customisation feats after the obligatory ones are out of the way but of course, there's a lot of bad design there ("obligatory feats" itself is terrible design - it should be baked into the base chassis if it's too good not to take).

[Rukelnikov]

I agree, but that's just a problem fixing another problem. Instead of having one obvious top tier choice (Vuman/CL is overpowered due to design issues, i.e. ASI sparsity and relative expense combined with the high amount of highly desirable ASIs/feats for most characters) now there's two top tier choices, which is better but far from the desirable point where all races would have their ups and downs and to play a given character archetype you wouldn't be racelocked but each race would just offer its own version of the same setup.

Of course, giving a bonus feat on 1 to everyone (two to Vuman) helps as does decoupling ASIs and feats or allowing 16-18 on point buy/rolling but that breaks many other expectations of the game (e.g. being able to start with 20 Dex means that armor proficiencies basically don't matter if you go Dex-heavy), and it punishes classes whose special thing those extra ASIs are (so Fighter and Rogue). I ultimately think it's still preferable that way: I prefer having excess ASIs to put into various stats to customise the character (so it's totally okay to have a charismatic fighter who can be every bit as charismatic as the Bard) instead of just using all ASIs on the obligatory power buffs and extra feats to make way for the customisation feats after the obligatory ones are out of the way but of course, there's a lot of bad design there ("obligatory feats" itself is terrible design - it should be baked into the base chassis if it's too good not to take).

Yeah, I think a lot about how to incentivize more "uncommon" stat allocation (the extremely charismatic fighter) or taking more "ribbons" whithout breaking the game, and I have yet to find a solution that suits me.

[Eldariel]

Yeah, I think a lot about how to incentivize more "uncommon" stat allocation (the extremely charismatic fighter) or taking more "ribbons" whithout breaking the game, and I have yet to find a solution that suits me.

Well, 5e does one thing really well in that regard and that's give everyone a clear, easy cap that can be reached in their primary stat. If you let people get to that 20 main stat and then give secondaries, those could plausibly be placed in tertiary stats. For example, following leveling path:
Feats: 1, 3, 6, 9, 12, 15, 18 (á la 3)
ASIs: +2 on 4, 8, 12, 16, 20

Allow 18 on point buy. Now most races can start with a 20 and Vumans start with 19s. This way it's possible to use all those ASIs on secondary and tertiary stats without hurting your primary contribution, and you'll probably be able to take secondary feats soon after level ~6. Of course, this kind of a system would want better feat balance (in practice everyone would have Resilient, Lucky and Alert since those feats are too good not to take and the only reason they're not universal right now is that there are builds whose core competencies depend on combat feats) and the saving throw system would have to be revamped too (Resilient being a must-have is just a symptom of the saving throw system being terrible).

A more involved rewrite would roll PAM/GWM/SS/CBE/etc. into either scaling class base mechanics (fighting style) or just plain base mechanics of the weapon (depending on the exact feature) and then give feats that enable starting to pick those up, as a sort of a "multiclass feat" option (see Fighting Initiate, Magic Initiate, Martial Adept, etc.). That would obviously be better. Then just focus feats on customisation and balance them. Of course, given we have stuff like Keen Mind and Elven Accuracy on same footing, these ribbonish feats should probably just be called something else (perks?) and be given a progression of their own where you can pick those up, perhaps tied to skills (since they tend to lean towards the skill system anyways). This kind of dissociation would see to the opportunity cost being low enough to not be problematic, making for more variety without having to just slam more stuff in.

But 5e design is sadly very incomplete and making a rework like this oneself is kinda pointless since you can only play it with your own table - the amount of effort it takes is just not worth the amount of benefit you glean from it unless you can market it but that's just not happening without an opening as big as Pathfinder's at least.

[anthon]

...by which I mean that its terrible how easy it is to kill things from range in 5e. Pretty much no matter how you look at it, ranged DPR is only slightly behind melee DPR, and ranged DPR has other massive advantages, including:

1. Ranged play both enabling kiting and countering kiting. A melee character who wants to kite has to have twice the movement speed available AND be able to fly to kite and/or counter kiting as effectively as a ranged character. This leads to a lot of encounters becoming really really imbalanced really quickly, depending on who has more ranged DPR and/or who has more movement.
2. If range of engagement is high (basically any outdoor scenario) a ranged character can often get 2-3 rounds of damage in for free even if kiting is impossible.
3. Vast majority of monsters have limited ranged options meaning that this style tends to be very effective.
4. Target selection. Picking off the wizard in the back while everyone else fights the zombie horde.
5. The Archery style is simply more useful in t1 and t2 than almost any other style, particularly when combined with Sharpshooter.
6. Needs to worry about opportunity attacks, grapples, and other such things far less frequently.

For contrast, melee has the following advantages

1. works better against prone enemies (who aren't moving anyway)
2. don't need to worry about cover (circumvented by Sharpshooter, and ranged characters don't have to move any more than melee characters to deal damage)
3. don't need to worry about enemies getting into melee (Crossbow Expert and BA disengage circumvent this)
4. More magic weapon options?
5. TWF is sorta good sometimes (mostly for rogues and at low levels)

Now, I'm not one to argue that 5e needs to be a balanced game. Its fine if certain strategies are better. However.

1. Ranged play is boring because there are few tactical decisions beyond "sit in one place and loose arrows" or "run away and loose arrows."
2. Melee combat is relatively complex because lots more mechanics come into play in melee. Opportunity Attacks, reach, grappling, shoving.
3. Because throwing weapons are terrible, strength-based characters have little way to contribute in a lot of these scenarios.
4. Having to design encounters while bearing in mind that the party can and will kite the vast majority of enemies to death is annoying and limits a lot of "field" encounters.
5. Lots of classes and archetypes are heavily pigeonholed into melee combat and simply don't get to use their class features at range. Even if these classes end up being 'good' at range, (like the Kensai) it feels bad because you probably didn't pick monk to shoot arrows all day.

All of the above can be planned around. Maybe everyone just chose to optimize for utility or melee because that's their interest. Maybe you can design encounters cleverly, giving the enemy total cover, you can have enemies gate in directly behind the players, you can run incredibly quick monsters who can nullify the advantages of range, you can have time pressure that forces the PCs to approach... but at some point we're just falling into Rule 0 fallacy. You can fix any problem with lots of clever GMing, but wouldn't it be better to create a general solution before mucking about so much with encounters? I can already think of a few possibilities.

• nerf ranged damage heavily. Ban Sharpshooter, drop EB down to a d8 or d6. The idea would be that although kiting would still be very powerful sometimes, melee would be more useful in a lot of other scenarios. The upside here is that damage doesn't need to be that much better for people to feel that melee specialization is worth it. Has the downside of potentially making certain other spells like Animate Objects even stronger than they already are. It's probably best to still have certain classes be able to dish out (relatively) crazy damage at range if they specialize heavily in that one thing, I just don't want it to be so easy.
• Add a default action called "charge" that allows a character to increase their movement by half and make (one) melee weapon attack at the end of their movement. This would give melee characters a way of running down enemies who are trying to kite them. (ofc this doesn't do anything against flyers but that's a separate problem.)
• Lower max ranges for ranged weapons and/or limit how easy it is to get huge boosts to movement. (or maybe cut their effective range in half if they move at all on their turn? But then this starts to look like 3.5....)

Not saying any of these would work great, but I figure that people here will correct me an I'll at least learn something.

Well, if you look at the psychology of damage, historically,

ancient man had stone knife, then stone spear.
before this time, man had rock, which was both a hand held melee weapon, but also a projectile.

thing is, in ancient rock times, clever man could push one stone or boulder, and then the boulder would roll down the hill, pick up speed, and squash his enemy under ambush. A variation of this was the Rock slide.

Range and Chain Reaction damage was born. Before fire. Before the spear. Before the bow.

Range has always been higher damage. Thats the kernel of the black mage. He sets up the original hillside boulders and avalanches.

You upgrade the technology a little, and the pattern repeats. You get to spears then realize you can throw spears. You can fit about 8 {Scrubbed} with spears stabbing the sabertooth,

or you can Wall of Arrows Wuxia the spears from range, and have 100 {Scrubbed} blacken the sky over the saber tooth with hurled spears, or later arrows.

You upgrade the technology again, and you got swords, but then there's Chinese black powder, fireworks, and cannons.

Explosives pretty much always do more damage than melee, even though they are also melee range, they AOE, like a claymore mine or a stick of dynamite.

The cannon damage from the 15th century includes cannons over 500mm in diameter and well over 1-10 million ft lbs of impact damage. We are talking instantly fatal to a T-Rex or Blue Whale.

So by the time you get to the Medieval Period, Ranged weapons, aside from cannons, also include things like crossbows and double bows, long bows and catapults. Ballista, Scorpions like the ones used to attack Dragons in Game of Thrones.

The big weaknesses of Ranged and AOE attacks are setup time, aiming, and ammunition, like retrieving or constructing, or price. The cost of the Faule Grete of 1409 was 1160 oxen, and they named it the "Lazy Grete" because it took forever to load and move, having a mass of 4.6 tons.

In modern warfare, these truths haven't changed too much. Diamond Cutter drill bits, cutting lasers, and large boring drills are melee weapons, and drastically more impressive than swords, but they still have inferior DPR to 20th century Naval Cannons or Fuel Air Explosives (ranged and AOE). But you can use a mining drill machine all day long to make tunnels, over and over. Cutting lasers can be used on steel plates for years with minimal maintenance. You can't say that about a bomb. It's one and done. The Naval cannons on the Iowa class battleships weigh 267,904 lbs (121 tons) and required a crew of 79 men to operate. Each "arrow knocked" weighed over a ton.


One possible way to think about balancing Missile Weapon/Range people is in terms of Maintenance Time, Maintenance Cost, and Initial Cost with consumables. Casting Time and Aiming time, for instance are possible, but then you have automatic weapons. A Katana or some other super Sword can easily cut a man in half, causing certain death in one hit, then do it again a moment later, repeatedly. But a mini gun, machine gun, or other 1000+ capacity auto firing weapon, like in "Last Samurai" will cut down charging samurai. Super swords are expensive, but they are about 20 times cheaper than their automatic ranged counter parts, and that ammo you burn through is incredibly heavy and expensive.


How that translates into D&D is up to you, like requiring your short rest time to repair the arrow heads, or having a large dump of treasure going to quivers of magical arrows.

Just remember ranged weapons have always had superior DPR, even in cave man days. {Scrubbed}

[Rukelnikov]

Well, 5e does one thing really well in that regard and that's give everyone a clear, easy cap that can be reached in their primary stat. If you let people get to that 20 main stat and then give secondaries, those could plausibly be placed in tertiary stats. For example, following leveling path:
Feats: 1, 3, 6, 9, 12, 15, 18 (á la 3)
ASIs: +2 on 4, 8, 12, 16, 20

Allow 18 on point buy. Now most races can start with a 20 and Vumans start with 19s. This way it's possible to use all those ASIs on secondary and tertiary stats without hurting your primary contribution, and you'll probably be able to take secondary feats soon after level ~6. Of course, this kind of a system would want better feat balance (in practice everyone would have Resilient, Lucky and Alert since those feats are too good not to take and the only reason they're not universal right now is that there are builds whose core competencies depend on combat feats) and the saving throw system would have to be revamped too (Resilient being a must-have is just a symptom of the saving throw system being terrible).

But that's part of the problem, if I give the players those stats and feats, they will just start min/maxing with that in mind, it doesn't incentivize the use of those character creation resources for RP nor does it disencourage from using them to further improve your combat capabilities.

A more involved rewrite would roll PAM/GWM/SS/CBE/etc. into either scaling class base mechanics (fighting style) or just plain base mechanics of the weapon (depending on the exact feature) and then give feats that enable starting to pick those up, as a sort of a "multiclass feat" option (see Fighting Initiate, Magic Initiate, Martial Adept, etc.). That would obviously be better. Then just focus feats on customisation and balance them. Of course, given we have stuff like Keen Mind and Elven Accuracy on same footing, these ribbonish feats should probably just be called something else (perks?) and be given a progression of their own where you can pick those up, perhaps tied to skills (since they tend to lean towards the skill system anyways). This kind of dissociation would see to the opportunity cost being low enough to not be problematic, making for more variety without having to just slam more stuff in.

But 5e design is sadly very incomplete and making a rework like this oneself is kinda pointless since you can only play it with your own table - the amount of effort it takes is just not worth the amount of benefit you glean from it unless you can market it but that's just not happening without an opening as big as Pathfinder's at least.

Yeah, having a different set of perks to pick from that focused more on fluff or RP stuff would be ok, but as you said its a lot of work and requires a lot of player buy-in since you are modifiying a substantial portion of the game. It works for long standing groups that probably already have their own heaps of house rules already.

[Eldariel]

But that's part of the problem, if I give the players those stats and feats, they will just start min/maxing with that in mind, it doesn't incentivize the use of those character creation resources for RP nor does it disencourage from using them to further improve your combat capabilities.

That's true, but once you get to the point where you have 20 in your main stat and 20 in maybe Con, you are left with no choice but to pick what you feel makes sense for your character. And even 20 in Con is kinda secondary, because all additional HP you gain is a smaller relative part of your total HP and thus less integral for your survivability (though still nice to have). I could certainly see putting something in Cha as a Fighter if I had the luxury of getting those +2s on level 4 and didn't have to raise my main stat.

Now, MAD classes like Monks, Paladins, Bards, and Bladesingers (and Barbarians if you want that Dex/Con AC of 20) are different in that they'll have some ASIs tied to raising their secondary stat and it would of course remove some of the interesting decisions from "which to raise" but OTOH it would put those at a predictable footing earlier.

Yeah, having a different set of perks to pick from that focused more on fluff or RP stuff would be ok, but as you said its a lot of work and requires a lot of player buy-in since you are modifiying a substantial portion of the game. It works for long standing groups that probably already have their own heaps of house rules already.

Indeed. Which is why I'd like a system that gets this kinda stuff right for once. Alas, I might just be waiting forever: it doesn't seem like either Paizo or WotC has the competence to hit all the marks right off the mark, and instead of iterative improvements they just throw the baby with the bathwater with every edition, so there'll simply be no iterative improvements to build on a solid skeleton (like 5e).

[Rukelnikov]

Indeed. Which is why I'd like a system that gets this kinda stuff right for once. Alas, I might just be waiting forever: it doesn't seem like either Paizo or WotC has the competence to hit all the marks right off the mark, and instead of iterative improvements they just throw the baby with the bathwater with every edition, so there'll simply be no iterative improvements to build on a solid skeleton (like 5e).

Well, we gotta take the good with the bad. 3e let you play whatever you wanted and ten thousand more things you wouldn't have thought of, but you pretty much needed a PhD in its ruleset and a dedication to make builds. Many a time you would end up spending more time making the build than playing it (in the case of a build intended to be played).

However, that also had the effect of "play a character as powerful as you want". So you knew that by 20th level you could literally nuke a metropolis from 200 miles away with a 9th level slot, or "charge" (more like let yourself fall on enemies) for ridiculous damage multipliers with titan sized weapons. But most people are not interested in playing any of that, and thus fall down to a level of power they consider appropiate, so, in a way, most characters were built with some flavor in mind.

5e is incredibly restrictive by comparison, but has an elegant simplicity to it that makes playing and DMing it so much simpler while retaining decent customization for the most common medieval fantasy archetypes, that I wouldn't go back to 3e unless I was stuck in a white void for a quadrillion years (althought with each book its less so, and the power creep is becoming increasingly evident with Tasha)

[Asisreo1]

I couldn't tell you -- Asisreo chose those parameters, not I.

What I can tell you is that changing up the variables isn't going to suddenly make prone the silver bullet that asisreo wants it to be, because the principle of "attacking with Disadvantage > not attacking at all" will continue to be true.

Likewise, "attacking with Disadvantage with your primary schtick > attacking with Disadvantage with your backup weapon" is also true. And of course, reduces the mobility from 1.5x move speed to 0.5x.

Either way, you face a DPR loss in those rounds. Fiddling with the variables only alters the size of the DPR loss from these prone rounds, it doesn't make it so that there isn't one.

Of course you're facing a DPR loss. The same type of DPR loss that would occur if the Ranged character has to start from melee position round 1 and especially if the monster was as-fast or faster.

Prone is a helpful tool because unlike when you're fighting in melee, there is no way to instantaneously give your enemy disadvantage without an action or bonus action. Its completely free.

Prone isn't the end-all-be-all of ranged tactics though. That would be dumb. Its a part of the various other tools a DM has in store that can sometimes shift the effectiveness around.

Like I said in the previous reply, there are hardly any monster without a true counter to ranged attacks and a DM definitely doesn't only have access to melee-enemies when creating even the most narrow of campaigns.

Another thing: Ranged characters cannot protect their squishier allies at all. Melee characters in melee ranged means that the enemy cannot merely attack with a ranged weapon at the cleric and drop their concentration. At worst, he must take an AoO before they use their ranged attack. But a melee character can even prevent that with a grapple. A Ranged Character lets the enemy do their damage on their desired target.

[Eldariel]

Well, we gotta take the good with the bad. 3e let you play whatever you wanted and ten thousand more things you wouldn't have thought of, but you pretty much needed a PhD in its ruleset and a dedication to make builds. Many a time you would end up spending more time making the build than playing it (in the case of a build intended to be played).

However, that also had the effect of "play a character as powerful as you want". So you knew that by 20th level you could literally nuke a metropolis from 200 miles away with a 9th level slot, or "charge" (more like let yourself fall on enemies) for ridiculous damage multipliers with titan sized weapons. But most people are not interested in playing any of that, and thus fall down to a level of power they consider appropiate, so, in a way, most characters were built with some flavor in mind.

5e is incredibly restrictive by comparison, but has an elegant simplicity to it that makes playing and DMing it so much simpler while retaining decent customization for the most common medieval fantasy archetypes, that I wouldn't go back to 3e unless I was stuck in a white void for a quadrillion years (althought with each book its less so, and the power creep is becoming increasingly evident with Tasha)

We'll only have to take them if an improved product doesn't come up. If some party published a 5.5esque system featuring the good parts of 5e (bounded accuracy, the relative simplicity of combat mechanics and advantage/disadvantage, ability score and ASI chassis, etc.) but with revamped class designs (e.g. martial classes with useful 12-20, fighting styles fleshed out, feats split usefully, more reasonable way to gain feats/etc., more interesting monster design, minionmancy revamped, turn action structure revamped, skill system revamped, etc.) I think it'd be a really easy switch to make. I think 5e hit most of the points in basic system mechanics (though few, such as the action system, could really use a facelift) but then totally dropped the ball in class design. PF2E meanwhile has a worse basic system (though a better action system) but way better class design (though there's probably too many options for sunday players and I could see dropping the moving levers to half). I think 5e with rewritten classes could actually cover most of the needs adequately but sadly since WotC is convinced that they cannot change printed things (though they still do it), fixing mistakes is impossible. Next edition will probably be too big of a departure again and most of the good will be lost while we get another set with something new good and something new bad to the overall same level of enjoyability.

[Morty]

Seems to me like there are two players to 5E combat. One is the intended layer, where you're going to do more or less fine with your chosen weapon style, and the other where feats come in and some combinations outpace others noticeably. It's not a huge problem if a game sticks to one of them, but when they come into contact, things can get problematic.

[Unoriginal]

Seems to me like there are two players to 5E combat. One is the intended layer, where you're going to do more or less fine with your chosen weapon style, and the other where feats come in and some combinations outpace others noticeably. It's not a huge problem if a game sticks to one of them, but when they come into contact, things can get problematic.

It's more that some feats and some tactics have more impact in certain environments and certain situations.

Getting Skill Expert for Diplomacy in a campaign that is solely about destroying outright hostile Undead in a catacomb from lvl 1 to 7 is not going to be very impressive (something IMO the DM should warn the player about immediately). Trying to Sharpshooter-kite while you're attacking goblinoids in their own lair is unlikely to turn well.

[CapnWildefyr]

...
Like I said in the previous reply, there are hardly any monster without a true counter to ranged attacks and a DM definitely doesn't only have access to melee-enemies when creating even the most narrow of campaigns.
...

Agreeing and adding on here:
I think everyone has forgotten dodge (unless I missed it). Dodge imposes disadvantage, which cancels EA completely, and certainly will reduce DPR for archers. Even if the PCs attack from cover to get advantage, after the first arrow flies, you can dodge and still close with the PCs. That first arrow reveals your position -- not even your first round of attacks, the first arrow. (Whether mechanically the targets have an action to use at that point is a different story, but they will on their next turn.)

I'm not sure if you're better using a dash action vs dodge, overall, too much math, and probably too situtational to determine.

Let's look again at the previous example of goblins on worgs at 300ft:

• A worg can cover 300 ft using dash in 3 rounds, not 10 as was originally quoted (perhaps meant not literally) a few pages back. Big difference.
• A worg can cover 300 ft in 6 rounds using dodge.
• A goblin on a worg can SHOOT BACK using a bow as he's closing
• A group of goblins attacking what they think is a weak group might be stupid and charge. A group of goblins attacking what they think of as a stronger party would probably using a different tactic -- something diversionary, a split force, planned use of terrain to take advantage of cover, etc
• at the end of the dash, the worg can't attack but the goblin on its back can

Another point, building off of previous comments: An archer popping out of cover, firing, and going back behind total cover results in fewer attacks. The PC has to ready an action here, which means no spamming attacks across every target in sight. Slows down the pace of the slaughter.

Not saying the SS feat + gloomstalker + archer and etc are not powerful. I've DM'd them, and they do somewhere between 1,000-10,000 hp/round. But you can make encounters challenging regardless, without "meta-dm-ing" it to death.

[Unoriginal]

Like I said in the previous reply, there are hardly any monster without a true counter to ranged attacks

What about all monsters who start the fight within 30ft of the party?

[KorvinStarmast]

...by which I mean that its terrible how easy it is to kill things from range in 5e.

The Bowmen of Crecy thank you for acknowledging their awesomeness.
(I refer to the novel published in 1966, by Ronald Welch; I discover that there has been a reissue during the 90's)

Let me get this straight, y'all find one narrow area where some martial classes outperform spellcasting classes in Dungeons and Dragons and y'all wanna nerf it?

Come see the violence casterance inherent in the system.

In my experience playing as a archery focused fighter with sharpshooter is that it looked better on paper than in reality.

Our party's Ranger 3(Hunter) / Rogue 5(Scout) with Sharpshooter feat was a pretty reliable damage source except when he rolled a 1 or a 2 and just freaking missed. My brother (DM) eventually took a page from my book and began to rule "default to partial cover (+2 AC) for enemies in melee with party members" unless there was a blatantly open shot (not really a flanking ruling, but a step toward a bit more verisimilitude). I miss him; he decided to retire the character and try out one of the early UA warlocks (the one associated with stars).

Let's establish this first: do you agree or disagree that Archery style + SS + CBE + EA is better than all other martial damage dealing options?

Sure eats feats, doesn't it? Then again, a Fighter has feats/ASIs to burn.

Do they actually have to keep track of ammunition at your table, or do you handwave this away and they can do an unlimited number of attacks like the melee-weapon users?

Our table does. I do. Yes, that is a way to balance things a bit, but I think Grod made a point a while back about "balancing by making something annoying isn't great design" - however we do keep track of spell slots.
So, keep track of arrow slots.

One thing, Sharpshooter doesn't negate cover. It negates partial cover. There's no reason an opponent can't do the old pop up, attack and duck back maneuver.

Goblins being a fine case in point.

So far they’ve encountered:
{snip fun encounters}
So a few encounters where kiting was feasible, at least one preferable, but i wouldnt call it an overwhelmingly successful strategy. Honestly in this particular campaign their biggest asset to date has been swim speeds on two characters.

Sounds like fun.

RAW, does this work? Attacker can't see you clearly: disadvantage; you can't see the attacker: advantage; straight roll. No?

Not really. They are obscured. If you cast fog cloud and move 10 feet from your location, the don't know where the target is. If they shoot at last known location with disadvantage, that's usually an auto miss ... but I guess DM's can adjust that if they'd like to.

Full cover works, of course, but its a shame that as a GM I basically never get to use half or three-quarters cover - it is either full or nothing.

When friend and foe are in melee, and are the same size, archers shooting into melee are dealing with partial cover. (+2 AC to the target) unless it's a clear case of "I have a clean shot" based on positioning or being airborne and shooting 'down' at a target.

I'm pretty sure I've never seen a tier 3 character without one.

I guess you never met any of my monks.

What about all monsters who start the fight within 30ft of the party?

What about orcs and their aggressive trait, which allows them to close rapidly and to make kiting bloody difficult?

[ZRN]

It’s not saying that at all.

Counterplay is very much *not* saying that you shouldn’t be able to negate abilities. Quite the opposite, in fact. It is about the particular ways in which you do so.

Resistances and immunities have the effect of encouraging players to diversify their elemental portfolios, and adds an extra layer of strategic consideration to (for instance) Wizards choosing their spells. That’s a good thing.

There’s a ton of work done on this subject by fellow game designers, I suggest looking it up, it’s a great read! :)

To be clear, I understand the concept of counterplay and don't have a problem with it; I'm saying it doesn't happen to apply in this case because rules and approaches are (or should be) very dissimilar between the DM and the players. I'll use the "ignore partial cover" portion of Sharpshooter as an example here, but it applies to other aspects of the Sharpshooter and Xbox Expert feats as well.

Rules-wise, the DM should only very rarely be giving feats to NPCs (much less every archer baddie), so the PCs will never be incentivized to stop paying attention to cover.

Approach-wise, the DM should (IMHO of course) have his NPCs act in a way that best fits their in-game understanding of the situation, and (UNLIKE the Purity of Body example) it is very difficult to imagine a scenario where any NPC would have in-game knowledge that would encourage them to NOT seek partial cover when fighting an enemy with a ranged weapon. Realistically, if Tim the Ranger has a reputation as an expert sharpshooter, that would just mean he's always more likely to hit - not that hiding behind a bar or whatever just doesn't work.

There are tons of situations where counterplay is important in 5e, but this happens to be one case where the overall design decision to have NPCs and PCs built with different rules and abilities means that a PC-only feat shouldn't impact counterplay in the specific way you describe. I know you could argue that these feats flatten the game a bit by making it so a ranged PC doesn't have to play around cover and limited range as much, but honestly 90% of the time these specific benefits come into play, they wouldn't result in a much different gameplay approach. Like, if a guy's behind partial cover, I'm more likely to take the effective -2 to hit rather than get out of position to get a clear shot. The feat benefits just (a) get rid of added complexities that are vaguely annoying for some people to track, and (b) occasionally make the character feel like a badass.

[MrStabby]

I often hear people say (A) but the rules don't bear it out. Sharpshooter lets you ignore the worst kind of cover (partial) but does nothing against good cover (total). Prone targets still impose disadvantage against Sharpshooter (and generally make the -5/+10 not worth using), so you still need melee attackers to flush them out by threatening to hit the prone targets with advantage (unless there's no time pressure and you can just plink away at disadvantage and still win--but in that case Sharpshooter was irrelevant already).

This is where I think you have it wrong. Partial cover is the best type of cover. Full cover diminishes choice. The question around what to shoot at is taken for you. There are some things you can, some things you can't. Partial cover being partial cover adds a more nuanced tactical decision making process to the game.

Partial cover is also the best cover becuase it is something the whole party can interact with. Full cover basically is the realm of spellcasters or each player chosing where to stand in the terain the DM has gifted them. Partial cover involves the whole part chosing how to position themselves to keep open lines of fire. It involves pinning down other enemies so the cannot provide cover to their allies.

Losing the role of partial cover in the game has a deeper more deleterious effect on fun than I think you describe. It is not a small thing but an elimination of the way that most enemies have of interacting with ranged combat.

Not often, because it's usually not needed to go as far as hundreds at a time.

Early on, 100 arrows (5 quivers/cases) is usually going to be enough between "town visits". With recovery, that's roughly 150 shots. If you can strap rope to your backpack, you can presumably strap/store quivers to it too, you only really need one to be accessible at a time anyway. You can also give them to your party members to hold onto or take the noble background for retainers, if your DM is being an extra stickler about volume in a way I would start to describe as 'combative'.

Levels 1-4 you're using 1 arrow/round, and most fights aren't going to last longer than 5 rounds or so, so roughly 1/4 quiver before you need to restock the one you're actually drawing from. Levels 5-10 you're using two arrows/round, so half a quiver per battle.

And that's all assuming you're only able to have one 'accessible' quiver at a time. One on the back and one of the belt means 40 arrows per fight available, which is probably going to be enough even with 4 attacks/turn and action surging at max level.

At level 10+ chances are high they will either have a magic quiver (or bow that makes arrows for them) or some other extradimensional space that carry capacity isn't really any issue. A bag of holding is an Uncommon item, the same rarity as a +1 weapon. If your party isn't getting Uncommon rarity magic items at level 10+ then your martials probably have more issues than just carry capacity.

Ammunition does become an issue if you're on an extremely extended absence from any sort of civilisation without proper planning, sure. And if your player fails to prepare then that's on them. But between generous carry capacity, ammunition recovery rules and being able to craft them with tools+proficiency (which is not unreasonable for an archer to want) I daresay it is very very rarely going to be a problem.

100 arrows should do 200 shots if you recover half of them each time, so you acually need fewer arrows.

Am I the only one who finds the primary allure of Sharpshooter to be the ability to fire to long range without disadvantage? The other two are more than just ribbons, I acknowledge, but there are far, far fewer characters I have or would play who would even be tempted by Sharpshooter without that particular bullet. If you offered that bullet on its own, I'd be tempted, even knowing it's not really worth a feat. Offer it on a half-feat, and I would take it in a heartbeat, even without the rest of the feat. And I probably wouldn't take the other two on a half-feat in most characters I play.

I think it depends on the DM and the campaign style. I have DMed a few different campaings and found different aspects of the feat to be the powerful bit in different settings. Range is useful, no doubt but I don't think it is the powerful part in most campaings (though with a lot of outside adventuring/shooting from rooftops etc. it could be). In a campaign fighting against low AC enemies or with team-mates that can easily provide advantage then the -5/+10 bit rocks. I think that the ignoring cover part is the most powerful though (or at least most commonly applicable). However, this does show the strength - you have three abilities each of which would have made a perfectly decent half feat, and rolled them into one (which might actually be a solution - 3 half feats would at least take more levels to pick up and gate the most powerful interactions to a stage in the game where martials can begin to fall behind).

What are the real issues here? Like, I’m hearing the white-room arguments loud and clear, sure, but are people as GMs:

- Seeing players at their tables with buyers remorse because they picked a martial?

- Having less fun combats- I mean actually, not just in theory.

- Finding sharpshooters and ranged in general something that needs to be penalised because the feedback you are getting from players is “y’know, I feel like this is too powerful and I’m not feeling challenged”

- (blue text) agreed that Elvish Accuracy is a cursed feat and the *real* problem here, because I am tired of seeing it over and over and over again in every martial theorycraft! (End blue text. Sorry, on phone, can’t edit)

Like, I get the math of how in an ideal situation it’s better, I don’t need that proven. What I do feel like I need to see is that it is actually a problem here.

Yes. Or yes specifically to the "having less fun combats" bit. As a DM, combats involving sharpshooter are less fun and less tactically deep. My choices around where to position the NPCs to cover softer targets or to be covered themselves are eliminated. As a DM, I think it has a smaller effect on the fun of players - I can hae things like enemies run past the front lines to get to the archers to a) put pressure on/give disadvantage to the archers/casters and b) let the melee folk be awesome by getting a load of attacks of opportunity.

As a player myself... it has an effect. Most archers are mechanically pretty similar in practice. Same feats, same attack action. It is hard to play an archer differently if there is another archer in the group (with a possible exception of rogue). Melee has a number of different styles. Between not wanting to play something too similar to someone else, and also not wanting to have something too mechanically similar to a character that group has seen before, I don't play archers. If I add on top of that the melee options that tend to be outshone functionally by archers, then I rule out more characters still (so not a big fan of playing a twf ranger). The end result is that I play casters or a Paladin (which just gets stupidly over-the top amounts of great abilities). Every. Single. Game. They are fun, and I like them but I feel that the edge that ranged combat has whilst getting so samey diminishes the breadth of the game for me.

If the goal is for the DM to find entertaining ways to mess with Sharpshooter players (not sure I recommend that goal but I sympathize with it), you can set adventures at night (so that foes 600' away aren't even visible yet), or use invisible or burrowing or teleporting creatures, or even just use more monsters.

I agree with this - now it might just be how I DM, but I tent to throw a lot of night time or underground encounters at my party which, to me, doesn't feel unnatural or like I am targetting any particular PC but does cap this ability of the feat somewhat.

Honestly, this isn't actually that weird. Sprinting in spurts and then throwing yourself behind whatever tiny scraps of cover you can find is pretty much how you'd cover a big open space under covering fire. Like, I can clearly visualize a scene from a war movie here.


Again, I think that you're ignoring the fact that people aren't going to bother to pick up SS+EA if they don't have a way to generate advantage when they need it. That's why people bring up the combination in the context of Samurai Fighters and the like. So it's only going to be GWM w/ advantage vs. SS w/o advantage against mooks.

As for which one is the bigger offender... they're both pretty bad, but EA was just the straw that broke the camel's back for me. It doesn't help that it basically enshrines elves as The Best Archers, regardless of what your particular campaign does with them.

I think that things like prone are a great answer to sharpshooter (sometimes) but a pretty poor answer to ranged combat being too powerful.

Against sharpshooter the disadvantage makes the -5/+10 ability less useful, it doesn't need cover and if you are shooting back then it is just both sides plinking at each other with low hit rates. Maybe not the most fun fight but it brings the feat in line with others. Of course if the PCs don't also go prone then the enemy can pop up and down for their shooting as well.

As for EA, the benefits of advantage don't have to come from the archer character - playing with a spellcaster that can blind enemies or restrain them is fine.

I am actually very relaxed about EA. In terms of accuracy, it isn't such a big deal: what are the odds of a third die comming up with a hit given that the first two missed? It is really small and I would expect, even on a build that frequently sees advantage, for it to mabe only make a difference one or two times a day. In a game that has the lucky feat, I don't really stress about this. I see a bigger deal on things like Paladins that can smite on critical hits.

And a feat is a big investment. I work on the assumption that 1) sharpshooter will be the better feat and will come first. 2) If you are waiting till level 8 for your second feat you probably want to have an even dex score over that span as the +1 to hit and damage and ancilliary benefits are so big. This means that EA is a modest boost coming along in the mid game and probably with an effctive -1 dex bonus over what you would have had in its absence. Most of the time I think I would still prefer the +1 to dex bonus.

And elves being the best archers? I guess there are worse races it could happen to. So I kind of think that dex bump is better than EA and so elves only become the "best" archers after dex has been maxed and sharpshooter procured... and possibly crossbow expert as well. That said other races have a lot of other things going for them as well - they may be better more effective characters without being better at archery.

[Unoriginal]

What about orcs and their aggressive trait, which allows them to close rapidly and to make kiting bloody difficult?

That is a good point.

[diplomancer]

As for EA, the benefits of advantage don't have to come from the archer character - playing with a spellcaster that can blind enemies or restrain them is fine.

True; but if we go that route, what about casters inflicting the paralyzed, or unconscious, condition when melee characters are nearby; unlike Blinded or Restrained to the target of a Ranged attacker, powerful as they are, those are usually death sentences.

[MrStabby]

True; but if we go that route, what about casters inflicting the paralyzed, or unconscious, condition when melee characters are nearby; unlike Blinded or Restrained to the target of a Ranged attacker, powerful as they are, those are usually death sentences.

Oh absolutely.

I guess my circumlocutory perambulations were not clear.

Whilst I think Sharpshooter is, after a fashion problematic, I see EA as beeing much less of an issue even considering the case against it was made missing some potential benefits.

[ZRN]

I've seen a few people ask on this thread but I don't think I've seen an affirmative answer.

Has anyone actually seen this supposed superiority of ranged martial attacks impact their game negatively?

I just feel like so few characters (rogues, rangers, and some fighters) are actually making a choice between ranged and melee styles that any imbalance isn't likely to really impact most games.

[x3n0n]

I've seen a few people ask on this thread but I don't think I've seen an affirmative answer.

Has anyone actually seen this supposed superiority of ranged martial attacks impact their game negatively?

I just feel like so few characters (rogues, rangers, and some fighters) are actually making a choice between ranged and melee styles that any imbalance isn't likely to really impact most games.

The only one I've seen is on the first page, before people started asking for examples.

Yeah i'm a minmaxer in a party of non minamaxers, and I play a paladin with PAM(will be sorcadin next level) and I thought I would have to tune him down so I would not open a serious-not-fun kind of gap with the others. Then a player who plays his 2nd character, a total beginner, chooses battlemaster-archery-sharpshooter, and gets 20 dex. We always laugh when it is his turn, that he has a shotgun and not a bow, as things usually die when it is his turn. He does not even remember to use his maneuvers or what they do. It does not matter.

I'm still having a lot of fun btw casting bless on him and keeping foes from him so he can obliterate everything.

Note that they're not necessarily perceiving it as negative, and that most of the group is not shooting for max efficiency, including the "offending" player.

[Sorinth]

Now, melee combatants, or just everybody, because rangeds can do the same if they are not on the run, going prone every couple seconds to avoid enemy fire seems clowny, and only works in a turn based scenario. Narratively the character moved a straight line and randomly decided to go prone a couple times, he's not ducking out of the way of the arrows, he's full prone.

And if that becomes a semi-standard strategy for moderately "intelligent" foes, then combat suddenly starts looking very different from what I'd wager most people imagine when they think medieval fantasy combat. That is a clear sign that rules are geeting in the way.

Agreed, and it's one reason Shields should probably do something extra vs ranged attacks and/or have some sort of "formation" bonus. If ducking behind a shield minimized the effects of ranged damage it would be more historically accurate and provide some tactical decision making especially if there was a "cost" associated with ducking behind the shield.