Ranged DPR is Terrible

[Kane0]

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.

I did mention a page or two back, i’ve noticed as DM that ranged attack characters are pretty reliable damage dealers with suprisingly high numbers at times but not to the point of disrupting the game. Maybe i’m just comfortable with the system at this point? But this would probably be a different story if the party weren’t mixed and everyone brought along a mobile sniper character.
But the same would be said if the party were all melee or all casters. Taking away the mix makes encounters harder to create for me since their capabilities arent so well-rounded and things get swingy.

For reference i’ve currently got a monk, a warlock, a bard, two rogues and two fighters (they usually arent all present at once). The rogues and warlock can fight melee and range equally well but the others are all melee focused except for the caster bard.

Edit: i also distinctly remember a long time ago playing a warlock with eldritch spear and spell sniper and getting to actually make use of all that range excactly ONE time, and even then it was one and a half turns of attacks before melee ensued with the rest of the party. Maybe the DM felt it was too strong that i could potentially end the encounter before anyone else could do anything and ‘adjusted’ accordingly but i’ll never know.

[Unoriginal]

How do they prevent the party from attacking before they reach 30'? Are they disguised as pilgrims? Waving a white flag of truce? Operating at night? Invisible? Indoors?

Indoor is the typical situation, yes.

[PhoenixPhyre]

I have had two "Gonna Snipe" characters. One ranger, one rogue. Both had the personality trait "DON'T TOUCH ME". Both were quite effective...if and only if they could keep the enemies off of them. Which I made sure only happened sometimes. Creatures with faster than usual movement, point-blank teleportation, simply having more than one door (ie flanking), ignoring the tanks, it all works. Or heck, other ranged characters. Because nothing says "have fun" like a horde of CR 1 quaddrones at 4 arrows per turn. Plus flying.

[MaxWilson]

Indoor is the typical situation, yes.

Indoors, how do they prevent the party from reconnoitering them with a Rogue/Chainlock Sprite/wizard's Arcane Eye/Shadow Monk/etc. before they get within 30' of the main party? Are the doors too big for a sprite to open? Magically trapped? Only accessible via teleportal?

[CapnWildefyr]

The one problem with that is that by taking using up your action you can't close the distance (Assuming both sides have the same movement speed). You kind of still have to be able to take the Dash action in order to close the gap.

I haven't fully thought it through but maybe instead of an AC bonus the shield just always increases cover by one category. So normally without cover you get the +2 AC, but then if you find partial cover it's +5, and if you find 3/4 you have total cover. You could still change the cover busting rules of SS if you wanted but it might not be as necessary.

You can move when you're Dodging.

That is why IMO the core issue is not Elven Accuracy, it's "unseen attackers getting advantage on ranged attacks." An Arcane Archer who uses Sharpshooter + Elven Accuracy to bring down any enemies the wildshaped druid in Giant Constrictor Snake form grapples is a feature, not a bug. The bug is (for example) an Eldritch Knight with Dancing Lights destroying everything at night away thanks to EA and 60' darkvision range on most monsters. Ditto Minor Illusion/Major Image tricks, or hiding inside a hedge, or Darkness (conveniently an Evocation spell), or any other inexpensive method of becoming unseen.

OK, but what about the rule for unseen attackers: "If you are hidden--both unseen and unheard--when you make an attack, you give away your location when the attack hits or misses." I think there is room for interpretation here, as with all rules, but to me this means that when you shoot a bow from within a hedge, after that, the opponents can think, "Oh ****, there's someone in that section of hedge!" and are then able to take cover or take the Dodge action, even though they can't "see" you. Advantage over (unless regained somehow). So my first attack is at advantage, but not the rest. Another point is whether or not you would allow Dodge if the attacker is not directly seen. I wouldn't do that for melee, but for missile weapons I would not blindly stick to RAW and would allow a Dodge -- I mean, arrows are visible. Also, I can still make myself a harder target to a bowman by running and moving randomly. Perhaps not RAW, wondering what's your opinion?

Lets consider a very 'normal' situation. A 60 by 30 chamber with a miniboss wizard at one end and coterie of elite guards near him. Some lesser guards are midfield, maybe. The party is 2 melee guys, 2 casters, 2 ranged characters. The ranged characters and spellcasters (on both sides) can engage the biggest threats on the other side of the map (each other) while the melee characters have to spend several turns moving. This situation persists for one round or even two rounds, and by that point the combat is already firmly going one way. If either side is worried about the melee characters, there are loads of CC effects that will keep them squarely away from the ranged characters and casters until everything is settled. If they're lucky, the melee characters get into range maybe a single turn before the wizard is dead at which point they will deal... the same damage that the ranged characters have been dealing for 1-2 rounds already. Their total damage over the course of the encounter is 1/2 to 1/3 of their counterparts. If you replaced them with ranged characters, they could still attack all the same people they did before... but they could start doing so on their first turn

This is something I'd consider a neutral situation. To make the martials shine you have to deliberately make things easy for them and hard for the casters. You have to add lots of cover to the map, you have to have the wizard cast fog cloud or something to reduce the capability of the archers. You need to squish the throne room to a cramped 20x40. You need to avoid the wizard casting something that would impede the progress of the melee guys. You need to buff the movement of the enemy melee guys so that they actually have a chance to get in against the ranged guys.

This is basic Rule 0 fallacy. Just because the DM can make it work doesn't mean he should have to. Fighting creatures in the open field is a very normal thing to do on an adventure and it should be supported.

Um, not sure about the math here. A T2 6' barbarian can close 40' in one round, then attack. In a 60' long room, how far can all the enemies be? Probably not lined up against the far wall, so one might be in range, especially vs. someone with a reach weapon. If you have slow PCs with stubby legs (dwarves and halflings), they can still dash and get there in 1 round. Sure melee PCs *might* lose 1 round of attacks, but next round is full-up. A fighter could decide to action surge to get there, and attack. So there are other options, it's not all up to the party's casters to 'shrink the room,' or up to the DM to nerf the encounter so martials can get involved.

Besides, there are thrown weapons. Maybe a Rule -1 fallacy is "The game rules aren't broken just because the barbarian didn't think to bring a throwing axe." Sure, it's not full damage, but neither is a caster's flame bolt or magic missile, compared to fireball, cloudkill, mass suggestion, etc. Sometimes you gotta play the hand you're dealt and get on with it. Unless every encounter starts at long distances, things will even out over time.

[HPisBS]

...
The issue with always buffing is that the player facing systems are just one element of the game. Other systems interact with that system, and have certain expectations from it. If your solution to some elements in one system being out of balance is to make it so that all the other elements in that system are equally out of balance, than on the surface it might seem like you fixed the problem, but in reality, you just created even deeper issues. You now need to rebalance all of the games other systems to fit the new norm, which is a massively larger amount of work.

In D&D terms, if some classes or builds are too strong, it is not simply because they outshine other classes. It is because they confound the expectations of the encounter design, exploration and attrition mechanics of the game. You need to nerf those classes, not buff the others, because doing the latter means not only rewriting a bunch of classes, but also changing the entire game structure as well to account for this new power level....

...
Something like, "when you take the dash action you can make a melee weapon attack as a bonus action" would help a lot but its still not enough. At some point you have to realize that melee characters having almost zero advantages despite having to move potentially massive distances (150 feet for a normal hobgoblin) is an unworkable problem. You have to buff melee damage and movement by an absurd degree to close the gap. I'm talking a 50% damage and a 100% movement increase or more.

This presents other problems, most notably pushing the game further into rocket tag territory.

I prefer buffs to nerfs but its not sufficient all the time.

It's not that you should always buff or all the time, just that that should be the first direction you look. People are loss-averse. 'Feels bad, man.

To the point about things being out of balance: most of the game is "out of balance." Pretty much all casters can overshadow pretty much all martials to some degree. And within martials, ranged has been singled out as the superior choice. So, the thing to do would be to bring martials up to where they're on par, with a little extra love given to melee.

- Or, better yet, just tweaking certain parts of the system itself. I really think that making Dash impose disadvantage on all ranged attacks by / against the dasher would probably be sufficient for closing the gap between melee and ranged focused chara

Giving (all?) martials Charger for free at certain levels would be another possibility. (It's weak enough of a feat to be really hard to justify spending an ASI on. So it's not exactly a huge power boost.)

As for "balancing for the new power level," if that is a problem that results from a given buff, then it can often be fixed by simply adding some extra mooks to the encounter(s). But something like Dash triggering disadvantage by / against the dasher shouldn't cause any such issues.

(The whole martial vs caster part would be better discussed and fleshed-out in any of the myriad of threads that already exist on the topic.)

Even the quoted link has nice things to say about nerfs, in some circumstances. It's a nuanced take, not a simplistic "always buff instead of nerf".

The real point of the video seems to be mostly about "embrace asymmetries in the game, and don't nerf things into symmetry as a form of balance."

And Max takes the prize!

[MaxWilson]

OK, but what about the rule for unseen attackers: "If you are hidden--both unseen and unheard--when you make an attack, you give away your location when the attack hits or misses." I think there is room for interpretation here, as with all rules, but to me this means that when you shoot a bow from within a hedge, after that, the opponents can think, "Oh ****, there's someone in that section of hedge!" and are then able to take cover or take the Dodge action, even though they can't "see" you. Advantage over (unless regained somehow). So my first attack is at advantage, but not the rest. Another point is whether or not you would allow Dodge if the attacker is not directly seen. I wouldn't do that for melee, but for missile weapons I would not blindly stick to RAW and would allow a Dodge -- I mean, arrows are visible. Also, I can still make myself a harder target to a bowman by running and moving randomly. Perhaps not RAW, wondering what's your opinion?

To be clear: I agree that even if you were hidden before, after you make your first attack you are no longer hidden (unless Skulker, etc. changes that). But that doesn't make you unseen, it just makes you no longer hidden. The attacker is still unseen and still gets advantage, at least per RAW. I think we agree on this but I'm stating it to be sure--I think you're just saying the enemy will start Dodging or something as a response. If you're denying the enemy actions because they're busy Dodging to cancel out your advantage from being unseen, that is also a win for the ranged attacker which they don't deserve (it's unrealistic and unnecessary).

I've spent the last four years though running the houserule that only unseen melee attackers get advantage (starting shortly after that unhappy Barbarian story I told upthread, as I started thinking about ways that RAW was unfair to melee PCs), and since then while I've seen ranged attackers be far stronger defensively, when it comes to DPR melee tends to pull ahead, since prone/darkness/heavy obscurement are all situations which favor melee, as indeed they do in real life. Ranged combat is still clearly better (lets you kill bigger monsters more safely with more tactical flexibility) but melee is better at some things (bodyguarding, DPR races in cage fights).

[Sorinth]

You can move when you're Dodging.

And so can the ranged enemy. In an open environment you wouldn't be able to close the distance with a ranged enemy if you spent your action taking the Dodge action unless you had a higher movement speed or an ability to BA Dash.

[ZRN]

Lets consider a very 'normal' situation. A 60 by 30 chamber with a miniboss wizard at one end and coterie of elite guards near him. Some lesser guards are midfield, maybe. The party is 2 melee guys, 2 casters, 2 ranged characters. The ranged characters and spellcasters (on both sides) can engage the biggest threats on the other side of the map (each other) while the melee characters have to spend several turns moving. This situation persists for one round or even two rounds, and by that point the combat is already firmly going one way. If either side is worried about the melee characters, there are loads of CC effects that will keep them squarely away from the ranged characters and casters until everything is settled. If they're lucky, the melee characters get into range maybe a single turn before the wizard is dead at which point they will deal... the same damage that the ranged characters have been dealing for 1-2 rounds already. Their total damage over the course of the encounter is 1/2 to 1/3 of their counterparts. If you replaced them with ranged characters, they could still attack all the same people they did before... but they could start doing so on their first turn

This is something I'd consider a neutral situation. To make the martials shine you have to deliberately make things easy for them and hard for the casters. You have to add lots of cover to the map, you have to have the wizard cast fog cloud or something to reduce the capability of the archers. You need to squish the throne room to a cramped 20x40. You need to avoid the wizard casting something that would impede the progress of the melee guys. You need to buff the movement of the enemy melee guys so that they actually have a chance to get in against the ranged guys.

Okay. A few things.

1. Nobody has to spend a turn moving before engaging except maybe the elite guards, because the melee PCs can take out the midfield guards first.

2. If the melee PCs ARENT there, the guards will curb-stomp the PC mages, because tanking is a thing that only melee characters can even really attempt. So the melee PCs seem pretty essential in this scenario even if they do less damage.

3. The boss mage can just hide behind his throne or the table or whatever for full cover after each spell and render the ranged PCs mostly useless.

[Rukelnikov]

Okay. A few things.

1. Nobody has to spend a turn moving before engaging except maybe the elite guards, because the melee PCs can take out the midfield guards first.

2. If the melee PCs ARENT there, the guards will curb-stomp the PC mages, because tanking is a thing that only melee characters can even really attempt. So the melee PCs seem pretty essential in this scenario even if they do less damage.

3. The boss mage can just hide behind his throne or the table or whatever for full cover after each spell and render the ranged PCs mostly useless.

What? Do you mean tanking as in drawing enemy fire or in a survivability capacity? If the former... hmm ok, maybe, not really, but they do get Sentinel. The latter is blatantly wrong, simple example AbjurerX/Hexblade1, upcast Agathys on demand

[MaxWilson]

Okay. A few things.

1. Nobody has to spend a turn moving before engaging except maybe the elite guards, because the melee PCs can take out the midfield guards first.

2. If the melee PCs ARENT there, the guards will curb-stomp the PC mages, because tanking is a thing that only melee characters can even really attempt. So the melee PCs seem pretty essential in this scenario even if they do less damage.

3. The boss mage can just hide behind his throne or the table or whatever for full cover after each spell and render the ranged PCs mostly useless.

What does point #2 mean? Tanking is a thing that practically anyone in 5E can attempt with a fair degree of success, not limited to PCs. The mages may have AC 19-21 (+5 if Shielding), they may have pre-summoned AC 17 Earth Elementals with 126 HP to tank for them, they may have a whole swarm of conjured animals boosted by Shepherd Druid spirits to tank by proxy. It seems clear that in this scenario, a party with zero melee PCs can do better than the melee party, e.g. by trading each melee PC for a Lyrandar warlock (see my .sig) who is also a ranged attacker.

A party with zero melee PCs is not inherently problematic, but it is problematic when a new player plays a melee PC and then realizes halfway through a campaign that they aren't relevant because of how various 5E rules interact.

[Ir0ns0ul]

I totally agree as well. Important to notice that ranged combat also has great support on magic items.

Bracers of Archery, Longbow +1 and Arrow +1 are all uncommon magic items.

If you have a generous DM, you don’t even need Sharpshooter, with the cheap setup above you’ll be attacking at +11 to hit and delivering 1d8 + 8 of damage as a Fighter/Ranger at level 5+ with DEX 18.

[PhoenixPhyre]

I totally agree as well. Important to notice that ranged combat also has great support on magic items.

Bracers of Archery, Longbow +1 and Arrow +1 are all uncommon magic items.

If you have a generous DM, you don’t even need Sharpshooter, with the cheap setup above you’ll be attacking at +11 to hit and delivering 1d8 + 8 of damage as a Fighter/Ranger at level 5+ with DEX 18.

Note: the arrows are one-time-use (with an estimated XGtE cost of 150gp). That's not trivial until you're much higher level.

[Trafalgar]

One big advantage for ranged builds are the 5e cover rules. An arrow slit or thick tree trunk gives a +5AC bonus which is almost equivalent to all attackers having disadvantage on the archer.

I feel like the main counter in gameplay is actually tracking ammunition and not allowing it to be recovered after combat. That kind of resource management is a drag on game play but does make an archer choose their shots carefully.

[quindraco]

One big advantage for ranged builds are the 5e cover rules. An arrow slit or thick tree trunk gives a +5AC bonus which is almost equivalent to all attackers having disadvantage on the archer.

I feel like the main counter in gameplay is actually tracking ammunition and not allowing it to be recovered after combat. That kind of resource management is a drag on game play but does make an archer choose their shots carefully.

This is a good rule and I support it, but it won't make archers be that careful - instead it'll encourage every archer to take proficiency in woodcarver's tools for 5 arrows per short rest and 20 per long while near wood, like a forest or, if unsupervised, a ship, and they'll find ways to carry the arrows they need by doing things like joining the party clamor for bags of holding. And it'll do actually nothing on artificers, who can't run out of ammo thanks to repeating shot.

So your rule adds both immersion and flavor and I like it, but there's no reality to 5E archers simply running out of ammo in a credible timeframe.

One thing you could do to buff the melee side is applying the TCOE Sidekick rules to warhorses, making them warriors. The biggest problem with 5E cavalry is how quickly horses evaporate in the face of a serious threat - far more quickly than their riders. Horse sidekicks have a way to gain more hit dice (and more Constitution and Dexterity), helping to alleviate that problem. Plus, right at level 1 there's RAW proficiency in barding.

What I can't tell you is how that will actually impact things like CR - the TCOE guidelines say to treat the resulting horse like a full PC for calculating CR, but that's bound to lead to weird consequences.

Note: If I were the GM, I would 100% ban my players from using longbows while mounted. There's just no way to do that without an incorporeal horse. I'd allow them to fire heavy crossbows, but I wouldn't let them reload them, because I interpret heavy crossbows as the kind that need your foot to reload properly.

[Amnestic]

One big advantage for ranged builds are the 5e cover rules. An arrow slit or thick tree trunk gives a +5AC bonus which is almost equivalent to all attackers having disadvantage on the archer.

I feel like the main counter in gameplay is actually tracking ammunition and not allowing it to be recovered after combat. That kind of resource management is a drag on game play but does make an archer choose their shots carefully.

I am unconvinced ammunition tracking actively does anything unless you're comboing it with a variant encumbrance rule - a rule that usually ends up hitting the strengthboys just as much because of how heavy their armour is in comparison to dexboys. And while moving slower under var-encumbrance is bad for the archer for sure, it's worse for melee (for what I hope is obvious reasons).

Note: If I were the GM, I would 100% ban my players from using longbows while mounted. There's just no way to do that without an incorporeal horse. I'd allow them to fire heavy crossbows, but I wouldn't let them reload them, because I interpret heavy crossbows as the kind that need your foot to reload properly.

Ignoring the guy-at-the-gym problems raised, didn't/don't Japanese archers use longbows from horseback?

[CapnWildefyr]

And so can the ranged enemy. In an open environment you wouldn't be able to close the distance with a ranged enemy if you spent your action taking the Dodge action unless you had a higher movement speed or an ability to BA Dash.

True. But anyone used to fighting in an open environment (except for monsters without hands and arms) will almost always be shooting back -- just not as well, and yes, they'll lose unless they have overwhelming numbers. And the melee PCs will be bored if they haven't learned to bring a bow - even if they are not specialized in it.

[CapnWildefyr]

To be clear: I agree that even if you were hidden before, after you make your first attack you are no longer hidden (unless Skulker, etc. changes that). But that doesn't make you unseen, it just makes you no longer hidden. The attacker is still unseen and still gets advantage, at least per RAW. I think we agree on this but I'm stating it to be sure--I think you're just saying the enemy will start Dodging or something as a response. If you're denying the enemy actions because they're busy Dodging to cancel out your advantage from being unseen, that is also a win for the ranged attacker which they don't deserve (it's unrealistic and unnecessary).

I've spent the last four years though running the houserule that only unseen melee attackers get advantage (starting shortly after that unhappy Barbarian story I told upthread, as I started thinking about ways that RAW was unfair to melee PCs), and since then while I've seen ranged attackers be far stronger defensively, when it comes to DPR melee tends to pull ahead, since prone/darkness/heavy obscurement are all situations which favor melee, as indeed they do in real life. Ranged combat is still clearly better (lets you kill bigger monsters more safely with more tactical flexibility) but melee is better at some things (bodyguarding, DPR races in cage fights).

I like your house rule. I was thinking - though I wasn't clear I suppose - that the hidden advantage for missile weapons should not be applicable after an initial attack, which would be a houserule change to the RAW. It makes sense to me that an invisible foe with an invisible sword gets advantage and won't let you Dodge, but not so for ranged attacks. Unless the arrows/javelins are invisible, whether or not you can see the attacker who shot them is not important, since you could see where the missiles came from. In your case or in mine, it does alleviate the problem a bit. So I think I'm in agreement now.

[In a way, though, " If you're denying the enemy actions because they're busy Dodging to cancel out your advantage from being unseen, that is also a win for the ranged attacker which they don't deserve (it's unrealistic and unnecessary)." is basically the same as me dodging a barbarian with a great ax because he's going to hack me to bits. I can attack and get slaughtered, or use my time dodging and hoping to slip away. I guess the diff is in trying to cancel an advantage that shouldn't be there.]

[ZRN]

What? Do you mean tanking as in drawing enemy fire or in a survivability capacity? If the former... hmm ok, maybe, not really, but they do get Sentinel. The latter is blatantly wrong, simple example AbjurerX/Hexblade1, upcast Agathys on demand

Drawing enemy fire and controlling/obstructing enemy movement. They get Sentinel and also often other subclass benefits (e.g. Cavalier or Ancestral Spirits).

To be clear, I meant that of the two types of builds we’re comparing, melee and ranged martial characters, the latter type can’t tank. They usually don’t even get opportunity attacks to punish enemies for running right past them. Of course there are other builds out there that can tank and even more other builds that can withstand a few hits, but unless the entire party is prioritizing survivability (and even to a degree if they are, because focus fire is effective even against tough targets), you still don’t want the enemy freely picking and choosing melee targets.

[ZRN]

What does point #2 mean? Tanking is a thing that practically anyone in 5E can attempt with a fair degree of success, not limited to PCs. The mages may have AC 19-21 (+5 if Shielding), they may have pre-summoned AC 17 Earth Elementals with 126 HP to tank for them, they may have a whole swarm of conjured animals boosted by Shepherd Druid spirits to tank by proxy. It seems clear that in this scenario, a party with zero melee PCs can do better than the melee party, e.g. by trading each melee PC for a Lyrandar warlock (see my .sig) who is also a ranged attacker.
.

I feel like the discussion risks drifting into “melee fighters vs. any build in the game that attacks from more than 5 feet away, with full resources and prep time available,” which isn’t a useful discussion.

[Unoriginal]

Indoors, how do they prevent the party from reconnoitering them with a Rogue/Chainlock Sprite/wizard's Arcane Eye/Shadow Monk/etc. before they get within 30' of the main party? Are the doors too big for a sprite to open? Magically trapped? Only accessible via teleportal?

They don't have to prevent reconnaissance. The environment is what will likely place them within 30ft (or close enough) of the party if a fight is to occure.

[Segev]

On house rules for fighting without being able to see: mine is that you only get advantage if you can see your target and they cannot see you. You get disadvantage if you cannot see your target. This leads to two blinded warriors (or two warriors fighting in the dark without darkvision, or two invisible warriors, etc.) both having disadvantage against each other.

It is also worth noting that going prone only helps at all if you are in short range of the enemy weapon or they have sharpshooter. I know sharpshooter is part of the assumption here, but I feel this needs pointing out nonetheless.

[MaxWilson]

This is a good rule and I support it, but it won't make archers be that careful - instead it'll encourage every archer to take proficiency in woodcarver's tools for 5 arrows per short rest and 20 per long while near wood, like a forest or, if unsupervised, a ship,

Congratulations sir, you got me. If I'd been drinking there would be root beer all over my phone.

They don't have to prevent reconnaissance. The environment is what will likely place them within 30ft (or close enough) of the party if a fight is to occure.

That situation still greatly favors ranged builds then. E.g. the party can plant caltrops on the approach and set a Dodging friendly like an armored zombie at the doorway to the room, and then take turns strafing the room from behind the friendly, or even moving briefly into the room if needed to get an angled shot (since friendlies can move through friendlies as difficult terrain, but enemies cannot).

Only in very niche situations is it difficult to exploit a reach or range advantage, in the 5E ruleset. Remember that burrowing vampire combat challenge you created a while back? Ranged attacks are more useful in that scenario than melee attacks are.

[ZRN]

That situation still greatly favors ranged builds then. E.g. the party can plant caltrops on the approach and set a Dodging friendly like an armored zombie at the doorway to the room, and then take turns strafing the room from behind the friendly, or even moving briefly into the room if needed to get an angled shot (since friendlies can move through friendlies as difficult terrain, but enemies cannot).

Only in very niche situations is it difficult to exploit a reach or range advantage, in the 5E ruleset.

There are a lot of popular melee builds that involve using darkness or fog spells, which I’d say is certainly no more “niche” than carrying around caltrops and zombies to avoid having to fight in melee.

[5eNeedsDarksun]

I totally agree as well. Important to notice that ranged combat also has great support on magic items.

Bracers of Archery, Longbow +1 and Arrow +1 are all uncommon magic items.

If you have a generous DM, you don’t even need Sharpshooter, with the cheap setup above you’ll be attacking at +11 to hit and delivering 1d8 + 8 of damage as a Fighter/Ranger at level 5+ with DEX 18.

I disagree both generally and specifically with your post.
Generally, there are way more and powerful melee items in the DMG, including things that add dice based damage bonuses. Bows are limited in nature and Xbows are nearly non-existant. I'd argue this is one of the things that balances the game back towards melees.
Specifically I've never met a DM that would be giving out 3 permanent magic items to a level 5 character, particularly ones that are taylor made for the character. With DMing like this many characters are going to be broken by tier 2.
I guess you could argue that magic is table dependent and there are posters on here that have said they basically have magic shops where players can buy items on demand. However 5e is already so tilted in favor of players if you go this route then at minimum forget about even playing published mods; decent optimization + liberal access to magic on demand = characters that function at way above expected level. This is not range dependent.

[strangebloke]

So, here's my new list of changes, take 3:

1. Everyone has the charge action. As an action you may move up to your speed toward a hostile creature that you can see and make one melee weapon attack. It's not very good for high-level fighters but its pretty okay for melee rogues, monks, clerics, and Barbarians(sort of, anyway). It won't save you if the Range of Engagement is 150 feet but it will save you if the range of engagement is 45 feet. Of course, the biggest winner here is monsters like the ettin. In order to kite such a creature you'll have to have a BA dash and a speed of 45 or greater, which is possible but not trivial. Kiting air elementals is a fools idea.
2. Ranges for all bows, crossbows, and damage cantrips are cut in half. (except poison spray lol.)
3. While mounted on a controlled mount, you and your mount share a turn and a set of actions. You occupy your mount's space and you and your mount move using your mount's movement. You may use your action, bonus action, and reaction every round to take any actions available to you or to your mount. The Dash and Disengage actions apply to your mount as well as you. Your mount always takes the dodge action.
4. Sharpshooter allows you to take a -5 penalty to either get +10 damage or x4 range.
5. Archery style only grants you a +2 if you use no movement on your turn.
6. Unseen attackers do not have advantage on ranged attacks.

Melee creatures will have a much easier time getting in and dealing at least some damage, which massively raises the floor of their functionality. Ranged characters have a far harder time pushing their accuracy stratospheric which makes Sharpshooter a lot harder to leverage for more damage. In "normal" encounters the ranged penalties won't apply that much but it makes the "centaurs on an open field" thing far less oppressive.

Okay. A few things.

1. Nobody has to spend a turn moving before engaging except maybe the elite guards, because the melee PCs can take out the midfield guards first.

2. If the melee PCs ARENT there, the guards will curb-stomp the PC mages, because tanking is a thing that only melee characters can even really attempt. So the melee PCs seem pretty essential in this scenario even if they do less damage.

3. The boss mage can just hide behind his throne or the table or whatever for full cover after each spell and render the ranged PCs mostly useless.

1. You're missing the part where the melee kill machines spent their first turn fighting the useless chafe at the door. They can't select targets, they can't get to the real enemies in time, so they just have to advance ~20feet up the field and smack some CR 1/8 guards around (who they're actually very inefficient against.) You could literally remove either side of melee combatants from the game and unless your melee PCs are specifically optimized for movement (rogues and monks) nothing would change for the first 1-2 rounds either way. The weaker guards at the door are explicitly pretty weak.
2. What are the "PC mages"? Do you mean the spellcasters? Bards, clerics, and warlocks all have an easy time getting to 19 AC, and are far less squishy than a lot of melee PC builds like rogues and monks tend to be at low levels. Ranged fighters and rangers etc. can usually get d10 hit die with 17 AC. To be blunt I don't think anyone will be too fussed about this issue, and if they are, its pretty easy for one of the casters to drop a 'hypnotic pattern' or something on the lowlevel guards. The casters are much better equipped to dealing with a lowlevel swarm anyway.
3. Not all spells need line of sight, Warlocks aren't really impacted by such tactics (they can get their full attack off on a ready EB), and ultimately all of the PCs can pull the same trick on him in reverse by using the doorway.

Finally, what are the melee people.... actually doing to stop these lowlevel guards from attacking the "squishy mages"? Using two reaction attacks? Yay? Killing them (very inefficiently) so that the casters don't have to kill them (very efficiently)?

The only reason melee characters have a reputation as "tanks" is because they're forced to run forward into melee where the enemies (who are almost always optimized for melee) completely butcher them.

I feel like the discussion risks drifting into “melee fighters vs. any build in the game that attacks from more than 5 feet away, with full resources and prep time available,” which isn’t a useful discussion.

I don't think this proves your premise that "mages are squishy and die to low level guards if left unattended."

Except for flat featureless terrain then the simple answer is Line of Sight. The question is really how far can you see in different situations. It wouldn't be at all surprising to have encounter start distance in a forest to range from 15ft to over 100ft depending how dense the forest is. I think older editions had more guidelines on encounter distance based on terrain.

The main difference between me and MaxWilson is that I'm not trying to argue for 'optimal tactics' and I'm not trying to argue that ranged characters totally and utterly dominate every scenario. What I am arguing is:

Ranged characters have the advantage at almost every possible distance. The only time they come up short is if they both unable to run away and are fighting in close quarters because of fog or whatever. In that scenario, if they lack CE, they'll be forced to switch from EB or SS to... normal melee, which will put them a little behind people optimized for that exact thing. In every other scenario the ranged character has a massive advantage because a load of reasons that I listed in the OP, and in some scenarios that do come up they will outright be able to make melee opponents and allies alike feel totally useless. Features that 'help close the gap' like boots of flying or the mobile feat... help ranged characters even more.

Moreover, Forests do not cut your line of sight to 15 feet unless you've fallen into a ditch or something. The only time you might naturally have engagement ranges that short is in a cave, blizzard, or fog cloud. Also bear in mind: For most melee characters if there's difficult terrain the range of engagement might as well be doubled.

Most of the time, engagement ranges are going to be either (1) infinite on the plains or the desert or the high/astral sea (2) 100-200 feet in an environment like a hilly forest (3) 60 feet in darkness or on the edge of a river or finally (4) 15-30 feet indoors or in a cave or adverse weather.

[PhoenixPhyre]

Have you ever been in a natural forest (ie not one manicured with all the underbrush removed)? Being able to see 15' is doing really well unless you're in a clearing. 100-200' is absolutely out of the question.

[strangebloke]

Have you ever been in a natural forest (ie not one manicured with all the underbrush removed)? Being able to see 15' is doing really well unless you're in a clearing. 100-200' is absolutely out of the question.

...What? Yes I have, but we're picturing two very different scenarios



In a forest untouched by man, the trees grow tall and thick enough that little light reaches the forest floor which means very little underbrush except around areas where tall trees cannot grow, IE, rivers, large clumps of rocks. Most of the time you'd be better off with a flashlight than a machete. You'll have ferns and mosses and the like elsewhere but its not sufficient to limit the range of engagement so severely. You'll still see an ogre rumbling toward you from a pretty sizeable distance.

In a younger forest where everything is much more chaotic, you'll have underbrush, but certainly not enough to block vision out past 15'. Like gosh how do you think people go hunting?

[Doug Lampert]

Ignoring the guy-at-the-gym problems raised, didn't/don't Japanese archers use longbows from horseback?

Historically everything we'd call a bow is called a "longbow" (crossbow is the alternative, there never was a weapon called a short bow).

So yes, the Samurai were mounted archers and used longbows. As were a bunch of other people. But unlike other mounted longbows, the Japanese "longbow" was actually long enough that mounted use was difficult. So in the D&D sense of the word longbow, they may well have been longbows.

The Samurai bow was held off-center with an asymmetrical bow design, which was substantially less effective than the much shorter Mongol bows. The Samurai shifted toward melee over time, because their bows really weren't all that good.

Tldr: The Samurai bow is long enough that in D&D terms it's a longbow. In terms of effectiveness, I'm not even sure it should be considered comparable to the so called short bow.

[MaxWilson]

There are a lot of popular melee builds that involve using darkness or fog spells, which I’d say is certainly no more “niche” than carrying around caltrops and zombies to avoid having to fight in melee.

But darkness and fog don't hamper ranged combat unless you're using my houserule or something like it.