One thing I think should also be considered is dex vs str. In 5e dex is generally a superior ability score to strength. You can use dex for initiative, AC, saves and you could also argue the skills for dex are better (stealth, acrobatics etc). Just thought it was worth mentioning.
I completely agree with your general point, but dex effecting AC is more likely a detriment than anything, since it is just playing catch up to the inherit benefits of heavy armor.
@matthew mullin actually it'd pretty even as long as naked is ignored. Medium Armor vs heavy you need 15 str for best armor and 14 dex for best armor with only a difference of 1 ac. When discussing factors like class proficiency and racial abilities, Dwarf is easiest and it gives medium armor on the strongest classes in the game. So you make due with what u can
@@batterylevellow5473 15 str is only required if you want to avoid the -10 movement penalty. You can technically have a str score of 1 and still get all the defensive benefits of plate armor. If you are a dwarf then you ignore the penalty and if you are one of the faster moving races like Centaur or wood elf than you would still move 25-30 ft.
It’s quite unfortunate that melee is simply weaker on average, especially when considering how cool melee characters are in media. Excellent analysis treantmonk!
True, but I think TM does a good job breaking it down and points out the various situations where melee is better. On average, ranged combat is a bit too good, and melee is not quite as good as it should be. For sure. But I think a lot of people overstate the difference based on white room theorizing - assuming that a majority of combat encounters will take place on a flat featureless plain, that opportunity attacks never happen, that blocking the enemy's path will not ever be advantageous tactically, that a kind of "soft tanking" is never possible simply by being out front and in the enemy's face, etc.
@@nathansmith9597 as lifelong tank/melee builder: It's the greatest. We get the buffs and powers from the spellcasters backing me. They don't know how truly powerless I would have been without haste (or they never stop reminding me). The druid summoners (shepherd) will always put dps me. But I survive and get THEM out when they hurt. TM is a daily listen in our household 🏳️🌈
to be fair i think sharpshooter is more important than crossbow expert. CE is good, but if you already have a lots of attacks and/or efficient uses of your bonus action it becomes less useful. For that reason it is better at early level of play. SS otoh considerable increases your damage, and also allow you to ignore cover. I remind you that your friend in melee can provide cover to an enemy. SO that's a +2 in situations that often happen. It's a big bonus to damage that stays relevant during the whole campaign. Finally hand crossbow do less damage, not much less in the grand scheme of things but still, and more importantly it's extremely rare to get a magic hand crossbow compared to a longbow. You may even have to multiclass forge cleric or artificier just to get a magic +1 on your weapon. Longbows user have stuff like the oathbow or dragon bane. Also elven accuracy is awsome and do not work with crossbows. Depending on your build you may not loose much. using a longbow and bumping dex or taking good feats like lucky, alert or resilient is very valid. Gunner is fun too.
I think overall its clear that while there are more options for melee in 5e, there aren't many relatively similar options across all weapon classes. I think the ranged feats in particular show this with how hard they push one specific weapon, even when you supposedly specialise in all crossbows with crossbow expert. And thats not mentioning that its apparently intentional that ranged attack spellcasters should consider crossbow expert so they can cast without disadvantage in melee. I'd like more interesting and diverse choice of effective weapons in both ranged and melee, but especially for ranged as they really have one option currently.
We introduced a homebrew ruling that allows melee users to cleave. This incentivizes close ranged combat in a multi enemy scenario where killing an enemy allows you to transfer the remaining damage to an adjacent creature guaranteeing an upper hand in the action economy. While the damage is lesser than that of a sharpshooter, the reliability makes up the difference vs a focus firing strategy.
@@tonyriemenschneider8745 Yep and if the Flanking optional rule is used too, that's yet another literal Advantage for melee. I use both at my table. Ranged is so much safer than melee so there should be some reward for that risk. As he said in vid, melee offers far more opportunities to turn your reaction and bonus actions into more damage. The biggest difference in overall damage between ranged and melee comes from melee damage lost while closing with enemy so the more mobility you have as a melee, the more you're going to close that damage gap.
@@tawumpas As a DM (what I am a majority of the time) one of the funniest things you will ever encounter is when you come to a new table that mostly hasn't used the Flanking rules previously and you tell them it's in. The player's eyes light up like it's Xmas...right up till the first time enemies surround their character and all have advantage as well..."I'm not sure I like this rule anymore" lol Makes me laugh every time ;)
@@Finnssssss These 8 wolves ain't so tough, right? 👀⚰️⚰️⚰️⚰️ 😬 Oops -- I play w backstabbing. But the defendant can define their agro and change it (to one target, shifting
Two additional things which favor melee but I count them as both circumstantial. First, magic melee weapons are generally better (or have at least more variety) than ranged weapons. I think there are 6? unique ranged weapons and none of them are crossbows. Second, depending on class, you can also get a damage increase with Booming Blade or GFP. I haven't mathed it out really, but depending on if you have extra attack/leve/class, then it could be a damage increase.
@@johngleeman8347 I believe it shouldn't exist at all. As well as a bonus action attack from Polearm Master. The fact that almost any character can easily get unconditional bonus action attacks is one of the main reasons why Dual Wielding seems so bad in comparison.
@@antongrigoryev6381 100% agree. Only two weapon fighting should give a guaranteed BA attack on every turn. All other weapon styles should have far more limitations on the BA attack. e.g. the crossbow BA attack should require you to target a creature within 5ft of you. The PAM BA attack should require targeting a secondary target that is also within your reach.
@@agilemind6241 The requirement of targeting enemies within 5 ft doesn't really make sense. What I think would be interesting is if the attack was available if you *didn't* attack with that hand crossbow as a part of your main action. So it could be used with a sword attack, or Dash, or Spellcasting, adding a bit more of damage where you wouldn't have it otherwise but not directly increasing dpr. I like your PAM suggestion though.
Here's my take on the subject, if the players are capable of moving around, especially if they have the means of controlling the board, ranged is by far superior. I was telling a coworker who also plays that I would rather take the longbow over the longsword because I can keep people way over there. You need me to be close to you after all to get those reaction attacks anyhow. But in close quarters, you may as well switch weapons and fight melee. But never underestimate that ability to hit before your opponent can. I'd even consider taking Alert over Piercer if you don't need tha ASI because if you can go fist, you can start applying pressure sooner, stacking that with Dex also affecting initiative order, ranged could easily get in way more attacks than melee in the right situations. I would say that not only having the increased chance to hit offered by archery, but also just being able to start attacking first, more than makes up for that bit of burst damage melee gets. That said, again I will never dismiss melee, there are plentiful encounters that happen indoors and other confined areas, leaving fewer options for that ranged attacker to be mobile. Also just more ways to play, especially if you aren't going the optimized route and just going for what seems fun despite power. And if you want the best of both worlds, spears and the like got you covered, even more so with the returning feature. It may not be the greatest in terms of range, but the idea is quick switch versatility. Now with that rant out of the way, I got a hexbow warlock to make.
I like Crossbow Expert for being able to use a longbow without disadvantage when within 5 feet of a hostile creature. Great breakdown today. Fun video. Cheers!
One thing I thought you might mention is stat dependency/SAD-ness. Dexterity has significant passive benefits for every character, while strength doesn't. If you make a melee character based on dexterity, you are stuck with lower base damage, no benefit from rage/reckless/GWM which specify strength-based or heavy. Bascially the drawbacks of ranged without the benefits, but that's still often worth it for the high AC/initiative/dex-saves and SAD-ness.
think it was planed not to be able to "doubleshoot" but instead to combine a shortswoerd in one and xbow in the other hand. thats why the xbow in a light ONEHANDED weapon.
Also, the fact that RAW you can use a feat to power attack with said hand crossbow, which would realistically be completely useless against any kind of of natural or artificial armour, but cannot get any kind of power attack option with a warhammer or a battle axe.
Agreed. I house rule this as just being able to dual-wield hand crossbows instead of being able to use it with a single hand crossbow. That's not much of an improvement but it does let players keep their character ideas largely intact. I also rule that the damage bonus portion of sharpshooter feat requires a two-handed ranged weapon, this makes it similar to great weapon master which only functions with even a subset of two-handed melee weapons and makes sense logically since a second point-of-contact on the weapon provides much greater stability for placing accurate shots (one of the reasons why rifles are much more accurate than pistols).
The bonus attack isn't what bothers me, it's that Crossbow Expert allows you to ignore the loading property and make multiple attacks per round with a single crossbow. Not only is this a necessary component in the one extra ranged attack per round builds, it is completely unrealistic - allowing one shot every action (i.e. every 6 seconds, or less with action surge, or a way to attack as a bonus action or reaction) is already generous, realism would be more like requiring a full action to reload a crossbow.
D&D has gradually removed all of the slightly annoying limitations on ranged weapons ie firing into melee, cover, firing while in melee; may require feats. It has not considered the issues with melee combat ie that you cannot apply damage reliably so that ranged is now just superior. I will say I did not pick this up in the playtest, where I did not actually play that much and number crunching does not cover actual play situations. FWIW I find ranged combatants crushingly dull to play as they act like turrets with no consideration for movement and trivially focus firing so they do not have much in the way of decisions to make.
My main problem with ranged comabt is that the "sharpshooter" feats does plain too much. One proposed house rule is that you can only use one benefit of the feat at one time. I find this kinda clunky, but I have no other solution, short of removing the "ignore cover" part.
@@TainakaRicchan I'd probably make it that 3/4 cover acts as half cover, and that optimal range is doubled, rather than disadvantage being removed entirely
The only character build I found myself getting bored with was a Bloodhunter Crossbow Expert. Sure he did a ton of damage, but boy there were so few choices in combat that actually mattered.
Did a high level oneshot playing a high dex crossbow expert fighter, and I have to say it was one of the dullest things I have done in DnD. There only so many ways I can describe shooting a crossbow, and while yes, swinging a sword can be dull too, at least bobbing and weaving in and out of combat esp with battle master made it so much more interesting.
This is a well made video. When starting off new characters or new groups or campaigns I typically run into the situation as a DM, where I have to explain the advantages and disadvantages of both melee and ranged combat. One of the hardest things that I've noticed is trying to explain in a very clear and concise way. This video relieves me of that pressure of explaining everything. Thanks man.
I really appreciate that you went into detail about situations where melee or ranged weapons are better, instead of making a blanket statement. It gives you more directions to make characters rather than making the same playstyle each time
Good discussion. On the whole I think the majority of cases favor ranged over melee and with it I agree with the analysis it's spot on. That said, depending on the table you use ranged is a playstyle with a resource cost. Many table ignore ammunition and ammunition loss but it can be a distinct consideration vs. essentially resource free melee attack.
As a lore bard who plays at a table along side a open hand monk, an assassin and a ranger (both ranged), I can say that our life got reeeeaaly better after I took summon shadow spirit to help in the frontline
The archery fighting style is there to counteract +2 AC from half cover, which is applied almost always in my experience, unless the party is fighting on flat plains. However, once sharpshooter is taken, archery fighting style obviously wins over melee options.
...or you go with a (Tasha's) Beastmaster Ranger, using your pet for basic melee, wielding the benefits of the Archery style and feats, and the tactical advantages of spells as well.
@@adameves5970 yes, you are correct. But the three dots at the beginning would indicate that it is the second half of a thought, also indicating that the first half is already available. If you'd watched the video, you already saw it. If you saw it and didn't understand it, I'm sorry. Can't help you with that part.
1) Pick Rock Gnome (small race) 2) take battle smith artificer, 3) get the mounted combatant feat, 4) put warding bond into a spell-storing item, 5) have steel defender cast it on you, 6) have fun
Grappling is an interesting option for controlling the battlefield. Shove+Grapple combo is one of the surefire ways to kill a creature. They cannot get up, they cannot move, all of their attacks have disadvantage, and most of the partys attacks have advantage. With Extra attack, you can do this in one turn, and If you're a battlemaster you can get an attack off for that round. Whats even better is the fact that its a contest in athletics. Contests tend to favor PCs more because they tend to have higher skill modifiers and expertise and whatnot. Also grappling attack for battle masters allow you to add the battle master die to the contest, which is honestly overkill at that point. Try grappling in 5e its really a lot of fun and is one of the ways a melee user can deliver CC.
@@The_Yukki It really doesn't because the only monsters that get proficiency in athletics are giants and humanoids. Any STR based character with proficiency in Athletics is going to succeed on a grapple more often than not even up into CR 20+. The main issue with Grapple builds is the size limitation, you absolutely need a way to become Large to be a grappler because so many monsters are Huge.
One feature that supports both melee and ranged options are the infusions provided by an Artificer. Repeating Shot can bring some ranged builds online a bit faster since it makes you ignore the loading property for ranged weapons. Just a small thing you might want to consider. Great video, coming from a new viewer!
It might be a bit too similar, but I’d also enjoy a video comparing dex vs strength builds. IMO dex is a bit too “overloaded” compared to strength. Dex can be used in melee or ranged, improves your initiative and AC (for med armor or less), affects more skills, and is maybe the most common save. The vast majority of characters want at least a 14 in dex. Str on the other hand might be the most “dumped” stat in the game.
One thing that was touched on but can’t be understated is that the dex being such a common save and ranged characters prioritizing that stat mean they are more likely to make those saves, and I like going first in combat and making my saves
My DM philosophy is to make sure encounters emerge with at least one enemy within 30'. It dawned on me from repeatedly witnessing a melee character get the highest initiative and as a reward, get a bummer turn where they throw a javelin or ready an action.
Chris, I feel this video is at least in part in response to my question about DEX vs STR on Discord. Thank you SO MUCH for going into such detail to answer my question!
Good Vid. 👍 One very minor point related to ranged characters and abilities that wasn't explicitly mentioned was with relation to Hexblades, and in specific, it relates to Eldritch Smite. Normally with a Paladin's Divine Smite, you have to be in melee and use a melee weapon in order to activate Smite. And on the surface, that would seem fairly reasonable. That restriction, however, from what I've seen so far in the rules, doesn't apply to Hexblades by RAW. This makes sniping flying targets much more impactful due to the fall damage involved, unless the flying enemy can't be knocked prone due to DM ruling. In any event, thanks for posting.
It's easy to see this when we remember how NPCs are more dangerous when they have a ranged options and how easy is to control a battle against a big strong stupid melee NPC.
There are two aspects of this decision that isn't covered by this video, and they're the reasons I almost exclusively choose to play melee over ranged: drama and narrative. Playing a melee character is inherently more dramatic and provides more flavorful ways to narrate attacks. First, the fact that melee places you in more danger is a GOOD thing if one of your goals is to have your character be an exciting and memorable part of the story, because conflict and danger is drama. Now your friends aren't just fighting a dragon, they're fighting a dragon who is locked in mortal combat with your raging barbarian who has brazenly grappled onto the beast's back. Second, it is my opinion that there are more interesting, brutal, anatomy destroying ways to narrate killing a monster with a sword or maul than there are with a crossbow. Once you've shot one monster in the eye so it pierces its brain, you've done it a million times.
The thing that you did forget to mention is without sharpshooter, the +2 from Archery style is made to offset the -2 you take if you shoot through an ally. Allies blocking same sized creatures are supposed to provide that monster half cover.
Currently playing a 4th level Half-Orc Battle Master Fighter. DM allowed a 1st level feat, so I took Polearm Master, and just now at level 4 I took Sentinel. Got to say, it's great to be able to eat a hit or two and not worry, as well as be able to do some battlefield control so our squishy caster, and hand-crossbow rogue can stay safe. In the small 10ft hallways of many dungeons that reach and the AoOs have been invaluable in keeping the party standing. Not going to lie, it's not as much damage as some other party members, but I think just being in the space to block lines of attack and control engagements is worth it in most cases. Except for one encounter where some goblin archers are just on the other side of a 20ft wide drop and just pelting arrows around and I can't do jack because my throwing axes only have a 20ft range.... -_-
I think there is another point to melee weapons and that's the fact that not every fight is fought in a large battlefield some of them are fought in a building or a small room in a dungeon and being a ranged user would be a disadvantage since enemies can come closer easier and faster thus giving you disadvantage to your attacks.
Absolutely. I can support these notions with actual game data. Unfortunately they are not extensive, but were very clear in the few campaigns we had strong melee PCs next to not even so strong ranged PCs. For example, in Curse of Strahd, my vengeance paladin delivered substantially less damage than the Monster Slayer xbow user ranger only because the % of rounds involving attacks was much higher for the ranger. Similar story between a ranged rogue and a battle master fighter in another campaign. They actually had similar damage output, but the battle master chassi was way superior for damage. Again, the proportion of rounds with effective attacks was much higher for the rogue. If the campaign happens almost exclusively in close quarters, I can see this changing, but with large variation of maps (from close quarters to huge maps), ranged characters do simply more total damage. Moreover, higher complexity of battles normally impacts more the life of melee PCs. Coming back to the paladin example, of course my vengeance paladin outdamaged the ranger in some combats, especially when I spent all my smite slots. So, indeed, nova damage was quite good as melee, but sometimes combat was half-solved when I finally reached the enemies.
One thing about ranged characters using opportunity attacks: you always have access to unarmed strikes, because you are always able to kick. Sure, it does less damage, but if your DM allows you to attempt a shove instead (which would make sense because like tripping) you could knock them prone, which hurts their movement much more.
Another advantage of Kensei Monk with Longbow - still has great Opportunity Attacks and is even stronger when engaged in melee :-D. So you don't want to fight him at range (has deflect missiles), but don't want to go in melee either (because you can get hit by Stunning Strike, or Flurry of Blows).
RAW, you can only shove in place of an attack during your action. So it does rely on your DM to AoO shove. If you have no monk levels, an unarmed strike just deals your str modifier, minimum of 1. That’s not just “less dmg” imo. But hey, it’s definitely fun!
You realize, we now expect an “oops all ranged” squad of four builds video that can steamroll everything that looks at them (I don’t think it would be too hard honestly, but you’d be sure to have come up with something on the same tier as the spike growth death squad).
I think one important thing you left out of consideration is the prone condition. It happens quite a bit, especially if you have a fighter with shield master, or the right battlemaster maneuvers. Tripping someone grants a large benefit to the melee character, but a ranged character gets pretty hosed when someone is prone.
One of the other things I would mention as a bonus for melee weapons, is that I find it's easier to get advantage on melee attacks. You mentioned reckless attack in talking about class features, but if your DM uses flanking rules, or if you can knock an enemy prone, those are simple ways for melee characters to gain advantage on attacks, which aren't necessarily unusable by ranged characters, but are certainly going to be less simple to utilise.
Hand crossbow stuff gives you a fkn gun, so it wins. Some abilities req melee weapons, so that's worth noting. Crossbow shenanigans aside, magic ranged weapons would be way more challenging to enchant as you must add something to each ammo to ignore DR. If that is accounted for and enchants cost double or ammo is seperate to reflect that, it could be worth having fancy flame tongue sword vs +1 bow.
I do both. I wouldn't limit my capability to deal damage at all ranges when situations arise. I haven't gotten into a lot of 5e. games since I came back to DnD 5e. from AD&D 2e -3.5 e. But what I've noticed is Melee is weaker than Range weapons. Mostly because of classes that amplify range weapons + feats.
I say always use Ranged first then Switch to melee. Basic combat tactics! Overall ranges is always superior (and it also is in real life!) stay away from being hit, hit multiple times before foes ‘close’, take advantage of all the other benefits of DEX, and easier to use cover, easier to recreate, avoid nearby auras, etc. You mentioned most of these. Great video, thanks!
Dwarf Champion with Dwarven Fortitude is an awesome tank. Gets into melee range with opponents with a greatsword, then takes the dodge action. Very hard to hit with 20 AC and disadvantage, but if they try to leave will either attack of opportunity, or move after to flank and tear up.
One thing that wasn't mentioned in the video is that dexterity is so much better and versatile than strength. Dex affects initiative,AC,and hit/ damage. Strength allows some minor battlefield control,kicking open doors/breaking out of grapples...and that's about it. Clearly dexterity is the far more valuable stat.
Well said. I think you really hit it on the head with this one. What really appeals to a melee player is the decision making. I think that it's probably easier for a melee to support an unoptimized party. Having the ability to control the battlefield in multiple ways(with spells/abilities and your body) let's you make a big non damage impact as well as any damage you might do. I'm curious about which would be more customizable. Probably ranged, having one feat and fighting style is really easy and plenty effective and then from there you can go any direction.
In short: ranged weapons are better for consistent damage (you can almost always make your attacks) but melee characters have more area denial to guard party members. In my opinion a ranged character is at its strongest when paired with a single melee character.
Against a single enemy, you get bigsby hand, command, pinning shot, etc. Against multiple enemies you get sleep, entangle, thorns, etc. Ranged character already have the tools to keep enemies away. True their DPR suffers. So if you want to optimize a tanky wall is the best choice for DPR for a ranged character. So you can do damage instead of keeping enemies away
One aspect not discussed - damage resistances. Piercing doesn't work against all creature types, and it's not like you can swap arrows for something that will cause bludgeoning or slashing. Also, there aren't a lot of ways of overcoming resistances to non-magical damage if you're using an exclusively ranged build. At some point you might have to ask yourself why you wouldn't just take a feat to learn Eldritch Blast and abandon the ranged weapon altogether.
I know 'Eldtrich Blast' may not really count in the 'ranged weapon vs melee weapon' debate, but I played through Dungeon of the Mad Mage with a swat team of ranged characters, two of which with repelling blasts, and that shit was cake-you don't need melee characters in this hyper simplified board game where all downsides to being ranged have been removed from previous editions.
I think the solution to ranged supremacy is making more interesting combats relying on terrain and enemy positioning. Stealthy quick enemies can get to your ranged backline from behind. Combat doesn't have to be just with enemies in front of you. Combats with a lot of full cover give advantage to melee combatants. Reaching a vantage point is tactically beneficial to both ranged and melee characters, but strength based ones will have higher athletics to get there more easily.
@@The_Yukki The reason I chose full cover particularly is because for ranged builds with sharpshooter partial cover becomes a non-issue, and melee combatants can overcome full cover much more easily. This is not a suggestion for every encounter, but it is one to build a more challenging encounter that the party needs to adapt to instead of relying on their tried-and-true tactics. The melee focused builds have their own enemies to take care of. If the ranged character chose to be at their max range of 120ft it's kinda their fault since it isolates them in case they need help. had they been firing from 60ft it would be easier to help them. positioning is a tactical choice. it is not a given that a ranged character will always shoot at max range. When caught in melee, the ranged character can disengage towards the melee character, making it easier to come to their aid.
The illustration at 8:57 in the lower right corner says "Rapier" but what is pictured does not look like a rapier because a rapier blade should be skinny straight and typically long with a sharp point on the end. I know be because I own 3 rapiers modified for SCA fencing, and I have studied historic rapiers.
I definitely agree that melee tactics are more complex, while ranged are more straightforward. In the last game I played, I built a melee tank focused artificer while my friend played a ranged damage focused gloom stalker. I used a "god wizard" philosophy of providing my teammates more options, so didn't build for damage. This let my allies lay down the hurt, while I focused on strategic positioning and such.
An easy way to fix the problem is to build for roleplay, not damage output, and throw a table rule that allows no more than one crossbow attack per round for light crossbows, and a reload time of two rounds for heavy crossbows. This encourages more tactical play from melee characters, and less specialization for ranged characters. To make heavy crossbows useful, make them auto kill any large or less creature on a double 20. Otherwise, they deal standard damage.
One simple way to make great weapon fighting style better is to have the reroll apply to any damage dice rolled for the attack (which is actually how I assumed it was supposed to work, until the intent was clarified via sage advice). On any normal, straight up attacks, it is worse than dueling. However, if there are any additional damage dice from Spirit Shroud, hunter's mark, booming blade / green-flame blade, smites (spells, divine smite, or eldritch smite), etc., it becomes better than dueling. Potentially _a lot_ better. Even with this ruling / house rule, ranged combat is still better in general. But it at least makes the fighting style for big melee weapons much more interesting. And I would point out that with all the new options for fighting styles, the fact that GWF is a bit underwhelming does at least sting less than it did when we only had what was in the PHB.
Two things I wish monk would have touched on that might be interesting to think about 1) Poison. If you apply it on a melee weapon and you miss you just swing again, where with ranged weapons you poison the ammunition and then you miss and now that poisoned ammo is gone. (Yes I understand you can apply poison to multiple projectiles at once but with disadvantage youll wish you were swinging a poisoned sword instead of whiffing your few poisoned arrows) 2) Damage types. Ranged weapons deal piercing damage excluding the sling which does bludgeoning. There are no slashing type ranged weapons RAW. So melee once again has the edge there.
17:40 There are a few aggro option e.g. Sentinel feat, 14th level bear totem barbarian and compelled duel spell, but I agree that they are few and far apart. Could be an interesting topic for another video
By “aggro mechanic,” he means a system in the RAW by which enemies must chose their targets. TM always mentions control options like the ones you listed when building tanky characters. In fact, he considers it a requirement to “tank” builds. But those don’t force your opponents to attack you (like how using taunt in wow plops you to the top of the aggro meter and that’s the end of it). Compelled duel? Just take the disadvantage or out range it and attempt to pass the save. Sentinel? Ranged attack with disadvantage, teleport, shove the sentinel out of their own melee range before moving, the AoO can miss (sometimes it’s more effective to take dodge than disengage anyways), turn invisible, blind the sentinel (or incap, stun, etc them), have literally any number of enemies higher than one leaving the sentinel’s melee range… all of that, assuming the probably tanky-looking sentinel wielding a melee weapon has already gotten in melee range with the enemy. Boy, that one’s iron-clad. Sorry that looked like a flame, I was just thinking out loud to the internet haha
I'm so glad a large channel is finally addressing this. I'm so tired of telling people that ranged deals more damage to be told "well 3.5 + 3.5 > 4.5, think again nerd!". I always say that melee damage should go up around 50% just to be told that it already deals the most damage and that it would break the game, no it wouldn't it would make melee damage be at least on par to ranged.
Playing with line of sight and terrain limitations more explicitly stated is a good way to make ranged characters have a harder time than melee. Too often at tables I play difficult terrain is the main detail that is pointed out and line of sight is often oversimplified due to theatre of the mind or a desire to keep things moving.
Well, that's the key. It is rather easy to take ranged characters out of the combat using physical obstacles, or just visual ones. Not to mention that improved AC tends to accompany melee builds. I would also note that Treantmonk put some caveats into the damage output as pertains to the length of the combat: *Over time*, he says, the ranged combat does more damage. The initial few rounds by melee characters tend to be far more powerful, then they run out of resources or adjacent enemies - and so the ranged attacks partially duplicate movement speed.
I think in the future WotC should consider merging strength and constitution. I think it would require a lot of small changes to the game (mainly how and when AS bonuses are applied) but it would make an overall healthier game. Here’s a big list of benefits: 1. Con and strength are very thematically similar (at least as similar as speed, reaction time, and hand-eye coordination which all fall under Dex) 2. Con saves currently come up a lot, especially compared to Str saves (pretty much only when resisting being pushed) this would put it more on par with Dex (Which has the other best save in the game) 3. Con applies a passive bonus everyone can make use of (much like dexterity in the form of AC) the passive benefits of Con also apply very well to needing to tank hits in melee. 4. Everything that Con and Str provides for build variation can easily be covered by feats. (For instance, you want a very tanky character but don’t want him to be a big bulky guy? Take that feat with bonus HP that I don’t remember the name of. Want a hard hitting glass cannon? Take Great weapon master) Honestly I might try to figure out a way to homebrew this in.
I think D&D in the current editions had taken most of the slight disadvantages of ranged and making it so "user friendly" that it can be a little bit excessive with feats and all. In previous editions it was already good (the tactical advantage of dealing damage away from foes is a big one), but it has its drawbacks. I also find unfortunate that a lot of optimized ranged characters happen to be dual crossbow wielders... this is not the kind of fantasy I tend to like, and I find very unrealistic how one can reload crossbows without a free hand. When you see people reload historical replicas, it is a lot of work! Anyway, great overview =)
Important thing to mention, if you want to do large amounts of damage with a melee character, you generally have to drop the best feature that limits ranged weapon users - shields
It's not even that there are more magic items that boost STR, It is that besides a flat +X weapon there are only a few choices for magic ranged weapons that do anything interesting. Maybe the dev's have this power imbalance between melee and ranged in mind when they make magic items? Not that you are guaranteed magic items when you play, but most tables I'd wager don't play without magic items.
Any analysis of the differences between ranged and melee combat needs to start with questions about how your table handles the rules of advantage, particularly flanking, as well as the party's construction as it lends itself (or not) to giving advantage to party members making attacks. If we assume a +7 to hit against a standard enemy AC of 15, advantage gives a 35 percent increase in odds to hit (and thus damage, for most classes in most cases) If we assume that the attacker has a power attack feat, like great weapon master or sharpshooter, advantage gives a 60 percent increase in odds to hit (and thus damage, roughly). In other words, having advantage on a power attack-using striker is significantly more powerful than a bonus action attack, and bonus action attacks from feats like crossbow expert and polearm master are already brokenly powerful. the primary ways for a ranged attacker to gain advantage are either to be an unseen attacker or for the object of the attack to be restrained or under the effects of a spell like faerie fire. in my experience at tables, characters attacking from range are generally not unseen attackers, especially beyond the first round, barring some sort of devil's sight/darkness shenanigans. crossbow expert sharpshooter fighters are almost never unseen in my experience. magical restraint is certainly a thing that I see often, but it depends on the party makeup, and it depends on the druid or wizard or whatever being willing to spend their concentration on that spell. Also many spells that grant incapacitated (like hypnotic pattern) end their effect if you do damage to that creature. Grappling will also give restrained, but grappling also tends to come along with shoving prone, which is a great condition for a melee attacker but gives disadvantage to ranged attacks. Ultimately, in my experience it is pretty rare for a ranged attacker to make more than one attack with advantage in any given combat, and often they get none or worse. meanwhile, a melee fighter with a power attack feat lives for advantage and will chase down flanking and prone enemies whenever possible. If a party has a rogue and a fighter, they can often dance through a battlefield encircling enemies one by one, flanking and then demolishing them. A similar analysis also holds for how cover plays in your campaign. Barring the totally broken sharpshooter ability to ignore cover, any level of cover normally puts ranged combatants at a huge disadvantage. Are you trying to shoot the enemy standing behind your fighter? They have +2 to AC. are they behind actual physical cover? +5. It's a bit unclear how grappling and cover work together, but trying to shoot an arrow through your teammate to hit the monster on the other side (assuming it's the same size) is pretty silly.
I'm playing a barbarian in a higher level campaign with both sentinel and pole arm master, I was seriously tempted to take the fighting initiate feat for the tunnel fighting combat style from UA to trade my bonus action for a lot more battlefield control in the right circumstances.
Take two levels of Hexblade, the Warcaster feat, and equip an arcane focus staff + shield + medium armor, and you can have the best of both worlds AND still cast spells.
This has been an ongoing issue I've had with 5e though usually I emphasize STR vs DEX. 1. It generally all works out but as a STR build you will have a smaller array of tactical choices (even though you do, in fact, have a bigger array for specifically the attack action), some of which might negatively impact the party (knocking enemies prone is good for melee, not so much for ranged people) or you incurr issues yourself (disengage and lose an action or get hit, not really gaining much distance either way). 2. DEX can switch between the two even if the grapple/shove element will be weaker for it in exchange for generally being good at stealth, easier time moving around for cover and one of the most common saves. Furthermore, STR boosters (the belts and potions of giant strength) are arguably better on non-strength builds as it matters not at all what your actual score is. 3. On that last point, generally DEX can dump STR but not viceversa. Barbarians especially even if they are THE dedicated STR class. 4. One of the hallmarks of STR is higher AC... though a) expensive and b) Generally you don't sleep in heavy armour so you might find yourself screwed over.
You recover 2/3rds of your bolts so really its fine unless youure under extremem survival scenario, which no dm likes to run for some reason (i like it in short bursts)
Everyone forgets that Belts of Giant STR exist. Up to 29 STR. That's a +9, not a +5. I never make a Fighter with more than 14 STR. Sooner or later I get a belt and I end up with more DEX or CON and at least one extra feat. You're going to want the belt later anyway, plan for it. There's no boost like this for the scrawny bow-users.
@@numbug1234 That's a good insight but I always have a 14 DEX as well so I can wear medium armor with +2 DEX bonus. I'd rather have the +2 to Initiative and Dex saves and ranged and Dex skills than go with a 10 DEX and heavy armor, even if it's 1 more AC. Start with 13 str and dex. Add 1 to each for race and you've only spent 10 points. You still have 17 points for your other 4 attributes You can have a good Con and Wis and still be the smartest guy in your non-Wizard party with that whopping 10 INT! It's easy to afford a 13 for any multiclass too.
Recently my DM has created more combats where some of the enemies fight from a distance. With half the party being focused on melee/ shorter range it shows how limited melee fighting can be. That alone will make me think twice before creating a melee build.
I don't do this as a DM any more. There's almost always a reachable enemy for a melee PC to close with and attack. I contrive it if I have to, so the bulette crashes up through the floor, an elemental coalesces from some vapours, a demon gates in, etc.
A full ranged party is actually pretty great. The best part is actually that no one rushes in ahead and gets beaten up by 5 enemies when the ranged attackers could get an entire round of free attacks. Having 1 tank character is amazing in dungeons though where they can block a door on their own. All hail Artificers, Clerics & Druids. Having melees is only really better than all ranged when you have a DM who likes to throw you into combat with enemies close to you. The type of DM where every other combat you get hit by an attack before even taking a turn.
Well, the name of the game is dungeons and dragons, not "wide open fields" and dragons. I mean, I agree that if the DM _never_ gives ranged characters a chance to to use range to their advantage, that's BS. But 1.) a lot of enemies as described in the books are ambush attackers, and 2.) when you are actually exploring crypts, caves, etc., you often aren't going to have 60ft of space between you and aggressors. So unless it is literally all the time, or the DM is clearly pulling stuff out of his butt to make ranged attacks bad in situations where they should be good, or something like that, then what you are talking about is not at all a sign of bad DMing.
@@nathansmith9597 Honestly, even then ranged isn't that bad. I have a DM who almost always sets up combatants within 30ft of one another and it works fine. You still get the agency of selecting your target when ranged and you can shoot running enemies in the back. The other way around would be way worse. Imagine always starting at 600ft range lol. I can't even fathom how malicious a DM would have to be to make ranged a clearly worse option than melee. However, in almost every other situation we have a pretty good shot at encountering the target at a distance. Anything BUT an ambush to be honest.
@@hieronymusnervig8712 Right, ranged usually isn't bad even when you start 20 or 30 ft away from the enemies, but my main point is that melee doesn't suck in those situations. As a DM I am not so worried about some characters being somewhat more or less powerful than others, but I do want to make sure that I don't accidentally make an encounter where anyone feels completely useless. (Sometimes a character has just incredibly bad luck, that does happen, but in those cases the player usually understands that it is just the dice and the odds are they will perform much better next time.) Obviously I can't speak to tables that run homebrew content, but in many combat encounters in published adventures you won't really have the opportunity to "kite" and kill your enemies from 100+ feet away. And that is probably good design to be honest, since (as you point out) ranged characters are still effective even when they can't cheese the encounter. But when they can cheese the encounter, it usually doesn't actually feel good / fun.
Stops enemies from disengaging to just walk away from the melee character, any character that gets hit from a reaction attack from that character has 0 speed, and any enemy attacking any but the sentinel within 5ft of them provokes an attack... Pretty much forces enemies to deal with a melee character instead of just walking right by.
@@Floormat-ux4rw Sentinel is a holdover from 4th edition that preserves one of the most enjoyed mechanics from the fighter class; video game style tanking. First feature is that your AoO's reduce an opponent's speed to zero on hit. This means if someone wants to leave, they probably won't. Next, it makes it so the disengage action doesn't work against you. You take your AoO's anyway. Finally, when someone swings at somebody other than you, you get to swing against them with your AoO. All together, this means staying in your attack range isn't a suggestion: it's the **law**. 4th edition optimizers called these "sticky" features, as they force creatures to stick close to the guy who's supposed to be getting hit. It's also sometimes used by rogues to weaponize their reactions. If an ally is a more tempting target than you, you can swing in for a quick shank and get off a potential second sneak attack per round. (Provided the ally doesn't also have the Sentinel feat. Sentinel Rogue is a fun combo buddy for Cavalier fighters who get similar features.)
I just enjoy range attacks. Either spells, archery or occasionally throwing a dagger. Just personal choice. The reason being you can stay in the back and be the support fire to the melee folks or be the one firing at the ranged enemies to help take care of the back line. I think also I enjoyed archery when I was in Boy Scouts helped too. A bit of fantasy mixed with real life hobby.
Key stats is also a factor - dex saves are very common while strength based saves really only affect being grappled yourself which can be negated completely via spells, feats, or magic items. This means that characters are more "optimized" by choosing dex based weapons than strength based. Grappling and shoving prone can be useful if you have a party that has other melee combatants, but this does take away from your ability to attack and deal damage yourself as well as giving disadvantage to all your ranged archers and eldritch blasters - dex saves on prone enemies are at disadvantage, so I guess this does help some casters if the enemy hasnt stood up yet. prone or grappled seems too infrequently useful and I have seen a player based their character around it. In addition, there are many useful dex-based skills that come up often - stealth, slight of hand, acrobatics while only one for str. Athletics just isnt as impactful at my tables. In some game systems, the damage from ranged weapons would still use str modifier even if using dex to attack. That would make sense and balance the need for stats. More str = more dmg.
One interesting thing to note is that melee tanking is just meh enough that ranged kiting is nearly as good of you have the access. Goading attack is straight up busted on ranged if they're already in melee with something else, and pushing attack and trip attack can control an enemy pretty well. Swarm keepers can do similar things, and rogue can kite well with cunning action.
Playing with a DM that uses dynamic maps (lots of moving elements, cover, interactive objects and the like) almost always prioritises melee combat due to character movement being much more important
Being honest, I can see some advantages in any of the departments, I mean, even though I haven't played many characters, so maybe I just had sittuations that supported my claim, but I've been in campaigns where literally being the tank of the group was the difference between a tpk and our characters not even falling, since there were many times that due to my bear totem barbarian and a friend's oath of the ancients paladin, we were able not to die, since with the paladin's aura and heavy tanking and the rage reducing almost all damage, we were able to survive dire sittuations that having more squishy characters would've probably ended up with at least one character dying (our dm even warned us that in the campaign I'm talking, if a character falls, is probably dead, since the enemy would aggro them unless we protect them well.). But also, as a kobold divination wizard, I have seen that there's sittuations where being a ranged character is quite helpful, since spells that create difficult terrain like web or stinking cloud can really ease the pressure from the group (however, in those sittuations, usually we had at least a character that was able to tank the hits, so, it made it a lot easier to deal with those characters) and our warlock in the campaign with my bear totem barbarian and the oath of the ancients paladin was able to take us out of an encounter using hypnotic pattern (poor enemies, they didn't have a chance. The only one that got away from the hypnotic pattern got his head chopped off with an ice axe after taking a level 3 scorching ray and being grappled by my barbarian so he couldn't wake up the others and was waiting the paladin's hit in the surprise turn, and later, the other three enemies were thrown from a high place into quicksands. I almost feel bad for them, even though they were the ones that had a hostile intent in the first place.). What I have a rough time seeing is an all ranged characters going that well, since in all those sittuations, both melee tanks and ranged casters worked together to get to the best case scenario, but maybe it's just that we have a different approach to the one needed for the all range characters to work
As a typical melee player I have to say if built right range is fun. I have a fairy that can fly 2 miles up (out of combat) and rain down eldritch blasts and an elf that gets to shoot 3 times with "double advantage" on every attack.
I do think it's very nice to have one Strength based beefy melee character in every party. But that's the thing: One. If you stack them, it complicates positioning for spells and AoE effects even further, and not getting nearly as much return on that investment. A decent ranged character can still have good AC and fight at point blank range, so a lot of the positioning discussed with melee characters can still be done in a pinch. But they gain all the benefits to stealth and initiative from Dex and also can go hide behind cover, or out of melee range, or kite enemies, and deal damage more consistently. I also disagree that melee users are more versatile. We've gained Smite spells that work with ranged, many ranged characters have some form of casting, or abilities like Arcane Archer's shot. The best thing melee users have up over Ranged characters I can think of is the Sentinel feat, which can provide some very effective resource-free lock down. I'm getting a bit too rambly, so tl:dr: Ranged characters frequently have as many options as melee characters, but having one beefy Strength based character does fill a useful party niche. Ranged attacks on the whole though are way more consistent and probably better for the rest of the party.
DM preference is probably the biggest factor I've found in giving the edge to ranged or melee combat. If you're playing with a DM who thinks melee combat is "cooler" and/or "more dramatic," you might find yourself starting every fight when a dozen enemies suddenly appear already in melee range. If you're playing with a DM who just really doesn't like melee, you may find yourself spending entire encounters chasing opponents who have infinite Bonus Action teleportation abilities.
One of the reasons why I love melee warriors is because they feel like underdogs. Also without a good frontline that range fighter is gonna be in tough. But I got me a bear totem barbarian 8 battle master fighter 4 and I have zero complaints. My build has been story / character focused, not optimized, even still, my initiative and my movement is stupid and my ability to hit is excellent and my damage is solid. And of course my survivability is fantastic. So ya, no complaints
As you said melee damage is more improvable ; a paladin who can smite on every attack( plus the improved divine strike at lv 11) maybe with upcast spirit shroud , polearm master and gwm will end the boss fight very quickly; yes you burn every resource but sometimes its what you are supposed to do.
If you play on a grid go ranged: it is easier and more reliable, if you play theatre of the mind, melee is fine. In any case, ranged damage or control is still mandatory if you want to deal with spell casters, flyers or ranged weapon users. Control and support classes (clerics, druids, paladin, artificers) can deal with the "tanking" and even do very good damage.
I think it depends on your class and subclass choice: Barbarian: main class features only work with melee. Fighter: some sub-classes are good in melee, all sub-classes are good in ranged combat. Paladin: some class feature only work in melee, so that where this class makes the most sense. Ranger: ranged. Melee ranger builds are possible, but it's an uphill battle. Rogue: Soul Knife and Swashbucker features only work in melee. All other subclasses are more effective as ranged combatants. Warlock: Hexblade can be a melee fighter, but is a better ranged fighter. All other subclasses will be ranged eldritch blasters.
Overall I would have to agree - ranged and melee are about equal, with each having the potential to be better in some situations. But for feats I feel the PAM and GWM are slightly better than XBE and SS. Sentinel is also a very strong feat, so I'm thinking feat support might have to go to melee. That however is fixed by the Archery Fighting Style - melee has nothing like it. Melee can and should opt for Defense, but to be fair a ranged PC could do the same(but the question arises - would they have enough to gain from it to justify the choice, considering they plan on staying mostly in ranged combat). Either way, very glad you covered this topic, it's one that I think a lot of us thinker on often. Your content's quality is the best there is.
@@TreantmonksTemple free damage is always optimal. even if immunity exists there are plenty of in-game tools to ensure you can never waste a posion. so, you can always get your free damage. I suggest doing a self driven evaluation of the dmg poison rules (even if you don't make a video) It can blow damage calculations out of the water and change the way people play.
The main issue I have with the abundance of ranged martial characters is that melee enemies are going to close with someone. They may arrive in a later wave after your control has been applied, or your control may have been insufficient, or they have enough mobility to get in someone's face despite your shenanigans. If no one is up front to receive them, you leave their target selection entirely up to the enemy. You hiding behind a rock in the back means someone else, probably someone with a smaller hit die and less ideal armor options, will be the one to face their wrath.
Level 18 Bugbear Rune Knight Fighter with a glaive says I use melee weapon in ranged combat. 55 foot combat radius with Pole arm master to attack when someone walks within 20 feet of you isn’t the strongest but it is still strong and fun to play
Melee and ranged can be easier or complicated, depends on the setting. Dungeon heave can be rough on ranged or easier depending on how it is designed. Outdoor settings with a lot of vision reducing environmental effects can be rough on ranged as well.
Unless you have crossbow expert, then you just run into melee range like all the melee characters and your downside is limited to lack of opportunity attacks. The no disadvantage in melee, and no cover lines of Xbow expert and sharpshooter kill melee - ranged combat tradeoffs.
My guess before I watch this video is that melee is a bit better for damage using things like smite, but ranged is superior defensively. But ultimately whichever is better it’s based on team composition, like if a wizard is concentrating on important spell, making it better for the enemies to you than them. Then go Melee but if you have a barbarian or tank style character it’s easier for them to do their job if you’re ranged. But every character should have an option for both.
After spell casters, ranged characters are my next favourite, I've seen it so many times, Big Bad Melee character taking rounds to get to the opponents or totally ineffective vs flying creatures.
The reason why you attack the melee over the people in the back because 17-18 AC is way easier to hit than the casters who have 24 AC and are likely to make you attack at disadvantage. And even could negate crits.
One thing I think should also be considered is dex vs str. In 5e dex is generally a superior ability score to strength. You can use dex for initiative, AC, saves and you could also argue the skills for dex are better (stealth, acrobatics etc). Just thought it was worth mentioning.
I love playing strong characters but the allure of high Dex is always just far too high for these reasons
I completely agree with your general point, but dex effecting AC is more likely a detriment than anything, since it is just playing catch up to the inherit benefits of heavy armor.
@matthew mullin actually it'd pretty even as long as naked is ignored. Medium Armor vs heavy you need 15 str for best armor and 14 dex for best armor with only a difference of 1 ac.
When discussing factors like class proficiency and racial abilities, Dwarf is easiest and it gives medium armor on the strongest classes in the game. So you make due with what u can
@@batterylevellow5473 15 str is only required if you want to avoid the -10 movement penalty. You can technically have a str score of 1 and still get all the defensive benefits of plate armor.
If you are a dwarf then you ignore the penalty and if you are one of the faster moving races like Centaur or wood elf than you would still move 25-30 ft.
@matthew mullin it makes strength armor explicitly worse than medium if you have to live with -10 speed just to wear your armor.
It’s quite unfortunate that melee is simply weaker on average, especially when considering how cool melee characters are in media. Excellent analysis treantmonk!
True, but I think TM does a good job breaking it down and points out the various situations where melee is better.
On average, ranged combat is a bit too good, and melee is not quite as good as it should be. For sure.
But I think a lot of people overstate the difference based on white room theorizing - assuming that a majority of combat encounters will take place on a flat featureless plain, that opportunity attacks never happen, that blocking the enemy's path will not ever be advantageous tactically, that a kind of "soft tanking" is never possible simply by being out front and in the enemy's face, etc.
@@nathansmith9597 as lifelong tank/melee builder: It's the greatest.
We get the buffs and powers from the spellcasters backing me. They don't know how truly powerless I would have been without haste (or they never stop reminding me). The druid summoners (shepherd) will always put dps me. But I survive and get THEM out when they hurt.
TM is a daily listen in our household 🏳️🌈
And considering how suicidal melee is in some campaigns
One of my main gripes with 5e is how frequently Crossbow Expert is the answer to “how can I best optimize this character’s damage?”
And since it removes the close combat penalty it's also the answer how to optimize melee damage.
to be fair i think sharpshooter is more important than crossbow expert. CE is good, but if you already have a lots of attacks and/or efficient uses of your bonus action it becomes less useful. For that reason it is better at early level of play. SS otoh considerable increases your damage, and also allow you to ignore cover. I remind you that your friend in melee can provide cover to an enemy. SO that's a +2 in situations that often happen. It's a big bonus to damage that stays relevant during the whole campaign. Finally hand crossbow do less damage, not much less in the grand scheme of things but still, and more importantly it's extremely rare to get a magic hand crossbow compared to a longbow. You may even have to multiclass forge cleric or artificier just to get a magic +1 on your weapon. Longbows user have stuff like the oathbow or dragon bane. Also elven accuracy is awsome and do not work with crossbows. Depending on your build you may not loose much. using a longbow and bumping dex or taking good feats like lucky, alert or resilient is very valid. Gunner is fun too.
I think overall its clear that while there are more options for melee in 5e, there aren't many relatively similar options across all weapon classes. I think the ranged feats in particular show this with how hard they push one specific weapon, even when you supposedly specialise in all crossbows with crossbow expert. And thats not mentioning that its apparently intentional that ranged attack spellcasters should consider crossbow expert so they can cast without disadvantage in melee. I'd like more interesting and diverse choice of effective weapons in both ranged and melee, but especially for ranged as they really have one option currently.
Agreed. I use ranged martials the most. But I usually do long bow with the gunner feat.
@@poilboiler I usually go gunner with a bow
We introduced a homebrew ruling that allows melee users to cleave. This incentivizes close ranged combat in a multi enemy scenario where killing an enemy allows you to transfer the remaining damage to an adjacent creature guaranteeing an upper hand in the action economy. While the damage is lesser than that of a sharpshooter, the reliability makes up the difference vs a focus firing strategy.
That is actually an optional rule in the DMG, cleaving through creatures
@@tonyriemenschneider8745 Yep and if the Flanking optional rule is used too, that's yet another literal Advantage for melee.
I use both at my table. Ranged is so much safer than melee so there should be some reward for that risk.
As he said in vid, melee offers far more opportunities to turn your reaction and bonus actions into more damage.
The biggest difference in overall damage between ranged and melee comes from melee damage lost while closing with enemy so the more mobility you have as a melee, the more you're going to close that damage gap.
Gunna try and give this to an enemy and then give it to the party 🥳
@@tawumpas As a DM (what I am a majority of the time) one of the funniest things you will ever encounter is when you come to a new table that mostly hasn't used the Flanking rules previously and you tell them it's in. The player's eyes light up like it's Xmas...right up till the first time enemies surround their character and all have advantage as well..."I'm not sure I like this rule anymore" lol
Makes me laugh every time ;)
@@Finnssssss These 8 wolves ain't so tough, right?
👀⚰️⚰️⚰️⚰️
😬 Oops
--
I play w backstabbing. But the defendant can define their agro and change it (to one target, shifting
Two additional things which favor melee but I count them as both circumstantial. First, magic melee weapons are generally better (or have at least more variety) than ranged weapons. I think there are 6? unique ranged weapons and none of them are crossbows.
Second, depending on class, you can also get a damage increase with Booming Blade or GFP. I haven't mathed it out really, but depending on if you have extra attack/leve/class, then it could be a damage increase.
I don't why they had to write the extra ranged attack feat as hand-crossbow only. What a stupid decision. XD
@@johngleeman8347 I believe it shouldn't exist at all. As well as a bonus action attack from Polearm Master. The fact that almost any character can easily get unconditional bonus action attacks is one of the main reasons why Dual Wielding seems so bad in comparison.
i think the developers screwed crossbow expert up. it seems to have been planed to allow a shortsword in one and handxbow in the other hand.
@@antongrigoryev6381 100% agree. Only two weapon fighting should give a guaranteed BA attack on every turn. All other weapon styles should have far more limitations on the BA attack. e.g. the crossbow BA attack should require you to target a creature within 5ft of you. The PAM BA attack should require targeting a secondary target that is also within your reach.
@@agilemind6241 The requirement of targeting enemies within 5 ft doesn't really make sense. What I think would be interesting is if the attack was available if you *didn't* attack with that hand crossbow as a part of your main action. So it could be used with a sword attack, or Dash, or Spellcasting, adding a bit more of damage where you wouldn't have it otherwise but not directly increasing dpr.
I like your PAM suggestion though.
Here's my take on the subject, if the players are capable of moving around, especially if they have the means of controlling the board, ranged is by far superior. I was telling a coworker who also plays that I would rather take the longbow over the longsword because I can keep people way over there. You need me to be close to you after all to get those reaction attacks anyhow. But in close quarters, you may as well switch weapons and fight melee. But never underestimate that ability to hit before your opponent can. I'd even consider taking Alert over Piercer if you don't need tha ASI because if you can go fist, you can start applying pressure sooner, stacking that with Dex also affecting initiative order, ranged could easily get in way more attacks than melee in the right situations. I would say that not only having the increased chance to hit offered by archery, but also just being able to start attacking first, more than makes up for that bit of burst damage melee gets. That said, again I will never dismiss melee, there are plentiful encounters that happen indoors and other confined areas, leaving fewer options for that ranged attacker to be mobile. Also just more ways to play, especially if you aren't going the optimized route and just going for what seems fun despite power. And if you want the best of both worlds, spears and the like got you covered, even more so with the returning feature. It may not be the greatest in terms of range, but the idea is quick switch versatility.
Now with that rant out of the way, I got a hexbow warlock to make.
I like Crossbow Expert for being able to use a longbow without disadvantage when within 5 feet of a hostile creature. Great breakdown today. Fun video. Cheers!
You’re better off to take Gunner if you’re not using a hand crossbow, as you get the stat boosts as well.
@@theresnoracelikegnome oh snap. Not familiar with that one. I will check it out. Thanks!
@@WallyDM it’s in Tasha’s. :)
If you have Crossbow Expert and aren't using a hand crossbow you could use a Heavy Crossbow instead of a longbow.
One thing I thought you might mention is stat dependency/SAD-ness. Dexterity has significant passive benefits for every character, while strength doesn't. If you make a melee character based on dexterity, you are stuck with lower base damage, no benefit from rage/reckless/GWM which specify strength-based or heavy. Bascially the drawbacks of ranged without the benefits, but that's still often worth it for the high AC/initiative/dex-saves and SAD-ness.
Crossbow Expert combined with hand crossbows is so silly conceptually. It honestly drives me crazy that they put something so dumb in the game.
tiny crossbow makes "pew pew".....3 to 9 times per 6 seconds, for more damage than every other weapon in the game. its so silly
think it was planed not to be able to "doubleshoot" but instead to combine a shortswoerd in one and xbow in the other hand. thats why the xbow in a light ONEHANDED weapon.
Also, the fact that RAW you can use a feat to power attack with said hand crossbow, which would realistically be completely useless against any kind of of natural or artificial armour, but cannot get any kind of power attack option with a warhammer or a battle axe.
Agreed. I house rule this as just being able to dual-wield hand crossbows instead of being able to use it with a single hand crossbow. That's not much of an improvement but it does let players keep their character ideas largely intact. I also rule that the damage bonus portion of sharpshooter feat requires a two-handed ranged weapon, this makes it similar to great weapon master which only functions with even a subset of two-handed melee weapons and makes sense logically since a second point-of-contact on the weapon provides much greater stability for placing accurate shots (one of the reasons why rifles are much more accurate than pistols).
The bonus attack isn't what bothers me, it's that Crossbow Expert allows you to ignore the loading property and make multiple attacks per round with a single crossbow. Not only is this a necessary component in the one extra ranged attack per round builds, it is completely unrealistic - allowing one shot every action (i.e. every 6 seconds, or less with action surge, or a way to attack as a bonus action or reaction) is already generous, realism would be more like requiring a full action to reload a crossbow.
D&D has gradually removed all of the slightly annoying limitations on ranged weapons ie firing into melee, cover, firing while in melee; may require feats. It has not considered the issues with melee combat ie that you cannot apply damage reliably so that ranged is now just superior. I will say I did not pick this up in the playtest, where I did not actually play that much and number crunching does not cover actual play situations.
FWIW I find ranged combatants crushingly dull to play as they act like turrets with no consideration for movement and trivially focus firing so they do not have much in the way of decisions to make.
My main problem with ranged comabt is that the "sharpshooter" feats does plain too much.
One proposed house rule is that you can only use one benefit of the feat at one time.
I find this kinda clunky, but I have no other solution, short of removing the "ignore cover" part.
@@TainakaRicchan I'd probably make it that 3/4 cover acts as half cover, and that optimal range is doubled, rather than disadvantage being removed entirely
The only character build I found myself getting bored with was a Bloodhunter Crossbow Expert. Sure he did a ton of damage, but boy there were so few choices in combat that actually mattered.
I also find them dull to watch being played. There is very little risk/reward with a ranged character.
Did a high level oneshot playing a high dex crossbow expert fighter, and I have to say it was one of the dullest things I have done in DnD. There only so many ways I can describe shooting a crossbow, and while yes, swinging a sword can be dull too, at least bobbing and weaving in and out of combat esp with battle master made it so much more interesting.
This is a well made video. When starting off new characters or new groups or campaigns I typically run into the situation as a DM, where I have to explain the advantages and disadvantages of both melee and ranged combat. One of the hardest things that I've noticed is trying to explain in a very clear and concise way. This video relieves me of that pressure of explaining everything. Thanks man.
I really appreciate that you went into detail about situations where melee or ranged weapons are better, instead of making a blanket statement. It gives you more directions to make characters rather than making the same playstyle each time
Good discussion. On the whole I think the majority of cases favor ranged over melee and with it I agree with the analysis it's spot on.
That said, depending on the table you use ranged is a playstyle with a resource cost. Many table ignore ammunition and ammunition loss but it can be a distinct consideration vs. essentially resource free melee attack.
I dislike how hand crossbow with crossbow expert and sharpshooter and archery is superior to every other weapon. If you look at consistent damage.
hand crossbows are just very silly and its a shame they are the best weapon in 5e...
As a lore bard who plays at a table along side a open hand monk, an assassin and a ranger (both ranged), I can say that our life got reeeeaaly better after I took summon shadow spirit to help in the frontline
The archery fighting style is there to counteract +2 AC from half cover, which is applied almost always in my experience, unless the party is fighting on flat plains. However, once sharpshooter is taken, archery fighting style obviously wins over melee options.
...or you go with a (Tasha's) Beastmaster Ranger, using your pet for basic melee, wielding the benefits of the Archery style and feats, and the tactical advantages of spells as well.
Then what?
You have half a thought right there.
@@adameves5970 yes, you are correct. But the three dots at the beginning would indicate that it is the second half of a thought, also indicating that the first half is already available. If you'd watched the video, you already saw it. If you saw it and didn't understand it, I'm sorry. Can't help you with that part.
@@ChristnThms I played a small Artificer the same way. The pet is a movable cover, too.
1) Pick Rock Gnome (small race) 2) take battle smith artificer, 3) get the mounted combatant feat, 4) put warding bond into a spell-storing item, 5) have steel defender cast it on you, 6) have fun
@@shaneturnes6458 additionally take the mounted Combat feat. Your ac should be high enough.
Grappling is an interesting option for controlling the battlefield.
Shove+Grapple combo is one of the surefire ways to kill a creature. They cannot get up, they cannot move, all of their attacks have disadvantage, and most of the partys attacks have advantage.
With Extra attack, you can do this in one turn, and If you're a battlemaster you can get an attack off for that round. Whats even better is the fact that its a contest in athletics. Contests tend to favor PCs more because they tend to have higher skill modifiers and expertise and whatnot. Also grappling attack for battle masters allow you to add the battle master die to the contest, which is honestly overkill at that point.
Try grappling in 5e its really a lot of fun and is one of the ways a melee user can deliver CC.
@@The_Yukki It really doesn't because the only monsters that get proficiency in athletics are giants and humanoids. Any STR based character with proficiency in Athletics is going to succeed on a grapple more often than not even up into CR 20+. The main issue with Grapple builds is the size limitation, you absolutely need a way to become Large to be a grappler because so many monsters are Huge.
One feature that supports both melee and ranged options are the infusions provided by an Artificer. Repeating Shot can bring some ranged builds online a bit faster since it makes you ignore the loading property for ranged weapons. Just a small thing you might want to consider.
Great video, coming from a new viewer!
Bear Totem Barbarian teamed up with a Oath of the Ancients Paladin is one helluva front line (tanking).
Great video, btw!
Completely agree with your thoughts on ranged. But man I get so board in combat if I am a ranged character that's not a caster
Me too
Oh, I REALLY need that All ranged/spell party vid!
It might be a bit too similar, but I’d also enjoy a video comparing dex vs strength builds.
IMO dex is a bit too “overloaded” compared to strength. Dex can be used in melee or ranged, improves your initiative and AC (for med armor or less), affects more skills, and is maybe the most common save.
The vast majority of characters want at least a 14 in dex. Str on the other hand might be the most “dumped” stat in the game.
Excited to see you revisit this topic after the dust settles following OneD&D official rule changes.
One thing that was touched on but can’t be understated is that the dex being such a common save and ranged characters prioritizing that stat mean they are more likely to make those saves, and I like going first in combat and making my saves
My DM philosophy is to make sure encounters emerge with at least one enemy within 30'. It dawned on me from repeatedly witnessing a melee character get the highest initiative and as a reward, get a bummer turn where they throw a javelin or ready an action.
If only they knew spells like mirror image and armor of agathys existed
Chris, I feel this video is at least in part in response to my question about DEX vs STR on Discord. Thank you SO MUCH for going into such detail to answer my question!
It wasn't, but I'm glad it addressed it.
Good Vid. 👍
One very minor point related to ranged characters and abilities that wasn't explicitly mentioned was with relation to Hexblades, and in specific, it relates to Eldritch Smite.
Normally with a Paladin's Divine Smite, you have to be in melee and use a melee weapon in order to activate Smite. And on the surface, that would seem fairly reasonable.
That restriction, however, from what I've seen so far in the rules, doesn't apply to Hexblades by RAW. This makes sniping flying targets much more impactful due to the fall damage involved, unless the flying enemy can't be knocked prone due to DM ruling.
In any event, thanks for posting.
It's easy to see this when we remember how NPCs are more dangerous when they have a ranged options and how easy is to control a battle against a big strong stupid melee NPC.
At lower levels: levitate. At higher levels: forcecage or hold monster, I guess.
There are two aspects of this decision that isn't covered by this video, and they're the reasons I almost exclusively choose to play melee over ranged: drama and narrative. Playing a melee character is inherently more dramatic and provides more flavorful ways to narrate attacks.
First, the fact that melee places you in more danger is a GOOD thing if one of your goals is to have your character be an exciting and memorable part of the story, because conflict and danger is drama. Now your friends aren't just fighting a dragon, they're fighting a dragon who is locked in mortal combat with your raging barbarian who has brazenly grappled onto the beast's back.
Second, it is my opinion that there are more interesting, brutal, anatomy destroying ways to narrate killing a monster with a sword or maul than there are with a crossbow. Once you've shot one monster in the eye so it pierces its brain, you've done it a million times.
The thing that you did forget to mention is without sharpshooter, the +2 from Archery style is made to offset the -2 you take if you shoot through an ally. Allies blocking same sized creatures are supposed to provide that monster half cover.
Currently playing a 4th level Half-Orc Battle Master Fighter. DM allowed a 1st level feat, so I took Polearm Master, and just now at level 4 I took Sentinel. Got to say, it's great to be able to eat a hit or two and not worry, as well as be able to do some battlefield control so our squishy caster, and hand-crossbow rogue can stay safe. In the small 10ft hallways of many dungeons that reach and the AoOs have been invaluable in keeping the party standing. Not going to lie, it's not as much damage as some other party members, but I think just being in the space to block lines of attack and control engagements is worth it in most cases.
Except for one encounter where some goblin archers are just on the other side of a 20ft wide drop and just pelting arrows around and I can't do jack because my throwing axes only have a 20ft range.... -_-
I think there is another point to melee weapons and that's the fact that not every fight is fought in a large battlefield some of them are fought in a building or a small room in a dungeon and being a ranged user would be a disadvantage since enemies can come closer easier and faster thus giving you disadvantage to your attacks.
Absolutely. I can support these notions with actual game data. Unfortunately they are not extensive, but were very clear in the few campaigns we had strong melee PCs next to not even so strong ranged PCs. For example, in Curse of Strahd, my vengeance paladin delivered substantially less damage than the Monster Slayer xbow user ranger only because the % of rounds involving attacks was much higher for the ranger. Similar story between a ranged rogue and a battle master fighter in another campaign. They actually had similar damage output, but the battle master chassi was way superior for damage. Again, the proportion of rounds with effective attacks was much higher for the rogue. If the campaign happens almost exclusively in close quarters, I can see this changing, but with large variation of maps (from close quarters to huge maps), ranged characters do simply more total damage. Moreover, higher complexity of battles normally impacts more the life of melee PCs.
Coming back to the paladin example, of course my vengeance paladin outdamaged the ranger in some combats, especially when I spent all my smite slots. So, indeed, nova damage was quite good as melee, but sometimes combat was half-solved when I finally reached the enemies.
One thing about ranged characters using opportunity attacks: you always have access to unarmed strikes, because you are always able to kick. Sure, it does less damage, but if your DM allows you to attempt a shove instead (which would make sense because like tripping) you could knock them prone, which hurts their movement much more.
If you're playing a ranged monk you still get a solid kick. Only one slight downside to it.
Another advantage of Kensei Monk with Longbow - still has great Opportunity Attacks and is even stronger when engaged in melee :-D.
So you don't want to fight him at range (has deflect missiles), but don't want to go in melee either (because you can get hit by Stunning Strike, or Flurry of Blows).
RAW, you can only shove in place of an attack during your action. So it does rely on your DM to AoO shove.
If you have no monk levels, an unarmed strike just deals your str modifier, minimum of 1. That’s not just “less dmg” imo. But hey, it’s definitely fun!
You realize, we now expect an “oops all ranged” squad of four builds video that can steamroll everything that looks at them (I don’t think it would be too hard honestly, but you’d be sure to have come up with something on the same tier as the spike growth death squad).
I think one important thing you left out of consideration is the prone condition. It happens quite a bit, especially if you have a fighter with shield master, or the right battlemaster maneuvers. Tripping someone grants a large benefit to the melee character, but a ranged character gets pretty hosed when someone is prone.
That's a good point.
I’d love to see a martial ranged and melee build making the best of those styles.
I will play this year for the first time a long campaign with a ranged-only party. Let's see how we will do. Thanks, great video as always.
One of the other things I would mention as a bonus for melee weapons, is that I find it's easier to get advantage on melee attacks. You mentioned reckless attack in talking about class features, but if your DM uses flanking rules, or if you can knock an enemy prone, those are simple ways for melee characters to gain advantage on attacks, which aren't necessarily unusable by ranged characters, but are certainly going to be less simple to utilise.
Hand crossbow stuff gives you a fkn gun, so it wins. Some abilities req melee weapons, so that's worth noting.
Crossbow shenanigans aside, magic ranged weapons would be way more challenging to enchant as you must add something to each ammo to ignore DR. If that is accounted for and enchants cost double or ammo is seperate to reflect that, it could be worth having fancy flame tongue sword vs +1 bow.
I do both. I wouldn't limit my capability to deal damage at all ranges when situations arise. I haven't gotten into a lot of 5e. games since I came back to DnD 5e. from AD&D 2e -3.5 e. But what I've noticed is Melee is weaker than Range weapons. Mostly because of classes that amplify range weapons + feats.
I say always use Ranged first then Switch to melee. Basic combat tactics!
Overall ranges is always superior (and it also is in real life!) stay away from being hit, hit multiple times before foes ‘close’, take advantage of all the other benefits of DEX, and easier to use cover, easier to recreate, avoid nearby auras, etc.
You mentioned most of these.
Great video, thanks!
Don't forget about the strength based Oversized Longbow found in Waterdeep Dragonheist when calculating weapons
Dwarf Champion with Dwarven Fortitude is an awesome tank. Gets into melee range with opponents with a greatsword, then takes the dodge action. Very hard to hit with 20 AC and disadvantage, but if they try to leave will either attack of opportunity, or move after to flank and tear up.
One thing that wasn't mentioned in the video is that dexterity is so much better and versatile than strength. Dex affects initiative,AC,and hit/ damage. Strength allows some minor battlefield control,kicking open doors/breaking out of grapples...and that's about it. Clearly dexterity is the far more valuable stat.
Grapples kill my characters more than dex saves
Well said.
I think you really hit it on the head with this one. What really appeals to a melee player is the decision making.
I think that it's probably easier for a melee to support an unoptimized party. Having the ability to control the battlefield in multiple ways(with spells/abilities and your body) let's you make a big non damage impact as well as any damage you might do.
I'm curious about which would be more customizable. Probably ranged, having one feat and fighting style is really easy and plenty effective and then from there you can go any direction.
In short:
ranged weapons are better for consistent damage (you can almost always make your attacks) but melee characters have more area denial to guard party members.
In my opinion a ranged character is at its strongest when paired with a single melee character.
Against a single enemy, you get bigsby hand, command, pinning shot, etc. Against multiple enemies you get sleep, entangle, thorns, etc.
Ranged character already have the tools to keep enemies away. True their DPR suffers. So if you want to optimize a tanky wall is the best choice for DPR for a ranged character. So you can do damage instead of keeping enemies away
One aspect not discussed - damage resistances. Piercing doesn't work against all creature types, and it's not like you can swap arrows for something that will cause bludgeoning or slashing. Also, there aren't a lot of ways of overcoming resistances to non-magical damage if you're using an exclusively ranged build. At some point you might have to ask yourself why you wouldn't just take a feat to learn Eldritch Blast and abandon the ranged weapon altogether.
I know 'Eldtrich Blast' may not really count in the 'ranged weapon vs melee weapon' debate, but I played through Dungeon of the Mad Mage with a swat team of ranged characters, two of which with repelling blasts, and that shit was cake-you don't need melee characters in this hyper simplified board game where all downsides to being ranged have been removed from previous editions.
I would love a video on whether or not melee characters are needed.
I think the solution to ranged supremacy is making more interesting combats relying on terrain and enemy positioning.
Stealthy quick enemies can get to your ranged backline from behind. Combat doesn't have to be just with enemies in front of you.
Combats with a lot of full cover give advantage to melee combatants. Reaching a vantage point is tactically beneficial to both ranged and melee characters, but strength based ones will have higher athletics to get there more easily.
@@The_Yukki The reason I chose full cover particularly is because for ranged builds with sharpshooter partial cover becomes a non-issue, and melee combatants can overcome full cover much more easily.
This is not a suggestion for every encounter, but it is one to build a more challenging encounter that the party needs to adapt to instead of relying on their tried-and-true tactics.
The melee focused builds have their own enemies to take care of. If the ranged character chose to be at their max range of 120ft it's kinda their fault since it isolates them in case they need help. had they been firing from 60ft it would be easier to help them. positioning is a tactical choice. it is not a given that a ranged character will always shoot at max range. When caught in melee, the ranged character can disengage towards the melee character, making it easier to come to their aid.
The illustration at 8:57 in the lower right corner says "Rapier" but what is pictured does not look like a rapier because a rapier blade should be skinny straight and typically long with a sharp point on the end. I know be because I own 3 rapiers modified for SCA fencing, and I have studied historic rapiers.
Yeah, that looks like maybe a cutlass or a hanger sword?
The dire flail is easily the dumbest thing on there.
I definitely agree that melee tactics are more complex, while ranged are more straightforward. In the last game I played, I built a melee tank focused artificer while my friend played a ranged damage focused gloom stalker. I used a "god wizard" philosophy of providing my teammates more options, so didn't build for damage. This let my allies lay down the hurt, while I focused on strategic positioning and such.
An easy way to fix the problem is to build for roleplay, not damage output, and throw a table rule that allows no more than one crossbow attack per round for light crossbows, and a reload time of two rounds for heavy crossbows. This encourages more tactical play from melee characters, and less specialization for ranged characters. To make heavy crossbows useful, make them auto kill any large or less creature on a double 20. Otherwise, they deal standard damage.
One simple way to make great weapon fighting style better is to have the reroll apply to any damage dice rolled for the attack (which is actually how I assumed it was supposed to work, until the intent was clarified via sage advice).
On any normal, straight up attacks, it is worse than dueling. However, if there are any additional damage dice from Spirit Shroud, hunter's mark, booming blade / green-flame blade, smites (spells, divine smite, or eldritch smite), etc., it becomes better than dueling. Potentially _a lot_ better.
Even with this ruling / house rule, ranged combat is still better in general. But it at least makes the fighting style for big melee weapons much more interesting.
And I would point out that with all the new options for fighting styles, the fact that GWF is a bit underwhelming does at least sting less than it did when we only had what was in the PHB.
Two things I wish monk would have touched on that might be interesting to think about
1) Poison. If you apply it on a melee weapon and you miss you just swing again, where with ranged weapons you poison the ammunition and then you miss and now that poisoned ammo is gone. (Yes I understand you can apply poison to multiple projectiles at once but with disadvantage youll wish you were swinging a poisoned sword instead of whiffing your few poisoned arrows)
2) Damage types. Ranged weapons deal piercing damage excluding the sling which does bludgeoning. There are no slashing type ranged weapons RAW. So melee once again has the edge there.
17:40 There are a few aggro option e.g. Sentinel feat, 14th level bear totem barbarian and compelled duel spell, but I agree that they are few and far apart. Could be an interesting topic for another video
By “aggro mechanic,” he means a system in the RAW by which enemies must chose their targets.
TM always mentions control options like the ones you listed when building tanky characters. In fact, he considers it a requirement to “tank” builds. But those don’t force your opponents to attack you (like how using taunt in wow plops you to the top of the aggro meter and that’s the end of it). Compelled duel? Just take the disadvantage or out range it and attempt to pass the save. Sentinel? Ranged attack with disadvantage, teleport, shove the sentinel out of their own melee range before moving, the AoO can miss (sometimes it’s more effective to take dodge than disengage anyways), turn invisible, blind the sentinel (or incap, stun, etc them), have literally any number of enemies higher than one leaving the sentinel’s melee range… all of that, assuming the probably tanky-looking sentinel wielding a melee weapon has already gotten in melee range with the enemy. Boy, that one’s iron-clad.
Sorry that looked like a flame, I was just thinking out loud to the internet haha
@@bearinabag2448 I see, since I never played videogames with aggro mechanics I thought aggro was attracting attacks towards you, not forcing them...
I'm so glad a large channel is finally addressing this. I'm so tired of telling people that ranged deals more damage to be told "well 3.5 + 3.5 > 4.5, think again nerd!". I always say that melee damage should go up around 50% just to be told that it already deals the most damage and that it would break the game, no it wouldn't it would make melee damage be at least on par to ranged.
Playing with line of sight and terrain limitations more explicitly stated is a good way to make ranged characters have a harder time than melee. Too often at tables I play difficult terrain is the main detail that is pointed out and line of sight is often oversimplified due to theatre of the mind or a desire to keep things moving.
Well, that's the key. It is rather easy to take ranged characters out of the combat using physical obstacles, or just visual ones. Not to mention that improved AC tends to accompany melee builds.
I would also note that Treantmonk put some caveats into the damage output as pertains to the length of the combat: *Over time*, he says, the ranged combat does more damage. The initial few rounds by melee characters tend to be far more powerful, then they run out of resources or adjacent enemies - and so the ranged attacks partially duplicate movement speed.
I think in the future WotC should consider merging strength and constitution. I think it would require a lot of small changes to the game (mainly how and when AS bonuses are applied) but it would make an overall healthier game.
Here’s a big list of benefits:
1. Con and strength are very thematically similar (at least as similar as speed, reaction time, and hand-eye coordination which all fall under Dex)
2. Con saves currently come up a lot, especially compared to Str saves (pretty much only when resisting being pushed) this would put it more on par with Dex (Which has the other best save in the game)
3. Con applies a passive bonus everyone can make use of (much like dexterity in the form of AC) the passive benefits of Con also apply very well to needing to tank hits in melee.
4. Everything that Con and Str provides for build variation can easily be covered by feats. (For instance, you want a very tanky character but don’t want him to be a big bulky guy? Take that feat with bonus HP that I don’t remember the name of. Want a hard hitting glass cannon? Take Great weapon master)
Honestly I might try to figure out a way to homebrew this in.
If you play the right build a melee attacker can keep right up with ranged. My Arcane Trickster with the Sentinel feat is a damage machine!
I think D&D in the current editions had taken most of the slight disadvantages of ranged and making it so "user friendly" that it can be a little bit excessive with feats and all. In previous editions it was already good (the tactical advantage of dealing damage away from foes is a big one), but it has its drawbacks.
I also find unfortunate that a lot of optimized ranged characters happen to be dual crossbow wielders... this is not the kind of fantasy I tend to like, and I find very unrealistic how one can reload crossbows without a free hand. When you see people reload historical replicas, it is a lot of work!
Anyway, great overview =)
Important thing to mention, if you want to do large amounts of damage with a melee character, you generally have to drop the best feature that limits ranged weapon users - shields
It's not even that there are more magic items that boost STR, It is that besides a flat +X weapon there are only a few choices for magic ranged weapons that do anything interesting. Maybe the dev's have this power imbalance between melee and ranged in mind when they make magic items? Not that you are guaranteed magic items when you play, but most tables I'd wager don't play without magic items.
Any analysis of the differences between ranged and melee combat needs to start with questions about how your table handles the rules of advantage, particularly flanking, as well as the party's construction as it lends itself (or not) to giving advantage to party members making attacks.
If we assume a +7 to hit against a standard enemy AC of 15, advantage gives a 35 percent increase in odds to hit (and thus damage, for most classes in most cases)
If we assume that the attacker has a power attack feat, like great weapon master or sharpshooter, advantage gives a 60 percent increase in odds to hit (and thus damage, roughly). In other words, having advantage on a power attack-using striker is significantly more powerful than a bonus action attack, and bonus action attacks from feats like crossbow expert and polearm master are already brokenly powerful.
the primary ways for a ranged attacker to gain advantage are either to be an unseen attacker or for the object of the attack to be restrained or under the effects of a spell like faerie fire. in my experience at tables, characters attacking from range are generally not unseen attackers, especially beyond the first round, barring some sort of devil's sight/darkness shenanigans. crossbow expert sharpshooter fighters are almost never unseen in my experience. magical restraint is certainly a thing that I see often, but it depends on the party makeup, and it depends on the druid or wizard or whatever being willing to spend their concentration on that spell. Also many spells that grant incapacitated (like hypnotic pattern) end their effect if you do damage to that creature. Grappling will also give restrained, but grappling also tends to come along with shoving prone, which is a great condition for a melee attacker but gives disadvantage to ranged attacks. Ultimately, in my experience it is pretty rare for a ranged attacker to make more than one attack with advantage in any given combat, and often they get none or worse.
meanwhile, a melee fighter with a power attack feat lives for advantage and will chase down flanking and prone enemies whenever possible. If a party has a rogue and a fighter, they can often dance through a battlefield encircling enemies one by one, flanking and then demolishing them.
A similar analysis also holds for how cover plays in your campaign. Barring the totally broken sharpshooter ability to ignore cover, any level of cover normally puts ranged combatants at a huge disadvantage. Are you trying to shoot the enemy standing behind your fighter? They have +2 to AC. are they behind actual physical cover? +5. It's a bit unclear how grappling and cover work together, but trying to shoot an arrow through your teammate to hit the monster on the other side (assuming it's the same size) is pretty silly.
I'm playing a barbarian in a higher level campaign with both sentinel and pole arm master, I was seriously tempted to take the fighting initiate feat for the tunnel fighting combat style from UA to trade my bonus action for a lot more battlefield control in the right circumstances.
Take two levels of Hexblade, the Warcaster feat, and equip an arcane focus staff + shield + medium armor, and you can have the best of both worlds AND still cast spells.
This has been an ongoing issue I've had with 5e though usually I emphasize STR vs DEX.
1. It generally all works out but as a STR build you will have a smaller array of tactical choices (even though you do, in fact, have a bigger array for specifically the attack action), some of which might negatively impact the party (knocking enemies prone is good for melee, not so much for ranged people) or you incurr issues yourself (disengage and lose an action or get hit, not really gaining much distance either way).
2. DEX can switch between the two even if the grapple/shove element will be weaker for it in exchange for generally being good at stealth, easier time moving around for cover and one of the most common saves. Furthermore, STR boosters (the belts and potions of giant strength) are arguably better on non-strength builds as it matters not at all what your actual score is.
3. On that last point, generally DEX can dump STR but not viceversa. Barbarians especially even if they are THE dedicated STR class.
4. One of the hallmarks of STR is higher AC... though a) expensive and b) Generally you don't sleep in heavy armour so you might find yourself screwed over.
Melee has a strong multiclass dip with 2-3 barbarian to get reckless attack. Making the chance to hit be insane. And rage adds to tankines a ton.
I'm surprised that limited ammunition wasn't mentioned. Depending on your DM, it can be a major downside to using ranged weapons.
You recover 2/3rds of your bolts so really its fine unless youure under extremem survival scenario, which no dm likes to run for some reason (i like it in short bursts)
Everyone forgets that Belts of Giant STR exist. Up to 29 STR. That's a +9, not a +5.
I never make a Fighter with more than 14 STR. Sooner or later I get a belt and I end up with more DEX or CON and at least one extra feat. You're going to want the belt later anyway, plan for it.
There's no boost like this for the scrawny bow-users.
15 STR lets you get the best type of heavy armour
@@numbug1234 That's a good insight but I always have a 14 DEX as well so I can wear medium armor with +2 DEX bonus. I'd rather have the +2 to Initiative and Dex saves and ranged and Dex skills than go with a 10 DEX and heavy armor, even if it's 1 more AC.
Start with 13 str and dex. Add 1 to each for race and you've only spent 10 points. You still have 17 points for your other 4 attributes
You can have a good Con and Wis and still be the smartest guy in your non-Wizard party with that whopping 10 INT! It's easy to afford a 13 for any multiclass too.
Recently my DM has created more combats where some of the enemies fight from a distance. With half the party being focused on melee/ shorter range it shows how limited melee fighting can be. That alone will make me think twice before creating a melee build.
I don't do this as a DM any more. There's almost always a reachable enemy for a melee PC to close with and attack. I contrive it if I have to, so the bulette crashes up through the floor, an elemental coalesces from some vapours, a demon gates in, etc.
Great video, really love the conclusions!
A full ranged party is actually pretty great. The best part is actually that no one rushes in ahead and gets beaten up by 5 enemies when the ranged attackers could get an entire round of free attacks.
Having 1 tank character is amazing in dungeons though where they can block a door on their own. All hail Artificers, Clerics & Druids.
Having melees is only really better than all ranged when you have a DM who likes to throw you into combat with enemies close to you. The type of DM where every other combat you get hit by an attack before even taking a turn.
Well, the name of the game is dungeons and dragons, not "wide open fields" and dragons.
I mean, I agree that if the DM _never_ gives ranged characters a chance to to use range to their advantage, that's BS.
But 1.) a lot of enemies as described in the books are ambush attackers, and 2.) when you are actually exploring crypts, caves, etc., you often aren't going to have 60ft of space between you and aggressors.
So unless it is literally all the time, or the DM is clearly pulling stuff out of his butt to make ranged attacks bad in situations where they should be good, or something like that, then what you are talking about is not at all a sign of bad DMing.
@@nathansmith9597 Honestly, even then ranged isn't that bad. I have a DM who almost always sets up combatants within 30ft of one another and it works fine. You still get the agency of selecting your target when ranged and you can shoot running enemies in the back. The other way around would be way worse. Imagine always starting at 600ft range lol. I can't even fathom how malicious a DM would have to be to make ranged a clearly worse option than melee.
However, in almost every other situation we have a pretty good shot at encountering the target at a distance. Anything BUT an ambush to be honest.
@@hieronymusnervig8712 Right, ranged usually isn't bad even when you start 20 or 30 ft away from the enemies, but my main point is that melee doesn't suck in those situations. As a DM I am not so worried about some characters being somewhat more or less powerful than others, but I do want to make sure that I don't accidentally make an encounter where anyone feels completely useless. (Sometimes a character has just incredibly bad luck, that does happen, but in those cases the player usually understands that it is just the dice and the odds are they will perform much better next time.)
Obviously I can't speak to tables that run homebrew content, but in many combat encounters in published adventures you won't really have the opportunity to "kite" and kill your enemies from 100+ feet away. And that is probably good design to be honest, since (as you point out) ranged characters are still effective even when they can't cheese the encounter. But when they can cheese the encounter, it usually doesn't actually feel good / fun.
The Sentinel Feat is a big plus for melee combatants too
Stops enemies from disengaging to just walk away from the melee character, any character that gets hit from a reaction attack from that character has 0 speed, and any enemy attacking any but the sentinel within 5ft of them provokes an attack...
Pretty much forces enemies to deal with a melee character instead of just walking right by.
@@Floormat-ux4rw Sentinel is a holdover from 4th edition that preserves one of the most enjoyed mechanics from the fighter class; video game style tanking. First feature is that your AoO's reduce an opponent's speed to zero on hit. This means if someone wants to leave, they probably won't. Next, it makes it so the disengage action doesn't work against you. You take your AoO's anyway. Finally, when someone swings at somebody other than you, you get to swing against them with your AoO. All together, this means staying in your attack range isn't a suggestion: it's the **law**. 4th edition optimizers called these "sticky" features, as they force creatures to stick close to the guy who's supposed to be getting hit.
It's also sometimes used by rogues to weaponize their reactions. If an ally is a more tempting target than you, you can swing in for a quick shank and get off a potential second sneak attack per round. (Provided the ally doesn't also have the Sentinel feat. Sentinel Rogue is a fun combo buddy for Cavalier fighters who get similar features.)
I just enjoy range attacks. Either spells, archery or occasionally throwing a dagger. Just personal choice. The reason being you can stay in the back and be the support fire to the melee folks or be the one firing at the ranged enemies to help take care of the back line. I think also I enjoyed archery when I was in Boy Scouts helped too. A bit of fantasy mixed with real life hobby.
Key stats is also a factor - dex saves are very common while strength based saves really only affect being grappled yourself which can be negated completely via spells, feats, or magic items. This means that characters are more "optimized" by choosing dex based weapons than strength based. Grappling and shoving prone can be useful if you have a party that has other melee combatants, but this does take away from your ability to attack and deal damage yourself as well as giving disadvantage to all your ranged archers and eldritch blasters - dex saves on prone enemies are at disadvantage, so I guess this does help some casters if the enemy hasnt stood up yet. prone or grappled seems too infrequently useful and I have seen a player based their character around it.
In addition, there are many useful dex-based skills that come up often - stealth, slight of hand, acrobatics while only one for str. Athletics just isnt as impactful at my tables.
In some game systems, the damage from ranged weapons would still use str modifier even if using dex to attack. That would make sense and balance the need for stats. More str = more dmg.
One interesting thing to note is that melee tanking is just meh enough that ranged kiting is nearly as good of you have the access. Goading attack is straight up busted on ranged if they're already in melee with something else, and pushing attack and trip attack can control an enemy pretty well. Swarm keepers can do similar things, and rogue can kite well with cunning action.
Playing with a DM that uses dynamic maps (lots of moving elements, cover, interactive objects and the like) almost always prioritises melee combat due to character movement being much more important
Being honest, I can see some advantages in any of the departments, I mean, even though I haven't played many characters, so maybe I just had sittuations that supported my claim, but I've been in campaigns where literally being the tank of the group was the difference between a tpk and our characters not even falling, since there were many times that due to my bear totem barbarian and a friend's oath of the ancients paladin, we were able not to die, since with the paladin's aura and heavy tanking and the rage reducing almost all damage, we were able to survive dire sittuations that having more squishy characters would've probably ended up with at least one character dying (our dm even warned us that in the campaign I'm talking, if a character falls, is probably dead, since the enemy would aggro them unless we protect them well.). But also, as a kobold divination wizard, I have seen that there's sittuations where being a ranged character is quite helpful, since spells that create difficult terrain like web or stinking cloud can really ease the pressure from the group (however, in those sittuations, usually we had at least a character that was able to tank the hits, so, it made it a lot easier to deal with those characters) and our warlock in the campaign with my bear totem barbarian and the oath of the ancients paladin was able to take us out of an encounter using hypnotic pattern (poor enemies, they didn't have a chance. The only one that got away from the hypnotic pattern got his head chopped off with an ice axe after taking a level 3 scorching ray and being grappled by my barbarian so he couldn't wake up the others and was waiting the paladin's hit in the surprise turn, and later, the other three enemies were thrown from a high place into quicksands. I almost feel bad for them, even though they were the ones that had a hostile intent in the first place.). What I have a rough time seeing is an all ranged characters going that well, since in all those sittuations, both melee tanks and ranged casters worked together to get to the best case scenario, but maybe it's just that we have a different approach to the one needed for the all range characters to work
As a typical melee player I have to say if built right range is fun. I have a fairy that can fly 2 miles up (out of combat) and rain down eldritch blasts and an elf that gets to shoot 3 times with "double advantage" on every attack.
I do think it's very nice to have one Strength based beefy melee character in every party. But that's the thing: One. If you stack them, it complicates positioning for spells and AoE effects even further, and not getting nearly as much return on that investment. A decent ranged character can still have good AC and fight at point blank range, so a lot of the positioning discussed with melee characters can still be done in a pinch. But they gain all the benefits to stealth and initiative from Dex and also can go hide behind cover, or out of melee range, or kite enemies, and deal damage more consistently.
I also disagree that melee users are more versatile. We've gained Smite spells that work with ranged, many ranged characters have some form of casting, or abilities like Arcane Archer's shot. The best thing melee users have up over Ranged characters I can think of is the Sentinel feat, which can provide some very effective resource-free lock down.
I'm getting a bit too rambly, so tl:dr:
Ranged characters frequently have as many options as melee characters, but having one beefy Strength based character does fill a useful party niche. Ranged attacks on the whole though are way more consistent and probably better for the rest of the party.
DM preference is probably the biggest factor I've found in giving the edge to ranged or melee combat. If you're playing with a DM who thinks melee combat is "cooler" and/or "more dramatic," you might find yourself starting every fight when a dozen enemies suddenly appear already in melee range. If you're playing with a DM who just really doesn't like melee, you may find yourself spending entire encounters chasing opponents who have infinite Bonus Action teleportation abilities.
One of the reasons why I love melee warriors is because they feel like underdogs. Also without a good frontline that range fighter is gonna be in tough.
But I got me a bear totem barbarian 8 battle master fighter 4 and I have zero complaints. My build has been story / character focused, not optimized, even still, my initiative and my movement is stupid and my ability to hit is excellent and my damage is solid. And of course my survivability is fantastic. So ya, no complaints
I don't think the bonus attack with a hand crossbow offsets the best magical ranged weapons being longbows.
The biggest advantage for melee is that it is fun and I love it :)
As you said melee damage is more improvable ; a paladin who can smite on every attack( plus the improved divine strike at lv 11) maybe with upcast spirit shroud , polearm master and gwm will end the boss fight very quickly; yes you burn every resource but sometimes its what you are supposed to do.
I love the mobile feat, i know its not as powerful as gwm but ill usually take it over it.
If you play on a grid go ranged: it is easier and more reliable, if you play theatre of the mind, melee is fine. In any case, ranged damage or control is still mandatory if you want to deal with spell casters, flyers or ranged weapon users. Control and support classes (clerics, druids, paladin, artificers) can deal with the "tanking" and even do very good damage.
I know it's specific, but in RAW, paladin can used improved smite with ranged attacks made with melee weapons, but not regular smite
I think it depends on your class and subclass choice:
Barbarian: main class features only work with melee.
Fighter: some sub-classes are good in melee, all sub-classes are good in ranged combat.
Paladin: some class feature only work in melee, so that where this class makes the most sense.
Ranger: ranged. Melee ranger builds are possible, but it's an uphill battle.
Rogue: Soul Knife and Swashbucker features only work in melee. All other subclasses are more effective as ranged combatants.
Warlock: Hexblade can be a melee fighter, but is a better ranged fighter. All other subclasses will be ranged eldritch blasters.
soul knife rogue works with range and has the longest maximum range in the game.
Overall I would have to agree - ranged and melee are about equal, with each having the potential to be better in some situations. But for feats I feel the PAM and GWM are slightly better than XBE and SS. Sentinel is also a very strong feat, so I'm thinking feat support might have to go to melee. That however is fixed by the Archery Fighting Style - melee has nothing like it. Melee can and should opt for Defense, but to be fair a ranged PC could do the same(but the question arises - would they have enough to gain from it to justify the choice, considering they plan on staying mostly in ranged combat). Either way, very glad you covered this topic, it's one that I think a lot of us thinker on often. Your content's quality is the best there is.
Good mental exercise. Still waiting on a poison deep dive. Hopefully we'll get there soon.
I have no plans at this time. Poison is a problem because of the frequency of immunity.
@@TreantmonksTemple free damage is always optimal. even if immunity exists there are plenty of in-game tools to ensure you can never waste a posion. so, you can always get your free damage. I suggest doing a self driven evaluation of the dmg poison rules (even if you don't make a video) It can blow damage calculations out of the water and change the way people play.
The main issue I have with the abundance of ranged martial characters is that melee enemies are going to close with someone. They may arrive in a later wave after your control has been applied, or your control may have been insufficient, or they have enough mobility to get in someone's face despite your shenanigans. If no one is up front to receive them, you leave their target selection entirely up to the enemy. You hiding behind a rock in the back means someone else, probably someone with a smaller hit die and less ideal armor options, will be the one to face their wrath.
Level 18 Bugbear Rune Knight Fighter with a glaive says I use melee weapon in ranged combat. 55 foot combat radius with Pole arm master to attack when someone walks within 20 feet of you isn’t the strongest but it is still strong and fun to play
Melee and ranged can be easier or complicated, depends on the setting. Dungeon heave can be rough on ranged or easier depending on how it is designed. Outdoor settings with a lot of vision reducing environmental effects can be rough on ranged as well.
Unless you have crossbow expert, then you just run into melee range like all the melee characters and your downside is limited to lack of opportunity attacks.
The no disadvantage in melee, and no cover lines of Xbow expert and sharpshooter kill melee - ranged combat tradeoffs.
My guess before I watch this video is that melee is a bit better for damage using things like smite, but ranged is superior defensively.
But ultimately whichever is better it’s based on team composition, like if a wizard is concentrating on important spell, making it better for the enemies to you than them. Then go Melee but if you have a barbarian or tank style character it’s easier for them to do their job if you’re ranged.
But every character should have an option for both.
After spell casters, ranged characters are my next favourite, I've seen it so many times, Big Bad Melee character taking rounds to get to the opponents or totally ineffective vs flying creatures.
The reason why you attack the melee over the people in the back because 17-18 AC is way easier to hit than the casters who have 24 AC and are likely to make you attack at disadvantage. And even could negate crits.