What I'm proposing is that the ranged penalty would last until the ranged attacker's next turn. Essentially until they had the opportunity to start doing something other than a ranged attack.
Currently, the effect essentially lasts the whole turn anyway (and beyond); if you assume that having an enemy within 5' reduces your ranged attack roll, the fact that you may not get any more ranged attack rolls is hardly any more relevant than that a Barbarian using Reckless Attack might not get attacked in return. With War Caster, for example, a ranged combatant faced in melee could also get a spell casting as a reaction, so they'd be able to cast a ranged spell as an opportunity attack, but (under the current rules) would be at disadvantage if their spell were ranged and an opponent were within 5'. You throw your javelin, an enemy closes the distance, and another moves past you... and your opportunity attack suffers beyond your initial ranged attack.
It gets particularly silly if you get to a scenario where the nearby enemy isn't even engaged in combat with you. For example, an archer is next to an enemy necromancer. The necromancer is busily conjuring up undead, and the archer is shooting at the undead... but is at disadvantage to hit the distant undead because technically he's standing near a necromancer who is ignoring him. The existing penalty is weird.
But imagine the inverse... the archer is trying to shoot the distant necromancer, while being crowded by the necromancer's undead minions. The current rules say the archer's doing fine against all the minions (normal, anyway), but has a hard time hitting the necromancer, on account of all that inconvenient jostling from the minions. But is that how the drama of the scene should unfold? Seems to me that the archer is pulling himself from the fray, risking life and limb to ignore the nearby threat and instead focus his efforts on a distant adversary. He's making himself vulnerable in order to strike! It's way more dramatic to have him succeed, but suffer for it, than to have him just miss a bunch of times while enduring a skeleton slap-fight. I want rules that reflect that sort of staging.
But those sort of rules may have other, unforeseen consequences, which is really what I'm hoping to suss out.
But is that how the drama of the scene should unfold? Seems to me that the archer is pulling himself from the fray, risking life and limb to ignore the nearby threat and instead focus his efforts on a distant adversary. He's making himself vulnerable in order to strike! It's way more dramatic to have him succeed, but suffer for it, than to have him just miss a bunch of times while enduring a skeleton slap-fight. I want rules that reflect that sort of staging.
But those sort of rules may have other, unforeseen consequences, which is really what I'm hoping to suss out.
If you want dramatically appropriate behavior from ranged combat, you completely remove the penalty for using ranged weapons in melee combat... but you also make it so attacks have really short range, because the way ranged combat works cinematically basically amounts to "by round 2, you're in melee combat. Unusually fast combatants may reach melee in round 1", because ranged combat scenes are boring.
The effect of Reckless Attack last until the start of your next turn.
The effect of Ranged Attacks in Close Combat last only when you make a ranged attack roll.
What I'm proposing is that the ranged penalty would last until the ranged attacker's next turn. Essentially until they had the opportunity to start doing something other than a ranged attack.
Currently, the effect essentially lasts the whole turn anyway (and beyond); if you assume that having an enemy within 5' reduces your ranged attack roll, the fact that you may not get any more ranged attack rolls is hardly any more relevant than that a Barbarian using Reckless Attack might not get attacked in return. With War Caster, for example, a ranged combatant faced in melee could also get a spell casting as a reaction, so they'd be able to cast a ranged spell as an opportunity attack, but (under the current rules) would be at disadvantage if their spell were ranged and an opponent were within 5'. You throw your javelin, an enemy closes the distance, and another moves past you... and your opportunity attack suffers beyond your initial ranged attack.
It gets particularly silly if you get to a scenario where the nearby enemy isn't even engaged in combat with you. For example, an archer is next to an enemy necromancer. The necromancer is busily conjuring up undead, and the archer is shooting at the undead... but is at disadvantage to hit the distant undead because technically he's standing near a necromancer who is ignoring him. The existing penalty is weird.
But imagine the inverse... the archer is trying to shoot the distant necromancer, while being crowded by the necromancer's undead minions. The current rules say the archer's doing fine against all the minions (normal, anyway), but has a hard time hitting the necromancer, on account of all that inconvenient jostling from the minions. But is that how the drama of the scene should unfold? Seems to me that the archer is pulling himself from the fray, risking life and limb to ignore the nearby threat and instead focus his efforts on a distant adversary. He's making himself vulnerable in order to strike! It's way more dramatic to have him succeed, but suffer for it, than to have him just miss a bunch of times while enduring a skeleton slap-fight. I want rules that reflect that sort of staging.
But those sort of rules may have other, unforeseen consequences, which is really what I'm hoping to suss out.
If you want dramatically appropriate behavior from ranged combat, you completely remove the penalty for using ranged weapons in melee combat... but you also make it so attacks have really short range, because the way ranged combat works cinematically basically amounts to "by round 2, you're in melee combat. Unusually fast combatants may reach melee in round 1", because ranged combat scenes are boring.