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.
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.
Tell that to Legolas's buttered feet in LotR!
Ranged combat can be exciting, but typically the exciting part isn't the shooting, but the getting away and the hiding behind things. Unless you're John Wick, and can shift seamlessly from kung-fu to gun-fu, and that's what feats are for. But in D&D, I do think ranged combat should always feel like the awkward third wheel, and it kinda does already, but penalizing attack rolls favors drawing things out, whereas penalizing defense favors shorter combats, one way or the other. Swapping the penalty to defense still encourages ranged fighters to withdraw and keep distant, and it still favors melee in toe-to-toe. It makes the rogue scaling the battlements to attack the archers/spellcasters far more effective (with advantage, he gets sneak attack!). It feels more dramatic.
But I keep having a sneaking suspicion there's maybe one more twist of rule I'm overlooking. Like, "Oh no, now anyone who takes Blind Fighting will have double secret super advantage on all their polearm attacks," or something.
But I keep having a sneaking suspicion there's maybe one more twist of rule I'm overlooking. Like, "Oh no, now anyone who takes Blind Fighting will have double secret super advantage on all their polearm attacks," or something.
Well, really the way to know is to playtest it. Tell your players you’re planning to try this house rule, and if it doesn’t work for one reason or another, then you’ll go back. I think, in practical terms, it not likely to matter for long, as most dedicated archers end up taking sharpshooter first chance they can, so it really might only come up during levels 1-3. That’s assuming you adjust sharpshooter to compensate for the change.
One issue I can see, however, is it runs against the general design principles, because PCs are kind of glass cannons that dish out much more damage than they can take. They’re designed to be missed more than they are hit, and have hit points which factor in that reality. If you start this, your archers will end up getting hit more often, which means they will likely start going down more often. Just in general, anything you do that increases randomness away from the expected average die roll screws PCs much more than it does monsters.
But I keep having a sneaking suspicion there's maybe one more twist of rule I'm overlooking. Like, "Oh no, now anyone who takes Blind Fighting will have double secret super advantage on all their polearm attacks," or something.
Well, really the way to know is to playtest it. Tell your players you’re planning to try this house rule, and if it doesn’t work for one reason or another, then you’ll go back. I think, in practical terms, it not likely to matter for long, as most dedicated archers end up taking sharpshooter first chance they can, so it really might only come up during levels 1-3. That’s assuming you adjust sharpshooter to compensate for the change.
One issue I can see, however, is it runs against the general design principles, because PCs are kind of glass cannons that dish out much more damage than they can take. They’re designed to be missed more than they are hit, and have hit points which factor in that reality. If you start this, your archers will end up getting hit more often, which means they will likely start going down more often. Just in general, anything you do that increases randomness away from the expected average die roll screws PCs much more than it does monsters.
I think you're right, that a dedicated ranged combatant will certainly be greatly tempted by the Sharpshooter feat, as soon as they could get it... but that was already the case. And again, the rule is not just archers, it's all ranged combatants, so it already includes spellcasters caught up in melee, too!
But, as you said, if it becomes a significant issue, players will take on the feat to correct it. The difference will be that NPCs are governed by the same rules, so it's important not to consider only one-half of the equation. Ranged NPCs will also be more fragile, sans feat, meaning that the Rogue, for example, will be particularly deadly against ranged mooks who might not have taken that feat, which can tilt the scales as needed to add a heroic moment to play.
I'm less worried about player death -- there are a LOT of safety nets already, and frankly my group has seldom needed any of them since 5e rolled out. We've never had a random PC death. But if you played a grindier sort of campaign (or just had a lot of really incautious players, I guess?), I could see where that shift it might make a bigger difference.
One interesting confluence occurs to me though... Healing Word. Shifting the balance to defense means that a caster using Healing Word would be at a similar disadvantage, whereas before they had no difficulty zapping that across the battlefield, even if they were in the thick of melee themselves. (But how weird is it that your healer could always rush into melee, spend his time binding someone's wounds, and somehow suffer no increase in difficulty for that level of focus amidst active combat, but a guy pointing a wand and saying 'bang!' is really struggling!😄)
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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.
Tell that to Legolas's buttered feet in LotR!
Ranged combat can be exciting, but typically the exciting part isn't the shooting, but the getting away and the hiding behind things. Unless you're John Wick, and can shift seamlessly from kung-fu to gun-fu, and that's what feats are for. But in D&D, I do think ranged combat should always feel like the awkward third wheel, and it kinda does already, but penalizing attack rolls favors drawing things out, whereas penalizing defense favors shorter combats, one way or the other. Swapping the penalty to defense still encourages ranged fighters to withdraw and keep distant, and it still favors melee in toe-to-toe. It makes the rogue scaling the battlements to attack the archers/spellcasters far more effective (with advantage, he gets sneak attack!). It feels more dramatic.
But I keep having a sneaking suspicion there's maybe one more twist of rule I'm overlooking. Like, "Oh no, now anyone who takes Blind Fighting will have double secret super advantage on all their polearm attacks," or something.
Well, really the way to know is to playtest it. Tell your players you’re planning to try this house rule, and if it doesn’t work for one reason or another, then you’ll go back.
I think, in practical terms, it not likely to matter for long, as most dedicated archers end up taking sharpshooter first chance they can, so it really might only come up during levels 1-3. That’s assuming you adjust sharpshooter to compensate for the change.
One issue I can see, however, is it runs against the general design principles, because PCs are kind of glass cannons that dish out much more damage than they can take. They’re designed to be missed more than they are hit, and have hit points which factor in that reality. If you start this, your archers will end up getting hit more often, which means they will likely start going down more often.
Just in general, anything you do that increases randomness away from the expected average die roll screws PCs much more than it does monsters.
You mean the part where he's using ranged weapons in melee?
I think you're right, that a dedicated ranged combatant will certainly be greatly tempted by the Sharpshooter feat, as soon as they could get it... but that was already the case. And again, the rule is not just archers, it's all ranged combatants, so it already includes spellcasters caught up in melee, too!
But, as you said, if it becomes a significant issue, players will take on the feat to correct it. The difference will be that NPCs are governed by the same rules, so it's important not to consider only one-half of the equation. Ranged NPCs will also be more fragile, sans feat, meaning that the Rogue, for example, will be particularly deadly against ranged mooks who might not have taken that feat, which can tilt the scales as needed to add a heroic moment to play.
I'm less worried about player death -- there are a LOT of safety nets already, and frankly my group has seldom needed any of them since 5e rolled out. We've never had a random PC death. But if you played a grindier sort of campaign (or just had a lot of really incautious players, I guess?), I could see where that shift it might make a bigger difference.
One interesting confluence occurs to me though... Healing Word. Shifting the balance to defense means that a caster using Healing Word would be at a similar disadvantage, whereas before they had no difficulty zapping that across the battlefield, even if they were in the thick of melee themselves. (But how weird is it that your healer could always rush into melee, spend his time binding someone's wounds, and somehow suffer no increase in difficulty for that level of focus amidst active combat, but a guy pointing a wand and saying 'bang!' is really struggling!😄)