The wording of SS and GWN respectively is "before you make an attack with a ranged weapon you are proficient with" and "before you make a melee attack with a heavy weapon that you are proficient with." So, if you used a heavy ranged weapon (longbow) to make a melee attack, could you take -10 on the attack roll for +20 damage?
The most commonly cited explanation i've found is you can't because under Improvised Weapons in the PHB it says "if a character uses a ranged weapon to make a melee attack" ... "it also deals 1d4 damage." They say that it makes the longbow an improvised weapon, which you (probably) aren't proficient in, and even if you had Tavern Brawler for proficiency it loses the Heavy and Ranged traits, disqualifying it for the feat. However, I can't see anything that says a weapon used incorrectly becomes improvised, only that it deals 1d4 damage. RAW it seems possible.
If you understand that the tweet by JC is explaining the RAW (https://twitter.com/JeremyECrawford/status/933436175649406976) then you can assume that the ranged weapon becomes an improvised weapon (just a long fragile stick) - and so proficiency won't apply since the bow isn't being used in a way that could possibly resemble the use of a bow.
That is why the sentence "If a character uses a ranged weapon to make a melee attack, " is in the middle of the paragraph dealing with "An object that bears no resemblance to a weapon".
If you understand that the tweet by JC is explaining the RAW (https://twitter.com/JeremyECrawford/status/933436175649406976) then you can assume that the ranged weapon becomes an improvised weapon (just a long fragile stick) - and so proficiency won't apply since the bow isn't being used in a way that could possibly resemble the use of a bow.
Tweets are not RAW.
That is why the sentence "If a character uses a ranged weapon to make a melee attack, " is in the middle of the paragraph dealing with "An object that bears no resemblance to a weapon".
You conveniently didn't read the last sentence of his tweet? As is often the case in areas where rules get murky, the DM will have an answer for your table and whatever answer he provides is the correct one.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
I'm probably laughing.
It is apparently so hard to program Aberrant Mind and Clockwork Soul spell-swapping into dndbeyond they had to remake the game without it rather than implement it.
The wording of SS and GWN respectively is "before you make an attack with a ranged weapon you are proficient with" and "before you make a melee attack with a heavy weapon that you are proficient with." So, if you used a heavy ranged weapon (longbow) to make a melee attack, could you take -10 on the attack roll for +20 damage?
The most commonly cited explanation i've found is you can't because under Improvised Weapons in the PHB it says "if a character uses a ranged weapon to make a melee attack" ... "it also deals 1d4 damage." They say that it makes the longbow an improvised weapon, which you (probably) aren't proficient in, and even if you had Tavern Brawler for proficiency it loses the Heavy and Ranged traits, disqualifying it for the feat. However, I can't see anything that says a weapon used incorrectly becomes improvised, only that it deals 1d4 damage. RAW it seems possible.
from the ammunition property rules it makes it an improvised weapon
If you use a weapon that has the Ammunition property to make a melee Attack, you treat the weapon as an Improvised Weapon (see “Improvised Weapons” later in the section). A sling must be loaded to deal any damage when used in this way.
therefore it isnt a ranged weapon when attacking in melee, or a melee weapon, its an improvised one.
I think there are some important definitions that have been skipped:
A melee weapon is used to attack a target within 5 feet of you, whereas a ranged weapon is used to attack a target at a distance.
Are you saying a ranged weapon cannot be used to target a creature within 5 ft of yourself? Radical take.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
I'm probably laughing.
It is apparently so hard to program Aberrant Mind and Clockwork Soul spell-swapping into dndbeyond they had to remake the game without it rather than implement it.
A melee weapon is used to attack a target within 5 feet of you, whereas a ranged weapon is used to attack a target at a distance.
Are you saying a ranged weapon cannot be used to target a creature within 5 ft of yourself? Radical take.
Well it is a direct quote from the PHB... But it is just another example of poorly written flavour text seeing as there are several melee weapons that can attack beyond 5ft too.
A melee weapon is used to attack a target within 5 feet of you, whereas a ranged weapon is used to attack a target at a distance.
Are you saying a ranged weapon cannot be used to target a creature within 5 ft of yourself? Radical take.
Well it is a direct quote from the PHB... But it is just another example of poorly written flavour text seeing as there are several melee weapons that can attack beyond 5ft too.
Huh. I thought we tried to stick to actually posting real rules here on this forum. I guess if you guys wanna argue ranged weapons cannot attack targets within 5ft of you, you're free to. I'm not sure how many people are going to end up taking it very seriously.
Also, fwiw, "within 5ft" is a distance.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
I'm probably laughing.
It is apparently so hard to program Aberrant Mind and Clockwork Soul spell-swapping into dndbeyond they had to remake the game without it rather than implement it.
The wording of SS and GWN respectively is "before you make an attack with a ranged weapon you are proficient with" and "before you make a melee attack with a heavy weapon that you are proficient with." So, if you used a heavy ranged weapon (longbow) to make a melee attack, could you take -10 on the attack roll for +20 damage?
The most commonly cited explanation i've found is you can't because under Improvised Weapons in the PHB it says "if a character uses a ranged weapon to make a melee attack" ... "it also deals 1d4 damage." They say that it makes the longbow an improvised weapon, which you (probably) aren't proficient in, and even if you had Tavern Brawler for proficiency it loses the Heavy and Ranged traits, disqualifying it for the feat. However, I can't see anything that says a weapon used incorrectly becomes improvised, only that it deals 1d4 damage. RAW it seems possible.
RAW, yes, they stack. Jeremy Crawford has stated that the intent of the rules is that improvised weapons have no properties, so a longbow isn't heavy when you make a melee attack with it per RAI, but there simply isn't any RAW implementing that intent.
Other than being the kind of cheese that could get someone kicked from a table, how problematic would this combination actually be in practice? A -10 to hit is a pretty extreme penalty, and it seems like it would generally go to waste against level appropriate encounters, and would be overkill for trivial encounters. It would often require a Nat 20 to hit, and then wouldn't really gain any benefit from the bonus crit damage.
Is there any way to make this practical given the drawbacks and resource investments?
Edit: I suppose if you could continue to stack GWM, you'd eventually stop being penalized because it would be Nat 20 or bust. Of course, that means you'd need to survive long enough to make 20 attacks, on average, to maybe one-shot a BBEG, and they would only need to foil that singular hit to reset the probability clock.
Yea I really hope they sort out the improvised weapon rules when they update the rules. The RAI is quite clear even if the RAW isn't due to bad writing.
At any table I get to rule then an improvised weapon does 1D4 damage and have no traits or extras or anything. It counts as being a weapon but that's it. I could be quite liberal with counting random things as being actual weapons (a table leg counts as a Club and such like that) but I'd make them a lot more likely to break than what an actual weapon is.
A melee weapon is used to attack a target within 5 feet of you, whereas a ranged weapon is used to attack a target at a distance.
Are you saying a ranged weapon cannot be used to target a creature within 5 ft of yourself? Radical take.
Well it is a direct quote from the PHB... But it is just another example of poorly written flavour text seeing as there are several melee weapons that can attack beyond 5ft too.
Huh. I thought we tried to stick to actually posting real rules here on this forum. I guess if you guys wanna argue ranged weapons cannot attack targets within 5ft of you, you're free to. I'm not sure how many people are going to end up taking it very seriously.
Also, fwiw, "within 5ft" is a distance.
I didn't say anything about that copy and pasted text other than it had been skipped. The fact that you can't make sense of it is the proof that it should be examined in this thread.
The wording of SS and GWN respectively is "before you make an attack with a ranged weapon you are proficient with" and "before you make a melee attack with a heavy weapon that you are proficient with." So, if you used a heavy ranged weapon (longbow) to make a melee attack, could you take -10 on the attack roll for +20 damage?
No, because if you use a longbow as a melee weapon it counts as an improvised melee weapon, which means (a) you aren't proficient with it, and (b) it's not a ranged weapon.
The wording of SS and GWN respectively is "before you make an attack with a ranged weapon you are proficient with" and "before you make a melee attack with a heavy weapon that you are proficient with." So, if you used a heavy ranged weapon (longbow) to make a melee attack, could you take -10 on the attack roll for +20 damage?
No, because if you use a longbow as a melee weapon it counts as an improvised melee weapon, which means (a) you aren't proficient with it, and (b) it's not a ranged weapon.
A longbow is a ranged weapon.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
I'm probably laughing.
It is apparently so hard to program Aberrant Mind and Clockwork Soul spell-swapping into dndbeyond they had to remake the game without it rather than implement it.
And that's one of the problems. A longbow is listed as a ranged weapon. And when you use it in melee the rules clearly say that it is a improvised weapon. Nothing explicitly says if it then counts as both a ranged and an improvised weapon or only as an improvised one.
The wording of SS and GWN respectively is "before you make an attack with a ranged weapon you are proficient with" and "before you make a melee attack with a heavy weapon that you are proficient with." So, if you used a heavy ranged weapon (longbow) to make a melee attack, could you take -10 on the attack roll for +20 damage?
No, because if you use a longbow as a melee weapon it counts as an improvised melee weapon, which means (a) you aren't proficient with it, and (b) it's not a ranged weapon.
There is a confounding factor, which is that there is the possibility of gaining proficiency with improvised weapons.
The wording of SS and GWN respectively is "before you make an attack with a ranged weapon you are proficient with" and "before you make a melee attack with a heavy weapon that you are proficient with." So, if you used a heavy ranged weapon (longbow) to make a melee attack, could you take -10 on the attack roll for +20 damage?
No, because if you use a longbow as a melee weapon it counts as an improvised melee weapon
There is no RAW in the game and no RAI tweets from JC stating that improvising a ranged weapon turns it into melee or that improvising a melee weapon turns it into ranged. In fact, we have the opposite: the RAW we have breaks down completely if improvised weapons gain the melee or ranged... uh... "categories" in a similar fashion to OP's original question breaking the game. The least inconsistent ruling we know of is that improvised weapons do not tamper with a weapon being ranged (clubbing someone with a bow), melee (throwing a longsword), or neither (a vial of acid).
Since we can't seem to find actual rules saying this doesn't work, it technically could, I think. However, since RAI and RAW are at odds here, and since looking at the concept, not the rules, makes this utterly ridiculous (like seriously, how does being a good shot help you whack people harder?), this is something that should probably just be left to DM discretion. And I cannot imagine a DM who would allow this - or, at least, I can't imagine a very fun DM who would allow this (100% RAW ruling with no deviation whatsoever for any purpose, ever - that doesn't strike me as fun, for anyone involved).
For me, as a DM, my response to this question is something along these lines: *visible disgust* "No, never."
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Paladin main who spends most of his D&D time worldbuilding or DMing, not Paladin-ing.
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The wording of SS and GWN respectively is "before you make an attack with a ranged weapon you are proficient with" and "before you make a melee attack with a heavy weapon that you are proficient with." So, if you used a heavy ranged weapon (longbow) to make a melee attack, could you take -10 on the attack roll for +20 damage?
The most commonly cited explanation i've found is you can't because under Improvised Weapons in the PHB it says "if a character uses a ranged weapon to make a melee attack" ... "it also deals 1d4 damage." They say that it makes the longbow an improvised weapon, which you (probably) aren't proficient in, and even if you had Tavern Brawler for proficiency it loses the Heavy and Ranged traits, disqualifying it for the feat. However, I can't see anything that says a weapon used incorrectly becomes improvised, only that it deals 1d4 damage. RAW it seems possible.
If you understand that the tweet by JC is explaining the RAW (https://twitter.com/JeremyECrawford/status/933436175649406976) then you can assume that the ranged weapon becomes an improvised weapon (just a long fragile stick) - and so proficiency won't apply since the bow isn't being used in a way that could possibly resemble the use of a bow.
That is why the sentence "If a character uses a ranged weapon to make a melee attack, " is in the middle of the paragraph dealing with "An object that bears no resemblance to a weapon".
Tweets are not RAW.
You conveniently didn't read the last sentence of his tweet? As is often the case in areas where rules get murky, the DM will have an answer for your table and whatever answer he provides is the correct one.
I'm probably laughing.
It is apparently so hard to program Aberrant Mind and Clockwork Soul spell-swapping into dndbeyond they had to remake the game without it rather than implement it.
from the ammunition property rules it makes it an improvised weapon
If you use a weapon that has the Ammunition property to make a melee Attack, you treat the weapon as an Improvised Weapon (see “Improvised Weapons” later in the section). A sling must be loaded to deal any damage when used in this way.
therefore it isnt a ranged weapon when attacking in melee, or a melee weapon, its an improvised one.
Bows make terrible melee weapons...... Bow strings dont hold up they way they do in movies....
I think there are some important definitions that have been skipped:
Are we talking about movies, or the real-life world of D&D?
"Not all those who wander are lost"
Are you saying a ranged weapon cannot be used to target a creature within 5 ft of yourself? Radical take.
I'm probably laughing.
It is apparently so hard to program Aberrant Mind and Clockwork Soul spell-swapping into dndbeyond they had to remake the game without it rather than implement it.
Well it is a direct quote from the PHB... But it is just another example of poorly written flavour text seeing as there are several melee weapons that can attack beyond 5ft too.
Huh. I thought we tried to stick to actually posting real rules here on this forum. I guess if you guys wanna argue ranged weapons cannot attack targets within 5ft of you, you're free to. I'm not sure how many people are going to end up taking it very seriously.
Also, fwiw, "within 5ft" is a distance.
I'm probably laughing.
It is apparently so hard to program Aberrant Mind and Clockwork Soul spell-swapping into dndbeyond they had to remake the game without it rather than implement it.
RAW, yes, they stack. Jeremy Crawford has stated that the intent of the rules is that improvised weapons have no properties, so a longbow isn't heavy when you make a melee attack with it per RAI, but there simply isn't any RAW implementing that intent.
Other than being the kind of cheese that could get someone kicked from a table, how problematic would this combination actually be in practice? A -10 to hit is a pretty extreme penalty, and it seems like it would generally go to waste against level appropriate encounters, and would be overkill for trivial encounters. It would often require a Nat 20 to hit, and then wouldn't really gain any benefit from the bonus crit damage.
Is there any way to make this practical given the drawbacks and resource investments?
Edit: I suppose if you could continue to stack GWM, you'd eventually stop being penalized because it would be Nat 20 or bust. Of course, that means you'd need to survive long enough to make 20 attacks, on average, to maybe one-shot a BBEG, and they would only need to foil that singular hit to reset the probability clock.
Yea I really hope they sort out the improvised weapon rules when they update the rules. The RAI is quite clear even if the RAW isn't due to bad writing.
At any table I get to rule then an improvised weapon does 1D4 damage and have no traits or extras or anything. It counts as being a weapon but that's it. I could be quite liberal with counting random things as being actual weapons (a table leg counts as a Club and such like that) but I'd make them a lot more likely to break than what an actual weapon is.
I didn't say anything about that copy and pasted text other than it had been skipped. The fact that you can't make sense of it is the proof that it should be examined in this thread.
No, because if you use a longbow as a melee weapon it counts as an improvised melee weapon, which means (a) you aren't proficient with it, and (b) it's not a ranged weapon.
A longbow is a ranged weapon.
I'm probably laughing.
It is apparently so hard to program Aberrant Mind and Clockwork Soul spell-swapping into dndbeyond they had to remake the game without it rather than implement it.
And that's one of the problems. A longbow is listed as a ranged weapon. And when you use it in melee the rules clearly say that it is a improvised weapon. Nothing explicitly says if it then counts as both a ranged and an improvised weapon or only as an improvised one.
There is a confounding factor, which is that there is the possibility of gaining proficiency with improvised weapons.
There is no RAW in the game and no RAI tweets from JC stating that improvising a ranged weapon turns it into melee or that improvising a melee weapon turns it into ranged. In fact, we have the opposite: the RAW we have breaks down completely if improvised weapons gain the melee or ranged... uh... "categories" in a similar fashion to OP's original question breaking the game. The least inconsistent ruling we know of is that improvised weapons do not tamper with a weapon being ranged (clubbing someone with a bow), melee (throwing a longsword), or neither (a vial of acid).
Since we can't seem to find actual rules saying this doesn't work, it technically could, I think. However, since RAI and RAW are at odds here, and since looking at the concept, not the rules, makes this utterly ridiculous (like seriously, how does being a good shot help you whack people harder?), this is something that should probably just be left to DM discretion. And I cannot imagine a DM who would allow this - or, at least, I can't imagine a very fun DM who would allow this (100% RAW ruling with no deviation whatsoever for any purpose, ever - that doesn't strike me as fun, for anyone involved).
For me, as a DM, my response to this question is something along these lines: *visible disgust* "No, never."
Paladin main who spends most of his D&D time worldbuilding or DMing, not Paladin-ing.