TOPIC: Thoughts on Ranged Combat/Melee hosing this year?

Kirk Bauer wrote: I agree. I prefer ranged-only scenarios here and there. It rewards spell casters and well-balanced builds or parties.

I agree with you Kirk. Well balanced parties are the way to go.

I am sure people have played D&D at some point (or RPGs in general), you have creatures that can only be hit with range. Balancing the party out is the way to go.

My group loved the mix of monsters this year, between range and melee - it was perfect!

Cheers,
Ed

Mike Steele wrote: I'm not a fan of overly penalizing melee combat, especially when ranged combat isn't similarly penalized. I'd rather the monster just have a significantly higher AC for both ranged and melee to hit than restricting melee combat.

My group was able to handle it though. Since we play Hardcore, I balanced most of the group so almost everyone hits on melee, and probably half hit OK on ranged - and most of the party members that can't hit very well with a ranged weapon can hit with spells. It did bother me a LOT more though when we used to play Nightmare.

Range combat has been penalized before in TD. The room that had high winds and range could not be used.

This year was a perfect balance!

Cheers,
Ed

GaryM wrote:

SnakeEyes (Eric) wrote: I just used this and my sword worked great.

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Potion Leaping Attack

I was told potion of leaping attack would not work as it's the brambles preventing the melee not a height difference. That's why I was wondering about the gloves of the flying fist and if they worked.

The gloves worked just fine. "When used to attack an opponent, tangible clones of these gloves magically launch themselves from the monk’s hands toward the target and then dissipate as soon as the attack is completed." i.e. Missile weapon!

tokendb.com/token/gloves-of-the-flying-fists/

Cheers,
Ed

I didn't care much for #3. It was too busy and neither group I was in managed to defeat the boss. I would be curious what the success/fail ratio was on that room compared to the others, but I'm not sure how well they track that.

By locking down the casters certain group compositions had a tougher time. My groups had an experienced caster in me, but sliding was less reliable or they didn't have iron in the early runs. So the smaller scrael stuck to the casters for so long the combat ground to a halt.

And so I thought I would be clever and use a polymorph to get it off me. This worked, but then I was stuck as a scrael for the whole room. Because the DMs conveyed that it had been decided by a higher authority that for this room you couldn't just take a round penalty and change back. That's not how the potions are reported to work in the tokendb and more importantly not what I was expecting. Arbitrary change to the rules is NOT COOL.

Kaledor wrote:

Mike Steele wrote: I'm not a fan of overly penalizing melee combat, especially when ranged combat isn't similarly penalized. I'd rather the monster just have a significantly higher AC for both ranged and melee to hit than restricting melee combat.

My group was able to handle it though. Since we play Hardcore, I balanced most of the group so almost everyone hits on melee, and probably half hit OK on ranged - and most of the party members that can't hit very well with a ranged weapon can hit with spells. It did bother me a LOT more though when we used to play Nightmare.

Range combat has been penalized before in TD. The room that had high winds and range could not be used.

This year was a perfect balance!

Cheers,
Ed

Melee is pretty penalized far more than is ranged. How was this year a perfect balance if melee was penalized repeatedly but ranged wasn't?

Kirk Bauer wrote: I agree. I prefer ranged-only scenarios here and there. It rewards spell casters and well-balanced builds or parties.

If melee is repeatedly penalized but there aren't ranged penalties (as I think this year was, unless I'm mistaken), that seems to promote ranged builds instead of balanced builds. There would need to be both melee and ranged restrictions to promote balanced builds.

I hated this year from a melee hosing perspective. I dont think anything in moongate was sneak-attackable at all. Several rooms that hosed melee also imediatly shut down spell casters with spider necklaces. And having a combat dungeon that both ends on a puzzle and has a melee hosing combat in room 6 is not cool. Sure make the final encounter hard but let everyone feel like they participated.

All in all I really liked the dungeons this year but other then the draccus the monster design was a total failure IMO.


Also as much as ranged advocates always refer back to that one time they were hosed by high winds I wonder if anu other examples of ranged hosing spring to mind?

Harlax wrote:

GaryM wrote:

SnakeEyes (Eric) wrote: I just used this and my sword worked great.

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Potion Leaping Attack

I was told potion of leaping attack would not work as it's the brambles preventing the melee not a height difference. That's why I was wondering about the gloves of the flying fist and if they worked.

I was told the same thing.

Told the same thing here for the shadow combat but for the queen it worked fine.

Last year and this year both had rogues not being able to sneak attack a LOT of the monsters, unless you equipped tokens that allow you to sneak attack constructs.

Mike Steele wrote:

Kirk Bauer wrote: I agree. I prefer ranged-only scenarios here and there. It rewards spell casters and well-balanced builds or parties.

If melee is repeatedly penalized but there aren't ranged penalties (as I think this year was, unless I'm mistaken), that seems to promote ranged builds instead of balanced builds. There would need to be both melee and ranged restrictions to promote balanced builds.

I think this statement would be true if Melee and Ranged builds were equally powerful. But they are are not, as melee offers much higher combined hit and damage bonuses.

I think at bottom the question is more one of what dungeon design should promote:

* similar effectiveness in both modes of combat
* not care if you are heavily weighted to one or the other modes of combat

I like the former, but it is a matter of taste.

Picc wrote:
Also as much as ranged advocates always refer back to that one time they were hosed by high winds I wonder if anu other examples of ranged hosing spring to mind?

Yes, plenty, before this year Ranged had been hosed roughly the same as Melee for the last 2-3 years.

The Mindflayer end boss in 2015 was completely immune to ranged attacks

So - the Ranged players took their end boss combat hosing medicine for this story arc already.

Wade Schwendemann wrote: Last year and this year both had rogues not being able to sneak attack a LOT of the monsters, unless you equipped tokens that allow you to sneak attack constructs.

+1

Rogues only burst of damage has been shut down much more often than melee this year, TDC, and last year.

You primary melee builds finally got a taste of what rogues having been eating for awhile now...