TOPIC: Range Combat Comment

Just a general comment about range combat.

Each room that has combat I slid my Bow and EVERY time the DM uses the Melee stats. My melee really does suck, they call miss. I state wow a +26 (24 for stat and +2 for bard) is a miss? They have to go back and redo it the damage. In one room I slid a 17 + 26 = 43, the DM says the AC is 39 and a 17 is a miss, so we stopped combat so he could look at the missile stats again. (We play on Epic).

Would it be a good idea to use a sticky note to cover the melee so they will use the missile? I brought it up in the coaches room about covering the melee stats with a sticky note and they said we cannot add a cover to the melee stats. We just have to keep stopping combat to tell the DM, this really slows down the combat.

Thoughts?

Cheers,
Ed

This idea has been brought up before, and I believe Druegar was against it, but as a DM I think that's a great idea. Another idea that was brought up (that we started using in Grind) was to put a big circle around the primary combat method on the party card.

Mostly it is a DM experience issue. When I was new to DMing I messed it up a lot. Now I think I almost always get it correct. For example, if most people are +10 or +15 to hit, and I see a +2 to hit, I naturally make sure I have the correct column.

When I slide and the DM shouts, "BARD!", I shout back, "BARD IS RANGED!" every slide as they're looking at the slider regardless of what round of combat we're on. I've found that the routine of combat makes DMs not actually look at the token in the slider, they're only looking to see if it has a damage ring and the attack number.

Rangers were having problems with their Charm of Shadow Shot being slid back with the dismissive statement of it not being a weapon.

I don't think they are bad DMs, they're just falling into a routine and ranged attacks are less common than melee, plus they're under time pressure to add up numbers. Add in new DMs who aren't as familiar with the token library and errors are bound to show up. I don't think it's rude to give them a loud reminder as they're looking at the slider that it's a ranged attack. That helps both you and them to stay accurate, and serves as a reminder to always check the token.

Just a thought, part of DM training is to have them fill out a party card (could be the standard 8.5x11 page with 5-6 preset token “players” with a mix of melee and ranged??

Hawk Fingle wrote: Rangers were having problems with their Charm of Shadow Shot being slid back with the dismissive statement of it not being a weapon.

I don't think they are bad DMs, they're just falling into a routine and ranged attacks are less common than melee, plus they're under time pressure to add up numbers. Add in new DMs who aren't as familiar with the token library and errors are bound to show up. I don't think it's rude to give them a loud reminder as they're looking at the slider that it's a ranged attack. That helps both you and them to stay accurate, and serves as a reminder to always check the token.

I do not think they are bad DMs, I am just trying to figure out some way to ensure they look at the missile. I did try yelling ranger is range. By the time they get down to the ranger - they forgot (sometimes).

I did underline the missile stats - that did not help!

I feel like circling the primary combat number or even a nice bright highlighter would do the trick for the less experienced DMs. As a dm I stopped arguing with players. If we have time after the puzzle or combat is done, then we can discuss it.

Kirk Bauer wrote: This idea has been brought up before, and I believe Druegar was against it

As a rule of thumb, I am opposed to:

• giving coaches yet another thing to do--they're burdened enough!
• adding things that need to be restocked in the coaching room.

As a solution to your dilemma, I suggest preemptively reminding your DM you're using ranged attacks (as Hawk Fingle does) and/or bring your own yellow highlighter to color in your ranged stats on the party card.

{dons Coach Coordinator hat}
As long as the highlighting doesn't get out of control, I'm cool with it. But if it gets abused, it gets the axe.

It's a problem. And it's a problem that's gotten worse because of all those freakin' overpowered throwing hammers! Especially now that so many players are using the Legendary Thor Hammer.

You should have to commit to melee or ranged. You shouldn't be able to change your mind when you discover there is retribution damage (against melee) or some other defense (against ranged).

Many, many times at last GenCon, I had to stop combat momentarily to ask players "melee or ranged?". Very annoying.

It would definitely be easier if the Party Card had some built in notation (or check box) where players clearly commit in advance to melee or ranged as their primary. For this past Grind, I started circling boxes to make it clearer.

Otherwise, for next year's Grind, I'm going to have to either default to Melee (unless someone says otherwise) or default to the build with the highest damage bonus (tie-breaker is highest to hit bonus).

I had to remind the DM that I used a Potion of Leaping Attack when everyone was using ranged or climbing because, yeah, my range combat sucks.

Some fights have reasons for switching between the two. I keep trying to make Shield of the Prism work which I use with barbarian builds because of +1 Mighty Sling. So, I'm not excited by locking someone in, though I'm fine with the idea of a default as it's rare to routinely be flipping.

Many, many of my builds are massive Dex and irrelevant Str, and I create builds for other players in the group. So, this happens all of the time to our group. Our monk this year GC, for instance, noticed that it was happening in room one of N1.

While I get that combat is dense for room DMs, I do find it odd that it's so easy to look at +2 to hit rather than +13 to hit (monk build for my friend), +1 to hit versus +25 to hit (my Origins monk build), or whatever.

I think I said as much before, I can certainly take more responsibility as a player to preempt the problem. I often don't think to do so as I have other things on my mind, and it often doesn't matter, so I let it slide [sic].

Even before combat stating the ranger is using range the DM forgets - long list of people before the ranger! LOL Even the monk stated using range and the DM slid back his tokens (very experience DM), which was quickly fixed. There are a lot of moving parts for the DM to remember as an old TD DM I understand that things get fast paced in combat - especially on Epic.

Nothing for the coaching room to have to have or do - I have my own sticky notes and yellow/pink/blue highlighter!

I have an idea that could help with this issue going forward. Unfortunately, it doesn't solve the thrown weapon issue and doesn't help anyone using older tokens. What if the background of weapon tokens indicated whether the token was melee or ranged? Maybe a more "white" background for melee and a more "gray" background for ranged, for example. Then, the party card could be shaded to match with the melee column being white and the ranged column being gray. This would help the DMs scan more easily between the token and the party card and match stats up appropriately. Perhaps thrown weapons could have a 1/2 & 1/2 background and the player needs to announce melee or ranged. Maybe to simplify, there's a rule that thrown weapons are melee by default unless announced as ranged.

Honestly, I think anytime something could be streamlined in some way, it would really help the whole experience. I'm not playing on epic or anything, but I do put a bit of time and effort into fiddling around with stats and outfitting my party. It's always a bummer when that effort ends up being lost in the dungeon because of the interplay between the complexity of the game, inexperience/confusion of players/DMs/coaches, and time restraints.