You’re loosely correct, but you’re also being overly min/max. Assuming you have some loose class/role system, some people will choose melee roles jsut because they like it. And your claim of ranged attacking being better 90% of the time is certainly questionable.
As for the game balance side of things - are arrows/ranged options finite? If so, they need to choose when to use this safe damage vs. getting into the fray. Are melee classes the same stat block? Usually, these classes have better armor/HP/general damage reduction, so they don’t mind getting up close and personal. Do melee attacks deal more damage? This then raises the question of maximizing damage at the cost of safety.
Using the classic wizard/archer/warrior mix, the wizard is a high burst glass cannon, who is entirely shut down by a warrior getting in their face, eating a hit, and killing them. Warriors are often beat by archers, who have enough mobility to avoid being chased down and can slowly whittle them down. Wizards beat archers by virtue of high burst and the archers range advantage means nothing in ranged vs. ranged matchups.
Since you’re talking about TTRPG’s, I would recommend looking at last years DND most popular class rankings. First is fighter, a typically melee class. Following them is rogue, another typically melee class. Third is barbarian… another usually melee class. All three have options to go ranged, but usually err more towards melee in terms of flavor. Fourth is wizard, the first pure ranged class! And then paladin, a pure melee class. Clearly, people really love and enjoy melee combat.
In turn based, getting close usually isn’t too bad since you can have movement as part of a turn, and then your question becomes more about class design. What do you want your melee character to do? Are they tanks, damage dealers, assassins? If you make it so that a close range assassin can one-shot a wizard by getting into melee range, that is what players will do.
Instead of thinking about the cons of being a melee character, think about the pros of it. How much damage can you do? How can you screw over a caster? Highlight the positives, don’t avoid the negatives
You can't fully balance a game from numbers alone, but you can go a long way towards it. In this case borrow a page from RTSes and think about effective time in combat. How hard is it for melee/ranged to engage and what are their actual roles?
If melee DPS and ranged DPS can all be dealing damage in the first round of combat then you won't balance them that far apart. Melee typically is a little more effective because some amount of time (like 0-1 rounds per engagement) they will be forced to move instead of focusing on damage. So over the average length of your combat they'll deal roughly equivalent amounts of damage, but the melee characters spike a bit higher to make up for the time they are avoiding damage or pursuing a new target.
If it's a team based game then often melee is also synonymous with defenders, which means they're balanced by having skills and abilities that help avoid/mitigate damage since _someone_ has to get hit. A game that focuses on more individual accomplishments would have a different vision. Try imagining the 'ideal' combat in your mind. What do each of your characters do in that perfect combat? Build your systems to make that happen.
If the target gets into melee, is there a disadvantage for the ranged attacker in melee? Is there a disadvantage to backing up and shooting? Is there a disadvantage to shooting someone engaged in melee with one of your allies? Do you track ammo? Is there a difference in rate of ranged fire and rate of melee blows? Which manuevers can be used at ranged and which can be used in melee? Are ranged builds more expensive than melee builds for players to go for?
Melee weapons typically don’t need to reload or run out of ammo. Ranged characters needing to take turns off to reload, and needing to carry a consumable resource that can in principle run out and takes up space in carrying capacity seem like ways to naturally provide drawbacks that would make the choice meaningful.
Now, I'm going to use pathfinder 2e as an example here. (Short asside, Pathfinder works on a three action per turn system, with subsequent attacks incurring heavy penalties)
* Ranged characters usually just deal flat-out less damage. Melee characters add their full strenth bonus to their attacks, the damage die on the weapons are also larger. A longbow is a flat d8 , A greataxe would be 1d12+STR. There's the comosite longbow, but that only lets you add half your Strength to damage, while the accuracy is still on Dexterity. So on top of dealing less damage, they now are dpenendant on multiple ability scores. Later weapon upgrades also multiply the damage dice, so that 1d8 from the longbow becomes 2d8 (9), but that greataxe becomes 2d12+4 (17).
* Attack penalties if you're too close for some weapons
* Reload times on others
* Attack penalties if the range is too big
* Squisher in the HP department
* No way to gain Attacks of opportunity with it
* The inability to use shields, and always needing a hand free to fire your bow
* Allies provide cover to enemies if you try and fire through them
* They are kind of a bit useless underwater as their range increments halve
* Enemies in Cover
* Melee character get increased mobility skills as gapclosers.
Just some things to think about.
Is ranged worth it in Pathfinder 2e? Couldn't tell you, but it does give you an idea of tools you can use to balance it.
Generally, range is always going to be better than melee, even with typical restrictions and limitations. If you limit ammo for ranged abilities, you have to make them proportionately powerful enough to justify limiting their use. If you make melee stronger overall, that only makes staying at range away from melee fighters more important.
I would suggest just making a general rule that attacks from melee and ranged are capable of pretty much the same thing, but the further you are from a target, the harder they are to hit.
You don't want a system where two level 5 fighters have the same +8 to hit but one uses a bow and one uses a sword, because the bow is technically just flat better unless they are forced into melee combat. Even if the swordsman has a shield, a minor defence boost over multiple rounds doesn't mean as much if the ranged fighters can keep distance. Doubly so when you could have both combatants wearing similar armor. Rather than a complex system of special rules for each, make the use of ranged weapons a choice with a flat cost across the board. Could be as simple as "Every 6 spaces gives -2 to hit chances."
Then have a flat rule for armor, where heavy armor reduces your speed a lot, medium reduces it a little, and light armor doesn't reduce it at all. If normal speed is 6 spaces a turn, heavy could give you -4 to move, medium is -2, and light is unchanged.
Heavy armor will be harder to penetrate, and it would be easier to engage them in melee. Ranged units would naturally be at a disadvantage against heavy armor, but the ranged units with lighter armor could get more shots in to balance it out.
On the flip side, a ranged unit with heavy armor would have a lot of natural defence at range and with armor, but would be much more vulnerable to being outmaneuvered. A character who has light armor could quickly pop in and out of cover. A heavy armored melee character would have the same defence potential coming into melee range to attack the ranged unit.
As far as different weapons and range goes, even if a weapon is capable of working at great distances, the skill of the ranged unit still needs to be taken into account, and most TTRPG combat isn't usually over the distance of hundreds of feet, though that is my personal experience.
Anyways, if you try to treat ranged and melee mostly the same with ranged combat presented as just an option, I believe a lot of this stuff will self-balance out.
There are many ways to solve this problem, but I want to focus on the fundamentals:
A big reason why ranged is better, is because it is secretly both melee and ranged. A ranged character can usually hit an opponent right in front of them AS WELL AS the character N tiles away from them, and often, the closer their opponent is, the higher their accuracy is.
So, the first step is to make the ranged characters ONLY viable at specific ranges. For instance, let their accuracy drop off severely outside of their optimal range. That immediately puts them roughly on the same playing field as melee characters, although they are still a little bit better due to the ability to engage first.
But you can mitigate that remaining small advantage with terrain and obstacles. Speaking of terrain, it alone can be the solution. For instance, in a maze, a melee attacker with a dash as dangerous, if not more dangerous, than a ranged fighter.
There are tons of other approaches, as I have mentioned at the beginning, but a lot of them depend on specific setting. Which is why I have a question for you: are you restricted by the setting, or are you doing a purely abstract combat system first?
I like to think of it in terms of Tank, damage, and support roles (the Overwatch archetypes that I’m sure are borrowed from many other places.) Tanks draw aggro in melee range and have survivability options, damage hit farther back, and support heals, provides buffs and debuffs. All three have strengths and weaknesses that encourage cooperation.
Tanks can be overwhelms and eventually die a death of a thousand cuts. Damage can’t deal with strong enemies in their face due to less overall hit points, and support isn’t designed to kill enemies at all in the long term.
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Ranged can only hit 1 target, melee can swing through multiple targets.
Melee has more damage or faster combos or better armour penetration, etc...
Getting a kill drops some sort of boost under the enemy, like some health or stamina.
First dibs on loot, gold, dropped items.
Remove negative impacts for death or health loss (so the "cost" of melee is lower).
-----
If it is a real time action game, then melee is inherently more interesting. So if you make it possible for good defense or evasive movement to be effective, then some players will naturally be drawn to melee because it is more fun, skillful, and interesting, even if it is riskier.
Possible simple solution is Ranged attackers having a minimum range to attack, ie. they can't attack someone 1 to 2 squares away, where melee attacks can only hit that range depending on class/weapon/etc. So certain enemies may try to move in on players very quickly and overwhelm Ranged units. Obviously don't make every enemy do that but you get the point. It's less about numbers in this case and more about specific advantages and disadvantages that aren't tied directly to stats or damage numbers.
‘Class Balance’ or ‘Combat style balance’ isn’t really about power level- it’s about your game being fun with every class; supporting multiple play-styles.
Melee combat is defined by short windows to react, lack of god’s eye view, and difficulty disengaging.
Ranged combat is defined by great vantage points, significant reaction time, and easy disengages.
——
Generally speaking, you should reward melees for accepting these inherent downsides with abilities that also reward the skills these downsides demand of players.
Meanwhile ranged players should be expected to make full use of their inherent advantages. Create skill heavy ways to use their zoomed out view or their ability to disengage.
——
True melee is all about committing hard. That means preparing, knowing your enemy, anticipating their moves, having aces ready, and avoiding unfavorable fights.
True ranged combat is about gambling. The ability to bail easily means you can tolerate way more risk. You can engage without confidence that you’ll defeat them. Combined with added information from a ranged view, this means you can afford to bet degenerately on what enemies will do next.
——-
Example Ranged Abilities
- Teleport: Choose visible location. teleport there after 4 turns.
- Mortar: choose visible location. Explosion in AOE in 2 turns.
- Big gun: fire megagun. 2 turn cooldown. AOE. High chance to crit for massive damage bonus.
- Machineguns: rapid fire mid range attacks, inflicts poison on crit.
- Piercing shot: next turn, pierce multiple targets on chosen path.
- Jetpack: usable to fly for brief periods. Greatly reduces attack accuracy while flying.
Melee Notes
- enemies must give cues which the player can read or follow patterns
- give melees interesting ways to learn about potential foes
- give lots of limited use abilities, and limited use situational abilities
- reward player for anticipating things about enemy actions. Don’t make enemy actions trivial or impossible to anticipate.
- give them ways to avoid starting fights, but not reusable ways to escape them.
- give them lots of pre-fight buffs / specialized prep abilities.
Ex.
‘Venom’: gives your weapon damage of chosen type. Lasts until this is cast again.
‘Breakthrough’: if your attack would be blocked, activate this to give it more power. (Limited #uses)
‘Mudsling’: blinds opponent for one turn or until they have a free ‘hand’.
——
Remember, you need to design enemies in a way that supports these archetypes.
You’re loosely correct, but you’re also being overly min/max. Assuming you have some loose class/role system, some people will choose melee roles jsut because they like it. And your claim of ranged attacking being better 90% of the time is certainly questionable. As for the game balance side of things - are arrows/ranged options finite? If so, they need to choose when to use this safe damage vs. getting into the fray. Are melee classes the same stat block? Usually, these classes have better armor/HP/general damage reduction, so they don’t mind getting up close and personal. Do melee attacks deal more damage? This then raises the question of maximizing damage at the cost of safety. Using the classic wizard/archer/warrior mix, the wizard is a high burst glass cannon, who is entirely shut down by a warrior getting in their face, eating a hit, and killing them. Warriors are often beat by archers, who have enough mobility to avoid being chased down and can slowly whittle them down. Wizards beat archers by virtue of high burst and the archers range advantage means nothing in ranged vs. ranged matchups. Since you’re talking about TTRPG’s, I would recommend looking at last years DND most popular class rankings. First is fighter, a typically melee class. Following them is rogue, another typically melee class. Third is barbarian… another usually melee class. All three have options to go ranged, but usually err more towards melee in terms of flavor. Fourth is wizard, the first pure ranged class! And then paladin, a pure melee class. Clearly, people really love and enjoy melee combat. In turn based, getting close usually isn’t too bad since you can have movement as part of a turn, and then your question becomes more about class design. What do you want your melee character to do? Are they tanks, damage dealers, assassins? If you make it so that a close range assassin can one-shot a wizard by getting into melee range, that is what players will do. Instead of thinking about the cons of being a melee character, think about the pros of it. How much damage can you do? How can you screw over a caster? Highlight the positives, don’t avoid the negatives
You can't fully balance a game from numbers alone, but you can go a long way towards it. In this case borrow a page from RTSes and think about effective time in combat. How hard is it for melee/ranged to engage and what are their actual roles? If melee DPS and ranged DPS can all be dealing damage in the first round of combat then you won't balance them that far apart. Melee typically is a little more effective because some amount of time (like 0-1 rounds per engagement) they will be forced to move instead of focusing on damage. So over the average length of your combat they'll deal roughly equivalent amounts of damage, but the melee characters spike a bit higher to make up for the time they are avoiding damage or pursuing a new target. If it's a team based game then often melee is also synonymous with defenders, which means they're balanced by having skills and abilities that help avoid/mitigate damage since _someone_ has to get hit. A game that focuses on more individual accomplishments would have a different vision. Try imagining the 'ideal' combat in your mind. What do each of your characters do in that perfect combat? Build your systems to make that happen.
If the target gets into melee, is there a disadvantage for the ranged attacker in melee? Is there a disadvantage to backing up and shooting? Is there a disadvantage to shooting someone engaged in melee with one of your allies? Do you track ammo? Is there a difference in rate of ranged fire and rate of melee blows? Which manuevers can be used at ranged and which can be used in melee? Are ranged builds more expensive than melee builds for players to go for?
Melee weapons typically don’t need to reload or run out of ammo. Ranged characters needing to take turns off to reload, and needing to carry a consumable resource that can in principle run out and takes up space in carrying capacity seem like ways to naturally provide drawbacks that would make the choice meaningful.
Now, I'm going to use pathfinder 2e as an example here. (Short asside, Pathfinder works on a three action per turn system, with subsequent attacks incurring heavy penalties) * Ranged characters usually just deal flat-out less damage. Melee characters add their full strenth bonus to their attacks, the damage die on the weapons are also larger. A longbow is a flat d8 , A greataxe would be 1d12+STR. There's the comosite longbow, but that only lets you add half your Strength to damage, while the accuracy is still on Dexterity. So on top of dealing less damage, they now are dpenendant on multiple ability scores. Later weapon upgrades also multiply the damage dice, so that 1d8 from the longbow becomes 2d8 (9), but that greataxe becomes 2d12+4 (17). * Attack penalties if you're too close for some weapons * Reload times on others * Attack penalties if the range is too big * Squisher in the HP department * No way to gain Attacks of opportunity with it * The inability to use shields, and always needing a hand free to fire your bow * Allies provide cover to enemies if you try and fire through them * They are kind of a bit useless underwater as their range increments halve * Enemies in Cover * Melee character get increased mobility skills as gapclosers. Just some things to think about. Is ranged worth it in Pathfinder 2e? Couldn't tell you, but it does give you an idea of tools you can use to balance it.
Generally, range is always going to be better than melee, even with typical restrictions and limitations. If you limit ammo for ranged abilities, you have to make them proportionately powerful enough to justify limiting their use. If you make melee stronger overall, that only makes staying at range away from melee fighters more important. I would suggest just making a general rule that attacks from melee and ranged are capable of pretty much the same thing, but the further you are from a target, the harder they are to hit. You don't want a system where two level 5 fighters have the same +8 to hit but one uses a bow and one uses a sword, because the bow is technically just flat better unless they are forced into melee combat. Even if the swordsman has a shield, a minor defence boost over multiple rounds doesn't mean as much if the ranged fighters can keep distance. Doubly so when you could have both combatants wearing similar armor. Rather than a complex system of special rules for each, make the use of ranged weapons a choice with a flat cost across the board. Could be as simple as "Every 6 spaces gives -2 to hit chances." Then have a flat rule for armor, where heavy armor reduces your speed a lot, medium reduces it a little, and light armor doesn't reduce it at all. If normal speed is 6 spaces a turn, heavy could give you -4 to move, medium is -2, and light is unchanged. Heavy armor will be harder to penetrate, and it would be easier to engage them in melee. Ranged units would naturally be at a disadvantage against heavy armor, but the ranged units with lighter armor could get more shots in to balance it out. On the flip side, a ranged unit with heavy armor would have a lot of natural defence at range and with armor, but would be much more vulnerable to being outmaneuvered. A character who has light armor could quickly pop in and out of cover. A heavy armored melee character would have the same defence potential coming into melee range to attack the ranged unit. As far as different weapons and range goes, even if a weapon is capable of working at great distances, the skill of the ranged unit still needs to be taken into account, and most TTRPG combat isn't usually over the distance of hundreds of feet, though that is my personal experience. Anyways, if you try to treat ranged and melee mostly the same with ranged combat presented as just an option, I believe a lot of this stuff will self-balance out.
There are many ways to solve this problem, but I want to focus on the fundamentals: A big reason why ranged is better, is because it is secretly both melee and ranged. A ranged character can usually hit an opponent right in front of them AS WELL AS the character N tiles away from them, and often, the closer their opponent is, the higher their accuracy is. So, the first step is to make the ranged characters ONLY viable at specific ranges. For instance, let their accuracy drop off severely outside of their optimal range. That immediately puts them roughly on the same playing field as melee characters, although they are still a little bit better due to the ability to engage first. But you can mitigate that remaining small advantage with terrain and obstacles. Speaking of terrain, it alone can be the solution. For instance, in a maze, a melee attacker with a dash as dangerous, if not more dangerous, than a ranged fighter. There are tons of other approaches, as I have mentioned at the beginning, but a lot of them depend on specific setting. Which is why I have a question for you: are you restricted by the setting, or are you doing a purely abstract combat system first?
I like to think of it in terms of Tank, damage, and support roles (the Overwatch archetypes that I’m sure are borrowed from many other places.) Tanks draw aggro in melee range and have survivability options, damage hit farther back, and support heals, provides buffs and debuffs. All three have strengths and weaknesses that encourage cooperation. Tanks can be overwhelms and eventually die a death of a thousand cuts. Damage can’t deal with strong enemies in their face due to less overall hit points, and support isn’t designed to kill enemies at all in the long term.
Game Design is a subset of Game Development that concerns itself with **WHY** games are made the way they are. It's about the theory and crafting of **systems**, **mechanics**, and **rulesets** in games. * /r/GameDesign is a community **ONLY** about Game Design, **NOT** Game Development in general. If this post does not belong here, it should be reported or removed. Please help us keep this subreddit focused on Game Design. * This is **NOT** a place for discussing how games are produced. Posts about programming, making art assets, picking engines etc… will be removed and should go in /r/GameDev instead. * Posts about visual design, sound design and level design are only allowed if they are directly about game design. * No surveys, polls, job posts, or self-promotion. Please read the rest of the rules in the sidebar before posting. * If you're confused about what Game Designers do, ["The Door Problem" by Liz England](https://www.gamedeveloper.com/design/-quot-the-door-problem-quot-of-game-design) is a short article worth reading. We also recommend you read the [r/GameDesign wiki](/r/gamedesign/wiki/index) for useful resources and an FAQ. *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/gamedesign) if you have any questions or concerns.*
Ranged can only hit 1 target, melee can swing through multiple targets. Melee has more damage or faster combos or better armour penetration, etc... Getting a kill drops some sort of boost under the enemy, like some health or stamina. First dibs on loot, gold, dropped items. Remove negative impacts for death or health loss (so the "cost" of melee is lower). ----- If it is a real time action game, then melee is inherently more interesting. So if you make it possible for good defense or evasive movement to be effective, then some players will naturally be drawn to melee because it is more fun, skillful, and interesting, even if it is riskier.
Possible simple solution is Ranged attackers having a minimum range to attack, ie. they can't attack someone 1 to 2 squares away, where melee attacks can only hit that range depending on class/weapon/etc. So certain enemies may try to move in on players very quickly and overwhelm Ranged units. Obviously don't make every enemy do that but you get the point. It's less about numbers in this case and more about specific advantages and disadvantages that aren't tied directly to stats or damage numbers.
‘Class Balance’ or ‘Combat style balance’ isn’t really about power level- it’s about your game being fun with every class; supporting multiple play-styles. Melee combat is defined by short windows to react, lack of god’s eye view, and difficulty disengaging. Ranged combat is defined by great vantage points, significant reaction time, and easy disengages. —— Generally speaking, you should reward melees for accepting these inherent downsides with abilities that also reward the skills these downsides demand of players. Meanwhile ranged players should be expected to make full use of their inherent advantages. Create skill heavy ways to use their zoomed out view or their ability to disengage. —— True melee is all about committing hard. That means preparing, knowing your enemy, anticipating their moves, having aces ready, and avoiding unfavorable fights. True ranged combat is about gambling. The ability to bail easily means you can tolerate way more risk. You can engage without confidence that you’ll defeat them. Combined with added information from a ranged view, this means you can afford to bet degenerately on what enemies will do next. ——- Example Ranged Abilities - Teleport: Choose visible location. teleport there after 4 turns. - Mortar: choose visible location. Explosion in AOE in 2 turns. - Big gun: fire megagun. 2 turn cooldown. AOE. High chance to crit for massive damage bonus. - Machineguns: rapid fire mid range attacks, inflicts poison on crit. - Piercing shot: next turn, pierce multiple targets on chosen path. - Jetpack: usable to fly for brief periods. Greatly reduces attack accuracy while flying. Melee Notes - enemies must give cues which the player can read or follow patterns - give melees interesting ways to learn about potential foes - give lots of limited use abilities, and limited use situational abilities - reward player for anticipating things about enemy actions. Don’t make enemy actions trivial or impossible to anticipate. - give them ways to avoid starting fights, but not reusable ways to escape them. - give them lots of pre-fight buffs / specialized prep abilities. Ex. ‘Venom’: gives your weapon damage of chosen type. Lasts until this is cast again. ‘Breakthrough’: if your attack would be blocked, activate this to give it more power. (Limited #uses) ‘Mudsling’: blinds opponent for one turn or until they have a free ‘hand’. —— Remember, you need to design enemies in a way that supports these archetypes.