When you have a character who uses only ranged weapons, and he is next to an enemy character, does he have the ability to use this weapon close on? If not what are his options for combat? Does this also apply to skeletons?

DJitD Page 11:
Ranged Attacks: Ranged attacks can be declared against any space to which the attacker has a line of sight.

So there is no minimal range, you can attack everything in sight (& range). If you deliberately want to make a melee attack, a hero could use his fists and roll a red die.

+1 to ET.

You can shoot (or use magic) at an adjacent enemy with no penalties. The attack will miss if you roll an X or if you somehow manage to roll 0 range (which is highly unlikely, if not impossible.)

Steve-O said:

I'd say unlikely, but with a bad weapon should be possible, I think.

I was wandering: the mechanics are indeed ientical for both ranged and magical attack, so is there a real difference between the two kind of attacks?. Ok, they use different weapons, but is it all there? That doesn't seem much of a difference to me.

Fingolfin80 said:

some skill cards refer to either ranged or magic or both. also in rtl for example, there are outdoor encounters that limit ranged (but not magic) attacks. same goes for a boss we've encountered. not sure, but the same might be true for vanilla (+addon) - dungeons.

Fingolfin80 said:

What on earth makes you think that it's possible, but only with a bad weapon? Why are you even posting wild guesses about the answer to an unimportant tangential issue that anyone could easily check and know for sure?

Barring built-in range or sorcery bonuses, the minimum range for a weapon is the sum of the minimum ranges of the dice. If the weapon includes any die with a minimum range of 1+, then it can't roll zero range; otherwise, it can. Since "good" weapons just have more of the same types of dice as "bad" weapons, not entirely new kinds, that can't possibly be the determinant, no matter what the actual dice say.

In fact, both the blue and white dice have a minimum of 1 range (unless they roll an X), so it's only possible for a ranged or magic attack to have zero range if there's a special ability involved that applies a range penalty (Black Curse), if you're using level 2 Deadeye from the FFG custom hero rules to treat an X as 0 range and -1 damage, or if you're using homebrew rules.

Fingolfin80 said:

The primary difference between Magic and Range is the types of abilities you're likely to see. Magic weapons tend to use special abilities (Blast, Breath, Web, etc) more frequently. Ranged weapons often just have some mixture of +X Damage and +X Range for surge-spending. When Ranged weapons do include special abilities, it tends to be stuff like Pierce or Sorcery, that doesn't leave lingering effects. This is not to say there are no Ranged Weapons with lingering effects, mind you. There is some crossover between these two paradigms, but this seems to be what the trend is. I say this without sitting down to read all the cards, mind you. Maybe we're just really good at drawing the same cards repeatedly. =P

Also, as Enti mentioned, there are Skills and Hero Abilities that specifically reference one or the other, and those powers won't activate for the "wrong" type. If a Skill triggers when making a "Ranged Attack" it does NOT trigger on Magic attacks, even though they have range.