Me and my buds are newbies to the game and are loving it - however - the dynamics of whether to utilize melee combat vs. ranged and magic attacks seems sorely outbalanced. Why bother with melee at all if ranged attack based characters far exceed and often equal the same abilities but from afar as well? A melee attack - unless I'm mistaken - has exactly the same benefits at point blank, adjacent positions to a character as well as from afar. There seems to be no advantage for a melee attack nor any disadvantage for a point blank ranged attack. Is this entiely fair? The beefier characters that specialize in melee may generally have more health tokens and a better base armour but it just seems to be a major tactical disadvantage to bother with melee strong characters at all. I must point out that we have only played the first two vanilla dungeons of the core set - but it just seems odd. If anyone has any feedback or insights into this it would be greatly appreciated.

in my experience, melee can dish out way more single target damage. especially early on. mages of course excell in aoe. you need at least one tankish hero to block enemies and eat a lot of damage (high armor) while ranged can snipe out the faster / weaker enemies more efficiently and use guard more effectively. as for the ol in the advanced campaign it's different. early on silver eldrich rule supreme imho.

I think as you play more, you'll change your mind. Melee characters tend to be less wimpy, and melee attacks deal more damage. I'd certainly rather have a whole party of melee characters than a party of ranged characters. When you find yourself missing due to lack of range, or rolling bow attacks with 0 damage, or failing to kill that beastman by 1 point of damage– who subsequently comes and eats your face, I think you'll see the light.

If you wanna try an experiment, pit 4 ranged or magic against a party of 3 melee characters, and I think you'll find the melee characters come out on top every time. In fact, a party of 4 ranged and magic characters will probably lose to itself , if you outfitted those same characters with melee shop equipment.

-pw

1) Check out the dice: the Melee die has a maximum of 4 hearts and a minimum of 1 heart and 1 surge (except the X); the Ranged die has a maximum of 2 hearts and a minimum of 1 surge.

2) Check out the shop weapons: the best Melee weapon, the Axe, adds 1 damage per surge rolled. The best Magic and Ranged weapons add 1 damage for every 2 surges rolled.

3) Check out the gold weapons: almost all Melee weapons add 2 damage per surge; almost all Magic or Ranged weapons add 1 damage per surge.

4) Melee characters have generally more hit points and higher armor.

All added up, in most Vanilla Descent quests, at least 1 Melee hero is more indispensable that at least 1 Ranged or Magic hero.

Magic and Ranged and definitely preferred, in the sense that a well-built party will usually have 3 of the 4 heroes using one or the other of those and generally only one Melee hero. However, that is not to say Melee is useless.

As Ispher points out, there are a lot of subtle ways that the dice and weapons create variety in performance. Melee attacks generally do a lot more damage and they don't have to calculate range at all. More importantly, the heroes that have high Melee traits generally also have good natural armor. Sooner or later the OL's minions will get close to the party, and it helps to have at least one person who can take a few hits. A party of 4 mages can dish out enough damage on any monsters in the general area to clear the room (usually), but if anything survives (or gets spawned) within striking distance, that group will crumple fast on the OL's turn.

Also, don't forget the skills. Usually (not always but usually) the skills a hero draws match closely with his trait dice - heroes with three melee dice also usually draw 3 Fighting skill cards. Those skill cards are generally aimed at boosting melee ability. Admittedly not all skills are that great. That seems to be a design philosophy with this game - make some of them suck and some of them rock so that drawing randomly has a noticeable effect. The right Fighting cards can make a Melee hero truly terrible to behold.

Thanks for pointing out the dangers of not taking a meat sheild.I just wish that being armed with melee wepons would offer a tactical bonus besides extra damage.In the games Ive played range and magic usually seem to get two attacks while the melee only gets one.Attacks not making range rarely seem a problem and once heroes get a copper wepon or better appart from misses and named monsters every hit is a kill.This in consideration makes the extra damage from melee not as potent as ranged and magic attacks.Ps Im only a newbie so if Im talking rubbish dont hesitate to put me right.

Melee heroes can often still get 2 attacks by spending fatigue to move into position.

Thanks antistone, that was the kind of thing I wanted to hear.Ps how do I get my hands on a copy of your herogen?

Um...following the link in my signature works well. It goes to a BGG file page .

Melee attackers do offer a tactical bonus in every aspect, more damage ( even with shop items they deal at least 2 times as much damage as the other types of attacks) is a great tactical bonus ( some monsters have much more hp than the others, and can not be 1 shot with a ranged attack ), plus the extra hp and armor make them good live shields to protect the weak sorcerers or archers ... there are so many more tactical advantages in the combination of the skills like taunt, or bear tattoo (u get grapple), and many more...