According to the rules, you can declare three types of attacks: melee, ranged, and magic attacks. With this rule, it's apparent that with a sword, you can only attack an adjacent enemy. So why does the melee die have range printed on it when this type of attack requires no range at all?

Originally? We can only speculate. The range numbers on the red die do end up being used in expansions for rolling boulders and morph attacks, though.

for many reason.

Melee attack sure has no range to calculate, but the red die is not for damage only, in sea of blood it can be use for calculate the movment of the ship or somethimes the sea wawes.

i argue the FF want give at all the dice the same chanse(surge-range-wound) to make tham usefull in every situation

Oh, I see. I just have the base set so I was entirely clueless on the significance of the range on the melee die. Thanks for clearing it up!