Originally Posted by
drempel
So another annoying thing with the way FG deals with ToV NPC's that maybe the extension could fix.
In ToV a lot of attacks are printed as "Melee or Ranged Attack", meaning the same attack works without disadvantage while in melee. However, in the combat tracker, when these creatures get added, they only have a ranged attack. They don't have a melee version of it to use.
Lots of creatures in the Monster Vaults have this wording, and anything that gets imported will have this as well.
The fix is to make a copy of the creature you want to use (because the MV is read-only) and duplicate the attack, making one melee and one ranged. That is a pain in prep. Even more so when improvising on the fly during a session.
Is there a way the extension could recognize this wording and either remove the disadvantage from the attack when a creature is in melee range (I think that's default behavior and not some other extension doing that), or split the attack into two separate attacks on the combat tracker when it gets added? Either would work better than what we have to do today.
It's probably easier to duplicate the attack for melee and use the right one for the correct distance (since I do believe if you make a ranged attack with these attacks and another creature is in melee range, disadvantage still applies).
Might be better to have in the core rules, though, since technically all these beasties are supposed to be able to be used in a 5E or 5.5E game—just a thought.
example wording from MV2:
Patron's Gift
Melee or Ranged Spell Attack: +5 to hit, reach 5 ft. or range 60 ft., one target. Hit: 10 (2d6 + 3) fire damage. If the target is a creature, it must succeed on a DC 15 STR save or be pushed 10 feet away from the kobold and knocked prone.