BG and many other games have penalties for using a ranged weapon against someone who's directly next to you. Is there such a thing in POE?

Sorry for starting a new thread on a minor question, but it's a hard to search topic.

No, what is one of the reasons why range combat is so ****ing preferable.

Well, I'm playing a ranger and it has various options to get additional precision if the enemy is far away.

Going in melee would reduce precision quite a LOT. That means less criticals hits, possibly less normal hits and more grazing hits.

 

Dunno for other classes though.

Ranged is generally better. There's builds you can do with melee that has a sustained dps advantage but overall I find that's less valuable than being able to easily focus fire.

BG and many other games have penalties for using a ranged weapon against someone who's directly next to you. Is there such a thing in POE?

Sorry for starting a new thread on a minor question, but it's a hard to search topic.

 

Unable to initiate engagement is one. No BG-like penalties though, which should probably be addressed.

There's a talent that gives 1.1x ranged weapon damage in close range, could be nice to stack with a sneak attack ranged rogue.

Ranged classes have less  down time where they need to reposition to attack . 

I wish there was a penalty for using ranged weapons while engaged, because I would like to be able to force enemy bowmen to switch to a melee weapon when I engage them.  That way I would be able to actually protect my backline people by engaging ranged enemies.  It is very annoying to have enemies ignore the person crushing their face while they continue to lob arrows at my Wizard.

I'm not entirely sure since I try to avoid such situations in the first place but I don't think you can engage with enemies when you have a ranged weapon equipped. That mostly means that flanking isn't possible and you'd make for an awful tank.

As has been pointed out, most ranged talents only apply when you're a certain distance away from the target (eg, 4m+). So if you're in melee range with a ranged weapon, you're only doing baseline dps at best. While a character using a ranged weapon at range is going to do a lot more dps (due to increased accuracy and damage bonuses etc).

 

Also, consider interrupts - reloading some ranged weapons is slow as is, getting interrupted while reloading is going to really crimp your dps etc.