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Are there attacks that are neither melee nor ranged?

Role-playing Games Asked on December 21, 2021

I was looking at the slow spell and realized its description states:

Regardless of the creature’s abilities or magic items, it can’t make more than one melee or ranged attack during its turn…

I was confused why it says “melee or ranged attack” instead of just “attack”, and thought perhaps there exists an attack that counts as neither melee nor ranged.

I realize it’s not exactly possible to prove a negative if there are no such attacks, but I still wonder:

Does such an attack exist?

2 Answers

Yes

One example is Ring of the Ram which can be used to "attack" a creature within 60ft. Although this is an attack at a distance, it is not listed as ranged, nor as melee.

Answered by user-024673 on December 21, 2021

No

All attacks are melee or ranged. They might additionally be spell attacks, weapon attacks, improvised attacks, or something else, but they're always melee or ranged.

The reason for calling out both is not to imply a third category, but to specify that all attacks are forbidden. Sometimes "attack" tends to read as "melee attack" or "weapon attack", so calling out both ranged and melee is just meant to make it more clear that it's affecting everything. (For example, slow would prevent you from using scorching ray to its full effect, because while you would theoretically get three or more rays to fire, you can only roll one ranged spell attack due to the slow effect.)

In one of Jeremy Crawford's appearances on Dragon+, he commented that there are several examples of confusing "reminder text" in the Player's Handbook that they regret in retrospect for exactly this reason. They added what were meant as reminders of rules printed elsewhere that inadvertently feel like they imply something that wasn't intended.

Answered by Darth Pseudonym on December 21, 2021

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