Problem:
Constitution: 1-10 B-rank, 11-30 A-rank, 31-60 S-rank
Endurance: 1-10 D-rank, 11-30 C-rank, 31-60 B-rank
Strength: 1-10 D-rank, 11-30 C-rank, 31-60 B-rank
Magic damage: D-rank = D-rank damage. Grows upon ranking. Limited by resource/mana.
Ranged damage: The same as spell damage because ranged weapons have spell limitations(IE you need the spell slot to use it from your weapon. With the only difference being you do not need to train those spells.)

D → C-rank: 20-30stat points

Str damage growth: 31points into STR by rank C = B rank damage.

Add on 250K Jewels weapon gained from questing D → C-rank
B rank damage (31STR) add on A splendid sword gained with your money. +45STR dmg.

C-rank melee character 76STR(with sword) deals A rank dmg per hit. Basically to get A rank damage you need to level C-rank.

You really had 15 points spare because you need to get 61STR for the damage amount so you could just invest those 10points into speed. (allows you to close the distance or stay on ranged characters another one of their weaknesses. Can't do things when ur close.)

Limitations: Movement speed to catch up to a ranged attacker. Solved by putting the difference into speed stat. You have points to spare.

Magic damage growth: D-rank = D-rank grows by one rank per level.
Limitations/Problem: Resource mana. Of course mages can still spec into STR as it is the only viable stat for early damage. Which is the only way a purebred sorcerer could outdamage a STR character. (by becoming one themselves. They kinda even out in the late game.)

Ranged damage growth: D-rank = weapon spell damage
Also plus the damage from spells if you are able to also cast your own spells. (ranged hunter build)
STR gives nothing to ranged characters because they are not using Melee weapons and if they have to then what was the point of them going ranged from the start.
Limitations/Problem: Mana, having to stat into both speed and intelligence to lower the cost of spells(your ranged weapon attacks) and keep range to melee characters that outdamage you by several ranks already.

Solution:

Slow down STR scaling


PROS:

Makes ranged characters more viable.

Also increases the usefulness of shields as Melee does less dmg for one handed builds.

Increases the incentive for fighting each other for weapon mastery and training.

CONS:

Speed becomes slightly slower for speed based melee builds.
Strength becomes slightly weaker.

Can't say I'm really with it, magic builds are already the strongest, this hurts Melee to help range, and doesn't affect Magic at all; so you're really just tanking all non-magic roles so you can shoot guns at D-rank. What I could see being more effective would be to have Ranged Weapon damage deal 1 rank higher damage, then everything can balance a little bit more fairly without super nerfing STR & speed in the process.

The biggest problem with this idea is taking a very specific weakness of ranged builds and attempting to correct it by changing something that's also used by every other build, and will create other, bigger problems as a result. The most obvious one is how this would hurt lower ranked players a lot more than higher ranked players, and significantly widen the gap between early/mid and late game. Once you've been around long enough stats aren't nearly as relevant as having good items, but for a lower ranked character, stats make up a huge chunk of their power.

If you imagine a B-rank fighting an S-rank character, it would have already been challenging as is. But since the B-rank can somewhat easily get S-rank damage via strength, he would need to call three or so hits to win, depending on what defenses the S-rank has.

Now if you imagine the same fight but with the B-rank having only A-rank melee damage, that suddenly becomes twice as challenging.

Even if you were to apply the same half damage nerf to the higher level player, they'd still have plenty of spells to make up for it.

Instead, for a much simpler solution, we could just tweak the obviously weak ranged weapons, since they don't really offer any upsides compared to swords and other melee weapons.


Tldr: Messing with stats is generally a very bad idea since it will affect every character on the site in some way, and will inevitably create even bigger balance issues that you'd have to fix.

If there's an isolated problem with items like bows and guns, fix those directly: Give ranged weapons some cheap, repeatable projectiles that actually lets them punish close ranged fighters for getting close.

I think the way to tackle this problem is by buffing ranged weapons instead of altering the core attributes itself which like Alisa said, would affect every character in the forum.

My suggestion is that we add a feature where attributes affects the spells of ranged weapons. Plus that would be more logical. An effect where the amount of strength a character has, increases the range or speed or maybe even damage of the spell from the ranged weapon.

Or perhaps separate spells from ranged weapons entirely and the stats of the ranged attack becomes affected by the weapon itself ie. damage. Strength doesn't have to be the only affecting attribute. It would be something like this just to give a rough idea:
Strength = damage of ranged attack.
Speed = cooldown between each ranged attack.
Endurance = range of the ranged attack.
and etc.

Though maybe works differently with guns, idk this is just my 2 cents.