I think it's worth doing a bit of ranged in DM, it gives you some Ninja levels which increases several stats and such. But yeah I'll be glad not to have to pick them up manually in LoG!
Daniel.
A gently fried snail slice is absolutely delicious with a pat of butter...
The only reason my wizards carried ninja weapons in dungeon master was so they could level up those ninja ranks! By the time you get to level 6 or so the problem is that everything takes almost no damage from range attacks compared to say what you can do with a fireball. Let's not forget too that high level magic hits and then explodes in all 4 spaces on a tile while a projectile just hit 1 space.
But if you want to get really crazy in DM with ninja levels you need to break out the diamond edge and just stab. You'll note the sword recovers very quickly from this action!