D&D 3E/3.5 3.5- Multiple shots with a bow?

aboyd said:

I'm confused. Isn't 110' just the first range increment? And can't you have 5 range increments? So isn't 550' the more likely range limitation? Maybe I don't understand a nuance or something.

Click to expand...

Oh yeah, range increments... it's been so long since the battlefield of an encounter was outside 100 feet that I've been able to use range increments. However, it's been even longer since I could probably hit something on those cumulative -2 penalties without being a ranger with true strike. It's a novelty that you can take -20 on your attack and potentially hit something a half mile away, nothing more.

IIRC, Races of the Wild had arrows that only took a -1 per range increment. I think they did less damage, though. Dragon Magazine (& the Dragon Compendium) had different arrows that added +20 ft or so to the range increment.

Guided shot from SC also lets you ignore range increments.

I had a PC in my campaign that was a Deepwood Sniper with a dragonbone bow; his range increment was ridiculous (285 ft or more -- I think there was something else that added to it, too, making it 300'+). He pulled off some extremely long range shooting (I think there was one guided shot + hunter's mercy shot at a fleeing dragon).

Some d20 book from FFG or someone had a feat that let you take a -2 penalty to your shots in exchange for not provoking AoOs when you fired the bow. We used that, which made the archer mighty effective. He was a dedicated archer, though.

That sounds like a good feat, not one worth taking, but rather something that should be included in the bundle of feats provided to most martial classes. IMHO, most every archery feat that exists in the core books could safely be bundled into martial classes, just as armor and weapon proficiency feats, and not break the game.

Archery got gimped with the non-stacking of Bow & Arrows enhancements.


Just a favourite pet peeve of mine with 3.5.

I thought 5 was for throwing, and bows went up to 10. I could be wrong, I read it just last night right before I went to bed. I do know each time you go past your range increments you get a -2 to hit.

Also, I had a rogue once with far shot. He took out a group of 6 men. All level 5 at level 3. All he had was far shot, point blank and rapid shot. He was using a short bow, but I also was startting at a range that gave him a -6. So I got some lucky shots at the start. Bows are very deadly if givin ranged.

IRL bowmen do NOT shoot thier bows when they find themselves in melee range of opponents - they draw a melee weapon and/or run away. Real world archers in combat were seldom making direct-fire shots at the enemy either - they were using indirect fire, at maximum range, from MASSED ranks of archers in order to kill the enemy by sheer volume of deadly hail. Direct fire situations would be more like... when the enemy is assaulting your castle walls and then you're firing your bow from battlements and arrow slits (that is, from a fixed position with MAXIMUM cover to protect you from counter-fire.)

D&D structures combat in a wholly unrealistic way from top to bottom. In every edition. It may mimic reality occasionally but it is not now and never has been a MODEL of reality. If you want to argue against how it arranges the rules for bows in combat you're VASTLY better off arguing it from a strictly gamist viewpoint. Bows work the way they work in 3E D&D for no other reason than the game wants to encourage the use of melee weapons over missile weapons without making missile weapons actually pointless. If bows and swords were EXACTLY EQUAL in their utility in combat that would tend to result in EXACTLY EQUAL usage by PC's and NPC's/monsters. That simply would look and feel WRONG to have bows and arrow an equal partner to sword and shield.

Ditto for two-weapon fighting, witch objectively is about the silliest notion you could care to dream up and lacks almost ALL basis in reality. But it looks cool. Therefore rules are adjusted to make it not just possible but practical - which in reality is just ludicrous.

You think the rules for bows are stupid. You could be right. I might even agree with you. But there's objectively nothing wrong with how 3E handles it, just as there's nothing wrong with simply changing them to suit your own tastes. Just leave the comparisons between real life (even personal experience) and D&D out of it because reality and D&D combat have VERY little to do with each other.

Man in the Funny Hat said:

Bows work the way they work in 3E D&D for no other reason than the game wants to encourage the use of melee weapons over missile weapons without making missile weapons actually pointless. If bows and swords were EXACTLY EQUAL in their utility in combat that would tend to result in EXACTLY EQUAL usage by PC's and NPC's/monsters. That simply would look and feel WRONG to have bows and arrow an equal partner to sword and shield.

Click to expand...

I disagree, I don't think it'd look or feel wrong at all if they were equivalently powerful options, and would love to see more stuff like Arrowmind to let legendary bow slingers whirl around in the thickest of melees, downing a foe half a second away from cleaving through the archer's skull with a sword, and then in the next instant headshotting a seige engineer from 300 ft away before he can launch a loaded catapult. That'd be awesome.

Yep, that's what it all comes down to, it's fun to idolize Sir Lancelot, but sometimes you want to be Robin Hood. Bows aren't lame in DnD because I can't kill things with them between casting spells like i might with swords; bows are lame in DnD because they're way cooler in our myths and legends.

StreamOfTheSky said:

I disagree, I don't think it'd look or feel wrong at all if they were equivalently powerful options, and would love to see more stuff like Arrowmind to let legendary bow slingers whirl around in the thickest of melees

Click to expand...

Again, if you want to have archery function exactly like melee there's nothing to stop you. But I've gotten a little fuzzy here - just what precisely IS the complaint? Is it that bows don't do the same damage as melee weapons? That it takes too many feats to be able to get an archer operating at maximum effectiveness? That even with all the feats you can muster bows are still generally an inferior choice of weapon? That you CAN'T make a Robin Hood character (or William Tell, or Legolas, or Crow from Hawk the Slayer)?

downing a foe half a second away from cleaving through the archer's skull with a sword, and then in the next instant headshotting a seige engineer from 300 ft away before he can launch a loaded catapult. That'd be awesome.

Click to expand...

And this is all just a matter of how the DM describes the effects rather than the rules being employed and is thus (near as I can tell) perfectly possible under the existing rules.

Man in the Funny Hat said:

Again, if you want to have archery function exactly like melee there's nothing to stop you. But I've gotten a little fuzzy here - just what precisely IS the complaint? Is it that bows don't do the same damage as melee weapons? That it takes too many feats to be able to get an archer operating at maximum effectiveness? That even with all the feats you can muster bows are still generally an inferior choice of weapon? That you CAN'T make a Robin Hood character (or William Tell, or Legolas, or Crow from Hawk the Slayer)?

Click to expand...

That's largely the complaint, yes. Archers simply don't get the nice things (TM) that melee does. Even as 3E evolved and "Noncasters (too often phrased simply as "Fighters") are underpowered!" became a meme and splat books were increasingly put out with power boosts to help "fix" this problem, archers were kinda left high and dry. There is no (official) Tome of Battle for archers. There's no Shock Trooper, no Pounce (yeah, they full attack already, but if melee can get the main advantage of archery, why don't archers have feats or class features to do melee damage?), etc...

Perhaps the saddest way to look at it is the fact that 3.5 actually seemed to go out of its way to actively DE-power archers. The best archer prestige classes -- Deepwood Sniper, Peerless Archer, the original Order of the Bow Initiate -- are all in 3.0. I do love the Cragtop Archer, but it's only a 5 level class (4 really, the last level is so incredibly worthless...) but that's not enough. I suppose the most famous archer nerf was not letting bow and arrow enhancements stack. Whether you think that was broken or not, it was undeniably a hard nerf to remove it.

Man in the Funny Hat said:

And this is all just a matter of how the DM describes the effects rather than the rules being employed and is thus (near as I can tell) perfectly possible under the existing rules.

Click to expand...

I think you misunderstood why I was saying this. I know a DM/player can describe things this way, and under the rules we have it could probably be done (just not as powerfully as say...a Swordsage using a Greatsword and the Shadow Garrote maneuver, for example).

I was responding to your claim that:

Man in the Funny Hat said:

If bows and swords were EXACTLY EQUAL in their utility in combat that would tend to result in EXACTLY EQUAL usage by PC's and NPC's/monsters. That simply would look and feel WRONG to have bows and arrow an equal partner to sword and shield.

Click to expand...

(Emphasis mine)

And giving a simple example of why I completely and utterly disagree with that. Extremely skilled super human archers can fit in just fine in fantasy alongside extremely skilled super human swordsmen.