Archery Contests

Hi!

In the last session IMC I ran a bunch of tournaments, based on "Tournaments, Fairs and Tavern" (Good book BTW). When I was prepping for the archery contest, I discovered that the DC's for hitting the target was far too easy.

The suggested DC in the book is 9 for a Bull's Eye. That suggests a size of "Diminutive" (DC = 10 +4 (size) - 5 (dex)). Even with the "no magic" rule of the tournament, that is far too easy for good archers.

The best PC in the competition was a Rgr5/Ftr1 with 18 Dex, WF Longbow and FarShot (going for Deepwood Sniper). With a MW bow and MW arrows he has a 6+4+1+1+1=13 to hit and a range of 165. Thus the range has to be at least 500 feet before his miss chance increases from 5%.

The best NPC (a Deepwood Sniper) had +22 to hit (14 levels, Dex +5, WF, MW bow, MW arrows), range of 215 and Aim (+2 to hit if you aim for a full round). He actually has only 5% miss chance out to 1720 feet, far outside the range of a normal composite longbow (10x110 ft = 1100 ft).

What I did was to reduce the target to "fine" (an extra +4), and to make the final round of the competition go against a moving target (thrown eggs at 450 feet). I required a spot check (not modified for range, because that would have been -45, but that is another discussion....) to spot the throw, the difference between the roll and the DC was then added to the hit DC because of a slow reaction. This worked pretty well, only the winner hit with all 10 shots, while one contestant actually managed to hit the judge (fumble...).

While these are (somewhat) high-level characters, I still think that archery is a bit too simple against stationary targets. There are probably two factors at work here.

I think size should have a bigger impact on hitting, with at least a +12 for the smallest size.

And range has definitely too few penalties on to hit. At longer ranges small variations in wind makes the miss chance grow exponentially, and this is quite poorly modeled in D&D. I would like to see the ranges of most ranged weapons reduced to something about half of what they are today, thus making hitting at long ranges something for the experts. Maximum range could then be 20xrange.

Comments ?

.Ziggy

In one of the first 3rd edition Dragons they had rules for an archery contest. They had a bullseye at DC 23, and 28 to split an arrow in the Billseye I think.

Crothian said:

In one of the first 3rd edition Dragons they had rules for an archery contest. They had a bullseye at DC 23, and 28 to split an arrow in the Billseye I think.

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Those are reasonable numbers, but not in line with the rules in the PHB. If you put the Bull's Eye as "Fine" (+8) with no Dex (-5), you need a range penalty of +10 (5 increments) to get at DC 23. For a composite longbow that is beyond 550 ft.

And this is my point. It's not difficult to adjust the DC to a reasonable level respective to the competition (you just pick a number), but it is very hard to do it using the basic D&D rules.

.Ziggy

Archery contest start out easy with archers only 30 yard from target. The contest is based on score of three arrows, the highest score would move on to next round and the target is moved back another 10 yards (increasing difficulty), then another round, then another round. Each round the target moves and the difficultly increases.

I use starting difficulty as 10 and use range increments from the PHB but critals a bulls eye, the closer the number is to 20 the closer to the bull's eye, unless the player uses called shot.

Well, the timing seems just too good on this, so I'll ask if you intend to compete in the ENWorld's Fair. You can find out about it in this thread: http://enworld.cyberstreet.com/showthread.php?s=&threadid=28270

As far as the difficulty for archery contests, we mostly did just use the core rules, figuring why re-invent the wheel. If you want to make it harder, just move the target's back farther, and your egg idea is very nice. I'll see if I still have time to slip that into the print version of TFT.

Also, consider that we had to make it reasonable for average people to compete. If you assume that a good Eagle Scout Boy Scout who has been practicing for a couple months can hit a target at 30 yards with a bulls-eye fairly regularly, then the numbers should make sense. Say maybe 1st level ranger, figure at best a 14 Dex, and voila, his attack bonus is +3, and so he can hit a bullseye fairly easily. An Olympic archer might be effectively a 3rd-level fighter, so at 30 yards he should be able to bulls-eye almost infallibly.

And heck, Deepwood Snipers with +22 attack bonuses would win any real world archery contest. But you're right, we should've thought of better ways for it to scale.

RangerWickett said:

Well, the timing seems just too good on this, so I'll ask if you intend to compete in the ENWorld's Fair. You can find out about it in this thread: http://enworld.cyberstreet.com/showthread.php?s=&threadid=28270

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Hmm, didn't really notice it before, might be interesting. Got a feeling it'll be a little too much of a smackdown for my tastes, but still...

RangerWickett said:

As far as the difficulty for archery contests, we mostly did just use the core rules, figuring why re-invent the wheel. If you want to make it harder, just move the target's back farther, and your egg idea is very nice. I'll see if I still have time to slip that into the print version of TFT.

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I used DC19 for the egg (10+8 (size fine) +0 (Moving =Dex10) +1 (because you have to destroy it)). But it was the spot check that made the big difference, the fighter had no chance against the rangers when Spot DC was 15.

I also used another rule that worked pretty well, modeling "nerves". I made everybody roll a will save before the semi-final and the final, with DC 10 and DC 15. Failure meant a -2 modifier because of the stress of the final. I also made them roll whenever they missed two shots in a row if they made the first roll. The poor NPC that hit the judge had failed horribly on the will save, sp it fit perfectly into the story

RangerWickett said:

Also, consider that we had to make it reasonable for average people to compete. If you assume that a good Eagle Scout Boy Scout who has been practicing for a couple months can hit a target at 30 yards with a bulls-eye fairly regularly, then the numbers should make sense. Say maybe 1st level ranger, figure at best a 14 Dex, and voila, his attack bonus is +3, and so he can hit a bullseye fairly easily. An Olympic archer might be effectively a 3rd-level fighter, so at 30 yards he should be able to bulls-eye almost infallibly.

And heck, Deepwood Snipers with +22 attack bonuses would win any real world archery contest. But you're right, we should've thought of better ways for it to scale.

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A Boy scout hitting the bull's eye 70% of the time at 30 yards is okay, probably a bit generous, but not very far from reality. Hitting it 10% of the time at 210 yards is *not*okay, most people would have a very hard time hitting the taget at all, never mind the bull's eye. But that is a problem of D&D, and not something that any contest rules can do much about.

In my world an Olympic archer would be appr. level 8-10, but YMMV. And certainly a Deepwood Sniper would would win it all, the main problem with him is that he'll automatically hit any stationary object within the range of the bow (barring a 1), and I think that is a little bit too heroic even for D&D. Note that he'll have something like -100 at spot checks at that range making it hard to see things

.Ziggy

-2/-4 for wind might be an option. And instead of a flat penatly, make that a penalty per range category as well.

Rav

Rav said:

-2/-4 for wind might be an option. And instead of a flat penatly, make that a penalty per range category as well.

Rav

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That is a pretty good idea ! The basic rules are pretty generous, with -2 for 21-30 mph, and -4 for 31-50 mph. But if you make that per range, you'll get the exponential effect I'm looking for. Thanks !

.Ziggy

Your welcome . I actually encountered the smae probelm earlier, but only just now did I think of this possible solution.

Rav