Righteous Might projectile weapons error

I thought A&E is a 3.0 book? I'll try to look at RotW sometime, don't have it with me.

And now in Pathfinder Bestiary 2, the Spriggan's size altering ability lets their missiles retain the boosted size for one round after being fired.

frankthedm said:

And now in Pathfinder Bestiary 2, the Spriggan's size altering ability lets their missiles retain the boosted size for one round after being fired.

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Yay, Pathfinder!

Woah now everybody,

Lets just calm it down here for just a second. As a general rule, I try to go for general rules..

What I am getting at here, is that wherever possible, I prefer rules text to give the overall rule and then allow for individual exceptions. This is an area where it is clearly a bit all over the place. The rules were changed in one spot, but missed in another. I am going to go back into this the next time we reprint and tweak it. I think Reduce Person will probably get the same clause, making it not quite as bad versus ranged weapon users.

Thanks for the catch, I will look into it.

Jason Bulmahn
Lead Designer
Paizo Publishing

IuztheEvil said:

I think Reduce Person will probably get the same clause, making it not quite as bad versus ranged weapon users.

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In 3.5 it was a trade off. 3.5 Reduce bumped up accuracy but dropped damage, 3.5 Enlarge dropped accuracy but bumped up damage.

Reversing so projectiles autocorrect back to medium damage after being fired makes Reduce person almost* an obvious buff for the ranged attacker while making being enlarged nearly no benefit at all for the ranged attacker. If there is an intentional damage cap on archery this would certainly maintain it.

EDIT: * Oops, almost forgot the rules for composite bows will bone the archer. Reduce will knock off two points of STR so unless they were carrying around a less powerful bow...

All composite bows are made with a particular strength rating (that is, each requires a minimum Strength modifier to use with proficiency). If your Strength bonus is less than the strength rating of the composite bow, you can't effectively use it, so you take a –2 penalty on attacks with it.

frankthedm said:

EDIT: * Oops, almost forgot the rules for composite bows will bone the archer. Reduce will knock off two points of STR so unless they were carrying around a less powerful bow...

All composite bows are made with a particular strength rating (that is, each requires a minimum Strength modifier to use with proficiency). If your Strength bonus is less than the strength rating of the composite bow, you can't effectively use it, so you take a –2 penalty on attacks with it.

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Yup, that will still suck unless your DM lets you get an adjustable strength bow, something I've long considered totally not broken and yet something that every edition of 3E and now PF seems to think is (well, late 3E they changed their minds with Bow of the Wintermoon, at least).

And if they change reduce person instead of enlarge, you're right. Reduce would become a great buff for an archer (who can offset the str issue)...just as enlarge is a great buff for melee. Reduce would remain an awful buff for melee and enlarge an awful buff for ranged. I personally prefer the 3e model with tradeoffs for each spell*, but as long as there's rules consistency, I'm ok with it. Thanks to Jason for addressing this, despite my angry rants.

*Well, reduce person just plain rocked for thrown weapon users (+2 to hit and AC for just -1 damage), but thrown weapon combat was so godawful underpowered that it wasn't a big deal.