[3.5] Archers nerfed! Meleers/Spellcasters rejoice!

[Hypersmurf]

Dungeon Caddies?

Damned straight.

I have it all planned out.

Cohort with a Staff of GMW, Keen Edge, and whatever the Energy Enhancement spell from... Savage Species? A&EG? is. With every intiative-boosting feat he can lay his hands on, and dozens of ranks of Knowledge: Monsters (or whatever the appropriate skill is). Preferably from a multi-armed race and the Multi-Tasking feat so he can retrieve the appropriate weapon from the Golf Bag and prep it with all the necessary spells in one round.

Bardic Knowledge a plus.

-Hyp.

 

[Marshall]

It's cheaper to get some +3 arrows to go with your +1 Flaming Shocking bow and it is to get a +3 Flaming Shocking Bow.

The first couple of times, yes. After that, those 1000gp a pop arrows get mighty expensive...

In my opinion, this gives an edge to Arcane Archers. They can pay for a heavily magic'd bow and get their arrows magic for free.

Other archer types will have to pay for a bow and arrows, or more likely just the bow and whatever the less efficient 3.5 version of GMW gives them.

Right, no ones going to pay for a magic arrow that wont bypass DR and wont stack with the bow to give enough damage to overcome DR. Your going to see a lot of +1, +9specials Bows and some way for the archer to get a GMW when he wants it. The AA just leaves out the GMW.

 

[DWARF]

Here's a potential house rule to "fix" the new DR system.

Every "plus" on a weapon past 1 allows the weapon to also have a material that it is counted as, when it's made.

So a +2 Sword, when crafted, could also count as Silver or Adamantite or whatever for DR. But only one of those and it's decided at creation. Perhaps a limit where the +2 coule be silver or cold steel. Then the +3 could be silver, cold steel or mithral, the +4 silver, colsd steel, mithral, adamantite, etc.

Just a thought.

 

[Left-handed Hummingbird]

Gosh, people are fussing about the new DR. Remember that there are low-level spells that'll silver your weapon and what not. Personally, I couldn't be happier that DR is finally coming into play as something the players have to think about. In good old Basic D&D everybody brought with them a silver dagger as a secondary weapon. There isn't need for a Swiss Army Sword, but the materials of the weapons will just be a factor when getting new ones. A typical fighter won't necessarily have more weapons than usual, he or she has just made sure that those weapons he have makes him or her more versatile:

Adamantite, magic longsword
Cold-iron, holy flail
Silver dagger

It's not like adamantite have stopped working on all the creatures that doesn't have DR.

 

[Hypersmurf]

Remember that there are low-level spells that'll silver your weapon and what not.

I thought it had been stated that they were deliberately not including "Adamantine Weapon" or "Cold Iron Weapon" spells...?

-Hyp.

 

[Left-handed Hummingbird]

Hmmm... I guess it won't make the Core then, but WotC posted this spell a while ago:

Silvered Weapon
Transmutation
Level: Brd 0, Clr 0, Drd 0, Pal 1, Rgr 1, Sor/Wiz 0
Components: V, S, M
Casting Time: 1 action
Range: Touch
Target: One weapon or projectile
Duration: 1 round/level
Saving Throw: None
Spell Resistance: None

You transform a single weapon or projectile into a silvered weapon or silvered projectile. A silvered weapon or projectile functions as a normal item of its type, except that silvered weapons or projectiles can hurt some creatures that can resist damage from normal weapons, such as werewolves.

Material Component: A silver coin.

 

[JRRNeiklot]

While I agree archery is seriusly overpowered, I don't think this is the answer. This will end the existence of bows over +1. We will see an abundance of the above mentioned holy, wounding, flaming, shocking, etc, bows, but they'll have a +1 enhancement bonus and a crapload of special abilities. The real solution is to ban greater magic weapon, or bar it from effecting 50 arrows. GMW is the culprit, not the bonuses stacking. There's an archer in my campaign with a +4 bow. Every day he gets a +5 gmw from the cleric and a+4 from the mage for a total of 100 arrows. If he actually had to find or pay for for these arrows, he'd conserve them and wouldn't be firing +5 arrows at a lowly goblin.

 

[Celtavian]

Re

What an awsome change, it was a long time coming.

 

[Olgar Shiverstone]

Don't jump to that conclusion until we see the final version of GMW. We already know the enhancement bonus drops to +1/4 levels (so you're not doing GMW for +5 until 20th level). For all we know the way the spell handles missile weapons may have changed as well (I concur that GMW 3.0 is more of a problem than anything else -- but I do think this change restores some balance between archery & melee, as both types now benefit equally from a given enhancement bonus.)

 

[Celtavian]

While I agree archery is seriusly overpowered, I don't think this is the answer. This will end the existence of bows over +1. We will see an abundance of the above mentioned holy, wounding, flaming, shocking, etc, bows, but they'll have a +1 enhancement bonus and a crapload of special abilities. The real solution is to ban greater magic weapon, or bar it from effecting 50 arrows. GMW is the culprit, not the bonuses stacking. There's an archer in my campaign with a +4 bow. Every day he gets a +5 gmw from the cleric and a+4 from the mage for a total of 100 arrows. If he actually had to find or pay for for these arrows, he'd conserve them and wouldn't be firing +5 arrows at a lowly goblin.

You either play an archer or don't have much experience DMing a min/maxed archer. The biggest problem is the stacking enhancement bonuses. We took them away, and the archer was no better than most of the other melees in the group. This one change alone does alot to balance archery against melee.