[3.5] Archers nerfed! Meleers/Spellcasters rejoice!

Zad · May 30, 2003

Well the way I see it, this pretty much rips the heart out of the Arcane Archer. Besides DR which other materials may bypass anyway, an entire prestige class is eradicated by just buying a +5 bow.

How depressing.

Left-handed Hummingbird · May 30, 2003

Zad said:
Well the way I see it, this pretty much rips the heart out of the Arcane Archer.

How depressing.

Why is it depressing? Who cares about the Arcane Archer? It's just one of WotC's examples of prestige classes in Greyhawk - it's easily replaced and by no means part of any D&D lore.

Nifft · May 30, 2003

Zad said:
Well the way I see it, this pretty much rips the heart out of the Arcane Archer. Besides DR which other materials may bypass anyway, an entire prestige class is eradicated by just buying a +5 bow.

How depressing.

I house-rule that bow enhancements add to Attack rolls, while arrow enhancements add to Damage. Thus, an Arcane Archer would do extra damage over and above what a fighter with the same bow would do.

Let's wait and see what the 3.5e Arcane Archer has to offer, though -- it may very well have some sort of Monk-ish bonuses to overcoming DR (Silver Arrows, Holy Arrows, Good Arrows, etc.)

-- Nifft

Synicism · May 30, 2003

Kai Lord said:
Totally. Hawkeye from Marvel Comics always had a specific arrow for any given situation, and now we're encouraged to as well.

Quick, Sidekick! Get my arrows for fighting vegan demons with a vulnerability to bratwurst! <g>

takyris · May 30, 2003

I'm not sure I get the problem with having multiple weapons to fight multiple things. I like that idea. A good fighter SHOULD have a decent weapon of each type (bludgeoning, slashing, piercing). Heck, that holds true even in 3.0 games.

I nearly splatted my 15th level party with a six-pack of clay golems -- they spent three rounds fighting before realizing that the cleric was the only one with a blunt magical weapon, and therefore the only one hurting it. The first thing they did when they got back to town was buy back the +1 warhammer and +2 greatclub they'd liquidated as useless...

As for specialty materials -- like silver or adamantine -- the whole "Only DR 10" deal is pretty much gonna make that less of a hassle. If you fight werewolves all the time in your game, you'll end up with a silver longsword at some point. And if you fight fey, you'll end up with a cold iron rapier at the very least...

Elder-Basilisk · May 30, 2003

Re: Re: Re

There's not much point in ever casting the spell for less than 1 hour/level though--especially now that it won't contribute to overcoming DR except possibly for archers. If they did change the duration, that's one more spell 3.5e has effectively removed from the spell list.

Hypersmurf said:
I suspect the duration probably has, given the stat buff changes.

-Hyp.

Elder-Basilisk · May 30, 2003

Re: Re: Re

Double Post

JacktheRabbit · May 30, 2003

Synicism said:
::sigh::

As much as I thought the stacking of bow and arrow enhancement bonuses was incredibly cheesy, I think the new rules will lead to some really, really stupid moments as you have archers carrying around hundreds upon hundreds of arrows of different types so they can actually hurt things.

No more stupid than the idea that the archer automatically knows all these special ammos he has to carry around.

Checklist.

"Silver arrows for werewolves."

Have you ever fought one?

"Nope but I know what hurts them somehow."

"Cold Iron for certain lower plane beings."

Have you ever fought one?

"Nope but I know what hurts them somehow."

"Holy Silver for other lower plane beings."

Have you ever fought one?

"Nope but I know what hurts them somehow."

Yep, that will be just so realistic as every archer suddenly knows what all the DR dependent materials are and collects a dozen arrows of each type to carry around.

diaglo · May 30, 2003

DocMoriartty said:
Yep, that will be just so realistic as every archer suddenly knows what all the DR dependent materials are and collects a dozen arrows of each type to carry around.

that's what untrained or trained knowledge checks are for or

the bard class

JacktheRabbit · May 30, 2003

diaglo said:
that's what untrained or trained knowledge checks are for or

the bard class

"Excuse me Mr Bard sir."

"I am Bob the archer and I was wondering if you could tell me exactly what exotic elements are needed to hurt monsters."

"Well of course Bob what monsters were you thinking about?"

"All of them of course. I am a munchkin archer and I need to make sure the DM never surprises me with anything."