3.ER -- Manyshot? !

[Quinn]

Well, first of all, before I complain, and lest we forget, let me say this...

THIS IS A WHOLE H3LL OF ALOT BETTER THAN THE ORIGINAL MULTISHOT!

That said, I don't think that the penalty is steep enough at high levels. A -8 penalty isn't usually that big of a deal to a reasonably high level reasonably maximized archer against the vast majority of targets given that you probably have an attack bonus of above 30. Archers have no problem finding extra attack bonuses. Moreover, this feat means that on many occassions the archers standard attack action is more effective than his full attack action. A high level archer has the following full attack penalties -0/-5/-10/-15. I can think of many cases where I'd much rather accept -8/-8/-8/-8 as a penalty, and take a move action. First, the lack of additional critical hits is not a penalty against anything immune to critical hits. Second, if a -8 penalty results in a number close to 20, I'm probably going to do more damage multishotting than I am accepting a -10 and a -15 penalty for my third and forth shots. The feat actually implies that it is EASIER to shoot four arrows from a bow at the same time than it is to shoot four arrows in succession.

At the very least, the penalty for shooting arrows ought to be as harsh as the penalty for shooting your last arrow. So I would change the feat to -5 penalty cumulative per extra arrow. Even so, this would _still_ be a useful feat because it allows you to make multiple attacks when normally you could only make one and there would still be many times you'd want to do that even at a -15 penalty to hit.

This is a good point, though I wouldn't disregard the impact of the critical hit and sneak attack. Unless you are fighting tons of undead and constructs, I think it would come into play in the majority of encounters. Also the 30' range does put the archer in more jeopardy. Again, I'd have to see this one in action before I could make any final judgements on it.

 

[Destil]

I would raise the same argument against this that Monte brought up against Rapid Shot on his messageboards today:

AC doesn't scale as much as Attack Bonus does with level. Those penalties become increasingly insignificant at higher levels, especially since they get cheaper after the first.

At high levels you can basically get a full attack and move. Bad, bad idea.

Pit Fiend 3e AC: 30
Proposed Pit Fiend 3.5e AC: 40

I think this will be dealt with, myself. I wouldn't be suprised to see a number of higher level monsters with higher AC, and perhaps a few more bonuses you can stack onto PC AC. (Monte also mentioned once that one issue he has with 3e is that a number of high level monsters should have better ACs).

 

[Celebrim]

"And no one thinks it's worth mentioning that the feat only works from within the range of a charge & sunder?"

Only if you are going to spend an equal ammount of time pointing out that most melee feats are completely useless unless you are within 5' of the opponent. This would seem to be a much bigger restriction in my opinion.

It would seem to me that if melee combat didn't allow a better chance to hit, more damage, and more security than missile combat that the system inherently favored missile combat since the ability to attack at range is such a powerful ability in and of itself. Even if a melee fighter has a slight advantage over a missile fighter in damage output, the missile fighter has an ABSOLUTE advantage at any range beyond the length of the melee fighters weapon. In most situations this more than makes up for the whatever theoretical advantage the melee fighter may have.

Imagine I introduced a feat 'Longarm' which gave you the ability to make melee attacks anywhere within 30' provided you gave up your threat zone. Would you agree that that was unbalancing? Imagine further that the feat 'Longarm' gave you enhanced attacks per round at an attack bonus rather than an attack penalty. You'd probably wonder what I was smoking. Imagine then I made a new feat in the 'Longarm' feat chain that let you take a full attack action while moving. What would you think of my rule design skills?

If the only penalty missile weapons have is a theoretical vunerability to certain special manuevers, I don't think this is nearly a sufficient penalty to offset all the advantages of archery's absolute advantage, plus generally superior feat chain, and generally superior PrC's.

The absolute advantage of missile weapons is unquestioned. What is questionable is whether archery needs superior feat chains and PrC's.

 

[Shard O'Glase]

umm yeah what Celebrim said.

 

[Olgar Shiverstone]

A high level archer has the following full attack penalties -0/-5/-10/-15. I can think of many cases where I'd much rather accept -8/-8/-8/-8 as a penalty, and take a move action. ... The feat actually implies that it is EASIER to shoot four arrows from a bow at the same time than it is to shoot four arrows in succession.

Note that the feat specifically says "as one attack ... against a single target".

I read that to mean one, all or nothing, die roll, which for four arrows means one roll at -8, not -8/-8/-8/-8.

 

[Hypersmurf]

I read that to mean one, all or nothing, die roll.

That's right.

"Both arrows use the same attack roll (with a -4 penalty) to determine success and deal damage normally."

The same attack roll, not the same attack bonus.

It's what makes this so nasty in combination with True Strike.

-Hyp.

 

[The Halfling]

Ahhhhh....

Olgar's right....

Just re-read the feat myself. The feat explictly states that all arrows fired are resolved with one roll on a SINGLE target. This makes it an all or nothing attack.

This is basically a feat that allows other ranged weapons to emulate the shuriken special ability at an increased attack penalty.

Rapid Shot would therefore be advantageous in scything through mooks. Manyshot would lend itself for use against the BBEG.

However, given that AC will be increasing for some of the top tier creatures, this would help curtail its use (theoretically).

Kind of a Power Attack for archers, really. One attack, at a penalty, that does increased damage on a successful strike, or nada on a miss. (On second thought, sound more like Power Lunge from S&F).

 

[comrade raoul]

HAW HAW!!1! Yet AGAIN I demonstrate my fillet-fu as applied to D&D sacred cows!

<homer>Mmmm .... sacred cow.</homer>

Yeah, I think archers are probably a bit too good already, and when I saw Manyshot in the revised PHB, I did a double-take, bitterly noted to myself that it was Christmastime in archer-land, and sat down to do an analysis. Here're my results.

[font=courier][size=1][color=white]manyshot:
expected hits by number of arrows
ac-att	one	two	three	four
-6	0.95	1.90	2.85	3.80
-4	0.95	1.90	2.85	3.40
-2	0.95	1.90	2.55	3.00
0	0.95	1.70	2.25	2.60
2	0.95	1.50	1.95	2.20
7	0.70	1.00	1.20	1.20
8	0.65	0.90	1.05	1.00
10	0.55	0.70	0.60	0.40
12	0.45	0.40	0.30	0.20

comparative table
expected hits by maximum number of attacks possible at listed bab
	bab +6		bab +11		bab +16
ac-att	ms	rs	ms	rs	ms	rs
-6	1.90	2.85	2.85	3.60	3.80	4.10
-4	1.90	2.80	2.85	3.45	3.40	3.85
-2	1.90	2.70	2.55	3.25	3.00	3.55
0	1.70	2.60	2.25	3.05	2.60	3.25
2	1.50	2.30	1.95	2.65	2.20	2.75
7	1.00	1.55	1.20	1.65	1.20	1.70
8	0.90	1.40	1.05	1.45	1.00	1.50
10	0.70	1.10	0.60	1.15	0.40	1.20
12	0.40	0.65	0.30	0.70	0.20	0.75[/color][/font][/size]

Some explanation: each table item indicates the number of statistically expected hits. In the second, comparative table, "ms" means manyshot, and "rs" means rapid shot, and each column represents the expected hits if the attacker fired as many arrows as his base attack bonus allowed (a bab of +11 allows three arrows with manyshot, and four with rapid shot). The "ac-att" column on both tables refers to the target's AC minus the attacker's total attack bonus, not counting modifiers from manyshot or rapid shot. In other words, if he were making a single, normal ranged attack at his highest bonus, "ac-att" is the number he'd need to roll to hit. When it's negative, it means the attacker's attack bonus exceeds the defender's AC by the listed amount.

Note that critical damage isn't considered here, because it's too complicated and varies significantly from archer to archer. This makes manyshot slightly worse than its listed expected hits would suggest, since only one attack can deliver critical damage.

What can we infer from these results? The comparative table isn't interesting, but it's reassuring: it's always better to use rapid shot than manyshot. The analysis of manyshot by itself, however, is interesting. If you can hit your target easily, manyshot provides a very big advantage. It's not worth using, however, for difficult shots, unless you really need to do a lot of damage and are willing to take a big risk: if you need a 7 or higher to hit, it's always (statistically) better to fire three arrows than four; if you need a 10 or higher, it's always better to fire two arrows than three; if you need a 12 or higher, it's best not to use manyshot at all. Note, though, that archers tend to have really good attack bonuses, so most of the time, they'll be able to use manyshot to good effect.

Is manyshot broken? As other posters have pointed out, it's very rare for archers, unlike melee characters, not to be able to take a full attack action if they want to (since you don't need to move next to your target) -- so manyshot isn't so much a general boost to damage output as it is a helpful tactical option. In general, I see manyshot having two or three common uses:

1. It's a big help in surprise rounds -- you can use your partial action to fill your enemies full of arrows.
2. It's great when you want to both do lots of ranged damage and increase the distance between you and approaching melee attackers.
3. If it's compatible with Shot on the Run, it can be a very powerful way to move outside of cover, do lots of ranged damage, and go back in.
4. If anything in 3.5e lets you take extra partial actions, it can enable archers to do massive damage when combining it with a (rapid shot-aided) full attack action.

Now all of these can be significant advantages in the right circumstances, especially "4", which could easily break games (especially with those damn cleric-archers). And I think archers are good enough as is: they don't need any more useful tactical options -- they can already deliver very large, reliable amounts of damage from wherever they want, whenever they want.

The conclusion: there's no way I'm allowing manyshot in any games I run, but it's not so sick that I'd step out of a game in which a DM allowed it.

 

[comrade raoul]

Oh yeah -- one more point. What's all this with feats scaling to higher BAB? Didn't Monte Cook or somebody explicitly say a while ago that feats weren't meant to scale -- that it's better to have "improved" versions of feats than to have scaling ones? If Manyshot scales to accomodate better BAB, shouldn't Improved Two-Weapon Fighting scale too?

 

[Dr. NRG]

Imagine I introduced a feat 'Longarm' which gave you the ability to make melee attacks anywhere within 30' provided you gave up your threat zone. Would you agree that that was unbalancing? Imagine further that the feat 'Longarm' gave you enhanced attacks per round at an attack bonus rather than an attack penalty. You'd probably wonder what I was smoking. Imagine then I made a new feat in the 'Longarm' feat chain that let you take a full attack action while moving. What would you think of my rule design skills?

Not only would you need to give up your threatened area, you'd also need to specify that it takes a two-handed weapon, but that you don't get the 1.5 strength modifier with that weapon (regardless of whether you use the feat). You'd also need to specify that the weapon used needs to be trivially easy to sunder, and that it requires a dex-based attack to hit with it. You would also need to specify that using this weapon in a threatened area would provoke an AOO. Oh, also, you'd need to specify that you have to carry "charges" for the weapon that can be taken away or run out, and if they're to be any good, these "charges" need to be very expensive, or rely upon another character casting spells to buff them.

Setting up a straw man feat and then demolishing it is easy. Taking all of the relevant factors into account is what people excercising rule design skills need to do.

If you did all of these, you might not be accused of smoking crack. In fact, you might be getting close to game balance...

This may have come off as a little testy - it's not meant to be. I just don't see the comparison as stated as valid.

NRG