archer vs. melee, 3.5 and all that

[Kerrick]

My guess is that they will simply make bonuses not stack, or have bow bonuses only affect accuracy and arrow bonuses only affect damage.

I thought that's the way they already worked? At least, we've been using that rule (the second part) for years. Anyway, god forbid they do anything that intelligent...

I rathe agree with eben. WotC is "fixing" a bunch of crap that wasn't broken in the first place, or that could be broken only by concerted effort (read: munchkins). The vast majority of us out there (or at least, I'd like to think so) are normal, non-munchkin gamers who like to have a good time. I'm not really a casual gamer; I play Fridays and Saturdays, and sometimes during the week when we have time off. I also write d20 books. I am not, however, a munchkin - far from it. I run concept characters for the most part; I like playing with different ideas and seeing where they go. And I have fun. The only reason I can see that they're "fixing" all this crap is because the munchkins' voices are the ones most loudly heard: "Oh, this is broken!" How many of you out there actually use (or have even though of) these "broken" combos? Be honest, now. How many of your DMs have used the ever-popular power word: no? How many of them have simply created a house rule (heavens forfend! not *gasp* house rules!) to deal with it? I mean, come on - no matter how well-balanced the system is, there will be people who play it differently, and there will be house rules. You cannot deal with every single instance of a "broken" rule! It simply can't be done, and the sooner WotC realizes this, the better off we'll all be.
Yes, there are some things that (badly) needed fixing, but those should have been done right the first time, IMO. Personally, I don't see the need to put out a whole new edition so they can market a bunch of new broken PrCs and a few tweaks (have you see the new blackguard? he gets aura of evil - ooooh... *dramatic shiver*). Oh, and so they can further emasculate the wizard and sorcerer. But that's a subject for another post...

 

[lmccauley]

Re: Re: archer vs. melee, 3.5 and all that

basically, think of it as the degree of the learning curve. How much SYSTEM WORK and SYSTEM EXPERIENCE matters in character design. HERO games for instance has a very high learning curve and the difference between a newbie building a simple character and a vateran building the same character will be seen as a drastic power difference.

You can say that again!

We occasionally play Champions and about half the group love doing all the tweaks/advantages/disadvantages to get the optimal character. The rest of us usually come up with a concept and then enlist their help to create a viable character. Otherwise we end up with vastly under-powered characters that the bad-guys just laugh at.

It's nice to be able to create a D&D (or more recently, D20) character and know that he isn't going to suck.

Cheers,
Liam

 

[JacktheRabbit]

I'm with you...

The archer thing... well, sure you can have two weapon enhancements. That always struck me as a fair balance, considering that enchantments on arrows are ablative (get used up as arrows are fired).

It is not really ablative when the party mage or cleric can GMW 50 of them at a pop and they stay enchanted for the entire day.

In my opinion GMW needs to be downgraded to a duration of 10 minutes per level instead of an hour per level.

 

[(Psi)SeveredHead]

WotC is "fixing" a bunch of crap

You must have a high opinion of WotC, to say that their work is "crap". Did you know that the 10th-level+ material was les playtested than the lower level material? This probably explains why spells such Haste were designed.

A 6th-level wizard raining down two Fireballs per round isn't overpowed, IME, but when the same wizard, at higher levels, chooses to use Hold Monster and Confusion in the same round, there is a problem.

Furthermore, the stuff is available for free.

 

[mmadsen]

The stacked bonuses from bows and arrows seem like exactly the kind of thing they worked so hard to avoid in other parts of 3E. I'm shocked such stacking made it this far.

I'm also surprised by the way 5' steps work in the rules as written. If you rule that 5' steps draw an Attack of Opportunity, then spellcasters and archers need heavy infantry support again.

 

[Utrecht]

The game was designed for dungeons.

Is this actually true - because I have never seen any of the designers state this - or the mechanics support this.

Often times I find myself as a spell caster having to move closer to get in range.

 

[(Psi)SeveredHead]

This was mentioned on the Monte Cook boards...

 

[Eben]

I agree when Petrosian says balance is important for helping the casual gamer/concept gamer/whatever and for reining in the system-tinkerers. But one of my initial points, that has been picked up by some other posters, was that there will always be some unbalancing elements in the game.
A few months from now we will start seeing the first "Who got the shaft in 3.5?" polls. All these "technical" discussions are interesting, but sometimes the give me the feeling that I'm playing the game the wrong way. For me,and the group I game with each friday nigth, playing is it's own reward. And following the discussions as to why we need 3.5, I get the feeling we're supposed to make a mathematical analysis of our characters so they fit in defined performance parameters.
I'm exagerating of course. But I had been reading a lot of positve reactions to a new edition and I wanted to give a bit of a counter-voice. And I'm glad to have noticed other people agree with me or at least can understand this point of view.
Cheers!

 

[Ranger REG]

Hmm. So, are they going to split the magical enchantment so that a projectile weapon (e.g., longbow) is granted bonus to hit only, and ammunition (e.g., longbow arrow) is granted bonus to damage only?

I wonder hypothetically, after reading the new DR rules, if a normal arrow is fired from a magical bow +1, would the arrow considered "magic" for the purpose of bypassing DR with a weakness for magic quality?

 

[Elder-Basilisk]

Funny that you should mention 3.0 haste. Because even if archery wasn't broken in 3.0e (I would argue that it was powerful rather than broken), it will be in 3.5e. And one of the things that is likely to be directly responsible for this is the change to Haste.

One of the balancing factors between archers and melee characters in 3.0e was that Haste was dramatically more advantageous for melee fighters than for archers (unless Manyshot was allowed but that's from the Epic Handbook and wasn't allowed in many places). Haste gave an archer a single extra attack and a bonus to AC (which wasn't usually relevant). It also let them move and make a full attack but archers don't usually need to do that. For melee character, OTOH, haste allowed them to partial charge and then make a full attack. Thus instead of simply giving a single extra attack, it gave them 2 to 8 extra attacks (taking TWF and Greater TWF into account). It also gave them an armor class boost that pushed poor armor classes to decent, decent armor classes to good, and good armor classes to excellent--and AC makes a big difference to a melee character facing monsters with rend, etc. The 3.5e haste, OTOH, will reportedly not give a significant AC bonus, and will only give a single extra attack ON A FULL ATTACK ACTION. Consequently, archers will almost always get the extra attack (and if they don't they will have Manyshot as a core feat). Melee fighters, OTOH, will probably only get the extra attack once every 2 to 3 rounds--and even then it will only be one attack.

So, the change to Haste is also dramatically altering the balance between melee and ranged fighters--absent any changes in GMW, feats or how and if bow and arrow enhancements stack.

I have. The fighter archer is the problem, not the rogue. Arrows do get used up, but when you have double the enhancement bonus, it's worth it. You get treasure faster for being a killing machine, which helps you afford the arrows while getting more XP. Fighter archers can soak up the damage at melee, and thanks to the 5ft. step can continue to use their ranged attacks with little difficulty. (edit: They also get a ton of feats, and there are a lot of archery feats).

But if you think 3.0 haste isn't broken, there's nothing I can say that will convince you.