Challenging a ranged group

[Boarstorm]

I know there's a lot of discussion going on about the superiority of the TWF ranger over the archer, but I think these discussion miss a vital advantage that the archer has -- range. By himself, not that big of a deal, but when combined with a warlock, a controlling wizard, a ranged cleric and one single solitary tank to keep the bad guys at bay and you've got a potential problem.

Seriously, this group's focus fire is enough to prevent about 70% of their targets from ever reaching melee range, and the few stragglers are quickly taken down thanks to the lack of a penalty for firing into melee.

I've been mixing up the encounters and throwing more artillery into the mix, but the monsters just don't dish out anywhere near the damage needed to remain competitive.

I'm thinking I'm going to have to change up my encounter locations more to give the monsters a chance to lurk around the corner instead of in the kill zone, but I won't be able to do that until the end of the current adventure.

Anyone have any other ideas?

 

[Zurai]

Terrain is very important in 4E. I can't define exactly why, but it's a much closer experience to a game like Warhammer where your tactical maneuvering and use of terrain will determine who wins the battle much of the time. On Flatworld, ranged groups are going to have a major advantage. Use liberal amounts of blocking and obscuring terrain, along with differing lighting conditions, and ranged loses a lot of its massive range advantage. Make sure you do give them some fights they can shine in, though. If every fight is in 2x5 square corridors with sharp right turns every 5 squares, your ranged attackers are going to feel cheated.

 

[WOLead]

Huh, what about weather effects to make ranged fighting a disadvantage. Heavy rain or fog, so that close hostiles are only concealed, but ones that are not adjacent are Totally Concealed. High Winds to give a ranged detriment that grows by -1 every 5 squares or so with Rough Terrain for flying.

For terrain, why not a tunnel system hidden underground allowing close combatants to approach the PCs with cover unless they spot the trap doors. It would have to be in...say the forest around a Goblin semi-permanent encampment. In a forest of giant redwoods or similar trees, granting cover so you don't have a straight line for very far, and have a scout hidden up in the tree tops above the PCs directing their location until he is noticed and killed.

Eh, the only ideas that come to me at the moment.

 

[Palladion]

As Zurai said, terrain is important. One things my group had to fight through was cover and concealment that came from wooded areas. Attackers firing out of those squares had no problems, but firing at them was a combined -4 penalty. Kobold artillery with glue ammo fired from the woods until we engaged them in melee or we hid in our own cover.

From a DM's perspective, you probably do not want to fight fire with fire, but use an appropriate response. Soldiers that force the PCs into melee, lurkers that pop up from where the PCs are fighting from, skirmishers that get to the PCs fast to set them up for a follow-up. Monster artillery will generally lose to PC ranged fire head-on.

 

[ender_wiggin]

Do not overdo it. You can kill them really easily once they lose their range advantage.

 

[Zurai]

Agreed. Too much is as bad as not enough.

A general rule of thumb from Warhammer 40k is that about 25% of the board should be covered in terrain. That won't work as-is for D&D because there's nothing resembling dungeons in 40k, but it's a good basic guideline for exterior maps.

 

[Mistwell]

I know there's a lot of discussion going on about the superiority of the TWF ranger over the archer

Really?

They seem roughly equal to me. Where can I find this discussion?

 

[Cryptos]

I'm in total agreement that terrain makes 4e combat (much more) fun.

In addition to terrain, combine encounters with traps more often with a ranged group if you're having a hard time challenging them, particularly traps that "shoot back" or can affect mobility or limit (or perhaps even randomize, with a teleport trap) direction of movement choices.

Edit: This will also likely take one of the ranged combatants out of the main fight, to disarm or disable the trap.

Also look for opportunities to do a half ambush, wherein you start an encounter with a straightforward confrontation against one visible group, then the second half of the monsters step out of the shadows behind the PCs.

But I also agree, because ranged characters tend to have lower defenses, that there will be a much finer line between challenging a ranged party and killing them. Much more so than with a mixed or martial party.

 

[Mal Malenkirk]

Challenge them with a lot of skirmisher type monsters.

Take a bunch of gnoll claw skirmisher, for example.

Speed 8 : The PCs won't be able to keep their distance.

Mobile melee attack : A single fighter is never gonna be able to tie them down. They are free to overrun him and take the fight to the ranged attacker.

Clawing charge (2xattack) means excellent damage if the PCs keep moving back; as long as they can charge they'll do much better damage and the way to stop this is to stand toe to toe to them and stay close. They literally can do twice as much damage if you insist on keeping your distance!

(I know you need 2 square to charge but if a ranged attacker shift 1 square, the gnoll just charge another ranhed attacker and keeps getting 2xattack. You have to stick next to them in melee to deprive them of this tactic and force them to use mobile attack instead)

They get a 5 point bonus to damage if there is two of them in contact so focused fire will work great.

They shouldn't bother staying close together ; with only one fighter, there isn't goinhg to be any flanking against them! They can split as wide as they want to neutralize area attack.

 

[Blackbrrd]

Monsters can take their move and then charge... So, either your monsters are starting more than 2x their move from their targets, or your characters are taking the monsters down in 1 round?