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Message: <blockquote data-quote="hong" data-source="post: 1876634" data-attributes="member: 537">Unless the guy with the crossbow is hidden, or invisible.Unless the guy with the crossbow has a bow, and iterative attacks.Unless the guy with the crossbow is a giant throwing a rock.Unless the guy with the crossbow chucks a Melf's acid arrow instead.And really, the monk has plenty of other super powers with which to get his moment of glory. Inherent dim door, Tumble, stunning fist, ethereal jaunt, SUPER SPEED... they have their toys to play with. (They may not be the toys people are expecting if they want to play the monk as a fighter, but that's an issue for another thread.)Deflect Arrows won't stop the monk getting sniped to death by a hidden rogue, whether it's via the skill or (improved) invisibility. It won't stop the monk being turned into a pincushion by your typical twink archer with Rapid Shot. It won't stop him being smooshed by rocks or other out-of-the-ordinary ranged attacks. It'll make 1st level mooks (generally the only ones who use the crossbow regularly, unless you introduce 3rd party crunch to make crossbows attractive) even more ineffectual, but it's not like this was a weakness of the monk crying out to be addressed. In general, it's most useful when it's least needed, which is hardly an indication of good design.Meanwhile, on the downside, the feat encourages even more the machine-gun archer schtick, of which squillions already abound in most D&D campaigns. Anyone who wants to play a different sort of ranged combatant -- say, a one-shot-kill guy a la the new OotBI, and/or (shudder) you actually want to use a crossbow for a change -- gets screwed by this feat. Then you get into the scaling issues where a 2nd level monk can deflect an epic archer's attack, and the introduction of yet another wart into D&D's combat system.In NWN, they changed this feat to give +4 AC against all ranged attacks, and that seems to work well. Not that anyone will still take it except the monk because of the IUS prereq, but it does the job.</blockquote>

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