How do you feel about raising longbow damage?

Brasswatchman

First Post
So I've been thinking about raising the damage of composite longbows and shortbows in the campaign I'm designing. I'm curious as to people's opinions; what would you say if your DM raised the damage of a medium Composite Longbow to 1d10, and a medium Composite Shortbow to 1d8?

I'm thinking about doing this, by the way, to try and preserve a more traditional fantasy feel. What do you think?
 

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Brasswatchman said:
what would you say if your DM raised the damage of a medium Composite Longbow to 1d10, and a medium Composite Shortbow to 1d8?
"I'm taking an archer!" :p

Nah, j/k.

Honestly though, with composite bows, I think the (subjectively) low base damage is offset just fine by Strength bonuses.


On the other hand, it mightn't be game-breaking to up the die by one. Probably not actually. *shrug*
 

I wouldn't. Even as the rules stand now, I've seen plenty of archer builds that are just horrific in the amount of damage they can deal out. I realize that raising the damage by one die type doesn't seem like a lot, but it'll add up fast.
 

Making such bows Exotic weapons would help, thereby requiring wannaba-machine-gun-snipers(I mean - archers!) to waste a feat beforehand. I'd suggest leaving normal longbows (1d8) and shortbows (1d6) as martial weapons though at least.

In the For More Than Glory campaign I'm presently substitute-DMing (Emiricol is busy lately), set in The 13 Kingdoms, I've seen Valdir (our party's resident fighter/ranger/deepwood sniper - though deepwood snipers are renamed in T13K to fit the elven group that trains them) nearly kill a juvenile green dragon all by himself in about 5-8 rounds, at which point the dragon fled up a tree and then flew off above the forest canopy, dipping back down again once it gained a bit of distance (trees below the canopy granting significant cover at that distance), as Valdir climbed a tree to try finishing it off. His range and attack modifiers are insane, at around 10th-level he can hit AC 20 or so even on a natural roll of 3, from a distance of like 200 or 300 feet; he can even manage fair accuracy from 1,000 feet. And he regularly deals around 10-12 damage on average per arrow, 2-3 times per round, and scores critical hits usually 1-3 times per battle (in the moderate-or-longer battle anyway). He uses alchemist's arrows often to bolster his damage output, since his Strength is around 15 or 16, while his bow only has a +1 enhancement so far. It's tough trying to come up with anything that will reasonably challenge the party when Valdir alone can easily deal out 100+ damage in 3-5 rounds, concealment or cover be damned. Creatures with some kind of piercing resistance, or miss chances from stuff other than concealment (i.e. Improved Invisibility, Displacement, Blink, etc.) could perhaps help.
 
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Brasswatchman said:
So I've been thinking about raising the damage of composite longbows and shortbows in the campaign I'm designing. I'm curious as to people's opinions; what would you say if your DM raised the damage of a medium Composite Longbow to 1d10, and a medium Composite Shortbow to 1d8?

I'm thinking about doing this, by the way, to try and preserve a more traditional fantasy feel. What do you think?

Archers are pretty gimp as is... so I don't think I'd have any issues with this. While you're at it, raise x-bow dmg too. :P
 

Arkhandus said:
Making such bows Exotic weapons would help
Yeah - isn't there an exotic weapon in Complete Warrior like this (a d10 composite longbow, basically)? I think it's called a Greatbow, or some other similarly imaginative title.
 

I'd not do it...removes the reason for taking crossbows completely...I'd actually do something about crossbow damage instead...perhaps 1d6+2 for light and 1d8+2 for heavy...they are armor-piercing weapons, so they should pack some punch, IMO. Or you could let them ignore 2 points of armor as was the case in later-2nd ed.
 

I've used d12 for heavy crossbows, and that worked fine.
However you might want to consider making mighty bows more available. A plus to damage if the welder has the strength seems more realistic than increasing damage dice for bows.
 

This sounds like the old "sheaf-Arrows" from the 2E days. Wouldn't you know, that after those little babies should up no one carried anything BUT Sheaf-arrows.

I understand the tweak you are trying to make but I see it as slightly over-kill. I think your logic is sound in theory but I think this is one of the peculiarities of D&D that once the idea passes through the mechanics it probably will over correct this issue you are trying to resolve.

I would probably pass on the change.
 

The best thing I have seen on bows was a variant that based weapon damage and range on the STR of the bow.
The chart included all types of bows, with the type of bow limiting how strong the bow could be. Crossbows have the adantage of being able to be drawn by a weaker users.

Mechanically the only changes to the system to get this variant to work was to drop the current Mighty bows and add a cople notes on the weapons chart.

I lost my link, and think I only have a hard copy at home :(
 

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