I'm annoyed at archers.

[IceBear]

As I was trying to post over the weekend (but couldn't) it almost sounds like the DM isn't doing his job. As a DM, if I see a player is dissatisfied with his character, I take a special effort to make sure that some situation comes up in which that character has a chance to shine. A nice encounter on a windswept mountain side (where the wind makes archery useless) could help. Also, when was the last time an archer had his bow sundered?

IceBear

 

[Endur]

Grapple and Trip

Grapple is the first thing one of my monsters does when he is within reach of an archer.

People talk about sunder, but sunder is risky: you have to out-roll the archer, then you have to have a magic weapon better than the bow's magic.

Grapple, however, is easy. All you need is a touch attack to hit. Normally, grapples generate AOO's, but the archer is holding a bow, so no AOO for him. Then its an opposed strength + BAB + size check. And while an Archer may have a decent BAB, most archers are not very strong.

Now, if you are worried that your archer is much better than your monster. i.e. a 7th level archer against an Ogre. The Archer's higher BAB may result in the archer winning the grapple against the ogre. Well, in that case, use the Trip special attack. BAB doesn't matter, Trip is based on size + strength. The Ogre should win the Trip and the archer falls on the ground. The Archer won't be able to use his mighty composite longbow while laying on the ground, so he spends a move-equivalent action standing up and doesn't get his full attack this round.

Tom

 

[Shard O'Glase]

Re: Grapple and Trip

Grapple is the first thing one of my monsters does when he is within reach of an archer.

People talk about sunder, but sunder is risky: you have to out-roll the archer, then you have to have a magic weapon better than the bow's magic.

Technically no. You only make an oppsoed roll against mellee weapons. I personally think this is lame and house rulled it to opposed roll for anyhitng in the characters hand.

 

[Petrosian]

. Also, when was the last time an archer had his bow sundered?

IceBear

Since you need an enhancement bonus equal or greater to even get anywhere with a sunder and the archer's bow is magiced up to say +3 or +4 or even +5 with GMW, sunder is really not that serious a threat except for the most potent bad guys. those are often the ones beelined by the tanks. An intelligent archer can keep threatened squares galore bwteen him and a chosen few of the bad guys if he knows what he is doing. An "intelligent" enemy will not usually rush past several tanks, taking AoOs in order to get near the archer.

For many monsters, who use their own DR as their ability to strike, sundering +3 or better items isa practical impossibility. (This assumes the Gm is liberal enough to count their DR as "vs enhahnced item sunder" apllicable. many would probably treat it by the same dint they treat "vs incorporreal" and rule it does not apply.)

In short, many dragons could not sunder a bow with a +3 enhancement if they wanted to.

While, for a GM, sundering the bow is a good game sense... the player will not have it for future battles, for an adversary on the spot it is less practical. The bad guy will not be thinking " sure, i will fall but i am taking your bow with me cuz you cannot clw the bow back together" normally.

In short, most of the times i have used sunder tactics, the fights went worse for the bad guys than they did when they went for damage instead. Since with GMW any bow can become a suitable replacement in moments, taking the tactical loses to score a GMic strategic hit seems inappropriate..

Now, if you change the enhancement rules, dropping the requirements, allowing any weapon to sunder any other, this might be different.

besides, in truth, sundering a bow is not much harder than sundering an axe, a spear or any other wooden hafted weapon.

 

[IceBear]

I just asked that question to get a feel for what, if anything, the DM is doing to hinder archers. As I stated, as this is a game, part of the DMs job is to make sure that ALL the players are having fun. Since it appears the two melee guys aren't having fun, I was trying to gauge if the DM in question is doing anything to show off the disadvantages of archers. Putting the party in a situation where the archers were at a disadvantage would allow for the melee fighters to shine.

Yes, I agree that sundering isn't the perfect solution, but I just wanted to get a feel for whether or not the archers ever had their bows sundered. Me, personally, I'd do something more constructive (like the windy outdoors encounter) than doing something that'll just tick the players off.

IceBear

 

[Elder-Basilisk]

IME, Great Cleave is one of the more useless feats once you hit mid- to high levels. Anything that you can kill in one hit probably wasn't a threat to begin with. It's the things that can take the damage and hit back that you should be worrying about.

I'll admit that cleave sees a lot more use at high levels than great cleave, but criticals, low-hp bad guys (wizards or rogues for instance), and other effects can make great cleave worthwhile. A melee monster could very easily drop a threatening target with his haste partial charge+power critical, cleave into another threatening bad guy, take his first two normal attacks on that bad guy, great cleave into another bad guy, and finish his routine by using his tertiary attack the third bad guy--possibly dropping him and great cleaving into a fourth.

If the character in question is a raging 12th level fighter/barbarian with an effective 28 strength and a +2 frost greataxe, two hits from him deal an average of 54 points of damage which is enough to drop a variety of villains who could be fairly threatening. Three hits deal 81 hp damage on average and four hits (which is the equivalent of what the first guy in the sequence took) deal 108 hp damage before power attacking--a moderate use of power attack pumps that up to an average of 128 points of damage to the first guy. I think Great Cleave could come into play here. . . .

Again IME, this (Expert Tactician) isn't likely to come up unless you actually work at it. Improved invis is probably the most reliable method, and that isn't exactly common. The rogue is probably also going to want first dibs on it.

It rather depends. If the character has good initiative (high dex, improved init), it may come up fairly regularly. If the melee character is a spellsword, Blink is a pretty reliable way of aquiring it too. Sound burst works good at low levels; Glitterdust, Blindness/Deafness, Evard's Black Tentacles (grappled opponents don't have a dex bonus against creatures outside the grapple), Power Word Stun, Power Word Blind, Holy Smite, etc keep the possibility open throughout the rest of the levels.

This [Power Attack] is probably the biggest trump that the melee guy has going for him. I don't think it's sufficient to tip the balance, however, especially when you consider the range of monster specials that only come into play in melee.

Power Attack is a wonderful equalizer for the melee monster. Considering the number of counters to archers, it should be plenty. It appears in this case though that either the DM is letting the archers get away with murder or he's completely unaware of the means to counter archers (usually by denying Line of Sight), or the melee "tanks" in question are the most ineffective combatants since the invention of the 10 str, 6 con elf swordsman.

Well, if we're using splatbooks, the archer character can also use Manyshot to get an effective full attack with a standard action each round. Overall, I don't think much of most of the splatbook feats.

Fair enough. The difference is that I think the new version of expert tactician is balanced but Manyshot isn't even close to it. (I think there's also a difference between using ELH and using the classbooks too).

 

[ConcreteBuddha]

Everyone saying that the melee characters in my specific campaign are ineffective and the archers are effective due to player and/or DM error is acting on incorrect assumptions. (Which I understand is partly my fault for not being entirely accurate or precise. Also, we all have different experiences that we bring to this discussion.)


1) This is not the only example I have of archers dominating the game. This is just the most recent.


2) Regardless of the actual statistics of the melee characters, the archers would dominate most battles. This is because the archers kill everything that is remotely a challenge in 2 to 3 rounds.

If the DM makes the encounters harder, one false step would cause a TPW. (Which almost happened at a lower level when the DM threw a Tsuno, some ogres and some orcs at us.)

Any melee character, regardless of the situation would get torn up just because they must get in melee combat. That means that we must maneuver ourselves as close to the bad guys as possible. The melee characters run to the front and get subject to attacks up the wazoo.


3) In order to use Ambidexterity, a character must have a Dex of 15+. The example character has a Dex of 16, and has a mithral chain shirt because he is looking ahead to eventually getting a 22 Dex with a +6 enhancement bonus, which will max out the Dex bonus to armor. A mithral breastplate, though it gives an extra armor point, doesn't allow a +6 dex modifier (Which he is eventually going to get anyway. Also, Dex as AC is generally better, IMHO, as it helps protect against touch attacks. And his initiative is generally good enough to avoid flatfootedness.)

Also, although it would be far superior for the above character to use a double bladed sword and armor spikes or a greatsword and armor spikes, that is not the point. It's not that the character doesn't hit often enough, it's that he is never given the chance to hit in the first place.

On the off chance he does get to hit, normally the bad guy is already so weakened by the archers that one or two hits drops the enemy anyway.


4) The reason why I don't want counters is because most counters that work against archers also work against melee characters. Sunder, disarm, grappling, concealment, cover, spells, and what have you are all ways to counter both archers and melee characters. That's why I don't really need them. Counters really are a moot point.

Specific counters that effect only archers and not melee characters are also rarely seen in combat. (Having every intellegent monster wielding a tower shield is a little lame.)


5) I agree that archers tend to have more trouble in dungeons. In a 5' corridor, an archer is hampered due to cover and the inability to maneuver. (This is lessened somewhat due to a wise selection of feats. Also, cover really isn't that big of a deal, since archers have obscene attack bonuses to hit.)


6) DnD a team game. Sure. But there are other games that have a team mentality that do not have obscene statistics for archers. (My personal favorite is 7th Sea.)

Just because I am annoyed at archers does not mean I dislike the team mentality. Notice that I haven't brought up any other class. I haven't said that wizards, clerics, druids, rogues or anything else is too powerful. I am specifically bringing up archers because I feel that they have little to no downfall as compared to melee characters.

 

[IceBear]

But that is the whole point of melee fighters - to engage in melee and take all the damage to would be going to the back ranks if the melee fighter wasn't there. Seriously, if that's your main beef then it's not going to change if you nerf archers. If you just want to have EVERYONE be melee fighters then that'll make it even, but that's the whole purpose of melee fighters.

BTW - what house rules were you planning on introducing to nerf archery?

IceBear

 

[maddman75]

Thing is Buddha, your experiences don't jibe with the experiences of the other people on the board. Personally, in my seven player group we'll have no more than 2-3 rear line characters - including a wizard. If there's any more than that, they get swarmed and can't be very effective. While we have had some effective archers (the ftr/rog/OOBI twink could lay out 100 a round easy, if invisible), they aren't more effective than well built meatshields, spellcasters, or other characters.

This leads us to two conclusions. Either your DM is staging encounters so that the archers have a distinct advantage, or the melee characters aren't as skilled at min/maxing characters as the archers are.

You've commented on TWF several times. TWF sucks man. It is only advantageous when you have sneak attack.

You've also commented that the monsters are dead before they ever get to you. In that case they should scatter and set up an ambush! THat's on the DM.

ALso, I'm curious as to what your strategies are.

 

[Ridley's Cohort]

Well said, maddman75.

From an average damage POV it hardly matter whether you fill your back ranks with archers or wizards or sorcerors.

The problem is you perceive that ranged attack specialists are running roughshod over the campaign. The answer is for the DM to tweak the tactics of the bad guys to deal with ranged attacks. At 7th level, you are big boys and should be able to handle the odd Fog Cloud or Web or Darkness.

You are incorrect that countermeasures affect the grunts equally. The NPC monsters and the PC grunts shouldn't mind fighting a brawl, even with a 50% miss chance. It's just slower going. The archers and wizards won't be so happy about the prospect.