I'm annoyed at archers.

[ConcreteBuddha]

Re: How to Fix Archers

It's this simple: use a battlemat and miniatures (or dice/markers of some kind).

This is /necessary/ to enforce the rule that make archers balanced: cover.

We have never not used a battlemap and miniatures for DnD.

All of my experiences have been with multiple DMs in multiple campaigns with multiple archers and always using a battlemap with terrain, darkness, concealment, cover, trees, walls, NPCs and PCs all adjucated. (Also using multitudes of different styles of houseruling, from strict rules interpretations to thick volumes of house rules.)

Having a 2/4/7/10 cover bonus to AC will seriously make your archer think twice about how great it is to be outside of range.

With a high Dex, Bracers of Archery, the Sharp-Shooting feat, and stacking bow and arrow bonuses to hit, cover becomes pretty meaningless. (Unless it's 9/10ths or total cover. In which case the bad guys are pinned down and unable to damage the party at all.)
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Pax---
Trees and leaves provide concealment, if not cover ... more and more, the further you are form the target (result: closing to melee range rewards the melee characters, while the ranged characters suffer miss %'s ...).

Seeking from the S&F. Check it out. Or you could just go with the Deepwood Sniper.
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Darklone---
I don't know how you handle it... but my PCs don't always surprise the monsters.

Surprise affects melee guys as equally as it affects archers.

As for the argument that the AoO against the archer is not bad... If the monster trips the archer with that AoO, the archer is screwed for that round (nooooo rapid shot orgy). And the 5ft step back doesn't help against 10ft reach monsters.

So here is the situation you just discribed:

1) A melee guy didn't block the monster from getting to the archer.
2) The monster ignores every character standing in front of the archer.
3) The monster didn't die in the first round Rapid Shot from the archer. (Due to surprise or what have you.)
4) The monster has 10 ft. reach.
5) The archer doesn't have a bunch of ranks in Tumble. (Which hasn't been houseruled.)
6) The archer has a lower AC than everyone else in the group.
7) The archer has lower hps than everyone else in the group.

Sure, if every one of these things happen, then the specific archer in question is doomed. Of course, it could also be the case that this exact sitution is pretty rare, and that it isn't a viable way of judging the game-balance of archery.

And monsters that are subject to an archers volleys usually hide in full cover and ready a partial charge at the archer,

And what? The archer walks boldly up and gets ambushed by the monsters hiding behind full cover? The melee guys run forward and get trounced by the monsters?

possibly damaging his weapon.

Affects melee characters as equally as it affects archers.

LOL, yeah, right, I think those things are called tower shields and provide full cover.

I was joking. Hence the "*grin*" in my post.



Seriously, though: if the solution you propose is to equip every intellegent monster with a tower shield, I'd rather nerf GMW. It's a little less silly that way.

 

[Numion]

Pax, you've given me some good info on how to shaft the archers. However, I can, and already have, done just that. My point was that archers have too much going for them, rules-wise.

Shafting players and nerfing their tactics is easy, for any DM. You can do whatever you like. I would've preferred melee and archery to be balanced from the get-go.

 

[Petrosian]

You know, probably that's the main difference between Petrosians and my campaigns... Not some obscure houserules but:

My monsters don't like to stand around and watch as the archers fire volleys into them

I have to admit that everything but full cover doesn't help much against D&D archers,... but there's always the good old hide behind the tables western movie tactic.

Ahh the old "the reason i do it right is because i run smarter" line of reasoning.

Nowhere did i state or even imply that my bad guys just stand around. Now, i can see where it will help your ego to just assume that other people play dumber than you, and so some good comes from the commentary you just provided, but it adds little to the overall discussion.

All the cover discussions tend to run into one major problem.

Circumstance which prevent archers from getting a shot, also tend to prevent meleers and possibly even spellers from doing so as well. An archer need LOE at range which is typically easier to get than LOE at no range. If a wall prevents my archer from moving 30' and gettin a shot within 30', its likely also going to stop the meleer from getting to melee range.

or to put it simply... the ability to attack AT RANGE is not MORE RESTRICTIVE than the necessity of attacking at reach. While circumstances can make both of them more difficult, the number and frequency of circumstances which make the NECESSIY of reach better than the ability to attack at range are fewer than the converse.

If your meleer can strike from 5', I can stand right behind him and shoot from 10 with the +4 benefit from GMW evaporating the cover bonus. All i am left with as a lowly archer is one extra attack at my highest BAB. Awww...

Sure, there are even some circumstances which prevent attacks from 10' or more, and the rest of your party will likely be worse off than the archer.

YMMV, what with you neing so much cleverer and all.

 

[Pax]

Originally posted by Mallik:
It's this simple: use a battlemat and miniatures (or dice/markers of some kind).

This is /necessary/ to enforce the rule that make archers balanced: cover.

In fact, another option is -- in the absence of a battlemat -- a whiteboard. I have the luxury of gaming at the local college, where there's a student club dedicated to gaming of all sorts, and especially RPGs. They made a (wise) investment a few years back, and have a LARGE whiteboard in each of their two rooms. As a GM, I've drawn a quick grid for the encounter area, and used single-letter (or letter-number pairs) for each character, PC or NPC, involved.

That, and a string held center-square to center-square, results in reasonably impartial rulings on cover/concealment issues. On a battlemat, it's even better (since the squares are guaranteed to be uniform in size and proportion, etc).

So in short, Mallik's advice is GOOD advice: use a battlemat, or make an equivalent (a sheet of graph paper and a pencil, if you must). It cuts down on archers' "superiority" by a long way.

Originally posted by LokiDR:
Not every encounter includes inteligent creatures. Not every inteligent creature takes combat reflexes. You have shown nothing, unless you suggesst making a large perchent of encounters into this sort.

A large minority of encounters -should- be with intelligent or semi-intelligent foes. One does have to conider motivation for each encounter; I'm sorry, but I have to ask -- have you grown out of the "menagerie of new and more exotic creatures" parade-of-encounters mode, yet?

If the party is going to encounter something, the GM should first have asked WHY the encounter will happen. "Because it'll be fun to have them fight creatures X, Y, and/or Z" isn't really a good reason.

Sentient foes are easiest to justify; give them a reason to be at thatlocation, give them a reason to impede the party in some way (toll-collecting orcs at a bridge, for one simple example). Then, let the players loose on the encounter.

Use is determined by cost. If the tatic causes you to be surrounded by enemies, take multiple AoOs, and the target can simply step away from you, it doesn't sound that usefull.

And if, as you continually assert, the archers are the primary source of damage, then almost ANY cost is justified to eliminate them ... FAST. As for stepping away ... that depends on your tactics (and your armament). Spiked Chains (or, from S&F, the Duom) are reach weapons that also allow attacks against adjacent foes.

Alternately, Armor Spikes with any reach weapon. Or, a mounted opponent, whose mount has reach; ride up, whack them, and if they step back to fire ... the mount gets an AoO, the RIDER possibly gets an AoO, and the archer is in a world of hurt.

Or, if the NPC is hasted, they pull a Move-and-Standard-Attack action with their normal round of action, and use their partial action to "Ready: move with archer X, keeping him in reach of my weapon" ... against a specific ranged-attacking enemy. They move, you rect and move WITH them, and the result is they stay threatened by your weapon.

Originally posted by Pax:
Originally posted by Pax
One feat lowers Cover-gained AC bonusses (Sharpshooter, from S&F), and not by a large amount. 9/10's cover (an Orc crossbowman behind an arrow slit) is harsh. Add in a nice screen of ivy across the wall the 'slit is set in, and you can even get concealment TOO ... without the orc suffering much.

Originally posted by LokiDR
So, what your are saying is that the archer has a huge advantage, shooting the party untill they can reach him. Why does this show archery isn't more powerful? Could you do this with melee? This does not help your case.

You haven't been paying attention. The enemy archer has all the advantages, and they are advantages cancelled ONLY by the PC's closing to MELEE RANGE. That favors the melee-combat specialists; the ranged fighters will suffer the cover-and-concealment penalties the enemy archer has chosen to make use of, while the melee fighters try and outflank that same enemy.

Goblins get old, fast. The concept of the goblin is to attack en-mass, not produce a few powerful goblins to win the battle. Yes, goblins do advance by class, but they are only listed in the MM up a few levels because of the concept of the race. Facing the powerful and strange is more fun than the mundane warmed over, hence the large number of different creatures in the game.

Goblins, only? My you have a well-trained "selective comprehension" skill, don't you?

Goblins. Orcs and Half-Orcs. Ogres (dim bulbs but not COMPLETELY stupid). Hobgoblins. Gnolls. Kobolds. Humans. Elves. Dwarves. Halflings. Gnomes. Centaurs. Demons, devils, and other lower-planar unfriendlies. Lycanthropes. Dragons, and often their minions. In the FRCS, Shades (of various pre-template racial types).

And that's thirty seconds' thinking, off the top of my head. Several of the above options come in multiple "Flavors" (an encounter with a Drow Priestess and her entourage will not be the same as an encounter with a Wild Elven barbarian war-party ...).

...

Now, with all that said, to various and sundry ... I do agree on several points.

GMW as written is brokenly powerful. I'll be changing it to affect 10 bolts / arrows / sling bullets / whatevers per casting. I will also, however, extend the same ability, in the same numbers, to vanilla MW (early on, being able to use MW to give the party some magical ranged weapons helps both players (as a safety net) and GM's (they can throw DR X/+1 flying monsters at the party before handing out magic arrows).

Protection from Arrows should advance in step with GMW, I agree.

As for stacking ammunition with the launcher; I'm unsure on this, but some alteration seems to be in order. I will probably go with +hit from the arrows, and +damage from the launcher ... it makes more sense to me that way, and that is somewhat more in keeping with how such devices work in real life.

However, while I agree some tweaking is needed, I don't think the balance between melee and ranged is COMPLETELY broken, left as-is.

 

[Petrosian]

"If a creature with 30 ft. of movement gets within 30 ft of the archer, why aren't they partial charging the archer and using improved grab, poison, or whatever nasty tricks they have up their sleeve?"

They possibly are. If a clea line of movemtn presents itself, and if this line wont allow AoOs from other PCs and so on. The nasty little catch is, every one of these works just fine vs the melee fighter too. IF the enemy can get to the archer, he can poison, improved grab and so on. Odds are tho, he can get to the melee fighter more easily and may even have been able to do so with a full attack. As an archer, a troll charging me is nothing to worry about. As a meleer, a trol full attacking me is.

This is part of the "archer edge."

"Flying creatures, summoned creatures, burrowed creatures, Dimension Door, etc. Why aren't your archers seeing these things?"

They do and when those things occur, the archer is EVERY BIT AS ABLE TO BE ATTACKED AS THE MELEE FIGHTER. Not that i said EVERY BIT AS... not MORE ABLE TO BE... and so on. Creatures who can move without having to go thru your lines can move to whomever they wish. In these cirtcumstances, anyone is vulnerable.

Citing cases after case where the archer is no better than the meleer is not gonna counter one single case where he is.

As for DIMDOOR, with the end your action thing, i have seen that specific one rarely work.

 

[LokiDR]

A large minority of encounters -should- be with intelligent or semi-intelligent foes. One does have to conider motivation for each encounter; I'm sorry, but I have to ask -- have you grown out of the "menagerie of new and more exotic creatures" parade-of-encounters mode, yet?

If the party is going to encounter something, the GM should first have asked WHY the encounter will happen. "Because it'll be fun to have them fight creatures X, Y, and/or Z" isn't really a good reason.

Sentient foes are easiest to justify; give them a reason to be at thatlocation, give them a reason to impede the party in some way (toll-collecting orcs at a bridge, for one simple example). Then, let the players loose on the encounter.

Monsters with low to no inteligence are just as easy, if not easier to justify a fight. "the pack of ____ run twords you, hunger in their eyes." Do not presume to tell me what the percentage of encounters should be for inteligent and non-inteligent for my campaign. If you don't know that this changes from campaign to campaign, you have a larger problem.

I don't see you point any way, since you state that inteligent foes should be a minority of the encounters seen. I hope you don't believe combat reflexes should be included in every inteligent creature encounter, as that would get repeditive.

So this discussion of trick inteligent creatures isn't the most helpful. Ditto spell casters. If wanted to make encounters screw archers, I easily could. I want to find times when the melee has advantage and isn't simply meat to be ground up.

And if, as you continually assert, the archers are the primary source of damage, then almost ANY cost is justified to eliminate them ... FAST. As for stepping away ... that depends on your tactics (and your armament). Spiked Chains (or, from S&F, the Duom) are reach weapons that also allow attacks against adjacent foes.

Alternately, Armor Spikes with any reach weapon. Or, a mounted opponent, whose mount has reach; ride up, whack them, and if they step back to fire ... the mount gets an AoO, the RIDER possibly gets an AoO, and the archer is in a world of hurt.

Or, if the NPC is hasted, they pull a Move-and-Standard-Attack action with their normal round of action, and use their partial action to "Ready: move with archer X, keeping him in reach of my weapon" ... against a specific ranged-attacking enemy. They move, you rect and move WITH them, and the result is they stay threatened by your weapon.

More tatics for the minority.

Not even a large perchent of those will take exotic weapons. Mounted characters are something, however. Most mounts I can think of, unless you are taking about dragons, don't have reach, the rider does. Ok, a minor point. But the tatic is shut down by a tumble check, DC15, which isn't that hard to get.

The ready action trick is good. This is the first tatic I can remember in this thread that really socks it to archers. Ok, that's good. Now how often can I use it? First, requires inteligent foes, the minority. Next, you need haste, which should be a minority of inteligent encounters. Then, the melee man must get to the archer, which my involve AoOs. Finally, your melee man is using one attack a round when he has at least 2. A fellow PC meleer should be able to make mince meat of him as he widdles me down, or better a fellow archer. On top of all that, I can avoid most attacks by double moving away, and the melee machine may not even be able to charge me. 1 for 1 isn't always the best trade for NPCs, especially if they are using up a decent level spell.

You haven't been paying attention. The enemy archer has all the advantages, and they are advantages cancelled ONLY by the PC's closing to MELEE RANGE. That favors the melee-combat specialists; the ranged fighters will suffer the cover-and-concealment penalties the enemy archer has chosen to make use of, while the melee fighters try and outflank that same enemy.

How is it harder for the archer to make that exact same manuver and still have the advantage of shooting the enemy from the door rather than being forced to charge him? You have shown only that archery can be used against archery, and it is STILL in the minority of inteligent creature combats.

Goblins, only? My you have a well-trained "selective comprehension" skill, don't you?

Goblins. Orcs and Half-Orcs. Ogres (dim bulbs but not COMPLETELY stupid). Hobgoblins. Gnolls. Kobolds. Humans. Elves. Dwarves. Halflings. Gnomes. Centaurs. Demons, devils, and other lower-planar unfriendlies. Lycanthropes. Dragons, and often their minions. In the FRCS, Shades (of various pre-template racial types).

And that's thirty seconds' thinking, off the top of my head. Several of the above options come in multiple "Flavors" (an encounter with a Drow Priestess and her entourage will not be the same as an encounter with a Wild Elven barbarian war-party ...).

Goblins, orcs, kobolds, gnolls and hobgoblins all use the same concept. I was making the point that fighting the same thing as you go up in level can get boring, especially if concept is a horde of weak creatures with a few leaders.

That isn't the point here. You were saying that goblin (weak) creatures should be more common than powerful (dragon) so the fact that there are a lot of melee creatures is irrelevant, because weak creatures can be advanced and attack using massed archery. This has a problem: you are saying use archery which seems to say that it is good. That is my point, it is always good to be on the side with the archer except a rare extreem like high wind. I also like to use different creatures, and there are more melee monsters to choose from. On top of that, you agreed that inteligent creatures should be in the minority of encounters.


On a side note, calling an argument sundry, statement such as "I'm sorry, but I have to ask -- have you grown out of ....", and 'My you have a well-trained "selective comprehension" skill, don't you?' only show your lack of etiquite and you are only here for demeaning others. I don't think they add anything, and take focus away from the discussion.

 

[Darklone]

Hmm. These examples always give me the impression that the PCs outnumber their enemies. There are melee types standing in front of the archers... your archers can tumble through the lines, the enemies can't, every sane PC is hasted, the enemies not... And speaking about intelligent enemies... As a minority???

Now this REALLY is a difference to my games. Nearly the only not intelligent opponents my PCs meet and have to battle (since you can usually evade some animals or move them to other locations if they endanger a village) are summoned monsters. Who are usually commanded by the summoners.

I do have to admit that I seldomly have battles where the PCs overpower their enemies like you described it.

As for the big trip trick monsters... A troll that tripped an archer once will not lose contact to that archer even if a melee type is next to him. Standing up and moving back causes another AoO... which is used as trip attempt. You say you use larger monsters (less cover): Trip and grapple them as hell. Sure, they can stick to shortswords and other tricks then... but they won't shoot. Well, as long as they don't have small longbows

 

[Shard O'Glase]

my 2 cents which will be short since this has been hashed out enough already IMO.

Archers at their core are more effective than the melle types, and since they aren't particulary vulnerable to mellee or combat in general that is a probelm.

You can weaken the effect of archers with special tacitcs. a few things about that.

1. yeah its great I can balance them a bit with special tactics, but I still need special tactics to bring them ito line which shouldn't be necesary.

2. most of the tactics I can use hinder the grunts just as much so I'm not doing much for balanceing them.

3. If I do it enough to let the mellee types shine as much as the archers do, it will be absurdly hard to not be giving the archers the impression that I'm punishing them.


As much as I like D&D this might be one of the probelms of their class sytem. If the archer was a class as oposed to the fighter, then the archer might rock at range and be dang effective, but I could make him fragile and needing of protection similar to but not nearly as extreme as the wizard. As is though I may end up actively punishing the archers in game for playing their roles as written.(IMO a nerf would be better) Ok it wasn't short.

edited for clarity

 

[Petrosian]

[/B][/QUOTE]

I do have to admit that I seldomly have battles where the PCs overpower their enemies like you described it.

I dont know if you just mentally swapped in inadvertantly overpower for outnumber or not.

In my games its about 50/50 as to whether the PCs or the NPCs are producing the conflict. The numbers usually run with 10% PCs having a big advantage in situation, 20% Pcs having slight edge, 40% relatively even, 20% favor enemies and 10% favor the enemies big. So the favorable environment and numbers varies quite a bit. Numbers is especially variable.

if, however, you are slanting your points now towards some sort of "you cannot have both an archer and a melee guy in your party, choose one" type of nons...position... then thats fine but its very limited.

My current group of PCs, for instance, down from 7 contains 6... fighter, barbarian, sorcerer, druid/ranger, rogue and monk.

As for the big trip trick monsters... A troll that tripped an archer once will not lose contact to that archer even if a melee type is next to him. Standing up and moving back causes another AoO... which is used as trip attempt. You say you use larger monsters (less cover): Trip and grapple them as hell. Sure, they can stick to shortswords and other tricks then... but they won't shoot. Well, as long as they don't have small longbows

Well, to limit the repetitiveness... i wont go into how these tactics work against melee guys, where the troll is taking full attacks, including possible rend, instead of single attacks plus AoO.

 

[ashockney]

A different perspective

Ok, I didn't sort through all six pages of posts, but I get the gist...

1) "Archers" are more powerful than other fighters, especially those specialized in "melee" combat.

2) "Archers" deal the most damage in combat.

3) GMW shouldn't stack with arrow and bow.

Several others have asserted:

4) Archers must contend with concealment, cover, and attacks of opportunity.

5) Specific tactics (used by NPC's) can help to reduce the effectiveness of archers (although some feats and prestige class abilites help to negate these penalties).

Ok. Here's my 2 cents on the "issues" from the thread.

1. Archers are NOT more powerful than other fighters, because...what's stopping the fighter from pulling out his bow too? Why is this different from the sorcerer, standing next to the archer, casting two Firebrand Spells (5th, MoF)on everyone of the villians the second he walks into the room? Getting a full attack action vs. a partial action is a HUGE difference. Thus, the need for the POUNCE special ability, from Singh Rager in OA. I would even argue this should be a "high end" feat above Spring Attack on that feat chain. In this regard, other fighters can be equally effective (give or take some special abilites) as archers AND go whip up in melee. Sweet.

2. Archers can dish it, no doubt. So can a melee Scimitar/Khopesh wielding Weaponmaster with a Vorpal Sword. You ever seen a Vorpal Whirlwind attack? You don't want to. How about a frenzied berserker power attacking? Overall, an archer's damage isn't significantly higher once we take out the "full attack" vs. "partial action" issues. Keep in mind that there are limitations on the strength bonus to damage that an archer will receive. This is a significant difference!

3). GMW should stack. What!?!?! Sacrilege! Heathen! Here's why:
a) Offset Range Penalties
b) Offset Concealment Penalties
c) Offset Cover Penalties
d) Offset limitations placed on strength damage from bows.
Please note, that whatever book put power attack in as a prestige class abilities for archers must have been PLAYTESTING: OPTIONAL. This was abundantly obvious to our whole group the first minute someone used a bow. This should get rule-0'd, or at a minimum, cap the PA bonus to 5 to keep it reasonable. Yikes.