I'm annoyed at archers.
- Thread starter ConcreteBuddha
- Start date
ConcreteBuddha
First Post
Victim said:
Hence why I said:
"A party of 4 twinky level 7 characters will fight a CR 8 encounter"
This is a hard encounter if you are fighting approximately 4 CR 8 encounters (or more) a day.
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.
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If, on the other hand, you fight 1 encounter a day, then you are going to have to increase the difficulty to CR +2, +3 or beyond. However, the CR system breaks down using this, because the party could make one false move and end up with a TPW.
Victim
First Post
ConcreteBuddha said:
Not always. If the group is a bunch of archers with movement boosting magic, then higher level dwarven melee fighters in full plate without S&S boots or fly won't be much of a threat if they come one at a time. They'd only be a danger in a coordinated attack from multiple directions so to pin the group.
Similarly, if the group casts Fly, the # of encounters with ground pounders w/o ranged attacks doesn't matter as long as they are all within the duration.
Beyond raw CR, other factors have to be considered. Some tactical situations aren't going to be threat to certain groups, and others overwhelming.
ascendance
First Post
The problem is that your melee characters aren't properly twinked out relative to your archer characters. One of them appears to be optimized for high AC, which, I suspect, severely limits his damage-dealing capability. The other uses TWF, which is only useful for sneak attackers. Real melee characters use 2-handed weapons. Its the way the rules work.
Try this for a super-melee type:
Half-Orc Bbn.
Str 18 (or 20, if you are a cheesy type, and rolled an 18)
Dex 13
Everything else is secondary.
L1 Bbn 1: Exotic Weapon Prof: Spiked Chain.
L2 Ftr 1: Power Attack
L3 Ftr 2: Cleave, Power Lunge
L4 Bbn 2: +1 Str
L5 Ftr 3: Great Cleave
L6 Tribal Defender 1: Extra Rage, Weapon Focus: Spiked Chain
L7 Tribal Defender 2: Wild Fighting!!!! (This is the king of abilities for two-handed fighters. It essentially allows them to Flurry)
L8 Fighter 4: Weapon Spec: Spiked Chain
This character has a tremendous amount of mobility and can do some serious damage. The Power Lunge/Charge combo reaches the heights of cheesiness. It has amazing amounts of tactical flexbility because of the Spiked Chain's reach. This was what I was aiming for before my current game died. GRRRRRR!!!!!!
Try this for a super-melee type:
Half-Orc Bbn.
Str 18 (or 20, if you are a cheesy type, and rolled an 18)
Dex 13
Everything else is secondary.
L1 Bbn 1: Exotic Weapon Prof: Spiked Chain.
L2 Ftr 1: Power Attack
L3 Ftr 2: Cleave, Power Lunge
L4 Bbn 2: +1 Str
L5 Ftr 3: Great Cleave
L6 Tribal Defender 1: Extra Rage, Weapon Focus: Spiked Chain
L7 Tribal Defender 2: Wild Fighting!!!! (This is the king of abilities for two-handed fighters. It essentially allows them to Flurry)
L8 Fighter 4: Weapon Spec: Spiked Chain
This character has a tremendous amount of mobility and can do some serious damage. The Power Lunge/Charge combo reaches the heights of cheesiness. It has amazing amounts of tactical flexbility because of the Spiked Chain's reach. This was what I was aiming for before my current game died. GRRRRRR!!!!!!
In my experience, archers are not too powerful. There are plenty of things out there which are worse. However, if you feel differently, I have a couple of suggestions that might help.
1. Emphasise the ammunition problem. This is the greatest bane of an archer. Don't allow quivers of ehlonna and such in your game. If an archer can only carry 80 arrows, he'll be alot more conservative about using them. Much like a spellcaster must preserve spells.
2. Use ambush effectively. Especially in tight quarters, this can be devastating. If archers are forced into melee once in a while, they will loose much of their advantage.
3. Don't stack the magic bows and arrows. Use the bows enchantment to affect the "to hit" and the arrow for damage.
Be careful about how far you go with this though, or you may end up neutering archers completely. The goal is to balance them; don't go too far the other direction either. Having a variety of battle scenarios will give everyone a chance to shine.
1. Emphasise the ammunition problem. This is the greatest bane of an archer. Don't allow quivers of ehlonna and such in your game. If an archer can only carry 80 arrows, he'll be alot more conservative about using them. Much like a spellcaster must preserve spells.
2. Use ambush effectively. Especially in tight quarters, this can be devastating. If archers are forced into melee once in a while, they will loose much of their advantage.
3. Don't stack the magic bows and arrows. Use the bows enchantment to affect the "to hit" and the arrow for damage.
Be careful about how far you go with this though, or you may end up neutering archers completely. The goal is to balance them; don't go too far the other direction either. Having a variety of battle scenarios will give everyone a chance to shine.
Celebrim
Legend
Olgar:
I'm not forgetting that at all (I've been playing this game 20 years) and in fact it is precisely my point.
If I am attacking a guy with a bow, then I claim that one swing of the sword more or less coresponds to one 'attack' because there isn't going to need to be a whole series of attacks, feints, parryies, reposts leading up to the critical 'thrust'. The guy with the bow simply can't actively protect himself in the same fashion as is persumed by the average abstract combat. You can't equate the two - a guy with a sword attacking another guy with a sword is nothing like a guy with a sword hacking at a guy trying to line up a bow shot on the guy hacking at him with a sword. The AoO is supposed to handle this, but as the number of attacks/round increases and the number of feats that increase arrow shots per round increase, the less important the AoO becomes and the more the melee attacker must rely on occassionally strange meta tactics - like grappling an archer is more dangerous than hitting him with the sword, or waiting on an archer to attempt to attack is more effective than relentlessly attacking, etc.
While I might get through the guard of a guy with a sword less often than a guy with an arrow can fire (and that's debatable, see my next point), I won't get through the 'guard' of a guy with a bow less often than he can fire - you can gaurantee that.
And if your answer to all of the above is, "Well, the guy with the bow is bobbing and weaving to avoid your attacks", how is it that at the very least he doesn't have a penalty to hit compared to when he does not need to bob and weave?
Furthermore, the 'abstract combat' arguement worked alot better for 1st edition D&D than it does for 3rd edition D&D. Combat in 3rd edition D&D has been made relatively less abstract in several ways. Most importantly, the length of a combat round has dropped from roughly 30 seconds to about 6 seconds. While this is still more abstract than a GURPS 1 second round, we are definately moving closer to a concrete model. Add to this the addition of combat manuevers and feats designed to represent certain actions in a round (feints, dodge, spring attack, fight defensively, and so forth), and you are moving closer to a system that is attempting to relate one action (or set of actions) to one round. And it is clear that the reason D&D is doing this is that it wants to have a more satisfying combat system than the old 1st edition system which was so abstract as to be almost entirely non-cinematic/non-visual; not to mention 1st editions kludgy mechanics for handling players attempting to do things other than roll attack dice (grapple, take cover, retreat, etc.).
Again, I don't think that D&D penalizes a missile attacker nearly enough for having recieved melee attacks in the last round, or being in base to base contact with a melee attacker. And, I also think that in general people have been too generous in creating feats and special powers for missile weapons specifically which are both additive with general weapon feats and above what would be considered appropriate for a general weapon feat/power.
I'm not forgetting that at all (I've been playing this game 20 years) and in fact it is precisely my point.
If I am attacking a guy with a bow, then I claim that one swing of the sword more or less coresponds to one 'attack' because there isn't going to need to be a whole series of attacks, feints, parryies, reposts leading up to the critical 'thrust'. The guy with the bow simply can't actively protect himself in the same fashion as is persumed by the average abstract combat. You can't equate the two - a guy with a sword attacking another guy with a sword is nothing like a guy with a sword hacking at a guy trying to line up a bow shot on the guy hacking at him with a sword. The AoO is supposed to handle this, but as the number of attacks/round increases and the number of feats that increase arrow shots per round increase, the less important the AoO becomes and the more the melee attacker must rely on occassionally strange meta tactics - like grappling an archer is more dangerous than hitting him with the sword, or waiting on an archer to attempt to attack is more effective than relentlessly attacking, etc.
While I might get through the guard of a guy with a sword less often than a guy with an arrow can fire (and that's debatable, see my next point), I won't get through the 'guard' of a guy with a bow less often than he can fire - you can gaurantee that.
And if your answer to all of the above is, "Well, the guy with the bow is bobbing and weaving to avoid your attacks", how is it that at the very least he doesn't have a penalty to hit compared to when he does not need to bob and weave?
Furthermore, the 'abstract combat' arguement worked alot better for 1st edition D&D than it does for 3rd edition D&D. Combat in 3rd edition D&D has been made relatively less abstract in several ways. Most importantly, the length of a combat round has dropped from roughly 30 seconds to about 6 seconds. While this is still more abstract than a GURPS 1 second round, we are definately moving closer to a concrete model. Add to this the addition of combat manuevers and feats designed to represent certain actions in a round (feints, dodge, spring attack, fight defensively, and so forth), and you are moving closer to a system that is attempting to relate one action (or set of actions) to one round. And it is clear that the reason D&D is doing this is that it wants to have a more satisfying combat system than the old 1st edition system which was so abstract as to be almost entirely non-cinematic/non-visual; not to mention 1st editions kludgy mechanics for handling players attempting to do things other than roll attack dice (grapple, take cover, retreat, etc.).
Again, I don't think that D&D penalizes a missile attacker nearly enough for having recieved melee attacks in the last round, or being in base to base contact with a melee attacker. And, I also think that in general people have been too generous in creating feats and special powers for missile weapons specifically which are both additive with general weapon feats and above what would be considered appropriate for a general weapon feat/power.
Hypersmurf said:
I don't see it that way, not entirely.
As for spells -- if we use a weapon-and-shield, or two-handed-weapon, type of melee grunt ... the Archer has GMW on his bow, and GMW on his arrows. Two spells to match would be haste on teh grunt, and GMW on his (single) weapon.
Alternately, if you want Haste/GMW/GMW for the archer, then, we go Haste/GMW/GMW on a TWF melee grunt, so the number of attacks aren't guaranteed to fall in favor of the archer.
Lastly: Haste isn't the only means to gain additional partial actions. A Ring of Blinking and the Expert Tatician feat can do likewise (actually, the feat and -any- means of denying the Archer their Dexterity bonus to AC). Frankly, finding a way to consistently apply the Expert Tactician would be preferable, as it would then allow greater use of Power Attack.
ascendance said:
If you can squeeze Combat Reflexes in there, that works VERY well with the Spiked Chain (or the Duom, an exotic longspear variant from Sword and Fist -- nice because the first time you use it's 5'-rach ability, you get an added +2 to hit for pure surprise ... heh!). Possibly at Character level 9, I guess.
Spiked Chain / Duom, and Combat Reflexes (perhaps eventually Hold hte Line, S&F), work together well. Consider them, if you ever get the chance to pursue your concept above in a later campaign.
