I'm annoyed at archers.
- Thread starter ConcreteBuddha
- Start date
kigmatzomat
Legend
IceBear said:
My friends would find great humor in the concept.
Yer gonna have to 'splain that one. I've lurked about the EN boards for a while but haven't noticed personalities yet.
Victim said:
Our groups source is a 12th level sorcerer with the spell and the extend feat. before bedtime he casts a bunch of the day long or hour long spells extended to last 24 hours. At 12th level with no bonus spells, a sor will have 6 4th, 5 5th and 3 sixth level slots for XGMW use. in our game, he uses 5 of these 14 slots, sometimes 6, to enchant two melee weapons (one for each fighter), two bows (one for the rogue and the archer ) and one for a set of 50 arrows. Sometimes they do 100 arrows.
Unless they fought earlier and he used spells, this leaves 8-9 spells of 4th and abaove available for use during the night if they get jumped. The spells refresh in the morning and last all day.
The occasional dispel drops some of these off, but the most common target for dispels is the mage, with fighter types second.
At 15th level, the sor gets "chain" and can with a single XC-GMW as a seventh level spell privide 16 weapons/ammo-sets of +5 lasting 30 hours with the one spell. That becomes two weapons per character in the six man party and 200 arrows. Even if dispelled, its one spell to renew it all.
WizarDru
Adventurer
LokiDR said:
Well, we've established you're not a Paladin, that's for darn sure. Lucky for those children you weren't there, I suppose. Instead, they found other ways to deal with the problem, and eventually managed to save all of the children, and their enslaved parents, as well. I'm guessing you have a thing with round pegs and square holes, because it's clear that all you've got is a hammer (and thus everything is a nail). Most D&D parties are a little more subtle than that. In this case, that strategy would be sentencing over seventy children, at least, to death, as the cleric wouldn't have enough time to raise them all. Never mind the reaction of the Paladin's god, cleric's god (who sent them) or their LG patron.
Also, we didn't agree that archers do more damage, we agreed that archers do more damage over time, in toto, under the right conditions. Archers don't do more damage per attack, they do more damage per round, if conditions are right. Example: in my game, at around 15th level, the archer was rendered useless when fighting animated ballistas, as were the spellcasters, for the most part. Only the melee players could deliver the damage to actually destroy or even incapicate them.
Archers can dominate, if all the combats are designed to play to their strengths. This does not make them broken. More than likely, they are either using house rules, prestige classes or feats that help break them, or they are just not getting faced with the right kinds of challenges.
kigmatzomat said:
To each their own. I agree that a party without a melee fighter in front is going to have a great deal of problems. I also agree that a party of nothing but melee fighters will also have problems. Teamwork is an important part of the game.
That being said, you most of all should see why some of us could be annoyed at archers. Like the experience of another poster from the SCA, you felt good teaming up with others for maximum effect. Do you get the gradatude of your comrads for being in harms way? Do you worry about dying more offen than the archer because you throw yourself in the way of danger? Maybe you have great skill in character design so you are safe, others do not.
I lament those melee characters who aren't so good at design. I have seen newbe after newbe ground under playing melee characters, but those same players are fine as archers. Shouldn't people be allowed to play reasonably effective characters of all types? I am annoyed by a well designed archer out-damaging a well designed melee fighter. I usually expect the great hero with the magic sword to slay the dragon in the fairy tales, not a fist full of magic arrows and a magic bow.
I won't ruin my day if others don't view the game this way. But if this thread has shown me anything, it is that others feel the same and several specific rule modifications can be made to bring D&D more in line with these expectations.
Storm Raven
First Post
LokiDR said:
I take it you were upset at how Smaug was slain in The Hobbit then.
WizarDru said:
I generally don't play paladins, but I have. If the rest of the party couldn't accept the children's deaths, I would help the party with their solution, depending on charcter. Some of my characters would have run, some kill, some rescue the children at all costs. The point is that this situation has come up rarely in my experience, so I don't try to plan for it.
In my game, by the way, I plan to use a lot of the tricks I have read here (maybe even the captured children) because I like situations that play to every character's strength. I am annoyed I don't see this more often. I am currently playing in "City of the Spider Queen" and the archer makes the rest of the party look like chumps. When I played Ruins of Adventure, the elven machine gun was dishing out huge damage compared to the rest of the party.
I never said archers dominate. I said I am annoyed by them. I am annoyed as a DM always being forced to plan around this group. I can change my game, but I can't force other DMs to do so to theirs. Maybe, just maybe, a future DM of mine will read this thread and decide that a lot of situations favor the archer, and this can be annoying.
