I'm annoyed at archers.

[Artoomis]

It seems like one of the most pervasive arguments about why archer are powerful revolves around GMW. It also seems to me that if a party relies on GMW, that word will get around via the "bad guy network," and pretty soon when this adventuring group is out and about bad guys will be flinging Dispel Magic (or Greater Dispel) around quite a bit.

In fact, in anything except a dungeon crawl, a famous group will tend to get known for its tactics, and, unless they can be flexible, they will soon find their cool tactics lead to their demise.

Also, of course, the great equalizer is the enemy archers who will target the archer. This should happen routinely. "Fireball" and the like are the best defense against this.

In real ancient and medieval warfare, archers were feared for good reason. This is not well-represented in D&D for balance reasons. Still, as can be seen by this thread, they still can cause some concern.

It's kind of like saying that mounted warriors are unbalanced in D&D. In a way they are - I can easily set up a mounted dog scenario that is truly vicious with ride-by attack, etc. It's pretty hard to counter, given that there is no AoO and you get to keep zipping by giving as much as x4 damage routinely, x6 on a critical!

So what? Such characters are rather specialized and it does them no good when their particular specialty cannot be used.

 

[Spatula]

Re: Re: Re: Don't fight the archer fight his bow

nevermind.

 

[Shard O'Glase]

Re: Re: Re: Re: Don't fight the archer fight his bow

Unfortunately this is not the case. Striking a weapon is a standard action, not an attack action, so it can't be used as an AoO. Also, in order to strike a weapon, a meleer must give up any extra attacks he may have.

You can't sunder with a staff, only with slashing weapons.

Reall? in that case two rules I never knew, I aught to read sunder more closely.

Of course neither of these things change that I hate the sunder mechanic, but hey its something new I overlooked.

 

[IceBear]

I'm pretty sure you can sunder with a staff. All it says in the rules is to use common sense on when determining if the weapon is effective or not. I can see someone breaking a sword with a staff.

Edit: Yeah, the SRD says you must use a slashing or bludgeoning weapons to strike a weapon so staves are in. Good catch about the Standard action vs Attack action though.

IceBear

 

[Spatula]

Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Don't fight the archer fight his bow

Reall? in that case two rules I never knew, I aught to read sunder more closely.

I was mistaken about the not being an attack action, but according to the rules you do need a slashing weapon.

 

[Spatula]

I'm pretty sure you can sunder with a staff. All it says in the rules is to use common sense on when determining if the weapon is effective or not. I can see someone breaking a sword with a staff.

Edit: Yeah, the SRD says you must use a slashing or bludgeoning weapons to strike a weapon so staves are in. Good catch about the Standard action vs Attack action though.

IceBear

Bah, I'm 0 for 2 today... my PHB says slashing but it got changed in the errata.

 

[IceBear]

Nevermind

 

[Elder-Basilisk]

At lower levels, the factors that propel archery beyond melee are not present. The fact that a levelless orc has a better chance is relaively insignificant in my games once arhcery is at its peak.

It's still relevant at higher levels though. A lot of PCs end up using bladed melee weapons which have hardness 10+enhancement and 5 hp or so. In order to sunder that in one blow, the NPC needs to deal 15 points of damage which is far less typical than the 7 needed to sunder a bow.

At higher levels, smart melee PCs buy mithral and adamantium weapons to make sundering impractical (hardness 20+, and lots of hit points, etc) You can't get a mithral or adamantium bow.

By the levels when archery is IMO in need of balancing, the sunder feat is easily accessible for those who tend to include it in their tactics. it fits right nicely alongside the opposite feats spent on archery in the examples.

The thing about the sunder tactic though is that the enemy doesn't need to have the feat. Even if the NPC doesn't normally include sunder in his tactics against melee characters, he may well include it in his tactics against an archer. I was running a mod at one point where an aspiring arcane archer thought he'd be clever and fire his bow at a troll from within melee range counting on his shield to protect him. The next round the troll, who was smarter than your average troll, used a claw attack to sunder the bow and then tore into the archer with his other attacks. He wouldn't have done that to a melee weapon but it was easy, convenient, and cut the archer's damage output down dramatically.

I have no problem with any Gm who has decided to add house rules to further empower melee weapons as opposed to bows. It seems many Gms have decided to use such rules and that once they are in use some semblance of balance occurs.

<snip>

Me, i st6ill prefer using the "solve the problem" by direct means, addressing the double double rules instead of trying to find more ways to take things away.

The comment about metal hafted axes and repairing axe hafts wasn't intended to be a house rule to shift the balance between melee and archery characters. It is a house rule that I'd allow but the purpose would be to make hafted weapons more viable vis a vis bladed weapons. If it modifies the archery balance as well, so be it.

 

[Spatzimaus]

Originally posted by LokiDR
Tumble, DC 15 stops this pretty quick.

True. Although, Tumble seems to be the second-most-house-ruled thing in the game (first being Harm, of course). I mean, it's just ridiculous that someone in heavy armor and weapons in both hands can somersault for 35 feet (from one side of my threatened area to the other) nonstop without giving me an opening and without slowing their movement appreciably. The DC should definitely scale with distance.

Stand Still has no size limit, so it'd even work, in theory, on the Dragon flying past you, assuming he failed a DC 15 Fort save. Of course, then you're left with a frozen above your head... splat.

Spring Attack and Ride-By Attack, on the other hand, are effective counters to Stand Still.

Neither I nor any one I know use psionics, so I haven't seen Stand Still in action. Is there a non-psionic version?

Large 'n In Charge (S&F?) does the same thing, except no need for a Fort save I think (but only works on targets smaller than you? Don't have the book here), and there was some other unofficial book that had something similar.
Stand Still is the most balanced of these, IMHO; the target gets a Fort save, even though the DC gets huge (10+ damage?), it requires a WIS of 13 and a small power point reserve.
Psychic Warriors are fun.

 

[Shard O'Glase]

The comment about metal hafted axes and repairing axe hafts wasn't intended to be a house rule to shift the balance between melee and archery characters. It is a house rule that I'd allow but the purpose would be to make hafted weapons more viable vis a vis bladed weapons. If it modifies the archery balance as well, so be it.

I'm fully behind this idea. I hate that Axe weilders and the like are at a disadvantage for basically a styalistic choice Axe v sword without any mechanical advantage. (yeah, yeah real world life aint fair and balanced weapons don't need to be etc. but I want someone to use an Axe or whatever if they want to and not feel motivated to take a sword because they don't break as often)