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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Pax" data-source="post: 507718" data-attributes="member: 6875">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.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.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.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, 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.</blockquote>

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