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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Celebrim" data-source="post: 510490" data-attributes="member: 4937">"While making pincushions out of their friend as well, considering that grappled people have a 50/50 chnce of being the target of a ranged attack."Well, barring a quote otherwise I'm not aware of, I guess as a DM I'm within my rights to assign an equal chance of hitting a gargantuan (or colossal or whatever) creature and the medium sized creature that he has buried beneath his tentacles, but I think my players might rightfully think that I'm being more than a little unfair if I did so.   Such a rule makes a bit of sence if two medium sized creatures are rolling around on the ground, but as you are using it, it is just a kludge to fix a different problem.WizardDru: Well, I'm saying at least two things.  First, I'm saying that multishot and order of the bow initiate are highly broken, and peerless archers and deepwoods archers are slightly broken, and that in combination all these broken things added to what was already a powerful concept (an archer) make for some serious problems.      Secondly, I'm saying that even without the clearly balance wrecking things above, that the archer concept is just a little too optimal.   Rapid shot is one of the best feats in the game, and you have to ask yourself, why does D&D persist in allowing missile attacks (with a bow) to be done more often than melee attacks, given the ubsurdity of such a thing and the fact that no other system allows that.  Quite the contrary, GURPS for example makes it almost impossible to attack as often with a bow as you may with a balanced melee weapon.   Don't you think if you are going to be drawing an arrow, knocking it to a bow, drawing the bow, taking aim and firing, that a melee fighter is going to get quite a few good swings in on you in that time?   AoO go a little ways to solve this problem, but with 5' steps they are quite easily avoided, and the melee fighter is forced to do some quite complex meta-gaming (as is being discussed here) to get around the weaknesses in the rules and simply get the attacks he clearly deserves.   I defy anyone, know matter how good they are with the bow, to draw knock and comfortably fire a longbow while I'm taking swings at them with a baseball bat or katana.   Yet, the archer is under no particular penalty to hit when so engaged.   Then on top of that, the enhancement bonuses of arrows and bows stack, allowing archers to have comparitively higher BAB's.   And on top of that, the standard weapon feats stack with the archery feat chains, so that you can have both accurate shot AND weapon focus which only increases the lead the archer has.  Why isn't thier an accurate blow feat?  Why isn't thier a rapid attack feat?  Isn't it because such feats would be clearly too good?  Then why do we assume archers need such extra feats?  Is it because a ranged weapon is so useless?I'm not saying rapid shot needs to be done away with, only that maybe the penalties for being an archer in base to base contact with a melee attacker maybe aren't large enough.As a DM I find that a few good archers is the cure for any number of ills.   Flying monsters?  No problem, just keep your distance.   Monsters with gaze attacks?  No problem, just keep your distance.   Any monster with a dangerous attack?  No problem, just keep your distance.  Spell casters?  No problem, just ready your weapon.  Difficult terrain or barriers?  No problem, I wanted to keep my distance anyway.  Monsters with missile weapons of thier own?  Yikes! Scary, but no better solution than a better missile weapon of your own.   There is no end of tactical problems that I've tried to throw at parties that was solved simply by filling the threat full of arrows (often in the first round or two).  It gets to be pretty uncinematic and anticlimatic.Yes, there are a few counters to archers that when they work control the problem fairly well, but why should I make every encounter one that cripples the archer?  What fun is that for me or the archer?  And if I don't make encounters designed to cripple the archers, I'm pretty certain that in most cases the collective archery fire of the party is going to make it a non-event in a hurry - the more so if the party were to ever decide to twink out.I'm not saying the sky is falling or anything, just thinking that maybe the -4 'into melee' penalty should applied when the target is threatening the archer and not just an ally of something like that (that and certain prestige classes were not good ideas).</blockquote>

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