Implementation and balance of ranged weapons

[Mishihari Lord]

Honestly, ranged weapons have never been a problem in a game I've played. They are what they are and the players adapt their tactics accordingly.

In D&D, shooting from range is great if you don't have another option, but spells are always better, and melee attacks do more damage. You can't really run and shoot at the same time (I'm not totally up on the latest editions, but in real life I'm a pretty good archer and there's no way I could run and shoot at the same time, much less pull an arrow and nock it) so if a melee fighter chases you, you only have a couple of options: run and don't shoot (you're neutralized), drop the bow and pull your sword (you're in melee now), or shoot at the guy while he melees you (you're dogmeat). All of these options seem reasonable and fine.

 

[Argyle King]

In some settings (the UK, China), even non-military weapons are even hard to have legally. In very particular settings (say, a passenger air plane) any weapon at all might be difficult to have.

Isn't visibility the bane of ranged weapons? That, and friendly fire, are (somewhat) limiting factors.

Thx!

TomB

To an extent, yes. It depends upon what the reasons for limited visibility are. If my friends are in the way, that limits me. If the problem is that the lights are off in the next room, but I'm reasonably sure there is a large group of enemies in there, I can spray and pray.

Honestly, ranged weapons have never been a problem in a game I've played. They are what they are and the players adapt their tactics accordingly.

In D&D, shooting from range is great if you don't have another option, but spells are always better, and melee attacks do more damage. You can't really run and shoot at the same time (I'm not totally up on the latest editions, but in real life I'm a pretty good archer and there's no way I could run and shoot at the same time, much less pull an arrow and nock it) so if a melee fighter chases you, you only have a couple of options: run and don't shoot (you're neutralized), drop the bow and pull your sword (you're in melee now), or shoot at the guy while he melees you (you're dogmeat). All of these options seem reasonable and fine.

In D&D 3rd and D&D 4th (the editions I'm most familiar with,) making a ranged attack takes the same kind of action that making a melee attack does. Moving and then firing a bow works perfectly fine. I believe so anyway; my knowledge of 3rd is currently more rusty than my knowledge of 4th.

While it's been a while since I've played 4th, I don't believe you take any kind of penalty for firing through spaces occupied by allies. I'm not even sure if the enemy line does much more than giving a minor penalty for firing upon things behind them.

In other games I play, that is not the case.

 

[tomBitonti]

To an extent, yes. It depends upon what the reasons for limited visibility are. If my friends are in the way, that limits me. If the problem is that the lights are off in the next room, but I'm reasonably sure there is a large group of enemies in there, I can spray and pray.

In D&D 3rd and D&D 4th (the editions I'm most familiar with,) making a ranged attack takes the same kind of action that making a melee attack does. Moving and then firing a bow works perfectly fine. I believe so anyway; my knowledge of 3rd is currently more rusty than my knowledge of 4th.

While it's been a while since I've played 4th, I don't believe you take any kind of penalty for firing through spaces occupied by allies. I'm not even sure if the enemy line does much more than giving a minor penalty for firing upon things behind them.

In other games I play, that is not the case.

Visibility includes problems of simple darkness or cover. I think that is more of an issue for ranged other than short range. There is still the problem of shooting someone from across the room, where neither is as likely to be a problem.

There is an extra issue, which is that many games (certainly D&D) rather reduce the lethality of all attacks. That is a problem for handling modern firearms in that reducing their lethality just doesn't fit our sensibilities. We want to make guns very damaging. But, if we make guns very damaging, we really should make other weapons correspondingly lethal: A knife to the gut is debilitating. Many cuts should be debilitating in a short amount of time. That extra lethality would turn D20 into a whole different game.

For D&D, a problem of ranged weapons is that getting the same damage output as a melee combatant, without resorting to somewhat fringe feat and class selection, is usually not possible.

D20 assigns a penalty to shooting in melee, unless a feat is taken (but many PCs, and not just those who specialized in ranged combat) will take the feat. (The penalty is -4 on a D20 roll, a large penalty.)

Opponents provide cover:

http://www.d20srd.org/srd/combat/combatModifiers.htm

Soft Cover

Creatures, even your enemies, can provide you with cover against ranged attacks, giving you a +4 bonus to AC. However, such soft cover provides no bonus on Reflex saves, nor does soft cover allow you to make a Hide check.

There is no rule for accidentally hitting another target, although, you could house rule that in. Mostly, this is ignored because of the complexity it would introduce.

Thx!

TomB

 

[Janx]

Here's another way to look at it.

A while back I was playing with a design for a miniatures game, and trying to assign point values for the different pieces.

One of the factors in my consideration was making the point cost appropriate to the combat effectiveness of the piece.

So if a you had 100 points of archers and I had 100 points of swordsmen, they should have a 50:50 chance of beating the other.

The key to that, in my thinking, was the range at which combat begins. Barring specific situational concerns, that was when one side enters the other's hittable range (ex. the archers can hit you at 100 feet).

From there, for 10 archers, how many swordsmen can make it to melee range with the archers?

And from there, how many remaining swordsmen does it take to have a 50:50 chance to kill the archers?

Assuming this logic results in "game balance" and that "game balance" is a good thing, I've got to play around with how many men on both sides, damage values, to-hit values, range and movement speed, until I get to this mythical 50:50 success ratio.

And all that means is that both pieces are valued properly so that in a generic combat, barring any situational advantage or tactical advantage from the player, that it's a fair fight.

In D&D, the concern is likely to not make one an overwhelming advantage of the other (ex. bows do 2d10, swords do 1d8) and to crank up the purchase cost a bit for the better weapon (a bow will let you hit the enemy a few more times for free, before he closes with you).

In terms of real life lethality, the right weapon in the hand of a person trained to use it in a situation that is not disadvantageous to use is equally lethal to any other weapon in its appropriate usage scenaro.

A swordman can kill you quite quickly in a sword fight. An archer can kill you quite quickly in a bow fight. A gunman can kill you quite quickly in a gun fight.

So in nearly any rule-system, it is mostly correct design to make them all do mostly the same damage.

A ranged weapon almost always has the advantage when the fight starts at range, so that's inherent in this model.

The disadvantage a ranged weapon has is a crowded/cover-ful battlefield (friendly fire/blocked LOS) or extreme close range (shooting you at 5 feet is still easy). Shooting you at 6 inches means we are likely grappling for my gun, and you may get it from me.

So making sure you enforce the disadvantages of a ranged weapon would be a "realistic" game balancer.

If after that, everybody still always carries and uses a ranged weapon first and foremost, then so be it.

Personally, since I started D&D, my PC always carried a ranged, melee, and extreme close range weapon (bow, sword, dagger/knife).

 

[Quartz]

ISTM that there are two main types of ranged weapon: the close-range weapons which depend on being thrown (spear, dart, axe, rocks, improvised weapons) and the distance weapons which depend upon equipment (bow, atlatl, maybe siege weapons). As such the two groups should be treated separately. How you treat them differently, I leave to better minds.

 

[Vyvyan Basterd]

I prefer D&D's take on balance between melee and ranged.

Range Increments: Yes, these are shorter than the true range of the weapon. But it models the effectiveness of your shot. Your character is shooting one or two arrows at range. The liklihood of connecting with a meaningful hit seems low. The military archers are firing hundreds of arrows into a tight formation with each volley. Even this wouldn't result in hundreds of fallen soldiers in a single volley IRL.

Movement: Sure, archers can move and shoot, but melee characters can charge. You want to fire and flee? The guy not aiming the bow is gonna run up and catch you.

The other aspects of the various D&D systems help simulate action-adventure, which I prefer.

 

[Janx]

I prefer D&D's take on balance between melee and ranged.

Range Increments: Yes, these are shorter than the true range of the weapon. But it models the effectiveness of your shot. Your character is shooting one or two arrows at range. The liklihood of connecting with a meaningful hit seems low. The military archers are firing hundreds of arrows into a tight formation with each volley. Even this wouldn't result in hundreds of fallen soldiers in a single volley IRL.

Movement: Sure, archers can move and shoot, but melee characters can charge. You want to fire and flee? The guy not aiming the bow is gonna run up and catch you.

The other aspects of the various D&D systems help simulate action-adventure, which I prefer.

As a side discussion on effectiveness, I've got a guy who "could" have been an Olympic archer (could as in life got in the way, but the skills exist). A could-have been Olympic archer is an order of magnitude better than my friend who's really good at bow hunting.

He plays LARPs that have bow rules. he dominates the battlefield. His team supports his position with shields and he positions himself to take the shots he needs, so he can move and shoot.

In the LARP, he would be the corner case that may make you think the archery rules are broken. because a bow in his hands, even with a limit of FIVE arrows is more than enough.

The other players using bows, often have never really shot a bow, let alone gotten ridiculously good at it. They hit at best 50% of the time, and usually much worse.

In contrast, he never misses. He is known for picking a jerky player on the other team and hammering arrows into the same unprotected rib all weekend so the guy has to get ribs wrapped.

I couldn't tell you where that translates into D&D. Or how he compares to a stereotypical English longbowman who spent all his time practicing.

But I would suggest to expect better performance from real life examples than not.

Skilled archers can easily account for range by arcing the shot. They are eyeballing the calculations a sniper makes to account for range, velocity and wind.

Therefore, I would not assume that a large volley of arrows was shot with the intent to get lucky by volume. Odds are good, many of those shots are going to hit EXACTLY where the archer intended.

 

[Vyvyan Basterd]

As a side discussion on effectiveness, I've got a guy who "could" have been an Olympic archer (could as in life got in the way, but the skills exist). A could-have been Olympic archer is an order of magnitude better than my friend who's really good at bow hunting.

In contrast, he never misses. He is known for picking a jerky player on the other team and hammering arrows into the same unprotected rib all weekend so the guy has to get ribs wrapped.

The skill of the target comes into question as well. And a "hit" with a blunt arrow against a soft target doesn't necessarily translate to an effectively damaging hit against an armored target. The D&D take on it in no way models real life, but it gets within action-adventure range of it well enough for me.

 

[Janx]

The skill of the target comes into question as well. And a "hit" with a blunt arrow against a soft target doesn't necessarily translate to an effectively damaging hit against an armored target. The D&D take on it in no way models real life, but it gets within action-adventure range of it well enough for me.

If he can keep hitting a guy in the same small rib with a tennis ball on the end of the arrow, imagine a proper arrow aimed at the armpit joint where there's no plating to protect that is exposed every time you raise your sword to hack a foe. And bear in mind, in a LARP, these are 20-30 pound draws. A "real" bow is going to be more powerful with a more aerodynamic arrow.

I'm perfectly happy with D&D's combat "unrealism" as well.

What I caution is under-estimating combat effectiveness of things.

At least some archers were VERY good shots

At least some knights in full plate were very strong, agile and nimble

At least some melee fighters were very good with their weapon


Also keep in mind, we've seen Mythbusters try to rush a bowman and try to block an arrow. It's not easy.

 

[Argyle King]

Also keep in mind, we've seen Mythbusters try to rush a bowman and try to block an arrow. It's not easy.

Not easy, but certainly within the realm of possibility; especially with training. There are specific military tactics which were designed specifically for a melee unit to get close to archers. There's also a big difference between sport shooting and shooting during combat.