Improved Rapid Shot feat

[jgsugden]

Some more issues to consider:

3.5 Archery tends to do less damage than melee combat. A feat that bumps archery up a bit is not necessarily a bad thing.

Melee attacks can exchange a bonus to hit for a bonus to damage (via the common feat, power attack). Archery (with the exception of manysnot which may not be combined with rapid shot) can not make this type of exchange ... so the extra amount by which you hit is completely irrelevant. Hitting by 2 or hitting by 12 is the same thing for any given hit.

Archers face an eatra limitation: arrows. They can only have so many arrows at the ready at a given time. Each quiver holds 20 arrows. If an archer is firing off 5 arrows per round, he goes through a quiver in 4 rds. In long battles, the arrows may run out before the enemies do ... Heck, an efficient quiver only holds 60 arrows. Sure, a bag of holding can carry thousands of arrows rather easily, but fetching those arrows in combat can be a hassle. Also, against certain foes, having the right type of arrow on hand may prove difficult. Getting silver, cold-iron and adamantine arrows is easier than getting a melee weapon made of the same material, but you tend to run out of them quickly if you hit a pocket of monsters with that type of DR.

Archery faces penalties that rarely, if ever, effect melee fighters: Cover, range and the penalty for shooting into melee combat. Cover and vs. melee penalties can be negated by feats, but that is not without cost.

 

[Elric]

I agree with jgsugden. I would also like to point out that Rapid Shot is almost always used when you have base attack +5 or less. By the time you get to +11, though, -2 to hit on 3 attacks may not be worth an extra attack at a -2 penalty against relatively tough opponents. Improved Rapid Shot makes it so that your Rapid Shot feat never becomes useless against strong foes at high levels.

If you were only allowed to take Weapon Focus: Longbow or Improved Rapid Shot, which one would you take? If you find that Manyshot is a useless feat, Weapon Focus is probably better unless you are a ranger. Of course, the problem is power creep- your character can get both of these feats and that may be overpowered.

 

[Nail]

If no one has problems with a 9th level Monk, would they feel better about IRS with a Prereq of BAB +9?

The difficulty with the 9th level Monk analogy is that a monk and an archer are not comparable, really. One has to run up and engage in melee, the other does not. The risk/reward ratio is not equal.

"Removing the penalty" is a bonus, and at ACs appropriate for PCs of that level, it is significant. It's true that some of the monsters in the MM in the CR 6 - 9 range have very low ACs (14-16), but that neglects a major type of villian: humanoids with class levels. What's the AC of that 5th level Lizard folk attacking them? How about the ever-deadly halfling ninjas?

Still, this bears some numerical scrutiny. I'm out of time today....anyone else?

 

[jgsugden]

As a side effect of the Manyshot prerequisite, only rangers or fighters can get IRS at 6th level (when they gain 2 feats each, effectively) as single class characters. All other classes have to wait until 9th.

 

[Nail]

.... By the time you get to +11, though, -2 to hit on 3 attacks may not be worth an extra attack at a -2 penalty against relatively tough opponents.

Errr...nope.

It scales quite nicely with level. In fact, you may notice that AC does not keep up with CR, by any stretch. Especially at CR 11+.

 

[jgsugden]

I hate to say it (because I love to use math to prove my points), but any number bashing on the efficiency of IRS will be fairly useless. So many campaign and character specific issues will have a dramatic effect on the subject.

I think the thing to do is to start keeping track of the efficiency of one archer in a game. If the character has IRS, see how many time he hits by 2 or less (or confirms a crit by 2 or less) on a rapid attack. If he doesn't have it, see how many times he would have hit if he did have IRS. That'll give you an indication of the value of the feat in your campaign setting.

 

[Elric]

Errr...nope.

It scales quite nicely with level. In fact, you may notice that AC does not keep up with CR, by any stretch. Especially at CR 11+.

That may be the case for you, but I have a rat-bastard DM!

 

[Crothian]

really it depends on the creatures, dragons have a fair AC for their CR most the time as do some other creatures.

 

[RigaMortus]

My Ranger is almost lvl 5 now, and I am having a hard time deciding what feat to pick at lvl 6... It is a toss up between IRS and IFE. I was going to go with IFE as it is applied to all your favored enemies, but now ya'll got me considering getting IRS first, heh... Decissions, decissions...

I also think Manyshot kind of sucks too. The only use I see for it is if you need/want to fire and move, otherwise there is no point to ever use MS over RS. Unless I am missing something...?

 

[James McMurray]

Manyshot is much better for disrupting enemy spellcasters than Rapid Shot will ever hope to be. Heck, whenever you're readying an action, you'll be glad you had manyshot.