Improved Rapid Shot feat

[two]

Yo

Hey thanks for running the numbers!

A number of things to consider: bracers of archery, minor and major, give to hit and damage bonuses that are, generally, unavailable to melee folks.

Plus, the big point:

Archers in my experience get far more than one extra shot over their melee counterparts.

Meaning, for every "full attack" that a melee guy gets, typically an archer gets 2 (on average). I think this is actually conservative.

"Normal" Battle, for party prepared for something. (given your sample PCs).

Round1 -- See bad guys at 50'. Archer does full attack. Fighters charge.

Archer: 3 attacks. Fighter: 1 attack.


Round2 -- Melee types engage, full attack. Archer full attack. Archer gets 3 attacks, melee guy 2.


Round3 -- Fighter killed whatever it was it was facing the previous round, moves/charges to get to next guy (typically they are not neatly lined up). Melee attacks once, archer 3 times.

Total so far: Archer 9 attacks, Melee guy 4.

Etc.

Plus, it often happens with melee guys that there is a lot of wasted overflow damage done, while an archer can simply target another bad guy (if the 1st arrow kills something). A fighter doing a full attack that kills it on swing1, well, he's done unless something else is within 5'.

All these niggly little things add up, in my experience, in a big way: more full attacks, auto-targeting, ranged safety, etc. When you throw haste into the mix, archers are helped disproportionatly (they take more full attack actions), etc. etc.

This is my playing experience; in a narrow twisty no-line-of-sight dungeon archers are very suboptimal. But, we don't come across that situation as much as other situations -- by far.

Just my impressions --

What do you think the full attack ratio is, ranged vs. melee?

2 for 1? 1 for 1? 2.5 for 1? 3 for 1?

 

[Darklone]

You can't say that for sure. The archer in our group is a druid, so she has a suboptimal BAB and casts now and then.

Taking Manyshot into account kills all calculations as well since it rocks for surprise rounds where the tanks usually don't act at all (while the rangers and druids with their abyssally high Spot checks do) or have to move into position...

 

[two]

Yeah, but what does your gut say?

I know there are too many factors to calculate reliably, but, in your gut, what do you feel?

Given your gaming experience, how often do archers full attack? How often do melee guys?

Sum up all battles in memory, divide, process, result = it's easy. Right.

 

[Nail]

Yep, it's easy

I know there are too many factors to calculate reliably, but, in your gut, what do you feel?

I feel like melee fighters get the short end o' th' stick on this one.

I spent the last 10 minutes fussing with what happens at higher levels, what happens if you add in bracers of archery, what happens if the weapons do "energy" damage unstead of the +1 or +2 to attack (+2d6 holy damage!).

Bottom Line: Great sword still does more damage on a full attack at low ACs (15 - 23). Archers do more damage at high ACs (30+).

But, as many have said, that's in an ideal situation: Full attack, a foe with lots of hp, etc. And even in that ideal situation, I'd prefer to be the archer, doing less damage. Why?

Read my lips: "No New Wounds"

'Cause, really: you don't think the enemies in base-to-base contact are just standing there, do you? Who's gonna be down on the floor, bleeding to death, by round 4?

In that kinda race, the archer is happy to lose.

 

[Nail]

....and as long as I'm ruminating on this, here's a thought:

Some DMs don't run battles well. The enemies ambush from too far away, all encounters start from 60' away, enemies ignore the "back row" in favor of those in front.....

In a typical dungeon with 10' wide halls and 30' x 30' rooms, it's no wonder the archer is always able to do his maximized schtick.

In campaigns I like, underground exploration (ruined temple or natural caverns) is always cramped and twisted. Underground, especially if the archer is in back, the archer is unlikely to be in a optimized setting for his attacks. In that case, the melee fighter is best.

<EDIT> One more thing: I've compared the absolute best melee weapon vs the bow. If your melee monster isn't using a greatsword.....then he is doing less damage, and therefore loses to the archer every time.

So: any style other than greatsword loses to bow because of the feat Improved Rapid Shot. Is that a good thing?

 

[Nail]

Taking Manyshot into account kills all calculations as well ..

Nope, the calculations can do that too.

Melee: Charge + Power Attack = More damage than Manyshot

Next!

 

[Korak]

Allow me to add the damage figures for the greatsword fighter with Power Attack included. I have a fun power attack spreadsheet that I developed for my high level melee characters to optimize my power attack selections. I am slowly generalizing it for any melee setup. It still requires a little tweaking when considering new setups, but anyway... here is the optimized damage for the fighter Nail mentioned earlier when he uses power attack to its fullest.

AC  -  PA  -  GS  -  Bow
10  -   8  -  87  -   39
11  -   9  -  84  -   39
12  -   9  -  82  -   39
13  -   9  -  79  -   39
14  -   9  -  77  -   39
15  -   8  -  73  -   39
16  -   7  -  69  -   39
17  -   6  -  65  -   39
18  -   5  -  61  -   39
19  -   4  -  58  -   39
20  -   3  -  54  -   39
21  -   2  -  50  -   38
22  -   1  -  46  -   37
23 to 38, PA for 0
39+ PA for 9

The THF really outshine the archers in taking out lower AC opponents. It really isn't even a contest.

I may post hasted numbers, charging numbers for the GS, and a higher level comparison later if people care for it.

Also, people have argued that the archer is getting more full attacks... are none of the enemies in your games moving past the tanks to engage the archers/casters? Sure, if no enemies pressure the archers to make them move, they will get more full attacks, but those are not terribly intelligent opponents.

 

[DrSpunj]

Next!

Okay, I've probably done something wrong with this, but here's the Excel sheet I threw together this morning. It starts out with Nail's basic assumptions and 100% Full Attacks for both the Melee Master & the Archer. However, it also allows you to manipulate a few things like the percentage of Single Attacks vs Charge Attacks (Assumption: the +2 AB you get from Charging you convert with Power Attack to +4 damage) vs Full Attacks so you can see how the numbers change.

I've added a relatively "basic" critical damage component (like a range of 19-20/x2 gets you double damage 10% of the time), and the formulas at the bottom that figure out damage won't take into account more than 2 base attacks (though I'll probably go back and add a 3rd and 4th base attack to account for BABs greater than 9 at some point), but I added enough function that you can change the Ability scores, Magic Items/Weapons, how much to Power Attack, +/- WF/WS/GWF, Average Weapon Damage, Crit Range, Crit Damage, whether or not PBS is included in the Archer calculations (though it's either in or out of all of them), etc.

It's not very pretty, and doesn't use menus and such, but I *think* it works. Please let me know if you find errors. I've highlighted the cells in gray that you can change, the rest of them are formulas or alter my basic assumptions.

I did use this to compare a lot of situations, and I don't think IRS is overpowered, but that's a gestalt. As Nail posted above, this is currently set up to compare a Greatsword wielder with Improved Critical to an Archer with IRS. You can change it to look at a variety of Melee Masters and the outcome doesn't change much: Melee Master better at low ACs, Archer better at high ACs (usually >30).

Thanks.

DrSpunj

 

[Nail]

For those of you with an excel spreadsheet:

The formula for critical hits simplifies to:
1 + A*(B-1) -->the "Critical hit confirmation Eqn"

where

• "A" is the chance to critical (a 19-20 range means a 10% chance), and
• "B" is the critical multiplier (so a greataxe, at x3, has a crit. multiplier of 3.)

The funny thing is, you just multiply that (above) with the "normal" average damage per round to get the total damage, including criticals. I always have thought that's weird....... It works out to 10% extra damage from either a greatsword or a greataxe.

Anyway: to calculate average damage from 1 attack you use the following formula:

Ave. Dam.= C * D * (1+ A*(B-1))

where:

• "C" is the chance to hit the opponent, and
• "D" is the average damage per hit.

So........
In an excel spreadsheet, the cell equation will be:

MIN(0.95, MAX((21-$A12+D$7)*0.05,0.05))*B$7*$C$7

where:

• "$A12" is the opponent's AC,
• "D$7" is the attacker's attack bonus,
• "B$7" is the attacker's average damage per attack, and
• "$C$7" is the critical confirm calculation.

Scared off yet?

 

[Korak]

Well, here is my power attack spreadsheet for giggles. This version is tweaked for the 2 attack character with 9 base attack. I have been spurred by this thread to fully generalize it. That will be forthcoming.

In this version you can account for sneak attack damage and various critical multipliers and threat ranges. It will also properly implement bane damage, but not the added bonus to hit the baned enemy, so remember to manually add 2 to the attack bonus if you are calculating versus a bane enemy. Place a 1 in the parameters field for sneak attack, bane damage, or elemental weapon properties and enter the average damage roll to indicate when that damage is appropriate, and a 0 in those fields when the target is not subject to that type of damage. eg. If our example fighter had a +3 flaming greatsword it would look like this:

Parameters	
Attack Bonus	21
Damage Bonus	15
Average Weapon Damage	7
Power Attack Multiplier	2
Fierce Bonus	0
Subject to Sneak/Bane Attacks	0
Average Sneak/Bane Damage	0
Subject to Elemental Attacks	1
Average Elemental Damage	3.5
Subject to Critical Hits	1
Threat Range	17
Critical Multiplier	2