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Message: <blockquote data-quote="jgsugden" data-source="post: 1340725" data-attributes="member: 2629">Yes and no. The calculations remain the same, but those calculations do not reveal how useful that feat is going to be in a campaign unless you put them in context.As another gross example. How valuable is the improved rapid shot feat in a campaign that doesn't aloow bows? How valuable is it in a campaign where the only manufactured weapons are bows? Are you likely to see such a massive shift in the utility of this feat between campaigns that are acutally played? No, but you will see a lot of variance that will result in a significant difference in how useful this feat is going to be.Does your DM throw armies of low level stuff at your party instead of one big creature? If so, this feat is less useful as these smaller creatures tend to have an AC that you hit with a 2, even with the penalty for RS.Does the DM throw monsters at you the force you to move a lot during combat? If so, this feat is less useful as you only have a standard action to fire your bow instead of a full round to use rapid shot.Does the DM throw a lot of high AC foes at you? Does the DM use small dungeon areas that make archery difficult? Etc ...The numbers remain the same, but we're looking at balance which is a function of more than just the numbers. A feat that grants a huge benefit, but may only be used rarely might be balanced with a feat that grants a small benefit at all times.To an extent, this is true when analyzing the balance of any feat or ability, but in the case of archery, it tends to be more true than usual. The effectiveness of archery as a combat tool is tied very closely to campaign design. If a DM puts a winding corridor into the game, archery will be very difficult in that passage. In the end, unless we can figure out how often a PC will be able to use a full round action to attack his foe compared to the time other PCs would have time to act, we really can't figure out how useful this feat will be. The same, to a good extent, can be said about rapid shot. I've been in sections of a campaign where archery was useless. I've also played in entire campaigns where an archer could use a full attack action in almost every round.The only way to figure out if this feat is abusive in your game is to try it out. Play a few sessions. If the archer has the feat, keep track of the times he hit because he has the feat. If he doesn't have the feat, keep track of the number of times (during a rapid shot) that he would have hit if he had the feat. During this time, keep track of the total number of rounds of combat as well to help put your other results in context. Look at those results and see how useful the feat has been. And if you don't have an archer ... why the heck do you care enough to have read this much of this thread?</blockquote>

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