Is A Thrown Weapon Ever a Ranged Weapon?

[DracoSuave]

Hmm ... not exactly a "ranged" attack, but I found a way to give a sword user melee reach 5.

Blade of the Eldritch Knight (AV2 p114)

Hmm ... I'm gonna look at chaladin, now.

I like this plan. While you do that, I'm going to design some ghost, grunt, sorcerer, and lobber minions.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

I find that it's much more cost-effective to have a non-magical ranged back up weapon and a few augmenting whetstones of an appropriate level.

Well, it isn't a bad thought, but there are some downsides. First it won't return, so you'll have to carry at least 3-4 javelins. That isn't a really big deal except of course now you need 3-4 whetstones. It would be OK for the "I want to mark someone way over there" situation but not the "I need to attack that flying creature raining death on the party" situation where you need to be able to keep repeating the attack.

Really, a 5 levels below you plain old magic weapon isn't that expensive. Every 5 levels or so you use Enchant Item to upgrade it by one plus. You'll hardly make much of a dent in your potion budget. Fighters really don't have a huge number of other uses for their monetary loot that are that much better anyway.

 

[chitzk0i]

The sword hurler paladin just needs to upgrade to a farbond spellblade bastard sword. d10, baby!

 

[Zaran]

So, rogue targets 9 enemies with Blinding Barrage. If he uses a nonmagical shuriken, he needs 9 of them. If he uses a magical shuriken, he needs only one (it either bounces off enemies, or return and is thrown with blinding speed).

I hate this so much. I realize it's to make it so one doesn't have to invest too much of their allotted loot to perform powers like this but it just totally crushes believability. What I do is allow the player to use a magical item's bonus on any weapon used in the attack. (for Blinding Barrage, one could use a magical blade with 8 other blades for the same to hit and damage.) This gives reason to the knife master who carries many blades about his body. I would still let the magical blade return at the end of the attack though ( don't like it much but the game is set up so the player needs their magical weapons to succeed.)

What really gets me is the fact that a rogue can use a hand crossbow for this attack to attack 9 targets. loading it in between attacks 8 times after the first all in one STandard action.

While the power itself is a great form of attack, it's too much for my simulationist ways.

 

[Danceofmasks]

Well, it is a blast attack ... since every target takes the same damage (unless you sneak attack somebody), you could look at it this way:
The rogue throws one magic shuriken. It splits into 9 and recombines.
Hey, it's magic.
I mean ... you could use a thrown weapon with the Ranger 1 daily Split the Tree ... you use the same attack roll there!

Also, I been thinking about the stupid sword throwing paladin, and I'm gonna go silly-like.
Build: Yellow (as in coward) Valkyrie.
Magic thrown sword. Either a drow long knife or a farbond spellblade as chitzk0i mentioned earlier.
Contagious challenge.
Half-Elf MC bard to *cough* pick up twin strike + versatile master + combat virtuoso.
Stat dump wis to 8, and invest in dex.
Champion of Corellon for silly amounts of AC .. and increased movement speed in plate.

Idea is to Divine Challenge foes in the middle of a clump, twin strike to mark (with divine sanction) two other foes adjacent to it, then use the run action to piss bolt around the corner (or graceful step over difficult terrain .. whatever to get out of dodge).

It will be the most hilarious paladin ever.

Actually, it looks to me like elegant strike + graceful step already makes champions of corellon play somewhat skirmish-like.

Edit:
Oooh, and on the subsequent round, peek round the corner and throw sword again ... if someone gets bloodied or dropped, shift 1 square back into total cover.
Muahahaha.