D&D 4E Looks like 4e's combat is closer, and I LIKE it!!

[Raduin711]

While practical range limit may be true (because of the nature of close combat without any sights or visual aids), the speed of an arrow leaving a bow is in excess of 70 yards per second, which means no one's "getting out of the way" of an arrow that easily; you'd better already have cover.

Yards per second doesn't mean much to me...

1 mile =1760 yards

70 yards per sec = 4200 yards/minute = 252000 yards/hour = 143.18 mph.

That's pretty damn fast. But I do doubt that arrows can maintain that speed for very long. I am no physics student, and I don't know how much air resistance slows down an arrow, or at what rate. But I think if you know the arrow is coming, you can do things to throw off the archer's aim... it is hard to fire at a moving target, while accounting for the speed of the projectile, even if it is very fast.

The whole reason longbowmen shoot an an arc is because they can only fire the arrow so far in a straight line, before gravity and air sucks the arrow down. essentially they fire it up in the air, high enough that gravity, rather than the archer's strength, pulls the arrow down.

 

[Fallen Seraph]

I love it too.

It works so well for my type of combat, where it is quite cinematic but also quite gritty and dirty. Lots of close combat wailing on the opponent while falling the muck, but at the sametime there is stuff with doing back-flips while on the top of a train and fighting on it, or in a alley, etc.

So it serves both my purposes quite well

 

[Henry]

Yards per second doesn't mean much to me...

1 mile =1760 yards

70 yards per sec = 4200 yards/minute = 252000 yards/hour = 143.18 mph.

That's pretty damn fast. But I do doubt that arrows can maintain that speed for very long. I am no physics student, and I don't know how much air resistance slows down an arrow, or at what rate. But I think if you know the arrow is coming, you can do things to throw off the archer's aim... it is hard to fire at a moving target, while accounting for the speed of the projectile, even if it is very fast.

The whole reason longbowmen shoot an an arc is because they can only fire the arrow so far in a straight line, before gravity and air sucks the arrow down. essentially they fire it up in the air, high enough that gravity, rather than the archer's strength, pulls the arrow down.

All true, but I'm only talking about in the first second. In one second, it's not likely to experience appreciable decrease to matter. In one second, it's definitely going well past the range of any battlemat, so it's not worth worrying about to me. Besides, I'm violating Hong's Third Law all over the place, so I'll leave it with "30-40 yards works for me."

 

[jdeyonke]

I'm with the OP on this one. The closer combat is much cooler. Granted, in the Delves I played at the Experience you really had no choice but to be in close. We learned the death and dying rules real fast Without second wind and surges every party I played would have been wiped out in the first round or two.
I played the Wizard in the longer preview. His max spell range was 20 squares, but most abilities were ten. He tried his best to stay away from the action, as did the ranger, but that didn't work out so well.

 

[ppaladin123]

Yards per second doesn't mean much to me...

1 mile =1760 yards

70 yards per sec = 4200 yards/minute = 252000 yards/hour = 143.18 mph.

That's pretty damn fast. But I do doubt that arrows can maintain that speed for very long. I am no physics student, and I don't know how much air resistance slows down an arrow, or at what rate. But I think if you know the arrow is coming, you can do things to throw off the archer's aim... it is hard to fire at a moving target, while accounting for the speed of the projectile, even if it is very fast.

The whole reason longbowmen shoot an an arc is because they can only fire the arrow so far in a straight line, before gravity and air sucks the arrow down. essentially they fire it up in the air, high enough that gravity, rather than the archer's strength, pulls the arrow down.

We can figure this out....Take a pencil or something similar and drop it straight down from around nose level (where the arrow would be fired). It takes only about 1 second to hit the ground (depending on how tall you are). If you fire an arrow straight rather than at an arc it will hit the ground one second later....that makes the effective range of a sniper shot much less than 70 yards (assuming the 70yrd/sec and no serious wind resistance) unless you are trying to hit someone in the thigh or foot. 35-40 yards sounds a lot more reasonable. You can certainly get farther by firing at an arc but that is not a precision shot. Long range bow combat is only effective in volleys then.

EDIT: so, beyond 60-70 yrds it isn't an issue of how fast the arrow is going or moving out of the way....the arrow is going to hit the ground before it even reaches you.

 

[AverageCitizen]

While practical range limit may be true (because of the nature of close combat without any sights or visual aids), the speed of an arrow leaving a bow is in excess of 70 yards per second, which means no one's "getting out of the way" of an arrow that easily; you'd better already have cover.

Paintballs generally travel at 300 fps, which is faster than that, and I have dodged them when the shooter was a little way off. I'm not sure how far, probably between 30-60 yards. Its not easy, its not like I'm a ninja, but a lot of the time you can just duck or weave a little bit. Granted, they are moving a little to fast to actually step out of the way, generally.

EDIT: Ah, Celebrim said pretty much the same thing. Good show, chap.

 

[kennew142]

Count me in the group that's happy about closing the ranges a little bit.

I really like wizards and sorcerers, but I am embarrassed sometimes at how far away from a battle I can stand (or fly) and control the battlefield. Given how tactical 3e combat was, I don't see how it can be moreso in 4e. I look forward to seeing how they've finally managed to make the casters less overwhelming in gameplay. Reducing the range of combat will go a long way towards that goal.

 

[Gort]

ISTR a quote from somewhere that the practical range limit for a bow is about 30 yards, because any more than that and the target can just step out of the way of the arrow.

Think I have to take issue with that - an arrow coming head-on to you is almost invisible. When firing at targets, it's a common injury for people to get poked in the eye by the rear end of arrows sticking out of the target, because they're so hard to see head-on.

But yeah, you'd have to be some kind of wire-guided laser-archer to be able to hit people reliably at the ranges D&D allows. The idea that an archer at 200 yards is as dangerous as a comparable swordsman at 2 is pretty much ludicrous.

Another thing that needs to die is the ability of archers to fire at close-combat distances. Bows are fiddly and precise machines - you could just brush it out of someone's hand in melee, and basically destroy it if you used a weapon. Plus, the idea that you'd let someone just back up five feet and shoot you is also ridiculous.

 

[AverageCitizen]

Think I have to take issue with that - an arrow coming head-on to you is almost invisible. When firing at targets, it's a common injury for people to get poked in the eye by the rear end of arrows sticking out of the target, because they're so hard to see head-on.

Well, thats just the shaft and the fletching, cause the head would be buried in the target. Plus target arrows don't even have a head, really. If you can see a paintball comin atcha, I'm pretty sure you could see an arrow.

Another thing that needs to die is the ability of archers to fire at close-combat distances. Bows are fiddly and precise machines - you could just brush it out of someone's hand in melee, and basically destroy it if you used a weapon. Plus, the idea that you'd let someone just back up five feet and shoot you is also ridiculous.

Yeah. Also bows are tricky at close ranges, because the arrow tends to jump up a few feet right as it leaves the bow. Aiming at point blank range is completely different.

 

[Lord Zardoz]

My understanding is that when used as a weapon of war, the tactic of choice was area bombardment with massed fire, rather than any attempt to hit a specific target past a minimal range. Given say 40 or 50 archers and a large number of combatants, that makes sense.

A single archer against a single target is probably a much lower range of being reasonably effective for the typical archer though.

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