Making it harder to be hit against ranged attacks...

[RigaMortus]

Imagine if you will a party of adventurers travelling down a deserted highway at night. Suddenly and without warining they are ambushed from afar by goblins, shooting arrows at them with their shortbows. Sure you could fire back, but it would be hard to hit under the cover of night. So what is a party to do? Advance as quickly as possible and engage them in melee combat. But to do this, you will surely get pelted with arrows along the way.

How do we minimize this? Simple... Just attempt to hit your fellow traveller next to you. Vola! You are now in melee combat and the goblins get a -4 to hit you. Does this make sense? No, not really. Is it legal in game terms? Appears so.

 

[Moto Jojo]

There are zillions of things you can do which are maybe legal by the letter of the law, but are obviously against the spirit of the rules. That one easily qualifies, so I won't even bother arguing it.

The thing you can do as you advance on those goblins is use the Full Defense action. You can still take your regular move, and you get a +4 to your AC (+6 if you have 5 ranks in tumble).

 

[Darklone]

Munchkins

Easy ruling: I agree with that full defense mode. Perhaps even move crouching or on the floor.

For the melee thing: Nonsense.

There's another thread which asks the same. The goblins simply don't care whom they hit and get no penalty but a 50% chance to hit each of the combatants. As long as they hit, who cares?

 

[Crothian]

Attacking your friends would only help to get less arrows on you. There's a chance they might hit your friend. Might as well just try to use him as cover.

Just cast shield spell and charge the goblins using a full defensive action.

 

[Victim]

Full defensive slows you down so you can't double move. Thus, you take twice as many shots.

Taking cover is a good idea. A run action is risky (goblins like the rogue class) but can pay off.

 

[Omegium]

tower shield.
They are next to useless in melee, since your enemy gets the same cover as you do, but it is great against ranged attackers. Full cover, charge,drop the shield just before you reach the goblins

 

[Crothian]

tower shield.
They are next to useless in melee, since your enemy gets the same cover as you do, but it is great against ranged attackers. Full cover, charge,drop the shield just before you reach the goblins

Excellent use for the Tower Shield, but I still don't see people carrying it around just for this purpose. The Tower Shield is not an adventurer's shield.

 

[Mal Malenkirk]

How do we minimize this? Simple... Just attempt to hit your fellow traveller next to you. Vola! You are now in melee combat and the goblins get a -4 to hit you.

-4 to hit you. But if they miss you by 4 point they are considered to have hit your fellow traveler. So they are not going to hit your group any less frequently.

If you have poor AC and your friend is a tank, you might as well hide behind him. This makes more sense and is not nearly as silly.

 

[Hypersmurf]

Re: Re: Making it harder to be hit against ranged attacks...

-4 to hit you. But if they miss you by 4 point they are considered to have hit your fellow traveler. So they are not going to hit your group any less frequently.

The firing into melee penalty is separate from a cover penalty. It's the cover penalty that gives a chance to hit someone else.

-Hyp.

 

[hong]

Re: Munchkins

There's another thread which asks the same. The goblins simply don't care whom they hit and get no penalty but a 50% chance to hit each of the combatants. As long as they hit, who cares?

The problem is that D&D doesn't really have rules for volley fire, or area-effect missile fire (firing into a crowd, where you don't really care who you hit). As it's rather late over here in Austria and I don't feel like racking my brain, does anyone know if there are rules that some kind soul has put together to cover this sort of thing?