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Message: <blockquote data-quote="StreamOfTheSky" data-source="post: 5148394" data-attributes="member: 35909">I never said to nerf Step Up.  I merely wanted to know why there was no option for others to take to negate or counter it.  Not a freebie.  Melee spends a feat to use Step Up, my archer has the option to spend a feat to protect himself from it.  Seems fair to me.  It's not some high level unique class feature, it's a level 1 feat.The reason is by a strictly numbers comparison, melee does more damage on a full attack.  Once melee characters reach an archer, they automatically have the advantage, even with 5 ft steps to avoid AoOs.Singling this out for a side rant, because 3.0 was more friendly to archers than 3.5.  The weapon size rules, for one.  More notably, the prestige classes.  The 3.5 OotBI sucks.  The only decent 3.5 archer PrC was Cragtop Archer, which as only 5 levels and helped with range, not damage.  Peerless Archer, Deepwood Sniper, the "good" OotBI...all 3.0 classes.Chance to "shine"?!  Combat in confined quarters, which in your game forced the archer to pick up a sword, is far more common than aerial enemies that force a melee character to pick up a bow IME.  And if he really was the primary damage dealer in the group, I can only conclude he was just a lot better at optimizing than the melee people.  In 3.0 I had monks that could do triple digit damage.  And monks were even crappier in 3.0 than they are in 3.5!And as for it being natural for melee to dominate up close...  Again, maybe in your games archers downing Fighters and Barbs from afar before coming into danger is the norm.  In my groups, you're lucky to get 2 rounds of free range shooting, most often you might get 1 round, if the melee character isn't already close enough to charge.  It's extremely uncommon IME for combats to not reach a melee stage if at least one side wants there to be one.  And with Step Up, once melee has begun, the archer can't break out of it.  Best case scenario might be Withdraw action to regroup.  Of course, charge is double movement just as withdraw is (the 5 ft speed loss might prevent that if they have the same base speed, granted) and barring AoOs from nearby enemies, the melee character has no real reason to not just take a Run action and move back adjacent to the archer on his turn anyway.</blockquote>

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