Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="Petrosian" data-source="post: 733130" data-attributes="member: 1149">"Seriously, I don't personally think that the archer is that unbalanced. I think that stacking bow & arrow enhancements is unbalanced. "We are very close to each other in position.The biggest thing I see in the archer's favor and that seems very wrong is the stacking of bonuses. Fix that by making it normal "use best only" or dividing them into "bow to hit and arrow for damage" IMo will almost completely make this a non-issue.In addition to that, I would also want to see rapid fire turned into two feats, akin to TWF, whenre the first feat gives the extra attack with a -5 and the second feat reduces it to a -2. However, I have to say that without the stacking this is a small issue, more one of s consistency glitch than an imbalance. Also, if they follow some of the other game leads and merge TWF and ambi into one feat, then this is not needed.Where we differ is on sundering. One printing of the rules (PHB) implies this "bows are like jewelry" approach to sunder but the other (SRD) does not come close, since its layout is different. The sage reference to strike object make ssense in the context he gave it, how to determine IF YOU HIT, but to then extrapolate that into also meaning to change how you damage weapons is a broad stretch from what he said, especially since the interpretation relies soley on a layout issue that only exists in one set of the rules not both. It also comes into play in the case of weapons "held" and not wielded, as the sage's reference to "use strikle a weapon" would also be applicable, iirc, to a "halfling carrying greatsword" and amazingly the "bows are jewelry" proponents now wants to create yet another interpretation which says its not based on what type of to-hit roll you use but based on what type of to-hit roll you could use in other circumstances, or somesuch, to say that even if the greatsword is attacked as a "using the strike object" it still gets to retain the "strike weapon" enhancements because in other cases you could have used strike weapon and so forth. Heck, even Hyp with his pseudo-trolling still seems to be just toying with the rules to consternate the others because he trouts this interpretation out regularly but seems to keep staying away from saying "and i support it" leaving it as an "if i were to defend it..." or something similar devil's advocate statement.IMO, IF, in order to maintain balance, you need to hack bows, enchanted bows which cost as much as enchanted swords, to pieces with enough frequency and regularity to make the sunder interpretaion relevant at all, then that is a sign of imbalance to begin with. Some tools are frankly too blunt or have too many side effects to be palatable to use frequently enough to matter. In short, if the major keys to balancing an archer all fall into the category of "dont let him be an archer in play" as in the various "break his bow a lot" or "make his bow fragile" and "don't let him archer situations" and so on, then you are not actually balancing the archer at all, just providing ample disincentives to players actually playing one.All this IMO and IMX.PS... The comment i think made great sense was the one that observed the impact PARTY SIZE would have. In a four man group, there are going to be situational difficulties in getting the "wall o' melee" in front of you. My DND group size is varying from 6-7 typically, and in the current group we have a dwarf fighter and human barbarian as the "front line" and the archer type onlt fills in for melee when he needs to, most often he is as safe and cozy behind the lines as the mages are. The rogue also plays archer when he can, only moving to melee if he needs flanking (for instance, against guys who can see invisible thus eliminating his ranged sneak attacks.) If this were a party of four, the need for a front line would probably negate the ease of archery from safe positions to a large degree.</blockquote>

Verification