Ranged Enemies in Higher Tier Games


Pathfinder Society

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Shadow Lodge *

Pathfinder Maps, Pathfinder Accessories Subscriber; Pathfinder Roleplaying Game Superscriber; Starfinder Superscriber

So I'm just getting my first character (Magus/Monk) up to Level 7. The first Bonus Feat that she took was Deflect Arrows...and she's never used it. In fact, I can only think of one scenario where our party has been attacked by weapons at range.

So I've been thinking of retraining out of this, but if I'm going to do that, it will have to be this level. But what I don't know is if enemies with ranged attacks just aren't a thing in PFS, or if they're something that only starts showing up at higher levels. (In every home game I've ever played, enemy archers have been rampant.) I know I'll feel especially stupid if I train out of this, and then start running into ranged enemies. What's been your experience with higher level play?

Silver Crusade 2/5

They are kinda feast or famine in my experience. They don't appear often, but the ones I have faced have been pretty brutal.

Grand Lodge 4/5

In my experience, they don't come at all but if they do come they come in such numbers and fury that their arrows block out the sun. One arrow per round doesn't make that much of a dent.

5/5

Often encounters get limited by map size in Society play. This makes it difficult to design encounters with effected ranged participants.

Grand Lodge 4/5 **** Venture-Captain, California—Sacramento

Kyle, Thats why we need more PFS raids into underground fortresses with properly built barbicans, punctuated with arrow slots on the second story and murder holes in the roof, and steel shutters on the inside. (So if the PCs move up to a slot, the enemy shuts the shutter and moves to another one...

Close combat archery for the win. Batter down the door under fire, or find a clever way past...

Silver Crusade 2/5

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"Often encounters get limited by map size in Society play. This makes it difficult to design encounters with effected ranged participants"

Really? Doesn't stop all the archery builds from murderizing the typical scenario. I'm still waiting for an NPC with access to fickle winds, fly, and ranged weapons.

For ranged NPCs, just photocopy some of the archery builds you see PCs use.

5/5

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David Bowles wrote:
I'm still waiting for an NPC with access to fickle winds, fly, and ranged weapons.

Already wrote one.

Silver Crusade 2/5

Good, because NPCs have a lot of bad karma to make up for in PFS. Plenty of dangerous fights with monsters, but NPCs have a tendency to get rofl stomped. I guess the bottom line is that it is possible for monsters to be inaccurately priced in terms of CR, but that's not really possible for NPCs. I think NPCs need a boost vis a vis monsters.

Silver Crusade 2/5

I just ran a scenario with two Erinyes devils. Almost a TPK from the ranged power they had.

Shadow Lodge 4/5

Protection from Arrows, Wind Wall and Fickle Winds are great options for your scroll library.

Deflect Arrows is only once per round. At your level, a single archer will have high enough BAB and the feats for multiple shots per round...and odds are you will be facing multiple archers.

So, imho, Deflect Arrows usually isn't worth it.

Grand Lodge 3/5 5/55/55/5

Pathfinder Starfinder Adventure Path Subscriber

My halfling barbarian died once to a garuda - plenty of ranged firepower there.

And I can think of a certain module that has some close-quarters archery as you're trying to storm into a fortress...

Scarab Sages 5/5

Andrei Buters wrote:
In my experience, they don't come at all but if they do come they come in such numbers and fury that their arrows block out the sun. One arrow per round doesn't make that much of a dent.

I can think of a game where my character deflected one arrow, snake styled the 2nd arrow, and then the next thirty arrows from a ton of archery attackers on an upper level wiped the character out (they all shot at my one character - he might have been their favorite enemy - human - one reason I stopped playing humans as much).

However I have seen the occasional time where it has helped - I actually would prefer not to have more archery ranged attackers in the game as it can be very brutal. I have been in more parties than naught without good capabilities to return fire.

Silver Crusade 2/5

DesolateHarmony wrote:
I just ran a scenario with two Erinyes devils. Almost a TPK from the ranged power they had.

Again, monsters for the win, NPCs for teh suck.

Liberty's Edge 4/5

Besides the volleys of arrows mentioned above, deflect arrows is nice to have at higher tiers when your party's alchemist or archer fails a will save. When GMing I have killed almost as many people in high tier with the party's confused archer as with enemies.

Silver Crusade 2/5

My confused archer ranger actually DID kill my own party member once.

Silver Crusade 3/5 *** Venture-Captain, North Carolina—Asheville

In my very first PFS scenario,

Scenario Name:
The Stolen Heir,
my brand spanking new character was almost one-shotted by an NPC archer. He ran past the building in question screaming for mercy before he snuck into the back to accomplish our mission.

I guess this is beneath your current level, but Deflect Arrows would have come in handy for me that day.

Shadow Lodge 4/5

I can think of maybe 8 scenarios with memorable ranged encounters, 3 of them had alchemists, all but 3 were in tier 1-5.

The only ranged encounter worth its salt in tiers 5+ was in the Heresy of Man series. It was brutally effective though. Besides that, there was a pretty effective one in The King of Storval Stairs and of course nobody should forget the aforementioned pair of erinyes.

As for those tier 1-5 ranged combats, I wish I could forget them. Especially the alchemist encounters.

Grand Lodge 4/5

Muser wrote:

I can think of maybe 8 scenarios with memorable ranged encounters, 3 of them had alchemists, all but 3 were in tier 1-5.

The only ranged encounter worth its salt in tiers 5+ was in the Heresy of Man series. It was brutally effective though. Besides that, there was a pretty effective one in The King of Storval Stairs and of course nobody should forget the aforementioned pair of erinyes.

As for those tier 1-5 ranged combats, I wish I could forget them. Especially the alchemist encounters.

Well, there is that Ranger who hates Clerics, with Humans as favored enemy, also in Tier 1-5, IIRC.

Scarab Sages

For what it's worth, my level 2 monk was brought to negative HP by javelins in the last scenario I played. I would have stayed up if I had taken deflect arrows.

Lantern Lodge 3/5

David Bowles wrote:
They are kinda feast or famine in my experience. They don't appear often, but the ones I have faced have been pretty brutal.

Exactly what David said.

I have seen a high level party got TPKed by range attacks in a lv 7-11 scenario.

It is not common, but when archers do pop up, they are brutal!

PS: If the scenarios are written with more archers in them, there would be a lot more PC deaths.

Silver Crusade 2/5

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Secane wrote:
David Bowles wrote:
They are kinda feast or famine in my experience. They don't appear often, but the ones I have faced have been pretty brutal.

Exactly what David said.

I have seen a high level party got TPKed by range attacks in a lv 7-11 scenario.

It is not common, but when archers do pop up, they are brutal!

PS: If the scenarios are written with more archers in them, there would be a lot more PC deaths.

Correction: well-built archers. PFS NPCs have inexplicably bad feats quite frequently.

5/5 *****

David Bowles wrote:
Secane wrote:
David Bowles wrote:
They are kinda feast or famine in my experience. They don't appear often, but the ones I have faced have been pretty brutal.

Exactly what David said.

I have seen a high level party got TPKed by range attacks in a lv 7-11 scenario.

It is not common, but when archers do pop up, they are brutal!

PS: If the scenarios are written with more archers in them, there would be a lot more PC deaths.

Correction: well-built archers. PFS NPCs have inexplicably bad feats quite frequently.

I am always surprised at how many PFS NPC casters come armed with point blank and precise shot as if using their terrible x/day d6+stat blasts was ever going to be a good option or if those feats would be a good choice even if they were. It is very mysterious.

5/5

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David Bowles wrote:
PFS NPCs have inexplicably bad feats quite frequently.

Because NPCs *can* be built organically. They did have a life prior to showing up in your adventure. Often, they were better served by taking feats that improved their profession or skill set and weren't solely focused on murderhoboing a group of Pathfinder Society agents.

Grand Lodge 4/5 **** Venture-Captain, California—Sacramento

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Kyle Baird wrote:
David Bowles wrote:
PFS NPCs have inexplicably bad feats quite frequently.
Because NPCs *can* be built organically. They did have a life prior to showing up in your adventure. Often, they were better served by taking feats that improved their profession or skill set and weren't solely focused on murderhoboing a group of Pathfinder Society agents.

Nah... NPCs are all murder hobos. That's why killing them makes pathfinders the good guys :)

Shadow Lodge 4/5 Venture-Lieutenant, Florida—Jacksonville

FLite wrote:
Kyle Baird wrote:
David Bowles wrote:
PFS NPCs have inexplicably bad feats quite frequently.
Because NPCs *can* be built organically. They did have a life prior to showing up in your adventure. Often, they were better served by taking feats that improved their profession or skill set and weren't solely focused on murderhoboing a group of Pathfinder Society agents.
Nah... NPCs are all murder hobos. That's why killing them makes pathfinders the good guys :)

Of course my murder hobos(ranged) are too optimized, I put in feats like toughness, fast learner, skill focus rather than rapid shot, multishot, far shot and such.

5/5

The key is to make them competent yet not optimized (except for the rare foe).

Dark Archive 4/5 5/55/5 ****

Kyle Baird wrote:
Because NPCs *can* be built organically. They did have a life prior to showing up in your adventure. Often, they were better served by taking feats that improved their profession or skill set and weren't solely focused on murderhoboing a group of Pathfinder Society agents.

Aww, I thought Golarion only consisted of people/creatures whose sole goal in life was to be able to commit mass murder as quickly as possible, so disappointing. /sarcasm

5/5

DrParty06 wrote:
/sarcasm

Laugh, but there's been many posts over the years complaining about "wasted" feats on NPCs for things like Skill Focus or Alertness.

5/5 *****

Kyle Baird wrote:
David Bowles wrote:
PFS NPCs have inexplicably bad feats quite frequently.
Because NPCs *can* be built organically. They did have a life prior to showing up in your adventure. Often, they were better served by taking feats that improved their profession or skill set and weren't solely focused on murderhoboing a group of Pathfinder Society agents.

Sure, building them organically is fine but even so many of them have combat related feats which do next to nothing for them with very little reason for them to have them.

I pulled up a random 7-11 to see what might be found....

Warning, spoilers within for Cultists Kiss

Spoiler:
OK, so one of the end boss enemies is a Vampire Sorceress. Her feats include combat reflexes, point blank shot and weapon focus ray. She has 5th level spells and knows all of two ray spells, Scorching Ray and Ray of Enfeeblement and her tactics have her barely using any of them. Her vampire Cleric ally has leadership which is quite literally doing nothing for him and extra channel despite already having 8 channels per day. I am fairly sure you could find similar examples in lots of scenarios.

I don't expect NPC's to be at the bleeding edge of optimisation. Obviously PFS has to cater for groups across the spectrum of competence but too often it seems to be skewed towards the easier end of things. It would be nice to see some more hard modes and perhaps some more effective tactics or even an opportunity to free GM's to determine their own NPC tactics.

5/5 *****

Kyle Baird wrote:
DrParty06 wrote:
/sarcasm
Laugh, but there's been many posts over the years complaining about "wasted" feats on NPCs for things like Skill Focus or Alertness.

I don't personally see an issue with alertness, NPC's want to notice the players coming to be able to prepare.

Silver Crusade 2/5

Kyle Baird wrote:
David Bowles wrote:
PFS NPCs have inexplicably bad feats quite frequently.
Because NPCs *can* be built organically. They did have a life prior to showing up in your adventure. Often, they were better served by taking feats that improved their profession or skill set and weren't solely focused on murderhoboing a group of Pathfinder Society agents.

If you want them to be mulched by the PCs, sure. Reliance upon monsters with misallocated CRs for challenging scenarios is rather limiting.

Silver Crusade 2/5

Kyle Baird wrote:
The key is to make them competent yet not optimized (except for the rare foe).

There's different levels of optimization. Level 0 is undesirable to me. Competent doesn't cut it when the NPCs are already behind on action efficiency, stat points, and wealth.

Silver Crusade 2/5

andreww wrote:
Kyle Baird wrote:
David Bowles wrote:
PFS NPCs have inexplicably bad feats quite frequently.
Because NPCs *can* be built organically. They did have a life prior to showing up in your adventure. Often, they were better served by taking feats that improved their profession or skill set and weren't solely focused on murderhoboing a group of Pathfinder Society agents.

Sure, building them organically is fine but even so many of them have combat related feats which do next to nothing for them with very little reason for them to have them.

I pulled up a random 7-11 to see what might be found....

Warning, spoilers within for Cultists Kiss

** spoiler omitted **

I don't expect NPC's to be at the bleeding edge of optimisation. Obviously PFS has to cater for groups across the spectrum of competence but too often it seems to be skewed towards the easier end of things. It would be nice to see some more hard modes and perhaps some more effective tactics or even an opportunity to free GM's to determine their own NPC tactics.

It's mainly skewed in the fights with actual NPCs with class levels. There are many, many challenging encounters, but nearly all of them involve monsters, and not NPCs with class levels. And of those challenging encounters, over half I'd say involve monsters that are not appropriately costed in terms of CR. Which means we have a problem of the "usual suspects" causing PCs a problem.

NPCs with class levels are hamstrung by the trifecta of less stats, less wealth, and poor builds. Monsters just are what they are and class levels are gravy, because you eliminate the poor stats and to a large extent the poor builds. I've seen many fights with monsters go sideways with multiple optimized PCs, but against NPCs with class levels, usually a single optimized PC is their doom. Usually.

5/5

David Bowles wrote:
Kyle Baird wrote:
The key is to make them competent yet not optimized (except for the rare foe).
There's different levels of optimization. Level 0 is undesirable to me. Competent doesn't cut it when the NPCs are already behind on action efficiency, stat points, and wealth.

Tactics and terrain can be just as important of a factor as build when it comes to NPCs. Let's not forget that authors are trying to build scenarios with a normal distribution of difficulty with the average PFS player feeling averagely challenged over the course of a scenario.

Silver Crusade 2/5

Kyle Baird wrote:
David Bowles wrote:
Kyle Baird wrote:
The key is to make them competent yet not optimized (except for the rare foe).
There's different levels of optimization. Level 0 is undesirable to me. Competent doesn't cut it when the NPCs are already behind on action efficiency, stat points, and wealth.

Tactics and terrain can be just as important of a factor as build when it comes to NPCs. Let's not forget that authors are trying to build scenarios with a normal distribution of difficulty with the average PFS player feeling averagely challenged over the course of a scenario.

That's fine, and I understand it. But it's really hard to reconcile the typical difference in difficulty between two encounters of equal CR in which one has evil outsiders, undead or monstrous humanoids and the other has NPCs with class levels.

5/5

The solution is to make evil outsiders with class levels. Half-fiend FTW.

Silver Crusade 2/5

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Kyle Baird wrote:
The solution is to make evil outsiders with class levels. Half-fiend FTW.

That eats up the CR budget really, really quickly though. I acknowledge that a fighter Babau would be quite potent, but that doesn't help the plight of the NPC human fighter.

How about an Erinyes gunslinger? Bang, yo!

Paizo Employee 5/5 Managing Creative Director (Starfinder)

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Kyle Baird wrote:
The solution is to make evil outsiders with class levels. Half-fiend FTW.

Sadly, as this forum pointed out to me already, a tetori monk trumps that. ;)

Silver Crusade 2/5

Tetori monks trump a lot of NPC schemes. In home brew, my solution would be to add NPCs to the encounter. And, at later levels, add healthy doses of Freedom of Movement from evil priests. No such luck in PFS for authors.

Paizo Employee 5/5 Managing Creative Director (Starfinder)

David Bowles wrote:
Tetori monks trump a lot of NPC schemes. In home brew, my solution would be to add NPCs to the encounter. And, at later levels, add healthy doses of Freedom of Movement from evil priests. No such luck in PFS for authors.

Bless you.

Silver Crusade 2/5

Thurston Hillman wrote:
David Bowles wrote:
Tetori monks trump a lot of NPC schemes. In home brew, my solution would be to add NPCs to the encounter. And, at later levels, add healthy doses of Freedom of Movement from evil priests. No such luck in PFS for authors.
Bless you.

The difference between having a continuous set of major antagonists that can learn and adapt to the PCs is night and day from the plight of the one-off scenario antagonists who have likely never heard of a Tetori monk and find out what they do the hard way.

Shadow Lodge

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There's a good book I read decades ago, I think it was A Magical Medieval Society which talks about the impact of a magic-heavy world. I *think* it was this book, but someone will probably know what I'm talking about.

In adventure design, it's important to think about the impact of magic in the world and not have the world built such that it's caught with its pants down when the PCs approach the situation with magic.

I've given this example before, but an evil noble is hosting a gala at his manor. He's specifically seeking to thwart the Pathfinder Society, and should not be surprised if a bunch of Pathfinders show up and try to sneak into his ball.

This noble should be expecting PCs to show up with hats of disguise trying to impersonate people they are not. He should have employed a level 1 wizard for a few gold to hit up everyone at the gate with detect magic, with his guards ready to decline anyone who shows up with magic auras like illusion. The party should have to resort to mundane Disguise checks in order to properly infiltrate a checkpoint, because all checkpoints should have hired someone with an unlimited use cantrip.

And clearly nobody who has a mask of stony demeanor smacked onto their face should be allowed in (well, unless it's a masquerade)... because before that person even opens their mouth, they're instantly suspicious.

I imagine great enemies of the Society have "heard tales" about the Society's elite and nigh undefeatable members. If you want to be an Aspis Villain, there should be an internal memo floating around to its leadership suggesting "hey, be prepared for these 10 tricks for when (and I do mean when, not if) a bunch of Pathfinders come knocking at the door of your lair".

For example, a villain employing traps would surely have picked up a wand of magic aura and take a trip through his lair each week and hit all his magical traps with it, as he'd surely expect his eventual usurpers to come trekking down that hallway with detect magic going.

Archers are fairly powerful in Golarion based on the way the Pathfinder rules set runs. They are more powerful that Medieval Earth archers would be relative to their melee counterparts. Thus, if you're a highly intelligent villain in Golarion, you'd always hire a handful of longbow-using minions to accompany your sword-wielding warriors. You'd be discriminating too. "Oh, you can't fire two arrows quickly in succession (rapid shot)? Come back and see me again when you can..."

I imagine there's a specific premium for enemies of Pathfinders to hire elven and half-elven henchman, as they are well suited to square off against the copious enemies who can employ sleep spells/hexes. Evil masterminds play games of chess like this. "Wait, did I just employ a single fire giant barbarian as my lone guardian to the door of my lair? Damnation! He's probably going to simply fall over to a witch hex... Tonight's the night of my big evil ritual. Maybe I'll swing by the local pharmacy and pick up some insomnia powder for Brutus with all this gold I seem to have tucked away in my bedchamber..."

The interesting thing about employing a band of evil elven archers in a scenario who each have a 1 level inquisitor dip and each have liberating command... the encounter is only more challenging for the slumber witches/tetori monks as a result of this extra embellishment to the encounter. A party without those "tricks" sees no difficulty change.

Silver Crusade 2/5

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Don't forget enemy gunslingers to deal with plate wearers and pets with 30+ armor classes.

Adding to this point, wizards and clerics are extremely powerful in homebrew campaigns because of their ability to change up their approach day to day and keep the BBEG guessing as to what the scheme of the day will be. Once a sorcerer is made, a BBEG can make it very hard on them.

The positions are almost reversed in PFS. Sorcerers overwhelm hapless NPCs with their limited, but focused approach to adventuring. Wizards are still effective, but their true strength, flexibility, is greatly mitigated by PFS's format.

Silver Crusade 5/5

DesolateHarmony wrote:
I just ran a scenario with two Erinyes devils. Almost a TPK from the ranged power they had.

Yep I ran that in the past too. I killed the party wizard.

When I played it, we were quite literally "pinned down", and were only saved by the flying Paladin/oracle (lore)/ Summoner (Synthasist) who wore his eidalon. It had wings, talloned hands beak and clawed feet, and a head shaped like a wedge of cheese. This flying cheese headed monstrosity of a PC smote evil and tore through these devil Eyrinyes.

Shadow Lodge

For kicks...

Internal Memo: For the eyes of Society enemies only.

Silver Crusade 2/5

Quite ironically, parties that shoot back well crush the Erinyes. Erinyes are particularly potent, because of their resistance to arcane ranged damage. I think my group wind walled and summoned air elementals and had a single ranged guy to assist the elementals.

Shadow Lodge

David Bowles wrote:
Don't forget enemy gunslingers to deal with plate wearers and pets with 30+ armor classes.

Scenarios seem to shun gunslinger enemies... perhaps that changes in Season 6.

But certainly the evil masterminds can hire a team of tiefling alchemist triplets who all quaff their mutagens and targeted bomb admixture.

Three 3rd level alchemists in a subtier 4-5 scenario? Evil...

Scarab Sages

David Bowles wrote:
Thurston Hillman wrote:
David Bowles wrote:
Tetori monks trump a lot of NPC schemes. In home brew, my solution would be to add NPCs to the encounter. And, at later levels, add healthy doses of Freedom of Movement from evil priests. No such luck in PFS for authors.
Bless you.
The difference between having a continuous set of major antagonists that can learn and adapt to the PCs is night and day from the plight of the one-off scenario antagonists who have likely never heard of a Tetori monk and find out what they do the hard way.

However, not even Freedom of Movement can escape the Inescapable Grasp of a Tetori.

Silver Crusade 2/5

"Scenarios seem to shun gunslinger enemies... perhaps that changes in Season 6."

There is no reason for this that I can see. Scenario writers shun lots of class/feat combos, further compounding the problems that NPCs have providing a challenge for "average" groups. Even simple power attack/cleave combos are quite rare.

"Three 3rd level alchemists in a subtier 4-5 scenario? Evil..."

Or they can just go with more harpies. /snark I'm sorry, monsters that don't let PCs even play is not my idea of pushing PCs to their limits.

Silver Crusade 2/5

Imbicatus wrote:
David Bowles wrote:
Thurston Hillman wrote:
David Bowles wrote:
Tetori monks trump a lot of NPC schemes. In home brew, my solution would be to add NPCs to the encounter. And, at later levels, add healthy doses of Freedom of Movement from evil priests. No such luck in PFS for authors.
Bless you.
The difference between having a continuous set of major antagonists that can learn and adapt to the PCs is night and day from the plight of the one-off scenario antagonists who have likely never heard of a Tetori monk and find out what they do the hard way.

However, not even Freedom of Movement can escape the Inescapable Grasp of a Tetori.

Then the BBEG shifts to running the tetori out of Ki. Or just using minions that don't care if they are grappled.

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