Sorry I didn't intend to mean that touch attacks gained automatic hits, I meant they just needed to be able to touch the target for the effect to work. Can you tell I'm getting tired ;)
And that's pretty much what Touch AC represents. One could interpret this as bypassing armor, which is perhaps what you were aiming for. No pun intended. :P
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The problem with demands of realism is that they're also so very specific.
Archers need to worry about hitting other people at a distance, but monks can punch through armor? Archers are given a completely random chance of hitting their ally, but people in melee have zero chance of missing and hitting their own allies on the side?
Demands for realism are never about realism, because it's never made to go both ways. It's the same thing that happens to crossbows and guns. Sure, force crossbows to have long, unusable loading times (for realism)...but continue allowing archers to fire three arrows from a single shot (because it's fantasy!)
It's a fantasy games. Allow things to be fantastic.
Actually, as an interesting aside to your point, crossbows were developed and used because they were more accurate and easier to handle by a non-specialist. A medieval pope(can't remember which) condemned them because of the slaughter they could cause (a pre-emption of the development of the modern gun). Now yes they do take longer to load but the Italian Pavise crossbowmen had massive tower shields strapped to their backs so they could turn around and reload.
Yes, it is a fantasy game and things ought to be fantastic, it's just that me personally got rather attached to the idea that errant arrows fired into close melees could very easily hit an unintended target, or miss altogether.
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Sorry I didn't intend to mean that touch attacks gained automatic hits, I meant they just needed to be able to touch the target for the effect to work. Can you tell I'm getting tired ;)And that's pretty much what Touch AC represents. One could interpret this as bypassing armor, which is perhaps what you were aiming for. No pun intended. :P
Probably, and I was getting tired. I've been knee deep today comparing PF with 3.5ed rules and I started making a few mistakes in my thought processes which eventually ended up on this thread. My Players are used to 3.5ed and not PF and getting them au fait and happy with this new system has been a tough one. Luckily they have no inclination to use 4th Ed. as they have, like me invested heavily in 3.5.
I'd dust off my general "Margin of Failure" rule for this one. Same as falling off a cliff on a climb skill, if you fail the roll by five or more, you hit the ally providing cover. Precise shot just eliminates the cover penalty, in that case.
This is a really, really good rule to keep around for situations where it seems like there should penalties for severe failure and slight failure. It's used a lot in 3.5/PF, but I think it should get even more love.
Consider this:
You and your buddy are standing shoulder-to-shoulder (well, about 5' apart, but you're hopping around, ducking, dodging, weaving, whirling, slashing, thrusting, etc.) and you're both swinging swords at some orcs.
What happens when you miss?
Shouldn't there be a chance that you hit your buddy? Shouldn't he have a chance to hit you?
Of course he should. "Collateral damage" and "friendly fire" and "backswing maimings" are all a part of warefare and they have happened since the dawn of warefare.
But I never see any DM's in here clamoring for rules to cover what happens when the barbarian accidentally clocks the paladin with his power-attacking, enraging, two-handed sword.
Why not?
PC-death and TPKs would run rampant. Every time a close fight sees a bad roll there is a chance of PC death. The clerics are already working overtime to heal the damage the monsters dish out, but with rules like these, they will have to work double-overtime to heal the damage the party does to one another.
As has already been pointed out, ranged combat already suffers from some pretty heavy disadvantages (lower damage, cover, provoking AoO, never making AoOs when enemies provoke them, multiple required feats just to be effective, etc.) but there is also the compensating safety of being able to inflict damage from afar while enemies cannot hurt you back (or if they can, they have the same ranged disadvantages that you have).
Is that balanced?
Hard to say.
But it seems that most of us think it isn't balanced. Adding additional disadvantages to further hinder ranged combat is unnecessarily punitive.
Unless you restore balance by letting melee combatants whack their allies too.
re: my immediatly previous post...
Note that everything I said applies to the bad guys too. So all the penalties and disadvantages we heap upon our own player archers are equally heaped upon monsters with ranged attacks and all other enemies who used ranged attacks against the players.
Unfortunately, the way this game works, we generally do NOT want PC death (certainly we don't want frequent PC death). On the other hand, we want constant monster death. In fact, just about every monster we throw at the PCs is supposed to die.
Even more so, we generally do NOT want TPKs but we do want very frequent TMPKs (Total Monster Party Kills). We almost always expect the PCs to kill every monster and every group of monsters.
So, if a few bad archery rolls pick off the occasional orc in the front line, no big deal. The DM always has more orcs.
But if a few bad archery rolls pick off the fighter in the front line of the PC group, that becomes a very big deal every time.
The player who runs the archer will feel awful when he kills a PC. He will feel like his character sucks. His character is a liability to the group rathe than an effective contributor. His character hurts the party rather than helps. That would make anyone feel awful.
Worse, many players really do care about their characters and when one PC kills another PC, both players may be emotionally involved in what happens. The player of the dead PC might be really angry about it. The archer's player will feel awful about killing someone else's beloved PC.
He might want to retire his archer on the spot. I would.
Is that the intent of a ally-hit rule? Making players angry with each other? Making certain character concepts so awful to play that anyone unlucky enough to have such a character will often feel so bad that he will roll up a new character?
I imagine nobody wants that - but such a rule can lead down this path. It might not always result in anger and flaring tempers, but it will almost always result in the guy playing the archer questioning his dubious choice to play a class that hurts the party more than it helps.
Nobody wants to play a sucky character.
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If you don't like the 4 point soft cover penalty.... move. Seriously.
Archers are quite balanced with melee, in that they almost always get a full attack, with more shots than any melee fighter (except a two-weapon specialist, and that's even more feat-intensive than an archer) will even dream of getting. Oh yeah, and they don't get hit back by melee-only foes.
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I'm the DM in the OP's game, and might I add that I stopped reading the replies halfway-up the 1st page because it seemed like people were just arguing...
Anyways, glad to know that I got it right. The rules about hitting your allies I now see are a relic that was not brought over from 3.0, but I honestly didn't check the rules for ranged combat since then in too much detail... Regardless, I didn't make him hit his animal companion with his attack that missed by 2. He dropped the BBEG with the shot right after that one, just so everyone knows, that poor poor ranger...
As for the balance issues with soft cover and everything... I agree with the above poster in that all you need do is move. Sometimes a 5 foot step will suffice, as I do believe it actually would have last night.
EDIT: oh, and the soft cover in question was a Raptor that had just pounced on the BBEG
Lots of text here and I admit to not reading all of it. Probably against RAW I am very liberal with my interpretation of "soft cover" when we're dealing with creatures of different sizes.
If a dwarf (small side of Medium) is fighting an ogre (small side of Large) and an archer <30' away wants to shoot the ogre I generally will reduce it to +2 to defender AC. Dwarves (dwarfs? or is that Tolkien?) plant their feet and hack away. He might bob and weave but I'd rule there's no way he's going to be obstructing the view of the ogre from about the waist up (so, +2 would make sense, no?)
For an animal companion in the way I'd probably consider the size of the creature. If it's a tiger and it's just standing there (i.e. not mauling the target) I'm going to say that a human-sized archer can probably shoot over its back with no bonus to target's AC. If it's an elephant, well, there you go...I'll give the target soft cover. Also, if that tiger is in melee he's jumping around and biting and what-not, so I'd probably give the full soft cover bonus.
So, my rulings on it are entirely subjective...we use RAW most of the time but we have some discussion about the weirder cases to try to come up with a ruling that is reasonable (not realistic, which doesn't IMO mix well with a very abstracted combat system such as PFRPG's).
M
If you don't like the 4 point soft cover penalty.... move. Seriously.
Archers are quite balanced with melee, in that they almost always get a full attack, with more shots than any melee fighter (except a two-weapon specialist, and that's even more feat-intensive than an archer) will even dream of getting. Oh yeah, and they don't get hit back by melee-only foes.
Your tone is somewhat insulting, but I will attempt to respond to your points with respect.
1)almost always get a full attack. Not when you have to move every round to get a single clear shot because of melee allies. Not in tight hallways in dungeons where a lot if not the majority of adventures take us.
2)more attacks than almost anyone, except TWF which takes more feats. Well let's see...TWF, ITWF, GWTF, arguably Double Slice. Versus Point Blank Shot, Precise Shot, Rapid Shot, Many Shot. Sounds about the same. I know, I know, archery get all their attacks at more or less their highest bonus, but still.
3)don't get hit by melee-only foes. Only if your DM plays them like mindless mooks, otherwise they're coming down the pipe at you since you ARE getting a full attack off more often. Not to mention a great deal of monsters a)fly b)have spells c)have reach so this is sort of a moot point. At least by the time you have enough feats to make you equivalent to the melee.
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Okay, to clear up some things meat- You only have to be able to draw a line from anywhere in your square to your target's square without intersecting a square holding another creature. This is not hard to do, and can easily be done with a 5-ft step in most cases, unless your target is completely surrounded.
Okay, to clear up some things meat- You only have to be able to draw a line from anywhere in your square to your target's square without intersecting a square holding another creature. This is not hard to do, and can easily be done with a 5-ft step in most cases, unless your target is completely surrounded.
I understand what you're saying, but this seems to me to only be true if you only want to target the closest enemy, the one just on the other side of your melee buddy, in which case he's probably engaged in melee and the -4 also applies. The farther back you attempt to target, the greater the chance that someone, friend or foe, will interrupt a clear shot. The battlefield is a chaotic place.
And again, in an open field this might be more true, but especially in a twisty turny dungeon there's nearly almost cover of some kind between yourself and your target. If there's not, that usually means they threaten and you provoke AoO.
I understand the balance part of this equation, and I just want to reiterate that my argument is only that Precise Shot should also eliminate your target's soft cover bonus to AC since they are both derived from the same logical argument. Being able to aim your shot so that your friend who is wrestling an orc is easy, but should there be someone else in the way then it's too much? A built in -8 to ranged attacks seems excessive.
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Well, neither of those are quite as "built in" as the "for argument's sake" people on these boards make it out to be. In this particular campaign, this is the first time that anyone had any cover verses his attacks, and we've been playing this campaign for the past few months. The other -4 (engaged in melee) is present any time pretty much after the first round, when melee usually ensues. Also, this is a 2-feat tax on your way to becoming a remarkable glass cannon.
The one thing that I can agree on is that you are likely to encounter soft cover at the same time as 'engaged in melee', so if you aren't a dedicated archer... maybe you should grab a sword and charge?
EDIT: Also, adding the ability to ignore soft cover would invalidate Improved Precise shot, as that is the most common cover type that you encounter.
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Interesting thought line with the precise shot overcoming the soft cover bonus to ac.
Do we know what the effect is of multiple people between you and your target? Is that +4 per creature?
It looks like that's how it would function to me, as I sit here at midnight trying to put this together :P
If that is the case, then precise shot lets you ignore the first +4 of soft cover, or the first extra body in the equation. After that, an additional +4 ac per creature in the way.
The idea that precise shot should work differently because it doesn't work as well within a dungeon environment is one I have to disagree with.
A melee character is at a disadvantage in an open field with a stretch of distance between himself and his archer opponents.
Similarly, an archer is at a disadvantage in a dungeon due to the confines of the area *though lots of things can help with that* Try getting boots of spider climb and firing your arrows from the ceiling.
Just like I'd suggest that a melee character get boots of striding/springing or boots of speed to close the distance faster in the field.
Different builds have different strengths/weaknesses.
Also, I don't really care if I can produce real world physics, as long as the game mechanics can mimic *and then break* them for the most part.
But, as always, the most important thing to do is to make the rule work in your campaign the way your group wants it to. Have fun first :)
Okay, to clear up some things meat- You only have to be able to draw a line from anywhere in your square to your target's square without intersecting a square holding another creature. This is not hard to do, and can easily be done with a 5-ft step in most cases, unless your target is completely surrounded.
Incorrect.
Time to reread the rule:
To determine whether your target has cover from your
ranged attack, choose a corner of your square. If any line
from this corner to any corner of the target’s square passes
through a square or border that blocks line of effect or
provides cover, or through a square occupied by a creature,
the target has cover (+4 to AC).
First, you pick the corner of your own square (so you might as well pick the most advantageous corner that is most likely to give no cover to your target).
Second, you imagine 4 lines from the corner you chose, each line going to a different corner of your target's square. If any one of those lines passes through a square or border that provides cover, or through an occupied square, then your target gets cover.
If you still don't see it that way, I draw attention to this wording: "If any line from this corner to any corner of the target’s square". That seems pretty clear: any corner of your target's square is suspect, therefore if any corner of your target's square can be used to qualify for cover, then that is the corner that must be used.
The rule does not grant either the archer or the target, either the player or the DM, the right to pick just one corner of the enemy's square. It says any corner and I am quite sure it means it.
Quite frankly, this means you literally must be off to the side of the combat or your target will get cover from your melee ally.
It's hard to diagram that with text, but maybe this will help:
T^^^^^^1
A^^^^^^2
3^^^4^^5
T = target. A = your ally in melee with the target. 1,2,3, 4, and 5 = five different archers. And the ^ represents empty squares.
If you lay all this out on a battlemat (or a chessboard) it will become more clear.
The target (T) has soft cover from the ally (A) against archers 2, 3, 4 and 5. Even Only archer 1 has a clear shot. Even archer #2 has to fire through a little bit of his ally's square (if you choose the upper right corner of 2, then draw the four lines, you will see that the line that goes to the lower left corner of T just nips through the edge of A).
Of course, all five archers also suffer a -4 penalty for firing into melee unless they have Precise Shot.
Note: I don't rule it this harshly in my game when I DM. I usually just eyeball it, but my "official" rule is that if you can hit three corners without cover, then you can disregard the 4th corner (your target is 3/4 exposed to you so he doesn't get soft cover). Which means that only archer #3 would have to deal with cover in my diagram (and any archer standing on those three empty spaces between #3 and #4 would also have to fire through the soft cover as well). But this is just a houserule.
Well, neither of those are quite as "built in" as the "for argument's sake" people on these boards make it out to be. In this particular campaign, this is the first time that anyone had any cover verses his attacks, and we've been playing this campaign for the past few months. The other -4 (engaged in melee) is present any time pretty much after the first round, when melee usually ensues. Also, this is a 2-feat tax on your way to becoming a remarkable glass cannon.
The one thing that I can agree on is that you are likely to encounter soft cover at the same time as 'engaged in melee', so if you aren't a dedicated archer... maybe you should grab a sword and charge?
EDIT: Also, adding the ability to ignore soft cover would invalidate Improved Precise shot, as that is the most common cover type that you encounter.
I find that no cover has happened extremely hard to believe, as I've been playing an archer for 3 months now and in NO combat (roughly 2 per week) has soft cover NOT been an issue for me at least once, and often the entire combat.
And if your answer the predicament is for EVEN DEDICATED ARCHERS to grab a sword and charge, then I can only imagine how fun it is to play in one of your games.
Also, read DMB's post for clarification on cover rules.
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EDITED: Actually, you might be right (DM Blake). Still, I would appreciate it if you would not assume that I have to have things explained to me like a mentally challenged fellow.
EDIT: Meatrace, please read my posts more carefully... I am the DM and he has honestly not been in a position where cover has been an issue. Also, I said If you aren't a dedicated archer not "even if".
EDITED: Actually, you might be right (DM Blake). Still, I would appreciate it if you would not assume that I have to have things explained to me like a mentally challenged fellow.
EDIT: Meatrace, please read my posts more carefully... I am the DM and he has honestly not been in a position where cover has been an issue. Also, I said If you aren't a dedicated archer not "even if".
I read your post carefully. You say he hasn't been in the position where cover has been an issue...but you're completely clueless as to what all cover encompasses. Gotcha.
Also, read MY posts more carefully. I am a dedicated archer, and I have honestly not had a single combat in 3 1/2 months where cover hasn't been a factor so you're NOT just telling non-archers to pick up a sword, you're telling me, because cover is a huge factor and will be until mid-high levels when I can take Improved Precise Shot.
To echo your previous statement, I would appreciate if you don't act like I'm mentally handicapped and unable to read your post and comprehend it, tie my shoes, etc.
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Really, the amount of time that cover crops up for an archer in a game is directly related to the will of the dm.
In my campaigns, for instance, I'm usually pretty generous with positioning and layout so that my players don't have to deal with cover all the time. I find it more entertaining to make the occasional longer fight using cover as a theme.
For my group, it's more fun to do rarely, because afterwards we're reminded of how irritating it can be :D
One dm that I played under ran cover and positioning very, very carefully. Under him, it came up a lot. So it's ok.
Different dms run it differently.
Meatrace, your dm just loves cover :/ You'll have to find some way to cope with that so that you still enjoy it. I'd offer suggestions, but it sounds like you've got your end covered already :)
Also, DM_Blake I didn't notice anything particularly insulting in what you posted. Actually, it was well put together, I thought, especially incorporating text-as-images. I can't ever seem to get those to come out right :p
Meatrace, "If you aren't a dedicated archer" Meaning that the character has to put in the feats. The comment was pointed at the forums viewers, not you specifically.
It wasn't an attack against you or your character about whether or not you were a good archer. It was merely an expression that, due to the cover rules, if a character hasn't invested in the archery tree, then generally it will be a better option for that character to engage in melee rather than try to deal with all the cover issues.
For dedicated archers, of course, they'll still be taking the shots. They'll have the feats and skills necessary to help them with that :)
It's text. Text can be very difficult to interpret at times. If that wasn't true, we wouldn't have a rules forum.
Meatrace, your dm just loves cover :/ You'll have to find some way to cope with that so that you still enjoy it. I'd offer suggestions, but it sounds like you've got your end covered already :)
Not really. We're running through Age of Worms and thus far it has been all dungeon crawl in tight passageways is all. I've very much munchkin'ed this character to be as good an archer as possible, so I'm doing fine, but I recognize that a casual player who just wants to be Legolas or what have you is going to become quickly frustrated with the rules, which is not something anyone wants.
Just as an anecdote, I had it brought up with a different gaming group by a grognard friend of mine that the thing he dislikes most about the 3.0+ system is feats. At first glance they seem like little ways you can customize your character, but in reality its a system outside the class system that forces you to plan ahead or fall behind. While I personally appreciate this system, as thought experiments and level planning are my thing, the more casual player might quickly realize that without precise shot at level 1 as an archer they are useless. Oh and they wasted their feat on Toughness since its so cool, and what now you have to take point blank shot to take that other one, it'll be a while before they will hit the broad side of a barn. Shucks, no fun. And as I said, it's inordinately fiddly and feat intensive to do so effectively.
Mini rant, done now though.
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I'd dust off my general "Margin of Failure" rule for this one. Same as falling off a cliff on a climb skill, if you fail the roll by five or more, you hit the ally providing cover. Precise shot just eliminates the cover penalty, in that case.
This is a really, really good rule to keep around for situations where it seems like there should penalties for severe failure and slight failure. It's used a lot in 3.5/PF, but I think it should get even more love.
I could go with that, nice and simple.
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Consider this:
You and your buddy are standing shoulder-to-shoulder (well, about 5' apart, but you're hopping around, ducking, dodging, weaving, whirling, slashing, thrusting, etc.) and you're both swinging swords at some orcs.
What happens when you miss?
Shouldn't there be a chance that you hit your buddy? Shouldn't he have a chance to hit you?
Of course he should. "Collateral damage" and "friendly fire" and "backswing maimings" are all a part of warefare and they have happened since the dawn of warefare.
But I never see any DM's in here clamoring for rules to cover what happens when the barbarian accidentally clocks the paladin with his power-attacking, enraging, two-handed sword.
Why not?
PC-death and TPKs would run rampant. Every time a close fight sees a bad roll there is a chance of PC death. The clerics are already working overtime to heal the damage the monsters dish out, but with rules like these, they will have to work double-overtime to heal the damage the party does to one another.
As has already been pointed out, ranged combat already suffers from some pretty heavy disadvantages (lower damage, cover, provoking AoO, never making AoOs when enemies provoke them, multiple required feats just to be effective, etc.) but there is also the compensating safety of being able to inflict damage from afar while enemies cannot hurt you back (or if they can, they have the same ranged disadvantages that you have).
Is that balanced?
Hard to say.
But it seems that most of us think it isn't balanced. Adding additional disadvantages to further hinder ranged combat is unnecessarily punitive.
Unless you restore balance by letting melee combatants whack their allies too.
You are, of course right here, and I see the point, but as James Jacobs pointed out quite reasonably, ranged attackers are not usually threatened during melee because they fire from a distance, whereas hand to hand combatants are, so the penalties currently in the rules are there for game balance rather than total realism.
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re: my immediatly previous post...
Unfortunately, the way this game works, we generally do NOT want PC death (certainly we don't want frequent PC death). On the other hand, we want constant monster death. In fact, just about every monster we throw at the PCs is supposed to die.
Well I don't always *want* constant monster death in all cases.
Some monsters might be, for example unusual for their type, I had a CG orc group in one of my games, that actually helped the party against a rival group of typical orcs who had ambushed them. As you might expect it made the party reassess orcs and the role playing that came out of this led to further stories; one in particular where the party vouched for that orc group so that they were able to build a farming community under the protection of a powerful lord. One orc from that community offered services to the party to help them infiltrate a dangerous orc tribe as a spy. Sadly he was killed, but the party later honored him with a statue!
Even more so, we generally do NOT want TPKs but we do want very frequent TMPKs (Total Monster Party Kills). We almost always expect the PCs to kill every monster and every group of monsters.
Why? Some monsters I use are deadly at a PC level, so I give my PCs subtle escape options, if they're clever enough to use them. I don't like players to feel invulnerable. Sometimes it's important to throw in the occasional wild card. If the players feel that they'll never be able to die then they lose interest in the challenges and eventually the game.
So, if a few bad archery rolls pick off the occasional orc in the front line, no big deal. The DM always has more orcs.But if a few bad archery rolls pick off the fighter in the front line of the PC group, that becomes a very big deal every time.
The player who runs the archer will feel awful when he kills a PC. He will feel like his character sucks. His character is a liability to the group rathe than an effective contributor. His character hurts the party rather than helps. That would make anyone feel awful.
S**t happens. The trick is to role play the situation. Perhaps the archer decides to spend his hard earned wealth in raising the character from death
Worse, many players really do care about their characters and when one PC kills another PC, both players may be emotionally involved in what happens. The player of the dead PC might be really angry about it. The archer's player will feel awful about killing someone else's beloved PC.He might want to retire his archer on the spot. I would.
I guess that's his choice. But like I was told in an earlier post by Mr Jacobs - it's only a game after all is said and done. Sure we all get invested emotionally in our characters, it's a bit like being an actor. Actor's deal with their roles being "killed off", and therefore, so should we.
Is that the intent of a ally-hit rule? Making players angry with each other? Making certain character concepts so awful to play that anyone unlucky enough to have such a character will often feel so bad that he will roll up a new character?
No. For me personally, it just seemed odd that a projectile like an arrow or Xbow bolt would just automatically miss everything in a melee if it missed it's intended target. But it's also true that the rules don't cover mishits by melee combat characters fighting closely with their allies. I actually hadn't factored this into my thinking. A barbarian wielding a massive two-handed sword standing next to say the cleric and hitting him by acccident if he misses is rather plausible too. But if you read Mr Jacob's post there are to be no rules regarding projectile misses hitting allies upcoming in official PF anyway, so your worries can be alleviated. Those of us that wish to use rules such as this are going to have to be satisfied with house rules.
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If you don't like the 4 point soft cover penalty.... move. Seriously.
Archers are quite balanced with melee, in that they almost always get a full attack, with more shots than any melee fighter (except a two-weapon specialist, and that's even more feat-intensive than an archer) will even dream of getting. Oh yeah, and they don't get hit back by melee-only foes.
From my gameplaying experience skilled archers are incredibly effective, and lots of my players like taking archery skills. This was what prompted me to discuss arrows that miss the target in the thick of melee. It appears however that others on this thread are not as enthusiastic about it, and from Mr Jacobs post earlier I don't think PF will be introducing penalties of that nature. It's a house rule issue now I guess.
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Your tone is somewhat insulting, but I will attempt to respond to your points with respect.
If you don't like the 4 point soft cover penalty.... move. Seriously.
Archers are quite balanced with melee, in that they almost always get a full attack, with more shots than any melee fighter (except a two-weapon specialist, and that's even more feat-intensive than an archer) will even dream of getting. Oh yeah, and they don't get hit back by melee-only foes.
I didn't think he intended to be insulting, emphatic certainly, but not insulting.
1)almost always get a full attack. Not when you have to move every round to get a single clear shot because of melee allies. Not in tight hallways in dungeons where a lot if not the majority of adventures take us.
True. Archery has limitations in this situation
2)more attacks than almost anyone, except TWF which takes more feats. Well let's see...TWF, ITWF, GWTF, arguably Double Slice. Versus Point Blank Shot, Precise Shot, Rapid Shot, Many Shot. Sounds about the same. I know, I know, archery get all their attacks at more or less their highest bonus, but still.
They also have the safe distance factor.
3)don't get hit by melee-only foes. Only if your DM plays them like mindless mooks, otherwise they're coming down the pipe at you since you ARE getting a full attack off more often. Not to mention a great deal of monsters a)fly b)have spells c)have reach so this is sort of a moot point. At least by the time you have enough feats to make you equivalent to the melee.
I agree, though it kind of depends on the intellect of the foes. I doubt whether ogres, hill giants, oozes(except perhaps Shoggoths), animals, mindless undead and a plethora of other monsters are thinking that damn archer is gonna kill me - I'm after him. Mainly they'll be thinking "Ouch" every time an arrow cuts into them and wondering what the little pointy stick is poking out from their hides is.
My archer oriented PCs usually get a few rounds of bow shots prior to the closing in of more intelligent enemies, and unless their number is legion each monster risks AoOs when it decides to break off an attack with a melee combatant to specifically target an archer, and most skilled archers (i.e, rangers, fighters) are also reasonably good melee combatants too, so they should in most cases be able to hold their own until the tanks wade in to defend them. I'm speaking from my own game experiences here. Archers can also if the situation is favorable climb onto something where they can get cover from melee attackers and still fire ranged attacks. Specialist archers generally have very good dexterity ratings, or at least they ought to.
Just some thoughts.
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I understand the balance part of this equation, and I just want to reiterate that my argument is only that Precise Shot should also eliminate your target's soft cover bonus to AC since they are both derived from the same logical argument. Being able to aim your shot so that your friend who is wrestling an orc is easy, but should there be someone else in the way then it's too much? A built in -8 to ranged attacks seems excessive.
This is where I do agree. When an archer is trained to such a high level of skill the -8 is punitive. It should be decreased to -4 at the least.
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Really, the amount of time that cover crops up for an archer in a game is directly related to the will of the dm.
In my campaigns, for instance, I'm usually pretty generous with positioning and layout so that my players don't have to deal with cover all the time. I find it more entertaining to make the occasional longer fight using cover as a theme.
For my group, it's more fun to do rarely, because afterwards we're reminded of how irritating it can be :D
One dm that I played under ran cover and positioning very, very carefully. Under him, it came up a lot. So it's ok.
Different dms run it differently.
Meatrace, your dm just loves cover :/ You'll have to find some way to cope with that so that you still enjoy it. I'd offer suggestions, but it sounds like you've got your end covered already :)
Also, DM_Blake I didn't notice anything particularly insulting in what you posted. Actually, it was well put together, I thought, especially incorporating text-as-images. I can't ever seem to get those to come out right :p
Meatrace, "If you aren't a dedicated archer" Meaning that the character has to put in the feats. The comment was pointed at the forums viewers, not you specifically.
It wasn't an attack against you or your character about whether or not you were a good archer. It was merely an expression that, due to the cover rules, if a character hasn't invested in the archery tree, then generally it will be a better option for that character to engage in melee rather than try to deal with all the cover issues.For dedicated archers, of course, they'll still be taking the shots. They'll have the feats and skills necessary to help them with that :)
It's text. Text can be very difficult to interpret at times. If that wasn't true, we wouldn't have a rules forum.
I guess we have all become a little heated during this debate. I even got told off by James Jacobs earlier for being insulting ;) but I didn't see anything deliberately insulting in the recent posts either, and I admit I was perhaps a little insulting to Mabven the OP healer yesterday, albeit mildly. That came about by total exasperation, and on my part weariness. It's a new day now and I feel a little annoyed at losing it with Mabven. It's easy for us to get overwrought in our discussions. We can have passionate opinions, and in fact without it, intelligent debate is impossible. But I have found the issues brought up by others to be very enlightening and I have shifted some of my original opinions because of this thread. PF Rules are an abstraction and often we may not see a logic behind something and debate it, which is great. But we need to sometimes take a step back and depersonalize ourselves from posts and look at the meat of another's argument. Yes, some people are insulting, and I think we all do it from time to time. Those who go all out to insult others rather than engage in debate generally get ignored and/or eventually booted.
Just my opinion. It's a new day, and the sun is shining. At least in Virginia it is ;)
The reason these penalties exist, by the way, isn't only because we're trying to be super-realistic about cover and the complexity of shooting arrows into melee, but is as much a balancing issue. If you're in melee with a target, that means the target can hit you back.
Being able to inflict damage at dozens or even hundreds of feet away from a target is a pretty good benefit over melee.
I don't expect this to really mollify folks who think the penalties are too high, of course, but it's something to keep in mind when you consider why melee attacks are easier to pull off.
I understand this and mostly I agree. Even with these penalties the changes to PF have made archery a powerful damage dealing build as it logically should be. It just seems that, rationally, you're double-penalizing archers. The penalty to hit someone engaged in melee seems to come from the same thought process as that for the cover i.e. someone is in the way.
It would be the same if the rationale for power attack to hit penalty was a sort of reckless swing, and since its a reckless swing opponents also get a dodge bonus against it.
This on top of the other built-in penalties I've mentioned in previous posts means you have to HYPER specialize in archery to make it as effective as a melee fighter with a greatsword does with just power attack and cleave, and the only tangible benefit is being less likely to be hit IN MELEE, something wizards of a moderate level take for granted.
It's silly to argue reality in the face of game balance so I won't do so, and I agree balance should almost always trump realism. However, from a more simulationist perspective it makes sense that ranged weapons and reach weapons would be favored because they don't put you in harms way as much, but the piling on of penalties I imagine leads to a trend where only number crunching power gamers (like myself) who know how to game the system to eke out every last point of hit, can make it work.
So let me get this straight:
You think the -4 penalty for firing into melee and +4 AC for firing through soft cover stacking is too much of a penalty when:1) assuming both ally and foe are medium sized, the ally could simply 5-foot step to several spaces so as not to be soft cover?
2) You could move up to 20' or 30' to get a better angle and not suffer the soft cover penalty?
3) the fact that even melee combatants with reach weapons are attacking through soft cover when an ally is between them and their target?
4) the fact that shooting at a foe when an ally is between you and them is fundamentally the same situation rules-wise as shooting at a foe engaged with an ally when there is a small tree (or other non-living object that grants soft cover) between you and the foe?
In other words, there are so many ways to mitigate this penalty, that I see it rarely come up in games and certainly don't see it as a big problem for ranged oriented builds. Obviously, certain situations may prevent you from taking these mitigating steps (such as fighting in a narrow corridor), but ranged combat shouldn't be effective in every combat situation, just as melee combat isn't effective in every combat situation.
Not really. We're running through Age of Worms and thus far it has been all dungeon crawl in tight passageways is all. I've very much munchkin'ed this character to be as good an archer as possible, so I'm doing fine, but I recognize that a casual player who just wants to be Legolas or what have you is going to become quickly frustrated with the rules, which is not something anyone wants.
Hmm, let me guess… Three faces of evil? I GMed that campaign too :). We had a ranger with undead as one of his favored enemies and he was a virtual "machine gun" in that campaign. I do remember times where the player would be miffed when he faced the soft cover penalty to hit due to cramped quarters, but far more often, he was shooting unimpeded at foes. And again, ranged combat doesn't lend itself to close-quarters combat as well, such as in a dungeon.
BTW, if I guessed right above, there are plenty of areas in that dungeon where ranged combat is far more advantageous than melee, but I won't give any spoilers :) But there are ample areas with changes in elevation.
Also, read MY posts more carefully. I am a dedicated archer, and I have honestly not had a single combat in 3 1/2 months where cover hasn't been a factor so you're NOT just telling non-archers to pick up a sword, you're telling me, because cover is a huge factor and will be until mid-high levels when I can take Improved Precise Shot.
Sounds to me like there's another problem. I suspect your allies are showing absolutely no regard for the archer when doing their combat positioning. Same thing happens to mages all the time. If you find yourself frustrated by someone being in the way *all the time*, then you need to talk with your party and have them modify their tactics so that you can get clear shots in. If everyone just uses the "charge like butt monkeys and fill in every available square" - then yes, you'll have cover penalties a lot.
Frankly, I find house rules about hitting allies on a miss help with this. With mages, the problem is worse because they need multiple clear squares for a lot of their area spells, but mages that get too frustrated just end up fireballing with a PC in the area from time to time (especially if they warned them ahead of time). Here, if you tell them "leave a line clear for me" and they don't, shoot anyway, and if they take an arrow from time to time then that's life.
@Marcus: I don't at all feel like you were insulting to me yesterday, but contrarywise, that you felt insulted by me, which I am sorry for. So please don't feel you have insulted me, because I don't feel insulted.
@everyone: In reality, until the advent of the rifled barrel, the way that projectile weapons of every sort were used in battle was to mass large amounts of archers/slingers/musketeers in a line and fire as a group into a large formation of enemies. There was no thought to trying to hit a specific target, and once a battle progressed to the stage of melee fighting, ranged attackers were withdrawn entirely, or forwent their ranged weapons for melee weapons. In any military organization, firing into a melee was sure to end in a quick court marshal followed by a firing squad, even if you brilliantly hit and killed your intended target.
My point is, the concept of firing into melee with a medieval ranged weapon is an arbitrary construct of the gaming system, in fact, firing a medieval ranged weapon with the expectation of any level of accuracy is an arbitrary construct of the gaming system, and in no way based in reality. So, we need to accept arbitrary rules to handle this fantasy situation. As a DM, you have the choice of accepting the arbitrary rules laid down by the publishers of the game, or coming up with your own arbitrary rules to handle it. So, we are left only with the idea of game balance. I think the designers have handled the game balance for ranged attacking into melee admirably, but it is certainly anyone's right to disagree. I implore you, however, if you are going to change the rules, do it in the name of your personal concept of game balance, with the intention of maximizing what is fun for your group, and not in the name of reality.
EDITED: Actually, you might be right (DM Blake). Still, I would appreciate it if you would not assume that I have to have things explained to me like a mentally challenged fellow.
Relax. Don't be so defensive nor so quick to assume you're being insulted when you're not. I suggested no slight to your mental competence so you should not infer that such a slight was my intent.
I just wanted to explain the rule as clearly as I could for anyone and everyone who happens to read this thread. There have been many threads on this forum about cover, and it seems to be widely misunderstood.
I was merely trying to be thorough.
So let me get this straight:
You think the -4 penalty for firing into melee and +4 AC for firing through soft cover stacking is too much of a penalty when:1) assuming both ally and foe are medium sized, the ally could simply 5-foot step to several spaces so as not to be soft cover?
2) You could move up to 20' or 30' to get a better angle and not suffer the soft cover penalty?
3) the fact that even melee combatants with reach weapons are attacking through soft cover when an ally is between them and their target?
4) the fact that shooting at a foe when an ally is between you and them is fundamentally the same situation rules-wise as shooting at a foe engaged with an ally when there is a small tree (or other non-living object that grants soft cover) between you and the foe?
1) 5' move is usually not enough unless your ally was just barely in the way (see my previous post above).
2) Often 20' or 30' is not enough, or not avaailable. Assuming a large open space like a grassy field, and assuming that the 20' or 30' you move puts you as close to your enemies as your front-line fighters, then yes, this can be enough - if you don't mind that you'll be in melee on your next round.3) Apples and oranges. Yes, reach weapons have to deal with soft cover too. But your point was about the -4 penalty for firing into melee combined with the +4 AC from soft cover. Guys with reach weapons never get that first penaltey eve if they have never taken a combat feat in their life. It's only ranged combatants, not maelee/reach combatants, who have to deal with both penalties at once.
4) Not quite the same. The tree won't be moving around and spoiling your shot nearly as much as an ally in melee will be.
Don't get me wrong, I believe both situations apply and there is no reason to use one and not the other. I'm just not sure I'm on board with your arguments here.
1) 5' move is usually not enough unless your ally was just barely in the way (see my previous post above).
2) Often 20' or 30' is not enough, or not available. Assuming a large open space like a grassy field, and assuming that the 20' or 30' you move puts you as close to your enemies as your front-line fighters, then yes, this can be enough - if you don't mind that you'll be in melee on your next round.
3) Apples and oranges. Yes, reach weapons have to deal with soft cover too. But your point was about the -4 penalty for firing into melee combined with the +4 AC from soft cover. Guys with reach weapons never get that first penaltey eve if they have never taken a combat feat in their life. It's only ranged combatants, not maelee/reach combatants, who have to deal with both penalties at once.
4) Not quite the same. The tree won't be moving around and spoiling your shot nearly as much as an ally in melee will be.Don't get me wrong, I believe both situations apply and there is no reason to use one and not the other. I'm just not sure I'm on board with your arguments here.
1) A 5-foot step by the ally will more often than not remove the cover bonus to AC to the foe (in fact, he doesn't remove the penalty only if he steps directly back toward you). Again, assuming medium sized foe and ally, a simple 5-foot step to the left or right eliminates it. No line drawn will go through your ally's space. Your ally can often 5-foot step diagonally adjacent to the creature as well, making it a non-issue. It gets a little more complicated if the foe is large or larger, but then your medium sized ally in all likelyhood is granting only partial cover (p.196)
2) 20' or more is often more than enough to get an open shot.
3) As far as it is concerned the stacking of both penalties is a non-issue to an archer character who takes Precise Shot. Guys with reach weapons will take feats that benefit their fighting style. Guys with bows will take feats that benefit their fighting style. Bottom line: If you want to be good at shooting into a melee, then you should invest into it.
4) It is fundamentally the same situation. Obviously, the tree can't move for you, but your ally can. If your ally is constantly puttiing himself in the way of your shots, then the problem isn't the rules, it's the ally. If the foe is using the tree as cover, then that is just good tactics, just as a flying creature remaining airborne vs. a melee focused character is just good tactics.
And no, rules-wise, ranged focus normally doesn't lend itself well to dungeon type terrain. I don't see how this is any different than other tactics and fighting styles that don't do well in this type of terrain, such as fireballs, lightning bolts, flying creatures, mounted combat, etc.
I'm the DM in the OP's game, and might I add that I stopped reading the replies halfway-up the 1st page because it seemed like people were just arguing...
Anyways, glad to know that I got it right. The rules about hitting your allies I now see are a relic that was not brought over from 3.0, but I honestly didn't check the rules for ranged combat since then in too much detail... Regardless, I didn't make him hit his animal companion with his attack that missed by 2. He dropped the BBEG with the shot right after that one, just so everyone knows, that poor poor ranger...
As for the balance issues with soft cover and everything... I agree with the above poster in that all you need do is move. Sometimes a 5 foot step will suffice, as I do believe it actually would have last night.
EDIT: oh, and the soft cover in question was a Raptor that had just pounced on the BBEG
This was why I said there should only be a -4 to hit. My assumption was that the animal companion was providing soft cover because it was engaged in the melee. Not camped out between the archer and the enemy with another ally engaged. Somewhere along the line the OP got skewed and an extra combatant was pushed into the mix. The original scenario only calls for a -4 due to soft cover (or firing into melee, however you want to look at it). Which as has been mentioned over and over again is negated by Precise Shot.
1) A 5-foot step by the ally will more often than not remove the cover bonus to AC to the foe (in fact, he doesn't remove the penalty only if he steps directly back toward you). Again, assuming medium sized foe and ally, a simple 5-foot step to the left or right eliminates it. No line drawn will go through your ally's space. Your ally can often 5-foot step diagonally adjacent to the creature as well, making it a non-issue. It gets a little more complicated if the foe is large or larger, but then your medium sized ally in all likelyhood is granting only partial cover (p.196)2) 20' or more is often more than enough to get an open shot.
Your assertions are demonstrably false in the majority of situations. 1)no, actually if you are directly behind your ally in relation to your target a 5-foot step will NEVER remove the soft cover bonus of your enemy. If you don't believe me, get out a battle map and try it out. (or see DMB's map earlier).
2)Now for a moment assume that you're not fighting on a flat, featureless plain and instead that you are in a dungeon, and there are walls, and other allies, and other enemies. In your typical encounter, even if you position yourself immaculately, you will likely encounter one kind of cover or another and soft cover from allies or enemies is a 20% reduction in your combat potential. Furthermore, as DMB stated, such movement that eliminates cover also eliminates any obstruction between your enemy, allowing him to easily charge you.
for 1) Huh? F=Foe A=Ally Y=You
FA.....Y (soft cover and melee penalty)
Ally takes five foot step to one side...
F......Y -or- F.......Y
A......[blank}.A......(still have melee penalty but no soft cover)
so your ally moving 5 foot CAN remove cover penalty Meatrace.
My bad, I misread that. I didn't catch the "by the ally" part. But even so that's something not in your control and also often not possible for your ally.
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@Marcus: I don't at all feel like you were insulting to me yesterday, but contrarywise, that you felt insulted by me, which I am sorry for. So please don't feel you have insulted me, because I don't feel insulted.
James Jacobs obviously felt I was ;) Didn't mean to get so wound up. So for that I am sorry. I was tired yesterday and your post got to me when it shouldn't have. I am usually very laid back and I hope we can remain friendly debaters in the future. I went back and read some of your other posts, as well as on other threads too and they were thought provoking.
Thank you for your magnanimous post, I appreciate it ;)
1) A 5-foot step by the ally will more often than not remove the cover bonus to AC to the foe (in fact, he doesn't remove the penalty only if he steps directly back toward you). Again, assuming medium sized foe and ally, a simple 5-foot step to the left or right eliminates it. No line drawn will go through your ally's space. Your ally can often 5-foot step diagonally adjacent to the creature as well, making it a non-issue. It gets a little more complicated if the foe is large or larger, but then your medium sized ally in all likelyhood is granting only partial cover (p.196)2) 20' or more is often more than enough to get an open shot.
Your assertions are demonstrably false in the majority of situations. 1)no, actually if you are directly behind your ally in relation to your target a 5-foot step will NEVER remove the soft cover bonus of your enemy. If you don't believe me, get out a battle map and try it out. (or see DMB's map earlier).
2)Now for a moment assume that you're not fighting on a flat, featureless plain and instead that you are in a dungeon, and there are walls, and other allies, and other enemies. In your typical encounter, even if you position yourself immaculately, you will likely encounter one kind of cover or another and soft cover from allies or enemies is a 20% reduction in your combat potential. Furthermore, as DMB stated, such movement that eliminates cover also eliminates any obstruction between your enemy, allowing him to easily charge you.
I wouldn't have made my "assertions" without trying it out on a battle map. ;) Try it yourself… I really don't see how it is not possible to see this.
The first, your medium ally stepping to one side or the other eliminates him from providing the medium sized enemy soft cover every time if he is directly between you and your target. It works almost as often if your target is large sized. Obviously you still have to contend with shooting into melee… again, which is easily solved with Precise Shot.
As for the second, rules-wise, it really depends on your orientation on the battlefield in relation to the grid… if you, your ally, and the foe are all in a straight line perpendicular to the grid, 20' or 30' of movement is likely not enough to give you a clean shot. However, if you're all in a straight line diagonal to the grid, it is very likely to give you the clean shot… hence my saying, "often more than enough"
1) A 5-foot step by the ally will more often than not remove the cover bonus to AC to the foe (in fact, he doesn't remove the penalty only if he steps directly back toward you). Again, assuming medium sized foe and ally, a simple 5-foot step to the left or right eliminates it. No line drawn will go through your ally's space. Your ally can often 5-foot step diagonally adjacent to the creature as well, making it a non-issue. It gets a little more complicated if the foe is large or larger, but then your medium sized ally in all likelyhood is granting only partial cover (p.196)2) 20' or more is often more than enough to get an open shot.
Your assertions are demonstrably false in the majority of situations. 1)no, actually if you are directly behind your ally in relation to your target a 5-foot step will NEVER remove the soft cover bonus of your enemy. If you don't believe me, get out a battle map and try it out. (or see DMB's map earlier).
2)Now for a moment assume that you're not fighting on a flat, featureless plain and instead that you are in a dungeon, and there are walls, and other allies, and other enemies. In your typical encounter, even if you position yourself immaculately, you will likely encounter one kind of cover or another and soft cover from allies or enemies is a 20% reduction in your combat potential. Furthermore, as DMB stated, such movement that eliminates cover also eliminates any obstruction between your enemy, allowing him to easily charge you.
I wouldn't have made my "assertions" without trying it out on a battle map. ;) Try it yourself… I really don't see how it is not possible to see this.
The first, your medium ally stepping to one side or the other eliminates him from providing the medium sized enemy soft cover every time if he is directly between you and your target. It works almost as often if your target is large sized. Obviously you still have to contend with shooting into melee… again, which...
I already said I misread your first point.
As for your second, your often is less than 10% of the time in my experience. You're again only considering one ally and one enemy, in a cluttered battlefield it is MUCH more difficult since any interceding creature will provide soft cover.
As for your second, your often is less than 10% of the time in my experience. You're again only considering one ally and one enemy, in a cluttered battlefield it is MUCH more difficult since any interceding creature will provide soft cover.
If you and your allies outnumber your foes, then yes, if several rush in and get into melee, then I can see your point. However, if there are multiple foes, then you'll often have multiple lines of fire.
I'm not trying to be or rude in asking this, but do the other players try to give you lanes of fire? I say this because we finished the AOW campaign a while back and I don't remember the party ranger consistently having this problem you speak of. The party consisted of: archer style ranger, 2 melee oriented fighters, 2 wizards, one cleric, and one melee oriented fighter/cleric. With half the party wanting to get into melee, the ranger still often had clear lines of fire, whether it was his allies getting out of the way, or the ranger shooting at targets not engaged in melee (other archer, spell casters, targets the melees could not get to, etc).
As for your second, your often is less than 10% of the time in my experience. You're again only considering one ally and one enemy, in a cluttered battlefield it is MUCH more difficult since any interceding creature will provide soft cover.If you and your allies outnumber your foes, then yes, if several rush in and get into melee, then I can see your point. However, if there are multiple foes, then you'll often have multiple lines of fire.
I'm not trying to be or rude in asking this, but do the other players try to give you lanes of fire? I say this because we finished the AOW campaign a while back and I don't remember the party ranger consistently having this problem you speak of. The party consisted of: archer style ranger, 2 melee oriented fighters, 2 wizards, one cleric, and one melee oriented fighter/cleric. With half the party wanting to get into melee, the ranger still often had clear lines of fire, whether it was his allies getting out of the way, or the ranger shooting at targets not engaged in melee (other archer, spell casters, targets the melees could not get to, etc).
It's not a matter of my allies though, I'm giving the specific example of dungeon crawls where there are usually tight, windy hallways and cramped caves and very limited movement. Even if my allies are considerate enough to move tactically specifically for my benefit, I'm doubting my enemies will be so cordial. I'm also speaking to the very specific way you have to determine cover, which means pretty much unless you and your ally are perpendicular to the enemy, your ally will provide cover. In a party of 6 adventurers, in an encounter against 6+ enemies, and a maybe 50x50ft cave, and mechanically needing to be near the rear and away from melee threats, soft cover will come into play a vast majority of the time. Perhaps not every round, but enough that your choice is either a)accept a significant penalty to your attacks (20%) b)move so much that you cannot get a full round attack off and potentially put yourself in immediate harms way.
I of course admit that in an open area the archer will near dominate, but this seems to be a much less common scenario for published adventures. That's my only argument on this point though, and obviously YMMV, but in my experience playing archers clear shots are the exception not the rule.