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I'm looking for your input on a modified version of Improved Precise Shot I want to use for my upcoming AP campaign.
In my previous campaigns, I'm finding the magic missile arrows of death from archers to be a bit overwhelming against enemies. Unless I'm using enemies with invisibility, the archer can usually decimate a target regardless of position or tactics. And invisibility can be easily defeated at the level when IPS is available.
So, I'm proposing to tune it down a bit without making it completely worthless for a Combat Feat.
improved Precise Shot: (same prerequisites) With your ranged attacks, every time you miss because of concealment, you can reroll your miss chance percentile to roll one time to see if you actually hit, including against targets with total concealment. Your range attacks also ignore the AC bonus granted to targets within 30 feet by anything less than total cover, and ignore half the AC bonus to targets beyond 30 feet. Total cover provides its normal benefits against your ranged attacks.
Since there is no melee-equivalent to IPS, I'm trying to provide a bit of the Blind-Fight feat in my modified version.
Your thoughts on this? Thanks.
Seems reasonable to me.
Are you also looking at the feat: Clustered Shots?
Makes sense.
My experience is that archers are great at dealing damage but relatively weak at other things, although that can depend a lot on the build. A ranger archer could be an effective scout and have many decent skills whereas a straight fighter archer is just an archer.
Do your games tend to focus on combat? Or other things like roleplaying, exploration, puzzle solving, etc.?
I'm a bit confused what you mean with "magic missile arrows of death" - just the regular full attack of an archery character? Because to me, Magic Missile is a spell.
Archery in Pathfinder is good at being a reliable source of damage, but it's very feat intense, and it generally doesn't come near the DPR numbers of other dedicated damage dealers (mainly melees). Don't forget that in Precise Shot, archery has a pure "unlock" feat just to be a viable playstyle.
At 11th level, some sort of flight should be aviable to many melees damage dealers, making many positionings and tactics moot against them as well. 11th level on a full BAB character, of course, meaning 4/9th casting at most.
I wonder what the other party members look like, or what other houserules you have in place, when you feel that archery is so overpowered that you need to ban or nerf multiple feats.
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Makes sense.
My experience is that archers are great at dealing damage but relatively weak at other things, although that can depend a lot on the build. A ranger archer could be an effective scout and have many decent skills whereas a straight fighter archer is just an archer.
Do your games tend to focus on combat? Or other things like roleplaying, exploration, puzzle solving, etc.?
We run APs so depends on the AP, but I do try to add more RP opportunities after a long dungeon crawl. However, the last few "archers" in the group were more focused on combat than roleplaying.
I'm a bit confused what you mean with "magic missile arrows of death" - just the regular full attack of an archery character? Because to me, Magic Missile is a spell.
This is a term we coined for archers with IPS. Just like magic missile, if an IPS archer can see any part of the target, regardless of concealment or cover, then they can take a shot. While they still need to make the attack roll, the arrows fly "unerringly" to the target.
I wonder what the other party members look like, or what other houserules you have in place, when you feel that archery is so overpowered that you need to ban or nerf multiple feats.
This is a valid concern, and I'm happy to elaborate on this. The current party has a gunslinger wizard, 2-weapon rogue, sword+board paladin, life oracle, and archer ranger. I do have a few house rules in place, but only when it seem to make sense or for better house keeping or play. For example, the rogue received Trap Spotter for free to speed up game play. Improved Familiar and Leadership are banned (enough "characters" already), as well as Sacred Geometry (no complex math please). And some for clarification where the RAW is lacking so we consistently.
The current party has a gunslinger wizard, 2-weapon rogue, sword+board paladin, life oracle, and archer ranger.
Ah, gotcha. The Wizard probably splits his stuff to much, Rogue (core or unchained?) is pretty weak anyway, and S&B Paladin is pretty defense focussed. It's no surprise the Ranger is the best damage dealer. That's not really archery's fault, though.
Be careful not to try to balance the damage the characters deal - Paladin has Smite Evil (which includes ignoring DR) and amazing self-healing with Lay on Hands, and the Wizard has Spells way more powerful than the Ranger's. The Ranger is more damage focussed than those two, and thus should be better at it.
Regarding your original question: Well, compared to Improved Blind-Fight, your feat is pretty weak. You're two feats in just the same, are way worse off against concealment, and ignoring cover is more of a ranged problem anyway. I'd probably keep the concelament part of the feat as it is, and restrict the cover part to only ignore soft cover.
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Be careful not to try to balance the damage the characters deal - Paladin has Smite Evil (which includes ignoring DR) and amazing self-healing with Lay on Hands, and the Wizard has Spells way more powerful than the Ranger's. The Ranger is more damage focussed than those two, and thus should be better at it.
To put it in a better context of my experience with IPS, this campaign is my 3rd archer in as many campaigns (all played by different players). The first was a Arcane Archer, the 2nd was a Archer Fighter, and now the 3rd is an Archer Ranger. All had IPS and all have about the same damage output.
Regarding your original question: Well, compared to Improved Blind-Fight, your feat is pretty weak. You're two feats in just the same, are way worse off against concealment, and ignoring cover is more of a ranged problem anyway. I'd probably keep the concelament part of the feat as it is, and restrict the cover part to only ignore soft cover.
I like you're idea of limiting IPS. It's a small change that lowers the power of the feat a bit, yet simplest to implement into the campaign. Thank you.