Rope Dart Weirdness

[K177Y C47]

Well I was looking at the ranged weapons for another thread when I noticed something weird about the rope dart... Well a few things weird.

1) The range of the weapon does not match up to the description... at all... The description says it is simply a spike attached to a 12 ft rope... but the range of the weapon is 20 ft. Where the hell did the extra 8 ft come from?I hope they are not assuming you have 8 ft arms...

2) technically the weapon is a ranged weapon... therefore following all the rules for ranged weapons... like being able to attack outside its first range increment... but how do you do that when it definetely has a cord?...

3) Since it is technically listed as a RANGED weapon, it would gain access to the ranged enchancements... like the Distance enchantment... how would that even work??? Do enchant it to make the cable extra stretchy? Like... is it a bungie cable now?...

Just some interesting things I've noticed. Any thoughts on this? Oh! and If you guys noticed anything weird with certain weapons be free to discuss them here!!!

[Charon's Little Helper]

1 - Length of dart/arm/leaning out etc. Plus there's only 15ft between you and a target '20ft' away since it includes the 1st square. Do you really think all reach weapons are a min. of 10 ft long? That'd be ridiculous & unwieldy. Try 6-7 ft. (Less for a reach weapon wielded by a halfling)

2 - If you really want to - cut the rope (makes it suck)

3 - If you really want to - cut the rope (makes it suck)

[Bandw2]

yeah, that 12 feet is originating from anywhere in a 5 foot square, and considering most melee weapons aren't 5 feet you can sort of enter adjacent squares to attack, that's 17 feet, then add arms, and you have 18-19 or so, this can easily enter squares 20 feet away from your square.

[Kazaan]

Remember that "range" for a ranged weapon is merely the range increment. A Thrown weapon can go out to a max of 5x its ranged increment, but with the rope, you simply ignore that factor and the furthest it can attack to is 10' from you. Now, if you let go of the rope, you could arguably throw it as far as you can, but you lose the ability to pull it back. The Distance enhancement, likewise, only affects the range increment, not the nature of the rope. Also keep in mind that, as a ranged attack rather than melee, you provoke AoO when attacking with a Rope Dart.

PS: You need some of that length of rope to hold it so, while it says "12 feet of cord", you can presume that about 2 feet of that is reserved as handling length and only 10' is your "working length".

[K177Y C47]

Kazaan wrote:

Remember that "range" for a ranged weapon is merely the range increment. A Thrown weapon can go out to a max of 5x its ranged increment, but with the rope, you simply ignore that factor and the furthest it can attack to is 10' from you. Now, if you let go of the rope, you could arguably throw it as far as you can, but you lose the ability to pull it back. The Distance enhancement, likewise, only affects the range increment, not the nature of the rope. Also keep in mind that, as a ranged attack rather than melee, you provoke AoO when attacking with a Rope Dart.

PS: You need some of that length of rope to hold it so, while it says "12 feet of cord", you can presume that about 2 feet of that is reserved as handling length and only 10' is your "working length".

Except it never says that. It has 0 caveats about it AT ALL. If it was treated as a really long ranged melee weapon then yeah, it can only attack out to its range. But it is a ranged weapon, and it has 0 specific rules regarding it, besides the flavour text which means 0 to how the rope dart works. So, in fact, the rope dart does attack out to 20 ft, can attack out to 100 ft, follows the rules for ranged enchancements, and technically can gain the benefit of rapid shot...

I mean, if there was a caveat written on it saying something to the effect of "Cannot attack outside of it's first range increment" then that would be one thing, but there is NOTHING about it... so RAW... its weird.

[Kazaan]

K177Y C47 wrote:

Kazaan wrote:

Remember that "range" for a ranged weapon is merely the range increment. A Thrown weapon can go out to a max of 5x its ranged increment, but with the rope, you simply ignore that factor and the furthest it can attack to is 10' from you. Now, if you let go of the rope, you could arguably throw it as far as you can, but you lose the ability to pull it back. The Distance enhancement, likewise, only affects the range increment, not the nature of the rope. Also keep in mind that, as a ranged attack rather than melee, you provoke AoO when attacking with a Rope Dart.

PS: You need some of that length of rope to hold it so, while it says "12 feet of cord", you can presume that about 2 feet of that is reserved as handling length and only 10' is your "working length".

Except it never says that. It has 0 caveats about it AT ALL. If it was treated as a really long ranged melee weapon then yeah, it can only attack out to its range. But it is a ranged weapon, and it has 0 specific rules regarding it, besides the flavour text which means 0 to how the rope dart works. So, in fact, the rope dart does attack out to 20 ft, can attack out to 100 ft, follows the rules for ranged enchancements, and technically can gain the benefit of rapid shot...

I mean, if there was a caveat written on it saying something to the effect of "Cannot attack outside of it's first range increment" then that would be one thing, but there is NOTHING about it... so RAW... its weird.

It doesn't need to say that because it's common sense. They don't need to outline every simple concept in the rules because, if they did, the rule book would be tens of thousands of pages long and weigh a few metric tons.

Sean K Reynolds wrote:

English is a very fluid language.

In some ways that is helpful because it allows us to express a rule in a natural way in one sentence and in another natural way in another sentence.

So it doesn't need to explicitly insult our intelligence by saying the rope dart is attached to a 12' cord which can be used to pull it back after it has been thrown and that cord prevents it from attacking out past the length of the cord because any person with half a brain can figure that out from the fact that the cord is held at one end and isn't 100 feet long. You say, "it's just fluff text" but that is an incorrect assessment. It represents a mechanical process and explains it in "plain English", relying on a reader to be able to put two and two together and come up with four rather than turnip. Would you also say that a Dagger can be thrown to its full 5x range increments even while attached to a weapon cord?

In other words, I don't see how explicitly stating it can be thrown and then retrieved with a tug of the cord and that the cord is only 12 feet long isn't saying that it can only be thrown out to the length of the cord. You say "it never says that". Well, guess what; it does. The correct assessment for you would have been, "I didn't think it said that, I must have missed it." You know, since you were asking for details on how the weapon worked and all... implying that you're unsure. I can't see how one can be unsure of how it works, but then a reasonable explanation is shot down because, suddenly, you know exactly what is or isn't valid.

[Dieben]

Candidate for FAQ?: "How does a rope dart work in combat specifically?"

[K177Y C47]

This biggest thing is that in RAW heavy games (like my GM of PFS) this can cause some weird issues. No where in the description does it say that you need to let go of it to use it, and they have it listed as a ranged weapon, instead of a reach weapon like the whip. So, you would think they would have put Caveats on it (they tend to do with stuff).

Heck, one weapon that is similiar to it (in design anyway) is teh Flying Blade. Essentially the weapon is a great axe on a long chain, But that weapon is listed as a 2 Handed martial weapon (maybe exotic i forgets), so it doesn't run into issues like this...

[K177Y C47]

Heck, actually looking at it, just about every similiar weapon is a melee weapon, not ranged...

Spiked Chain

meteor hammer

Kusari-Gama

Double Chained Kamas

Flying Blades...

Just about every "weapon on a rope/chain" thing seems to be 2 handed melee, which makes it weird that this one weapon is actually a ranged weapon.

[Pigtails]

I would assume the reasoning could be that the +dex to hit makes some sense given the nature of the weapon in question. Or it could just be an oversight on some level.

In any event, as the rules stand, you can apply ranged enchantments and whatnot to the dart.

[Carla the Profane]

conductive rope dart Ki scorching rays?

free action retractable from more than 20 ft?

does anyone know what's going on with this weapon?

Does this mechanically have anything to do with the meteor hammer?

So many possibilities...

Especially for PFS, where table confusion pretty much prevents anyone from using this weapon.

[Mort the Cleverly Named]

I agree, it is poorly written. Other weapons like the Flying Blade and Meteor Hammer work in similar ways but are not classified as Ranged Weapons. It even calls out the Meteor Hammer and uses the word "reach" in the description, but is not a normal reach weapon.

There are also extra issues. Like most ranged weapons it does not say whether it is light, one handed, or two handed for purposes of two-weapon fighting. It says one can "quickly retrieve the weapon with a tug," but lists no action. Perhaps free, perhaps swift like a weapon cord (at the time of writing), but it really isn't specified and table variation is likely to occur.

It isn't alone in that section of Ultimate Combat, either. Many weapons have unique rules (double-chained kama, double walking stick katana, and Kyoketsu shoge come to mind) but are not written in such a way to make them explicitly clear. These issues were brought up when the book was released but did not make the errata, so I would not hold out substantial hope of additional clarification.

Also, to anyone claiming "common sense" fixes all I would point out in this very thread people have applied different mind caulk to the rules to claim it can only attack 20' away or 10' away. So it is obviously not as obvious as you might think.

[Charon's Little Helper]

K177Y C47 wrote:

Heck, actually looking at it, just about every similiar weapon is a melee weapon, not ranged...

Spiked Chain

meteor hammer

Kusari-Gama

Double Chained Kamas

Flying Blades...

Just about every "weapon on a rope/chain" thing seems to be 2 handed melee, which makes it weird that this one weapon is actually a ranged weapon.

Because unlike all of those weapons it's a ranged weapon (go figure) and provokes AOOs when used.