Given the choice of only ONE class, what would you pick for an archer?


Advice

101 to 119 of 119 << first < prev | 1 | 2 | 3 | next > last >>
RPG Superstar 2012 Top 16

gamer-printer wrote:
All the yabusame's abilities are limited to shooting a bow as a standard action - single shot. So though his abilities are powerful, they are no more powerful than a paladin. A lot can be accomplished with a successful shot, but it has to be a successful shot and he has little else to follow in that round. I think the limitation of single shot on these abilities balance the potential to be overpowered. Historically a samurai is supposed to be a mounted archer expert, but the PF samurai doesn't really support that - the Kaidan setting needed one that fit that concept, so this is why it was created.

You are incorrect. I'm not sure if that's your intention or what, but that's not how the class reads.

Far Challenge has no restriction on the number of arrows that can be launched for the damage bonus.
If they opponent hits you in melee...then its suddenly a standard challenge to boot! Two challenges for the price of one!
And archers do not need a damage bonus.

The level 6 ability is the Vital Strike entire chain for a bow, with the addition of dex to damage, stacking with Str to damage (there's no 'replacement' wording). Effectively, this is TWO lines of feats...the Vital Strike chain, and that horrid chain that 'added' weapon spec to your Vital Strike multiplier.
Note: The way it reads obfuscates a key thing: Is this only multiplying the base arrow damage, or is it multiplying ALL the damage the arrows do, including fixed bonuses? In other words, is it replicating the Vital Strike chain, or the MYTHIC vital strike chain?
And then if you miss, you still might hit! Not that you're going to miss with double your Dex mod to hit from One with the Yumi (basically a scaling +5 to +10 bonus to hit. Note that BY ITS WORDING, it stacks with Manyshot, which is a 'single bow attack'.)

Distant Death is effectively a +20 bonus to hit. You may as well just give him True Strike for 2 Resolve.

It's an overpowered PrC with horrendous balance issues. The "I get a ranged smite against anyone but I won't call it that' was the first hint things were going wrong, and it just went downhill.

==Aelryinth

RPG Superstar 2012 Top 16

Saldiven wrote:
LoneKnave wrote:
Hey Aelryinth, have you seen Luring cavalier? Just asking.

I'm surprised nobody has brought this up.

Sure, he can't self buff like casters. He gets enough Feats to make archery work, though slower than other classes. He gets a full progression Mount. But then the challenge adds +damage equal to Cavalier level to every shot until the target of the challenge hits him in melee. There's a ton of damage potential there against targets that need it.

Archers don't need huge damage buffs. They get full attacks.

Just look at the ridonkulous numbers a smiting paladin archer can put up. Then realize the cav/samurai can do that with ANY target.

Ugh.

Even a standard Cav ability of +1 to +7 damage and/or TH per arrow would quickly stack up impressively. Full attacking archers murder things quickly.

==Aelryinth


@Aelryinth: Oh, sorry...I wasn't addressing the 3PP archetype. I was just commenting on the fact that nobody had mentioned the Luring Cavalier in discussing good dmg output archers.


The yabusame's challenge is certainly equivalent to smite, I agree, and you're right it doesn't apply to just a single shot, but all of his other special abilities are one-shot related: one with the yumi, shi no ya, and distant death are all single shot only per round. He replaces far challenge with standard challenge when an opponent hits him, but he only gets one form of challenge - not both simultaneously.

You don't like Dex to damage, I get it, but there's been Dex to damage since 3x, its not anything new, and not particularly broken. This archetype has been designed to disallow specific feat builds that would break things in OP ways, thru the limitation of single attacks per round. Even if every single, single-shot arrow hits every round with bonus damage, that's not enough to drop a target. I've seen many games where an archer with multi-shot and any other means of firing more than one arrow kill an opponent in a single round. For the yabusame to do the same, the opponent has to have low AC and HP. If the opponent is CR balanced, a yabusame cannot drop him in a single round. I just don't see this as overpowered. (I've thoroughly playtested this archetype.)

RPG Superstar 2012 Top 16

Heh, k. He just copied that ability and subbed samurai for cavaliar for the yamabushi class.

It's still overpowered. Ranged smite on target of choice is a hugely strong thing to have.

==Aelryinth

RPG Superstar 2012 Top 16

gamer-printer wrote:

The yabusame's challenge is certainly equivalent to smite, I agree, and you're right it doesn't apply to just a single shot, but all of his other special abilities are one-shot related: one with the yumi, shi no ya, and distant death are all single shot only per round. He replaces far challenge with standard challenge when an opponent hits him, but he only gets one form of challenge - not both simultaneously.

You don't like Dex to damage, I get it, but there's been Dex to damage since 3x, its not anything new, and not particularly broken. This archetype has been designed to disallow specific feat builds that would break things in OP ways, thru the limitation of single attacks per round. Even if every single, single-shot arrow hits every round with bonus damage, that's not enough to drop a target. I've seen many games where an archer with multi-shot and any other means of firing more than one arrow kill an opponent in a single round. For the yabusame to do the same, the opponent has to have low AC and HP. If the opponent is CR balanced, a yabusame cannot drop him in a single round. I just don't see this as overpowered. (I've thoroughly playtested this archetype.)

Sure, one shot builds aren't going to kill anything by the round.

But you need to reread the link you sent me to, because what you're describing is not what the class actually is.

1) Ranged Smite is lethal. Combine with full attacks, rapid shot and/or manyshot, and 1 round kills of the enemy is a thing that is going to happen routinely.

2) One with a Yumi applies to one ATTACK per round. A Manyshot is considered ONE ATTACK (see Missile Deflection, it deals with ALL of a manyshot's arrows). So, the TH bonus applies. The ability does not say one ARROW.

3) Dex to damage has existed, but always replacing another ability score, not stacking. And it has been incredibly rare on ranged attack builds for precisely the fact that ranged attack builds don't need damage.
This is particularly dangerous because the same ability describes damage multipliers without defining if it is restricted to the die of the arrow or the arrow+multipliers.

If it's the latter, you've got Mythic Vital Strike, which is a full attack all in one shot, and you're not gonna miss with double dex to hit, and the damage is going to be sick if Dex is added onto the stack.
========================

So, what you may have intended for the class is not what is described there.

==Aelryinth


Aelryinth wrote:
UnArcaneElection wrote:

^Or a real machine gun archer like Lars Anderson . . . .

Lars uses a short bow with no strength bonus and d4 dmg flight arrows. He's a trick shot archer, not a war archer. Against any armored target, he's going to do next to nothing because his arrows can't get through real armor, and he's not accurate to shoot around the armor at speed.

His style of shooting is like being able to juggle eight balls at once. Just because your hands are fast enough to do that doesn't mean you can throw them at someone coming at you with hostile intent and in armor and expect to hurt them.

The most recent video I saw of him had him shooting some targets in chainmail, and had these been people instead, they certainly would have suffered injury. He did shoot these at a lower rate than in his highest speed segments of the video -- in other words, adapting to the particular targets, trading in various directions between accuracy, firing rate, and power as needed. An archer who CAN'T make that kind of tradeoff on the fly is more of a one-trick pony.

And historically, short bows have had legitimate military use, namely where you need a bow but you can't physically fit a longbow. Such uses have included archery from horseback (low end of the longbow would collide with the horse), which seems appropriate since we're talking partly about mounted archers (although Samurai for at least some of their history would have had some variety of yumi instead).

RPG Superstar 2012 Top 16

1) Chainmail is the armor most vulnerable to archery, because it is vulnerable to piercing damage. The kind of chain mail he used was the least protective, I've heard from reviews of what he was doing. He uses a 35 lb bow with light arrows. Those don't penetrate real armor.

2) The technique he uses is based on Middle Eastern archers using a rapid fire technique. It was employed against people wearing basically silk armor because of the desert heat.
Needless to say, the Crusaders, when they came in, laughed at the technique. They'd get shot up like porcupines, and keep fighting on, uninjured from the arrows sticking out of their leathers and mail.

3)He's a trick shot artist, and it is trick shot archery. You don't try and pull this stuff in a real fight against real fighters. It looks great and it has its uses against unarmored opponents. But that's it. In a real fight, you shoot slower because you use heavy arrows and draw strength to punch through armor.

===Aelryinth


Aelryinth wrote:
1) Chainmail is the armor most vulnerable to archery, because it is vulnerable to piercing damage. The kind of chain mail he used was the least protective, I've heard from reviews of what he was doing. He uses a 35 lb bow with light arrows. Those don't penetrate real armor.

And again, of course you adapt to what you're up against. Also, somebody with his training who had bulked up more muscle would be able to maintain his rate of fire and punch through heavier armor.

Aelryinth wrote:

2) The technique he uses is based on Middle Eastern archers using a rapid fire technique. It was employed against people wearing basically silk armor because of the desert heat.

Needless to say, the Crusaders, when they came in, laughed at the technique. They'd get shot up like porcupines, and keep fighting on, uninjured from the arrows sticking out of their leathers and mail.

So, how well did the Crusaders do in the heat? I don't have specific information on that aspect of the Crusades, but I observe that while the Crusaders managed to establish some footholds that lasted for a while, large regions that they intended to take over remained outside their control.

Aelryinth wrote:
3)He's a trick shot artist, and it is trick shot archery. You don't try and pull this stuff in a real fight against real fighters. It looks great and it has its uses against unarmored opponents. But that's it. In a real fight, you shoot slower because you use heavy arrows and draw strength to punch through armor.

Again, you adapt to what you're up against. And since he can shoot arrows out of the air a decent fraction of the time, he could probably get a thin arrow in through an eyeslit (or possibly other vulnerable spot) in plate armor, which would be as good as or even better than punching through the actual steel plate.


Gunslinger Bolt-ace

Dex to damage, bracers of falcons aim + improved critical make you a 17+ X4 crit d10 damage instead of d8. Array of utility abilities, shoot vs touch ac at 120 foot range.

RPG Superstar 2012 Top 16

1) No, you can't fire faster with the right arrows. He's doing chest draws, using light arrows and low poundage because that's the only way to generate that level of speed. I'm not saying he's weak. I'm saying he's using a willow wand instead of a greatsword because it's not possible for a greatsword to do what he wants it to do.
Lots of professional archers comment on what he's doing, UEC. Again, he's a trick shot artist. That doesn't mean he's not skilled.

2) The knightly orders trained to fight in the heat. There are many battle reports of Templars and Hospitalars riding out to confront ten times their numbers of enemies, because they wore armor and their enemies didn't, trouncing them. The myths of Crusader invincibility carry on in the Middle East to this day!
Which is not to say that there weren't cases where the heat was used against them, but that was only something unwise Knights succumbed to. Locals wore silk to fights, and Knights wore steel.
You only have to control local areas and cities to have control. Crusaders did fine. They were, in the end, simply outlasted, betrayed from without by their homelands, and the Knightly orders disbanded.
Also, keep in mind many 'Crusaders' were just marauders out to kill. the knightly orders were rightfully feared for their prowess. Many crusaders were little better then brigands.

3) He can shoot arrows he knows are coming using selective photography along a predetermined arc. It's a trick shot, like shooting a dime out of the air.
That doesn't mean you can poke an arrow through an eyeslit against an active moving opponent who can just put an armored arm up to block your shot, or better yet a shield, or even the flat of his blade.

Like I said, Lars has some skills. That doesn't mean they're all that great on the battlefield.

===Aelryinth

RPG Superstar 2012 Top 16

Ryan Freire wrote:

Gunslinger Bolt-ace

Dex to damage, bracers of falcons aim + improved critical make you a 17+ X4 crit d10 damage instead of d8. Array of utility abilities, shoot vs touch ac at 120 foot range.

Note that Bracers of Falcon's Aim are VERY underpriced for what they do, hence why they are banned in PFS.

==Aelryinth


^1. Again, he has shown some adaptability in the accuracy/power/speed tradeoff. Bulking up your muscles (not that he's weak, but still well within the human strength range) and your bow would let you fire heavier arrows at the same speed.

^2. I'm sure that Crusader invincibility legends were born . . . just as over here we have legends of Communists (more recently Socialists) behind every tree.

^3. Given that an armored warrior is moving a LOT slower than an arrow, and that the armored warrior can't see you if putting an arm or a shield in the way, I'd say that the implication of being able to put an arrow through an eyeslit (or force your opponent to block their own vision against other things) is fair. And if they're trying to block somebody else's arrow from coming in through their eyeslit, they might not see your arrow (because they're paying attention to the other arrow) while it still has a path to get in. Not guaranteed, of course, but it would be a high risk to the armored warrior. Also, depending upon your orientation relative to their facing, they might not even be able to see your arrow heading for their eyeslit at all -- this means that the arrow wouldn't get in their eye, but just by going in it would be guaranteed to do some crippling and likely fatal damage. This is probably why some Medieval/Renaissance helmets substituted some sort of grilles for eyeslits, despite the reduction in vision. Of course, this would select for a counter-response to go to heavier/longer bows and more strength training. Like I said, you have to adapt to the situation.

RPG Superstar 2012 Top 16

1) if he could fire heavier arrows at the same speed, he'd do it because it would prove his point. If he tries it, his RoF and/or his range is going to fail. The pros have spoken.
Keep in mind he's a serious hobbyist and worked for years on this. Bulking up isn't going to help him appreciably.

2) The records are there. The Middle East feared the Knightly Orders.

3) And yet, shields and armguards are used for exactly that purpose today. Saying the archer can easily target an eyeslit is like saying a man can easily bat an arrow out of the air. You're talking about an extremely rare and impressive feat of marksmanship which was notable for exactly how rarely it happened, and now saying how easily it could be done in the heat of a moment knowing that if you miss this angry guy with a sword is going to split your skull. Shooting someone in the face was simply not that easy for ANY archer, regardless of Rate of Fire, mainly because people didn't like being shot in the face!

==Aelryinth


The thing that bugs me about Lars is he tries to claim that his method of archery is the "one true method," a method "long forgotten" and so forth, when it's not. As someone who made a very good counter to his video said, "Archery is about what works." All sorts of different archery methods were developed because they each worked in a given situation, and his happens to be based off of Middle Eastern archery techniques that, as Aelryinth says, are used against lightly armored opponents.

(Example: the Welsh Longbow was a weapon that did its job and did it darned well, but it is NOTHING like the low poundage bow he uses.)

And yeah, chainmail vs. arrow = dead guy. That's common.


A response to Lars Andersen's video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rDbqz_07dW4


Aelryinth wrote:

1) if he could fire heavier arrows at the same speed, he'd do it because it would prove his point. If he tries it, his RoF and/or his range is going to fail. The pros have spoken.

Keep in mind he's a serious hobbyist and worked for years on this. Bulking up isn't going to help him appreciably.

Like I said before, you adapt to the situation, trading off between accuracy, power, and rate of fire as needed.

And bulking up by itself wouldn't be enough, but it would be necessary. (Firing heavier arrows at the same velocity and firing rate uses more energy.)

Aelryinth wrote:
2) The records are there. The Middle East feared the Knightly Orders.

I don't doubt this, but the power of the knights probably got inflated in the legends.

Aelryinth wrote:
3) And yet, shields and armguards are used for exactly that purpose today. Saying the archer can easily target an eyeslit is like saying a man can easily bat an arrow out of the air.

I didn't say it was easy. I just said that somebody who has the accuracy required to shoot down incoming arrows (even if not 100% of the time) could do it a decent fraction of the time. (What do you think the replacement of eyslits with grilles was for on some types of armor?)

Aelryinth wrote:

You're talking about an extremely rare and impressive feat of marksmanship which was notable for exactly how rarely it happened, and now saying how easily it could be done in the heat of a moment knowing that if you miss this angry guy with a sword is going to split your skull. Shooting someone in the face was simply not that easy for ANY archer, regardless of Rate of Fire, mainly because people didn't like being shot in the face!

{. . .}

This is less an argument that his technique can't work than that it can't become very widespread among a population (even if it gets widespread geographic recognition), because most people just can't do it, whereas in contrast, almost any idiot can use a firearm, even without great muscle training (just as long as they can hold against the recoil); this was true long before the development of modern firearms that let you get a high rate of fire.

Inlaa wrote:
The thing that bugs me about Lars is he tries to claim that his method of archery is the "one true method," {. . .}

AND

Neo2151 wrote:

A response to Lars Andersen's video:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rDbqz_07dW4

Linkified.

I'll give you this, the historical claims in his videos are overly broad. At least this response video isn't claiming that his techniques don't work (the closest being that you aren't going to have much luck splitting a wood arrow in half -- but on the other hand, in some parts of the world, bamboo is a legitimate material for making arrows). I gave this one the nod.


Quote:
I don't doubt this, but the power of the knights probably got inflated in the legends.

Weeeeell...

Okay. Consider that we're specifically talking about knights here for a moment. Knights are different than other medieval warriors in that they were rich enough to be equipped with the best money could buy as far as weapons and armor goes. These guys were:

a) wearing amazing armor

b) probably actually well trained in combat unlike a lot of footsoldiers

So them being feared isn't really all that impressive, but it makes sense and it's probably not all THAT inflated. They're these rich guys in heavy armor that laughs off low poundage bows. Well, hey - that's a thing that happened. That's one reason why guns changed warfare so much: they made armor nearly (NEARLY) obsolete.

Middle Eastern archery was developed to fight people in the desert (edit: or, well, in hotter climates - day climates - than most of Europe). The knight orders were still disadvantaged when traveling in other places because they tromped around in the armor we're talking about. It just so happens that heavy armor was a great counter to bows and arrows.

RPG Superstar 2012 Top 16

It was a great counter to scimitars, too. Arabaian culture lauds the scimitar as their ideal weapon.

There's a famous story of a Knight and an Arab using their swords in a contest, to cut a silk ribbon, and to cut an iron bar.

The scimitar was so sharp it could shear the silk ribbon without difficulty. But it hit the iron bar and bent badly.

The Crusader's straight sword wasn't sharp enough to cut the silk ribbon, but it was hard and solid enough to cleave the iron bar.

When it came to fighting, guess who was wearing iron, and guess who was wearing silk?

A guy in armor you can't really hurt with the weapon you have in hand is a terrible opponent. The scimitar is not a weapon really made for dealing with armor, either, as its a slicing weapon which does poorly against metal. A longsword, on the other hand, was designed to be able to break bones if it couldn't get through the metal, and could easily do the hacking part of the job against people in light armor.

==Aelryinth

101 to 119 of 119 << first < prev | 1 | 2 | 3 | next > last >>
Community / Forums / Pathfinder / Pathfinder First Edition / Advice / Given the choice of only ONE class, what would you pick for an archer? All Messageboards

Want to post a reply? Sign in.