Natural (or supernatural) wind or weather effects (penalties, concealment) could help, if that makes sense on your plane. You could describe a big shape barely recognizable in the mist approaching with thundering steps that shake the ground.
Deflect Arrows or gloves of arrow snaring are also options.
There is also fickle winds, but it is not a core spell.
Ever heard the old phrase "don't bring a knife to a gunfight"?
That's what you're doing. You have a bunch of combatants all carrying "guns" (bows, really, and ranged spells, and your NPC is bringing a knife (sword?) to this "gunfight".
So don't do it.
Have the large barbarian and his minions use bows and mythic abilities right back. If the PCs are fighting at long range, then the bad guys should too.
Alternatively, have them make use of teleport or other similar abilities so they can get right into melee range even during the surprise round, thereby neutralizing the ranged characters' advantage.
And as you mentioned, spells like Protection against Arrows or Entropic Shield might be very useful, assuming the bad guys have reason to know ahead of time that the PCs fight at long range and have time to prepare these kinds of spells to protect themselves.
Perhaps the easiest way to neutralize long ranges is to make them impossible. It doesn't matter if you can shoot 200 feet if you are fighting in a 30x30 room, or if you just got ambushed by monsters that are less than 20 feet away, or if you're fighting in a thick fog, etc. Even a dense forest might provide so much cover and concealment that long ranges are impossible ("In a sparse forest, the maximum distance at which a Perception check for detecting the nearby presence of others can succeed is 3d6 × 10 feet. In a medium forest, this distance is 2d8 × 10 feet, and in a dense forest it is 2d6 × 10 feet." so call it a dense forest and the combat starts, on average, only 70 feet away).
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Natural (or supernatural) wind or weather effects (penalties, concealment) could help, if that makes sense on your plane. You could describe a big shape barely recognizable in the mist approaching with thundering steps that shake the ground.
Deflect Arrows or gloves of arrow snaring are also options.
There is also fickle winds, but it is not a core spell.
This. The weather system can very easily inhibit ranged combat with even mild winds. Combine that with cover, fog, and some camo and you've got some excellent totally natural choices to help stymie the tide of arrows. Magical options also include invisibility and blur.
Also hiding your guy behind larger allies. A human fighter who comes charging in behind his big ogre friend has at the very least some cover from the assault and if you wanna get real sneaky you can slap a large tower shield on him and make a literal living wall of thwamping death to hide behind. Also reduce person on your melee guy and have the caster ready to dismiss it when you reach melee.
You know what real-world people use against snipers?
Curtains.
Seriously. Just hang up a few sheets, and everybody is denied their line-of-sight and line-of-effect. Works great against archers, wizards and bomb-chuckers - until they set fire to the curtains anyway.
Anybody mention displacement or mirror image yet?
Ambushes. Traps. Throwing the focus elsewhere, if only for a few moments, in order to enable stealth use. If they're wandering along as guards, or just as people, roll Will saves with a penalty equal to the number of hours they've been travelling for them, and only if they MAKE the save will you roll a PER check - because nobody is (or can be!) 'on' 100% of the time. Have one of the minions have a flying familiar of a normal sort, with instacommunication with its master, keeping track of them as it passes nearby - every two or five minutes, you know? Mixed in with others of its kind, or just other birds or whatever it is. This allows the bad guy to stay ahead of them and then set an ambush for when they're all showing signs of their attention wandering.
Have them come around the corner and the bad guy is already RIGHT THERE and knows they're coming, so it's a melee-range surprise round with THEM caught out.
This isn't a video game where a warrior can run around using nothing but a sword and still expect to live.
This isn't a video game where a warrior can run around using nothing but a sword and still expect to live.
unless it's a party trying to cooperate. If the wizard has on a hat of disguise set to the fighter's appearance, mirror image helps them both.
Here's an idea for an item.
Bug eye pendant. The item does look like a bugs eye, a dome shape with 30 tiny mirrors on the front. The back has a command word in a language a fighter could conceivably know. When the wearer says the command word he or she gains 1-6 mirror images for ten rounds. When an image gets hit and vanishes, a tiny mirror shatters. The cord it's on can be worthless or a magic item in it's own right. When the effect times out, the remaining images vanish but no more mirrors shatter. It can be reactivated once it times out.
I can eventually figure out the GP value unless someone wants to ninja that.
Remember that archers can get the Cyclonic special ability on their bows. It costs a hefty amount but is well worth it for archers that don't want their skills to be negated by a literal flick of a wrist. Some of your more rules-savvy players might be aware of its existence.
Additionally, things like Invisibility, Vanish, Greater Invisibility REALLY mess with ranged opponents.
You can't shoot something if you can't see it very easily.
What's your group's darkvision like? If your barbarian is a race that can see in the dark, and/or has darkvision from a potion/spell, there could also be darkness emanating from him due to a magic item/spell. 30 feet of movable "no, you don't know exactly where he's at" negates an archer just fine. Even if they do have darkvision, it won't kick in until the barb is sixty away, cutting down a lot of the pre-fight damage. Watching a giant sphere of darkness moving inexorably towards your party has its own nice mental effect.
Also... Deflect Arrows. Srsly. (Or Missile Shield.) Not that big a feat investment. Negating one arrow a round seems worth it.
Also keep in mind barbarian move and the Run action-- your barbarian might be able to truck towards them pretty damn fast, terrain allowing.
This scenerio isn't necessarily abusing too much, but our group consists of a five people. One person is a skill monkey and can only really do anything with his poisons. One person is a sorcerer who can do a lot of fire spells, a barbarian that hits stuff, a paladin. Basic premises. Our Skill Monkey investigator and Paladin are both archers. The Fifth character comes in and brings another archer. These people are mythic 1 at this point in the game because various reasons, but mostly because they did a lot of cool stuff and this way I can throw some interesting things at them and have to not worry as hard about them dying because of auto stabilization and additional health, plus they all do some more damage and can do neat things. Our Ranger comes in with Mythic Deadly Aim and the ability to shoot a target from about 200+ Feet away. They haven't been using this too much, but I'd like to introduce a more threatening minion of the BBEG their fighting without having the Ranger deal 40 damage a round while it runs up to them. Protection against Arrows could be a solution, but I don't feel like it's enough. Is there anything else in the core rules against this type of damage that I missed or should I just look into third party/make a balanced spell for such a situation.
The evil minion in question is essentially a large sized Barbarian whose point is to try and drive them out of the plane their in, in an attempt to hide it's secrets for a bit longer.
Alternatively, there is a witch, a wizard and a goblin rogue the party is already aware of and having all four together could be threatening, but I don't want them to just try and fight them thinking they can suddenly take the wizard who was clearly a higher level then them when they first encountered it. (It didn't kill them because it had no offensive spells left prepared so it just made them scared).
Silent image some curtains, Boom, instant cover.
Metagaming wise they know they aren't real. In game they would have to interact with the curtains to disbelieve them.
This isn't a video game where a warrior can run around using nothing but a sword and still expect to live.Yes, but this is also a group game where if one player finds they are at a disadvantage, they should find a way to overcome with the group. The Barbarian wouldn't be able to do the things I want him to do if I build him to shoot just as far as our one archers range, so instead he would look for a way to cancel out the inane range of one of his foes.
If you design an encounter in an environment that gives a significant disadvantage to your monster's preferred fighting style, you can count on them being destroyed. Don't have the encounter take place somewhere open. Make it indoors or have lots of cover. If he's out in the field, give him mobility options like a mount.
The bug eye pendant would be good for low level vampires that the GM wants to last for more than 1 round.
Terrain. Unless every battle happens in on empty flat plane, cover should prevent some range advantage. Indoors it's practically impossible to find an area that allows that much range.
Soft cover. If there are creatures in the way, they make it difficult to shoot the bad guy.
There are many arrow specific defenses as well, such as wind spells, protection from arrows (Which can be put on items), and the deflect arrows feat (as well as the mythic version).
New feat, Taking a wild shot
This negates the -4 for firing into combat or at enemies with soft cover. You hit what ever is directly in front of the target, till they drop or get out of the way. If they have 50% cover, 1-10, hit the cover, 11-20, hit the target, on a D20.
This becomes less evil when you consider merciful arrows and undead. Merciful arrows deliver cure spells instead of normal damage. Healing someone under the vampire's control will give them a new save.
It's slightly off topic but the idea just came to me and I may be able to use it elsewhere.