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Aren't longer-range encounters much less frequent? I have that perception for some reason...
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Not being adversarial but... This means that, for one reason or another, they are indeed less frequent. Right? :D
Frequency plays a relevant role here - the same reason why a good blind choice of Favored Enemy for Rangers is usually 'Humans', and not 'Gnomes'.
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Well, I do not think it is a published adventure, but probably the majority of them. There is a million of PF material I have never read, but long-range encounters are rare in the ones I have indeed read. It feels like it is part of the system itself (since they are the ones designing adventures and the game mechanics), and not of this or that campaign.
So it comes across as 'we have designed 1% of modules/scenarios/encounters in which there are long-range encounters', but we have designed a fighting style/ranged class (as part of the core system) which will only be at its best (by comparison to the others) 1% of the time.
In any case, fair enough. No more opinions from my end on this one. Not familiar enough with the system anyway. I am here to learn, and trying to see all sides of it.
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I.e. it's not relevant to a discussion of whether the game is balanced or not to say "the situations that favor melee happen more often" because that sentence isn't accurate, it's missing the "in my campaign" at the end.
Does it matter? If a preponderance of campaigns and published adventures are built around certain assumptions, the fact that you could, possibly, do something entirely different to change the balance calculus doesn't really mean anything at all.
Yes, you can build a campaign to favor certain assumptions and maybe even completely flip traditional views on game balance on their head, cool. That doesn't really change much for anyone else though.
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Just to weigh in, yes it matter what published adventure paths and modules do.
If 99% are written such that something isn't useful, it doesn't matter that the published adventure can be run differently, or that in someone's complete homebrew they could be completely out in left field.
Those published adventures represent Paizo's expectations, and the character options they publish should reflect that.
If something is generally a bad option in published adventures, it might be worth reviewing how it could changed.
Personally, I think allowing runes to be swapped (daily) between weapons for no fee (basically how automatic bonus progression worked in PF1, while if PF2 you get the bonus with any weapon at any time) would allow an archer to carry both a short bow and long bow and use either as appropriate for the kinds of combat they're having.
So yeah, the answer here is actually "Use Automatic Bonus Progression."
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I find that being a competent archer with a short bow in hand at the start of an encounter, with the capacity to switch to a melee weapon without wasting an action when the time calls for it is very effective in PF2. Not wasting actions moving into position where the enemy doesn’t have to move is how you gain a big tactical advantage in PF2. Archers get very good options for this.
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Aren't longer-range encounters much less frequent? I have that perception for some reason...
This is not a question of map but of players.
If your fellow party members strategy is: "We open the door and charge!" then being an archer will be painful.If your fellow party members strategy is: "Let's put an immobilizing snare in front of the door and make a bit of noise to attract the guards." then playing an archer will be way more funny.
The size of the map doesn't matter much. Even if you start 30 feet away from the enemy, you often have engouh space behind you to make a long-range fight. This is the mentality of your party that is important. If they dislike strategy and just want to charge and Strike 3 times, forget about playing an archer. If they like more complex combats, archers should shine way more.
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Not being adversarial but... This means that, for one reason or another, they are indeed less frequent. Right? :D
Frequency plays a relevant role here - the same reason why a good blind choice of Favored Enemy for Rangers is usually 'Humans', and not 'Gnomes'.
Your instincts are correct. After 10+ years of playing an archer in PFS (officially endorsed campaigns created by Paizo), I can count on one hand the number of times I've shot something more than 100 yards (1st range increment) on the longbow. I've never had any encounter start with combatants out of range. Essentially never happens unless there's some specific thing the scenario wants to invoke, point being it's not even remotely common.
Playing PF2 2e since launch, I've never had a combat start out of the 1st range increment for the shortbow. I haven't played them all, so I'm sure there might be some, but we're probably talking about 10% or less.
For all kinds of obvious reasons, published content is going to heavily favor close quarters combat. Real world practicality is the biggest reason. Using a longbow, you've just got to eat the Volley penalty, pay the "feat tax" to avoid it, or use actions to try and get around it, if possible (because it's not always possible.).
That would be a GM problem.
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Those published adventures represent Paizo's expectationsSays who, exactly?
Especially given how significantly each published adventure varies in style and design from the rest, I don't see a reason to believe the adventure content - rather than the rulebooks themselves - show us the expectations Paizo has for the rules.
Example: I'm pretty sure Paizo expects some people to find the options they put into the rules useful in at least some of their campaigns - rather than Paizo spending time and effort and money writing options they expect to basically never get used because they didn't happen to publish the kind of adventure that would highlight them.
I said it, that's who.
Like I said, if 99% of published adventures make a longbow not useful, then from that stand point it's not useful. Even if the published rules for weapons don't make that clear.
It's literally not the first time Paizo has published "trap" or weaker options, and I don't mean intentionally. Things happen where an idea can seem fine and balanced, but in execution when taken in the context of typical combats it does matter.
But as I said, it literally is a non-issue if you just use ABP because you're not tied down to one weapon.
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Which makes more sense A) the options available to you in your campaigns have to be balanced based on the choices I make as an adventure designer, or B) the options available to you in your campaigns are balanced around what situations are possible according to the rules rather than just the ones someone happened to select for a particular campaign?
Well, it's a kind of a loaded question but if I had to pick one... A, ish.
The game should be balanced around the types of encounters the designers created the game to handle and trends in their own adventure and mechanical designs. Trying to balance around "what's possible" doesn't take us anywhere except right here, because "what's possible" is an endless bottomless pit of increasingly contrived scenarios to justify anything and everything.
Luckily, that's more or less how Pathfinder is already built. It's far from balanced for any possible campaign, because it can't be. Instead balance and design decisions tend to be based around certain assumptions and trends.
Does that make it harder to run a game that happens outside the standard assumptions of Pathfinder? Of course, but that's kind of the hazard of stretching any system and it'd be unreasonable to expect Paizo to try to accommodate "what situations are possible."
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We experienced GMs can alter the combat spaces to make them fun for the style the players chose, regardless of the maps in the modules. For us, it is a GM issue. Inexperienced GMs don't have the skills yet.
In my case, the players chose ranged attacks for their characters because the forest setting in Trail of the Hunted favored them. Even though several of the maps in that module were small, they could attack beyond the mapped region. For example, they were supposed to attack the final boss in his camp down in a ravine. The map was 220 feet wide, but the camp was only 105 feet wide. I expected the players to exploit the open space beyond the camp. The players instead attacked the camp when the boss was away, and then attacked the boss when he was fording a river. I had to create the map of the river ford. It was 500 feet wide.
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No, Captain Reductive, that's not what I'm "really arguing" so keep your words out of my mouth, thank you very much.
Ah, the chosen words of every single person that finds themselves with a sudden inability to make a valid argument.
Yeah fair enough. My mistake there, I apologize and I'd edit that part out if I could.
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If you want to play an archer, play an archer. It's a viable combat style you can have fun playing and be effective. It's not going to hit as hard as a two-hander fighter, but it didn't in PF1.
There are times where you will shine. I've seen this in game. Mobile creatures, flying creatures, casters moving around, other archers, monsters across difficult terrain, creatures with auras or abilities that trigger being proximity, creatures with powerful AoOs, and other encounters that I can't list archers do well. They don't have to worry about a lot of terrain and mobility issues that melee have to worry about.
People make it sound like every fight melee just gets to run up and full attack. It isn't like that all the time. Archers can attack a lot more areas on a battlefield without moving. There are many times when this can be advantageous.
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We experienced GMs can alter the combat spaces to make them fun for the style the players chose, regardless of the maps in the modules. For us, it is a GM issue. Inexperienced GMs don't have the skills yet.That's not an option in PFS, nor should it be. More to the point, if I buy published content, I expect it to work with minimal effort and essentially zero modification to suit something as basic as someone using a longbow.
Even more to the point, I don't want that burden on my GM. I don't want my GM to have to spend a lot of extra effort to make a longbow, or a polearm, or a whip, or any of the other commonly available weapons "effective." If that's required for me to enjoy the game, neither of us is gong to be playing PF2.
One of the most important and signfiicant changes to PFS was the mandate that GMs had to "run as written." Too often well-meaning GMs thought they were doing to something to improve the experience only to unwittingly ruin it. PF2 isn't going to succeed if expects GMs to constantly be rekajiggering encounters.
Many of us have argued that ranged weapons are effective. What they lack is superiority. In PF1 a high-Dexterity martial character who devotes all their feats becomes a powerhouse. In PF2 no-one becomes powerful enough win level-appropriate encounters singlehandedly. My players win through teamwork.
In today's game session, my players battled an 11th-level Goliath Spider. This was based on Section G of Assault on Longshadow, in which they would have encountered a CR 6 advanced Ogre Spider. They had taken a different path and missed that encounter. I myself like seeing them lay down their own path during a module, and I recycle the pieces they skipped to continue their path. I moved the spider and the plot-relevant treasure in its lair onto the route to Section K, 17 pages and one level later. And I replaced the Ogre Spider with one that would challenge them and save me the trouble of applying an elite adjustment to the PF2 Ogre Spider.
Of the seven PCs in that encounter, only the monk and the champion entered into melee. The other five--ranger, rogue, druid, sorcerer, and rogue/sorcerer--made ranged attacks from about 30 feet away, the ranger and rogue with bows. The party had spotted the web and avoided touching it. Instead, they had set up snares near the web, hidden in ambush positions, and then deliberately strummed the web. The spider walked into the snares and the ambush. It died in the second round.
The rogue archer was especially effective with her new Precise Debilitation feat, which requires Striking a flat-footed creature. Flanking a Gargantuan creature requires a lot of movement. Leaving the foe flat-footed by hiding behind undergrowth was more practical. The rogue could not be behind undergrowth if she were adjacent to the spider. In this situation, a shortbow was a more effective choice than a shortsword.
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It really doesn’t take all your feats to be able to do competitive DPR with archer to melee. In fact, far more than individual character build, team tactics and campaign are going to determine who has the highest DPR in PF2. A fighter with point blank shot could spend 0 more feats on an archer specific combat style and be able to use a bow at higher levels of play, and have the choice to use that bow be more tactical than moving twice to make one or two attacks in melee. That whole suite of precise shot, weapon focus and weapon specialization being essentially built in to martials, with fighters maybe having to spend one class feature or feat to apply it to bows if that is not their primary focus goes a very, very long way in making archery “effective.” It is the longbow specifically that is a bit more situational and requiring additional feats to keep up.
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[That would be a GM problem.It's not even remotely a GM problem. PFS scenarios typically (if not always) identify the box where PCs start the encounter and where the NPCs are positioned.
PFS allows GM leeway. GMs not doing so is a GM problem.
Thinking PFS is normal play is something else way off the ranch somewhere.
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Many of us have argued that ranged weapons are effective.Again, that word doesn't actually convey any information about archery, that people think it does. It just tells us that "you" think it's effective, however you set the bar.
Several high bars could be established to measure effectiveness, such as:
1. Only the most damaging weapons are effective, or2. Any weapon that lets a character contribute meaningfully to combat is effective, or
3. Any weapon that lets a player have fun in roleplaying combat is effective.
Or I could crunch numbers. A Str 10, Dex 18 fighter with a shortbow deals 1d6 damage per hit. The same character with a shortsword also deals 1d6 damage per hit. If the character switches to a longsword for 1d8 damage (28% more) or a greatsword for 1d12 damage (86% more), then losing the +4 Dex bonus for a finesse weapon reduces the damage due to missing more often (36% to 71% fewer hits depending on AC and MAP).
The choices would be different for a Str 18 fighter, but that would be a different character.
In this situation, a shortbow was a more effective choice than a shortsword.I think the OP is asking something more complex than whether there exists a situation where a ranged weapon is useful.
I already reported in comment #19 that that shortbow-wielding rogue is the 2nd-best damage dealer in the party. That covers all situations that the party has encountered.
Some of yesterday's arguments about PFS and adventure paths forcing the PCs into close quarters might suggest that all situations in the mostly-outdoors Ironfang Invasion adventure path are not typical of all situations in all adventure paths. However, my players created high Dexterity characters after I explained the plot of Trail of the Hunted in Session Zero. They would need to be stealthy, so Dexterity was a priority. Session Zero lets the players know about such emphasis before they design their characters.
In PF1 a high-Dexterity martial character who devotes all their feats becomes a powerhouse.I agree.
But you're now talking about all your feats to become "effective" when before, you became "powerhouse." So in reality, you're confirming everything I've been saying. And if someone is going to argue that it doesn't take all your PF2 feats to be "effective" I'll counter by saying it didn't' take all my feats to feel like a "powerhouse."
That description was talking about an archer in PF1. Pathfinder 1st Edition is a better game than Pathfinder 2nd Edition for a power fantasy about a character who is the best at what they do. Being best requires a lot of investment in PF1, but the investment works.
Pathfinder 2nd Edition has a different paradigm. The PCs cannot specialize in PF2 as much as they do in PF1. The first year after PF2 was released, the forums had many threads about parties repeatedly losing in combat. This is because many players were still building for PF1 combat. In PF1 power wins and in PF2 tactics win.
The OP, Hobit of Bree, asked whether being an archer is a trap, because he correctly saw that archery could not be as powerful as in PF2. In my PF2 experience, investing in archery is not a trap. The payoff for investing in archery is smaller, but this is balanced by the investment being smaller, too. Archery tactics, in contrast, work fine in my PF2-converted Ironfang Invasion campaign. With the three-action system, the rogue can Hide in the undergrowth and then shoot her shortbow for sneak attack damage. Precise Debiliation lets her make her target flat-footed for sneak attack damage on the 2nd shot, too. The ranger uses Hunt Prey, Flurry Edge, and Twin Takedown to shoot often with low multiple attack penalties, instead. Standing out in the open tempts his targets to close in and step on the hidden snares that he set up. These are tactics rather than power.
[That would be a GM problem.It's not even remotely a GM problem. PFS scenarios typically (if not always) identify the box where PCs start the encounter and where the NPCs are positioned.
PFS allows GM leeway. GMs not doing so is a GM problem.
Thinking PFS is normal play is something else way off the ranch somewhere.
A certain amount of leeway, yes, but N N 959 isn't totally wrong there for PFS. Putting all of the PCs into a little box given on the scenario if the way that the PCs were approaching the area makes that nonsensical is a GM not using the leeway they have in a way that they should. That isn't really applicable to all encounters though, and replacing the map with one that would be better suited to PC build choices would be outside of the leeway that you have when running a PFS game.
PFS specific things are definitely a different matter than normal play, but all of the areas you end up in changing to accommodate longbow range would also be weird. (Encounter range changing in cases where the PCs are actively working to make anlong range engagement happen and are able to choose their battlefield are obviously a different matter).
It should never be applicable to all encounters.
Whining about range because you refuse to use anything but 1 particular weapon, welp that's the quickest way to not be in the group anymore.
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I like how in PF2 the reason to play an archer is primarily "my fantasy of my character has them using a bow effectively" and not "this is the way to do more damage than any other combat strategy."
Archery is not a trap in my experience, but it is clearly no longer the best game in town.
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D6, deadly, range, less action intensive, safer, kiting options, multiple ammo types.....all seems pretty serviceable to me. It even has access to d8 with longbow (which is the damage gate before two handed weapons). Doesn't seem underpowered to me for the benefits you're gaining
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I like how in PF2 the reason to play an archer is primarily "my fantasy of my character has them using a bow effectively" and not "this is the way to do more damage than any other combat strategy."
Archery is not a trap in my experience, but it is clearly no longer the best game in town.
IMO it's nice that strength based 2-handers are actually the unquestionable raw damage kings now to make up for the inherent disadvantages of that; if you're swinging a maul then you've committed to being up front without a shield and investing in a stat that does nothing other than make you hit good. Not a great feeling to accept all of those disadvantages and still not hit very hard compared to the turret standing safely in the back.
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I don't think these types of discussion take the entire picture into account. Melee martial are almost always evaluated within a single round bubble and from that perspective they will always "win" the mathematical argument about DpR. However, that does not take into account that they spend a lot more time dying than a ranged character and have a might higher average cost because of the all the healing and condition removal that has to be poured into them post-battle. So from a high-level view of the various characters you cannot say one is "better" or "more effective" than another simply because your math analysis does not cover all the variables and is therefore at best incomplete and at worst inaccurate. Not to mention a truly precise assessment would require examining variability aspects in the equation that are challenging to quantify. So at the end of the day, its not that being an archer is a trap, its that these conversations are traps. The only evaluation that matters is, are you happy with and enjoy playing your character? If so, then it is effective as it is. Good luck!
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I already reported in comment #19 that that shortbow-wielding rogue is the 2nd-best damage dealer in the party. That covers all situations that the party has encountered.Your example, like Superbidi's, both involve a sneak-attack Rogue. Neither of you has made any effort to separate the damage dealt from sneak attack from that resulting purely from the shortbow. Nor do you either of you make any real effort to discuss the combat effectiveness of anyone else in the group. So "2nd-best" doesn't really mean much when we have no idea who he or she is competing against and how much of that is actually attributable to archery. I am admittedly surprised that you and he are offering these examples as proof of something given how skewed the data is.
I love to talk about the amusing characters created by my wonderful players.
The best damage dealer in the 7-member party is a high-Strength catfolk monk who attacks with Tiger Stance and is typically Hasted by the leshy sorcerer. He is a highly mobile (speed 40) melee character and the most athletic party member, too, climbing up walls and jumping over ravines.
I have already explained the gnome rogue with thief racket. She is a sniper and almost never joins in melee. She also opens locks adeptly. Of course, she enhances her shortbow damage with sneak attack. That is no stranger than barbarians enhancing their damage with rage. Until her first 10th-level battle against the Goliath Spider, her first shortbow Strike from hiding added 2d6 sneak attack damage and her second shortbow Strike lacked sneak attack damage. Now that she can make a target flat-footed via Precise Debilitation, both shots can deal sneak attack damage.
The gnome druid of the storm order likes to deal damage with magic and I would rate her as the 3rd-best damage dealer. At low levels this meant casting a lot of cantrips such as Produce Flame and Electric Arc with extended range from the Reach Spell metamagic, but now she has enough spell slots. She recently adopted a second-hand animal companion, a fledgling roc that had been the companion of an Ironfang Legion ranger.
The elf archer with flurry edge is another high-Dexterity archer. He also gained Str 16 and Dex 20 after the recent 10th-level ability boosts. This ranger invested in snare crafting. His favorite tactic is to scout out the enemy, hide snares before engagement, and then shoot from behind the snares to lure opponents into the snares. Thus, he enhances his damage with snares. He is also a switch-hitter, putting away his bow and pulling out melee weapons as the enemy closes in. The snares put his damage above the druid's damage, but that does not happen as often as he likes. He comes in 4th best at damage.
The halfling rogue with the scoundrel racket and the Sorcerer Multiclass Archetype prefers to talk opponents out of fighting, but when he does fight he plays tricky. He had shot a shortbow at 1st level, but switched to Produce Flame and Telekinetic Projectile at 2nd level, and learned Magical Trickster at 4th level to add sneak attack damage to those spells. These days he also has flaming Dragon Claws. The two cantrips are still his only spells.
The high-Dexterity tailed-goblin liberator champion plays defense, standing 15 feet from any ally in danger to defend them with Liberation Step reaction and defending herself with shield block. However, she can deal 2d6+5 damage with her shortsword and her velociraptor animal companion provides more offense. She also has a Climb Speed and has used it to bypass barriers and traps.
The vine-leshy fey-blooded sorcerer is the healer. She (the preferred pronoun of this asexual character) has one cantrip that deals damage, and all her other spells are support (correction: she recently learned Cloudkill). She is charismatic, diplomatic, and persuasive and once outcharmed a maenad. She also tells everyone that she is the familiar of the catfolk monk.
The gnome rogue, gnome druid, elf ranger, and halfling rogue/sorcerer were the original party, not counting two players who dropped out early due to life events. They created high-Dexterity stealthy characters trained in Nature and Survival to protect refugees hiding in the forest during Trail of the Hunted. The goblin champion joined in the middle of that module when we switched to Roll20 in March 2020. By the end of Trail of the Hunted the party regularly applied their stealth tactically for ambushes. The catfolk monk and leshy sorcerer joined halfway through Fangs of War in November 2020, so they were not constrained by the needs of Trail of the Hunted.
I ranked the characters by amount of damage dealt, but that is not the purpose of those characters. Their current purpose is to be Chernasardo Rangers, the respected protectors of Nirmathis who live unseen in the forest and appear in times of need--and they did gain official status from the existing Chernasardo Rangers.
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I don't think these types of discussion take the entire picture into account. Melee martial are almost always evaluated within a single round bubble and from that perspective they will always "win" the mathematical argument about DpR. However, that does not take into account that they spend a lot more time dying than a ranged character and have a might higher average cost because of the all the healing and condition removal that has to be poured into them post-battle. So from a high-level view of the various characters you cannot say one is "better" or "more effective" than another simply because your math analysis does not cover all the variables and is therefore at best incomplete and at worst inaccurate. Not to mention a truly precise assessment would require examining variability aspects in the equation that are challenging to quantify. So at the end of the day, its not that being an archer is a trap, its that these conversations are traps. The only evaluation that matters is, are you happy with and enjoy playing your character? If so, then it is effective as it is. Good luck!
You are explicitly correct.
I wish more would be happy with and enjoy playing their character and not worry if Steve is doing more damage.
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Back to the OP and his question: being an archer is not a trap. While there are multiple agruments in this thread about what is most effective in a fight, or in situation X... the differing playstyles of different groups & GMs make a lot of this moot.
I play both a Greatsword Fighter and an Archer Ranger in Pathfinder Society, and both are enjoyable. Which is most enjoyable? The Thief racket Rogue! :D
The best advice I can give you is to try out an Archer and see for yourself... as long as you are not in a situation where you will be locked into that choice if you end up not liking it. If you are going to get locked in, then choose something you _know_ you will enjoy long-term.
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Sounds like you're doing well! My only advice is to try to Hunt Prey before combat whenever possible. Be explicit about looking for tracks and discovering enemies before combat starts, which will allow you to save an action on the first round of combat. Very nice when that happens!
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Sounds like you're doing well! My only advice is to try to Hunt Prey before combat whenever possible. Be explicit about looking for tracks and discovering enemies before combat starts, which will allow you to save an action on the first round of combat. Very nice when that happens!
Seconded! Survey Wildlife may help with this as well, and can let you get a headsup on what you might be fighting as well-- saving you another action to Recall Knowledge.
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I've done the tracking thing once. I basically treated it as my exploration mode action, is that right?
I've yet to find recall knowledge to be useful. Game seems to make a big deal of it. But my only options are "shoot stuff" so knowing strengths/weaknesses of creatures hasn't been helpful (yet). Am I missing something?
Knowing an enemies’ weakness could be helpful for your fellow party members so they can decide, let’s say, the proper spell to deal with that enemy. It could also be helpful if you decide to buy specialty ammunition to shoot from your bow.