Casters are still ranged characters. They're not the subject of this discussion as they have more options and thus don't tend to get bored, but you should have ranged threats attack your casters often enough that they have to spend resources on defence.
That is literally what the quote you're responding to says. When there are ranged enemies around and they're capable of basic tactics or observation, they are more likely to target the casters than the ranged martials, so the problem of ranged martials being too safe remains unaddressed. Incidentally, casters don't have the same problem as ranged martials because many of their basic spells, especially cantrips at low level, have short ranges that prevent them from sniping.
Yes, in the current design paradigm.
If you truly think it is fun to play a character that doesn't get to use their abilities, I'll be happy to run that exact encounter for you. You can be the Barbarian.
The fix is that we should design melee martials so they have impactful things to do outside of melee range (probably tied to a resource like focus points), or we give them gap-closing moves that let them cover that ground faster.
I'm sorry, why do we need to upend the design of a whole bunch of classes just on the off-chance that they find themselves at ranges that few APs ever include? Would it not be more reasonable to just not have melee martials start miles away from ranged enemies, and instead adjust range increments on ranged weapons to better reflect Paizo's combat zones?
You defeat gap closers by exploiting terrain, moving back as they try to advance, or by sending your own melee out to meet them. Gap closers don't invalidate ranged threats; they simply ensure that trying to be a turret is a poor play unless you're set up in a great defensive position.
If you can defeat gap closers through simple means, then we're back at square one and melee characters would suck at the ranges you're proposing they fight at. What you're saying also doesn't address the issue I've raised, which is that if gap closers can let melee characters close several turns' worth of Strides in one go, then you've essentially made distance irrelevant, so map scale doesn't matter when every character can just move from end of the map to the other within the same turn. Might as well keep maps at the size they are now and shorten range increments.
So we need to make fights close ranged to cater to melee, and this isn't an encounter design issue, but suggesting that we fix encounter design to engage ranged characters doesn't count because...
Because your suggestion doesn't fix encounter design, it demands rewrites of dozens of classes all to make encounters play the exact same as the thirty-by-thirty-foot battle zones we have now. It's not that it doesn't count, it's that you have no valid fix to propose, and your incredibly convoluted solution is all being deployed to avoid admitting a basic discrepancy between ranged weapon increments and Paizo's encounter map sizes.
We already have specific encounter designs in published material, both due to page space and a desire not to force melee characters to spend even a round not being awesome. PF2 is built to make melee feel good and doesn't spend enough time either in encounter design or specific rules to ensure ranged feels the same way.
And what exactly do you propose to make ranged characters feel awesome, then? It's super weird that you would treat the fun of playing melee characters in Pathfinder as a bad thing, and I really don't see the value in trying to frame ranged and melee fun as a zero-sum game here. I and others have proposed ways of making ranged combat more fun by way of more options and less excessive safety: it seems like you view this excessive safety as a feature and not a bug, which is why you've chosen to make this your hill to die on here. Why is it so important to you that ranged martials be unassailable and require encounter design to bend over backwards to accommodate them?
The AP enounter designs suck and are the biggest issue with PF2. Fixing this fixes ranged martial's feeling bad at the table. A mix of close and open encounters means that both ranged and melee characters get their chances to shine.
Open encounters that place the party at extreme distances from the enemy suck for the melee characters, and using them frequently would in my opinion lead to far worse encounter design than whatever it is you're attributing to Paizo now. If you want a game that does that more, play Starfinder 2e instead, which caters to ranged combat primarily, and see for yourself how lacklusted ranged combat is even when it includes your "fix". Your solution ain't it.
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But Teridax does pose a problem with optimal ranged character situations.
They are not all that dynamic.
I think the GM can do a lot but lets say they can’t.
Earlier in the thread special ammo was brought up, there is also the bola for throwing out a ranged trip.
But specialized ammo is not really an option for low level and the ones that are, are not very engaging in combat. But they can be engaging options for mid to high level where money and options are more plentiful.
We could introduce abilities that require ranged characters to get within 30ft but likely they will never use them unless forced to. And that would mean were not in turret mode territory anyway.
There are actually class specific options that can give alternatives to turret mode or enhance it as you level but I think the essential point is that turret mode is a preferred situation and not doing it might just be a waste of all the effort from allies to get the ranged PC the opportunity to turret.
But if we are talking about low level its probably more or less that all options for all characters are more limited at those levels.
But Teridax does pose a problem with optimal ranged character situations.
They are not all that dynamic.
That's because PF2 doesn't force them to be. If a character standing still were a sitting duck, they'd need to find cover and ensure that the enemy can't invalidate that cover or accept that they are going to get crit if anything wants to attack them.
Ranged combat works best when any attack can threaten a character, you need to either be in hard cover or juking like a madman, and when most characters are able to participate. PF2 fails on every one of these counts and, as a result, makes it poorly suited for ranged attackers without spells or other tricks baked into their kit.
It's why my suggestion isn't just make better encounters, though that does help a lot. It's also to penalise ranged characters for standing still in the open and getting into reach of a melee threat, making mosters weaker to flanking shots at range (but only from narrow angles), giving melee characters impactful gap closing options, and designing battles with a mix of tight dungeon battles and open encounters that use maps spanning the length of an entire kitchen table.
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I don't think realism and verisimilitude are all that valuable if they get in the way of a more interesting and fun-to-play game. Sure, in real life, ranged weapons are valuable because they let you kill or hamper a foe from a position where you can't easily be hurt, but when I want to make a character with a ranged weapon, my thoughts are, "Robin Hood/Legolas/Kagome cool," not, "hopefully this will prevent the enemies from using their cool abilities on me and I don't have to be exposed to any risks while playing this character."
Like, if we want verisimilitude so badly, we should probably consider the fact that a shield and sufficient armour would render ranged attacks as particularly noisome hail at the upper end of the first range increment--a meaningful threat to those hapless souls wearing cloth, but not for an armoured character.
Incidentally, while some of RPG-Geek's suggestions are the same as things that have already been said (give ranged characters flanking opportunities they'll move for), others I feel are not ideal. I would rather see mechanics not punishing ranged characters for suboptimal play, but rather offering them risks and rewards. Making one of the most static playstyles less fun if you do it wrong seems ineffective compared to offering meaningful rewards for participating in the combat in fun and engaging ways.
And there are certainly ways you can make a fight start at extra long range and still be fun (I'm thinking Shadows of the Colossus-style running from cover to cover), I think combats where the melee characters have to spend several actions to possibly several turns just moving into position would be the exception even in an ideal system, not the norm. Same as in stories, you start the scene when the action starts, and most of the time, archers plunking small-potatoes damage back and forth across a field while melee characters run is not going to be 'the action' in any meaningful sense, no matter whether it technically shaved off 10% of the enemy's health pool before the fight actually started.
I don't think realism and verisimilitude are all that valuable if they get in the way of a more interesting and fun-to-play game. Sure, in real life, ranged weapons are valuable because they let you kill or hamper a foe from a position where you can't easily be hurt, but when I want to make a character with a ranged weapon, my thoughts are, "Robin Hood/Legolas/Kagome cool," not, "hopefully this will prevent the enemies from using their cool abilities on me and I don't have to be exposed to any risks while playing this character."
Robin Hood and Legolas both break TTRPG character design rules by also being excellent in melee. In their stories, they are often the highest-level person in a battle facing off against mooks PL-3 or worse below them. If they were forced to follow PF2 rules and were written as if constrained within PF2 encounter design their stories would suck.
Like, if we want verisimilitude so badly, we should probably consider the fact that a shield and sufficient armour would render ranged attacks as particularly noisome hail at the upper end of the first range increment--a meaningful threat to those hapless souls wearing cloth, but not for an armoured character.
We'd also want to make it so a character just marching in armour gets fatigued and so that same character is sucking wind 5 minutes into a dungeon and dead of exhaustion within 15 if they keep pushing without getting magical support from the party healer. The idea that you can adventure at all in full plate, rather than adventuring in breast plate and an open face helmet and putting on the full set only before major battles, is far sillier than the idea of them being felled by an archer.
Incidentally, while some of RPG-Geek's suggestions are the same as things that have already been said (give ranged characters flanking opportunities they'll move for), others I feel are not ideal. I would rather see mechanics not punishing ranged characters for suboptimal play, but rather offering them risks and rewards. Making one of the most static playstyles less fun if you do it wrong seems ineffective compared to offering meaningful rewards for participating in the combat in fun and engaging ways.
Punisher effects are often more effective for forcing action than mere buffs. These same changes also impact ranged martials positively, as foes now have to move or become easier for them to hit. Either that PL+3 boss now needs to move, or the ranged character just got +2 to hit against them.
And there are certainly ways you can make a fight start at extra long range and still be fun (I'm thinking Shadows of the Colossus-style running from cover to cover), I think combats where the melee characters have to spend several actions to possibly several turns just moving into position would be the exception even in an ideal system, not the norm.
I'd make the encounter mix something like 60% what we get as standard now, 25% close ranged encounters with ranged threats and cover, and 15% other, which includes long ranged engagements but also stuff like traps/haunts or flying enemies at low levels.
Same as in stories, you start the scene when the action starts, and most of the time, archers plunking small-potatoes damage back and forth across a field while melee characters run is not going to be 'the action' in any meaningful sense, no matter whether it technically shaved off 10% of the enemy's health pool before the fight actually started.
Which stories, though? SLA's bridge runs were all done at extreme range and showed the attritional nature of warfare in a high-fantasy setting. It's about presentation, and most writers are pretty bad at writing these scenes well.
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I don't think realism and verisimilitude are all that valuable if they get in the way of a more interesting and fun-to-play game. Sure, in real life, ranged weapons are valuable because they let you kill or hamper a foe from a position where you can't easily be hurt, but when I want to make a character with a ranged weapon, my thoughts are, "Robin Hood/Legolas/Kagome cool," not, "hopefully this will prevent the enemies from using their cool abilities on me and I don't have to be exposed to any risks while playing this character."
Yeah, for quite a while my take has been that Pathfinder's "realism" is like Die Hard. A few tough main characters fighting their way through whole heaps of enemies. What we want isn't actually gritty realism, but a sense of consistency, that the game's laws of physics in one scene are consistent with those in the next scene.
I would rather see mechanics not punishing ranged characters for suboptimal play, but rather offering them risks and rewards. Making one of the most static playstyles less fun if you do it wrong seems ineffective compared to offering meaningful rewards for participating in the combat in fun and engaging ways.
I think any ranged system does need to deal honestly with players who DO want their character to be safe in the back row. It's a valid desire for a certain kind of character to play, and/or playstyle that someone wants out of a character.
Basically, some players really do have a low appetite for risk, and others enjoy taking bigger risks to access greater rewards. We should aim to offer something satisfying to both.
So we want to find things to offer to the daredevils who'd leave their turret position if only there was a good reason to. But without punishing the beer and pretzels in the turret player who is quite happy to stay there.
And there are certainly ways you can make a fight start at extra long range and still be fun (I'm thinking Shadows of the Colossus-style running from cover to cover), I think combats where the melee characters have to spend several actions to possibly several turns just moving into position would be the exception even in an ideal system, not the norm. Same as in stories, you start the scene when the action starts, and most of the time, archers plunking small-potatoes damage back and forth across a field while melee characters run is not going to be 'the action' in any meaningful sense, no matter whether it technically shaved off 10% of the enemy's health pool before the fight actually started.
Thinking this over, this used to be done as looooong range combat on an impractically large map that was hard to fit on the gaming table because well, "all combat is combat". But PF2 actually challenges that way of thinking quite a lot, why can't it just be a minigame/skill challenge instead?
An Infiltration scene could definitely have as an obstacle "here's some low level guards. You need to knock them out quietly so the alarm doesn't get raised", and solve that with a skill challenge or a few abstracted attack rolls, without actually doing the full rolling initiative and putting people on a grid part.
Running ultra long distance combat where some of the PCs have stuff to do and others don't, using the combat mechanics, is not great. So I'm more and more for really reducing range increments a lot.
Imagine the following:
* Increase ranged weapon damage a bit. Slightly bigger damage dice, and we can remove the "half" clause from the propulsive trait.
* Range increments also apply to damage.
* Range increments become shorter, say 30 foot for a shortbow, maybe 50 foot for a longbow.
* The battlemat that actually fits on your gaming table is the gold standard. Ranged challenges at longer distances than that should use a minigame instead.
You'd want to tune it so that an archer operating in their second range increment would do about the same damage as currently, but one operating in the first increment would do a bit more.
This doesn't on its own solve turret effects, but it does balance archery around the prospect of combats that take place in forests (range is eventually limited by trees in the way) or in dungeons.
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Increasing ranged damage isn't what i would want to see.
Aside from tipping the scales toward ranged over melee it also leaves casters in the dust.
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EDIT:
Does anyone else find these sentence by sentence rebuttal posts hard/irritating to read?This is a good point; I imagine walls of text like this are hard to get invested in when you're not one of the people arguing. I suppose my intention here was to be very clear on what I'm replying to, as I feel I've been repeatedly quote-mined and straw-manned already, but if there is a better way to engage with someone who uses those kinds of tactics in online discussion, then I genuinely would like to hear more about that, as I'm starting to feel like these large posts are making it difficult to get other conversations going.
Yeah, when I see a post that's line by line quotes with replies, and the whole post is about two screens long, and it seems like a lot of arguing, I probably won't bother reading it.
The problem with that is, that it's in the middle of a discussion on a topic that I think is very interesting. There's absolutely something not quite satisfying about ranged combat. And there's been some really interesting analyses about what that is and maybe what could be done about it.
So, what can you do if you find yourself drawn into this kind of argument? Well, the best I can offer is to just resist the urge to go for a line by line reply. Take a step back, decide on a few most interesting points, write a reply ONLY to those.
That can feel like you're leaving something on the table - there were other points on the table that you don't agree with, or feel you were mischaracterized on.
But if you want to get your point across, you have to prioritize THE point you care about making most. For all the other points, consider if they're going to distract from your main point?
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The general idea of shifting ranged power away from range increment sizes and into damage and other contributions really appeals to me. I'd personally lean more towards more damage through new mechanics that incentivize ranged characters to move, such as some kind of high/low ground condition, maybe ranged flanking, and perhaps some other effects, but in all cases, having more of that visible power and less excessive safety would be a win-win IMO, and respect current balance.
Increasing ranged damage isn't what i would want to see.
Aside from tipping the scales toward ranged over melee it also leaves casters in the dust.
I think the current turret style fighter or ranger shouldn't really do less damage than they do now, maybe a little bit more. Others (Starlit Span) don't need more so much. But the main thing I think "conventional" archers need is a decent plan for handling enemies with resistance or hardness, like the irritatingly common animated statue.
I dunno about high ground. Ranged combat certainly benefits a lot from interesting terrain - any terrain that provides an obstacle to a melee trying to close in but doesn't provide cover is good for the archer. Even if you don't get a benefit for high ground, if a melee has to free up hands to try Climb checks to get to you, that's pretty good.
And on the other hand, the rules at this point also should work with the many already published adventures and maps out there. We can't just go and update the maps for all APs to include higher ground more often. Dungeon floors tend to have a lot of fights happening on level ground.
I think we gain most by brainstorming improvements that work in a lot of terrain types. I think ranged flanking is more promising that way.
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I do think a high ground mechanic can work with existing encounters and terrain. To bring back an example condition I brought up earlier:
Exposed You have the low ground, causing gravity to take the force out of your attacks and add it to oncoming hits. The exposed condition always includes a value. You take a circumstance penalty equal to this value to the damage rolls of attacks against targets you're exposed to, and the range increments of your attacks against those targets are halved. Creatures you're exposed to gain a circumstance bonus equal to your exposed value to the damage rolls of attacks against you, and the range increments of their attacks against you are doubled. You're automatically exposed to creatures who have the high ground against you: the GM determines what counts as a sufficient difference in elevation to expose you; this is usually at least 5 feet for every 15 feet the creature is from you for you to be exposed 1, with each additional 5 feet per unit of distance increasing the condition's value by 1.
This would actually be really simple to integrate. Fighting indoors? Leap onto a table or other piece of furniture and gain a small circumstance bonus against your enemy. Fighting in a forest? Climb a tree and exploit your vantage point. Defending a town? Great, that front gate you've reinforced will also help your archers perched on top to deal more damage to incoming enemies. In most of these cases, though, you'd need to move in order to make use of this bonus, and so in ways that could also be countered by enemies moving in response to you. The reverse is also true: if ranged enemies are fighting you from one of these vantage points, you will want to try to avoid staying in the low ground for too long, something melee characters will automatically do by closing the distance with those enemies, but something ranged characters will need to find a way to do without necessarily getting in melee range.
Even if the details may need adjusting, the base idea I think would lend itself to more interesting and variable expressions of damage than, say, bigger damage dice, and would also encourage more movement from ranged characters. To address Bluemagetim's concern, it could also be to the benefit of casters, because they too could exploit the high ground, particularly early game with their attack cantrips. Even melee characters could situationally exploit this, including reach weapon wielders stabbing at enemies from on high. Although I don't think realism is by itself a solid argument in support of this, I do think this could also encourage a few tactics you'd see in actual combat, while also mirroring scenes in fictional combat ("It's over Anakin, I have the high ground!").
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A suggestion to make combat in general less static.
Right, I'm going to take Ascalaphus's suggestion to heart and answer this succinctly: all of the suggestions you have made here are self-serving, and ultimately fail to make ranged combat less static. In fact, in this very example you cited, your very first sentence in that quote explicitly states you think ranged combat should be static. When you're demanding that Paizo revamp their encounter design, their class design, and their core mechanical design, all to accommodate a state of affairs that has already been proven not to work, and all while insulting their competence, you should probably be asking yourself if you're acting reasonably. Making character attacks, for instance, and specifically accusing me of being argumentative while you yourself are presently embroiled in multiple simultaneous arguments across different threads, is not behavior I would call reasonable. You can do better than this, and insulting everyone who does not share your wonky worldview will leave you with few supporters. It certainly hasn't gotten you any in this discussion.
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I suspect when you've reached the point of making personal attacks, it is well past the time to take a step back from the keyboard. Some time to cool off an reflect on what parts of the topic actually matter can only improve the quality of the discussion
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Furthermore, I wish I had more time to respond to various points, but I would like to emphasize that what makes Legolas or Robin Hood cool isn't necessarily how many people they can kill with a bow per round. Being effective with a bow is core to the fantasy of playing either of these characters, but playing only curbstomp encounters is not my idea of fun. The problem for me is not that I can't play a character who mows down hordes of enemies in a hail of arrows, the problem is that playing as an archer doesn’t feel very effective at close range and isn't fun at long range where the range advantage would ramp up.
(Incidentally I also agree with Ascalaphus' succinct response, it's not a bad thing for people who want to play a hang-back-safe archer to attack only from difficult to reach positions... if they enjoy the 3/round playstyle, who am I to take it away from them)
Perhaps you should lead with what you'll give to ranged martials in exchange for their range getting axed.
Gladly!
So, I think it stands to reason that I've made quite a few suggestions aimed to give ranged characters more options, more variance, and more gameplay, including numerous ways of dealing more damage and applying more utility, and so without harming melee characters at all (in fact, several of these proposals would benefit them too!). Sorry to disappoint, but I'm not the evil oppressor you so desperately want me to be. You, on the other hand, are drawing increasing amount of criticism for your antics, so I suggest you take a break and come back with a clearer head, if only so that you stop polluting... is it three threads now? Some plural number of threads with pointless bickering, repeated comparisons of your opponents to fascists/white supremacists/nazis, and actual bigoted statements of your own.
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Increasing ranged damage isn't what i would want to see.
Aside from tipping the scales toward ranged over melee it also leaves casters in the dust.
Ranged is mostly fine.
As I stated earlier in the thread ranged reactions is the main design space I would like to see developed as it very weak.
You have a lot of good shield reactions.
You have solid melee reactions.
Some more reaction spells have been added and counterspell.
Useful ranged combat reactions are lacking.
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Useful ranged combat reactions are lacking.
On that note, I'm surprised there isn't a reaction that lets you take cover. Being able to reactively Take Cover as soon as you're targeted by an attack would be a useful action economy benefit for ranged characters, and could be made just situational enough that it wouldn't be a must-pick.
Riffing of the theme of ranged reactions, how about:
There's obviously a lot more that could be done in this realm, and Starfinder's been implementing more ranged martial reactions too, so this is just spitballing.
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Increasing ranged damage isn't what i would want to see.
Aside from tipping the scales toward ranged over melee it also leaves casters in the dust.
Ranged is mostly fine.
As I stated earlier in the thread ranged reactions is the main design space I would like to see developed as it very weak.
You have a lot of good shield reactions.
You have solid melee reactions.
Some more reaction spells have been added and counterspell.
Useful ranged combat reactions are lacking.
You're right, there's not a lot of ranged reactions. And the ones that do exist, you usually have to open up via class feats that take a few levels to come online. For the purpose of setting the tone what a combat style is gonna be like, it's really helpful if you can already do things at level 1-2.
Well, readied attacks account for some of that. A lot of the fantasy about "reaction shots" you can say is people readying to shoot if this or that happens. But readied actions are intentionally worse than class feature style reactions; they share MAP with your turn, which Reactive Strike, Retributive Strike, Stand Still, Implement's Reaction etc. all don't.
I think ranged reactions that are a bit more powerful than that, but require you to be in the right spot, are an interesting design space. You can use requirements like:
* Weapon is ready (loaded, wielded)
* Within first range increment
* Opponent has no cover
Of course Starfinder has the operative with a reaction that triggers off a lot of things and causes a ranged Strike, which was pretty controversial if that wasn't a bit too much of a good thing. Maybe the sweet spot is in between that, and the somewhat lackluster ready action strike.
I know Fake Out is also controversial whether that's too good or not, but you could do the inverse: fire an shot in the general direction of an enemy to distract them just as they're making a strike at an ally (basically, Aid their AC against an attack).
We can argue about whether you want to actually fire the arrow/bullet or just threaten with it like Fake Out does. I'm not really thrilled with the gunslinger/reload gameplay, I don't personally want to drag down ranged combat in general with that. Arrows are cheap and returning thrown weapons are also a thing. And Starfinder guns can shoot more times before needing to reload.
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A series of feats that let you ready a Strike as a single action and use it as a reaction under specific conditions (an enemy leaves cover, an enemy moves, etc.), with perhaps additional benefits too like slowing a fleeing enemy by shooting them in the leg, stunning an enemy popping out of cover by shooting their head, and so on.
This one stands out to me. We have a couple of effects like this on alchemical bombs, but I've never seen those be super amazing. (Though, I should give it a try next time in a blue moon I'm playing an alchemist against an ooze, and then just kite it.)
Normally slowing down an enemy is not that exciting because it tends not to last so long, and they can often plan around it by doing something else than moving, or budgeting actions to move differently. But if you can do it as a reaction you get much more potential to interrupt plans.
Yeah, this is probably an entire discussion by itself, but I think Speed penalties feel inconsistent because there's such a large spread of different monster Speeds that a flat penalty can sometimes achieve essentially nothing, even if it can also be debilitating in other instances. That they're also short-lived and often easy to work around adds to the problem, though hopefully penalizing someone's Speed as a reaction after they've committed to a move action, rather than before, would sabotage their plans as you mention. In general, reactions have this huge potential to disrupt a target's best-laid plans by affecting them mid-turn, and that's perhaps something ranged martials could perhaps be allowed to tap into some more.
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It's a fine line to thread. Yesterday I was playing a scenario where we fought a lot of mooks (with chunky stats) with reactive strike, we felt pretty oppressed.
I think penalizing speed on a ranged reaction might be in the goldilocks zone - it's somewhat nasty, but not quite as wrecking as disrupting spellcasting at range would be. It'd probably take some careful phrasing of the ability though, for example that you have to do the reaction at the beginning of the movement, not halfway through. That way the enemy has a sporting chance of settling for a lesser movement path, like closing to melee but not making it all the way to flanking position. If you could do it midway through and abruptly cause enemies to run out of speed & stop their move it might be too cheesy.
If you phrase the trigger so it's precisely at the beginning of the movement, this also works well with a gameplay style of moving into position as an archer. After all, you can quite well predict where someone is going to START their movement, and move so they won't have cover. You can even bait them into doing that movement (and triggering) by appearing to offer a clear path toward you.
Taking a shot (pun intended) at writing this as an ability;
Baiting Shot (1 action, flourish)
Skill Feat - Trained Deception
You present yourself as a target to an enemy, baiting them into coming after you. Choose an enemy. Until the start of your next turn, that enemy gains a +2 circumstance bonus on melee attack rolls against you, and you gain the following reaction:
Shoot in the Foot (reaction)
Trigger: the baited creature starts a Stride, Fly, Climb or Swim action.
Effect: if the baited creature is within the first range increment of a ranged weapon or unarmed strike you're wielding, use it to Strike. If you hit, the creature takes a 5 foot circumstance penalty to all its speeds until the start of your next turn; this also reduces the distance it can cover with the triggering action. This cannot reduce a speed the creature has below 5 feet. If you are an expert in deception, increase the penalty to 10 feet, or to 15 feet if you are legendary.
On a critical hit, you can double the penalty. This replaces any other critical hit specialization effect you might have.
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While this doesn't interact with MAP, it's a flourish so it shouldn't excessively stack with powerful class abilities. It replaces critical hit spec effects because being able to stack this with the bow spec of stapling someone to the ground would be too intense.
Taking a shot (pun intended) at writing this as an ability;
Baiting Shot (1 action, flourish)
Skill Feat - Trained DeceptionYou present yourself as a target to an enemy, baiting them into coming after you. Choose an enemy. Until the start of your next turn, that enemy gains a +2 circumstance bonus on melee attack rolls against you, and you gain the following reaction:
Shoot in the Foot (reaction)
Trigger: the baited creature starts a Stride, Fly, Climb or Swim action.
Effect: if the baited creature is within the first range increment of a ranged weapon or unarmed strike you're wielding, use it to Strike. If you hit, the creature takes a 5 foot circumstance penalty to all its speeds until the start of your next turn; this also reduces the distance it can cover with the triggering action. This cannot reduce a speed the creature has below 5 feet. If you are an expert in deception, increase the penalty to 10 feet, or to 15 feet if you are legendary.On a critical hit, you can double the penalty. This replaces any other critical hit specialization effect you might have.
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While this doesn't interact with MAP, it's a flourish so it shouldn't excessively stack with powerful class abilities. It replaces critical hit spec effects because being able to stack this with the bow spec of stapling someone to the ground would be too intense.
I quite like this proposal. Here's the feedback I have on this:
That aside, though, the basic action of baiting an enemy to come to you and then sabotage them mid-turn I think is brilliant, and I generally like the notion of mechanics that invite the enemy to play a certain way. It would certainly put the distance advantage of ranged characters to use, and would let them apply utility in several ways, first by diverting an enemy towards themselves, and secondly by hindering their mobility.
Which reminds me, Hit the Dirt should be such a thematic hit, but what happened was my gunslinger took it, found out that after that one moment of +2 AC he was now at -2 AC for the rest of the round, and then he has to use an action or be at -2 to hit too.
We really need an 'intentional prone' status for gun/crossbow users that doesn't affect their to hit and gives them a hefty bonus against ranged attacks. Would give one more advantage to them over bows, too.
Agreed. While I can understand Paizo wanting to making the prone condition a debuff more than anything else, and can understand how that would hinder bow attacks, it's weird that going prone penalizes your gun and crossbow attacks too when people will go prone specifically to improve their gun accuracy, as well as lessen their exposure to return fire. I've talked about how cover ought to be made more situational by making creatures off-guard to angles where they're not covered, but the prone condition in particular would be the perfect opportunity to have ranged shooters take position in a way that gives them an edge against other ranged opponents, but makes them extra-vulnerable to melee attackers.
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I think it's about worth a Flourish because you're hoping to get an attack out of turn without MAP, and it doesn't prevent you from getting an attack in your own turn without MAP. Note that this would also trigger quite a lot on enemies that have to move anyway, for example melee types at the start of combat that haven't closed with any PC at all. It could fire so often that without the flourish trait this would be big power creep.
Circumstance bonus vs off-guard is pretty arbitrary. But if you miscalculate and the enemy manages to move into a flank, it would be stackable with the circumstance bonus. So it's a risky action, unless you're very confident you moved to a safe position. (It encourages ranged characters to keep repositioning...)
I think 5 or 10 feet speed penalties can be enough to force enemies to spend a move action more than they were counting on, and with bows it could even be enough that with two strides with penalty they still can't get to you.
I'm imagining this also working pretty well for a crossbow ranger with Precision and Running Reload. It's always been a bit of an annoyance that the "smart tricky" ranger stereotype is a thing, but doesn't have much mechanical teeth to it.
Anyway, I'm not married to it working exactly like this, it's more a rough sketch of how something like this could work. I dunno if it needs an actual Deception skill check worked into it - I feel with the ranged Strike you're already rolling dice, and rolling twice would feel forced/clunky.
I do think that if it involves a Strike, it may not need to have a separate Deception roll on top. An alternative could be to reframe the attack as more of a warning shot than a full-damage, MAP-free Strike with crowd control layered on: without damage getting involved, you could make the Speed penalty much steeper, potentially even interrupt the move action entirely on a crit success (or limit it to a Step), without it also contributing lots of additional damage.
Another alternative could also be to just not have the Strike ignore MAP. That way, it would take up one of the actions you'd use to Strike, and you'd be using a reaction to gain the benefit of sabotaging an enemy. This would also be closer in function to the Ready action, which preserves MAP if you Ready a Strike.
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I think if it wasn't an actual strike, you could reasonably change it to a skill check instead and take off the flourish trait. Although warning shot sounds more like intimidate than deception. Maybe (borrowing an idea from Trip) on a critical success you actually graze them for a bit of damage.
It'd also be possible for both of these to exist as feats. Doesn't have to be only one or the other.