Re: archery commentary

[Wright Frazier <khelek@ns1.cioe.com>]

> With a bow range of 720 feet (200% of Keiron Bow Range), your naked 
> warrior takes 11 rounds of fire to get into melee range.  With the 
> Bowman switching over to quickdraw once you're inside 360ft you take 8 
> or 9 Broad-tips at a d10 each before your warrior arrives to BEGIN 
> killing him quickly and efficiently.  Sprinting will help do a marginal 
> degree, but being a naked target, the bowman with descent missile mod 
> won't miss.  Expect to take 6d10 damage if you can make a sprinting 
> check, 8d10 if you cannot.  

a) If he hits with all of them.
b) the Kieron bow only does a d8.

>  
> >Or get a firemage to go forth and blow them away with a fireball. 8d6 
> in one
> >round after being the target of a couple of arrows is a risk.
> 
> Again with a ruling that the range can be extended by skill to 720 feet, 
> it's not a couple arrows it's 7 to 9 (depending on sprinting, assuming a 
> naked mage) before the firemage gets to 120 feet to toss a fireball 
> (this does ignore finessing).

As others have said, if you are encountering someone at 720, you are
a fool to charge them.

> 
> Imagine the above scenerio with an archer who has Flaming Arrows.  The 
> sprinting warrior eats 6 to 8 arrows at 1d10 + 1d8 each.
> 
> I like seeing the bow range extended to make missile weapons more 
> useful.  But quading the bow range (Keiron Great Bow with skill is a 
> 450% bow range jump), is likely to unbalance things in the opposite 
> direction.

As i've said before, I'd be surprised if a character ever got a Kieron
Great Bow, they aren't exported at all.  So you'd have to kill a soldier
of the Kingdom to get one(an adventure to hike all the way up to the mountains
to do this..oh wait..people already go on adventures to get a magical
item), or do it via a serious black market thing, which is again an
adventure.  Look at the availability and the price on these things.  They
cost several thousand GP, _AND_ are only attained via roleplaying.  You
do not walk into a bowyer and pick one up..ever.  As I stated at the
beginning of the list a few months back, they are intended as quasi-magical
items.

> 
>  The only problem
> >I see with the range situation is that there tend to be scores of 
> dedicated
> >archers for the enemies while we, as adventurers, tend to be diverse.
> >
> 
> Yes, the above examples assume a single archer.  Banks of archers now 
> become unassailable as there range with skill is 5 or 6 times the 
> longest ranged spells.

Incorrect...get Long Eyes and you'll whip the crap out of any archer.
A base long eyes gives 4d6 rounds of 8x range.  Thats a 960' long
lightning bolt, and goes up to 16x range.  Magic can already reach
that far, and you can't easily take a mage's ability to whip off a
lightning bolt away.  You can however loose a weapon fairly easily, and
its nigh impossible to get one.

I think a very important thing that people are missing is the availability
section of the weapon.  All of these weapons are very very difficult to
find in the first place, and near impossible to get training in.
The Kieron Great bow does 1d8 damage, has an availability of 5, takes
a master weapon smith a DECADE to create and a 5d6 weapon smithing
check, and it costs a base of 4,000sp in the place they are made.  A
place that _ONLY_ makes them for the military. 

Speaking from personal experience, I have a character out of play for 2
game months doing nothing but creating a single weapon.  It sucks ass, and
i can't even contemplate wanting to keep a character out of game play for
a DECADE to make one of these, or waiting a DECADE for one.  If they
go and attack a soldier for one, they are going to have an entire kingdom
after them.  You can't hide these weapons, its 7' long when unstrung,
and quite unique in appearence.  People know what these things are, and
know that they only come from Geleia, and know that only soldier's use'em,
or possibly folks with a reason, and a right, use'em openly. 

Wright