Re: archery commentary

[Benjamin Austin <jedi@ecn.purdue.edu>]

On Tue, 22 Sep 1998, Wright Frazier wrote:

> > 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.
> 

As per Steve's comment regrading the shield, I would not allow someone to 
sprint where they are using a arm to hold a 15-20 object in front of 
them - it is an action contary to the form required for sprinting.  

> >  
> > >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.
> 

Commented as below

> > 
> > 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.
> 


So I need to be a better than average fire/air mage with one or two 
combinations of spells from multiple groups to begin to take on some 
shmoe 2/5 of a met away.  Sound unbalancing?

In the game that I ran last weekend, the players came up against a Keep 
with ten guys on the wall with crossbows.  They had to cover an open 
field of 600' and I informed the players that they were not extended 
range crossbows.  The average rating was 24 and no one even attempted to 
run across the field.


> 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
> 


You can say that they are hard to find but as these weapons become common 
ground, I know that 5 people are going to have them by the end of the 
semester based on the way gms give out items.

Sorry, but I do not care for the new ranges and am infavor of Dan's idea.

BJ