Can Kites Be Kept Under Control?

[Harshax]

I have put a bullet in a half-inch wide piece of wood at more than 500 meters with an M60, more than once.

Is that a typo ?

It's certainly possible to do that -- heck it's possible at twice that range. But the M60 is a fully automatic machine gun that puts several other rounds into a cone around the target and is not intended to be used for precision greater than a couple of feet. So I'm wondering if you meant some other type of gun instead?

It was no typo. I was teaching marksmanship and weapon-use, particularly methods to keep the weapon steady. To illustrate my points, I purposely tapped a couple into a wood beam down range.

[DrPraetor]

Since this is parallel to Frank's monster manual thread, let's talk about it within that milieu. In a gritty and realistic period warfare simulator, you'd have all sorts of concerns about ranges and period-appropriate bow technology and so on - but none of that matters for either the heroes or the extras in the genre that is defined by D&D.

So, let's talk about Trolls, Manticores and camel archers at a both adventuring and lordly tiers.

In the adventuring tier, the Manticore and Camel Archer can both kite at a level-appropriate competence level. Whether the manticore shoots a single spike or a volley, it does so from the air and it outmatches those character classes who don't have a designated response. Whether the camel archer is ineffective at 100m or not depends entirely on whether you assign it to level 2 or level 4. In response to the original question - you need to be focused on making these decisions in a sensible way, but beyond that, kiting only becomes a problem if you design that character classes to have insufficient or imbalanced access to ranged attacks or flight or ranged attack suppression of their own.

Thus consider the troll. In the adventuring tier, the troll is a puzzle monster, and you need fire. This is a problem if paladins and assassins can't have burning weapons of some kind. In the abstract, we're dealing with trolls in the same way we deal with kiting monsters - you need the capability to deal with them spread among the classes.

There is a separate problem, where it is undesirable to encourage monotonous parties where everyone in the party kites. This worse than making some members of the party trolls, since 1) one-flavor parties make it hard to show up with whatever character you want to play, and 2) even if one character is a puzzle monster functionally invulnerable to a given opposition group - well, that isn't ideal, but since the rest of the party isn't, there is still danger.

At the lordly tier, I'm getting sleepy but -
[*] Trolls are puzzle monsters depending on supply. If you have supply, your troops have the torches to deal with trolls and otherwise they don't.

[*] Camel archers are a puzzle monster depending on generalship. If you are a bad general, your roman legionnaires are kited to death in the desert. If you are a good general, you will come up with a plan where you ambush the camel archers from concealment or something, and because your class power is that you are a good general, this will be declared to be a brilliant plan and it will work.

[Foxwarrior]

Don't forget another balance problem: you take the Great Eagle, a level 5 monster, and put a first level Longbow Archer on top of it to shower the party with arrows that very slowly pick them off. A lot of counters to Great Eagles mentioned in that thread probably become totally irrelevant when the Great Eagle stays 800 feet away.

[maglag]

You know, Dungeons look like natural counters to mongol archer tactics. In a world filled with elves and their composite longbows, manticores and Dragons, it may make a lot of sense to live in places with low ceilings and lots of LoS breaking walls.

That's pretty much why modern militaries started making underground bunkers instead of tall fortifications.


Funny how Frank and K never seemed to notice that and tried to come up with new special abilities for dungeons when your base not being raped by fliers+range is already more than enough reason for the powers that be to place their fortifications underground.

[Mask_De_H]

You know, Dungeons look like natural counters to mongol archer tactics. In a world filled with elves and their composite longbows, manticores and Dragons, it may make a lot of sense to live in places with low ceilings and lots of LoS breaking walls.

That's pretty much why modern militaries started making underground bunkers instead of tall fortifications.


Funny how Frank and K never seemed to notice that and tried to come up with new special abilities for dungeons when your base not being raped by fliers+range is already more than enough reason for the powers that be to place their fortifications underground.

Calling you retarded would be an insult to the handicapped.

Dungeons didn't get extra stuff to prevent flyers in the Dungeonomicon, they got extra stuff to prevent Scry and Die-ers.

[Stahlseele]

Don't forget another balance problem: you take the Great Eagle, a level 5 monster, and put a first level Longbow Archer on top of it to shower the party with arrows that very slowly pick them off. A lot of counters to Great Eagles mentioned in that thread probably become totally irrelevant when the Great Eagle stays 800 feet away.

So, is there no max range for bow and arrow?
I mean . . 800 feet sounds like a lot to me.
But i use metric, so i am not sure how much that would be in real numbers to me.
Ok, according to a quick google that is about 244 meters. That is still a good distance.
Also, should the difficulty to hit not go at least as high as the eagle is flying?
You know, extreme range, fast moving shooter, moving targets, probably partial cover from trees or something?

[MGuy]

Don't forget another balance problem: you take the Great Eagle, a level 5 monster, and put a first level Longbow Archer on top of it to shower the party with arrows that very slowly pick them off. A lot of counters to Great Eagles mentioned in that thread probably become totally irrelevant when the Great Eagle stays 800 feet away.

So I'm still not 100% sure whether the question is actually about putting counters specifically into D+D or if this is a question about how to design around long ranged weapons in general. Since actually clarifying things seems to be out of style on these boards as of late I'm going to assume, from this, that this is a question relevant to D+D. In DnD you should already have counters to long range combat. It's been said a number of times that fighting types should just be able to pick up a ranged weapon and be ok with it. Casters have a slew of spells at their command that work at a distance. I don't really see a first level archer, firing from the back of a Great Eagle at 800ft, really killing an entire group of adventurers. A longbow has a range increment of 100ft. A group of 5th level adventurers shouldn't be taken down by that so I don't see this scenario as being particularly lethal unless the archer not only has infinite arrows that weigh nothing on hand but also that the group of adventurers who'd be taken down by this would have to be doing nothing in response.

[maglag]

Also, should the difficulty to hit not go at least as high as the eagle is flying?
You know, extreme range, fast moving shooter, moving targets, probably partial cover from trees or something?

Well in one hand gravity would be on the eagle rider's side. A lot easier to loose arrows down than up. Even just dropping a bunch of rocks should suddenly be quite dangerous.

In the other hand being in the air means indeed you have zero cover so ground units can benefit from cover and air dudes cannot. Just need to also make cover good enough to make a difference.

[Thaluikhain]

Well in one hand gravity would be on the eagle rider's side. A lot easier to loose arrows down than up. Even just dropping a bunch of rocks should suddenly be quite dangerous.

Still difficult to hit. At 244m, it'd take, what, about 7 seconds for a dropped rock to hit the ground (assuming 1ish G and no air resistance, granted). Plenty of time to run.

Now, against a large group of people or a settlement that'd be quite effective.

[erik]

Ok, according to a quick google that is about 244 meters. That is still a good distance.

Heck. This guy can do 283m with no hands.

[brized]

I have two potential anti-kiting solutions (haven't playtested them yet though):

1) All ranged attacks incur a penalty to hit unless you spend a move action to Aim, which lasts for 1 Round. Aiming also grants a bonus to hit/damage within close range, but attackers also get a bonus to hit you, due to how focused you are on aiming and not defending yourself. If porting directly to D&D 3E, you'd be flat footed.

2) While mounted, you get a progressively worse penalty to hit based on whether your mount is moving, double moving, or running.

[Pixels]

Reducing the chance to hit or damage won't stop people from kiting. It just makes a long and boring tactic even more long and boring. If you really want it gone, either disable long ranged attacks + movement or rip out long ranged attacks entirely.

[erik]

Reducing the chance to hit or damage won't stop people from kiting. It just makes a long and boring tactic even more long and boring. If you really want it gone, either disable long ranged attacks + movement or rip out long ranged attacks entirely.

Um. It will if they don’t have unlimited ammo. That level one elf on a bird misses with all arrows after a couple minutes and then just holds their limp dick.

Edit: probs a good idea to get rid of auto hits on 20s when at long range increments to not incentivize bullshit long shots.

[brized]

Edit: probs a good idea to get rid of auto hits on 20s when at long range increments to not incentivize bullshit long shots.

Yeah, I'm not a fan of that rule in general, so I don't use it in my RPG. If porting directly to D&D it's a toss up: It's better for balance, but an exception to an exception, so more cognitively demanding than more simple rules.

[Stahlseele]

Reducing the chance to hit or damage won't stop people from kiting. It just makes a long and boring tactic even more long and boring. If you really want it gone, either disable long ranged attacks + movement or rip out long ranged attacks entirely.

Um. It will if they don’t have unlimited ammo. That level one elf on a bird misses with all arrows after a couple minutes and then just holds their limp dick.

Edit: probs a good idea to get rid of auto hits on 20s when at long range increments to not incentivize bullshit long shots.

Oh yeah, shadowrun had that too since they introduced the edge and longshot bullshit rules . .

That is never a thing you want to have in your game of rng via dice ever.
Getting around rolling the dice and being subjected to the rng thereoff by spending a semi finite ressource . . or breaking the RNG with things like auto success at certain rolls.

[K]

A move-equivalent Dodge or Hunker Down action that made someone immune to non-melee ranged attacks would also solve kiting completely.

[Pariah Dog]

A move-equivalent Dodge or Hunker Down action that made someone immune to non-melee ranged attacks would also solve kiting completely.

By non melee ranged attacks do you mean do point blank crossbow to the face (that typically provokes AOO) or within a small range (like large creature melee) would a frost giant applying this have a larger protective range than a dwarf?

Would throwing weapon characters get equally dicked by any solutions meant to stop asshole with a longbow on a horse/griffin/dragon? playing "HA HA YOU CAN'T REACH ME!" even though that generally have a range that if they do not kill the target with their weapon, they can get it returned by the target walking over and stabbing them in the face with it.

[K]

A move-equivalent Dodge or Hunker Down action that made someone immune to non-melee ranged attacks would also solve kiting completely.

By non melee ranged attacks do you mean do point blank crossbow to the face (that typically provokes AOO) or within a small range (like large creature melee) would a frost giant applying this have a larger protective range than a dwarf?

Would throwing weapon characters get equally dicked by any solutions meant to stop asshole with a longbow on a horse/griffin/dragon? playing "HA HA YOU CAN'T REACH ME!" even though that generally have a range that if they do not kill the target with their weapon, they can get it returned by the target walking over and stabbing them in the face with it.

I generally count melee range as the range of a charge.

[Username17]

A move-equivalent Dodge or Hunker Down action that made someone immune to non-melee ranged attacks would also solve kiting completely.

It would solve long range kiting, but it wouldn't solve invisibility kiting, hover kiting, or root kiting. Nor would it make characters immune to being outnumbered by kiters.

In the broader sense, in the meeting of any particular characters and monsters, there is going to be an optimal range of engagement for each team. And further, characters and monsters are going to have means of keeping conflict at their desired range. Sometimes it's going to be excessively stark, like how the Dire Bear has absolutely fuckall it can do at medium range so the relative advantage of holding things at that range is functionally infinity. Or how getting to close range with a Tyrannosaurus Rex is probably an extremely bad idea.

Player Characters should never be in the situation where they are literally powerless at short, medium, or long range. But regardless, you're going to have some characters be better or worse at different ranges. We know that Berserkers and Monks have cool shit they can do at short range, we know that Rangers and Warlocks have cool shit they can do at long range. And some foes from team monster are going to be very range dependent - up to an including various beasts who are literally powerless as long as things stay at long range and chanting sorcerers that are almost as worthless once cornered into short range stab-fests.

The answer to a Manticore isn't that everyone has to be equal at every range, it's that the Crossbow Sniper in your party has to be good enough that the Manticore can't beat the party by just holding back in the air throwing spikes. But yes, the Berserker also needs a damn bow, because while it's OK for the character to lose an archery duel to a Manticore, it's unacceptable for the Berserker player to have nothing to do if the rest of the battle settles into an archery duel with the Manticore.

-Username17

[K]

A move-equivalent Dodge or Hunker Down action that made someone immune to non-melee ranged attacks would also solve kiting completely.

It would solve long range kiting, but it wouldn't solve invisibility kiting, hover kiting, or root kiting. Nor would it make characters immune to being outnumbered by kiters.

But aren't those separate problems? Those problems being invisibility as an absolute defense, flight being uninterruptible by almost any effect, and save or suck effects being covert save or dies?

Fundamentally, we are asking the question of "does this mechanic make the game more or less fun?"

Kiting is not fun for anyone, so it needs to go.

Frankly, ranged combat is not that fun. There is little maneuvering, few special effects, it doesn't work at all with DnD's philosophy of dumping abilities into a single weapon, and it makes you immune to entire sections of people's combat abilities from spells to auras to AoOs. Mostly, it's just trading dice-rolls.

I say that this is an excellent reason to return to my original solution of just making ranges very short like dagger ranges and having a special Snipe action.

[Username17]

Frankly, ranged combat is not that fun. There is little maneuvering, few special effects, it doesn't work at all with DnD's philosophy of dumping abilities into a single weapon, and it makes you immune to entire sections of people's combat abilities from spells to auras to AoOs. Mostly, it's just trading dice-rolls.

There's no reason for any of this to be true. Ranged combat has exactly as many choices and relevant abilities as you choose to write for it. Melee combat has exactly as many choices and relevant abilities as you choose to write for it.

Yes, D&D Fighters with bows generally just say "I shoot the monster. I roll to-hit. I roll for damage. End turn." Over and over again. It's dull. But D&D Fighters do literally exactly that with melee attacks too! Except that instead of saying "I shoot the monster." they say "I stab the monster." Once you get to melee there isn't any more movement to do. You just stand there and roll d20s at each other until somebody falls down. It's dull.

Moving forward, people need choices to make and abilities to use during ranged combat. They also need choices choices to make and abilities to use during melee combat. And this isn't like a real hard ask, let's be honest. Wizards already have choices to make and abilities to use in ranged combat. It's the most interesting part of combat, to be honest. Warblades and shit are fairly interesting in melee combat and they have choices to make and abilities to use there.

The first issue with bow based combat is that the "choice" of a Ranger to use or not use Rapid Fire is uninteresting because they never choose to not use it. The second issue with bow based combat is the non-specialist bow users don't even have that. And that has to fucking stop. Even Berserkers need a few meaningful ranged combat choices. Sniping, Coving Fire, Fire Arrows, shit like that.

-Username17

[Stahlseele]

The only reliable way to deal with kiting is to not allow kiting.
This means limiting yourself to spaces where you can reach your foe no matter what and thus their kiting does not work.
Kiting is an area denial ability for the most part. Even with it being small plink plink DOT instead of huge alpha one shot . .
Because there is usually no good way to get around it.
Now, granted, a heavy full plate and a tower shield should make you basically immune to ranged attacks . . but that comes with its own suite of problems.

And it works basically no matter what. The invisible kiting is actually worse than the flying one, because it is much less limited in where it can happen.

I successfully went full on Predator with a Troll armed with Bow and Arrow in Shadowrun. Had a mage cast improved invisibility on me. Had a distraction going on, shot out the lights and just walked right through a warehouse and at ranges of less than 10m nailed enemies to the terrain with arrows.

I agreed to not do that again after that arguably awesome scene, because it was bullshit effective.

[Foxwarrior]

There are counters to enemies you can't see, even a few anyone can afford. Doors. Puddles. Explosive weaponry. Invisible kiting is a good strategy, but at least it's not a mathematically perfect strategy.

Edit: okay, that was a kind of silly thing to say, environmental obstacles can deal with aerial kiting too.

[kzt]

I successfully went full on Predator with a Troll armed with Bow and Arrow in Shadowrun. Had a mage cast improved invisibility on me. Had a distraction going on, shot out the lights and just walked right through a warehouse and at ranges of less than 10m nailed enemies to the terrain with arrows.

I agreed to not do that again after that arguably awesome scene, because it was bullshit effective.

There always seems to be that sort of tacit agreement in SR games. We had it on the mind control spells.

[K]

Frankly, ranged combat is not that fun. There is little maneuvering, few special effects, it doesn't work at all with DnD's philosophy of dumping abilities into a single weapon, and it makes you immune to entire sections of people's combat abilities from spells to auras to AoOs. Mostly, it's just trading dice-rolls.

There's no reason for any of this to be true. Ranged combat has exactly as many choices and relevant abilities as you choose to write for it. Melee combat has exactly as many choices and relevant abilities as you choose to write for it.

Yes, D&D Fighters with bows generally just say "I shoot the monster. I roll to-hit. I roll for damage. End turn." Over and over again. It's dull. But D&D Fighters do literally exactly that with melee attacks too! Except that instead of saying "I shoot the monster." they say "I stab the monster." Once you get to melee there isn't any more movement to do. You just stand there and roll d20s at each other until somebody falls down. It's dull.

That's pretty wrong. Melee combat has positioning, which is interesting because it is always changing and greatly affects combat.

In melee combat, preventing others from getting full attacks by forcing them to make a move and an attack instead of a full is a big deal. It's the difference between a troll murdering you and not, and avoiding that moves you through environmental effects like flanking, environment like traps and walls and rough ground and line of sight effects, AoOs and reach, and AoEs from buffs that you want to cluster into and AoE attacks that you want to avoid as a group.

Melee also has a number of unique tactics like disarm, trip, grapple, charge, bull rush, and overrun which don't get a lot of use, but they do get some.

Bow ranged combat takes place at ranges where almost no spells are used. Seriously, name five or six goto spells with the max range of a bow (ten range increments means that the max range on a longbow is 1000 ft, so the short answer is no spells). Honestly, at even four or five increments you are out of the range of the Long range of spells unless the caster is near-epic level and/or using range-extending metamagic.

Could you write up a version of ranged bow combat where these things matter? I guess, but why expend the effort to make a game where all the PCs buy the same weapon. Are you making a new game called Dungeons and Bows? Why not go full simulationist and give massive to-hit and AC penalties to people not using swords? Swords and Bows is honestly not the dumbest theme for a game.

In short, rewriting the whole game to make the bow combat mini-game an essential part of the game is a big ask. I don't think the juice is worth the squeeze.