Core Principal: Buy a Fvcking Bow

[Mistborn]

It seems like every other fvcking fantasy game design thread devolves into hand wringing about fliers with bows and how they give sword fappers the sads. Allow me to present a counter-proposal, buy a fvcking bow.

Exclusively melee mundane fighter is a dumbass concept and as evidenced by the endlessly recurring dumbass threads it clearly breeds dumbasses. Sometimes the enemy has wings, or fast horses, or fvck is on a tall cliff or something and swording is not a relevant ability. The correct response is not to declare that archers can't hit anything because I once dodged a toy arrow at a LARP. It's to have a fucking ranged attack which one can accomplish by spending some gp at the local weapon shop.

Like to paraphrase Frank that one time at the end of the day someone has to get kicked out of the fellowship for the sake of coherency. But for fvck sake at least Legolas and Robinhood should keep there places.

[Foxwarrior]

Not only should you buy a bow, it should be the bow with the largest possible range increment. People with 1100 foot range can kite those with 800 foot range just fine.

[Kaelik]

Hot Take: This does nothing to solve the problem in most games because plinking for 1d8+10 damage with a lower to hit against someone who could have entropic warding at level 10 doesn't mean anything.

The solution is to write games that don't forcefully specialize characters away from ranged combat, and then also to have players be pretty smart, and to have "good" versions of kiting like teleporting devils who use short range spells but teleport away to set up more ambushes, or dragons that have recharge attacks but fly away during the part where they can't use them, so they trade more efficiently than you and will kill you, because these kinds of kiting are good, since the players can use tactics and strategy and abilities to negate or beat them, and not build a game where harassment monsters kite by being 99999ft away and shooting an arrow better than you at that range.

[Stahlseele]

@Lord Mistborn
Logical Conclusion of that argument:
Play a fvcking mage!

[K]

Hot Take: This does nothing to solve the problem in most games because plinking for 1d8+10 damage with a lower to hit against someone who could have entropic warding at level 10 doesn't mean anything.

The solution is to write games that don't forcefully specialize characters away from ranged combat, and then also to have players be pretty smart, and to have "good" versions of kiting like teleporting devils who use short range spells but teleport away to set up more ambushes, or dragons that have recharge attacks but fly away during the part where they can't use them, so they trade more efficiently than you and will kill you, because these kinds of kiting are good, since the players can use tactics and strategy and abilities to negate or beat them, and not build a game where harassment monsters kite by being 99999ft away and shooting an arrow better than you at that range.

Yup.

[Ignimortis]

Better proposal: allow sword dudes to actually reach those distant targets by some means such as flight, teleportation, or making ranged attacks by waving their sword fast enough and producing razor wind or whatever. By level 10+, you should be able to cleave the air hard enough it hits someone 100 feet away from you. Or just jump far enough to stab them in the face anyway.

[Username17]

Better proposal: allow sword dudes to actually reach those distant targets by some means such as flight, teleportation, or making ranged attacks by waving their sword fast enough and producing razor wind or whatever. By level 10+, you should be able to cleave the air hard enough it hits someone 100 feet away from you. Or just jump far enough to stab them in the face anyway.

No.

First of all, distant opponents don't start being a problem when you're a 10th level character whose basically a dude out of a shonen anime, they start being a problem at first level. Kobold with a crossbow is an opponent you could encounter in your very first combat at the lowest possible level.

Secondly, having all combats settled the same way is boring. The game is generally and genuinely better if you do different stuff in different situations. If your response to a flying harpy is "I hit it with my sword!" and your response to a crawling carrion crawler is "I hit it with my sword!" and your response to a lurking invisible stalker is "I hit it with my sword!" and your response to an ogre with a hammer is "I hit it with my sword!" then your choices don't really mean anything. And that's terrible. 4th edition is terrible, and the thing where you could write a script and have your character get played according to that script to tolerable effectiveness without you even being there for the description of the encounter is awful.

There should be encounters where you use long range attacks because the enemy has the ability to stay at long range. And there should be encounters where you use long range attacks because you don't want to get to close range with the fucking blender monsters.

But equally, characters should have choices and abilities that they make and use at long range and at short range. Rangers should like shoot the wings of dragons or shoot fire arrows into a spider's webs. Shit like that. Green Arrow isn't a boring character, but he would be if all he did was do the same heart piercer attack every time.

-Username17

[Ignimortis]

Better proposal: allow sword dudes to actually reach those distant targets by some means such as flight, teleportation, or making ranged attacks by waving their sword fast enough and producing razor wind or whatever. By level 10+, you should be able to cleave the air hard enough it hits someone 100 feet away from you. Or just jump far enough to stab them in the face anyway.

No.

First of all, distant opponents don't start being a problem when you're a 10th level character whose basically a dude out of a shonen anime, they start being a problem at first level. Kobold with a crossbow is an opponent you could encounter in your very first combat at the lowest possible level.

Secondly, having all combats settled the same way is boring. The game is generally and genuinely better if you do different stuff in different situations. If your response to a flying harpy is "I hit it with my sword!" and your response to a crawling carrion crawler is "I hit it with my sword!" and your response to a lurking invisible stalker is "I hit it with my sword!" and your response to an ogre with a hammer is "I hit it with my sword!" then your choices don't really mean anything. And that's terrible. 4th edition is terrible, and the thing where you could write a script and have your character get played according to that script to tolerable effectiveness without you even being there for the description of the encounter is awful.

There should be encounters where you use long range attacks because the enemy has the ability to stay at long range. And there should be encounters where you use long range attacks because you don't want to get to close range with the fucking blender monsters.

But equally, characters should have choices and abilities that they make and use at long range and at short range. Rangers should like shoot the wings of dragons or shoot fire arrows into a spider's webs. Shit like that. Green Arrow isn't a boring character, but he would be if all he did was do the same heart piercer attack every time.

-Username17

At first level, a bow is actually a good enough solution, because whatever damage it does is still relevant and whatever bonuses you lose from not using a sword probably aren't. It stops being so at about level 4 or 5, because your sword is now magic, and your bow sidearm is probably not.

I didn't intentionally try to imply that there should be a single way to handle every single problem, nor that those should be given out automatically.

Various solutions are good and proper - I was arguing that there should be abilities for melee dudes to still use most of their relevant bonuses at the point where weapon-switching to a bow is probably not doing anything. There should (rarely) be combats where melee dudes are almost invalidated, but having every flying encounter past level 5 be that way is bad too. That a melee guy can become something like a Dragoon doesn't solve all of his problems, I think, but it helps with some, and that's good, because you're doing stuff you weren't able to do before, which is actual character progress.

[Username17]

It stops being so at about level 4 or 5, because your sword is now magic, and your bow sidearm is probably not.

The correct answer to "3rd and 4th edition rules don't give out enough equipment by default" is not "therefore we have to make everything stupid and boring where everyone spams the attack button because nothing else matters" it's "give out more equipment." I mean, fucking obviously.

-Username17

[Darth Rabbitt]

Exclusively melee mundane fighter is a dumbass concept and as evidenced by the endlessly recurring dumbass threads it clearly breeds dumbasses.

Seeing as how you post endlessly recurring dumbass threads complaining about exclusively mundane melee fighters, I have to conclude that you are a dumbass attempting to breed.

I admit that this response is a low blow but I see absolutely no reason why this couldn't have been a response in the kiting thread or, if you thought that this warranted its own topic, why you couldn't have necroed one of your many previous threads about this.

[Lago PARANOIA]

Exclusively melee mundane fighter is a dumbass concept and as evidenced by the endlessly recurring dumbass threads it clearly breeds dumbasses.

Seeing as how you post endlessly recurring dumbass threads complaining about exclusively mundane melee fighters, I have to conclude that you are a dumbass attempting to breed.

I admit that this response is a low blow but I see absolutely no reason why this couldn't have been a response in the kiting thread or, if you thought that this warranted its own topic, why you couldn't have necroed one of your many previous threads about this.

As much as it pains me to admit this, Lord Mistborn has the correct take on this. See Frank's previous posts.

Yeah, I know a lot of players want to play a bruiser with a big sword that always fights at 100% effectiveness no matter the tactical situation. But fuck 'em. Fuck them in the bleeding eye socket. When a game sincerely tries to accommodate this paradigm, you get fucking 4th edition D&D. And I know he's once again making sport of the Dumbass Melee Fighter, but the toxic influence of the archetype is by no means settled or even acknowledged. Again, see 5th edition D&D. So even if it seems old hat to you, it's by no means old hat to the gaming community at large.

[Thaluikhain]

Better proposal: allow sword dudes to actually reach those distant targets by some means such as flight, teleportation, or making ranged attacks by waving their sword fast enough and producing razor wind or whatever. By level 10+, you should be able to cleave the air hard enough it hits someone 100 feet away from you. Or just jump far enough to stab them in the face anyway.

Just throwing this out there, how about instead of giving an item or ability which renders distance unimportant, give a number of items/abilities which a clever player can McGyver into bringing sword and enemy together, and leave it up to them to think up how.

And probably having a bow as well cause that sort of thing would get old if overdone, I'd imagine, and they might not have any great ideas.

[Lago PARANOIA]

That said, on the one hand it is kind of unfair how a pure martial who only uses ranged weapons gets screwed over fewer times by shifts in the tactical situation than a Dumbass Melee Fighter. Of course, the solution to this IMO isn't to flatten the tactical landscape so that neither archetype gets screwed. The solution is to make it so that both archetypes have a reason to switch up weapons and tactics.

This seems obvious here, but let's get real for a second: the melee fighter is just flat-out going to have to compromise his concept more than the ranged fighter. It's just the nature of the beast. Legolas was shooting people from 10 feet away and even using his arrows as melee weapons; Gun Kata and bayonets are a thing. In action-adventure fiction, bruiser melee characters always end up picking up competent ranged attacks, from near-VAHs like Guts to badass city-destroyers like Goku and Superman.

[MGuy]

I don't think you need a whole new fighter thread to basically say 'a fighter should pick up a bow'. If someone really, really disagrees with the notion that a fighter should have a secondary weapon for situations where his melee build won't do then they are just dumb. That being said, melee people should be catered to. I can't think of any popular piece of action/adventure media where melee people aren't a significant force to be reckoned with. Even in the Avatar series there were a bunch of melee fights even though bending was the obvious end all be all to combat. You don't need to necessarily narrow the tactical space in order to indulge them. Thinking that 4E was caused by catering to fighters instead of more likely being a cynical attempt to capitalize off of the presumed popularity of MMOs at the time is a poor excuse not to give melee people some interesting tools to help them stay relevant at all levels.

Honestly I'm tired of the endless slew of fighter threads that basically all come down to the same things. The answer to the fighter issue is to give fighters super powers. That's it. Doesn't matter if you give them Galick Guns, Flash Step, Full Counters, or whatever. As long as you allow fighting people to fight on up to higher levels they will not care too much about how you do it and, let's not kid ourselves, it has to be done if you want to please the most people in TTRPGs. If you think that's too animu change it to magic weapons and don't force them to specialize in just one weapon. DnD is combat focused and at the end of the day if the shit doesn't work in combat people who play and like fighters/barbarians/etc really don't care. Warhammer 40K has giant cathedral ships and the Emperor of Mankind is still depicted and said to go around using a giant fuck off sword and gauntlet combo with his mind powers complimenting him.

TL: DR - Fighters can and should be able to pick up a bow without cringing too much and stab manifestations of primordial chaos in the 'not really a' face.

[Username17]

That said, on the one hand it is kind of unfair how a pure martial who only uses ranged weapons gets screwed over fewer times by shifts in the tactical situation than a Dumbass Melee Fighter. Of course, the solution to this IMO isn't to flatten the tactical landscape so that neither archetype gets screwed. The solution is to make it so that both archetypes have a reason to switch up weapons and tactics.

This seems obvious here, but let's get real for a second: the melee fighter is just flat-out going to have to compromise his concept more than the ranged fighter. It's just the nature of the beast. Legolas was shooting people from 10 feet away and even using his arrows as melee weapons; Gun Kata and bayonets are a thing. In action-adventure fiction, bruiser melee characters always end up picking up competent ranged attacks, from near-VAHs like Guts to badass city-destroyers like Goku and Superman.

Green Arrow has a metal bow that he hits people with and also punches and kicks a lot. Robin Hood carries a sword. Both of those are viable life choices for an archer character once enemies close to melee range.

The difference between the Swordsman having to compromise his character concept and the Bowman having to compromise his character concept is that participating in melee combat without a dedicated melee weapon is a first level ability (see: Monk). If you say "I want to play an archer who shoots people at short range and kicks people or trips them with my bow at very close range" that is a valid character concept at level 1. If you want to play a Swordsman who just smacks people with a sword at all ranges, that's not remotely a 1st level character concept. It's arguable whether that's a valid character concept at any level, since you'd basically need levitation and combat teleportation to make that functional - which is a level of badassery unattainable by D&D characters in most editions.

-Username17

[OgreBattle]

Conan sometimes throws swords, sometimes swords with swords, sometimes fires a bow, sometimes sneaks shirtless, sometimes leads an army in heavy armor, sometimes gets owned by a wizard's shadow beast, sometimes hacks a wizard's head off before said beast can be summoned.

But D&D expects each aspect of Conan to be a distinct protected class, while a wizard or cleric or druid can sneak/tank/pew pew/melee rawr by memorizing different spells. That's the basic problem with D&D's class design

As the kiting thread explains I think bows (and guns and so on) need to be nerfed too, they're way too accurate and damage dealing in D&D.

[JonSetanta]

...since you'd basically need levitation and combat teleportation to make that functional - which is a level of badassery unattainable by D&D characters in most editions.

But it can be.

Grognards just won't have it.


EDIT:

Secondly, having all combats settled the same way is boring. The game is generally and genuinely better if you do different stuff in different situations. If your response to a flying harpy is "I hit it with my sword!" and your response to a crawling carrion crawler is "I hit it with my sword!" and your response to a lurking invisible stalker is "I hit it with my sword!" and your response to an ogre with a hammer is "I hit it with my sword!" then your choices don't really mean anything. And that's terrible.

Hit locations with status effects would add spice to an otherwise bland melee dish.