Quote from: CRKrueger;952922Archery is always going to be conditional.  Even Legolas in the LotR movies, probably the most ridiculously overpowered archer of all time, still has to go to daggers sometimes.  The reality of getting hit with arrows is, they stick in you, you have to deal with them.  You just keep fighting, they are going to be broken off, doing more damage, or get driven into you for even more damage.

You want to sex up archery?  Give crossbows some level of armor piercing, give arrows and bolts sticking out of you some kind of penalty.  Really though, each of the abilities to finish off runners, soften up chargers before melee, or to engage other archers by itself makes archery worth while, without all the other uses.

I really like the arrow sticking out of you idea. Wish you had mentioned this before I finished my ranged weapons table in LFG!

I consider ranged attacks to be "free damage" whilst keeping the shooter relatively safe (behind cover or the enemy has to close etc). With that in mind, I think in order to balance out things you need disincentives to always reach for your bow: eg disad if shooting in melee, opp attacks moving out of melee, some kind of chance of hitting a friend in the same melee on a miss, etc. Otherwise I agree with the OP you end up with everyone shooting everything.

Quote from: Charon's Little Helper;952921That one is much less of a big deal for bows than for crossbows due to how much faster they can be strung - and it was cheaper to have a few.  There was a semi-famous battle where there was a massive storm beforehand.  The English longbowmen just put their bowstrings under their caps, while their opposite number who were crossbowmen mercs were made all but useless in the battle.  (And the French killed more than the English did when they ran because the French thought that they were just cowards and/or traitors.)

"Semi famous battle?"  It's the fucking battle of Crecy, the first great English victory of the Hundred Years' War and the one that got the longbow its reputation.

Look up the real world experiments on penetration with a bow. They can be devastating weapons. If anything bows in most RPGs are rather underpowered. And that is before you add tricks like curare. Against unarmoured targets massed bowmen equal mass slaughter.

Bows however suck in dungeons. I cannot shoot at our local indoor range, the ceiling is too low, and I do not have a longbow either. Also the light is likely to be too uncertain to allow accurate targeting. Creatures are going to pop into encounter range at relatively close quarters, so either the archer is in the front and gets a shot or two off while the orcs charge, or the archer is in the rear and the front rank fighters have to step aside to give him a clear shot instead of setting spears to recieve the charge.

A short, weak self-bow is going to be useless against armor, for that job you need a long bow, composite bow, or serious recurve. But why would a well equipped adventurer carry a short, weak self-bow anyway?  They would upgrade to the more powerful killing weapon asap.

Worth remembering too are that the astounding displays of speed and accuracy put on by champion archers are generally performed under calm stable conditions, not with a horde of bloodthirsty enemies charging at you!

Get rid of the uber-spells and super weapons, and all of a sudden, the ability to kill at a distance with a simple tool and skill develops a coolness all its own.

Many real world tools and skills make less sense in imaginary worlds.  If everyone is lugging around sub-atomic blasters or shooting lightning out of their finger tips, then yeah, I'm not sure people would bother with bows and arrows.  Bows have become rather uncommon on modern battlefields, and not because they are out of fashion. But, given a world where where the state of the art weaponry is a sharpened stick or length of iron, the coolness of a bow becomes self-evident.

One thing to think about is this...

Bows, slings and crossbows work just fin in the hands of commoners and they work just fine in magic dead zones.

If your magic system is right out the gate outperforming the archery then thats a problem of your system, Not archery. YOU made magic that strong and I assume made it super common to that its being used more than bows. Either tone down the magic or accept that bows may be less useful.

In 5e a fighter with a bow can crank out equal or more damage than a wizard with a cantrip and can then potentially exceed that.

These are good mechanics ideas. But it's also a matter of flavor and inspiration. Who here has a good archer story from a campaign?

Quote from: Doom;952902Archery is a clear problem from a game design point of view. Quite a number of games have screwed it up and made archery an "I win" button.


Make it mechanically as good as melee combat, and there's no reason for melee combat.

Your magic system is also a factor here--if you give spellcasters infinite damaging spells, archery is only a choice if it does quite a bit more damage than those spells. But that all depends on your magic rules.

Really it just depends on what you're shooting for. Realism, then archery should get cranked up (there's a reason why the military focuses on ranged weaponry, after all....). Balance? Then you need to crunch some numbers. Fun? Then go with a subsystem, maybe something that's very swingy where archery might do a kill shot, or might do absolutely nothing even if the character has maxed out everything. Superheroes? Then create all kinds of goofy arrows with various effects.

But there are just too many game-related factors to give much help.

There is only a limited number of arrows. If an archer carries a quarrel he has 20, two quarrels, forty arrows, three quarrels sixty arrows. If he gets off two shots in a melee round, that is twenty arrows in ten rounds. Quarrel empty.

If it is just twenty orcs, most of them would be dead or wounded (unless they surprised the party at very close range 10-40 yards, in which case, three rounds to melee for the archers, tops.

If the players are in a day long pitched fight with an opposing army, there is an extremely good chance the archers will run out of arrows before lunchtime.

Longbowmen require specialized training. Crossbows don't require special training but it takes a looooong time to reload, so they were mostly used defensively from defenders that were besieged, and once in great awhile as a throwaway first strike weapon used by a melee group (They were expensive to make though so that didn't happen much).

Quote from: GameDaddy;952985There is only a limited number of arrows. If an archer carries a quarrel he has 20, two quarrels, forty arrows, three quarrels sixty arrows. If he gets off two shots in a melee round, that is twenty arrows in ten rounds. Quarrel empty.

If it is just twenty orcs, most of them would be dead or wounded (unless they surprised the party at very close range 10-40 yards, in which case, three rounds to melee for the archers, tops.

If the players are in a day long pitched fight with an opposing army, there is an extremely good chance the archers will run out of arrows before lunchtime.

I will say - that's not as big of an issue at standard adventurer levels rather than low % battlefield shots.  I know that Mongols were recorded as going into battle with hundreds of arrows each, and they often shot themselves dry.  But does anyone really want a system where you roll for hundreds of arrows a day?  *snore*

Quote from: Doom;952902Archery is a clear problem from a game design point of view. Quite a number of games have screwed it up and made archery an "I win" button.

But...  They ARE 'I win' buttons.  Where the hell do you think we got the idea to use gunpowder to propel a small lead ball at near supersonic to supersonic speeds?  Ranged combat is superiour to melee combat for multiple reasons, the least of which is giving the soldier a better chance of survival, against a lesser skilled foe.  There is a reason ranged combat is king in the modern world.

Quote from: Ashakyre;952983These are good mechanics ideas. But it's also a matter of flavor and inspiration. Who here has a good archer story from a campaign?

Depending on who DMed for us, you could be stuck with a bad roll for starting hit points: two DMs I played with didn't allow re-rolls, half rounded up (from UA -how I did it as DM) or max at 1st level (the option for pussies). So we had one fighter with 2 hp and another with 3. Needless to say, they weren't thrilled at the idea of hth combat, so one used a crossbow and the other, a horse bow. They simply shot every enemy and ran if necessary (they wore leather armor, so they could outrun most low-level monsters and more importantly, most other PCs. They had gotten so good at perforating enemies at a distance that even when they leveled up and got enough hit points to make up for their previous bad rolls, they stuck with what got them so far. They recruited a dwarf fighter in plate armor, to help fend off attackers. Other PCs also got into the act with darts, daggers, flaming oil, acid, hatchets, clubs and anything else we could use. Our combats were basically shoot-outs, and if the enemy didn't have missile weapons...


Tough titty for them.

Quote from: Christopher Brady;952989But...  They ARE 'I win' buttons.  Where the hell do you think we got the idea to use gunpowder to propel a small lead ball at near supersonic to supersonic speeds?  Ranged combat is superiour to melee combat for multiple reasons, the least of which is giving the soldier a better chance of survival, against a lesser skilled foe.  There is a reason ranged combat is king in the modern world.

Um....yes? I guess I should have specified "real world" military when I qualified things. Now, back to discussion of game design...

Quote from: Imaginos;952909Do you have any examples?  Personally, I've always found the opposite, so I'd like to see what I've missed.

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Well, people have already mentioned the "main" RPGs out there having this issue, but the first few generations of MMOs also had this problem, where ranged attackers were just plain dominating. Asheron's Call, Meridian 59, lots of computer games make this mistake, it's hardly limited to tabletop. (note: I'm referring to games here, not the real world where ranged attacks make lots and lots of sense).

Quote from: Doom;952902Really it just depends on what you're shooting for. Realism, then archery should get cranked up (there's a reason why the military focuses on ranged weaponry, after all....).

Yes, but it's not what most people think it is;). It's mostly "because we can use a non-muscle based mechanism for ranged fighting".
Even recurve bows are muscle-based, though.
But there is a reason why riders were charging with spears and sabres well past the invention of firearms.
Now, let's leave it at that. The OP ain't looking for realism, so we don't need to discuss it in this thread.

Quote from: Psikerlord;952940I really like the arrow sticking out of you idea. Wish you had mentioned this before I finished my ranged weapons table in LFG!

It's a standard Special Effect in Mythras:).

Quote from: Xanther;952916Without seeing your rules not much can be said.

In real life there are several disadvantages to archery that never seem to make it into games.  First, games focus on the bows that were exceptionally powerful when most would not penetrate armor.  Second, these powerful bows were not easy to make (recurve) and/or took years and years of training to use effectively.  Third, a moving target that is dodging is very, very hard to hot.  Fourth, ammo; bows use arrows, and these arrows are subject to damage if not protected.  Fifth, encumbrance bows and a quiver of arrows take up a lot of space AND you need to be relatively free of constricting clothes and gear to use a bow effectively.  Sixth, bow strings are not all weather, they don't work when wet, or desiccated.  Seventh, bow strings lose their effectiveness if kept on the bow to long; so if you keep your bow strung all the time you will have to regularly replace the string.  Eighth, wind can make a bow unusable.  Ninth, strings break and mishaps occur.  Tenth, an arrows power decreases with range.

I've rarely seen these factors ever incorporated into play.

Another factor that seems to be missed, is that naturally thick or blubbery skin can make arrows near useless.  Yet in most RPGs there is no reduction or immunity.  A rhino or elephant hide can turn small caliber arms, arrows are next to useless.  Yu can imagine all sorts of fantasy creatures being effectively immune to arrows.

In my homebrew melee weapons can do more damage than ranged weapons, which is generally true a sword hacking into you is going to do more damage than an arrow; although we are weak things so it doesn't take much to kill us, no so much a troll.

All of this is true. I've been told by a guy who researches ancient Bulgarian warriors archery and horsmanship that they used to carry at least 3 bows in a campaign. Only one bow was strung at all times, so the other two could rest.
 

Quote from: DavetheLost;952952Look up the real world experiments on penetration with a bow. They can be devastating weapons. If anything bows in most RPGs are rather underpowered. And that is before you add tricks like curare. Against unarmoured targets massed bowmen equal mass slaughter.

All the weapons are underpowered in RPGs. Amusingly, only shields, most armours and grappling are undevalued more than them (while the effect of untrained punches and kicks is often overvalued).
I'd rather not speculate about the reasons for that, though:D!


And to the OP: google Tucker's kobolds for a prime example of how judicious use of ranged weapons can turn stronger, better equipped enemies into mincemeat;)!

Quote from: Ashakyre;952983These are good mechanics ideas. But it's also a matter of flavor and inspiration. Who here has a good archer story from a campaign?

Jan's current 5e Fighter is archery focused and shes held off a few hard battles by plinking away relentlessly till she cant. She outputs alot of hurt with a bow. Maxed out DEX for +5 damage and to hit, Archery for another +2 to hit, 3 attacks a round, every time she uses Precision Strike she can add +1d10 more damage though can only do that 4 times per short rest, and Sharpshooter so range and cover are less of a problem. And she has a +1 bow for even more plinking fun. Thats +8 to hit, +6 damage (or the occasional 1d10+6). As noted in other threads. Chews through ammo! But I carry for her an extra quiver of arrows so shes got over 75 shots if we can recover ammo after. Cant allways. But we try.

Probably one of the best ones was our group getting ambushed by a bunch of bandits armed with longbows. Me and Kefra are primarily melee types so we had to close range first which was to say the least a painful experience. Jan meanwhile was plinking away at the bandits who were using the trees for cover. Or were trying to at least. By the time we got to melee Jan had taken down three bandits and was finishing off the fourth. Though in that same span shed lost about half her HP total. She accounted for half the kills and over 30 arrows I believe. Oh... and all the arrows from my quiver were poisoned since I'd taken the time to prep them and drop them off with Jan before charging off into the fray. Normally we dont. But these bandits were known for using poison arrows so we decided to return the favour. And Kefra had Protection from Poison on us all going in.

It was even worse in AD&D.