Equipment question

The work around I use is to only have one melee character. He gets an invisibility item, and starts combat on the other side of the bad guy from the other five characters, who are all archers. It sucks that we can't get Improved Precise Shot, but it's built correctly in RAW.

 

w007?! you get 7 feats over the course of your adventuring career, so that's pretty damn few. then there are feats like dodge or weapon focus, and feats like natural spell. natural spell makes druids rule the core game and is the only feat a druid's ever gonna need, dodge and weapon focus are laughable bonuses you won't even notice without keeping track, and then there's precise shot which is a lot better than weapon focus, but still doesn't make your archer an archer, because he still needs point blank shot, rapid shot and improved precise shot, so 4 feats in total, more than half of what you get in your entire career. that's pretty fuckin' expensive in my book!

 

I agree, Zugs, 2 feats should be more then enough to offset the Bowman's penatly at firing into a melee in any circumstance!

 

Except when you are a Ranger and chose Archery-style.

 

Zugschef-
As you say, precise shot is better than weapon focus, dodge, and any number of core feats. It's also available at first level under certain circumstances, and allows you to fire a bow into hand to hand combat as if you were down at the archery butts. The fact that at higher levels the exponential power gain of full casters outstrips the linear gain of martial classes, or that some caster feats are overpowered, doesn't change the fact that it allows you to function as effectively in a close quarters fight by standing in the doorway as you would going in and risking being hit by stray swords. Certainly comparable to cleave, for e.g.

 

my point is that one feat should be enough to make you an archer.

as for dodge and weapon focus, these are horrible feats and should be avoided like the plague. the fact that fighter is a class which is 4 levels long at the maximum (level 5 literally gives you nothing but +1 bab) is especially true in a core game, since there are so few feats worth a damn and most feats which are worth a damn are feats for casters. additionally must-have feats like power attack and combat expertise should obviously be part of the core mechanic and no feats at all.

the way it is, playing with mundane classes is deliberatly playing hard mode. unfortunately, for advanced players this also means that hard mode is boring, because it means auto-attacking instead of the complexity of casting various spells. and ranged combat is even more hardmode than melee because at the start of your career you lack the feats you need for hitting in the first place and later opponents have damage reduction "you won't beat this with an arrow".

bottom line: as it is, archery in toee is what sorcerer and wizard are doing when not casting spells.

 

It may be "hard mode", but that doesn't stop it from being fun for some of us. I usually run with one melee type and five archers, two of whom are casters primarily for crafting purposes. Even the quarry fight (at 20th level for the non-crafters) is interesting with this mix because you have to know when to swap out the archers in the front (i.e. the ones taking the punishment). It's neither impossible nor boring for me. I can't say that for Iuz, of course. He requires either Scather cheese plus Enlarge and Haste (to beat St. Cuthbert to him) or Otiluke's Resilient Sphere cheese (when there are four of him).

 

well, the reason archery is even possible at all in this game is due to the game coddling you. really. all it needs to shut down archery is a 1st level spell (obscuring mist).

 

Without the game "coddling" us, the tactic to deal with obscuring mist is to simply wait it out, or drop the spell caster before he gets it off.

 

Even with Obscuring Mist if you are within 5 feet of the target you only suffer a 20% chance of missing.

If you are further away it goes up to 50%.

The Gust of Wind spell should remove the mist in four rounds.

Actually, fireball is supposed to eliminate it completely, but I don't think that is implemented in TOEE.

 

The Blind Fight feat is an other workaround for those pesky obscuring mists

 

blind-fight only works in melee, and ranged attacking out of an obscuring mist is impossible with normal ways of perception, and blindsense, blindsight, etc. are not obtainable for pcs in toee.

as for gust of wind and fireball, sure this works, but both are higher level than obscuring mist (higher resource cost) and the first one is just reactive and does nothing to improve your situation (like in combat healing). on top of that, the topic is archery, and when your argument is that you can totally ignore obscuring mist because you can use magic, too, then you've obviously missed the point. d'uh.

but, yeah, it's hypothetical since the game doesn't play smart.

the point still stands that archery takes a lot of effort to work at all, and despite all claims is at best on an even level with other offenses, which don't take half the amount of effort to be made working and are not as easily shut down.

-> you can play archers in toee, but it requires a fair amount of system mastery to make them work *at all*.

[edit] well, actually the topic was shields and asfc, but... ^^

 

In my current game I have a Rogue 19 with holy flaming composite shortbow. Most battles, either Zaxis or my wizard casts Imp Invis on him and he does 4 or 5 times 50+ hp damage to most foes, with 10d6 sneak +2d6 holy + fire + basic arrow. No need to move too much or worry about being hit. I recently added manyshot and the wounding critical rogue feat, but his basic build is point-blank and precise shot at first level. I can't remember when he last took damage, but the Slavers didn't manage it and nor did anything in any of the elemental nodes. 2 feats to be Legolas/ SAS/ Navy SEAL with a bow is pretty cool to me.
An optimiser might argue that he'd be better replaced with another full caster with Knock plus the usual offensive spells but I've tried the all-Wiz/Cleric/Druid party and it got pretty dull quite soon.
You're probably right that ToEE doesn't implement anti-archery strategies very well, but then again the determined sniper team would have effective counters. There are plenty of bugs and minor rules lapses in ToEe and D&D that favour spellcasters, too.

 

Heck- I got my tank the Longbow Weapon Focus feat just to help use up all the arrows you get at Hickory Branch. Besides, he doesn't do too well when I've got Stinking Cloud hanging about...