Tournament Arc, Part 5/8
They have a healthy relationship. And if you’re a professional archer, you’re probably jealous. Here’s why.
Standing in the backfield while unloading shot after shot into the baddies is an appealing combat style. As an archer you’ll be full-attacking long before the dumb brute with the pointy metal stick closes to melee, meaning that you basically get a free turn just for rolling initiative. Of course, that assumes you’re fighting on a featureless plane. If you’ve ever plucked a bowstring, fletched an arrow, or shot into melee, you know just how rarely that’s the case. That in turn makes mobility really friggin’ important for an archer.
Dashing away from the danger zone, getting around cover, and finagling the angles so that you’re not shooting your own allies are all important for the bow-havers of the multiverse. And if your corner of the multiverse happens to lie in the vicinity of 3.X D&D, you know that there’s a struggle here. That’s because full attacks don’t play nice with movement, reducing your salvo of rapid shot / manyshot / full-iterative down to a single dorky arrow. Wouldn’t it be nice if somebody else could move for you? That way you could just concentrate on spamming arrows.
Enter the mobile archery platform. It might come in the form of a flying carpet, monstrous companion, or loyal steed, but the big idea is to let something else carry you around the battlefield. In today’s comic, the mobile archery platform’s name is Druid. In my own game, her name was Betty.
I was a necromancer, and the gang had just taken out a homebrew xenomorph. Forget the silliness of aliens in Golarion and just look at the stat block on that thing. Note the “Climb +∞” score. You might understand why my group was suddenly interested in adding to our stable of undead companions. After a bit of animate dead and a lot of Craft (carpentry), we’d rigged up a literal platform to our perfect climbing machine, giving the resident android gunslinger the ideal perch from which to do his thing.
Was it silly? Very yes. Do I remember why we named her Betty? Not even a little bit. Was it effective? Dude was an unstoppable killing machine with a rifle. It was an always-on sniper’s perch, meaning that the baddies were full of holes well before they could figure out how to get to the ceiling.
So for today’s discussion, what do you say we swap trade secrets? What’s the best way to get around the battlefield as an archer? Do you go the mounted route, or do you get more creative with your battlefield taxis? Tell use all about your favorite mobile archery platforms down in the comments!
ARE YOU A ROLL20 ADDICT? Are you tired of googling endlessly for the perfect tokens? Then have we got a Patreon tier for you! As a card-carrying Familiar, you’ll receive a weekly downloadable Roll20 Token to use in your own online games, as well as access to all of our previously posted Tokens. It’s like your own personal NPC codex!
AD&D2, Forgotten Realms :
Forest Gnome Rogue with a sling, riding in the backpack of the Moon Elf Bladesinger.
Got the last hit and kill on a Juvenile Green Dragon in the woods of Cormanthor due to the Magic Stones from the Druid …
That wood-themed table was weird.
Backpack gnomes are pretty legit.
I could never figure out whether they ought to impose some kind of penalty on their “mounts” though.
Time to break out the encumbrance rules?
Oh, I did use those. And added negative modifiers to the Gnome’s THAC0 for the moves of the Elf. The Elf character was strong enough to carry the whole group though !
But when dice start rolling 20’s …
When this mess came up in 5e, I suggested disadvantage to the mount’s athletics and acrobatics checks. It’s less the weight and more the little dude squirming around.
I may have also suggested disadvantage on attacks, but that might be a step too far.
as a GM, I’ve seen the situation pop up more times than I care to admit. my personal solution is simple: one of them (the mount or the rider) is spending a move action to hold on. I don’t care which one, but one of them is doing it. Ride feats don’t apply to PCs, and remember encumberance for penalties.
I guess that would make packpack gnomes better casters than archers.
In the last campaign, we had a ranger who would eventually leave the group (character, not player). But before he left, he took command of the giant construct named Dread. He would sit on Dread’s shoulder and shoot from there. Think ‘The Iron Giant.’
Riding about on things that aren’t meant to be ridden is one of the hallmarks of a good archer.
A lot of people complain about the supposedly game-breaking mobility of aarakocra in D&D 5E, and yes, a 50′ fly speed on a level 1 character is pretty substantial. But I’ve recently come to the conclusion that, in the environments where flying allows a character to dominate the battlefield, 90% of the same functionality can be achieved by simply buying a horse.
And 5E doesn’t have any pesky rules about archery or spellcasting being harder on a galloping horse. You can just gallivant around the battlefield, with your mount taking Dash or Disengage actions on your behalf, while you do whatever it is you do best. I’ve also recently noticed that if you’re on a horse, you can move through spaces occupied by Small creatures. That line of goblins with spears? Not a problem!
I always wondered why they replaced “flying” with “horsemanship” back in Portal: https://mtg.gamepedia.com/Horsemanship
Portal was a weird time.
There is certainly a lot of overlap in the two Environment, big open outside areas are the typical one. But in any Mines of Moria like situation (that is inside ruins/dungeons with high ceilings count for flyers but not for a horse) works for the aarakocra but not the horse.
Normal horses also don’t have that many hit points (compared to PC’s that have few levels in them), so enemies with (typically worse than their melee) ranged attacks can kill the horse in a reasonable amount of time and then close to melee. Against enemies whose best attack is ranged neither the horse archer nor the flyer really have any advantage of course.
I think I know why she was called Betty.
https://villains.fandom.com/wiki/Betty_(Kung_Pow!_Enter_the_Fist)
I guess it was a little less intimidating with that name. Better PR for necromancy. :/
The concept of mobility on a ranged character is part of why I picked a Vanara as the race of my Steel Hound Archetype investigator. Being able to climb pillars or hang from the roof, out of range of melee enemies, whilst blasting away with a firearm, is a very effective combat tactic. The prehensile tail also helps with reloading!
I’ve never really given the monkey boys a look. Something about the flavor never quite hooked me.
Should I give ’em a look though? What are they best at?
Going by their influences of media, they are copies of the Monkey King archetype – oriental monkey-men with vaguely martial arts focus (examples – Goku, Journey to the West, Wukong, the monkey trainer from Ori and the Will of the Wisps..). Visually can be furry/anthro monkeys (Wukong of LoL) or the ‘monkey-faced, monkey-handed’ human (think Planet of the Apes, or live-action adaptations of Journey to the West). Like the Kitsune, they’re viable oriental tricksters and ideal monks, mixing intelligent creatures with a wild carefree or id-unrestrained personality (or a defiance of it, being a sage as a race known for foolishness or sillyness).
Mechanically, their main gimmicks are having a built-in climb speed, acrobatics benefits, a prehensile tail (helps reloading or nabbing items quickly, without needing to be a Tiefling), and favor Dex/Wis, making them decent for wise sage roles or tricky acrobatic roles, or other monk roles. Alternative racials grant them a CS in every knowledge skill, give them UMD user benefits, or the theme of being a tough gorilla-type.
So overall, if you want an Oriental race, a race with a climb speed, a race with perfect Monk racials/theme, and to play either a sage or a trickster/literal monkey, Vanara is your race. Martials are favored but a climb speed can be creatively used by multiple classes in the early game.
They notably also have three items associated with them. Vanara are behind the special material ‘Whipwood’, the ‘Meridian Belt’ magic item (which lets you wear FOUR rings, swapping two into active on demand, wearing two on your toes), and the Sun Wukongs Puzzle Box.
As for who they (and a lot of other media) are based on, have an OSP video to detail their crazy awesome inspiration:
https://youtu.be/61nuXrvqNgI
I guess the real downside of the race is that it’s hard not to fall into the Sun Wukong clone situation, or feeling obligated to break out of it (see also, Drizzt and his effect on Drow PCs, Gandalf vs PC wizards, etc…).
Ah. Monkey monk. Gotcha.
I think I tried wise-old-kung-fu-hermit as my first PC out of college, but haven’t touched ’em since…. Except for the half-giant grappler martial artist with brutal pugilist barbarian levels. We don’t talk about him though.
In any case, it may be time to go back to the class. I could certainly use some variety!
Thanks for the write-up in any case!
Yup, monkey monk – especially if they’re armed with a quarterstaff. They’re fairly iconic somehow, probably because of all the Journey to the West stuff.
Here’s a living and very vivid example of one!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EFKSa54BBig
A cool trick one can pull off with a Red-Scaled Kobold in Pathfinder is to give them the racial that lets them see through smoke (requires red scales), nab a ton of smokesticks (or an eversmoking bottle) and toss smoke clouds to serve as cover/hiding spot that most enemies cannot see through (including darkvision/see in darkness foes), but you can. You can sit in a cloud of smoke and enjoy free concealment and immunity to most spells that require line of sight whilst shooting away with your preferred weapon.
I know that fog cutter lenses are a thing. Didn’t realize they were a freebie option for kobolds though. Might have to look into that for a build.
A Goz Mask is another option (and better than the Fogcutter Lenses by miles). Get one for everyone in the party, plus an Eversmoking Bottle (or smokesticks and similar items/spells), and proceed to play ‘SWAT team assault’ with all of your enemies.
Alternately, have an entire tribe of red-scale Kobolds recreate the horror of Tucker’s Kobolds by using smoke and their ability to see through it to make one hell of an ambush / lair defense tactic.
I think we did that goz mask business once upon a time in my mythic game. We had so much random magical crap by the end of that one I honestly can’t remember what I crafted, lol.
I see the microphone is one of the Handbook-verse’s first technological discoveries.
I was invented shortly after the Scry-Phone: https://www.handbookofheroes.com/archives/comic/scryingdevice
Our gunslinger purchase a pair of slippers of slipper climb, and would start the battle off by climb up the closest wall while firing. Being an inventor, though, walls weren’t enough; he built himself a rudimentary hanglider, and once the walls had gained him enough height, he’d go flying above the battlefield, raining hot lead from above.
Man, I really should have grabbed a thesaurus before writing that comment; though I’m not sure how many synonyms for “side of a building” are out there, so there probably weren’t many ways to spice up the sentence regardless.
lol. I gather there were a lot of high-ceiling chambers in the local dungeon.
My favorite work-around for archer mobility comes from a greentext post I read on reddit a long time ago:
https://old.reddit.com/r/DnDGreentext/comments/640fqr/of_archers_accuracy/
All of this guy’s stories are great, but this one stuck out to me, and I IMMEDIATELY thought of it when I read your daily discussion question!
TL;DR: Mobility is for suckers and people without archery feats!
The game changes when you take the “dungeon” out of dungeons and dragons. Big open-field battles tend to alter the calculus in a big way. Especially if you ignore distance penalties to Perception.
In Pathfinder, it can also change substantially if you DON’T ignore distance penalties to Perception, but your character has Signature Skill(Perception) and a Distance Composite Longbow.
I forget the name of the “see forever” charm in Exalted, but my group always had fun theorizing about standing on top of the Elemental Pole of Earth and just sniping anything in Creation.
“Eye of the Unconquered Sun”. It’s realllll fun.
all things dnd youtube channel just did a narrated version of this story. it was pretty good.
Nice! Looking that up now, because the Felix la Vulpe stories are some of my favorites in the fandom! Thanks for pointing me that way, stranger!
This is all making me think of a story I’d run across once where some people worked out a Pathfinder build that would let them snipe Cthulhu (with oil tankers, no less!) while ol’ squidface is still in deep space:
http://designofdragons.blogspot.com/2016/04/in-brightest-day-in-blackest-night-no.html
Right now I’m playing a Wizard in our interdimensional arena pathfinder game. Now, because I wanted a challenge, Evocation and Necromancy are my barred schools, while my focus is Divination. (Turns out this was actually a decent choice because the Diviner school powers are awesome.) This means I can’t just throw fireballs around to destroy my enemies, and after I’ve dropped all my buffs and debuffs, its time to pull out my longbow. Now, the easiest way for me to gain positional superiority is with a simple casting of Fly, but my eventual plan is to start using Beast Shape II+ to start turning my familiar into something that can carry me around.
That’s DIY “Fly, Conjurative”: https://www.d20pfsrd.com/magic/all-spells/f/fly/
One time in a high level pathfinder game long ago, we had a gunslinger who did similar with a purchased airship. The dm let him get one relatively cheap, and allowed him to take the leadership feat, as he wasn’t really that good at making characters or remembering the rules. Admittedly it still wasnt always the most useful, as he often forgot he had iterative attacks. Still though, him and his cohort were fairly fun, and just having an airship is useful. It was also fun how he accidentally made his character caitlyn effectively and his cohort leona, which we all realized a few sessions into play.
If you can get an airship, always get an airship. They come with the best theme music: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lq2ANOkfsIA
I introduced my friend to dnd. His first character is a ranger. Laugh all you want, he has the most consistent damage dealer of the party. Anyway, he usually just plants his feet, and honestly, as someone new to dnd myself, I have a hard time giving him advice on what he should do. Any ideas fellas?
Yup. Tell your GM to include more ambushes, cover penalties, and complex terrain w/ obstacles. It will make for more varied and challenging play for the ranger.
Well I’m the DM. I’ve done a couple ambushes and he still just turns into a turret. What would a cover penalty be? How would complex terrain help encourage movement?
If you have pillars, stalactites, and low cover in your environment, you force the archer to move to get line of sight to your enemies.
Assuming you’re running in 5e, the cover rules live over here: https://5thsrd.org/combat/cover/
More generally, threatening the archer with melee is key to making it an interesting thing to play. The interesting gameplay decision is, “Holy crap! These ambush critters charged before I could set up! Should I break from melee, risking an opportunity attack, in order to keep shooting?” Multiple creatures, foes with long reach, flying critters that can get into the backfield, and environmental rules like low light or high winds can also force movement.
You want to let your sniper set up and plunk away about half the time. Sitting in a bell tower and shooting into a target-rich environment is every bow-haver’s dream. It’s what they’re best at, and it’s good policy to let the player do the thing sometimes. But if you find that boring, varying things up by using a dynamic environment to provide consequences to standing still is helpful.
Thank you. I will try to keep those things in mind. That being said, he doesn’t do bad in melee either. I’ll have to try and think up something. Perhaps a scenario where he has to cover multiple fronts, and thus must change position regularly.
What about literal tower defense? It could be a great “spotlight” encounter for an archer. Maybe the party mage has to “perform the ritual” for X rounds while the melee dudes defend him down below. It’s the archer’s job to cover 2-3 different sides of a tower to thin out the enemies, but his job is complicated when [insert wimpy flying creatures here] begin to harry him.
That’s pretty much exactly what i was thinking. Also why does the reply button disappear after a certain number of nested replies?
The reply button thing often annoys me. I’m pretty sure it’s to keep reply chains from getting obnoxiously thin, but it does make it hard to carry on the conversation.
Weirdly, I can still “reply” on the back end of the site, but no one else seems to have that ability. :/
Technically Lumberjack Explosion isn’t a horse. He’s a unicorn, which, depending on the source you’re pulling from, only superficially resemble horses. In D&D, they have cloven hooves for one. So he still has a chance with that princess.
I admire your optimism.
Also i just remembered the one comic where said princess wanted to date him, but he said it likely wasn’t legal. Does she not see him as an animal, or something?
She doesn’t see him as an animal or something:
https://www.handbookofheroes.com/archives/comic/powers-of-perception
More specifically, she doesn’t realize he’s an animal.
And I thought MY rolls were bad.
That built-in Vigilante +20 to Disguise checks is one hell of a buff!
Lumberjack Explosion and Gunslinger are unknowingly experiencing the same existential hell of loneliness.
Those two really ought to get together and…
https://www.handbookofheroes.com/archives/comic/sidekick
Never mind. :/
Out of curiosity sake, how often did the opportunity to use a 16′ tall ceiling climbing platform come up? Were you guys pilfering dungeons made for giants?
When all you’ve got is a hammer…
https://www.handbookofheroes.com/archives/comic/i-cast-maslows-hammer
But for serious, this strategy came up big during a coup against a secretly-controlled-by-undead kingdom. This thing was the disguised queen:
https://www.d20pfsrd.com/bestiary/monster-listings/undead/harionago/
…And breaking into her throne room with its high-ass ceiling was key. We even got to do it twice wince we got our butts kicked so hard the first time.
Mounted archery? Why one could practically conquer Asia with a tactic that good!
I admit I haven’t played an Archer much as a player. I did play an archer Assassin Rogue in a one-shot: The silent but deadly Elven Assassin “The Green Wind”.
Corridors were narrow in the dungeon so the meatshields could do their part. so I didn’t have to worry much aboot enemies closing the distance. If they did though, Cunning Action lets the Rogue disengage as a bonus action. Sadly the “Hitting Cover” rule in the DMG is an optional rule, but Green Wind did have the Sharpshooter feat so it wouldn’t be an issue.
The “Hitting cover” rule in the DMG is probably my favorite implementation of “If you shoot into melee you might hit your friends. It’s pretty simple; if you miss by the margin of cover, you use that same attack roll against the cover. (I believe it was a faithful conversion of 4E’s rule but I could be remembering wrong)
If the 18 AC plate-clad Fighter is giving the 17 AC opponent half-cover, (+2 AC) and I roll an 18 to hit, then I only missed because the Fighter is giving cover, so I use that 18 to hit against the Fighter instead.
Nice to see that rule codified. I’ve heard people deciding the “it hits your shield” or “it hits your armor” based on homebrew, but baking it into mechanical rather than flavor text terms is fun. I’ve seen the same rule in Mordheim (cover gives you -1 to hit; if you fail to hit by 1, you hit the cover instead).
Of course, forcing the expert archer to consistently hit their buddies can be an unpopular option depending on the player. In that sense, I think it goes in the “optional rules” for a good reason.
The only archer I’ve played was a Scout back in 3.5, multiclassed all the way to hell and back to have massive mobility. Didn’t need a horse, I was (much) faster on foot, and I had a workaround which I don’t remember to full attack even after moving.
I don’t remember just how much speed I had honestly, I only remember that it was completely overkill and was almost never really useful. Still, I liked being speedy. It’s fun. Especially when I acquired a flying speed equal to my ground speed through a particularly overpowered Wish.
There’s just something inherently hilarious about speedsters in tabletop. We’ve got on in our Mutants and Masterminds game, and I crack up ever time she winds up on the other side of the grid at the end of her turn.
The only true means of battlefield conveyance for the ranged minded individual is the reanimated skeleton of a giant hydra. You can carve seating into the bones, and enjoy the sweet taste of victory from a comfortable position.
This message brought to you by necromancy.
That same necromancer I talked about had an undead bulette “land submarine” with a hatch in its back and a cannon built into its snout. It was a silly game.
For today comic i was expecting a little story or question about in-game bestiality 🙁
Oh, well, other time it would be. So apart from using the Bow word from Godbound, even when it’s more like the artillery word, a trick i like to use is portals. Once in a game the archer of the group and i got a great idea, combine a little portal spell with his bow so that when she wanted she could create an small portal before the arrow to send it anywhere she wanted. It serve us really well when one of the posible bad guys try to use the enchanted bow to launch an small Brahmastra. She use the spell to open a portal but without destination preventing the destruction of an small continent, think Spain-size. And later she use the spell again to release that arrow right on the face of the real and final bad guy. Think with portals is great 😀
One think i like to do for myself is to combine archery and teleportation. Either me or the arrow, if they keep speed, acceleration and angular moment between teleports. Or using a cluster bomb bow. Um, a Kuva Bramma could be a god addition to my arsenal now think about it 😀
I always liked the idea of offensive portals:
https://i.pinimg.com/originals/bd/8b/47/bd8b4768bf4d0e519b7608981b689bed.jpg
Once in a game i placed two portals, one in front of the other without space in the middle, so that when something got out of one it enters the other time and time again. This way when something is trapped in between the portals all his matter occupy the same space but keep interacting between them, until you close on of the two portals and all the bloody goo and portal-frag go out from the lasting portal 😀
Portals are bloody fun 😛
My personal favourite is the very simple 5e combination of beast master ranger and gnome or halfling. A free wolf (or other medium pet), and a stature small enough to ride it. Also, the beast gets all your handy ranger terrain abilities, which makes a helluva difference… if you’re using revised ranger.
Wait a minute… Beast master does things? I was given to understand it was an unplayable affront against God and nature and should never be used for anything under any circumstances ever. You mean to say the internet is given to hyperbole!?
My group’s instance of this is vehicular, but the gunner (who has twice now ended combat on the first action of the first turn, eliminating all hostiles before anyone else on either side got a shot) is dating the pilot (who is also sensor operator and has been acting to get the gunner bonuses before combat starts, and has been causing the gunner to be in position to shoot).
What’s the system?
In 5e do you really need to do any better than a Pegasus granted by Find Great Steed? It flies three times faster than you can walk and has an actual number of hit points.
Though a Broom of Flying or Flying Carpet are also pretty handy in the “doesn’t die out from under your butt” department.
This conversation reminds me of that one time I was playing a gestalt Mystic/Arcane Archer winged Tiefling. They just flew around by themselves and shot arrows around like they thought a longbow was a semi-automatic rifle. (Wait, didn’t I link that character sheet in the comments before?)
The mechanics of the Peasant Railgun dictate that the best medium for rapid transit is crowd surfing
Using the homebrew book, ‘In the Company of Dragons’. So we had a draconic party member… however, they started Small size. So it was the dragon being carted around by the much larger Goliath Barbarian woman. Perhaps in a few levels and a growth spurt, the dynamic will be reversed.