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!

 

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