Opportunistic Archer

[hafrogman]

So I was looking through Martial Power when I noticed this feat. It allows an elf fighter to use a bow for the attacks granted by his Combat Challenge. At first I thought this was a really interesting feat. . . but then I looked more closely at the wording which specifically says

When you can make a melee basic attack against a target because of Combat Challenge, you can instead make a ranged basic attack with a bow against the target.

But Combat Challenge only allows you to make melee basic attacks when you're adjacent to the marked enemy. . .

So as far as I understand the wording, this means you can only use a bow to make the ranged basic attack when you're already standing adjacent to the enemy. And exactly how often to fighters find themselves standing in melee with a bow out?

Is there some other use to this feat that I'm missing that somehow justifies it as a paragon level feat? You might get one sub-par attack just before you swap your weapon out?

 

[Kordeth]

It depends on how you parse Combat Challenge.

In addition, whenever an enemy marked by you is adjacent to you and shifts or makes an attack that does not include you, you can make a melee basic attack against that enemy as an immediate interrupt.

You can read that as "any time an enemy marked by you is adjacent and does one of these two things," in which case you're right and the feat is pretty worthless, or you can read it as "any time an enemy marked by you is adjacent to you and shifts or any time an enemy marked by you attacks someone else," in which case the feat allows you to take a shot at any marked enemy in bow range that attacks an ally. IMHO, that's in line with a paragon feat, and since that wording doesn't actually change the effect of an ordinary fighter's Combat Challenge, that's how I'd read it.

 

[hafrogman]

Thanks, that actually makes a lot of sense.

 

[Danceofmasks]

Hmm ... that could have implications for reach weapons, too.

 

[Kordeth]

Hmm ... that could have implications for reach weapons, too.

Good point, I forgot reach explicitly only doesn't work with OAs; I was thinking you only benefited from reach on your turn, period.

Still, I don't see that as a huge balance issue; reach weapons generally lag a bit behind non-reach two-handed weapons in either damage or accuracy (or sometimes both; compare the falchion's +3/2d4/high crit with the glaive's +2/2d4/reach), so reading CC this way doesn't make reach weapons the obvious choice for great weapon fighters.