Playing Against Expectations - The Archer Fighter

[Zaphling]

Ways of The Dee Em: Playing Against Expectations - The Archer Fighter

Hi people of EnWorld. This article is aimed to the question "What's the use of Fighters having military ranged weapon proficiency when they can't use it or at least, seldom uses it?"

 

[Zaphling]

The warlord has the option and uses strength for it. Why can't the Fighter, or in general, strength classes use strength to make ranged basic attacks? Logically speaking, bows need strength to be pulled too (I'm not sure about this).

And to some lesser extent, in most video games crossbows need strength instead of dexterity to be used (although I think dexterity should be the logical way).

 

[OnlineDM]

The archer Slayer that you describe in your article is fine, if you're okay with the Power Strike house rule that you included. An archer Knight or archer Weaponmaster wouldn't work very well because they need to be close to the enemy for the defender aura / mark to function.

And keep in mind that PCs CAN use Strength to make ranged basic attacks - they just use a heavy thrown weapon like a javelin.

I understand your argument about "you need to be strong to pull a bowstring" but remember that D&D is a game, not a faithful representation of reality. It also takes dexterity to load an arrow quickly, to aim the bow accurately and to release the string cleanly. Should you use your average of Strength and Dexterity, then? Nah, just go with Dex. It's simpler, and that matters for playing a game.

 

[Zaphling]

The archer Slayer that you describe in your article is fine, if you're okay with the Power Strike house rule that you included. An archer Knight or archer Weaponmaster wouldn't work very well because they need to be close to the enemy for the defender aura / mark to function.

And keep in mind that PCs CAN use Strength to make ranged basic attacks - they just use a heavy thrown weapon like a javelin.

I understand your argument about "you need to be strong to pull a bowstring" but remember that D&D is a game, not a faithful representation of reality. It also takes dexterity to load an arrow quickly, to aim the bow accurately and to release the string cleanly. Should you use your average of Strength and Dexterity, then? Nah, just go with Dex. It's simpler, and that matters for playing a game.

I appreciate your argument. With the fact that WotC are now making newer class builds that are not following the norm, e.g. the new defender and striker barbarian, why haven't they built an archer fighter in the first place?

The first argument is about archer fighters, which can be achieved with a good build using the Slayer. Since the original slayer has the heavy blade and the axe, and the Dragon Magazine has the staff, why haven't they thought of a bow and crossbow?

The second argument is about archer defenders, but that can be in another topic.

 

[Nemesis Destiny]

Actually, I played in a game where a Weaponmaster used his bow a lot - mostly because his player was afraid of tanking. He didn't like getting hit, and really didn't like taking damage.

His mark is still effective at range, but he couldn't do anything to enforce it, so it played more like a half-assed controller.

As a build though, you would need something else to make it work. Mark of Warding would help (mark penalty is -3), and you would likely want to poach multiattack powers so you can mark many things at once. So you'd want to be a half elf, and multiclass into Ranger (probably), but at the end of the day, you're still only half a character, as you have no way to punish your enemies for violating your mark.

Alternately you might want to grab the new monk multiclass that gives you Unarmed Strike so that you can punish adjacent enemies while still wielding a bow in your other hand.

Regardless, there are better ways to do it.

I like your Slayer houserule (and thought up a similar one last year for bow slayers when the book first came out). Haven't tried it yet though.

 

[Zaphling]

Actually, I played in a game where a Weaponmaster used his bow a lot - mostly because his player was afraid of tanking. He didn't like getting hit, and really didn't like taking damage.

His mark is still effective at range, but he couldn't do anything to enforce it, so it played more like a half-assed controller.

As a build though, you would need something else to make it work. Mark of Warding would help (mark penalty is -3), and you would likely want to poach multiattack powers so you can mark many things at once. So you'd want to be a half elf, and multiclass into Ranger (probably), but at the end of the day, you're still only half a character, as you have no way to punish your enemies for violating your mark.

Alternately you might want to grab the new monk multiclass that gives you Unarmed Strike so that you can punish adjacent enemies while still wielding a bow in your other hand.

Regardless, there are better ways to do it.

I like your Slayer houserule (and thought up a similar one last year for bow slayers when the book first came out). Haven't tried it yet though.

A novice player in my table tried it and using the Battle Wrath stance with a longbow, it dealt 1d10+12 basic attack damage. Even the veterans was like, "NOT FAIR!" hahaha. But he doesn't have any dailies though, so can't use fancy moves, but he was happy with it.

 

[Nemesis Destiny]

A novice player in my table tried it and using the Battle Wrath stance with a longbow, it dealt 1d10+12 basic attack damage. Even the veterans was like, "NOT FAIR!" hahaha. But he doesn't have any dailies though, so can't use fancy moves, but he was happy with it.

Yeah, the idea that made me come up with it was for the same guy that played the cowardly fighter, actually. This time he was making a slayer pirate that wielded a pistol and a cutlass. With Power Strike houseruled into Power Shot for him, it works perfectly, and he will have decent damage output.

 

[DEFCON 1]

It was my interpretation of the PH1 that the whole point of the Martial power source was so that the archer fighter was the Ranger. And the lightly-armored and dexterous fighter was the Rogue. And the heavily-armored and bigassed weapon wielding fighter was the Fighter. And the intelligent or charismatic fighter was the Warlord.

For whatever reason though, people got so hung up on the class names themselves that they didn't want to play a Ranger, they wanted to play a Fighter who used a bow, or a Fighter who dual-wielded. Which also partially explains why they created the dual-wielding Fighter build in Martial Power, because there was SO MUCH pushback from the community upon PH1's release for it that they made the build just so people would shut up about it.

 

[(Psi)SeveredHead]

The warlord has the option and uses strength for it. Why can't the Fighter, or in general, strength classes use strength to make ranged basic attacks? Logically speaking, bows need strength to be pulled too (I'm not sure about this).

In 3.x, bows used Dex to hit and Strength to damage. Realistic, but alas not balanced being forced to split stats like that. Archers were weak damage dealers, so lots of options were created to give them bonus damage (Pathfinder continued this trend). I suspect that if you don't control options, you go from having underpowered archers to overpowered ones.

It's an issue of flavor. Maybe having greater Strength will let you penetrate armor (if 3.x had armor as DR as core rules, archery would have been even more realistic) but it has little to do with aiming.

 

[Zaphling]

It was my interpretation of the PH1 that the whole point of the Martial power source was so that the archer fighter was the Ranger. And the lightly-armored and dexterous fighter was the Rogue. And the heavily-armored and bigassed weapon wielding fighter was the Fighter. And the intelligent or charismatic fighter was the Warlord.

For whatever reason though, people got so hung up on the class names themsleves that they didn't want to play a Ranger, they wanted to play a Fighter who used a bow, or a Fighter who dual-wielded. Which also partially explains why they created the dual-wielding Fighter build in Martial Power, because there was SO MUCH pushback from the community upon PH1's release for it that they made the build just so people would shut up about it.

The idea of this thread, according to the article above, was to make a Royal Archer type of warrior, much like Sebastian in dragon age 2 who wore a chainmail, or should I say, the archer city or castle guards who wore chainmails or scale armor. Rangers on the other hand, don't start out with chainmails and it is counterproductive to learn a chainmail feat for it while fighters already have it.