The Gaming Den

It seems like putting a very long range weapon on a flier and having them shower down bullets on people from too far to shoot back is a very effective way to deal with enemies who don't have roofs. Putting a very long range weapon on a horse or teleporter guy is almost as effective.

Aside from making the longest range weapons so heavy that kiters can't carry them (which is difficult to do once megabeasts like dragons get into the mix), is there a good way to make fights in the forest not foregone conclusions?

If you're in the forest there's plenty of terrain to disrupt line of sight and so on.

There's concerns like ammo capacity and attracting attention.

With Mongol archers, they were outranged by East Asians with larger composite bows and crossbows fired from foot who often had portable cover like a war wagon (which also stored their larger long ranged weapons).

A horseback arrow also does less 'damage' than a charging lance, the famed Mongol cavalry used arrows to break enemy formations and charged in with saber and lance to scatter them. D&D makes arrows and bolts way more powerful (equivalent to a polearm hit) than they were compared to a spear thrust, axe swing, etc.

Oh right, because humans are endurance predators, so if the Mongol cavalry tried to kite the enemy forever they'd run out of arrows and stamina before the enemy was defeated, and then their enemies could just walk quickly up to them and stab all their horses to death.

In a fantasy rpg, making missile negation and reflection abilities available helps limit the applications of kiting.

I saw the title and thought it was a complain against Kenneth Hite's involvement in V5.

Foxwarrior wrote:Oh right, because humans are endurance predators, so if the Mongol cavalry tried to kite the enemy forever they'd run out of arrows and stamina before the enemy was defeated, and then their enemies could just walk quickly up to them and stab all their horses to death.

Actually the mongol horses were quite good in the stamina department. Plus each warrior had actually like 3 horses so they could basically ride all day and move much faster than anybody else expected them to, so they often were able to just take cities before the local army could gather for defense.

Another trick of theirs was to mount slaves on the above extra horses to create the illusion they had a lot more mounted troops that they actually had, lowering enemy morale and sometimes making the other side just sue for peace.

Take also in account that Genghis Khan imposed a really strict training on his armies (like "lose your extra bow string and you get executed"), so the golden "horde" was very disciplined.

There was also the Battle of Carrhae where multiple roman legions were kited to death thanks to trying to fight horse archers in the desert (zero cover), plus a camel supply line to keep the arrows coming.

Speaking of which another key factor is that although horses are fast in plain terrain, they're not so fast in rocky hills/mountains and forests.

However terrain is not a factor for fliers, so my best suggestion is making that flying is really tiring, even more if you're trying to aim a bow while in mid-air. Maybe the dragon can make one dramatic flame fly-by, but then they need to land for a bit before taking flight again.

Is this about balancing a game in the abstract, like designing in a weakness to kiting in general or for something specific?

Fantasy ranged attacks are just simulated as way too powerful.

From a sufficient range, a single target can sidestep arrows pretty easily. It's only the volley of arrows from a unit of archers that is devestating to other troops becauser it covers a large area, or the sniper shot on an unmoving and unaware target, that is actually dangerous. Otherwise, archery at range greater than melee range should be incredibly difficult. Basically, any hits are just accidents where the target just happened to step into the path of the arrow at the wrong moment.

I honestly think archery rules are only written by people who have never had an arrow shot at them.

K wrote:Fantasy ranged attacks are just simulated as way too powerful.

From a sufficient range, a single target can sidestep arrows pretty easily. It's only the volley of arrows from a unit of archers that is devestating to other troops becauser it covers a large area, or the sniper shot on an unmoving and unaware target, that is actually dangerous. Otherwise, archery at range greater than melee range should be incredibly difficult. Basically, any hits are just accidents where the target just happened to step into the path of the arrow at the wrong moment.

I honestly think archery rules are only written by people who have never had an arrow shot at them.

Sidestepping arrows can only be easily done if you're concentrated on doing that. If there's a battle and people's attention is spread everywhere, I expect that archers firing even at moving targets will have a much easier time. And if archers are using direct fire from close distances they should have be able to hit even people trying to evade them, specially if the archer is experienced enough to aim ahead.

*hovers 15' off the ground, or stands on 10' ledge*
*every person below them passively sidesteps every arrow*

Yes, so much more realistic.

Guess we should also make sure fireball, lightning bolt, and all of those other ranged spells are also removed of their accuracy to keep things in line (except lightning bolt)...

This blog looks at real world archery competition data and concludes that DnD range modifiers are way too lenient http://deltasdnd.blogspot.com/2011/03/b ... y.html?m=1

They suggest -10 for medium and -20 for long range with bows

OgreBattle wrote:This blog looks at real world archery competition data and concludes that DnD range modifiers are way too lenient http://deltasdnd.blogspot.com/2011/03/b ... y.html?m=1

They suggest -10 for medium and -20 for long range with bows

That suggestion is for an old edition and the data sample is for a circumstance unrelated to typical gaming archery, so I wouldn't call it the best conclusion.

virgil wrote:

OgreBattle wrote:This blog looks at real world archery competition data and concludes that DnD range modifiers are way too lenient http://deltasdnd.blogspot.com/2011/03/b ... y.html?m=1

They suggest -10 for medium and -20 for long range with bows

That suggestion is for an old edition and the data sample is for a circumstance unrelated to typical gaming archery, so I wouldn't call it the best conclusion.

"Shooting a stationary target from a fixed range with ample time to aim your shot" is not completely unrelated to "shooting a moving target from an assortment of ranges with hardly any time to aim your shot", and certainly none of the ways in which it differs would be expected to result in more accuracy.

In terms of translations, I could be convinced that ranged weapons should have shorter range increments; something like 20' for bows. You'd need to also accordingly reduce the typical range of magic.

K wrote:Fantasy ranged attacks are just simulated as way too powerful.

From a sufficient range, a single target can sidestep arrows pretty easily. It's only the volley of arrows from a unit of archers that is devestating to other troops becauser it covers a large area, or the sniper shot on an unmoving and unaware target, that is actually dangerous. Otherwise, archery at range greater than melee range should be incredibly difficult. Basically, any hits are just accidents where the target just happened to step into the path of the arrow at the wrong moment.

I honestly think archery rules are only written by people who have never had an arrow shot at them.

People typically grossly underestimate how hard it is to do long range rifle shots. The fact that there are some people who can reasonably reliably hit a man sized target at a mile does not mean it isn't really damn hard to learn how to do this.

I suspect that hitting a man-sized target at 400 meters with a bow isn't easier.

Omegonthesane wrote:

virgil wrote:

OgreBattle wrote:This blog looks at real world archery competition data and concludes that DnD range modifiers are way too lenient http://deltasdnd.blogspot.com/2011/03/b ... y.html?m=1

They suggest -10 for medium and -20 for long range with bows

That suggestion is for an old edition and the data sample is for a circumstance unrelated to typical gaming archery, so I wouldn't call it the best conclusion.

"Shooting a stationary target from a fixed range with ample time to aim your shot" is not completely unrelated to "shooting a moving target from an assortment of ranges with hardly any time to aim your shot", and certainly none of the ways in which it differs would be expected to result in more accuracy.

That being said, the article's author maps "England's finest [real world] archers" to the D&D concept of "12th level fighter". I don't know that that accords with the Den's general post-3E conception of levels and tiers.

But archers/kiters aren't really based on real life tropes. They are based on literary tropes. Just because they share features such as the same weapons or look similar, it doesn't mean they are the same or they act in the same exact way.

IN games, people don't fire arrows until they run out and then charge forward with a lance or a sword. Characters are built around chassis such as builds/character classes/whatever game feature we're talking about and most such chassis are based around specialization in one-two areas.

So The problem with situations such as trying to tie kiting in games to Archers are also lancers is that often archers become a class by themselves. The bow isn't a weapon, it's a literal class feature at times based on abilities given. It's not feasible without changing the entire build of an archer. I mean, kiting/range-killers is a modern trope. We have snipers in the army, umm fragile speedsters and glass cannons in fantasy sandbox games and role playing games. I don't think you can specifically "fix" kiting without either reconfiguring everything else or just removing the idea of a legitimate character trope that most people identify with action games now.

Blicero wrote:
That being said, the article's author maps "England's finest [real world] archers" to the D&D concept of "12th level fighter". I don't know that that accords with the Den's general post-3E conception of levels and tiers.

I interpreted it as "the accuracy rate of England's tournament archers at short range is equivalent to the bonus a 12th level fighter gets", not saying they are 12th lvl fighters IRL but that D&D numbers work out that way.

From real world 1600's sources... Ming commander Qi Jiguang considered the tanegashima matchlocks of coastal pirates to be more accurate than bows:

[Qi Jiguang] explained that he first understood the power of arquebuses when he lost his first battles against the Japanese pirates. “Having suffered setbacks and been thus forced to consider things, used defeat to strive for victory and replaced [our] bows-and-arrows with the tactic of proficiently firing muskets.” Perhaps he was predisposed to favor guns because his father had been vice commander of the firearms division of the capital army in Beijing. In any case, Qi became a partisan of the the arquebus. “It is,” he wrote, “unlike any other of the many types of fire weapons. In strength it can pierce armor. In accuracy it can strike the center of targets, even to the point of hitting the eye of a coin [i.e., shooting right through a coin], and not just for exceptional shooters…. the arquebus is such a powerful weapon and is so accurate that even bow and arrow cannot match it, and … nothing is so strong as to be able to defend against it.” Arquebuses, used in combination with traditional weapons, allowed him to fight successfully against the pirates.

The Qing dynasty that overthrew the Ming kept horse archery as a mainstay of their military, but that's specifically horseback archery where the rate of fire is higher until revolvers and semi-automatics get invented.

Here's a website on smoothbore musketry of the 1500's to 1700's, mentions expected accuracy at various ranges
http://old.scotwars.com/equip_smoothbore_musketry.htm



Of course in a fantasy RPG you can have legendary archers slaying dragons with a single arrow, but the common soldier is something else

Cynic wrote:But archers/kiters aren't really based on real life tropes. They are based on literary tropes. Just because they share features such as the same weapons or look similar, it doesn't mean they are the same or they act in the same exact way.

IN games, people don't fire arrows until they run out and then charge forward with a lance or a sword. Characters are built around chassis such as builds/character classes/whatever game feature we're talking about and most such chassis are based around specialization in one-two areas.

So The problem with situations such as trying to tie kiting in games to Archers are also lancers is that often archers become a class by themselves. The bow isn't a weapon, it's a literal class feature at times based on abilities given. It's not feasible without changing the entire build of an archer. I mean, kiting/range-killers is a modern trope. We have snipers in the army, umm fragile speedsters and glass cannons in fantasy sandbox games and role playing games. I don't think you can specifically "fix" kiting without either reconfiguring everything else or just removing the idea of a legitimate character trope that most people identify with action games now.

The trope is that archers are OK in melee ranges. The trope is not that the archer kites the fuck out of things because he can run and shoot and no one can catch him.

Legolas shoots things that are like ten feet away in battles like the Battle of Amon Hen and the Defense of Minas Tirith, which is coincidentally a pretty realistic way to effectively use a bow in a chaotic melee. He snipes like two Wargs at Isengard before shooting the rest at ranges of ten feet or less.

That's workable. Give the longbow a range increment of a dagger and then say that there is a special Snipe action that allows for the full theoretical range of the weapon and requires that the target is unaware and either moving in a straight line or not moving.

When people complain that they can't kite, tell them that your game is better designed than a video game.

In the books, Legolas periodically runs out of arrows in larger battles and is forced to resort to his knives. You're also likely to be forced into melee regularly while playing as Legolas during either of the two games based directly on the movies, although Legolas' massive arrow reserve does mean that this is less likely to be because of running out of ammo and more likely to be because melee just works better when bad guys are mobbing you. Neither of these are as prominent as the movies (which also portray Legolas in melee, but only rarely), but it's still true that most depictions of Legolas portray him fighting melee despite being better at ranged combat and facing enemies who mostly or completely lack ranged weapons.

Using bows in melee combat is an established trope, which specifically calls out that the decision is usually because it looks cooler on the big screen (which is a weird goal for a game that relies on the mind's eye).

When people complain that they can't kite, tell them that your game is better designed than a video game.

Funny, when a video game enemy is invulnerable to attacks when they can't reach the player (usually because they jumped onto a building), I have only seen this described as a flaw.

Archery's terribly weak in some well known action based video games. In Dark Souls bows are almost never used for player vs player due to how easy they are to sidestep and how hard it is to lead/predict your shot. Their magical attacks have a similar problem though not as bad due to AoE, limited tracking, faster projectile speed, etc.

I have put a bullet in a half-inch wide piece of wood at more than 500 meters with an M60, more than once. It took time, relaxation and a well lit target to do that, but all the body sense that goes with that kind of accuracy is not nearly as difficult as drawing a bow and firing accurately. I think there's a few things you can do to counter kiting without altering damage/range modifiers.

Kiting tactics, as others have mentioned, can be managed with applied encumbrance rules. Even if you have a bag of holding, you still need to spend an action pulling ammunition from the bag.

You can start smokey fires to create concealment. Create Fog works too, a generally underused spell in my experience. A mirror on a bright day might work, in a pinch. A forest should provide plenty of cover ... wait out the flyer's spell or endurance and engage when they land to rest.

Dispel Magic to negate flying would solve the distance gap. Summoning Fliers to harry the archer could also work as a distraction. Engaging in melee with the archer's allies imposes a penalty too, unless they have Precise Shot.

Also, pulling out ranged weapons of your own would return kiting tactics in kind.

You know, Dungeons look like natural counters to mongol archer tactics. In a world filled with elves and their composite longbows, manticores and Dragons, it may make a lot of sense to live in places with low ceilings and lots of LoS breaking walls.

Harshax wrote:I have put a bullet in a half-inch wide piece of wood at more than 500 meters with an M60, more than once.

Is that a typo ?

It's certainly possible to do that -- heck it's possible at twice that range. But the M60 is a fully automatic machine gun that puts several other rounds into a cone around the target and is not intended to be used for precision greater than a couple of feet. So I'm wondering if you meant some other type of gun instead?