PF - Neat archery puzzles?

[Rixx]

I'm going to be running a one-on-one with one of my players soon, and I'm going to be running him through a Zelda-style dungeon. His character's an elven archer, and he's going to get a nifty bow at the end of it.

Trouble is, I'm finding it a little hard to come up with puzzles! Anything that involves shooting a small target or looking for a hidden target to shoot is out, because that basically comes down to rolling the die until you succeed, which isn't too fun. Does anyone here have any ideas?

[Damakos Verrade]

What ECL is the dungeon?

[Rixx]

The character's level 4 (Zen Archer Monk), and is going to get a level 3 partner (Summoner), both with 25 pt. buy.

[Machinekng]

Some sort of combination lock could work. Using in-game knowledge, he would dechiper the order in which to hit the targets. Any sort of riddle could work.

Also, certain forms of combat can be puzzle like. He could use his bow to set off traps from afar, killing whatever poor monsters you throw at him.

[Fox45]

Maybe pit him against a group of little monsters and he has to shoot the only one that's a different color, maybe add another layer to the find target shoot target puzzle by adding a time limit to it. If you need some ideas maybe take a look at some encounter traps from Dungeonscape or a few good traps in Serpent's Skull #4 to get some ideas.

[Caphi]

As a Zen Archer, he can use Flurry with a bow. See if you can make something around having to pick out two things (like Machinekng said) and then hit them in the same turn?

[avr]

Monk archer? That's about mobility, right? So, set something up where he has to get somewhere to shoot the target - the top of a pillar or an island or a high wire or similar perhaps.

[Lord Ruby34]

Monk archer? That's about mobility, right? So, set something up where he has to get somewhere to shoot the target - the top of a pillar or an island or a high wire or similar perhaps.

While moving.

[mint]

First: I would play some zelda and portal, rip and combine.
Test puzzles on one or two other people to make sure they are solvable and take an appropriate amount of time.
Remember three clues to find something you've hidden.
Finite amounts of arrows! Maybe not as in: you have 150 tries, start rolling.
But like, have the set up for a shot take time or be dangerous.
Figuring out a tricky puzzle and then being screwed by probability is not so much fun. Maybe only roll to hit when killing things?

Example:
Stand at point A, shoot pedestal at point B with an arrow you lit with living ice in room C, then run to point D and shoot an arrow through point B at the waterfall at point E freezing it solid and making it climbable. Next room. Continue testing.

[only1doug]

I'm going to be running a one-on-one with one of my players soon, and I'm going to be running him through a Zelda-style dungeon. His character's an elven archer, and he's going to get a nifty bow at the end of it.

Trouble is, I'm finding it a little hard to come up with puzzles! Anything that involves shooting a small target or looking for a hidden target to shoot is out, because that basically comes down to rolling the die until you succeed, which isn't too fun. Does anyone here have any ideas?

Allow the "take 10" option for target shooting then set up conditions in each room which would give sufficient modifiers for his attack to autohit on a roll of 10. Basically the puzzle is offering him the opportunity to increase his bow attack to the point where he can auto-hit. If he wants to chance it without solving the puzzle he can make a normal roll and may or may not hit.

The beginning should be easier, he should probably be able to autohit without solving the puzzle for 4-5 rooms. The last levels should get harder, 10 won'tt autohit, he'll need to take a 20 to autohit. (which would require 20 shots of ammunition, which leads to my next point).

Ammunition: Colour coded arrows, issued in various rooms. Different targets will be unlocked by different coloured ammunition. This will result in you re-using the rooms several times.
The last rooms should require you saving ammunition from the earlier rooms in order to conserve enough to take a 20.

Re-issuing ammunition will reset all the doors opened by ammunition of that colour.

[Xtomjames]

A favorite of mine is the Chasm Shot. In the dungeon make a 40 foot wide by 70 foot long chasm. He has to get across to the other side of the 40 foot gap where the other door is (presumably). In the middle of the gap is a pillar that covers the whole view of the door made out of polished granite or marble. The archer has to find away to get an arrow and rope across to the other side and embed it into the wall so he can climb across. Only there is no straight shot.

DC 10 spot or listen suggests there is minor air movement

DC 15 spot or listen suggests there is potential direction to the air movement

DC 20 "" suggests there is a current of air that might move around the column.

DC 25 "" suggests there is a vortex wind coming around the base of the column upward and if he were to shoot on the correct side of the column the arrow could get caught by the wind and carried around the column.

[only1doug]

i've drawn up a little map in paint, it's in the spoiler below.

http://img824.imageshack.us/img824/6792/archerypuzzleroom.jpg

[ericgrau]

The first intro puzzle that most video games start off with is the switch that you hit with X (here an arrow), and a door that opens. Simple, obvious, but it tells the player that there are target switches and that itself might be something he doesn't know right away.

From there I'd find some typical switch puzzles and switch them to arrow switches. Then you keep adding forms of complication from there. Like maybe you can't press a switch from the side, nor a pressure plate, but you could dislodge an arrow, which you shot earlier, from the side and have that land on the pressure plate. And you need to activate that pressure plate from the side b/c you need to be standing on a certain moving platform when you activate it.

The AC of a still object like an arrow is 5 + size modifier btw. Up to +16 for 2-3 inches or less IIRC. So 21 AC for the side of an arrow maybe.

[Dusk Eclipse]

If it is based on Zelda dungeons, I DEMAND the switches to be golden eye (or silver for less important ones) and one must be encased on ice and the only way to activate it is through firing an arrow through an open flame to melt the ice.

:smalltongue:

[Gametime]

Lighting torches with flaming arrows is always a classic. Maybe a series of torches dangling over a pit; lighting a torch could either lock or unlock a door (or add or remove segments of a bridge, you get the idea), so that the player has to figure out which combination of lit torches allows progression. (Some sort of "dousing" fluid to dip arrows in would have to be available for this to work.)

Or a puzzle involving getting an entire section of the room to a specific level of brightness (that is, neither too bright or too dim), requiring the player to light torches such that the light circles either don't overlap but still cover as much area as possible or overlap only in the right ways.