Martial Maneuvers and Ranged Attacks -- HELP!

[wayfare]

Hey All:

I am working on a martial arts campaign, and a few of my players want coverage of ranged attacks within the disciplines. Since we have never played with ToB we are not looking for homebrewed disciplines, but I made a houserule to allow some coverage:

Diamond Mind, Shadow Hand, and White Raven maneuvers are compatible with ranged attacks, Unless the maneuvers requires a melee-only combat option (charging, for example).

Does this make sense? Is it thematically appropriate, and will it hold up in play?

My Logic:

Diamond Mind: This discipline has ranged attacks written all over it. Firing one extremely accurate attack says sniper to me, and there are plenty of fantasy archers who talk about focus being the key to good archery.

Shadow Hand: Shadow Hand also says sniper to me, but it has tactical abilities that allow you to impare your opponents.

White Raven: While a few maneuvers are specifically stances, the ability to fire at your enemy and create an opportunity for your allies to attack seems pretty straight-forward to me.

[Righteous Doggy]

Well, its homebrew but I could totally see it working. It might be scary to be hit by a ruby nightmare blade from 240ft away though. Can't hurt too much can it!

[wayfare]

Well, true, but its sort of the bottom level of brewing. We've never tried ToB, so we want to hold off on home brewed disciplines until we get a feel for the approved stuff. (funnily enough, they are ok with homebreweed classes, just not homebrewed disciplines)

But man, can you imagine a Greater Insightful Strike coming from nowhere? Makes an archer with concealment and decent stealth a thing to be feared!

[shadow_archmagi]

Yeah that looks easy and legit. I can't imagine archery becoming overpowered anytime soon, even with this buff

[Righteous Doggy]

Yep! that was my point. Very sniper style though, study the foe, Concentrate, and... BOOM HEADSHOT! and shadowhand to teleport/conceal and white raven for tactical reinforcement from behind. All cool stuff!
Its not really a feel for the ToB if its using things like this though is it? Good luck anyway. I love the book. Makes melee way more fun.

[wayfare]

Yep! that was my point. Very sniper style though, study the foe, Concentrate, and... BOOM HEADSHOT! and shadowhand to teleport/conceal and white raven for tactical reinforcement from behind. All cool stuff!
Its not really a feel for the ToB if its using things like this though is it? Good luck anyway. I love the book. Makes melee way more fun.

I don't think ranged support is necessarily a bad thing. Most of the game is actually going to be arena combat, as the PCs rise through the ranks to discover who is the best martial artist in the world. The PCs won't be able to go ranged for long, as most opponents will quickly close. In some arenas (they are determined randomly), ranged won't really help too much at all (a darkness arena, an arena with lots of short halls and twists and turns).

[Talionis]

The only thing I would worry about is your Melee characters wondering why the archers can do everything they can do at range. I don't think its overpowered, but it may not be balanced. So you may want to give something else nice to your melee centric combatants.

Generally speaking melee is more dangerous (if for no other reason that many creatures only attack with melee), and therefore you should get a bigger reward for entering melee.

[Feralventas]

I agree that Diamond Mind and Shadow Hand would work pretty well as ranged combatant styles, but I'd like to note a couple things.

Sneak attack, sudden strike and the like only work within 30ft, so a lot of the Shadow Hand aspects might still require a measure of proximity; no 5 creeping shadow death strike or whatever it is from half a field away.

Additionally, a lot of White Raven is based on Charges and tactical orders from someone on the field; if you're using this at range, it's likely to require giving away your position, and your team might resent that you're shouting orders from bow-shot range while they're in the thick of it all getting smacked around.

I know Tiger Claw and Setting sun and Desert Wind might not work as well at range, but I'd think Stone Dragon and Iron Heart and Devoted Spirit might be worth looking at for ranged translation as well; if a Cleric can heal at range (via metamagic or AOE) or an archer can sunder/trip at a distance, it makes sense to me that these could be worth consideration.

[2xMachina]

I am pretty sure most Martial Maneuvers does not specify melee (except in those few cases where it does).

[Talionis]

I am pretty sure most Martial Maneuvers does not specify melee (except in those few cases where it does).

I'm pretty sure this is wrong.

Most of the boosts do not specify melee, but almost all of the attacks specify melee or the assumption is that all are melee attacks by a general rule. I don't have the book in front of me, but I remember spending some time going through them to see which maneuvers could be used by archers. There are more than you'd think but most of them are boosts or stances.

Desert Wind is already a fairly non-melee discipline, a number of the attacks are cones or fire snakes that chase targets.

Again, I would carve out some benefit to balance melee combatants if you decide to make this change.

[shadow_archmagi]

Generally speaking melee is more dangerous (if for no other reason that many creatures only attack with melee), and therefore you should get a bigger reward for entering melee.

The bigger reward already appears in the form of dealing way, way more damage normally.

[Talionis]

This is something Carnivore put together for the Archery Handbook regarding maneuvers:

The following martial stances are at least somewhat useful for ranged combatants
Desert Wind
Flames Blessing
Holocaust Cloak
Rising Pheonix

Devoted Spirit
Aura of Perfect Order [law]
Aura of Triumph [good] *6
Aura of Tyranny [Evil]
Immortal Fortitude

Diamond Mind
Hearing the Air
Pearl of Black Doubt
Stance of Alacrity
Stance of Clarity

Iron Heart
Absolute Steel
Supreme Blade Parry

Setting Sun
Ghostly Defense
Giant Killing Style
Shifting Defense
Step of the Wind

Shadow Hand
Assassins Stance
Balance on the Sky *7
Child of Shadow
Dance of the Spider *7
Step of the Dancing Moth

Stone Dragon
Giants Stance
Stonefoot Stance
Strenth of Stone
Roots of the mountain

Tiger Claw
Blood in the Water
Hunters Sense
Leaping Dragon Stance

White Raven
Bolstering Voice
Leading the Charge
Press the Advantage
Swarm Tactics

The following martial maneuvers do not require melee attacks
Desert Wind
Blistering Flourish
Distracting Ember
Dragons Flame
Fan the Flames
Fire Repost ****
Fire Snake *****
Hatchlings Flame
Inferno Blast
Leaping Flame
Ring of Fire
Wind Stride
Wyrm's Flame
Zypher Dance

Devoted Spirit
Shield Block ***

Diamond Mind
Action Before Thought
Diamond Defense
Mind over body
Moment of Alacrity
Quicksilver Motion
*Time Stands Still

Iron Heart
Iron Heart Endurance
Iron Heart Focus
Iron Heart Surge

Setting Sun
Baffling Defence
Feigned Opening *6
Mirrored Pursuit
Scorpion Parry
Stalking Shadow

Shadow Hand
Cloak of Deception
One With Shadow
Shadow Blink
Shadow Garrote
Shadow Jaunt
Shadow Noose
Shadow Stride

Stone Dragon
*Adamantine Bones
Boulder Roll
*EarthStrike Quake
Mountain Avalanche

Tiger Claw
**Dancing Mongoose
Fountain of Blood
**Raging Mongoose
Sudden Leap

White Raven
Lions Roar
Order Forged From Chaos
White Raven Tactics

* strikes that work with ranged weapons
** boosts that grant extra attacks that work with ranged weapons
*** debatable: only when using a bluckler or shield. It does not specificy if you must be recieving the shields bonus yourself, so with a loose interperetation a bow user could use this with a buckler.
**** Debatable: While you do make a melee touch attack, it does not specify if this is a weapon related attack or not.
***** Broken: Duration is instantanious, but the firesnake moves at 60ft per round? What action is it to control a fire snake? none is indicated. How many firesnakes can one control at once? no limit is specified? What is to stop me from having nigh infinate firesnakes running around? and dealing 6d6 damage to everything in sight (In this case evasion is actually bad because if I deal no damage on a successful reflex save the fire snake can keep passing through your square until you fail a save.) Can a target he stuck by different fire snakes in the same round? if so we are looking at an infinate damage loop. I recommend as a houserul a duration of concentration, IE 1 standard action per round to mantain or a 5 round effect limit (like salamander charge).
*6 partial: while you don't benifit, a melee using ally can.
*7 while using a 1 handed ranged weapon.

[Talionis]

The bigger reward already appears in the form of dealing way, way more damage normally.

Generally, maneuvers do way more damage than ordinary melee attacks, unless the ordinary melee attack is very optimized.

[Feralventas]

Generally, maneuvers do way more damage than ordinary melee attacks, unless the ordinary melee attack is very optimized.

Maneuvers have a higher base damage capacity, but a lower maximum capacity.

An optimized Fighter or Barbarian (or Paladin against the right targets) will be able to crunch out more raw damage per round than a martial-maneuver class, but in a conflict, the MarMan classes have far more utilitarian options available, making them usually more fun to play and more situationally viable than their PHB counterparts.

For example, I've run a 3.P game where the charge-a-lot Paladin was handing out about 600 damage per round on an evil target at about 14th or 15th level. The basic system he used was charge+lance+smite+spirited charge and a couple of other effects. The multiplied and combined effects were substantial, but that's all they were; damage.

A low-level Swordsage could mitigate that with a single maneuver, though it would take a mid-level one to do so with regularity.

[eggs]

Generally, maneuvers do way more damage than ordinary melee attacks, unless the ordinary melee attack is very optimized.
This isn't relevant.

What is relevant is a comparison of
:[Melee Weapon Damage]+[Strike effect]
to
[Ranged Weapon Damage]+[Strike Effect]

Unless something unusual like Hulking Hurler is going on, that first value is going to be much higher than the second. Especially with damage-multiplying strikes.

And going into melee isn't inherently undesirable (AoOs mean much more damage and battlefield control).

[Keld Denar]

Falling Star Discipline by Fax Celestis (http://wiki.faxcelestis.net/index.php?title=Falling_Star_Discipline)

[Darrin]

My notes on Ranged Swordsages (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showpost.php?p=11918094&postcount=16).

Some thoughts on Ranged Warblades (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showpost.php?p=10296220&postcount=420), which is mostly the same as above, but with some sample Warblade builds and a lot of suggestions for Warblade-friendly races.

And some more thoughts on Ranged Crusaders (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showpost.php?p=12450184&postcount=3), or rather a maneuver progression and some sample builds.

[Cwymbran-San]

As far as balancing is concerned: how do you think about the following restriction?

You may use any maneuver from any discipline you wish, as long as it does not require a charge or other melee-related action. If you choose to employ MarMan from a discipline this way, you may not use that discipline for melee attacks.

That way, you would have a completely different style of play for said warriors. First example that came to my mind was samurai-like: Diamond Mind attacks with the Dai-kyu, Tigers Claw while fighting with katana and wakazashi (for obvious reasons) or White Raven while fighting with the katana only (cool idea of a samurai battle leader, inspiring courage in his comrades while charging into melee and shouting orders).

Thoughts?

[wayfare]

As far as balancing is concerned: how do you think about the following restriction?

You may use any maneuver from any discipline you wish, as long as it does not require a charge or other melee-related action. If you choose to employ MarMan from a discipline this way, you may not use that discipline for melee attacks.

That way, you would have a completely different style of play for said warriors. First example that came to my mind was samurai-like: Diamond Mind attacks with the Dai-kyu, Tigers Claw while fighting with katana and wakazashi (for obvious reasons) or White Raven while fighting with the katana only (cool idea of a samurai battle leader, inspiring courage in his comrades while charging into melee and shouting orders).

Thoughts?

I can see that, though white raven would have to be an exception, as it is too heavy on charge attacks to allow for something like this. Still, a good idea!

[Answerer]

The only thing I would worry about is your Melee characters wondering why the archers can do everything they can do at range. I don't think its overpowered, but it may not be balanced. So you may want to give something else nice to your melee centric combatants.

Generally speaking melee is more dangerous (if for no other reason that many creatures only attack with melee), and therefore you should get a bigger reward for entering melee.
The melees have fewer feat taxes (PBS and Precise Shot are still necessary for initiating archers, methinks), more intrinsic damage and/or AC (1.5x damage for two-handers, doubled attacks for TWF, or a shield for AC and defensive enhancements), and lower costs (don't have to pay for the compositing). Plus the melees can take AoOs. They have plenty, IMO.

I'd also suggest considering Desert Wind; it's already fairly ranged anyway, with all its fire blasts. Also, Tiger Claw would be awesome for a thrown-weapon user.