Low-Impact Ranged Defenses

[GilesTheCleric]

I'm in the process of statting up an E8 character for a future campaign (months away), and am a bit stuck on thinking about ranged combat.
Game rules: T3 max. 3.5, 3.5 drag, PF, some 3p (DSP) allowed. All setting materials allowed. No 3.0. PrCs by request. Low-magic.

Mystic Wildshape Bear Totem Ranger 8
1: Animal Devotion, Sudden Silent (flaw), EWP: some weapon (flaw), Power Attack (human)
3: Sudden Still
6: Sword of the Arcane Order
8+: Hidden Talent: Expansion, Improved Grapple, IUS, Touchstone: Catalogues: Hunger, Snap Kick, other things
X: retrain Sudden Silent to Natural Spell pronto; Sudden Still to something; Animal Devotion to something

Capabilities: Improved Grab, 4th-level wizard spells, wild shaping into a bear/ snake/ etc; skill points into knowledge and social (PF human subrace). Key spells are Polymorph, Balor Nimbus, Enlarge Person, Bladeweave, Whirling Blade, Fist of Stone, and Fearsome Grapple. I'm avoiding skill-boosting spells and most BFC in the name of remaining T3. Basically a grappling gish bear.

I'm pumping grapple as efficiently as I can, while also keeping social skills and knowledges high. Also: yes, pounce is better than grab, but pounce is also boring. I'm not making an optimized combat monster here; just a hairy one.My character's focus is really entirely on melee, and while I like it in terms of fluff, there's no way he could survive a couple archers plinking away at him from 1000' away, and that's just a sad way to die. How can I add a bit of resistance in terms of ranged attacks to the character for minimal build resources? I don't necessarily need to be able to defeat ranged challengers, but surviving them would be nice.

My current ideas are all simple -- use a horse, use Animal Devotion to try to close quickly, run away/ take shelter until they're gone. But, those approaches are all easily foiled.

Edit: Yes, I've read eggynack's druid handbook, and a whole bunch of other handbooks (monk, warshaper, ranger, mystic ranger, etc).

[Xervous]

If you've got that much distance between you and the archers the resulting penalty to their spot checks will be considerable. At 210ft they're eating a -20. Even a lame attempt at hiding should put you beyond the average archer's perception. Or take the following for consideration.

24 Wis L6 druid archer with maxed spot will have a +16 bonus before other considerations, much more than you're likely to see on the average plinking archer. Being 170ft away will nullify that bonus giving someone with +0 hide even odds to avoid being seen. Stretch it out to 370ft and the +0 hider can't be seen period. A modest investment in sneakiness to get up to +10 will bring this to 270ft for 100% avoidance. With higher hide modifiers and against less perceptive enemies this safe distance gets much smaller.

EDIT: overlooked the fact that it's E8 vs. E6. But the point still gets across.

[Zanos]

Protection from Arrows?

[ComaVision]

Protection from Arrows?

Or maybe Wind Wall.

[GilesTheCleric]

I'd like to avoid using spells to solve this, in the spirit of staying T3.

[ComaVision]

I'd like to avoid using spells to solve this, in the spirit of staying T3.

Carry around a spare tower shield?

[paranoidbox]

Maybe you could hide behind a smoke screen from Smokesticks or any of the other alchemical smoke bomb-ish alternatives. Or use an Eversmoking Bottle that's unstoppered on your belt.

[GilesTheCleric]

If you've got that much distance between you and the archers the resulting penalty to their spot checks will be considerable. At 210ft they're eating a -20. Even a lame attempt at hiding should put you beyond the average archer's perception. Or take the following for consideration.

24 Wis L6 druid archer with maxed spot will have a +16 bonus before other considerations, much more than you're likely to see on the average plinking archer. Being 170ft away will nullify that bonus giving someone with +0 hide even odds to avoid being seen. Stretch it out to 370ft and the +0 hider can't be seen period. A modest investment in sneakiness to get up to +10 will bring this to 270ft for 100% avoidance. With higher hide modifiers and against less perceptive enemies this safe distance gets much smaller.

EDIT: overlooked the fact that it's E8 vs. E6. But the point still gets across.

Investing in hide/stealth should help, and has the added benefit of hopefully letting me avoid being spotted in the first place. I have something like 9 sp per level, so it certainly counts as low resource cost.


Carry around a spare tower shield?
That's a great idea! I could even double down on cover and grab that tortoise shell shield can hide under; I don't think it weighs more than the tower shield. Gold is a great resource to use here.

Maybe you could hide behind a smoke screen from Smokesticks or any of the other alchemical smoke bomb-ish alternatives. Or use an Eversmoking Bottle that's unstoppered on your belt.

A mundane Wall of Smoke sounds great. All T3 classes have access to that, so it seems very fair. Remind me to check the shax's haversack and the other item guides before I finish my build.

[Calimehter]

How unreasonable is it to assume that there will be *some* form of cover you can take to keep long range "plink" damage from wearing you down? Don't get me wrong, it is always nice to have a solution built into the character build . . . but it is worth weighing the investment of resources against the odds of being multiple rounds of movement away from available cover (i.e a solution to the problem) in your likely campaign setting.

[GilesTheCleric]

How unreasonable is it to assume that there will be *some* form of cover you can take to keep long range "plink" damage from wearing you down? Don't get me wrong, it is always nice to have a solution built into the character build . . . but it is worth weighing the investment of resources against the odds of being multiple rounds of movement away from available cover (i.e a solution to the problem) in your likely campaign setting.

That's a good point. I figure in many situations it won't matter, but I can see the possibility being present. The setting is described as china during the three kingdoms era. It sounds like there will be a fair amount of travel on horses out in the open when we're not in a city. And after having seen films like The Last Emperor (and Jet Li's Hero, which the GM referenced), I wouldn't be surprised if archers en masse were common. We're expected to fight in larger confrontations, too. Since it seems like the goal is to be heroic (hence low-magic E8), I don't want my character to die a common soldier's death. If he's going to die, it ought to take at least ten archers against just him, not a stray shot in the midst of things.

[frost890]

Protection from Arrows?

Our party made a bunch of "Favors" with this cast on them. I was basically just a piece of cloth that we wore on our belts. Seemed to work for us.

How willing is your GM in regards to working with you? Can you carry a large shield to protect you from the rain(of arrows)? Can you use a weapon skill to deflect arrows? If he is pointing you towards the wuxia genre. USE ideas from that. They use swords, sectioned staves and even cloth to deflect arrows, knives and poisoned needles.

[GilesTheCleric]

Our party made a bunch of "Favors" with this cast on them. I was basically just a piece of cloth that we wore on our belts. Seemed to work for us.

How willing is your GM in regards to working with you? Can you carry a large shield to protect you from the rain(of arrows)? Can you use a weapon skill to deflect arrows? If he is pointing you towards the wuxia genre. USE ideas from that. They use swords, sectioned staves and even cloth to deflect arrows, knives and poisoned needles.

There's a few options like that I could use -- Shalantha's Delicate Disk being the popular one, but there's also skull talismans, runes, those eberron crystal things (they function identically to potions, iirc), and probably a few others I can't remember (edit: spell tiles, that's the one I couldn't remember!). I'll have to think on those. As a wizard, I could make them for the whole party so nobody feels left out, and I could make a finite number of them so it's not an auto I-win for every encounter.

While the game setting is probably going to be fairly wuxia (the GM is encouraging us to play initiators), he's definitely holding me closely to RAW, since he knows I can build an effective character already. I'll have another go at the indexes of weapons to see if any of them have something built in already, though. Right now the weapons I'm looking at duplicate the ability of improved grab (for redundancy and to cover size differences that imp grab doesn't), so it would be easy to pick a different weapon instead.

I should also go read HoB or ask the GM what the mass combat rules will be like. I think you can roll a reflex save against barrages? I'd have to check.