Archery Mechanics Questions

[ThatDuckGrant]

I have a number of questions about using a longbow in various situations. I’m looking at creating a bard archer (possibly with a dip into hexblade) and I’m curious if it really is this easy to keep yourself from being hit.

1. While darkness/devil’s sight is active, does firing out of the darkness provide advantage? I know there is a lot of talk about this combo, but RAW I would interpret that the hide action needs to be taken after each attack to be hidden. It seems like darkness allows for a creature to be unseen, but not necessarily hidden.

2. Assuming I’m wrong above, what if the target has truesight or blindsight, but only to a range of 60 feet, and you are farther away than 60 feet?

3. With sharpshooter, your range is 600 feet. It’s unrealistic to move 600 feet away horizontally from your target in most situations, but combined with fly or a greater steed, could you use your movement to move straight up every turn, essentially taking yourself out of the combat except for your ability to shoot ungodly distances. Would it be reasonable for a DM to not allow you to fire straight down at enemies if riding a Pegasus or griffin?

I suppose the downside to this is if the opponent has a flying speed and follows you up. Don’t want to get into a situation where you’re dueling with an ancient dragon because you didn’t want to be around when it used its breath weapon.

4. Could you combine the two strategies: fly 300 feet up on the back of a mount, cast darkness, and rain down arrows with advantage?

5. If your concentration is broken or your mount dies, feather fall stops you from falling to your death. Can you fire a bow while falling at 60 feet per round? 10 feet per second is actually pretty fast (6.8 mph) and the inability to stop would probably stop you from attacking right?

[Man_Over_Game]

There is no need to hide. RAW, it says that if you are attacked and can't see your attacker, they have advantage to hit you and you have disadvantage to attack them. It also mentions "Combatants often try to escape their foes’ notice by hiding, casting the invisibility spell, or lurking in darkness." [Page 194] Hiding =/= unseen, but they both achieve a similar goal. "Hidden" means they don't know where you are (and thus can't see you), where "unseen" just means they can't see you, and you only need to be "unseen" to get the advantage/disadvantage bonuses.
Then you are still unseen.
Height advantage is a real thing. By the time that kind of flight is relevant, most enemies you face will have experience with flying things and likely have some means of dealing with you. But this is a valid issue, and is why early game flight is banned in Adventure League games.
Technically, yes, but you may have trouble controlling the mount in pure darkness. It can't see, so it might start panicking. I might inflict the Frightened status unless you rolled stupidly high on your animal handling. It might just buck you off.
I would assume you could still take actions as normal while Feather Falling. Otherwise, why would Feather Fall not have concentration, or require your action every turn to maintain while falling? To not require concentration, but still be unable to do anything, seems a bit counterintuitive, so it's probably intended to allow you to perform actions while falling.



This does give me an idea, though: An elite force of high level Bards, using Find Greater Steed and sharpshooter to take out targets over a battlefield. This is possible with a level 10 bard, maybe go Valor as the Archetype of choice. Grab Expertise into Animal Handling and this would make for a pretty damn cool Valkyrie squad.

[Mellack]

I just want to add that 60' a round is not that fast. A rogue can already move that every round at level 2 while shooting. Faster if they are a wood elf.

[Man_Over_Game]

I just want to add that 60' a round is not that fast. A rogue can already move that every round at level 2 while shooting. Faster if they are a wood elf.
Tack on a level of Monk, and you're looking at 10.2 MPH with no resources. Have your wizard cast Longstrider on you and now you're hitting almost 14 MPH. Dash with your main action, hit level 11 (Monk 9/Rogue 2), and now you're moving 20 MPH up walls.

GOTTA GO FAAAST

[ThatDuckGrant]

Lol. 20 mph is still a good 20% slower than Usain. My objection wasn’t that 7mph is fast. The argument was that’s its fast for shooting a bow. Accurately. At 600 feet.

[ThatDuckGrant]

Also, that idea of a group of Valkyries is pretty badass. Make them Aasimar (kin of celestials) and they’d fit right into the MCU.

[Man_Over_Game]

Since wind might be a major concern, he could say that a 500+ vertical distance imposes disadvantage on ranged attacks, but I don't know of a DM who would care all that much. 600 feet in the air might as well be 130 feet in the air. Either it's not a concern, or there's nothing you can do about it (most ranges end at 120 feet).

[Kadesh]

Lol. 20 mph is still a good 20% slower than Usain. My objection wasn’t that 7mph is fast. The argument was that’s its fast for shooting a bow. Accurately. At 600 feet.

You have invested a feat and multiple character levels in it. So what?

[GorogIrongut]

I have a number of questions about using a longbow in various situations. I’m looking at creating a bard archer (possibly with a dip into hexblade) and I’m curious if it really is this easy to keep yourself from being hit.

1. While darkness/devil’s sight is active, does firing out of the darkness provide advantage? I know there is a lot of talk about this combo, but RAW I would interpret that the hide action needs to be taken after each attack to be hidden. It seems like darkness allows for a creature to be unseen, but not necessarily hidden.
Honestly, as a DM, YOU may not be seen but the target would know that every attack is coming from the dark blob. Combine that with the fact that your arrows aren't invisible and I wouldn't give you advantage whether or not you chose to hide... beyond possibly the first attack depending on how the player set it up.

2. Assuming I’m wrong above, what if the target has truesight or blindsight, but only to a range of 60 feet, and you are farther away than 60 feet?
If they're out of range of your darkness bubble, they still can't see. But for the reasons mentioned above, I wouldn't grant advantage.

3. With sharpshooter, your range is 600 feet. It’s unrealistic to move 600 feet away horizontally from your target in most situations, but combined with fly or a greater steed, could you use your movement to move straight up every turn, essentially taking yourself out of the combat except for your ability to shoot ungodly distances. Would it be reasonable for a DM to not allow you to fire straight down at enemies if riding a Pegasus or griffin?
There's nothing unreasonable about any of this. It's how the rules are written and there's an element of verisimilitude to it, so as a DM it wouldn't bother me in the slightest.

I suppose the downside to this is if the opponent has a flying speed and follows you up. Don’t want to get into a situation where you’re dueling with an ancient dragon because you didn’t want to be around when it used its breath weapon.

4. Could you combine the two strategies: fly 300 feet up on the back of a mount, cast darkness, and rain down arrows with advantage?
As per my answer to #1, you could do this but wouldn't get advantage. Not unless the sun was ridiculously high in the sky and made it difficult to see any arrows flying in. But that's situational. People pay attention to flying clouds of shadowy darkness.

5. If your concentration is broken or your mount dies, feather fall stops you from falling to your death. Can you fire a bow while falling at 60 feet per round? 10 feet per second is actually pretty fast (6.8 mph) and the inability to stop would probably stop you from attacking right?
As a DM, I would potentially allow a player to fire as they fell. I would probably make them take a dex or a con check to show their ability to keep it together enough to fire while falling. Even if they succeed I would give them disadvantage.



I'm a pretty liberal DM. For example I allow my players to start using the flying races. Because I view the game 3 dimensionally. And for every encounter that flying makes a piece of cake, there are plenty of encounters that flying would make absurdly difficult. I can't count the number of times one of my players got that 'oh crap' look on their face when they realized that the fact they were flying was potentially going to kill their character.
Expect these tactics to work some of the time. The rest of the time you will find your DM has figured out how to deal with these and any other shenanigans.

[Man_Over_Game]

Kind of interesting, the farthest shot ever recorded was 930 feet, in 2015, by a guy with no arms.

[Man_Over_Game]

Honestly, as a DM, YOU may not be seen but the target would know that every attack is coming from the dark blob. Combine that with the fact that your arrows aren't invisible and I wouldn't give you advantage whether or not you chose to hide... beyond possibly the first attack depending on how the player set it up.

It is worth bringing up that this does contradict the Unseen Attacker rules, and that this is effectively a homebrew decision.




When you attack a target that you can't see, you have disadvantage on the attack roll. This is true whether you're guessing the target's location or you're targeting a creature you can hear but not see. If the target isn't in the location you targeted, you automatically miss, but the GM typically just says that the attack missed, not whether you guessed the target's location correctly.

When a creature can't see you, you have advantage on attack rolls against it. If you are hidden–both unseen and unheard–when you make an attack, you give away your location when the attack hits or misses.


Not saying that's a bad thing, but it's worth explicitly mentioning that at the start so other GMs/Players understand that it differs from the norm.

[ThatDuckGrant]

I appreciate both answers. I would agree with the house rules that an archer making ranged attacks out of the blob would probably lose advantage after a time. It’s also good to know that the rules are in fact written contradicting that home brew rule.

While I’m a fan of discovering ways to optimize characters, I’m also supportive of being nerfed if I end up way stronger than the rest of the party. That would be an easy way to do it.

[Man_Over_Game]

Don't count yourself out yet. You're looking at a level where flight is starting to become more common. Fly, as in the spell, is available to 3 casters at level 6. The earliest you can get Find Greater Steed was with a bard at level 10, and having a flying mount before that level should not be possible.

It looks powerful on paper, but unless your DM is handing out flying mounts or other methods to fly, then this isn't exactly something that's "broken" as much as "it's very effective in specific scenarios in a high level campaign", which is a lot easier to deal with than the Darkness + Devil's Sight, which is useful almost ALL the time and is available at level 3.

The distance is not an issue. The flight is not an issue. The issue is that few bad guys are going to be packing Daylight, and fewer can see through magical darkvision. Consider most Drow enemies to be useless, and most enemy mages won't be able to do jack unless they already have an army of mooks to keep you back.

[ThatDuckGrant]

Yes I was specifically talking about the Darkness/DS combo, which is a OP combo, as evidenced by the many signatures on this thread stating that OP options are frequently taken.

[Lunali]

I appreciate both answers. I would agree with the house rules that an archer making ranged attacks out of the blob would probably lose advantage after a time. It’s also good to know that the rules are in fact written contradicting that home brew rule.

While I’m a fan of discovering ways to optimize characters, I’m also supportive of being nerfed if I end up way stronger than the rest of the party. That would be an easy way to do it.

The idea is that while the character being attacked may know roughly where the attack is coming from they don't know when and can't know which direction to move to avoid it until after the attack is fired. If they focus on avoiding the attack they can negate the advantage (dodge action) but then they can't focus on other things as well.

[Slayn82]

Since wind might be a major concern, he could say that a 500+ vertical distance imposes disadvantage on ranged attacks, but I don't know of a DM who would care all that much. 600 feet in the air might as well be 130 feet in the air. Either it's not a concern, or there's nothing you can do about it (most ranges end at 120 feet).

A Longbow has 150/600 range. 500+ distance imposes disadvantage already, but since you have the High Ground, you shoot away without advantage or disadvantage. And under most circunstances, that's pretty ok. Beware of enemies who send a small force to close range to cast Faerie Fire/Blindness on the targets, and then allows their archers to drop arrows from long range. Or beware of staying too close to a camp fire, at night, where enemies would have line of vision of you. Fighting at darkness carrying sources of light against unseen, ranged attackers, isn't a picknick.

Fighting archers who have high ground, with few paths of approach, while a troop of their defenders stay on your way with prepared positions of ambushes and traps. That's pressure.

[Keravath]

I appreciate both answers. I would agree with the house rules that an archer making ranged attacks out of the blob would probably lose advantage after a time. It’s also good to know that the rules are in fact written contradicting that home brew rule.

While I’m a fan of discovering ways to optimize characters, I’m also supportive of being nerfed if I end up way stronger than the rest of the party. That would be an easy way to do it.

According to RAW, based on the Unseen Attacker rules quoted above, they would not lose advantage. As you mention it would be a house rule to change it.

However, the reasoning behind the unseen attacker rules would appear to be the following.

If you can't see them then you do not get any advance warning of an incoming attack. During a typical combat, the defender can't spend their entire round staring at the dark cloud where the arrows come from without perhaps taking the dodge action. If they are engaged in any form of combat or there are multiple combatants then the defender will need to look or glance around the battlefield to defend themselves from other attackers or position themselves appropriately. An unseen attacker can take advantage of these moments when the defender's attention is elsewhere since they can take an attack at any time without telegraphing what they plan to do. Mechanically, this gives the attacker advantage on the attack role since the defender can't anticipate or react to the attack. This remains true whether the defender knows someone will fire arrows from the darkness or not ... they just don't know exactly when that attack might take place.

Similarly, when attacking a creature you can't see, the attack is made at disadvantage since you can't see exactly where they are to refine your aim and you can't try to time the attack for a moment when their attention is on another part of the battle. Both of these reduce the likelihood of your attack hitting an unseen defender who can still see the attacker.

In the case, where neither defender nor attacker can see each other, then the advantage and disadvantage cancel out leaving a straight roll for both attacker and defender since neither can time their attack to take advantage of distractions but similarly neither can anticipate the attack of the other so the attacks are resolved with neither advantage nor disadvantage. (assuming that the DM rules that the characters are aware of each others locations through sound or some other mechanism).

Anyway, the point of the comments is that the house rule removing advantage for firing out of darkness that one character can see out of but others can not see into, appears to be based on some other way of interpreting the unseen attacker rules since the reasoning outlined above continues to hold even if a defender is aware of attacks originating in a globe of darkness.

[Keravath]

A Longbow has 150/600 range. 500+ distance imposes disadvantage already, but since you have the High Ground, you shoot away without advantage or disadvantage. And under most circunstances, that's pretty ok. Beware of enemies who send a small force to close range to cast Faerie Fire/Blindness on the targets, and then allows their archers to drop arrows from long range. Or beware of staying too close to a camp fire, at night, where enemies would have line of vision of you. Fighting at darkness carrying sources of light against unseen, ranged attackers, isn't a picknick.

Fighting archers who have high ground, with few paths of approach, while a troop of their defenders stay on your way with prepared positions of ambushes and traps. That's pressure.

I think the original comments referred to a character with the sharpshooter feat which removes the long range disadvantage limitation of ranged weapons. A long bow in the hand's of a character with the sharpshooter feat has a normal range of 600'.

[BeefGood]

, but since you have the High Ground, you shoot away without advantage or disadvantage.
Is "High Ground" a thing in 5e? I am not aware of it.

[Slayn82]

Excellent points made, both about the Sharpshooter talent and the High Ground issue.

Having played D&D for 25 years, it's something that has been again and again catching my feet : I mention rules that are normal in another edition like if they were also valid in 5 ed. Formally, High Ground advantage isn't a 5 ed. rule, but it's probably one of the more common circumstances that would make the DM award the advantage.

So, yes, I'm wrong on the assumptions of my point. It still stands somewhat, but more as an anecdote. Sorry for the confusion.

[Man_Over_Game]

Technically, Dis/Advantage can be made for virtually anything your DM says it gets. Typically though, with the standard rules, there's nothing saying someone gets a benefit to hit because they're higher up.

With height does come the means of controlling when/how to break LoS, and the difficulty of being advanced upon by melee fighters, so I'd say the benefit is inherent to the situation. You're not more accurate (and they're not easier to shoot), but that doesn't mean there's no benefit to it.

I don't have any archery experience, so I'm not sure if this is actually true or not. Balance-wise, archers on the top of a tower aren't going anywhere since melee fighters can't reach them and they don't have a reason to move, so giving them advantage every round without a way of nullifying it reliably is a bit too much.

[Slayn82]

Technically, Dis/Advantage can be made for virtually anything your DM says it gets. Typically though, with the standard rules, there's nothing saying someone gets a benefit to hit because they're higher up.

With height does come the means of controlling when/how to break LoS, and the difficulty of being advanced upon by melee fighters, so I'd say the benefit is inherent to the situation. You're not more accurate (and they're not easier to shoot), but that doesn't mean there's no benefit to it.

I don't have any archery experience, so I'm not sure if this is actually true or not. Balance-wise, archers on the top of a tower aren't going anywhere since melee fighters can't reach them and they don't have a reason to move, so giving them advantage every round without a way of nullifying it reliably is a bit too much.

Yeah, it's a mess. You can approach it from the side of game balance, and leave it as you suggested. Or you can approach it as a simulationist, and argue for advantage in some circunstances.

Castles and Towers were sometimes constructed over hills, and the height difference allowed archers to get their arrows further, because they would be able to fly 1 or 2 seconds more until reaching the ground in comparison to another archer shooting from the ground. It's an strategic advantage, but it wouldn't translate very well to the tactical combat that D&D usually represents. Since I'm looking exactly at this sort of thing for a campaign I'm planning, it's an interesting situation to consider.

For my personal toughts on the matter, are that if I was DMing, a Height difference of 75 feet or more in height would give advantage on targets at 150 feet or closer.

My reasoning is that your average arrow will fly 2 or 3 seconds to reach the Longbow's stated 600 feet maximum range, and if you let an object drop in free fall, it would cover around 75 feet between the second and third seconds. As such, the archer can shoot closer to the horizontal axis than the 45º ( that would give the bow the maximum range) to give it more penetration power. On the other hand, if you are shooting closer to the vertical axis, your arrow builds more acceleration from the extra second of drop, for roughly the same effect.

This still is an roughly outline, but looks good and fair enough for me.