Falling Star - Archery ToB discipline (by Fax Celestis, edited) (PEACH)

[Elves]

Falling Star (google doc) (https://docs.google.com/document/d/1OXDWorLq0CX4j6oIQGJZdcp_XiCWNtXs9vNMwL2CkS4/edit?usp=sharing)

This is meant as a basic, simple, boring archery discipline. There's going to be another one for magical archery, with AoE effects etc.

Because there are only a couple of archery disciplines in Age of Warriors (see my sig), I want to make sure they don't suck, so critique is appreciated.

Ideas for new maneuvers also welcome.

[NigelWalmsley]

Why do you need multiple archery disciplines? ToB maneuver progressions and prerequisites typically give you space for about two disciplines, spreading "bow stuff" out over multiple disciplines seems like it would make it difficult to support both ranged and melee combat, which falls into a trap martial characters have often fallen into.

Looking over the maneuvers (I just skimmed the list, unless I had some mechanical question, so I may have missed some stuff or made bad assumptions):

Trunculating Shot: This seems incredibly niche. Martial Adepts do not get a lot of maneuvers, and even a Wizard would be hard-pressed to justify learning something this specialized.
Blindside/Flanking Shot: These seem kind of redundant. Is there a reason you need two different ways of turning on Rogues?
Quicker Than the Eye: Again, this seems crazy niche (unless I'm forgetting something a Dexterity bonuses count as Dodge?). How many enemies actually get Dodge bonuses at all?
Sniper's Stance: It looks like this changed in editing a couple times. It's in the list as a 5th level stance, in the text as a 4th level stance, and the summary indicates the penalty is "halved" but the text has it going from -20 to -5. But overall, I just don't see how this is supposed to be that impressive of an ability. Casters get Greater Invisibility at this point, they can just be 100% invisible while attacking people. And, yes, that's a much lower duration, but still.
Supreme Focus: I feel like if you're going to hand this out, you need to give people more boosts. There's not even a 9th level one.

My overall impression is that I feel like this doesn't take how archery is typically used in D&D into enough consideration. Archery is all about volume of fire, not singular big attacks (Tiger Claw has the same issue to an extent). You have a bunch of strikes that are basically "one attack + minor rider", and I suspect that an optimized archer would ignore those completely and try to get all the boosts and counters they can (including e.g. the Diamond Mind stuff). Maybe I'm wrong, but my feeling is that the discipline needs to be mathhammered against a traditional archery build.

[Elves]

Why do you need multiple archery disciplines?
Thematic difference and because supernatural magical stuff doesn't fit warblade. Also don't want to make it too big.


Trunculating Shot: This seems incredibly niche. Martial Adepts do not get a lot of maneuvers, and even a Wizard would be hard-pressed to justify learning something this specialized.
It's an immediate action attack, which is valuable, and at level 1, the 0 to -10 range is relevant. True, not a keeper - it should be given scaling.

One idea:
You can also initiate this counter when a creature would be forced to make a save against death from massive damage. If you do, they don’t need to make the save. Instead, you make a ranged attack against them.


Blindside/Flanking Shot: These seem kind of redundant. Is there a reason you need two different ways of turning on Rogues?
Flanking gives +2 atk, flat-footed means no immediate actions, some stuff keys off one or the other. Maybe the flanking one is either a stance or an effect you can maintain.


Quicker Than the Eye: Again, this seems crazy niche (unless I'm forgetting something a Dexterity bonuses count as Dodge?). How many enemies actually get Dodge bonuses at all?
Made Dex+dodge, boosted to 4th from 2nd. Will add new 2nd level boost.


Sniper's Stance: It looks like this changed in editing a couple times. It's in the list as a 5th level stance, in the text as a 4th level stance, and the summary indicates the penalty is "halved" but the text has it going from -20 to -5. But overall, I just don't see how this is supposed to be that impressive of an ability. Casters get Greater Invisibility at this point, they can just be 100% invisible while attacking people. And, yes, that's a much lower duration, but still.
It should be 5th/-5. Possibly it should be 3rd. It facilitates a certain playstyle and does its job so I don't think it's a big problem.


Supreme Focus: I feel like if you're going to hand this out, you need to give people more boosts. There's not even a 9th level one.
There's intentionally one per level other than 9th. Even swordsage only gets 12 readied mvs @ 20th. But it's important that they scale, so I will go back to them with that in mind.


My overall impression is that I feel like this doesn't take how archery is typically used in D&D into enough consideration. Archery is all about volume of fire, not singular big attacks (Tiger Claw has the same issue to an extent). You have a bunch of strikes that are basically "one attack + minor rider", and I suspect that an optimized archer would ignore those completely and try to get all the boosts and counters they can (including e.g. the Diamond Mind stuff). Maybe I'm wrong, but my feeling is that the discipline needs to be mathhammered against a traditional archery build.
Number crunching would be ideal, I don't have time for that right now unfortunately since I don't know much about ranged builds. In lieu of that, the best approach might be to make the strikes an alternative to ranged damage builds, giving them stronger rider effects, while letting the boosts be there to augment traditional archery play based on manyshot/rapid shot. Does that seem like a reasonable makeshift answer?

Any cool ranged riders you can think of, besides the usual stun/etc?