Full attack with Range weapons

[Dhoule]

Hi there.

My current GM and a fellow player of us (both with far greater RPG and D&D experience than me) seem to be pretty stubborn against the idea of full attacks with ranged weapons (mainly bow, I guess) being a thing.

Common sense, as they suggest, should imply it'd take longer to draw an arrow, aim and shoot it than to throw in another slash in melee. But by common sense my wizard shouldn't be able to fly, either ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

To me, it seems to be just the way they've always played, maybe even as a habit from older versions where this wasn't possible. I've been unable to find any place in the PH or the DMG where it states that you can't make a full attack with a ranged weapons (even if they said it's stated somewhere), but I also can't find anything which confirms you can do it.

Do you guys know anything about it? Is there any place in these books that I can show to them and say "See? Our level 6 Ranger is now indeed able to shoot 3 arrows with Rapid shot, and not just 2, and he'll shoot more, as the levels go by".

Thanks!

[ciopo]

Best I can think of.

They are thinking of the reload property of crossbows, not normal bows.

The definition of melee and ranged attack, neither of which imply they are "allowed" multiple attack : in other words if bows are so limitied, then swords are too, because they don't have explicit permission either, other rhan the general definition of full atfack which does NOT calls out melee/ranged, it only says attacks.

Rapid shot specifically uses the plural when referring to the normal amount of attacks

[Jack_Simth]

Hi there.

My current GM and a fellow player of us (both with far greater RPG and D&D experience than me) seem to be pretty stubborn against the idea of full attacks with ranged weapons (mainly bow, I guess) being a thing.

Common sense, as they suggest, should imply it'd take longer to draw an arrow, aim and shoot it than to throw in another slash in melee. But by common sense my wizard shouldn't be able to fly, either ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

To me, it seems to be just the way they've always played, maybe even as a habit from older versions where this wasn't possible. I've been unable to find any place in the PH or the DMG where it states that you can't make a full attack with a ranged weapons (even if they said it's stated somewhere), but I also can't find anything which confirms you can do it.

Do you guys know anything about it? Is there any place in these books that I can show to them and say "See? Our level 6 Ranger is now indeed able to shoot 3 arrows with Rapid shot, and not just 2, and he'll shoot more, as the levels go by".

Thanks!
Digging....
I can't find a direct statement, but it's certainly strongly implied. Basically, it doesn't really distinguish between the two except when it's calling out the differences (e.g., Dex to attack vs. Strength, AoO's, and such).

Attack Roll

An attack roll represents your attempt to strike your opponent on your turn in a round. When you make an attack roll, you roll a d20 and add your attack bonus. (Other modifiers may also apply to this roll.) If your result equals or beats the target’s Armor Class, you hit and deal damage.
Automatic Misses and Hits

A natural 1 (the d20 comes up 1) on an attack roll is always a miss. A natural 20 (the d20 comes up 20) is always a hit. A natural 20 is also a threat—a possible critical hit.
Table: Size Modifiers Size Size Modifier
Colossal -8
Gargantuan -4
Huge -2
Large -1
Medium +0
Small +1
Tiny +2
Diminutive +4
Fine +8
Attack Bonus

Your attack bonus with a melee weapon is:

Base attack bonus + Strength modifier + size modifier

With a ranged weapon, your attack bonus is:

Base attack bonus + Dexterity modifier + size modifier + range penalty

Base Attack Bonus

A base attack bonus is an attack roll bonus derived from character class and level or creature type and Hit Dice (or combinations thereof). Base attack bonuses increase at different rates for different character classes and creature types. A second attack is gained when a base attack bonus reaches +6, a third with a base attack bonus of +11 or higher, and a fourth with a base attack bonus of +16 or higher. Base attack bonuses gained from different sources, such as when a character is a multiclass character, stack.
It's an attack bonus either way, and you get the extra attack regardless of what sort you're using.

Under Actions in Combat (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/combat/actionsInCombat.htm), "Ranged" is a sub-category of "Attack" (look at the standard action table: it's "Attack(melee)", "Attack(unarmed)", and "Attack(ranged)" - and the same section has a "multiple attacks" sub-header, which says you use the full-round action "Full attack" to get the iteratives.

Rapid Shot (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/feats.htm#rapidShot) includes:
Rapid Shot [General]
Prerequisites

Dex 13, Point Blank Shot.
Benefit

You can get one extra attack per round with a ranged weapon. The attack is at your highest base attack bonus, but each attack you make in that round (the extra one and the normal ones) takes a -2 penalty. You must use the full attack action to use this feat.
Special

A fighter may select Rapid Shot as one of his fighter bonus feats.

A 2nd-level ranger who has chosen the archery combat style is treated as having Rapid Shot, even if he does not have the prerequisites for it, but only when he is wearing light or no armor. (emphasis added)

Note that it references the normal ones - plural - not the normal one.

[loky1109]

More of that: Rapid shot use full-attack. If you can't full-attack with ranged weapons, Rapid shot is useless.

[Zombimode]

Do you guys know anything about it? Is there any place in these books that I can show to them and say "See? Our level 6 Ranger is now indeed able to shoot 3 arrows with Rapid shot, and not just 2, and he'll shoot more, as the levels go by".

You mean, aside from

no statement to the contrary
rules applying to only ranged or only melee actualy say so
crossbows explicitly requiring actions for reloading and bows do not
ALL monster and NPC statblock with ranged weapons listing iteratives with ranged attacks

?

No, aside from that I have nothing to add.

In other words: your DM is simply wrong. Is that a problem for you and if so what could convince them? From your description it sounds possible that providing a rules argument woul not suffice. If the just don't like the idea of multiple attacks per round with bows they could always say "Ok, I see how the rules are, but in my game you don't get multiple attacks with bows as a house rule."

[loky1109]

Common sense, as they suggest, should imply it'd take longer to draw an arrow, aim and shoot it than to throw in another slash in melee.

Well, look here
https://youtu.be/2zGnxeSbb3g?t=107

Yeah, Lars's bow is very light, and he is very well trained, but look at people in video's left side: 10 arrows in 13 s., 14 s., 28 s., 35 s. Two to Five arrows in the single round.

And about "throw in another slash"... It isn't so easy as your common sense implies. Try it yourself.

[Martin Greywolf]

Common sense, as they suggest, should imply it'd take longer to draw an arrow, aim and shoot it than to throw in another slash in melee. But by common sense my wizard shouldn't be able to fly, either ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

I have used pretty much every weapon in DnD handbook in real life, with sole exceptions of mounted lance and the like, as I am not rich enough to own a horse. This argument is idiotic and can only be made by people who have no idea of how to use a weapon against someone who is using one right back at you.

An experimentation with high speed cameras has shown that the best longsword fighters in the world can throw a single cut at a target, with a passing step, in about 200 ms at best - this would be your five foot step. If you engage no brain cells or have no experience with swords, you will come up with 30 attacks per round - if you do, you realize that is a single dedicated attack and chaining them will require different footwork and technique, and that follow up to Zornhau is a sequence called Zornhau-ort which involves stabbing by extending your hands, which is an action that takes about 50 ms, so you get two attacks in 250 ms (24 per round?!), but only in that specific attack sequence, and that is if you initiate the exchange and are already at the proper measure and...

You get the picture, it gets complicated. The better measurement is the Zwerchcopter, where you chain left and right Zwerchhau, an attack sequence that is supposed to be chained (albeit like... 5 times at most in practice, and with steps), and people doing that can get to about 60 cuts in 20 seconds, so 3 cuts per second, getting us 18 properly delivered cuts. Absolutely no one in DnD comes anywhere close to that, especially not at 1st level, which is what the people doing these challenges would be.

Now, bows, crossbows, slings - all have wildly differing rates of fire, you have direct draw crossbows that are almost as fast as bows (12 shots per minute, after which you are gassed out), yo have cranequin crossbows that take a minute or so to reload and so on. Ranged weapons fire a shot anywhere from twice per round to once per ten rounds.

So, if you say that 1 attack == one swing of a sword, there are two possibilities: 1) ranged weapons will have massively more damage, or 2) melee weapons will do so many attacks they will make ranged weapons immaterial. The problem is that this is not how things work at all.

Let's get to melee weapons, unless you are facing an utter beginner, your first attack will not land. You need to either do some work in the approach to trick him, throw a feint (that requires two separate actions by definition) or launch a combination of strikes (e.g. Zornhau-ort into upper left winding into a Zwerchhau) that will get through the defenses and land once. This chain of attacks isn't several separate attacks, they are a series of threats where each step creates an opening to make the next one possible, and where each attack could land if the opponent doesn't defend.

Real life not being turn-based, you get into the other person doing the same to you and have to discuss the timing, initiative and feeling of pressure you get from the opponent's blade, and it gets really complicated really fast, even if the actual techniques are limited to basic cuts. So, if you go watch something like Swordfish longsword tournaments, you see periods of (seemingly) nothing much happening, followed by exchanges that have about 2-3 attacks per second and usually last about 3 seconds tops.

So, any appeal to real life speed when discussing DnD is null and void before it starts, because real life sword fights Do Not Work That Way, not even in duels. Once you start to skirmish, the speed is even lower, I can make as little as 1 actual attack per 5 seconds and still be effective, if that one attack lands in someone's unprotected kidney, or I can land no attacks and still be effective because I tied up opponent's shield and allowed the spearman behind me to stab him in the chest. Oh, and armor also lowers the speed quite a bit, first from weight, second from exhaustion. Put on ten sweaters and go sprint with a heavy backpack to see why.

Now, ranged attacks work... almost as they are shown in DnD: one arrow, one attack, and there isn't much you can do to block them actively (well, you can parry thrown ones, parrying arrows is only rarely possible). A standard high draw weight longbow can fire 12 arrows a minute, but only for that one minute, after that, you are gassed out. If you have something like 30 lbs modern bow (you could argue this is someone with fantasy or magical strength using a 160 lbs warbow that is now very light for him), you can get to 30 arrows a minute. So, by DnD rounds, you get 1.2 to 3 arows per round. This very close to what we see in the rules for low levels without involving cheese and heavy optimization - to a point where I think ranged attacks were the metrics that were used to set up DnD action/time ratio in the first place, and melee weapons were made to fit that with the handwave of "it's several attacks epr action".

[pabelfly]

Bow attack speed realism is a strange thing to be hung up upon. Someone has already posted a YouTube video of the archer Lars, who fires multiple shots quite quickly and with good accuracy too, and in other videos he discusses the history of archery and speed requirements. But even if none of that existed, it's DnD, let the players do stuff that's cool if it's not OP. Mundane archery is generally a weak combat style. It's feat heavy and loses a lot of effectiveness against opponents with decent damage reduction.

If your DM won't let you do a volley archer see if they are okay with Pathfinder's Vital Strike feat line instead, where you do one attack per round with increasing damage, and also lets you switch between weapons with little issue.

[Biggus]

ALL monster and NPC statblock with ranged weapons listing iteratives with ranged attacks


This was what I was going to say. In the MM we have Solar (Angel), Erinyes (Devil) and Storm Giant all shown having multiple attacks with bows, and in the DMG (p.112-123) we have sample 10th-level Half-orc Barbarian, 15th-level Hobgoblin Fighter, 15th-level human Paladin, 15th-level gnoll Ranger and 10th-level goblin Rogue shown with them.

There are also the feats Rapid Reload and Rapid Shot (PHB p.99):


If you have selected this feat for hand crossbow or light crossbow, you may fire that weapon as many times in a full attack action as you could attack if you were using a bow.

This wouldn't do anything if you can't make more than one attack with a bow.


You can get one extra attack per round with a ranged weapon. The attack is at your highest base attack bonus, but each attack you make in that round (the extra one and the normal ones)

(Italics mine)

This says normal ones, not one, making it clear you can make multiple attacks as standard.

[Gruftzwerg]

1)
https://www.d20srd.org/srd/equipment/weapons.htm#ammunition


Projectile weapons use ammunition: arrows (for bows), bolts (for crossbows), or sling bullets (for slings). When using a bow, a character can draw ammunition as a free action; crossbows and slings require an action for reloading. Generally speaking, ammunition that hits its target is destroyed or rendered useless, while normal ammunition that misses has a 50% chance of being destroyed or lost.

Although they are thrown weapons, shuriken are treated as ammunition for the purposes of drawing them, crafting masterwork or otherwise special versions of them (see Masterwork Weapons), and what happens to them after they are thrown.

You can draw ammunition as free action. Bows don't need to be reloaded like Crossbows (for those you can get feats to reload faster).


2)
As others have pointed out, the general Attack rules of Full Attack apply to both melee and ranged Attack.


___
Thus, unless you are using a crossbow, your DM is (maybe unintentionally) trying to nerf you with making up houserules.

[ShurikVch]

The only (AFAIK) cases where "no ranged iterative" is true are:
1) Siege engines are generally have reload times which are measured in full-round actions
2) Zombies are incapable to attack more than once per round - even Fast Zombie Archer wouldn't be able to shoot more than once
3) Ranged natural attacks (without Improved Rapidstrike)

[Biggus]

The only (AFAIK) cases where "no ranged iterative" is true are:
1) Siege engines are generally have reload times which are measured in full-round actions
2) Zombies are incapable to attack more than once per round - even Fast Zombie Archer wouldn't be able to shoot more than once
3) Ranged natural attacks (without Improved Rapidstrike)

Well, you also need a feat to make iteratives with crossbows or thrown weapons.

[NerdHut]

Even if we accept that up to four ranged attacks per Full-Attack is unrealistic (it's not), the whole point is to be unrealistic. It's D&D, not Little Wars.

By the time a full-BAB character gains an iterative attack, PCs are already verging on superhuman without magic. A pretty typical sixth level ranger has a better than 50% chance of surviving a hundred-foot fall with no more than a "Well that hurt." A sixth level human monk can run over 22 mph. When you gang up on a fifth level barbarian, he's no easier to hit, despite being surrounded. A third level druid cannot be tracked through natural terrain (this includes a desert without wind and arguably snow). While these are not all impossible abilities, they are exceptional (one might even call them Extraordinary Abilities). So why are we trying to limit archers to low-level so-called "realism" while wizards are lobbing fireball at a megaraptor?

There is absolutely nothing in the books that says a high-level archer can only take one shot per full-attack, and even if that was a realistic limitation (again, it's not, as outlined by others on this thread), it's antithetical to the design of the game. So there is no excusing this house rule in my opinion. Let the archers do cool things.

[gijoemike]

I have used pretty much every weapon in DnD handbook in real life, with sole exceptions of mounted lance and the like, as I am not rich enough to own a horse. This argument is idiotic and can only be made by people who have no idea of how to use a weapon against someone who is using one right back at you.

An experimentation with high speed cameras has shown that the best longsword fighters in the world can throw a single cut at a target, with a passing step, in about 200 ms at best - this would be your five foot step. If you engage no brain cells or have no experience with swords, you will come up with 30 attacks per round - if you do, you realize that is a single dedicated attack and chaining them will require different footwork and technique, and that follow up to Zornhau is a sequence called Zornhau-ort which involves stabbing by extending your hands, which is an action that takes about 50 ms, so you get two attacks in 250 ms (24 per round?!), but only in that specific attack sequence, and that is if you initiate the exchange and are already at the proper measure and...

You get the picture, it gets complicated. The better measurement is the Zwerchcopter, where you chain left and right Zwerchhau, an attack sequence that is supposed to be chained (albeit like... 5 times at most in practice, and with steps), and people doing that can get to about 60 cuts in 20 seconds, so 3 cuts per second, getting us 18 properly delivered cuts. Absolutely no one in DnD comes anywhere close to that, especially not at 1st level, which is what the people doing these challenges would be.

Now, bows, crossbows, slings - all have wildly differing rates of fire, you have direct draw crossbows that are almost as fast as bows (12 shots per minute, after which you are gassed out), yo have cranequin crossbows that take a minute or so to reload and so on. Ranged weapons fire a shot anywhere from twice per round to once per ten rounds.

So, if you say that 1 attack == one swing of a sword, there are two possibilities: 1) ranged weapons will have massively more damage, or 2) melee weapons will do so many attacks they will make ranged weapons immaterial. The problem is that this is not how things work at all.

Let's get to melee weapons, unless you are facing an utter beginner, your first attack will not land. You need to either do some work in the approach to trick him, throw a feint (that requires two separate actions by definition) or launch a combination of strikes (e.g. Zornhau-ort into upper left winding into a Zwerchhau) that will get through the defenses and land once. This chain of attacks isn't several separate attacks, they are a series of threats where each step creates an opening to make the next one possible, and where each attack could land if the opponent doesn't defend.

Real life not being turn-based, you get into the other person doing the same to you and have to discuss the timing, initiative and feeling of pressure you get from the opponent's blade, and it gets really complicated really fast, even if the actual techniques are limited to basic cuts. So, if you go watch something like Swordfish longsword tournaments, you see periods of (seemingly) nothing much happening, followed by exchanges that have about 2-3 attacks per second and usually last about 3 seconds tops.

So, any appeal to real life speed when discussing DnD is null and void before it starts, because real life sword fights Do Not Work That Way, not even in duels. Once you start to skirmish, the speed is even lower, I can make as little as 1 actual attack per 5 seconds and still be effective, if that one attack lands in someone's unprotected kidney, or I can land no attacks and still be effective because I tied up opponent's shield and allowed the spearman behind me to stab him in the chest. Oh, and armor also lowers the speed quite a bit, first from weight, second from exhaustion. Put on ten sweaters and go sprint with a heavy backpack to see why.

Now, ranged attacks work... almost as they are shown in DnD: one arrow, one attack, and there isn't much you can do to block them actively (well, you can parry thrown ones, parrying arrows is only rarely possible). A standard high draw weight longbow can fire 12 arrows a minute, but only for that one minute, after that, you are gassed out. If you have something like 30 lbs modern bow (you could argue this is someone with fantasy or magical strength using a 160 lbs warbow that is now very light for him), you can get to 30 arrows a minute. So, by DnD rounds, you get 1.2 to 3 arows per round. This very close to what we see in the rules for low levels without involving cheese and heavy optimization - to a point where I think ranged attacks were the metrics that were used to set up DnD action/time ratio in the first place, and melee weapons were made to fit that with the handwave of "it's several attacks epr action".

This is an amazing answer.

It isn't about just throwing a slash. The 6 second round is identifying a potential opening and performing a series of movements to attempt to hit that opening. In the beginning, the fighter only sees 1 possible route of attack. As they get better and they see more openings and know additional movements and techniques to attempt to exploit those openings. This is observation, analysis, movement, strike.

So ATTACK =/= single slash. But with a bow, you aim at the body and shoot. You don't have to identify an opening lining up with the movements of the opponent's weapon. Aim and release. pulling ammo and drawing the bow are free actions in D&D. The free action draw and reading of ammo is listed under the ammunition entry in the PHB.

[ShurikVch]

Well, you also need a feat to make iteratives with crossbows or thrown weapons.
Yes, I skipped Rapid Reload
But which feat you mean for thrown weapons? :smallconfused:
Also, slings are a move action to load too, and don't even have specific feat for them - thus, no iteratives for them too

[loky1109]

Yes, I skipped Rapid Reload
But which feat you mean for thrown weapons?
Quick Draw.

[ShurikVch]

Quick Draw.
Gloves of Endless Javelins?

[Biggus]

By the time a full-BAB character gains an iterative attack, PCs are already verging on superhuman without magic. A pretty typical sixth level ranger has a better than 50% chance of surviving a hundred-foot fall with no more than a "Well that hurt." A sixth level human monk can run over 22 mph. When you gang up on a fifth level barbarian, he's no easier to hit, despite being surrounded. A third level druid cannot be tracked through natural terrain (this includes a desert without wind and arguably snow). While these are not all impossible abilities, they are exceptional (one might even call them Extraordinary Abilities). So why are we trying to limit archers to low-level so-called "realism" while wizards are lobbing fireball at a megaraptor?


The devs themselves addressed this here (https://web.archive.org/web/20161031212736/http://archive.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/dd/20060120a):



The best Olympic archers are 7th-level rangers, based on their accuracy against a Fine, stationary target 230 feet away and some reasonable assumptions about feat choices.

Weightlifter Shane Hamman? Str 23, based on his snatch weight.

A 6th-level monk with a +5 movement speed feat can hit a world record for the marathon, which is 27,687 5-foot squares long.

So by about level 6 or 7 characters are already at Olympic standard. By about level 9 they're firmly into the realm of the superhuman (a 9th-level Monk with the Run and Dash feats can smash every running world record there is for example).


Quick Draw.

Yes, this. Also, looking at the text of the feat, it provides further evidence that you can make multiple attacks with a bow:


A character who has selected this feat may throw weapons at his full normal rate of attacks (much like a character with a bow).

[Darg]

This is an amazing answer.

It isn't about just throwing a slash. The 6 second round is identifying a potential opening and performing a series of movements to attempt to hit that opening. In the beginning, the fighter only sees 1 possible route of attack. As they get better and they see more openings and know additional movements and techniques to attempt to exploit those openings. This is observation, analysis, movement, strike.

So ATTACK =/= single slash. But with a bow, you aim at the body and shoot. You don't have to identify an opening lining up with the movements of the opponent's weapon. Aim and release. pulling ammo and drawing the bow are free actions in D&D. The free action draw and reading of ammo is listed under the ammunition entry in the PHB.

This is actually mentioned in the PHB, but is left out of the SRD.


Attack Rolls: An attack roll represents your attempts to strike your opponent. It does not represent a single swing of the sword, for example. Rather, it indicates whether, over several attempts in the round, you managed to connect solidly.

The whole point is for leaving open theatrical interpretation of fights to make them much more amusing. Another thing to keep in mind is that player characters are designed to be super human as you get higher levels. You can beat the world record for long jump at 10 Str by level 7 with 10 ranks. Not to mention adding in magic and other fanciful means of enhancement. I met a guy capable of putting 16 arrows in a 6" bullseye in 30 seconds from 20 ft away. Used a low draw weight, but the possibility still stands especially when superhumanity plays a part.

The real limiting factor for archery is the ammunition. I know a lot of people ignore the ammunition being a limiter, but you really aren't going to be carrying more than 2 quivers at a time and your enemies won't always have more on them. Quick-loading is one of my favorite enhancements for that reason

[Dhoule]

You mean, aside from

no statement to the contrary
rules applying to only ranged or only melee actualy say so
crossbows explicitly requiring actions for reloading and bows do not
ALL monster and NPC statblock with ranged weapons listing iteratives with ranged attacks

?

No, aside from that I have nothing to add.

In other words: your DM is simply wrong. Is that a problem for you and if so what could convince them? From your description it sounds possible that providing a rules argument woul not suffice. If the just don't like the idea of multiple attacks per round with bows they could always say "Ok, I see how the rules are, but in my game you don't get multiple attacks with bows as a house rule."

I don't think it's a houserule. At least, not the way he believes houserules work, not by his standards. He didn't come up with that, it's the way he understands it. You can make full attacks with ranged weapons. I see it. You see it. But he doesn't. Just that.

I don't think I'll win this without definite proof, and I wouldn't want to start an argument over it. It wouldn't be the first time I'd bring it up, and I don't want to be a nuisance. Honestly, aside from this (and a few other minor details), I consider my GM a pretty good one, and I enjoy our time playing.

At least, it works both ways, I guess, as our enemies can't make full ranged attacks, either, so it's not like we're in clear disadvantage because of it. It just pains me to see our ranger doing worse than he should, and I wanted to find out if I could do something about it. But oh well.

[ciopo]

It makes manyshot (and potentially greater manyshot) actually more useable, since this means he can standard action do two attacks and keep the move action free for other stuff all the time, instead of being locked into only having 5ft steps if he wanted to do full attacks. manyshot is "worse" than full attacking with rapid shot, since it's generally one less attack and at a higher penalty, but that it's a standard action rather than full round is powerful on it's own.

I would encourage your ranger to go for greater manyshot and to multiclass into scout to add precious precision (in this case, skirmish) damage to those shots. With Swift hunter feat to be enabled to do the skirmish damage even on undeads/elementals/construct etcetera.

It's a solid use-case honestly.


Or find something else to use the move action on, if skirmish is not to his taste. Improved feint bluff maybe? I forgot if there is a ranged feint option

Maybe move-action hide?

[AvatarVecna]

So me, I'm a simple person. I don't know weapons, I don't really have a full understanding of how they would physically function - I can imagine such things, but I'm not sure how realistic my imagination is. But also, I don't think that matters too much, for two reasons.

First, the rules are abstractions of reality. It makes very little sense that a 1 lb dagger and a 12 lb greataxe swung by the same guy will swing at the same speed as each other...but it's abstraction. I could certainly imagine that "three dagger attacks" could be three quick stabs or slashes, while "three greataxe attacks" could be one momentous chop, and the damage ranges from 0 hits worth of damage to 3 hits worth of damage depending on whether your one chop missed, or if it hit, how deep it got into them. Similarly, I think a trained warrior could stab three guys in quick succession, but if they're using that big ole axe, maybe it looks more like...a cleave attempt that just didn't necessarily kill anybody? Like, you're just swinging that heavy thing like you're playing baseball, and it swipes three people who were all next to you. That's the basic idea behind how Cleave works, right? And for that matter, Whirlwind Attack? That's not unbelievable. So even though it makes zero sense that a dagger can swing at the same speed as a greataxe, it can make sense that a dagger can attack as fast as a greataxe - because "attacks" are abstractions.

Of course, with bows, you've got physical ammo you're losing with each shot, so that's not quite the explanation there. But also, even if we're discounting Lars (I think the way they react to success in the video implies an awful lot of "attempt" takes we're not shown, in order to give the impression he nails all the accuracy stuff first try using this technique), but even those more immobile archers who are just shooting as fast as they can reach D&D speeds without much trouble. So it's objectively realistic for D&D bows to shoot more than once per six seconds? And also like...if we're talking realism, the real-world range record with such a bow is under 1000 ft.

Second...I don't care how realistic the rules are. Gandalf stops holding back and calls down storms of lightning, thunder, and fire on the Balrog. Bilbo Baggins, professional layabout, ducks down in a crowd of goblins, and between the press of bodies and the inherent sneakiness of hobbits, they just completely lose track of him and forget they had another prisoner in their number. And Legolas is a goddamn arrow machine. He shoots a man in the heart from 500 ft away, with less than a second from "drawing bow" to "firing arrow". He does a 270 quickscope on an orc and gets a headshot. He shoots a piece of taut string a ways away on a dark, rainy night. I don't necessarily even want my fantasy elf archers to be realistic, I want them to be awesome. Legolas is awesome, and Legolas could totally fire 5 shots a round at targets 1600 ft away with pinpoint accuracy. Even if it wasn't realistic to shoot that fast or that accurate or that far, who gives a ****?

[pabelfly]

At least, it works both ways, I guess, as our enemies can't make full ranged attacks, either, so it's not like we're in clear disadvantage because of it. It just pains me to see our ranger doing worse than he should, and I wanted to find out if I could do something about it. But oh well.

My suggestion - see if you can get Pathfinder's Vital Strike feats in the game. They work with his interpretation of archery and are decently balanced if you don't go crazy with upsizing the character or their weapons.

[Zombimode]

I don't think it's a houserule. At least, not the way he believes houserules work, not by his standards. He didn't come up with that, it's the way he understands it. You can make full attacks with ranged weapons. I see it. You see it. But he doesn't. Just that.

Sure. But I think we have collected a very good number of evidence in this thread that you can use to challange his viewpoint.

But I would put him on the spot and ask if he would have a problem IF bow users could make multiple attacks according to the rules.
If he says "no" you can go "cool, I the following evidence showing that they can".

If he says "yes" then providing a rules argument is won't really help.

[Biggus]

I don't think I'll win this without definite proof, and I wouldn't want to start an argument over it. It wouldn't be the first time I'd bring it up, and I don't want to be a nuisance. Honestly, aside from this (and a few other minor details), I consider my GM a pretty good one, and I enjoy our time playing.


What do you consider "definite proof"? Even if he's dubious of stat blocks as evidence (which isn't entirely unjustified, although it's less justified when every single one makes the same "mistake") the text of Rapid Reload, Quick Draw and Rapid Shot make it crystal clear that you can make multiple attacks with a bow.



But I would put him on the spot and ask if he would have a problem IF bow users could make multiple attacks according to the rules.
If he says "no" you can go "cool, I the following evidence showing that they can".

If he says "yes" then providing a rules argument is won't really help.

Having said that, I'd agree with this: it's worth asking first if he's open to changing his ruling if you can provide good evidence that he's wrong. If he says no, you know there's no point causing any more argument about it, but at least you know where you are.

[Dhoule]

What do you consider "definite proof"?

Definite proof would be a sentence somewhere in the PH or the DMG explicitly stating: "you can make several ranged attacks during a full attack when your BAB becomes higher than +5" or something like that.

Thanks for the answers. I might try to discuss about it once more if the topic arises at some point, but I probably won't bring it up myself.

[Zombimode]

"you can make several ranged attacks during a full attack when your BAB becomes higher than +5"

This is a sentence you won't find.

But you also won't find a similar sentence regarding melee attacks. Does this mean you can't make iteratives with melee attacks? Of course not. For the rules it is never in question if you can make iteratives with ranged weapons.

Look at Rules Compendium p. 17, definition of Full Attacks:
If you get more than one attack per round because your base
attack bonus is high enough, because you fi ght with two
weapons or a double weapon, or for some other reason, you
must use a full-round action to be able to make your additional
attacks.

See? No mention of melee attacks. Just attacks. And a ranged attack is still an attack.

Edit: It is important to note that there is no ambiguity where or not multiple attacks with ranged weapons are possible. They are. That is: you can proove that "Multiple attacks per round with a ranged weapons are possible" is a true statement AND that accepting "Multiple attacks per round with a ranged weapons are NOT possible" neccessitates accepting other statements as true which are contraticted by the rules (namely you would need to acccept that ranged attacks are not attacks, which is contraticted by the rules).

But understanding this kind of proof requires a certain level of reading comprehension and basic understanding of logic. While it is not unthinkable that you DM truly suffers a lack of education in that regard I wouldn't assume that. My money is still on that he simply does not like the idea of someone making multiple attacks with ranged weapons. See his appeal to "realism".

2nd edit: the PHB actually uses Lidda with thrown weapons as the example to explain itterative attacks on page 22.

[liquidformat]

Definite proof would be a sentence somewhere in the PH or the DMG explicitly stating: "you can make several ranged attacks during a full attack when your BAB becomes higher than +5" or something like that.

Thanks for the answers. I might try to discuss about it once more if the topic arises at some point, but I probably won't bring it up myself.

I mean you pretty much have that between the ammunition (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/equipment/weapons.htm) definition and iterative attacks. The ammunition section under weapons states that drawing arrows is a free action that doesn't interfere with ranged attacks and iteratives attacks don't differentiate between ranged and melee. That seems to be very RAW heavy proof that you get the same iterative attacks from a bow as a sword. Furthermore, I see no RAW or RAI proof that bows get less iteratives than swords.

Maybe they are thinking of the AD&D weapon speed rules in which case they apparently are only using those rules for bows and not for all melee weapons as daggers and unarmed strikes are faster than long swords are faster than great swords and so on...

[Zombimode]

Maybe they are thinking of the AD&D weapon speed rules in which case they apparently are only using those rules for bows and not for all melee weapons as daggers and unarmed strikes are faster than long swords are faster than great swords and so on...

Which would be funny since in AD&D bows actually get two attacks per turn out of the box with no additional investment.