Always Carry a Sword and a Bow.

[Zovc]

No one has ever actually told me that, but every time I've seen a premade character, or every time I (or a personal friend) has made a character, 'made character has had a ranged weapon "just in case."

Is there any real reason for this? The fighter almost always plunges into the fight, and most other characters don't want to gobble up their move actions reloading.

I'm not saying I have a problem with an adventurer being ready for anything (in fact, I <3 me some Factotum), but I've never seen an encounter that makes players go "I need to take out my bow!"

What kind of engaging encounters are there that "essentially" force the players to participate in ranged combat instead of melee combat?

The most reasonable way to have players to use ranged weapons I could come up with was to have each side be on opposite sides of a river.

[Xyk]

Flying opponents make it beneficial to have a bow. Some sort of entanglement or something would be similar.

[Croverus]

Setting up an ambush, or if the terrain is difficult to pass through (the enemy overturns tables or carts to slow you) but in most cases that make movement hard, that means there is also cover for enemies to hide behind.

[Mando Knight]

Dragons. Kobolds in caves with crossbows. Pegasus-mounted knights. Things like that which can keep out of your reach and pound you with their weapons.

[Bang]

Is there any real reason for this?

National Preparedness Month.
Store wirecutters up your sleeves, marbles in your pants.
You gots to be on your toes.

[SparkMandriller]

Do you really want to be the guy that got killed by a flying man with a bag of rocks?

[Sinfire Titan]

4E Example: A party I was in had 2 range-focused characters, myself (a Wizard) and a Ranger. The next step down was a Dwarven Fighter with 5 throwing axes.

One encounter pitted us against Kobolds mounted on bats. Between my Magic Missiles and the Ranger's bow, we were the only ones contributing. The Fighter would toss his axes, and everyone else just sat back and watched.

It woul[d have taken most of our resources had I not remembered my Daily: Sleep. The encounter ended via Falling damage.

[Keld Denar]

It depends. Bows at low levels are exceptionally useful. At mid-high levels, though, they become WAY less useful. First of all, your bow is gonna be terrible compared to your primary weapon, since you'll probably spend most of your resources (money, feats, class abilities) on your primary weapon + misc melee gear such as +str, +con, miss chance, teleport, fly, etc. Even with a Chained GMW from your party caster, your bow will be woefully lacking in most cases because you won't have Rapid Shot, you won't have +eqiv mods on your bow, and you won't have ranged damage related gear.

Then there is action economy. Even if you swap to your bow and take a couple of pot shots at an enemy out of reach, the amount of damage you do will not compare to the amount of damage you will lose dropping your bow and switching to a melee weapon when you need one, not to mention the loss of AoOs from a reach weapon or similar. So you may have been initially useful, but in the long term you suffer.

At mid-high levels, your job, as a melee character, is to do your best to stand between your casters and the bad stuff, to not die, and to make dead anything you have the ability to as quickly and efficiently as possible. If it flies, your casters should either make you fly, or ground it. If its really far, your casters should find some way to disable it till you get to it and/or port you to it, assuming you can't port yourself.

There is more to playing a dynamic high level melee character than just WEAPONZ AND ARMORZ. I used to play a high level melee character in Living Greyhawk, and with the group I played with, I never touched a ranged weapon after about, level 8 or so, through level 15, the end of the campaign.

[Kobold-Bard]

...Is there any real reason for this?...

Same reason you should always bye an Adamantine Dagger and hide up your butt at the first opportunity:

Be prepared for anything!!

The chances of you going to jail are slim, but if you do that hidden Dagger is going to save you because it ignores the prison bar's Hardness.

If you're a Fighter and the enemies all take flight, without a backup ranged weapon you're going to be nothing but a moving bullseye.

[Eldariel]

The principal reason is that there's no reason not to have a bow. The encumbrance is trivial and scenarios where it might come in handy do exist (though are more rare higher on and indeed, you're usually ****ed either way when you can't use your primary weapon unless you're a specifically constructed dual threat warrior type with skills in both).

Besides, all the iconic fantasy characters use them in conjuction; why shouldn't you? That's really a failure of the system IMHO - a high-level Fighter should be reasonably efficient with a bow by virtue of being a high-level Fighter without specific focus in that regard. Sure, a focused Fighter should be better but even a melee Fighter should have SOMETHING to do with Dragons and such. It's really one of the principal reasons flight is so important; ranged attacks suck by default.

[Karoht]

Answer me this.
You're hungry. Are you going to hunt with a sword, a mace, an axe, or a bow and arrow?

You want to shoot a rope over to a buddy on the other side of a chasm, or perhaps he's up a tree and your climb isn't so hot. Do you tie the rope to the end of your sword and throw it?

You have a friend dangling by the neck at a public hanging. Gonna throw your sword or axe, or shoot an arrow to hit the rope?


Utility my friend. Utility.

[Saph]

Besides, all the iconic fantasy characters use them in conjuction; why shouldn't you? That's really a failure of the system IMHO - a high-level Fighter should be reasonably efficient with a bow by virtue of being a high-level Fighter without specific focus in that regard.

Well, any high-level full-BAB character is going to be reasonably effective with a bow, just not amazing. You still get all your iterative attacks and you probably have a half-decent Dexterity if you make a career of standing on the front lines. A +5 (or whatever) mighty composite longbow is less than 1,000 gold, which isn't much at that level and gets steadily less significant as you keep levelling.

[taltamir]

Flying opponents make it beneficial to have a bow. Some sort of entanglement or something would be similar.

if they are level appropriate, than you can ALSO fly by than... magic flight is very low level...

[Keld Denar]

Answer me this.
You're hungry. Are you going to hunt with a sword, a mace, an axe, or a bow and arrow?

D&D rules don't emulate this well. You'll start at whatever encounter distance is ruled by your spot/listen checks, and you'll still probably be best off charging or similar. Again, useful at low levels, not so at higher levels.

You want to shoot a rope over to a buddy on the other side of a chasm, or perhaps he's up a tree and your climb isn't so hot. Do you tie the rope to the end of your sword and throw it?

Again, not modeled well. You'll probably utilize some form of magic to cross, especially at higher levels. And in most cases, its most beneficial for someone with ranks in acrobatic skills to scale the cliff/tree freeform and then secure a rope. Plus, any rope significant enough to climb with will impede the flight of an arrow so much it'll probably only go 20 feet. And don't even THINK that a rope tied to an arrow is gonna support the weight of even a halfling trying to climb it. It'll either slip off if the stress is transverse, or snap the arrow if the stress is perpendicular.

You have a friend dangling by the neck at a public hanging. Gonna throw your sword or axe, or shoot an arrow to hit the rope?

If done right, the hangee is dead before they reach the end of the rope. If done wrong, hold your breath rules provide enough time to move/teleport/fly up to your friend and cut the rope by hand, even if you have to muscle through a guard or 2. Poorly modeled.

Utility my friend. Utility.

Utility isn't very well modeled in D&D, much less in a setting that has magic. Everything you've mentioned is very cinamatic, but it just doesn't translate to D&D. Unless you liberally apply the Rule of Cool, its generally better to stick with your primary weapon and seek alternative methods.

[Saph]

if they are level appropriate, than you can ALSO fly by than... magic flight is very low level...

Yes, but magic flight has a speed of 40-60 feet. It's not very hard for enemies to stay out of reach of that. If they start the encounter a few hundred feet above you, even flight isn't going to let you catch them unless they want to be caught.

[taltamir]

Yes, but magic flight has a speed of 40-60 feet. It's not very hard for enemies to stay out of reach of that. If they start the encounter a few hundred feet above you, even flight isn't going to let you catch them unless they want to be caught.

magic can impede their flight or make them fall in a variety of fun ways (or just die)... then there is cover, limited room size, etc etc.

Sure, on an open field without cover against an opponent with a very high flight speed and very long range attack of its own, this could be a problem...

[kjones]

D&D rules don't emulate this well. You'll start at whatever encounter distance is ruled by your spot/listen checks, and you'll still probably be best off charging or similar. Again, useful at low levels, not so at higher levels.

It's even worse than that. In D&D rules, you hunt with a Survival check. You can do this bare-handed and buck naked.

[technophile]

Plus, any rope significant enough to climb with will impede the flight of an arrow so much it'll probably only go 20 feet.

This is why you tie a long piece of twine (or thinner, lighter rope if twine isn't strong enough) to the arrow, and tie the rope to the end of the twine. Arrow flies, relatively unimpeded by the twine, and whoever's on the other side uses the twine to pull the rope over.

Then again, a warrior with a mighty composite longbow firing full-on treebranch-sized arrows can probably just tie the end of the rope to the arrow, it's practically got enough energy to reach orbit at that point.

[Yuki Akuma]

I don't think arrows can fly at 11.2 km/s. They'd disintegrate from air friction!

[olentu]

It's even worse than that. In D&D rules, you hunt with a Survival check. You can do this bare-handed and buck naked.

That does not seem that bad. One could just be making traps from the surrounding environment.

[Cieyrin]

I don't think arrows can fly at 11.2 km/s. They'd disintegrate from air friction!

Tell that to the Cragtop Archer with a Large Composite Greatbow, Flight Arrows and the rest of distance enhancers out there. He doesn't quite reach escape velocity but gets pretty damn close. With Horizon Shot, he doesn't lose any accuracy along the way, either. Spotting that far is something else entirely. It says something when you need to scry your target before you shoot him from beyond the long range of spells.

[jmbrown]

No one has ever actually told me that, but every time I've seen a premade character, or every time I (or a personal friend) has made a character, 'made character has had a ranged weapon "just in case."

Is there any real reason for this? The fighter almost always plunges into the fight, and most other characters don't want to gobble up their move actions reloading.

I'm not saying I have a problem with an adventurer being ready for anything (in fact, I <3 me some Factotum), but I've never seen an encounter that makes players go "I need to take out my bow!"

What kind of engaging encounters are there that "essentially" force the players to participate in ranged combat instead of melee combat?

The most reasonable way to have players to use ranged weapons I could come up with was to have each side be on opposite sides of a river.

You know what really cheeses me off? The almost universal idea that fighters are supposed to charge head first into combat. Before the discovery of gunpowder, armies would soften each other up with artillery and ranged attacks then charge. A group that charges first ends up getting hit with friendly fire.

In D&D this is simulated by the penalty when two people are in melee. It makes absolutely no sense why, in open terrain where you're capable of seeing your opponent at 50+ft, fighters always go for their melee weapons first. No. Keep your bow or crossbow on hand, when you see an enemy and it's your turn to fight before them, shoot first, drop your weapon, then draw your sword.

In an enclosed space it makes more sense to keep a melee weapon ready but at the same time I absolutely hate it when fighters get the initiative before my ranged characters because even though they're blocking the enemy from reaching the back row, they figure "Well, I get to go first so I'll draw first blood!" 90% of the time this isn't tactically feasible. It means your archers, who may be backup ranged fighters without precise shot, will get a penalty to shoot and the wizard will have to rethink his area of effect attacks.

I really hate fighters in gaming groups because I rarely see anyone make use of the magical delay function.

[Foryn Gilnith]

Bah. Quit griping. Shoot one of the characters not engaged in melee with the fighter, get a spellguard ring and keep blasting, or switch to single-target spells. Delay is only going to give you a single round of attacks anyway, so you'll probably want Precise Shot if you really can't cope with the tank's presence on the first round of combat - the easiest round to find another target. 90% of the time, in my experience, delay is not a viable option.

It makes absolutely no sense why, in open terrain where you're capable of seeing your opponent at 50+ft, fighters always go for their melee weapons first. No. Keep your bow or crossbow on hand, when you see an enemy and it's your turn to fight before them, shoot first, drop your weapon, then draw your sword.

Wasting your time fumbling with a likely nonmagical ranged weapon means damage penalties, a higher chance to miss entirely, and likely allows the monster to advance on his own terms.

[Keld Denar]

Yea, you would have liked playing with my Living Greyhawk group jmbrown. The fighters stay in close formation near the caster, and if its their turn before his, they delay. Then the casters open with a disable, followed by a swift teleport or waits for the monsters to advance. Boom, fighter comes out of delay and full attacks. No fumbling with gear, or single attacks on a charge. Granted, not as vital when pounce is actively used in-game (Living Greyhawk banned nearly every form of pounce except for Wildrunners).

One of my friends was relatively new to the game, exclaimed after Dim Dooring 2 optimized power attacking fighters into full attack range "I never knew I could do so much damage with a 4th level spell" when the 2 of them dished out over 300 damage in a round thanks to being able to full attack from the Dim Door.

[Jayngfet]

You know what really cheeses me off? The almost universal idea that fighters are supposed to charge head first into combat. Before the discovery of gunpowder, armies would soften each other up with artillery and ranged attacks then charge. A group that charges first ends up getting hit with friendly fire.

In D&D this is simulated by the penalty when two people are in melee. It makes absolutely no sense why, in open terrain where you're capable of seeing your opponent at 50+ft, fighters always go for their melee weapons first. No. Keep your bow or crossbow on hand, when you see an enemy and it's your turn to fight before them, shoot first, drop your weapon, then draw your sword.

In an enclosed space it makes more sense to keep a melee weapon ready but at the same time I absolutely hate it when fighters get the initiative before my ranged characters because even though they're blocking the enemy from reaching the back row, they figure "Well, I get to go first so I'll draw first blood!" 90% of the time this isn't tactically feasible. It means your archers, who may be backup ranged fighters without precise shot, will get a penalty to shoot and the wizard will have to rethink his area of effect attacks.

I really hate fighters in gaming groups because I rarely see anyone make use of the magical delay function.

This is incredibly bad when one factors in the complete scoundrel, which offers up about a dozen special hidden weapons and bayonets for any imaginable weapon so you don't have to waste an action or drop the bow to fight when you enter melee.

[tyckspoon]

In D&D this is simulated by the penalty when two people are in melee. It makes absolutely no sense why, in open terrain where you're capable of seeing your opponent at 50+ft, fighters always go for their melee weapons first. No. Keep your bow or crossbow on hand, when you see an enemy and it's your turn to fight before them, shoot first, drop your weapon, then draw your sword.

Because even in open terrain the Spot rules (assuming they're being used) mean the fight is probably going to start in charge range, and if you're a melee specialist you're better off getting into contact for a melee attack than firing a weapon you don't have major bonuses in using. (That aside, the way Full Attacks work means it's still usually better to have the enemy come to you. Doubly so if you use a Reach weapon and can expect to get an Attack of Opportunity from it.)

[jmbrown]

Shoot one of the characters not engaged in melee with the fighter

Often the enemy not engaged in melee is a skirmisher waiting to move around the fighter to the now unguarded ranged attackers.

get a spellguard ring and keep blasting

...giving time for the enemy to close in.

or switch to single-target spells.

And if I don't have those prepared or fighting a large-but-weak group of monsters?

Delay is only going to give you a single round of attacks anyway, so you'll probably want Precise Shot if you really can't cope with the tank's presence on the first round of combat

A single round can swing the course of battle. Fighter goes first; fighter delays; rogue goes and gets a sneak attack on the monster; monster charges fighter and swings; fighter's delay ends and he full attacks the monster.

Had the fighter charged in, the rogue wouldn't have gotten his sneak attack. This situation of ham fisting battles has occured to me loads of times because I always play as support characters who rely on going before everyone else. When that doesn't happen it usually means someone steps in my way because they couldn't delay the single round to give the battle the edge. Delaying is pretty much cheating because you know your allies' initiative right off the bat. "I delay until after my buddy..." okay, done.

It's a simple tactic that has prevailed for centuries of human combat. When flintlock weapons came around in the 15th century, the common tactic was to fire the gun, drop it, then draw your sword. You're losing more by charging head first at your earliest opportunity than shooting and/or delaying.

Yea, you would have liked playing with my Living Greyhawk group jmbrown. The fighters stay in close formation near the caster, and if its their turn before his, they delay. Then the casters open with a disable, followed by a swift teleport or waits for the monsters to advance. Boom, fighter comes out of delay and full attacks. No fumbling with gear, or single attacks on a charge. Granted, not as vital when pounce is actively used in-game (Living Greyhawk banned nearly every form of pounce except for Wildrunners).

Pounce is pretty powerful but most monsters that have pounce are stalking predators and those tend to be loners. I think it was the mini manual that added all of those cool short-range teleportation powers and I like the sound of your group. It just irks me when a group gives up tactical advantages like sneak attack because the fighter charged 60' in the first round thus forcing the rogue to double move into the opponent's flank or something stupid like that when it could it have been fighter shoots bow, draws sword: monster charges: rogue moves in and sneak attacks with the flanking bonus and likely deals more damage than if fighter decided to charge round 1.

[Zephyros]

In a Warhammeresque game I ran last year I tried for the first time to significantly buff bows. I doubled their variant damage, double their threat range and critical multiplier (for bows and crossbows only). Eg. A longbow dealt 2d8 (+x str if it was composite) and threatened on 19-20 for x4 dmg.

After some well positioned ambushes by bow-users my trigger happy charge happy players learn to respect the power of a fine Marksman or three of them

[taltamir]

In D&D this is simulated by the penalty when two people are in melee. It makes absolutely no sense why, in open terrain where you're capable of seeing your opponent at 50+ft, fighters always go for their melee weapons first. No. Keep your bow or crossbow on hand, when you see an enemy and it's your turn to fight before them, shoot first, drop your weapon, then draw your sword.

In an enclosed space it makes more sense to keep a melee weapon ready but at the same time I absolutely hate it when fighters get the initiative before my ranged characters because even though they're blocking the enemy from reaching the back row, they figure "Well, I get to go first so I'll draw first blood!" 90% of the time this isn't tactically feasible. It means your archers, who may be backup ranged fighters without precise shot, will get a penalty to shoot and the wizard will have to rethink his area of effect attacks.

I really hate fighters in gaming groups because I rarely see anyone make use of the magical delay function.

The problem is that DnD fighting is extremely unrealistic.
Fights occur in turns, and people go by order of initiative.

IRL:
Two guys see each other from across the room. Guy B has a bow in his hand and a sword in a holster, guy A has a sword in his hand.
guy A charges while drawing his sword. Guy B gets a shot off, then, if he missed and guy A is still alive, draws his weapon and meets guy A head on.

DnD:
Two guys see each other from across the room. Guy B has a bow in his hand and a sword in a holster, guy A has a sword in his hand.

option 1: guy A rolls higher initiative. He goes first. He charges guy B, reaches him, and hits him... on his turn guy B has to drop his bow and draw a sword (provoking AoO) and then hit him back. They take turns whacking each other.

option 2: guy B rolls higher initiative. He goes first. He shoots guy A (while guy A is exactly at the same spot he was when they first saw each other). He most likely hits, but does insignificant damage. He then drops his bow and draws a useful weapon, aka melee. His turn is now up.
Guy A's turn, he charges guy B, who meets him head on.

DnD is fundamentally unrealistic because it is turn based... this is something I like about gurps. Guy A's turn, he attacks, guy B chooses if to block, dodge, etc... than guy B attacks. It feels more "real time" with turn order just alternating who is on the "defensive" and who on the "offensive" at each given point.

[BatRobin]

Always Carry a Sword and a Bow

And arrows, durr.