Bows and Buff Spells

[onivel]

May 21, 2015 15:45:15 GMT -5 Autumn said:

May 21, 2015 11:05:50 GMT -5 Edge said:

That part of the lore will either be removed or downplayed, to where it was a style that may have started among the elves but has since moved to other cultures. All it will require now is the arcane and martial training and the willingness and ability to combine the two.

Likewise for the class formerly known as Dwarven Defender (new name not quite yet decided).

Might I suggest Drunken Dervish for the new name?

Pretty sure that's what Geno is   ; )

Dwarven Dervish.. Drunken Dervish.. same thing reallly.

[lb7]

Honestly? If any ranged weapon is in need of any improvements on anything... it's the Crossbow. Seriously. There is absolutely no difference between using a longbow, and a long crossbow, except for the fact that you need rapid reload feat to fire more then one shot per round for a crossbow. That makes crossbows completely useless on CD, and even in NWN in general.

While it is true that historically speaking, crossbows take longer to reload then a bow, they have always held more accuracy then a longbow, and even continued to have a place in warfare when muskets were made and being refined, depending on where you go and the time period. I would actually say that it is Crossbows that should get the damage bonus... At least a bonus damage on critical hits. Something. Because right now, a crossbow is more trouble then it's worth to master, except for RP (Which, I've NEVER seen, on any server).

[ClockworkMayhem]

May 20, 2015 23:59:02 GMT -5 Vincent07 said:

There are some -very- nice bows in loot.  

As I said before, you CAN put GMW and Keen on bows now.  But you have to target it on the person holding the weapon.

I'm not increasing base Bow damage.  That would make an area like the epic Gnolls, which is already lousy with archers, impossible.

What I am doing:  With the hak update, Arcane Archer will be loosing its racial restriction and gaining another perk or two.  So roll up an AA once I do that.  

Haven't read the rest of the thread yet, but I can attest to this, as Mouse is something of a pack rat and has several incredibly good bows that are great for ranged characters (most of which she uses for varying occasions). I promise, there are bows that are good on their own in the loot - you just have to find them.

[Edge]

May 21, 2015 15:55:58 GMT -5 onivel said:

May 21, 2015 15:45:15 GMT -5 Autumn said:

Might I suggest Drunken Dervish for the new name?

Pretty sure that's what Geno is   ; )

Dwarven Dervish.. Drunken Dervish.. same thing reallly.

We're trying to branch out away from the dwarf-centric nature of the class, not more toward it

[Edge]

May 21, 2015 16:32:29 GMT -5 lb7 said:

Honestly? If any ranged weapon is in need of any improvements on anything... it's the Crossbow. Seriously. There is absolutely no difference between using a longbow, and a long crossbow, except for the fact that you need rapid reload feat to fire more then one shot per round for a crossbow. That makes crossbows completely useless on CD, and even in NWN in general.

While it is true that historically speaking, crossbows take longer to reload then a bow, they have always held more accuracy then a longbow, and even continued to have a place in warfare when muskets were made and being refined, depending on where you go and the time period. I would actually say that it is Crossbows that should get the damage bonus... At least a bonus damage on critical hits. Something. Because right now, a crossbow is more trouble then it's worth to master, except for RP (Which, I've NEVER seen, on any server).

This is unfortunately the nature of the beast not only in NWN but in D&D and related games in general. Crossbows stink regardless.

Heck, with the advent of "unlimited cantrip usage" in Pathfinder, Crossbows have even ceased to be "that weapon the mage hopes to roll 20s on when s/he runs out of/doesn't want to spend spells".

There's really nothing we can do to change that other than completely changing how the weapon works, utterly divorcing it from any semblance of its PnP counterpart.

[Yaldabaoth]

May 21, 2015 19:18:46 GMT -5 Edge said:

May 21, 2015 16:32:29 GMT -5 lb7 said:

Honestly? If any ranged weapon is in need of any improvements on anything... it's the Crossbow. Seriously. There is absolutely no difference between using a longbow, and a long crossbow, except for the fact that you need rapid reload feat to fire more then one shot per round for a crossbow. That makes crossbows completely useless on CD, and even in NWN in general.

While it is true that historically speaking, crossbows take longer to reload then a bow, they have always held more accuracy then a longbow, and even continued to have a place in warfare when muskets were made and being refined, depending on where you go and the time period. I would actually say that it is Crossbows that should get the damage bonus... At least a bonus damage on critical hits. Something. Because right now, a crossbow is more trouble then it's worth to master, except for RP (Which, I've NEVER seen, on any server).

This is unfortunately the nature of the beast not only in NWN but in D&D and related games in general. Crossbows stink regardless.

Heck, with the advent of "unlimited cantrip usage" in Pathfinder, Crossbows have even ceased to be "that weapon the mage hopes to roll 20s on when s/he runs out of/doesn't want to spend spells".

There's really nothing we can do to change that other than completely changing how the weapon works, utterly divorcing it from any semblance of its PnP counterpart.

Making quality crossbows widely available at all tiers would certainly be a start.  Crossbows suck in NWN because NWN tends to play significantly differently than PnP.  In PnP, one will typically spend a considerable amount of time at low levels, during which time, the crossbow is king.  Other than the lack of iterative attacks, a heavy crossbow is simply a better weapon than a longbow.  In NWN, one tends to blaze through their lower levels, so the crossbow has less time to reign.  It tends to become a self reinforcing cycle, in that, because quality crossbows aren't available at high levels on most servers, nobody bothers investing in them.  Because nobody bothers investing in them, nobody bothers to make quality crossbows.  The big question is whether or not getting crossbows into the hands of the adventuring populace is a big enough concern for the staff to necessitate creating a bunch of crossbows.

Edit: The other thing that makes crossbows suck is the unwillingness of item creators to put the Mighty property on Crossbows.  Admittedly, since crossbows are designed to use mechanical power to overcome the need for a strong user to pull on the string,  it's a little more tricky to explain how to make a crossbow mighty.  These could be explained simply as crossbows that have such a high draw strength that they require a strong user to properly turn the winch and get the most out of the bow.  Don't be afraid to mighty the crossbow.

[Edge]

Huh. I thought NWN didn't allow Mighty to be put on crossbows. But I just checked it and it apparently is allowed. Interesting.

But yeah. Even in PnP, I've never seen anyone use a crossbow, now that Pathfinder has unlimited cantrips. There's simply no need for them, even at low levels.

[Voice of Kerensky]

May 21, 2015 9:19:34 GMT -5  @belladonna said:

Yeah, if you're using the dragon bows for comparison, you haven't seen the better bows of their tiers.  

That's the problem, though. I wasn't using the dragon bow for comparison because I stated upfront it was clearly outclassed just based off a glance. I first created a good bow and it got beat out by both EMW'd and non-EMW'd longsword, and then an entirely hypothetical and totally fantastical bow that would likely never see the light of day on CD and it still gets badly outclassed by the melee alternative. I highly recommend reading the post and its numbers in depth.

Just to review, though:

Bow with +1, 2d6 elemental arrows and +5 mighty: min 9, max 26, avg 17.5
Sword of Heavens (decent tier 4 longsword): min  13, max 28, avg 20.5
Sword of Heavens with EMW:  min 19, max 37, avg 28

This is assuming a base 10 str character with +12 str worth of buffs using the longsword and a spell level 10 EMW (scroll level). The sword does 60% more damage.

And then I did this ridiculousness:

Bow with +3, 2d10 elemental arrows and +6 mighty: min 12, max 37, avg 24.5
Sword of Heavens with level 20 EMW: min 29, max 47, avg 38

This is assuming a base 20 str character (easily achievable with ECL +0) with +12 str worth of buffs using the longsword. The sword does 55% more damage.

Again, I'd like to point out that a tier 4 sword under exceedingly normal conditions is outclassing a bow of a power level that doesn't exist even at tier 5 by 55%.

The underlying problem here is that bows:

1) Have str bonuses capped by mighty (this isn't a problem if not for...)
2) Do not benefit from enhancement damage (+4-5 avg dmg per hit)
3) Do not benefit from EMW (~ +7-14 avg dmg per hit)

Fix 2 and 3 (which is doable) and bows can start being competitive. Hell, I play a character that uses god-awful double weapons (horrible investment, mathematically) but even I won't touch bows as anything more than a very secondary weapon.

As far as crossbows go, they're a mechanical disaster in NWN and 3.5 and really only have value on first shot/sneak attack/HiPS.

[Vincent07]

As far as I'm aware, NWN does not calculate bonus damage for ranged attacks off of the bow.  It's done off of the -arrows-.

Elemental Weapon spells apply an OnHit anyway, which won't do jack off of a bow even if the above turns out to be wrong in testing.  So even then, you'd have to put it on the arrows, not the bow.  


Bow damage is lower?  Here's a thought as to why.  Because it's safer.   You get the safety of standing behind the fighters and lobbing arrows at the big ugly with the Nopesword who would otherwise have a change to cut you in two if you picked up that higher damage sword and waded into melee.   So there's your tradeoff.

That said, I've seen some very well made archer builds do a fair bit of damage, so maybe the fault isn't entirely in the bow?

[Voice of Kerensky]

May 21, 2015 23:41:26 GMT -5 Vincent07 said:

As far as I'm aware, NWN does not calculate bonus damage for ranged attacks off of the bow.  It's done off of the -arrows-.

Elemental Weapon spells apply an OnHit anyway, which won't do jack off of a bow even if the above turns out to be wrong in testing.  So even then, you'd have to put it on the arrows, not the bow.  


Bow damage is lower?  Here's a thought as to why.  Because it's safer.   You get the safety of standing behind the fighters and lobbing arrows at the big ugly with the Nopesword who would otherwise have a change to cut you in two if you picked up that higher damage sword and waded into melee.   So there's your tradeoff.

That said, I've seen some very well made archer builds do a fair bit of damage, so maybe the fault isn't entirely in the bow?

It doesn't by default, no. It requires a 2da change, as Perihilion noted. But it's fairly simple. Having seen his work implemented before, I'd suggest to hit him up for it. (I promise, I'm not putting you on the spot <.<)

I've seen decent archer builds that can do decent damage on CD.. the problem is simply that they could be doing (much) better with melee, mathematically, in almost every instance.

And it's actually not as "safer" as it sounds. CD's AI is actually not completely derp at times. And mobs will charge, or attempt to charge, lower AC characters. As by using a bow you're sacrificing AC by not using a shield, and simultaneously doing some damage (most bow builds do at least have decent AC), they get targeted quickly.

Lower damage is to be expected... if you look at my numbers for unbuffed tier 4 bow vs unbuffed tier 4 sword (albeit on a 10 str character), they're not that far off. 20% difference or thereabouts. Acceptable. The problem occurs in that bows currently don't get the rather massive damage output boosts that both enhancement and EMW give.

To investigate, here's what it would look like if you had a 10 str archer character using a +5 mighty bow with +1, 2d6 elemental arrows bow and +4 attack bonus (that'd be a solid tier 4 bow) would look like if you had the enhancement damage bonus + EMW damage bonus, vs a decent tier 4 sword (using Sword of Heavens again) also with EMW, with a 20 base str/32 buffed char using it. We'll use level 20 EMW for this example.


Sword of Heavens: min 29, max 47, avg 38
Example Bow: min 24, max 44, avg 34

This scenario gives the sword 11% or so more damage, and is much a more reasonable difference given the situational safety advantage the bow user has (keep in mind, probably lower AC, so = higher value target, in addition to not having any other statistical or defensive bonuses that a tier 4+ shield may have on them--DR, saves, etc). The melee user also has other possibilities to increase their DPS output (dual wield or 2 hander instead of sword and board) that the bow simply does not have.

[suddenperihelion]

May 21, 2015 23:41:26 GMT -5 Vincent07 said:

As far as I'm aware, NWN does not calculate bonus damage for ranged attacks off of the bow.  It's done off of the -arrows-.

Elemental Weapon spells apply an OnHit anyway, which won't do jack off of a bow even if the above turns out to be wrong in testing.  So even then, you'd have to put it on the arrows, not the bow.  


Bow damage is lower?  Here's a thought as to why.  Because it's safer.   You get the safety of standing behind the fighters and lobbing arrows at the big ugly with the Nopesword who would otherwise have a change to cut you in two if you picked up that higher damage sword and waded into melee.   So there's your tradeoff.

That said, I've seen some very well made archer builds do a fair bit of damage, so maybe the fault isn't entirely in the bow?

The NWN engine can handle bonus damage based on bows; it just requires a 2da swap and then the bows will accept damage boost properties - this includes both spell buffs and it also includes just normal damage boosts. The damage boost works (I have tested), and also stacks with arrow damage boosts if they are of different types. So it is 'possible'. Though additional work would be required to add extra damage bonuses onto loot bows, if that was desired. None of this would be particularly technically demanding though.

As for the second comment, I'm not so sure that the AI used here actually makes aggro management vastly easier for ranged characters than for melee characters. There is some advantage to it, but not nearly enough to justify the loss of AC and damage associated with bow use: a careful melee character can stay a step or two behind his friend and only draw aggro from OnDamaged events - an archer often has to deal with the same issues.

In my mind, the difference between melee and archery in NWN boils down to this:
-There is only one way to build an effective archer (AA PrC). This build fills a niche in taking down epic AC targets that melee doesn't have enough AB to connect with
-There are oodles of different ways to build an effective melee build

Yes, I'm aware of sneak archers, divine might archers, and the like, but those builds are almost always more effective with a sword than with a bow.

[Edge]

I'm gonna be honest... got the same problem going here as we do on the Paizo boards. Soon as the number crunching starts spilling out, my eyes cross.

[Deleted]

Actually, one of the best builds for archers I've seen yet didn't involve AA at all.

[suddenperihelion]

As I said, I am aware of other archer builds! I'm curious to hear more details of the build in question, though.

[Voice of Kerensky]

May 22, 2015 6:33:08 GMT -5 Edge said:

I'm gonna be honest... got the same problem going here as we do on the Paizo boards. Soon as the number crunching starts spilling out, my eyes cross.

Well, that's what us number crunchers are here for.