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A thing I find useful is movement. It's all well and good the archer being 300ft back from the rest of the party, but if the enemy has a way to move far and fast- flight, legendary actions (There are homebrews out there for lesser legendaries for 'boss style' monsters that aren't high CR), teleportation etc- then suddenly being so far away is a bad thing, because now the other players need to run over over multiple turns to get in range to help while the archer is trying to survive in melee. Had a ranged character that had a very bad time with this while fighting a Valkyrie. One moment it was fighting the front line, the next it had leapt up and was flying towards them while throwing spears, the rest of the party running behind to catch up.
We have a minmaxer who somehow builds characters 2-3 levels more effective than anyone else. Having multiple simultaneous threats (not 1 monster and mooks) in a combat made it possible for the rest of the party to contribute to victory.
@@SusCalvin This is a comment about a D&D DMing issue, so what's a shotgun got to do with anything? Firearms are not part of most settings in D&D. Saying "so don't play D&D" in a discussion of ways to handle a minor and occasional issue is a very strange response.
Firearms can commonly be found in the Sword Cost by the timeline of 5e. Given that the Faērūn is the most common place in 5e to adventure in, not having access to them is also seems like a DMing issue.
Based on that ending I just want to say that you're not just almost certainly a great DM (so high INT and WIS) - you're also charming, thoughtful, skilled, hot and flexible. (CHA and AGI) Plus we know from other feats in videos that you're able to withstand cold weather with nearly no gear (CON) and just generally capsule of lifting heavy shit (STR)... ... So if you need external validation the rest of us are screwed.
@@Scott-ql2kxand still add a further digit. It’s like scoping out a project. It will always take twice the time estimated, even if you’ve already taken this into account.
@@Scott-ql2kx nah. The whole game's made up, the DMs allowed to make up anything they want. If that means doubling an enemy's healthy or giving them an unplanned "second phase" that doesn't change its stats too much, they're allowed to do that.
That can keep the fight going, but if you don’t do anything tactically as well, then it doesn’t actually fix the balance issue, it just pushes it into “one player is getting a challenge and the rest struggle to survive while barely feeling like they make an impact”
There is one specific thing most people ignore when playing dnd, and that's vision. 600ft range doesn't help you a lot of you only have 90-300ft darkvision. It doesn't help you if the enemies are obscured by fog, or completely hidden behind (full) cover (as you mentioned in the video) Also, next to using cover, or fast moving creatures, there's also another thing easily being coverlook: Magic. Aka illusions, teleport and phase-shift. Oh and what I really loved about your video, especially at the end, this isn't just a guide to "deal with archers" it's a proper guide of how to utilise every party member in an encounter. And on that note, I want to share an experience I had with a new DM in Pathfinder: I was a gnome melee-fighter, and we had an encounter with Goblins, most of them were higher up or further away so attacked from afar, and I was trying to get closer to the melee gnomes. And here is, when the whole group, not just the DM, is responsible for a great encounter experience. As almost everyone else of our group was a ranged char, or had at least ranged options, they always killed the melee goblins before I even could get to them, so out of 10-15 goblins, 5-6 of which were melee or at least reachable for me, I managed attack 1-2, and all my actions prior to that were just "move" (as you have to use an action to move in pathfinder). - So while it's good if the DM makes a balanced encounter and give every player a possibility to do something, it's also important for the players to act accordingly.
Those are some really good points about visibility, and a reminder that even if your weapon system can plausibly reach out to 600ft, your unassisted eyes might not be very helpful at those distances, especially in less than ideal conditions, like dark night, or inclement weather. I would also say that most characters, even well equipped enemies, should carry a backup weapon, perhaps even a ranged one, as it can be very frustrating when the only practical action you can take is a double move towards the enemy, or take cover and ready your action to ambush the advancing monsters. This is something I often see: that just because someone has built a character to specialize in a certain tactic, like melee, does not mean they can’t carry a bow or crossbow and be able to present a threat at range as well. Remember: Aragorn used a bow sometimes too, and even Gimli threw an axe or 2 in his day! After all, as the above video clearly shows, flexibility is a very valuable trait to possess as well!
Thank you for sharing your knowledge and talents with us! I don’t know much about D&D but you’ve inspired me as a man to start pole dancing, so I really appreciate your example. Keep up the good work!
One aspect of ranged combat a lot of people don’t take into account is just how damn bulky (not even heavy) ammunition is. A quiver only holds 20 arrows in 5e (which is already pretty bulky), and if you carry more than two quivers worth, it’s gonna start getting real wacky where you’re keeping all of those with out a bag of holding or the magic quiver. And unlike all the other random stuff in your inventory, you can’t reasonably just drop your arrows like you could drop the 12 goblin short swords you may or may not be carrying.
@@Delmworksthe actual weight has nothing to do with what I described. Arrows take up a lot more space than you’d expect. You can physically carry the weight of crap load of them, but where are you putting them all? One extra quiver worth of them fills up a backpack.
How many arrows can an archer carry, I think that'd be my goto if I had a troublesome ranged build. They can only RaW recover half their arrows/bolts after each encounter, so unless they carry a lot they'll need to restock somewhat often. They also need to take the time to do it, so if there is a time crunch, or they are rushing around to save a dragon from some villagers then they might run out.
The answer still is a lot, especially if you encounter enemies who also use arrows -- I counted every arrow when playing a ranged rogue in an underdark campaign and still ended up with more than I could use. I think that I carried 2 full quivers in case we got separated from our baggage NPCs (again) most of the time. In hindsight, the DM could have let us loot fewer usable arrows, but they aren't heavy and there's only so many turns of combat to try and use them.
A small thing that can help scale back the power of ranged characters is make them keep track of ammo. Most DMs don’t, but if your overpowered arrow machinegun is firing 5 arrows a turn, but started the quest with only 20 arrows, they might run out two long rests away from civilization
The idea is to force them to use backup melee weapons, which in theory they should have. The problem is abusing ranged combat, so the easy way to fairly and realistically stop it is to not give them unlimited ammo
@@isaacmarsh2609 this is why i make them track magic ammo and barley ever give magic ranged weapons instead so you dont force people to lose over half their class abilities in a lich fight because minions exist
@your_SecondShadow, fair enough. I tend to ply more “grounded” D&D where PCs track ammo anyway. I reward them for forethought (packing lots of ammo) or cleverness (scavenging or producing more) but I don’t play BG3 style where all ranged weapons have unlimited ammunition. As a result, in the campaigns I play in, if a ranged focus PC was being problematic, they would be balanced out by requiring an expendable resource (that I can restrict) to function, the same way other classes have spell slots, and backup weapons were common to deal with running out of arrows or with enemies who got close. The most important part of any DM advice is to know your players and their style and work within that framework, my answer comes out of that reality. While your method of limiting magic ammunition and weapons is probably more functional for you, most of the enemies my players face are humanoids, and magic equipment doesn’t make a huge difference for example. I answered the way I would address that issue at my table.
My rogue character was in a battle where he hid in the shadows and just shot his crossbow at the BBEG while the rest of the party was dealing with area effects and minions. Because he was able to stay hidden, he kept the BBEG pinned down and prevented things from getting worse.
@@MalloonTarka You (a) do have to make a new stealth check every time you hide, which is different from simply riding the same stealth check each time and (b) unless you also move, they still know where the shot came from so could still shoot at disadvantage or simply charge your position. You have lost the primary advantage to not being seen.
Closer to the end you hit all the things I planned on commenting! Don't overly target the min-maxxer (i've been guilty of that before oops), Do let the players do what they made their characters to do (aka, don't knock them prone every time when flying, just enough that it isn't aninstant win strat), and remember to let everyone have fun at the game, maybe the fighter DOES clean the floor but that wasn't the point of the encounter anyway. Amazing video, thanks for doing this!
Two more methods: 1) track arrows, even if you let the archers restock at zero cost to save time, if you have 90 arrows and the dungeon has 30 orcs, you may well run out and will have to think a bit more about what is and is not worth shooting at. 2) become a Hussite, even a goblin can strap a barn door to a wagon and create a slow-moving yet impenetrable-to-arrows wall, just make sure to encourage creative ways of dealing with it. In the real world, the advantage of archery was balanced by abysmal attack speed when compared to melee - a bow can get to six to ten arrows per minute, a sword can do 90 attacks in that time, and that's using a very conservative attack speed (it would be ~200 with the top speed I know about).
Truly awesome video, I like how you took the time to animate out all the melee and adversarial actions of the monsters, as well as your own; portraying them simultaneously; it really adds to the sense of action, and makes it crystal clear the situations you are describing; very good work! I feel compelled to add to a point you portrayed visually with your handy crossbow: the fact that loading a crossbow takes actual time! Thank you! I’ve never much cared for game features that remove that key component of the crossbow, the major feature of it in fact: that it can be loaded, and loaded ahead of time. It’s why crossbow expert is such a problematic feat, at least for me, as it removes a concrete, physics based fact of life of the crossbow, and does it entirely via game rules; no physical modification of the crossbow required! I’ve always found that completely removing the loading property of crossbows makes them feel not like crossbows, and turns them into nearly silent, semi-automatic guns, which often does not feel like it fits with much of the high fantasy, low tech of typical D&D settings like Forgotten Realms (though, it would fit very well in Eberron). Additionally, repeating crossbows are a thing, both in D&D and real life, so why not just use those if you want to bypass loading? Ancient Chinese Repeating Crossbow: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Repeating_crossbow All that said, I wanted to add a point I think some often miss: if those archers dual wielding hand crossbows are doing too much damage with those super light weight, light draw things (which were historically considered toys by the wealthy), then maybe 5E balancing point was off (shocking I know!). As a GM / DM, you can change the rules, as they are mere suggestions (and in 5E often overly simplified, poor ones). Simply use your GM power to adjust the hand crossbow down to a d4, which is exactly where it should be anyway! Besides, the poor, sad d4 gets almost no use anyway, let your players play with the funny looking, potentially dangerous floor caltrops; let them feel different! While we’re at it, let great axe users throw 3d4 as well, it’s statistically stronger than 1 d12 anyway, and lets the barbarian feel even more special! All barbarians should feel special! :) Anyway, that’s all I wanted to say; sorry about the paragraphs, but if I choose to say something, it seldom ends up a small thing.
Yeah, I personally quite like the base crossbow rules: they do more damage than equivalent bows, but are slower, making them perfect for rogues, mages, and the like, but trained warriors who can shoot a longbow quickly will be better off with that. I feel like crossbow expert was literally designed for people who want ‘medieval gun’ characters (which is odd, because guns canonically exist in-setting anyway) A repeating crossbow would be a fun, niche variant that would make up that gap
Good points about the reloading issue, however I'd like to point out: 1) The crossbow dps builds don't really rely on the crossbow's damage die but on a lot of flat bonuses or additional dice like sneak attack. Reducing the crossbow initial average damage by one won't really do anything. 2) Regarding greataxes, 3d4 are stronger on average but certain features such as the barbarian's brutal critical or the half-orc's savage attacks add additional damage dice on critical hits, which are more likely to happen when using reckless attacks. I'd have to calculate which option would be better, but doing 4d12 on a crit sounds alot better than doing 8d4 (lvl9 half-orc barbarian).
@@ancoron8257 The D4 bit was more of an aside, a minor bump down to help adjust expectations concerning lethality for a little hand crossbow with such a light draw, and to give the d4 some more love. The core of the downward adjustment to the dual wielding hand crossbows would be to bring some much needed balance to the feat Crossbow Expert, simply removing its total negation of the loading property. This would still allow dual hand crossbows to be able to do a quick 1, 2 punch, but they would then either have to drop them and draw two more (which would get bulky and expensive) or reload one, and make another attack if they are a class that gets an additional attack at 5th, or even another if a fighter. For the great axe: The Barbarian Brutal Critical exact wording of “one additional weapon die”, then scales up to 2 at 13, and 3 at 17 when you roll at 20 can be handled by ruling that the weapon die of a great axe is 3d4, not 1d4, and you’d make a similar change to the Half Orc’s Savage Attack ability. I get 3d12 for a lvl 9 half orc barbarian on a crit; 1 for the weapon, 1 for Barbarian Brutal Critical, and 1 for Half Orc’s Savage Attack. So, for a lvl 9 half orc barbarian, that would be 3 3d4, so 9d4: 36 / 2: 18 average damage, compared to 3d12: 36 / 2: 18. At lvl 13 it’s a 4d12: 38 / 2: 19; but comparing it to 4 3d4; 12d4: 48 / 2: 24; a bit better. Also, the minimum damage will be much better: as of each of those 12 little d4s can be a 1 - 4; resulting in a minimum hit of 12, and a maximum of 48; nice! While 4 big boy d12s can be 1 - 12; but you could get 3 1s; ouch! That’s a 3 damage minimum, with a 48 max; too swingy for my taste. Additionally, I find that high minimum damage reflects the extreme threat a giant, two handed axe should convey, that is a lot of sharp metal swinging down, and even on less than a perfect hit, there is a lot of force and impact bundled up in that metal, and it’s gonna hurt, and drop a lot more hurt than 3 hp represents! That’s sad dagger lvl potential disappointment lurking in there; saddest great axe ever… :( All this assumes your player is ok throwing all those little caltrops around of course! Conversely, if that many d4s are deemed an unwanted hazard, just let those class and race feats add big boy d12s to their 3d4s: let players toss their pile of d4s, then drop a big d12 down for a finisher if they crit; make it even more exciting! Give em the best of both worlds!
@@MrDelightfulRPG Agreeing about the crossbow side of things. Greataxes though: I feel like the current RAW is essential in differenciating greataxes and greatswords. Doing the rulings like you suggested would make the greataxe preferably to the greatsword in every single instance, even if you granted the same multiple-damage-dice-added-on-these-features ruling to them. So this would properly imbalance the weapons against each other. Currently the greatsword is the safe option, while the greataxe is the barbarians way to do huge crits. And about the flavour of rolling low: any hit leads to damage, even ones with abysmal edge alignment, low force or barely any accuracy. People like to think about the attack roll as everything regarding the way you swing, but it is better to understand both in combination dictate both how you swing and thus how much damage is done. However you rule, make sure none of those d4 gets lost ;)
This biggest problem balance-wise IMO is the Archery Fighting Style: a +2 to the attack roll. Bonuses to the attack roll increase the damage much more than bonuses to the subsequent damage roll, making this the best fighting style out of all of them, at least when it comes to damage output. It should have just been a +2 to the damage roll, like with the Dueling Fighting Style.
That's an option or it could have been conditional, as in +2 to hit when the target is benefitting from cover. Or take after the old precise shot and say creatures don't provide cover against your ranged attacks.
I have a L16 Monk/Fighter that practices Kyudou. Most combats they are highly accurate, but deal lower damage, they only pull out the big guns on important bbeg.
Definitely appreciate things like this, especially when I have lots of players who like to min-max in my games... despite me much rather not having that be the case. Not all my players are like this but this is definitely helpful for those select few. Overall, really cool stuff all around, and I love your commitment to sticking with the archery gimmick, it is really cool, easily one of my favorite things to see in action.
I make a small nerf to sharpshooter. I either tone down or outright remove the ability to ignore cover. The reason why, is because it's a feature that's both boring and strong. It means the archer can just pick any spot that has a good line of sight and plant their butt down, doing nothing but roll dice. If they now have to deal with cover(which imo is supposed to be the balancing factor that limits ranged characters) then they're forced to move around and find better angles of shooting. That ways it plays more like Xcom and less like bloons tower defence.
Another tact against missile fighters that most don't use, is limited ammo. While a person can swing a sword for years, the archer will run out of ammunition, even worse if the monster needs+1 arrows to damage it at all
I have 3 archery specialist characters I've run in the last year. My half-elf multiclass ranger/rogue with sharpshooter would be ridiculous outdoors so when we are outdoors we are in a forest or jungle with limited visibility or it's at night and 60' darkvision only allows shooting at 60' range or we are dungeon crawling. Sharpshooter with a longbow and sneak attack would be able to due brutal damage if only the character had a target at 600'. I also have an eldritch knight horse archer with sharpshooter, expertise at animal handling, and mounted combatant. He also has a sword and shield for when things get up close.
"Give them the ability to fly, and that's a problem." Hee hee, yeah. First time playing, I chose a rogue aarakocra, and was able to do a lot of damage without getting nabbed because I could fly.
So fun GM story time. I made a GMPC who has a LOT going on as a ranged character. A tiny look is they are Eldritch Archer with dips into Ranger and Rogue. And while I COULD fudge this part, my rolls are always sh*t! The guy cannot hit the broad side of a mountain unless he literally closes his eyes. Whenever he BLINDLY fires at something, he hits! And the guy has BLINDSENSE! So unless something negates that sense, he STILL cant hit anything! Its been a joke to either make a melee character or ritually blind my guy! At least he has some utility as other stuff like the face, etc...
0:34 Yeah it definitely isn't just ranged characters. The scenario of turning a boss monster into a bloody mist is something that Paladins are basically designed from the ground up to do. Their entire kit by default, is just a gigantic enormous burst damage. There is also something to say about a +10 Damage boost from Sharpshooter. It's cool, but it's flat. Sharpshooter is really dangerous at low levels, because +10 is massive. When you're at mid-high levels, +10 is pretty whatever. Your "Impressive" 80 damage, becomes the single target component of an AoE spell that at minimum will still do half damage that a spellcaster has. While the caster has gone from dealing 20 to 140, you'll have gone from 80 to 110 in those same levels. Non-Magical Archers tend to get out-scaled.
Love ya, but as a D100 GM n' Player, I often aske to power-up archer 'cause other GM often tell : -Your bow is not always ready to shoot, taking an arrow in your back take time, -Bows have ridiculous fire rate (Warhammer 1 attack per turn, Warrior 1 up to 10), -Swordmen can run 50m in 6s and hit you twice before you can even shoot (BasiC) -You don't have LoS ... or you get shoot in the back by an "ally" archer (we all have a Dumbo Player that play archer with the luck worst than )
Is ranged combat OP? Yes. Should it be OP? Also, yes. Not just because historically ranged combat had been really powerful but because you need such power to stand a chance of making it to even level 10 without a TPK being statistically inevitable.
One piece of advice that applies to any game you play with multiple people (and a few that you don't) is "If you give gamers the tools to do so, they will optimise the fun out of the game." D&D has always had issues like this. Whether it's spellcasters getting access to room-clearing nukes while the melee guys can only hit one or two people a turn, or the frequently-reinforced misunderstanding of rules around Nat 20s and Persuasion rolls allowing high-CHA characters to bypass entire fights by chatting or seducing the encounter, D&D players are prone to doing it a lot, because just one person can decide they want to play that way and cause problems for the rest. On the DM's end, you expressed the solutions very well. Proof some (but not all!) encounters against that sort of thing, and use the tools at one's disposal to stop one person destroying whole encounters one-handed. Even something like adjusting HP values or the numbers of bad guys can help there. (As a sidenote, most of the tables I've been at simply banned people making long-range Aaracockra or Winged Tieflings. Flying PCs are much easier to plan around if they do most of their damage in melee.)
I was surprised to learn that there was such a bias against rangers in the dnd community bc I had SO much fun playing one for a while, surprising myself with how much of a powerhouse I could be in combat - I think, thankfully, I nerfed /myself/ a little bit because I'm also an idiot who just kind of mashes in whatever sounds decent when I'm levelling up (I know I definitely nerfed my spellcasting by not realising WISDOM was important to that and disregarding it in favour of putting my better rolls in strength and dex lol, and I'm almost certain I made many other choices that would be deemed foolish by min-maxers and the like, but hey-ho, I'm more into the RP side anyway, I was having plenty of fun)
Whenever anyone in a campaign suggest doing something impractical as an archer I always check afterwards if you have shown it is/isn't and how hard it is. You do things in real life I would have told players to use a DC20 with disadvantage to attempt! Thanks for the stunning content!
Our DM made a terrible mistake and allowed me to play a Horizon Walker Ranger 8/Battlemaster Fighter 3/Assassin Rogue 3 along with the Sharpshooter and Piercer feats and giving us massive amounts of magic items my character alone is packing enough magical ammunition to do in average rolls upwards of 800 damage in her first turn if she went all out with all of the expensive high level magic arrows. Thankfully it's not too noticeable as the rest of our party is almost as bad and the Winged Tiefling Sorlock is definitely worse.
Well if you're all balanced it seems fine? Though if I was your DM I would at least mess with your group once by setting up encounters either where the stakes are really low and the enemies weak (good thing all that power gives you when your mission is to metaphorically get a cat down from a tree) or I would make it necessary for you to pull your punches (self-sacrificing enemies whom you need to keep alive or something) :)
If anyone thinks archer builds can be pretty overpowered, then go and have a look at the RPGBOT article "Bugbear-y Me in Damage", particularly the one built around Scorching Ray. The whole thing's an exploration of how bugbear surprise attack breaks the math, and it includes the line "solo a CR 20 enemy in one turn".
"Maybe there's a puzzle there" and my INT-heavy rogue archer is super there for it, yeah. I love doing absurd amounts of damage from afar but I also like puzzles and roleplay! The DM for the campaign where I've played a rogue archer the longest has nearly killed me multiple times by placing other archers on the map -- most combat encounters, I either take no damage at all, or get critted on. The last time we were in a volcano, what he did was introduce some sparks who could dispel magic, after I'd gotten a Ring of Spell Storing (I actually killed that character in melee, it was a whole RP thing for my character, really heartbreaking, and picked the ring out of the pyre we'd burned him in) and had the sorcerer put Haste in it before every rest -- which took me out of combat for a round, because I was the one concentrating. There was also a fight where an enemy used Misdirection and my arrow killed a PC -- I was Hasted, so I could have gotten to him in one turn, if we had Potions of Healing. So now my super smart true neutral rogue archer has also become a back-up healer.
All good thoughts and ideas. I run into this quite often, as I usually DM at a games store with an open table policy. Thus, I've had to adapt my DMing toolbox to a very changing set of conditions. Not specific to archers, but definitely appropriate to the SS/CBE/EA issue is to simply give the power player an obvious threat with a metric ton of hp. I mean, they built the character specifically to do massive damage. If you let them, they're happy. Simultaneously, I toss lower hp threats at the other players to give them their moments to shine. I even have a list of different concepts to reskin for those players not traditionally powerful in combat: I toss highly mobile enemies with extremely low CON at the Monk, so he can land his stun and feel good about it. I toss swarms of low hp minions at casters who love Fireball. I toss swarms of zombies at Clerics. I toss traps at the Artificers, and low WIS guards for the Assassin to take out. Yeah this sounds like a lot of extra work, and if I'd conceived of it as a single goal and tried to do it all at once, it would have been. Rather, it's been a decade in the making and I just keep adding and modifying the toolbox. The one essential tool that I can never get rid of is the realization that my goal as a DM is NOT to beat the players. My goal is to give them a credible opposition that they WILL beat in a glorious way. I consider it a successful session when I've managed to give everyone at the table a heroic moment.
My personal favorite is to make the archer want to choose the non combat option. Put them in the middle of a storm where ranged combat is all but impossible. Don't do this all the time of course, but every now and then just show them that they aren't the only option.
I've shot in some pretty heavy winds without issue, and in the rain. If it's bad enough to make archery difficult, it's probably going to make melee combat just as much so. In all honesty, though, melee characters have some pretty strong combinations as well. Sentinel, polearm master, and great weapon master make a very effective combination when taken together, for example, and a crit fishing paladin with elven accuracy is also rather potent. As for spellcasters...let's just say that once the party hits moderately high levels, any full spellcaster that isn't keeping up with an archer in terms of effectiveness really needs to rethink what spells they're using.
@@alexanderflack566the issue I’d say is that these powerful combos force players to use specific builds to keep up. Not all archers should have to use a hand crossbow to be effective, and not all melee fighters should feel pigeonholed into using a halberd. Not least because there are some classes (e.g. monk) that aren’t designed to use any of those options.
@@blumineck You don't need to use polearms; the paladin example I gave typically doesn't, since paladins are somewhat MAD and have fewer feats in the first place compared to a fighter. Also, hand crossbow isn't that much better than a longbow, even with crossbow expert, especially with certain classes. It's much better with rogue, of course, but ranger often needs their bonus action for other things. In the end, you will always get a much more effective build if you know what you're doing than if you don't; nerfing archery isn't going to change that. It's just been my experience that the options are much better balanced than this video implies. Unless you fight primarily flying enemies in open fields, ranged martial weapons simply don't offer a massive advantage over melee combat, especially compared to the advantage the spellcasters have over both.
@@alexanderflack566 I take your point! I’m mostly basing this off the number of guides that state that if you’re not using crossbows in a ranged build, or a great weapon (or better yet, a polearm) as a melee build, you’re somehow Doing It Wrong(tm). The video is mostly intended to point out that archery *isn’t* overpowered, as long as you remember to make your combats varied and use tactics.
I once had a player who loved taking cover in a tree or behind a cliff while peppering the battlefield with arrows. My solution to the event described in the opening to this video was to have my boss guarded by tanky melee fighters who could use a reaction to take incoming ranged attacks. The player wasn’t accomplishing nothing because damage was still happening, but one-shotting the boss was impossible.
I just made a new ranged fighter character, using exandria guns as the DM allows, my own little way of balancing this was to make my character something that i encourage many many people to, not min-max :] Yes my character is an excellent shooter, but i put flaws in it, and only picked feats/proficiencies that makes sense with the lore rather than the build
Absolutely love this video!! I've been watching the channel for ages, as a keen D&D player with an archer ranger I've been playing foir about 4 years at this point. This might be a bit out of the blue but after enjoying your videos for free for so long, I wanted to offer some free general video feedback that might help push your channel even further. My main observation is that people come here for the unique content (700k subs is amazing, well done) but a bit of added sheen to the videos might help even more! 1 - Audio compression. Apply a fair bit of compression to the microphone audio track if possible, either in a free software like Audacity or in your video editor if available. It raises the volume of the quieter moments and squashes the volume of the louder bits so that overall the volume is nice and even throughout. This will help with the issue of the most part of the video feeling too quiet compared to other videos, or moments where it suddenly sounds louder because your mouth moved closer to your mic. Once you have the preset set up, its super easy to apply to every video! 2 - Background music. This is down to taste so can definitely be ignored if it's not for you, but from what I've seen other similar creators in the space have some faint background music which can really help with the overall atmosphere and sheen. Royalty free music libraries are a good place to start. Worth experimenting with at least! 3 - Quality control. As far as I noticed this video is edited really nicely, but I noticed in some past videos you accidentally leave in a failed take of some script, followed immediately by the good take. Whenever I upload a long edited video I make sure to do a quick watchthrough of any renders to try and catch things like this. Like I said, this one looks good so maybe you've already fixed that. 4 - Facial discipline. Lots of shots end with you looking away from the camera, walking away, closing your eyes etc. If you watch some other bigger video creators that show their face, this often isn't the case, their shots will end with them still looking at the camera, or at least in a natural position that makes it feel like the next shot is a continuation of the conversation. (Some of this is down to clean editing too.) If you hold the camera's gaze, you'll hold the audience with you! Ok that's probably a lot so I'll stop. I hope you take this friendly critique the way it's intended, looking forward to seeing your channel grow even more!
very insightfull video, but i have 1 question: is there any type of weapon you dont have for crying out loud? seriously, you have massive swords, bows, crosbows, axes everything
Most creatures in the monster manual do not have a ranged attack. Obviously most creatures can make an improvised ranged weapon attack, but they wouldn't have proficiency in it. I think the issue is shockingly simple to solve because it is so easy to add a ranged attack into a stat block. Humanoid enemies should at least have crossbows because they are easy to use. A big, strong and imposing enemy might have proficiency in improvised weapons, which they use to throw rocks, chairs and even people. Intelligent enemies or pack animals may use tactics like flanking. A really stupid enemy might just charge at the party and hit whoever is closest, but a pack of wolves will send one or two to flank around the sides for a pincer attack. Finally, the solution should never be to make ranged combat useless because ranged combat is a class fantasy. If you put teleporting enemies that can move 300 ft. without provoking opportunity attacks that bee-line to the archer then that's no better than putting in hordes of spellcasters into your encounters who take turns casting Counterspell the moment anyone tries to cast something. You want to CHALLENGE the ranged fighter, not DISCOURAGE them.
Enemy cultists. Just very low-level hyoomons...with the Magic Initiate: Warlock feat. A good half dozen or so, plus a couple of tougher more-casty cult leaders and maybe a summoned eldritch horror with magic resistance and a big bucket of basic hit points, and it's a party! And your archer is their Special Friend. Eldritch Blast cantrip, Hex spell (have 'em mess up Wisdom if you want to nuke ArcherBoi's Perception so they can be sneaky). Grasp of Hadar invocation because you're the DM and said they can have it. Spread 'em out. Or as the wannabe Rommel in your group would yell, "Keep your interval!" And as soon as ArcherGurl takes out one of their number, it's ON. They get pelted with blasts that drag their "I hide off the edge of the battlemap because the DM can't say there isn't cover there I'm clever" ass out into the open, where they get more swiss-cheesed than that guy in Robocop. Sauce for the goose. And besides... who can turn down an adventure where you take on the Cult of Hadar? I mean... baddies with Hunger of Hadar, (mmmm, damaging darkness and unfriendly tentacles), Evard's Black Tentacles (for you anime pervs), some nice heart-carvin' action, maybe a telepathically-delivered nightmare or two to interfere with Long Rest... sounds like Spring Break to me!
Fantastic video and insights, but don't overtax that injured shoulder! It honestly almost impossible to tell, but based on range of motion and a few slightly abreaviated actions, I'm... guessing it's the right one that's still on the mend? Everyone with eyes already KNOWS you're a bloody LEGEND; you can afford to dial it back a bit until the sore wing is fighting fit again!🥺😨🧡😊
We *REALLY* need more archer love in DnD5e, we have no archer specific classes (rangers have no incentive to be archers apart from Swift Quiver, but they also have plenty of more melee-centric spells), and our only archer specific subclass is Arcane Archer, which sucks
All good thoughts and ideas. I run into this quite often, as I usually DM at a games store with an open table policy. Thus, I've had to adapt my DMing toolbox to a very changing set of conditions. Not specific to archers, but definitely appropriate to the SS/CBE/EA issue is to simply give the power player an obvious threat with a metric ton of hp. I mean, they built the character specifically to do massive damage. If you let them, they're happy. Simultaneously, I toss lower hp threats at the other players to give them their moments to shine. I even have a list of different concepts to reskin for those players not traditionally powerful in combat: I toss highly mobile enemies with extremely low CON at the Monk, so he can land his stun and feel good about it. I toss swarms of low hp minions at casters who love Fireball. I toss swarms of zombies at Clerics. I toss traps at the Artificers, and low WIS guards for the Assassin to take out. Yeah this sounds like a lot of extra work, and if I'd conceived of it as a single goal and tried to do it all at once, it would have been. Rather, it's been a decade in the making and I just keep adding and modifying the toolbox. The one essential tool that I can never get rid of is the realization that my goal as a DM is NOT to beat the players. My goal is to give them a credible opposition that they WILL beat in a glorious way. I consider it a successful session when I've managed to give everyone at the table a heroic moment.
Love to see more DnD/ tabletop rpg content from you! I’m curious if you’ve played other systems and how you think archery is handled best in what ones if your looking for video ideas either way great content as always!
A level 3 fighter has +3 with all weapons as far as I know. There is no special archer. You can fight with a mauser or sword or bottle or hand grenade as the situation warrants. One advantage of ranged weapons is sometimes initiative. A group of people with pistols drawn can fire as a troll runs up. If the troll has a pistol they fight im the same bracket.
This is an awesome video. LOL I didn't know you went inside, I thought you only lived in your backyard shooting arrows and poledancing all day. xD Also, idk if you noticed, but your audio is extremely low in this. Idk if youtube might let you raise the volume in the editor, without having to reupload, but you should see if it's fixable.
Well i think still spellcasters are king in the game. Honestly as a long time DnD player and DM, archers never bothered me much, a well built archer will be above powercurve at levels 5-6, 11-12 and 14-16. But i think it is fair because they only get those levels to be stronger than others and even then from my experience by an insubstantial margin. As to melees getting more options, i htink that is fair because their options are a lot about survival( like second wind, unarmored defense, and various self buffs) because htey are in the thick of it, and otherwise they woudl have only i hit closest monster with an attack ad infinitum. Archers usually atleast have a wider pick of targets and positions to be in battle. Also rangers dont deal well with hordes, as they dotn have any inherrent good AOE until very late into the game. Also a suggestion for any other DMs, use casters to deal with archers if htey are beign a nuisance, but not maybe directly, use spells like wall of fire/forcewall to force them to reposition.
I've been playing in a pretty Hard-Combat-Focused campaign as a somewhat un-optimal Crossbow ranger, and man. Rangers may be "underpowered" but I am outdamaging the spellcasters, the fighter, everybody out here with Crossbow Expert and Hunters Mark and a +1 weapon and its got me thinking about how terrifying a fast-firing archer of the fantasy type would actually be. Terrifying! Imagine that kind of firepower just, machine gunning through foes. I'm so glad you talked about Cover--Cover is really important early on, and even after archers start being able to work around it, I think a little thought about line of sight can make cover relevant again--sure, you can ignore partial cover and stuff, but if you can't *see* the target, you'll need to move. Moving, avoiding or focusing on enemy ranged combatants or god help you, enemy casters, can help make archers feel more dynamic. I've found some worth in DMing with powerful archer characters in having things like mobs of easily killed bad guys which the archer or melee fighters can stomp, but which in numbers can be a problem--the fighter and the Ranger can divy up targets and work together to effectively control and destroy the enemy while keeping their wizard safe and that can be really fun.
I get that previous editions really favoured (long)swords over pretty much every other weapon. But 5e's weird overcorrection into making hand crossbows and polearms--weapons almost no hero in fantasy fiction uses--the best options in the game never sat right with me. Anyway, great video! You covered all the bases in a fun and interesting way, and the editing on those combat examples was fantastic!
I just wish that they didn’t make feats for some weapons that were just flat out better than what other weapons get, regardless of what the weapon is. An extra bonus action attack is HUGE, as is 10 points of damage per attack, and restricting it to specific weapons restricts the fun and variety of the game
Excellent vid! I didn’t notice anything about volume being a problem until I came here to the comments looking for that map book (I believe it’s Immersive Battle Maps by Yarro Studios. ) Volume seemed fine to me (aren’t you wearing 2 mics?!?) and content was awesome as always!
Pretty new to D&D. Playing a swarmkeeper ranger. After our last session the DM said, "you guys were supposed to run from that fight, but you got lucky." The boss was prone and unable to act for roughly 5 rounds and I was dealing roughly 17-20 damage each turn (we're lvl 2 btw). When the boss finally got up, he immediately charged me and slapped my ass for hitting him so much.
A very high effort video on an insanely complex topic. I myself could write a huge essay on this problem (like the fact that ranged martials MUST have some kill power if they want to leverage their target accessibility), but this will take way too much time. One thing I can add is that vast majority of builds I saw that run CBE+SS tend to over-focus on damage while neglecting everything else. They usually have little-to-no saves (Resilient in Wis/Con alone won't cut it), no utility, limited mobility tools, etc, which can be detrimental as the variety of challenges tend to increase with the game's progression. Unfortunately, this is a shared issue among many martial builds, not only ranged ones.
I built my character as a winged tiefling Fathomless warlock/Sea sorcerer with a Spell Sniper-ed and Eldritch Spear-ed Eldritch Blast. Normal range 600 ft, Distant Spell 1200 ft. I can push and pull at range, allowing me to manipulate the battlefield and keep people off vulnerable targets or draw them into range of the tanky characters. However, it's very, very rare where I'm actually able to use my range, as most fights take place within 30-60 ft, well within EB's natural 120. Out of the three years I've played him, I can count on one hand the number of encounters I've had that allowed me to make use of the full range. DMs, if someone's built their character to do something, throw something at them that allows them to do that thing. Keep them in check if it's too OP, but let them do the thing they are meant to do, or "shoot your monks."
I'm not a min maxer, and don't have special equipment, but as a Gloomstalker Ranger with a 18 in Dex and Tasha's Optional Rules, I absolutely steal everyone's kills. The biggest problem I face, and one thing I absolutely love about playing a Ranger is having to relocate and move to make sure I can still fight effectively.
This is a major part of what makes D&D such a terribly designed game. If's built simultaneously like a board game where you're having abstracted tactical fights whose goal is to have good builds and win encounters while also being a game that completely breaks down if you play it that way but completely breaks down if you don't.
Dragonborn sorcerers with a shield spell are funny. Base AC of 12 or 13 +5 AC lvl 1 reaction spell lol Im gonna min-max my next character as an archer purely to make suboptial decisions in combat for the lols
I’ve been able to put together a really fun Archer build in a combat focused dnd game I’m in with an Artificer + Echo Knight Fighter build. It’s been insanely fun and despite the minor damage problem I face at the moment (I don’t have extra attack yet cause multi class) I’ve been able to put Sharp Shooter to good use with a +7 to hit for the reduced accuracy. My normal to hit rn is a +12 and it is crazy funny to a lot of the people I play with. The dm who also usually runs Echo Knight said he thought the build was really interesting and found he liked the ingenuity
I am currently playing as a Rogue with Crossbow Expert, mainly just because I want a higher chance to hit my sneak attack when it's my turn. Having just one more chance to land a hit is the difference between excitement...and utter disappointment. Sure I could use Cunning Action: Aim, but I hate being locked down in one spot when mobility is so important during combat.
I want to call special attention to the spell that countered my OP Archer in a final boss fight, Wind Wall. I love this spell. Arrows and Bolts cannot pass through the Wind Wall and a person moving through it has to make a STR Save. And what's the most popular Dump Stat for a ranged character? Strength of course!
im currently running a flying bloodhunter who uses a crossbow... already trying to not abuse flying and shooting too much.. even though i planned to take sharpshooter and crossbow expert.. but my dm just made the mistake of giving me the bobbing lilly pad. its a vehicle that can fly/swim and is 10 feet by 10 feet... its literally flying cover.. lol (sorry dm)
So I'm working on an rpg system of my own, and I have dabbled a little bit in archery in the past, but at an extremely low bigginer level. I figure the best way to answer this question is to hope I catch a pro's attention. Is there such a thing as a "quick bow" or some equivalent that isn’t just a short bow? Something that less trained archers could use to rapid fire arrows in the length of a single turn? If so, what would be a fair number of attacks, and what would it be capable of strength wise? All answers are welcome, thank you so much!
Before finishing the vid: you talking about the overpowered range fighter taking out all the enemies while the other players twiddle their thumbs made me think of something. I just got the idea of letting the ranged fighter fight off all the enemies while the other players maybe help NPCs evacuate a dangerous situation. Like, maybe there is a siege or something and they are trying to evacuate out of a room and to an escape tunnel, and the range fighter is fighting off enemies while the other players help NPCs get out from under rubble, help them get to the escape tunnel, heal them if they are injured, etc. Just thought this could actually be kind of cool if handled correctly.
For flying you could also make a rule that flying makes it more difficult to shoot. Flapping your wings or whatever it is that keeps you from falling seems like it could make shooting more difficult, much like running (though Idk whether D&D lets you sprint while shooting with no adverse effects).
But do also remember, ranged characters are always stronger than melee, but Soellcasters are much more strong than any martial. And they can be and usually are ranged. Martials also are usually limited to doing cool things in combat, since their usefulness out of combat can be seriously limited The points in this video are still important, and the melee martials definitely would need a hand But I don’t want to act like the spellcasters are also suffering here. It’s usually them that break encounters because of how powerful spells can be! This isn’t a bad thing, but knowing this helps decide on balance I personally love my support spellcasters that do intense control and can still dish out big damage when needed!!
Nobody ever uses encumbrance or ammo/reagent tracking, even though part of the reason they exist is to make rangers and casters limited in their effectiveness so that melee builds aren't completely overshadowed. It's like using the Free Parking lottery in Monopoly- it might be more fun temporarily for the players that land on it, but the game no longer functions correctly and eventually it just drags.
Excellent content, as always. But this particular video had a serious sound issue. I was blowing out my speakers trying g to hear you, and then your volume would suddenly spike and I'd go deaf. Thank goodness for the subtitles.
Is the audio SUPER quiet for anyone else? I have to go max volume to be even able to hear the talking? Did I fuck up some setting or do others have a hard time hearing this also?
The flying ranged PC is something I am constantly having to deal with in my current campaign in the form of a fairy warlock, so I'm constantly having to find ways to actually threaten them. Most recently, we spent an extended stretch of the campaign in a sprawling outdoor dungeon in the form of a ruined, abandoned city split into different tiers on a promontory. To keep the fairy PC from trivializing everything, I infested the city with a giant flock of perytons that spent all day circling the skies far above the city, such that flying too high risked attracting some down. The rest of the party being groundbound and melee-oriented, the warlock would have to either go to ground themself, or deal with the swarm alone.
The first time I ever played DND the DM made me a powerful archer character so that I wouldn’t die, and then I killed an entire carriage of enemies that we spotted due to someone getting a nat 20 on their perception check, which we were only supposed to encounter when we reached the next city. We then deception-ed our way through the city walls and had a lovely peaceful time in a city filled with boring NPCs
Great video! This is why dms who insist the game is supposed to be played like you run in slug it out, no one moves, make my eyes cross. Like, that's fine if you like it, but I love a good dynamic moving monster and I've found it usually gives each character an aristeia at least once every couple sessions rather than it all going to a single paladin/archer/rogue.
Funnily enough, I am currently running a campaign where all the players have found out their secretly dragons and turn into wyrmling statblocks when they hit zero from lethal damage instead of starting death saves. Meanwhile, I have a bunch of ranged characters in my box that I am teeheeing over as they take risks in exposing themselves.
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I love the way you edited yourself acting things out, and your enthusiasm throughout the video! ❤️
Thank you! Shooting at other people is highly illegal, but shooting at a past/future me is fine 😂
A thing I find useful is movement. It's all well and good the archer being 300ft back from the rest of the party, but if the enemy has a way to move far and fast- flight, legendary actions (There are homebrews out there for lesser legendaries for 'boss style' monsters that aren't high CR), teleportation etc- then suddenly being so far away is a bad thing, because now the other players need to run over over multiple turns to get in range to help while the archer is trying to survive in melee.
Had a ranged character that had a very bad time with this while fighting a Valkyrie. One moment it was fighting the front line, the next it had leapt up and was flying towards them while throwing spears, the rest of the party running behind to catch up.
That’s a great incentive to not stray too far!
It's so cool to see two and even three of you at the same time!
Thanks! It’s not an easy power to master, but it’s fun when it works 😂
We have a minmaxer who somehow builds characters 2-3 levels more effective than anyone else. Having multiple simultaneous threats (not 1 monster and mooks) in a combat made it possible for the rest of the party to contribute to victory.
Stop using games with builds. My favourite build is a level 1 fighter with a shotgun because options are limited.
@SusCalvin so games without options? Any options a player can make about their abilities or equipment will have builds
@@SusCalvin This is a comment about a D&D DMing issue, so what's a shotgun got to do with anything? Firearms are not part of most settings in D&D. Saying "so don't play D&D" in a discussion of ways to handle a minor and occasional issue is a very strange response.
Firearms can commonly be found in the Sword Cost by the timeline of 5e. Given that the Faērūn is the most common place in 5e to adventure in, not having access to them is also seems like a DMing issue.
Based on that ending I just want to say that you're not just almost certainly a great DM (so high INT and WIS) - you're also charming, thoughtful, skilled, hot and flexible. (CHA and AGI)
Plus we know from other feats in videos that you're able to withstand cold weather with nearly no gear (CON) and just generally capsule of lifting heavy shit (STR)...
... So if you need external validation the rest of us are screwed.
It turns out that we’re all screwed, really 😂 but thank you!
Imposter syndrome is awful.
Hot take: the spell Acid Arrow should be usable by rangers
Real dms just add an extra digit to the HP of the boss mid encounter
Only if they're mediocre.
Real DMs have already planned for it.
@@Scott-ql2kxand still add a further digit.
It’s like scoping out a project. It will always take twice the time estimated, even if you’ve already taken this into account.
@@Scott-ql2kx nah. The whole game's made up, the DMs allowed to make up anything they want. If that means doubling an enemy's healthy or giving them an unplanned "second phase" that doesn't change its stats too much, they're allowed to do that.
For me bosses always have max hp for their dice. This will usually only but 1 extra round though.
That can keep the fight going, but if you don’t do anything tactically as well, then it doesn’t actually fix the balance issue, it just pushes it into “one player is getting a challenge and the rest struggle to survive while barely feeling like they make an impact”
There is one specific thing most people ignore when playing dnd, and that's vision.
600ft range doesn't help you a lot of you only have 90-300ft darkvision.
It doesn't help you if the enemies are obscured by fog, or completely hidden behind (full) cover (as you mentioned in the video)
Also, next to using cover, or fast moving creatures, there's also another thing easily being coverlook: Magic. Aka illusions, teleport and phase-shift.
Oh and what I really loved about your video, especially at the end, this isn't just a guide to "deal with archers" it's a proper guide of how to utilise every party member in an encounter.
And on that note, I want to share an experience I had with a new DM in Pathfinder: I was a gnome melee-fighter, and we had an encounter with Goblins, most of them were higher up or further away so attacked from afar, and I was trying to get closer to the melee gnomes. And here is, when the whole group, not just the DM, is responsible for a great encounter experience. As almost everyone else of our group was a ranged char, or had at least ranged options, they always killed the melee goblins before I even could get to them, so out of 10-15 goblins, 5-6 of which were melee or at least reachable for me, I managed attack 1-2, and all my actions prior to that were just "move" (as you have to use an action to move in pathfinder). - So while it's good if the DM makes a balanced encounter and give every player a possibility to do something, it's also important for the players to act accordingly.
Those are some really good points about visibility, and a reminder that even if your weapon system can plausibly reach out to 600ft, your unassisted eyes might not be very helpful at those distances, especially in less than ideal conditions, like dark night, or inclement weather.
I would also say that most characters, even well equipped enemies, should carry a backup weapon, perhaps even a ranged one, as it can be very frustrating when the only practical action you can take is a double move towards the enemy, or take cover and ready your action to ambush the advancing monsters.
This is something I often see: that just because someone has built a character to specialize in a certain tactic, like melee, does not mean they can’t carry a bow or crossbow and be able to present a threat at range as well.
Remember: Aragorn used a bow sometimes too, and even Gimli threw an axe or 2 in his day!
After all, as the above video clearly shows, flexibility is a very valuable trait to possess as well!
Thank you for sharing your knowledge and talents with us! I don’t know much about D&D but you’ve inspired me as a man to start pole dancing, so I really appreciate your example. Keep up the good work!
Thank you! I’m really glad you find this stuff inspiring!
One aspect of ranged combat a lot of people don’t take into account is just how damn bulky (not even heavy) ammunition is. A quiver only holds 20 arrows in 5e (which is already pretty bulky), and if you carry more than two quivers worth, it’s gonna start getting real wacky where you’re keeping all of those with out a bag of holding or the magic quiver. And unlike all the other random stuff in your inventory, you can’t reasonably just drop your arrows like you could drop the 12 goblin short swords you may or may not be carrying.
You employ an ammo carrier goon. Have a bloke with you who only runs ammo. You are hopefully not engaging in intense military engagements in there.
An ammo carrier with nothing but boxes of shells should extend combat operations a bit.
You could hire a bloke who only runs ammo for you. As part of the baggage train.
Imma be real with you cheif I am not tracking encumbrance until it’s measured in metric
@@Delmworksthe actual weight has nothing to do with what I described. Arrows take up a lot more space than you’d expect. You can physically carry the weight of crap load of them, but where are you putting them all? One extra quiver worth of them fills up a backpack.
Are archers overpowered? My ranger with +14 to hit and multi attack 😀
An expert on the subject, clearly
Small Nitpick: ranged attacks have disadvantage on anyone, while a melee combatant ist within 5ft. of them. Not only on this enemy.
First of all, congrats on 700K. But second, I would love to know what happens to any burglars that come into your house because I think I know.
Yeah, they get the shaft. 😄
Thabks! Haha yeah, you see that target at the back? Guess what’s inside it? 😂
(It’s clothes. Thankfully I haven’t had to deal with any burglars!)
@@blumineck I bet they all watch your channel and don’t realise it’s got clothes in it. Keep up the good work you’re really funny.
They're beaten down to an inch of their lives, tied down to a chair, and then forced to give opinions on his pole dance routine
@@maxi1ification I haven’t laughed so hard in a while. I can imagine it too.
How many arrows can an archer carry, I think that'd be my goto if I had a troublesome ranged build.
They can only RaW recover half their arrows/bolts after each encounter, so unless they carry a lot they'll need to restock somewhat often. They also need to take the time to do it, so if there is a time crunch, or they are rushing around to save a dragon from some villagers then they might run out.
The answer still is a lot, especially if you encounter enemies who also use arrows -- I counted every arrow when playing a ranged rogue in an underdark campaign and still ended up with more than I could use. I think that I carried 2 full quivers in case we got separated from our baggage NPCs (again) most of the time.
In hindsight, the DM could have let us loot fewer usable arrows, but they aren't heavy and there's only so many turns of combat to try and use them.
A small thing that can help scale back the power of ranged characters is make them keep track of ammo. Most DMs don’t, but if your overpowered arrow machinegun is firing 5 arrows a turn, but started the quest with only 20 arrows, they might run out two long rests away from civilization
Then they cant play the game unless someone has woodcarvers tools and access to wood
The idea is to force them to use backup melee weapons, which in theory they should have. The problem is abusing ranged combat, so the easy way to fairly and realistically stop it is to not give them unlimited ammo
@@isaacmarsh2609 this is why i make them track magic ammo and barley ever give magic ranged weapons instead so you dont force people to lose over half their class abilities in a lich fight because minions exist
@your_SecondShadow, fair enough. I tend to ply more “grounded” D&D where PCs track ammo anyway. I reward them for forethought (packing lots of ammo) or cleverness (scavenging or producing more) but I don’t play BG3 style where all ranged weapons have unlimited ammunition. As a result, in the campaigns I play in, if a ranged focus PC was being problematic, they would be balanced out by requiring an expendable resource (that I can restrict) to function, the same way other classes have spell slots, and backup weapons were common to deal with running out of arrows or with enemies who got close.
The most important part of any DM advice is to know your players and their style and work within that framework, my answer comes out of that reality. While your method of limiting magic ammunition and weapons is probably more functional for you, most of the enemies my players face are humanoids, and magic equipment doesn’t make a huge difference for example. I answered the way I would address that issue at my table.
@@isaacmarsh2609 that is entirely fair
A chance to watch one of my favorite archers and learn more about DnD‽‽ hell yeah!!
Thank you!
My rogue character was in a battle where he hid in the shadows and just shot his crossbow at the BBEG while the rest of the party was dealing with area effects and minions. Because he was able to stay hidden, he kept the BBEG pinned down and prevented things from getting worse.
Problem is, that does not work RAW. RAW, soon as you fire, you are revealed. So at that table, your DM allowed it but most would not.
@@nctpti2073 Rogues can hide as a bonus action. Shoot, hide, shoot, hide, shoot... I think you can see where I'm going with this.
Also, the shadow I was in was cast by a giant statue, so it was additional cover added to it.
Skyrim stealth archer
@@MalloonTarka You (a) do have to make a new stealth check every time you hide, which is different from simply riding the same stealth check each time and (b) unless you also move, they still know where the shot came from so could still shoot at disadvantage or simply charge your position. You have lost the primary advantage to not being seen.
Closer to the end you hit all the things I planned on commenting! Don't overly target the min-maxxer (i've been guilty of that before oops), Do let the players do what they made their characters to do (aka, don't knock them prone every time when flying, just enough that it isn't aninstant win strat), and remember to let everyone have fun at the game, maybe the fighter DOES clean the floor but that wasn't the point of the encounter anyway.
Amazing video, thanks for doing this!
Two more methods: 1) track arrows, even if you let the archers restock at zero cost to save time, if you have 90 arrows and the dungeon has 30 orcs, you may well run out and will have to think a bit more about what is and is not worth shooting at. 2) become a Hussite, even a goblin can strap a barn door to a wagon and create a slow-moving yet impenetrable-to-arrows wall, just make sure to encourage creative ways of dealing with it.
In the real world, the advantage of archery was balanced by abysmal attack speed when compared to melee - a bow can get to six to ten arrows per minute, a sword can do 90 attacks in that time, and that's using a very conservative attack speed (it would be ~200 with the top speed I know about).
We can hire an ammo carrier I think. That would be fun use of a porter. Just a bloke with a box of shotgun and rifle shells.
That seems like an absurd amount of rounds of combat. And I love combat and I've only played rangers so far
Noted…
-(every Fighter gets 100 extra attacks in melee)-
Truly awesome video, I like how you took the time to animate out all the melee and adversarial actions of the monsters, as well as your own; portraying them simultaneously; it really adds to the sense of action, and makes it crystal clear the situations you are describing; very good work!
I feel compelled to add to a point you portrayed visually with your handy crossbow: the fact that loading a crossbow takes actual time! Thank you!
I’ve never much cared for game features that remove that key component of the crossbow, the major feature of it in fact: that it can be loaded, and loaded ahead of time.
It’s why crossbow expert is such a problematic feat, at least for me, as it removes a concrete, physics based fact of life of the crossbow, and does it entirely via game rules; no physical modification of the crossbow required!
I’ve always found that completely removing the loading property of crossbows makes them feel not like crossbows, and turns them into nearly silent, semi-automatic guns, which often does not feel like it fits with much of the high fantasy, low tech of typical D&D settings like Forgotten Realms (though, it would fit very well in Eberron).
Additionally, repeating crossbows are a thing, both in D&D and real life, so why not just use those if you want to bypass loading?
Ancient Chinese Repeating Crossbow: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Repeating_crossbow
All that said, I wanted to add a point I think some often miss: if those archers dual wielding hand crossbows are doing too much damage with those super light weight, light draw things (which were historically considered toys by the wealthy), then maybe 5E balancing point was off (shocking I know!).
As a GM / DM, you can change the rules, as they are mere suggestions (and in 5E often overly simplified, poor ones).
Simply use your GM power to adjust the hand crossbow down to a d4, which is exactly where it should be anyway!
Besides, the poor, sad d4 gets almost no use anyway, let your players play with the funny looking, potentially dangerous floor caltrops; let them feel different!
While we’re at it, let great axe users throw 3d4 as well, it’s statistically stronger than 1 d12 anyway, and lets the barbarian feel even more special!
All barbarians should feel special! :)
Anyway, that’s all I wanted to say; sorry about the paragraphs, but if I choose to say something, it seldom ends up a small thing.
Yeah, I personally quite like the base crossbow rules: they do more damage than equivalent bows, but are slower, making them perfect for rogues, mages, and the like, but trained warriors who can shoot a longbow quickly will be better off with that. I feel like crossbow expert was literally designed for people who want ‘medieval gun’ characters (which is odd, because guns canonically exist in-setting anyway)
A repeating crossbow would be a fun, niche variant that would make up that gap
Good points about the reloading issue, however I'd like to point out:
1) The crossbow dps builds don't really rely on the crossbow's damage die but on a lot of flat bonuses or additional dice like sneak attack. Reducing the crossbow initial average damage by one won't really do anything.
2) Regarding greataxes, 3d4 are stronger on average but certain features such as the barbarian's brutal critical or the half-orc's savage attacks add additional damage dice on critical hits, which are more likely to happen when using reckless attacks. I'd have to calculate which option would be better, but doing 4d12 on a crit sounds alot better than doing 8d4 (lvl9 half-orc barbarian).
@@ancoron8257 The D4 bit was more of an aside, a minor bump down to help adjust expectations concerning lethality for a little hand crossbow with such a light draw, and to give the d4 some more love.
The core of the downward adjustment to the dual wielding hand crossbows would be to bring some much needed balance to the feat Crossbow Expert, simply removing its total negation of the loading property.
This would still allow dual hand crossbows to be able to do a quick 1, 2 punch, but they would then either have to drop them and draw two more (which would get bulky and expensive) or reload one, and make another attack if they are a class that gets an additional attack at 5th, or even another if a fighter.
For the great axe: The Barbarian Brutal Critical exact wording of “one additional weapon die”, then scales up to 2 at 13, and 3 at 17 when you roll at 20 can be handled by ruling that the weapon die of a great axe is 3d4, not 1d4, and you’d make a similar change to the Half Orc’s Savage Attack ability.
I get 3d12 for a lvl 9 half orc barbarian on a crit; 1 for the weapon, 1 for Barbarian Brutal Critical, and 1 for Half Orc’s Savage Attack.
So, for a lvl 9 half orc barbarian, that would be 3 3d4, so 9d4: 36 / 2: 18 average damage, compared to 3d12: 36 / 2: 18.
At lvl 13 it’s a 4d12: 38 / 2: 19; but comparing it to 4 3d4; 12d4: 48 / 2: 24; a bit better.
Also, the minimum damage will be much better: as of each of those 12 little d4s can be a 1 - 4; resulting in a minimum hit of 12, and a maximum of 48; nice!
While 4 big boy d12s can be 1 - 12; but you could get 3 1s; ouch! That’s a 3 damage minimum, with a 48 max; too swingy for my taste.
Additionally, I find that high minimum damage reflects the extreme threat a giant, two handed axe should convey, that is a lot of sharp metal swinging down, and even on less than a perfect hit, there is a lot of force and impact bundled up in that metal, and it’s gonna hurt, and drop a lot more hurt than 3 hp represents!
That’s sad dagger lvl potential disappointment lurking in there; saddest great axe ever… :(
All this assumes your player is ok throwing all those little caltrops around of course!
Conversely, if that many d4s are deemed an unwanted hazard, just let those class and race feats add big boy d12s to their 3d4s: let players toss their pile of d4s, then drop a big d12 down for a finisher if they crit; make it even more exciting!
Give em the best of both worlds!
@@MrDelightfulRPG Agreeing about the crossbow side of things.
Greataxes though: I feel like the current RAW is essential in differenciating greataxes and greatswords. Doing the rulings like you suggested would make the greataxe preferably to the greatsword in every single instance, even if you granted the same multiple-damage-dice-added-on-these-features ruling to them. So this would properly imbalance the weapons against each other. Currently the greatsword is the safe option, while the greataxe is the barbarians way to do huge crits.
And about the flavour of rolling low: any hit leads to damage, even ones with abysmal edge alignment, low force or barely any accuracy. People like to think about the attack roll as everything regarding the way you swing, but it is better to understand both in combination dictate both how you swing and thus how much damage is done.
However you rule, make sure none of those d4 gets lost ;)
This biggest problem balance-wise IMO is the Archery Fighting Style: a +2 to the attack roll. Bonuses to the attack roll increase the damage much more than bonuses to the subsequent damage roll, making this the best fighting style out of all of them, at least when it comes to damage output. It should have just been a +2 to the damage roll, like with the Dueling Fighting Style.
I agree! It seems out of place with the rest of the game, and makes it harder to keep balance when new features are added.
That's an option or it could have been conditional, as in +2 to hit when the target is benefitting from cover. Or take after the old precise shot and say creatures don't provide cover against your ranged attacks.
I have a L16 Monk/Fighter that practices Kyudou. Most combats they are highly accurate, but deal lower damage, they only pull out the big guns on important bbeg.
"ranged characters are basically like cats"
_Is currently playing a tabaxi archer..._
Definitely appreciate things like this, especially when I have lots of players who like to min-max in my games... despite me much rather not having that be the case. Not all my players are like this but this is definitely helpful for those select few. Overall, really cool stuff all around, and I love your commitment to sticking with the archery gimmick, it is really cool, easily one of my favorite things to see in action.
I make a small nerf to sharpshooter. I either tone down or outright remove the ability to ignore cover. The reason why, is because it's a feature that's both boring and strong. It means the archer can just pick any spot that has a good line of sight and plant their butt down, doing nothing but roll dice. If they now have to deal with cover(which imo is supposed to be the balancing factor that limits ranged characters) then they're forced to move around and find better angles of shooting. That ways it plays more like Xcom and less like bloons tower defence.
Another tact against missile fighters that most don't use, is limited ammo.
While a person can swing a sword for years, the archer will run out of ammunition, even worse if the monster needs+1 arrows to damage it at all
Repeating weapons fix that
@@fluffyking94 and that's something everyone gives their archers
I have 3 archery specialist characters I've run in the last year. My half-elf multiclass ranger/rogue with sharpshooter would be ridiculous outdoors so when we are outdoors we are in a forest or jungle with limited visibility or it's at night and 60' darkvision only allows shooting at 60' range or we are dungeon crawling. Sharpshooter with a longbow and sneak attack would be able to due brutal damage if only the character had a target at 600'.
I also have an eldritch knight horse archer with sharpshooter, expertise at animal handling, and mounted combatant. He also has a sword and shield for when things get up close.
"Give them the ability to fly, and that's a problem."
Hee hee, yeah. First time playing, I chose a rogue aarakocra, and was able to do a lot of damage without getting nabbed because I could fly.
We ruled that if you can see and shoot down on a whole field, the whole field can see you. Down there can be a lucky dude with a shotgun.
So fun GM story time. I made a GMPC who has a LOT going on as a ranged character. A tiny look is they are Eldritch Archer with dips into Ranger and Rogue.
And while I COULD fudge this part, my rolls are always sh*t! The guy cannot hit the broad side of a mountain unless he literally closes his eyes. Whenever he BLINDLY fires at something, he hits! And the guy has BLINDSENSE! So unless something negates that sense, he STILL cant hit anything!
Its been a joke to either make a melee character or ritually blind my guy!
At least he has some utility as other stuff like the face, etc...
Love both DnD and archery! This is perfect
0:34 Yeah it definitely isn't just ranged characters. The scenario of turning a boss monster into a bloody mist is something that Paladins are basically designed from the ground up to do. Their entire kit by default, is just a gigantic enormous burst damage.
There is also something to say about a +10 Damage boost from Sharpshooter. It's cool, but it's flat. Sharpshooter is really dangerous at low levels, because +10 is massive. When you're at mid-high levels, +10 is pretty whatever. Your "Impressive" 80 damage, becomes the single target component of an AoE spell that at minimum will still do half damage that a spellcaster has. While the caster has gone from dealing 20 to 140, you'll have gone from 80 to 110 in those same levels. Non-Magical Archers tend to get out-scaled.
Love ya, but as a D100 GM n' Player, I often aske to power-up archer 'cause other GM often tell :
-Your bow is not always ready to shoot, taking an arrow in your back take time,
-Bows have ridiculous fire rate (Warhammer 1 attack per turn, Warrior 1 up to 10),
-Swordmen can run 50m in 6s and hit you twice before you can even shoot (BasiC)
-You don't have LoS ... or you get shoot in the back by an "ally" archer (we all have a Dumbo Player that play archer with the luck worst than )
Is ranged combat OP? Yes.
Should it be OP? Also, yes.
Not just because historically ranged combat had been really powerful but because you need such power to stand a chance of making it to even level 10 without a TPK being statistically inevitable.
One piece of advice that applies to any game you play with multiple people (and a few that you don't) is "If you give gamers the tools to do so, they will optimise the fun out of the game."
D&D has always had issues like this. Whether it's spellcasters getting access to room-clearing nukes while the melee guys can only hit one or two people a turn, or the frequently-reinforced misunderstanding of rules around Nat 20s and Persuasion rolls allowing high-CHA characters to bypass entire fights by chatting or seducing the encounter, D&D players are prone to doing it a lot, because just one person can decide they want to play that way and cause problems for the rest.
On the DM's end, you expressed the solutions very well. Proof some (but not all!) encounters against that sort of thing, and use the tools at one's disposal to stop one person destroying whole encounters one-handed. Even something like adjusting HP values or the numbers of bad guys can help there.
(As a sidenote, most of the tables I've been at simply banned people making long-range Aaracockra or Winged Tieflings. Flying PCs are much easier to plan around if they do most of their damage in melee.)
I was surprised to learn that there was such a bias against rangers in the dnd community bc I had SO much fun playing one for a while, surprising myself with how much of a powerhouse I could be in combat - I think, thankfully, I nerfed /myself/ a little bit because I'm also an idiot who just kind of mashes in whatever sounds decent when I'm levelling up (I know I definitely nerfed my spellcasting by not realising WISDOM was important to that and disregarding it in favour of putting my better rolls in strength and dex lol, and I'm almost certain I made many other choices that would be deemed foolish by min-maxers and the like, but hey-ho, I'm more into the RP side anyway, I was having plenty of fun)
Whenever anyone in a campaign suggest doing something impractical as an archer I always check afterwards if you have shown it is/isn't and how hard it is. You do things in real life I would have told players to use a DC20 with disadvantage to attempt! Thanks for the stunning content!
Thanks for the great advice! I'm always surprised by how many good ideas I've forgotten when I hear other GMs talk about their style of running games!
Our DM made a terrible mistake and allowed me to play a Horizon Walker Ranger 8/Battlemaster Fighter 3/Assassin Rogue 3 along with the Sharpshooter and Piercer feats and giving us massive amounts of magic items my character alone is packing enough magical ammunition to do in average rolls upwards of 800 damage in her first turn if she went all out with all of the expensive high level magic arrows.
Thankfully it's not too noticeable as the rest of our party is almost as bad and the Winged Tiefling Sorlock is definitely worse.
Well if you're all balanced it seems fine? Though if I was your DM I would at least mess with your group once by setting up encounters either where the stakes are really low and the enemies weak (good thing all that power gives you when your mission is to metaphorically get a cat down from a tree) or I would make it necessary for you to pull your punches (self-sacrificing enemies whom you need to keep alive or something)
:)
Dexterity is the real bane of 5e. I'm playing a ranged character in Pathfinder and I'm not doing as much damage as I should compared to our melee DPS
What an excellent video! Thank you very much! You are very talented.
Excellent content. Making me miss D&D badly
If anyone thinks archer builds can be pretty overpowered, then go and have a look at the RPGBOT article "Bugbear-y Me in Damage", particularly the one built around Scorching Ray. The whole thing's an exploration of how bugbear surprise attack breaks the math, and it includes the line "solo a CR 20 enemy in one turn".
"Maybe there's a puzzle there" and my INT-heavy rogue archer is super there for it, yeah. I love doing absurd amounts of damage from afar but I also like puzzles and roleplay! The DM for the campaign where I've played a rogue archer the longest has nearly killed me multiple times by placing other archers on the map -- most combat encounters, I either take no damage at all, or get critted on. The last time we were in a volcano, what he did was introduce some sparks who could dispel magic, after I'd gotten a Ring of Spell Storing (I actually killed that character in melee, it was a whole RP thing for my character, really heartbreaking, and picked the ring out of the pyre we'd burned him in) and had the sorcerer put Haste in it before every rest -- which took me out of combat for a round, because I was the one concentrating. There was also a fight where an enemy used Misdirection and my arrow killed a PC -- I was Hasted, so I could have gotten to him in one turn, if we had Potions of Healing. So now my super smart true neutral rogue archer has also become a back-up healer.
All good thoughts and ideas.
I run into this quite often, as I usually DM at a games store with an open table policy. Thus, I've had to adapt my DMing toolbox to a very changing set of conditions.
Not specific to archers, but definitely appropriate to the SS/CBE/EA issue is to simply give the power player an obvious threat with a metric ton of hp.
I mean, they built the character specifically to do massive damage. If you let them, they're happy.
Simultaneously, I toss lower hp threats at the other players to give them their moments to shine.
I even have a list of different concepts to reskin for those players not traditionally powerful in combat:
I toss highly mobile enemies with extremely low CON at the Monk, so he can land his stun and feel good about it.
I toss swarms of low hp minions at casters who love Fireball.
I toss swarms of zombies at Clerics.
I toss traps at the Artificers, and low WIS guards for the Assassin to take out.
Yeah this sounds like a lot of extra work, and if I'd conceived of it as a single goal and tried to do it all at once, it would have been. Rather, it's been a decade in the making and I just keep adding and modifying the toolbox.
The one essential tool that I can never get rid of is the realization that my goal as a DM is NOT to beat the players. My goal is to give them a credible opposition that they WILL beat in a glorious way.
I consider it a successful session when I've managed to give everyone at the table a heroic moment.
My personal favorite is to make the archer want to choose the non combat option. Put them in the middle of a storm where ranged combat is all but impossible. Don't do this all the time of course, but every now and then just show them that they aren't the only option.
I've shot in some pretty heavy winds without issue, and in the rain. If it's bad enough to make archery difficult, it's probably going to make melee combat just as much so.
In all honesty, though, melee characters have some pretty strong combinations as well. Sentinel, polearm master, and great weapon master make a very effective combination when taken together, for example, and a crit fishing paladin with elven accuracy is also rather potent. As for spellcasters...let's just say that once the party hits moderately high levels, any full spellcaster that isn't keeping up with an archer in terms of effectiveness really needs to rethink what spells they're using.
@@alexanderflack566the issue I’d say is that these powerful combos force players to use specific builds to keep up. Not all archers should have to use a hand crossbow to be effective, and not all melee fighters should feel pigeonholed into using a halberd. Not least because there are some classes (e.g. monk) that aren’t designed to use any of those options.
@@blumineck You don't need to use polearms; the paladin example I gave typically doesn't, since paladins are somewhat MAD and have fewer feats in the first place compared to a fighter.
Also, hand crossbow isn't that much better than a longbow, even with crossbow expert, especially with certain classes. It's much better with rogue, of course, but ranger often needs their bonus action for other things.
In the end, you will always get a much more effective build if you know what you're doing than if you don't; nerfing archery isn't going to change that. It's just been my experience that the options are much better balanced than this video implies. Unless you fight primarily flying enemies in open fields, ranged martial weapons simply don't offer a massive advantage over melee combat, especially compared to the advantage the spellcasters have over both.
Roll weather randomly. It takes less work. Or grab the weather forecast of last year and use it.
@@alexanderflack566 I take your point! I’m mostly basing this off the number of guides that state that if you’re not using crossbows in a ranged build, or a great weapon (or better yet, a polearm) as a melee build, you’re somehow Doing It Wrong(tm). The video is mostly intended to point out that archery *isn’t* overpowered, as long as you remember to make your combats varied and use tactics.
I once had a player who loved taking cover in a tree or behind a cliff while peppering the battlefield with arrows.
My solution to the event described in the opening to this video was to have my boss guarded by tanky melee fighters who could use a reaction to take incoming ranged attacks. The player wasn’t accomplishing nothing because damage was still happening, but one-shotting the boss was impossible.
Fantastic stuff. Audio seemed really low though.
Great video, thanks!
Glad you liked it!
I just made a new ranged fighter character, using exandria guns as the DM allows, my own little way of balancing this was to make my character something that i encourage many many people to, not min-max :]
Yes my character is an excellent shooter, but i put flaws in it, and only picked feats/proficiencies that makes sense with the lore rather than the build
Absolutely love this video!!
I've been watching the channel for ages, as a keen D&D player with an archer ranger I've been playing foir about 4 years at this point. This might be a bit out of the blue but after enjoying your videos for free for so long, I wanted to offer some free general video feedback that might help push your channel even further. My main observation is that people come here for the unique content (700k subs is amazing, well done) but a bit of added sheen to the videos might help even more!
1 - Audio compression. Apply a fair bit of compression to the microphone audio track if possible, either in a free software like Audacity or in your video editor if available. It raises the volume of the quieter moments and squashes the volume of the louder bits so that overall the volume is nice and even throughout. This will help with the issue of the most part of the video feeling too quiet compared to other videos, or moments where it suddenly sounds louder because your mouth moved closer to your mic. Once you have the preset set up, its super easy to apply to every video!
2 - Background music. This is down to taste so can definitely be ignored if it's not for you, but from what I've seen other similar creators in the space have some faint background music which can really help with the overall atmosphere and sheen. Royalty free music libraries are a good place to start. Worth experimenting with at least!
3 - Quality control. As far as I noticed this video is edited really nicely, but I noticed in some past videos you accidentally leave in a failed take of some script, followed immediately by the good take. Whenever I upload a long edited video I make sure to do a quick watchthrough of any renders to try and catch things like this. Like I said, this one looks good so maybe you've already fixed that.
4 - Facial discipline. Lots of shots end with you looking away from the camera, walking away, closing your eyes etc. If you watch some other bigger video creators that show their face, this often isn't the case, their shots will end with them still looking at the camera, or at least in a natural position that makes it feel like the next shot is a continuation of the conversation. (Some of this is down to clean editing too.) If you hold the camera's gaze, you'll hold the audience with you!
Ok that's probably a lot so I'll stop. I hope you take this friendly critique the way it's intended, looking forward to seeing your channel grow even more!
Thanks for the advice!
very insightfull video, but i have 1 question: is there any type of weapon you dont have for crying out loud? seriously, you have massive swords, bows, crosbows, axes everything
Well we've recently seen that the only firearm he seems to have on hand is a plastic one 🤷
The one and only thing that is OP in 5e is a lvl17+ wizard who read his entire spell list and has enough downtime in game...
Most creatures in the monster manual do not have a ranged attack. Obviously most creatures can make an improvised ranged weapon attack, but they wouldn't have proficiency in it. I think the issue is shockingly simple to solve because it is so easy to add a ranged attack into a stat block. Humanoid enemies should at least have crossbows because they are easy to use. A big, strong and imposing enemy might have proficiency in improvised weapons, which they use to throw rocks, chairs and even people.
Intelligent enemies or pack animals may use tactics like flanking. A really stupid enemy might just charge at the party and hit whoever is closest, but a pack of wolves will send one or two to flank around the sides for a pincer attack.
Finally, the solution should never be to make ranged combat useless because ranged combat is a class fantasy. If you put teleporting enemies that can move 300 ft. without provoking opportunity attacks that bee-line to the archer then that's no better than putting in hordes of spellcasters into your encounters who take turns casting Counterspell the moment anyone tries to cast something. You want to CHALLENGE the ranged fighter, not DISCOURAGE them.
Enemy cultists. Just very low-level hyoomons...with the Magic Initiate: Warlock feat. A good half dozen or so, plus a couple of tougher more-casty cult leaders and maybe a summoned eldritch horror with magic resistance and a big bucket of basic hit points, and it's a party! And your archer is their Special Friend.
Eldritch Blast cantrip, Hex spell (have 'em mess up Wisdom if you want to nuke ArcherBoi's Perception so they can be sneaky).
Grasp of Hadar invocation because you're the DM and said they can have it.
Spread 'em out. Or as the wannabe Rommel in your group would yell, "Keep your interval!"
And as soon as ArcherGurl takes out one of their number, it's ON. They get pelted with blasts that drag their "I hide off the edge of the battlemap because the DM can't say there isn't cover there I'm clever" ass out into the open, where they get more swiss-cheesed than that guy in Robocop.
Sauce for the goose. And besides... who can turn down an adventure where you take on the Cult of Hadar? I mean... baddies with Hunger of Hadar, (mmmm, damaging darkness and unfriendly tentacles), Evard's Black Tentacles (for you anime pervs), some nice heart-carvin' action, maybe a telepathically-delivered nightmare or two to interfere with Long Rest... sounds like Spring Break to me!
"For example, D&D's most iconic monster..."
The beholder
"...the dragon"
Ah
Fantastic video and insights, but don't overtax that injured shoulder! It honestly almost impossible to tell, but based on range of motion and a few slightly abreaviated actions, I'm... guessing it's the right one that's still on the mend? Everyone with eyes already KNOWS you're a bloody LEGEND; you can afford to dial it back a bit until the sore wing is fighting fit again!🥺😨🧡😊
We *REALLY* need more archer love in DnD5e, we have no archer specific classes (rangers have no incentive to be archers apart from Swift Quiver, but they also have plenty of more melee-centric spells), and our only archer specific subclass is Arcane Archer, which sucks
All good thoughts and ideas.
I run into this quite often, as I usually DM at a games store with an open table policy. Thus, I've had to adapt my DMing toolbox to a very changing set of conditions.
Not specific to archers, but definitely appropriate to the SS/CBE/EA issue is to simply give the power player an obvious threat with a metric ton of hp.
I mean, they built the character specifically to do massive damage. If you let them, they're happy.
Simultaneously, I toss lower hp threats at the other players to give them their moments to shine.
I even have a list of different concepts to reskin for those players not traditionally powerful in combat:
I toss highly mobile enemies with extremely low CON at the Monk, so he can land his stun and feel good about it.
I toss swarms of low hp minions at casters who love Fireball.
I toss swarms of zombies at Clerics.
I toss traps at the Artificers, and low WIS guards for the Assassin to take out.
Yeah this sounds like a lot of extra work, and if I'd conceived of it as a single goal and tried to do it all at once, it would have been. Rather, it's been a decade in the making and I just keep adding and modifying the toolbox.
The one essential tool that I can never get rid of is the realization that my goal as a DM is NOT to beat the players. My goal is to give them a credible opposition that they WILL beat in a glorious way.
I consider it a successful session when I've managed to give everyone at the table a heroic moment.
Love to see more DnD/ tabletop rpg content from you! I’m curious if you’ve played other systems and how you think archery is handled best in what ones if your looking for video ideas either way great content as always!
A level 3 fighter has +3 with all weapons as far as I know. There is no special archer. You can fight with a mauser or sword or bottle or hand grenade as the situation warrants.
One advantage of ranged weapons is sometimes initiative. A group of people with pistols drawn can fire as a troll runs up. If the troll has a pistol they fight im the same bracket.
This is an awesome video. LOL I didn't know you went inside, I thought you only lived in your backyard shooting arrows and poledancing all day. xD
Also, idk if you noticed, but your audio is extremely low in this. Idk if youtube might let you raise the volume in the editor, without having to reupload, but you should see if it's fixable.
another way of knocking flying archers prone is to give the enemies walloping ammunition, which the party can loot and use for themselves.
I came for the secret weak points of Archers, what's all this positivity?!
woohoo, more dnd!
Well i think still spellcasters are king in the game.
Honestly as a long time DnD player and DM, archers never bothered me much, a well built archer will be above powercurve at levels 5-6, 11-12 and 14-16. But i think it is fair because they only get those levels to be stronger than others and even then from my experience by an insubstantial margin. As to melees getting more options, i htink that is fair because their options are a lot about survival( like second wind, unarmored defense, and various self buffs) because htey are in the thick of it, and otherwise they woudl have only i hit closest monster with an attack ad infinitum.
Archers usually atleast have a wider pick of targets and positions to be in battle.
Also rangers dont deal well with hordes, as they dotn have any inherrent good AOE until very late into the game.
Also a suggestion for any other DMs, use casters to deal with archers if htey are beign a nuisance, but not maybe directly, use spells like wall of fire/forcewall to force them to reposition.
excellent use of the environment!
I've been playing in a pretty Hard-Combat-Focused campaign as a somewhat un-optimal Crossbow ranger, and man. Rangers may be "underpowered" but I am outdamaging the spellcasters, the fighter, everybody out here with Crossbow Expert and Hunters Mark and a +1 weapon and its got me thinking about how terrifying a fast-firing archer of the fantasy type would actually be. Terrifying! Imagine that kind of firepower just, machine gunning through foes.
I'm so glad you talked about Cover--Cover is really important early on, and even after archers start being able to work around it, I think a little thought about line of sight can make cover relevant again--sure, you can ignore partial cover and stuff, but if you can't *see* the target, you'll need to move. Moving, avoiding or focusing on enemy ranged combatants or god help you, enemy casters, can help make archers feel more dynamic.
I've found some worth in DMing with powerful archer characters in having things like mobs of easily killed bad guys which the archer or melee fighters can stomp, but which in numbers can be a problem--the fighter and the Ranger can divy up targets and work together to effectively control and destroy the enemy while keeping their wizard safe and that can be really fun.
I’m sorry the trap is going to do what to a baby 😭😭😭
I get that previous editions really favoured (long)swords over pretty much every other weapon. But 5e's weird overcorrection into making hand crossbows and polearms--weapons almost no hero in fantasy fiction uses--the best options in the game never sat right with me. Anyway, great video! You covered all the bases in a fun and interesting way, and the editing on those combat examples was fantastic!
Ngl too few fictional characters use polearms. Such a cool and flexible weapon.
I just wish that they didn’t make feats for some weapons that were just flat out better than what other weapons get, regardless of what the weapon is. An extra bonus action attack is HUGE, as is 10 points of damage per attack, and restricting it to specific weapons restricts the fun and variety of the game
Excellent vid! I didn’t notice anything about volume being a problem until I came here to the comments looking for that map book (I believe it’s Immersive Battle Maps by Yarro Studios. )
Volume seemed fine to me (aren’t you wearing 2 mics?!?) and content was awesome as always!
Thanks
Pretty new to D&D. Playing a swarmkeeper ranger. After our last session the DM said, "you guys were supposed to run from that fight, but you got lucky." The boss was prone and unable to act for roughly 5 rounds and I was dealing roughly 17-20 damage each turn (we're lvl 2 btw). When the boss finally got up, he immediately charged me and slapped my ass for hitting him so much.
A very high effort video on an insanely complex topic.
I myself could write a huge essay on this problem (like the fact that ranged martials MUST have some kill power if they want to leverage their target accessibility), but this will take way too much time.
One thing I can add is that vast majority of builds I saw that run CBE+SS tend to over-focus on damage while neglecting everything else. They usually have little-to-no saves (Resilient in Wis/Con alone won't cut it), no utility, limited mobility tools, etc, which can be detrimental as the variety of challenges tend to increase with the game's progression.
Unfortunately, this is a shared issue among many martial builds, not only ranged ones.
I built my character as a winged tiefling Fathomless warlock/Sea sorcerer with a Spell Sniper-ed and Eldritch Spear-ed Eldritch Blast. Normal range 600 ft, Distant Spell 1200 ft. I can push and pull at range, allowing me to manipulate the battlefield and keep people off vulnerable targets or draw them into range of the tanky characters. However, it's very, very rare where I'm actually able to use my range, as most fights take place within 30-60 ft, well within EB's natural 120. Out of the three years I've played him, I can count on one hand the number of encounters I've had that allowed me to make use of the full range. DMs, if someone's built their character to do something, throw something at them that allows them to do that thing. Keep them in check if it's too OP, but let them do the thing they are meant to do, or "shoot your monks."
I'm not a min maxer, and don't have special equipment, but as a Gloomstalker Ranger with a 18 in Dex and Tasha's Optional Rules, I absolutely steal everyone's kills. The biggest problem I face, and one thing I absolutely love about playing a Ranger is having to relocate and move to make sure I can still fight effectively.
In Pathfinder, Variant Grippli can jump to a wall, too high to touch: stick there: and rain down arrows with impunity... 😅
This is a major part of what makes D&D such a terribly designed game. If's built simultaneously like a board game where you're having abstracted tactical fights whose goal is to have good builds and win encounters while also being a game that completely breaks down if you play it that way but completely breaks down if you don't.
I built a Grippli Ranger: Archer Style for a New Player in one of my games: My own creation destroyed me many times over! 😖
Dragonborn sorcerers with a shield spell are funny. Base AC of 12 or 13 +5 AC lvl 1 reaction spell lol
Im gonna min-max my next character as an archer purely to make suboptial decisions in combat for the lols
I’ve been able to put together a really fun Archer build in a combat focused dnd game I’m in with an Artificer + Echo Knight Fighter build. It’s been insanely fun and despite the minor damage problem I face at the moment (I don’t have extra attack yet cause multi class) I’ve been able to put Sharp Shooter to good use with a +7 to hit for the reduced accuracy. My normal to hit rn is a +12 and it is crazy funny to a lot of the people I play with. The dm who also usually runs Echo Knight said he thought the build was really interesting and found he liked the ingenuity
I am currently playing as a Rogue with Crossbow Expert, mainly just because I want a higher chance to hit my sneak attack when it's my turn. Having just one more chance to land a hit is the difference between excitement...and utter disappointment. Sure I could use Cunning Action: Aim, but I hate being locked down in one spot when mobility is so important during combat.
I want to call special attention to the spell that countered my OP Archer in a final boss fight, Wind Wall. I love this spell. Arrows and Bolts cannot pass through the Wind Wall and a person moving through it has to make a STR Save. And what's the most popular Dump Stat for a ranged character? Strength of course!
im currently running a flying bloodhunter who uses a crossbow... already trying to not abuse flying and shooting too much.. even though i planned to take sharpshooter and crossbow expert.. but my dm just made the mistake of giving me the bobbing lilly pad. its a vehicle that can fly/swim and is 10 feet by 10 feet... its literally flying cover.. lol (sorry dm)
So I'm working on an rpg system of my own, and I have dabbled a little bit in archery in the past, but at an extremely low bigginer level. I figure the best way to answer this question is to hope I catch a pro's attention. Is there such a thing as a "quick bow" or some equivalent that isn’t just a short bow? Something that less trained archers could use to rapid fire arrows in the length of a single turn? If so, what would be a fair number of attacks, and what would it be capable of strength wise? All answers are welcome, thank you so much!
Before finishing the vid: you talking about the overpowered range fighter taking out all the enemies while the other players twiddle their thumbs made me think of something. I just got the idea of letting the ranged fighter fight off all the enemies while the other players maybe help NPCs evacuate a dangerous situation. Like, maybe there is a siege or something and they are trying to evacuate out of a room and to an escape tunnel, and the range fighter is fighting off enemies while the other players help NPCs get out from under rubble, help them get to the escape tunnel, heal them if they are injured, etc. Just thought this could actually be kind of cool if handled correctly.
For flying you could also make a rule that flying makes it more difficult to shoot. Flapping your wings or whatever it is that keeps you from falling seems like it could make shooting more difficult, much like running (though Idk whether D&D lets you sprint while shooting with no adverse effects).
But do also remember, ranged characters are always stronger than melee, but
Soellcasters are much more strong than any martial. And they can be and usually are ranged.
Martials also are usually limited to doing cool things in combat, since their usefulness out of combat can be seriously limited
The points in this video are still important, and the melee martials definitely would need a hand
But I don’t want to act like the spellcasters are also suffering here. It’s usually them that break encounters because of how powerful spells can be!
This isn’t a bad thing, but knowing this helps decide on balance
I personally love my support spellcasters that do intense control and can still dish out big damage when needed!!
Nobody ever uses encumbrance or ammo/reagent tracking, even though part of the reason they exist is to make rangers and casters limited in their effectiveness so that melee builds aren't completely overshadowed. It's like using the Free Parking lottery in Monopoly- it might be more fun temporarily for the players that land on it, but the game no longer functions correctly and eventually it just drags.
Excellent content, as always. But this particular video had a serious sound issue. I was blowing out my speakers trying g to hear you, and then your volume would suddenly spike and I'd go deaf. Thank goodness for the subtitles.
Is the audio SUPER quiet for anyone else? I have to go max volume to be even able to hear the talking? Did I fuck up some setting or do others have a hard time hearing this also?
The flying ranged PC is something I am constantly having to deal with in my current campaign in the form of a fairy warlock, so I'm constantly having to find ways to actually threaten them. Most recently, we spent an extended stretch of the campaign in a sprawling outdoor dungeon in the form of a ruined, abandoned city split into different tiers on a promontory. To keep the fairy PC from trivializing everything, I infested the city with a giant flock of perytons that spent all day circling the skies far above the city, such that flying too high risked attracting some down. The rest of the party being groundbound and melee-oriented, the warlock would have to either go to ground themself, or deal with the swarm alone.
Did u ever try firing arrows while on horse back ?
I mostly play Pathfinder, where archers are REALLY limited in ways to get extra damage. I was just being upset about that, but I guess this is why.
The first time I ever played DND the DM made me a powerful archer character so that I wouldn’t die, and then I killed an entire carriage of enemies that we spotted due to someone getting a nat 20 on their perception check, which we were only supposed to encounter when we reached the next city. We then deception-ed our way through the city walls and had a lovely peaceful time in a city filled with boring NPCs
Great video! This is why dms who insist the game is supposed to be played like you run in slug it out, no one moves, make my eyes cross. Like, that's fine if you like it, but I love a good dynamic moving monster and I've found it usually gives each character an aristeia at least once every couple sessions rather than it all going to a single paladin/archer/rogue.
Funnily enough, I am currently running a campaign where all the players have found out their secretly dragons and turn into wyrmling statblocks when they hit zero from lethal damage instead of starting death saves. Meanwhile, I have a bunch of ranged characters in my box that I am teeheeing over as they take risks in exposing themselves.
I have a Ranger with archery and the sharpshooting feat. AND teh buffs don't matter when you constantly roll 5's or less on the die.
All players should like fights that end quick in their favor because their PCs are not puking and dying. This should always be their goal.