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Mich:

I'm not going to refute your maths. Neither my talent nor my interest lies in that aspect. I will tell you that with extensive experiences, the difference between a +4 and +8 attribute bonus (basic body vs. body+heart) is not insignificant and can make or break many fights.

It's actually very possible that a character will spend hope on a basic attack success if:
-the resulting basic damage will kill the creature.
or
-the attack scores a piercing blow.

It's the latter scenario that I'm interested in for this discussion, because that is what the MWE virtues are all about. Making the shot of a lifetime is a bit dramatic, but the MWE's virtues are tailored to him delivering piercing blows when and where he wants. Deadly Archery is meant to synergize with Stinging Arrow in this respect; with the two of them, there's pretty much no foe that's safe from him delivering a piercing blow to, and I think that's what the designers intended for the MWE. (Knowing that, if *I* personally were to make an archer MWE, I'd probably forego the starting favored bow package and go to Great Bow, eating the misses at low levels, but if you are ok with TN 16 injury tests on a keen bow, then go that route.)

The Hobbit can take BofND at low level and get a nice consistant buff to hitting. By Bow skill 4-5 that bonus largely redundant and becomes superfluous. For the same reasons that I'm arguing for the MWE, though, the static bonus is nice, and of course he pays no hope point to trigger it. That's a great perk but it's fundamentally designed to do a different thing than Deadly Archery, so comparing the two virtues to one another is not the right approach. A hobbit who is considering BotND has a decision to make:

-keep the Bow Skill low, around a max of 2, and use BotND to reliably hit for 5 damage (essentially it's a shortcut to sustained, ranged, low-but-consistent dps.)
or
-max Bow skill as primary weapon, in which case BotND has no place in his end-game build, because he's most likely going to hit anyway (except for the same cases which i cited for MWE. But, the Hope expenditures aside, a static bonus is either redundant and superfluous or it's not, regardless of what you have to do to trigger it. So if you would argue that a +3-4 bonus is wasted for MWE, then you must concede that a +3-5 bonus is also wasted for Hobbits)

The other option for the Hobbit is to commit to a full archer build, knowing that the bonus from BotND is going to be often redundant for the "shot of a lifetime" shots, but be able to glean some marginal use from it for those rare high-parry, moderate-hindrance, and/or wearied shots. The only difference is, unlike the MWE he cannot count on anything awesome happening from his shot. The MWE can make the shot against all odds, grin, and say "Stinging Arrow, TN 18 please", and that is why he must pay the additional hope to do so.

Roc,

Let's take the worst case scenario: two dice, which come up snake eyes, body of 4: if you rolled Edge, as you say above, then with a normal attribute invocation you are still going to hit anything up to Parry 4. And there's only a 1/432 chance of getting exactly that roll. Make it three dice, or higher body, or favoured (I'm on my phone...aren't bows favoured for Mirkwood Elves?) and it becomes even less likely that you'll need more than a normal bonus.

Edit: yeah, it's favoured. So with +5 it's a 1/432 of hitting Parry 5, not 4, as worst case scenario. With skill 3 it becomes ~1/2,500 and Parry 6. So with a perfectly reasonable skill of 3 and Body of 5(7) you will almost never need anything more than a normal attribute bonus.

By the way, the best thing about Fair Shot, that works through endgame, is not increased chance of hitting but increased chance of a Pierce. (Sorry if somebody already said that...trying to follow this thread on my phone.)

Glorelendil wrote:Roc,

Let's take the worst case scenario: two dice, which come up snake eyes, body of 4: if you rolled Edge, as you say above, then with a normal attribute invocation you are still going to hit anything up to Parry 4. And there's only a 1/432 chance of getting exactly that roll. Make it three dice, or higher body, or favoured (I'm on my phone...aren't bows favoured for Mirkwood Elves?) and it becomes even less likely that you'll need more than a normal bonus.

Edit: yeah, it's favoured. So with +5 it's a 1/432 of hitting Parry 5, not 4, as worst case scenario. With skill 3 it becomes ~1/2,500 and Parry 6. So with a perfectly reasonable skill of 3 and Body of 5(7) you will almost never need anything more than a normal attribute bonus.

Glor:

That might be the worst-case scenario but it's not the preferred scenario. (actually it's not the worst-case scenario either). The preferred scenario is: you gotta kill this one orc because he's about to cut the rope that Mirabella is hanging off and she'll fall down the Watchtower on the Heath to her death if he succeeds. You roll your attack and you need a 16 (parry 4), you are also weary (because despite what mathers like to theorize on, weary happens a lot). You roll (some combination of 8-11), and the feat die does not produce a piercing blow. Then you add 2 points of hope and kill him.

Agreed. The circumstances are rare. Now let me tell you a little story about a Dunedain named Elenath. Elenath was in a fight getting pummeled by these 2 undead elf guards. It came his turn to attack and guess what he rolled: EoS (feat) +6 + 6 on the success dice. Darn! He missed with an extraordinary success. Shucks that would have helped, and he missed the TN by 5. Oh but wait, his body attribute is 8. Hey he spent a point of hope and killed one of his attackers in one shot. Good thing his body attribute was higher than 4. (And my Grymthanes didn't have that high of a parry.)

But let me take a step back from the anecdotes, because the point of all this was never to argue that Deadly Archery is always a great Virtue to take all the time. I don't think I should have to state that emphatically as I would have thought it's self evident. I'll concede it's not a great selection when you have favored bow, body rating of 5/8 and heart of 2 (ie, the array you alluded to above) In that instance it doesn't make sense to take it. But to use that stat array as evidence that the virtue is lackluster and needs a houserule? No...that's the wrong approach. Not every virtue is great for every build. That's not the litmus test. Nor is the proper comparison to a Hobbit virtue which looks like the Elf virtue on the surface but seems better.

Having now analyzed this through (because it came up), I would say Deadly Archery is useful for:

-Primary melee combatants who want to be able to hit with their (not favored) Bow skill of 1 or 2 when they would otherwise have hit with a piercing blow and/or a great/extraordinary success.
or
-Dedicated elf archers who want the absolute certainty to hit anytime, anywhere, with a piercing blow, on their terms.

There is only one vritue in the game that always makes sense to take all the time and that's Twice Baked Honey Cakes. It's basically the players saying "Dear Loremaster, we've had a meeting and come to the conclusion we don't want to really worry about the Journey phase...ever...so....yeah. Honeycakes."

Ok, so not only are the circumstances rare, but even then it's only useful for some backgrounds. (And I think you're still forgetting to include favoured attribute bonus, but then again I didn't include Weary.)

I'm not saying there aren't scenarios where it won't save your bacon, I'm just saying that it's probably not going to happen. You could very easily, even probably, play through TfW and DoM and never once "need" to use it.

By the way, with skill 2 you are more likely to need it in some cases, but less likely to ever need it for a double Tengwar.

And speaking of anecdotes, think about Feanomor in HS's campaign: he has all the virtues, but didn't start having fun with his elf archer until he got skill 4.

Glorelendil wrote:Ok, so not only are the circumstances rare, but even then it's only useful for some backgrounds. (And I think you're still forgetting to include favoured attribute bonus, but then again I didn't include Weary.)

I'm not saying there aren't scenarios where it won't save your bacon, I'm just saying that it's probably not going to happen. You could very easily, even probably, play through TfW and DoM and never once "need" to use it.

Yeah but the point is you take it when it is useful for your background/build and disregard it when it's not... much like many other virtues/rewards. Would you say that Stiff Neck of the Dwarves is a good selection for a Dwarf hero who seems to be passing all this corruption tests and never accumulates shadow? Does Spear of King Bladorthin make sense for a Barding swordmaster who is specializing up the wazoo in sword? But do those virtues suck in general because of those circumstances? (Well...maybe spear of king blad does...but that's a different discussion altogether).

Glorelendil wrote:By the way, with skill 2 you are more likely to need it in some cases, but less likely to ever need it for a double Tengwar.

Agreed. That's why I proposed 2 builds that it makes sense for:
-melee elf who occassionaly shoots, and gets an edge-miss (because of low roll, weary, high TN, or all of the above).
-shooty elf who always shoots, and wants to be able to produce piercing blows on his terms, even when he's tired, thirsty, unlucky, in complete darkness, at long range and/or all of the above.

As an aside to this, let me also break down the optimal stat array I feel it makes sense for:
Body 4/? Heart 4/? Wits 6/? with no favored weapon. (ie, they took the melee starting weapon package).
In this case, Deadly Archery gets you a +100% return on using a body attribute point (gross) and extends your marginal effective range by a reasonable and likely amount. (from +4 to +8)

Who does it not make sense for?
Body 5/7-8, Heart 2-3/? Wits ?/? with a favored weapon (ie, they took the favored bow starting weapon package). obviously, in this case, the virtue is getting you 25% - 50% return on body attribute point (gross) and extends your marginal effective range by an unlikely and probably far less common amount (from +7-8 to +9-11)

Glorelendil wrote:And speaking of anecdotes, think about Feanomor in HS's campaign: he has all the virtues, but didn't start having fun with his elf archer until he got skill 4.

Not to dodge the anecdote, but I honestly don't remember enough about Feanomor's rolls and/or decision making to know if he was doing things right. Did he have Deadly Archery? What was stat array?

Funny you mention Spear of King Bladorthin: I was defending it in another thread with similar arguments to the ones you're using: it might be awesome, if the stars align. (Unlike Bardings, though, Elves don't really have better options...)

Anyway, just to clarify, I'm not arguing that Deadly Archery is good only for some builds. I'm saying that for the most optimized builds it's still the weakest archery virtue in the game. For other builds it's even worse.

That is: for a minority of builds, early in the game, in rare situations, with unlikely dice rolls...it's AWESOME.

For the canonically best archers in Middle Earth, it's pretty darned weak.

EDIT
I'll offer one concession: I'm coming at this from a "what is statistically useful?" standpoint. But the thing Deadly Archery does give is control: in those highly unlikely scenarios where it's useful, it's guaranteed to be useful. And the ability to press an "i win" button, even if it may never actually happen, is a totally valid kind of fun.

Oh, and regarding Feanomor: he had Elven Magic (which he did use, too often imo) and Deadly Archery, but the situations we've been talking about never arose: Deadly Archery just never made the difference between defeat and victory. He spent Hope like there was no tomorrow (which, in retrospect, was true for him) so he sometimes used Deadly Archery to turn normal misses into normal hits. Otherwise he missed constantly with 2 dice, missed frequently with 3 dice, and then finally started rocking the Extraordinary Successes and Called Shots with 4 dice.

Another reason I think "Shadow Bane" should apply to Forward or Rearward stance.