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...Here's the other problem with deadly archery.

Suppose you're using Envoy of the King, Archer build. Because they start with favored Bow...you might even have a +8 when you spend a hope if you make body your +2. (+3 on heart, with a 6/2/6 build...)

What earthly use is Deadly Archery to Envoy of the King?

Roc wrote: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.

I do get your point Roc, but my maths is just to tell you that the difference between a +4 and a +8 (BEST case, for an elf with Deadly Archery) is insignificant most of the time, for an elf who really wants to be, well, a deadly archer.

Let's consider two variants of the elf in your example (again, remember that this is the BEST case for a Deadly Archery user): Body 4, Heart 4. Elf A has Great Bow 3 (6 Experience points), Elf B has Great Bow 2 and Deadly Archery (taken at Wisdom 3, 6 Experience points). Both are shooting against TN 18.

Maths: Elf A has a 38.85% chance to hit. Elf B has 16.44%. When Weary, Elf A has 26.04%, Elf B has 14.58%.

Then they both invoke an Attribute bonus (+4 for the first, which becomes +8 for the latter with Deadly Archery... BEST case scenario, did I already mention it?).

Maths: Elf A has a 69.48% chance to hit. Elf B has 74.07%. When Weary, Elf A has 47.72%, Elf B has 57.41%.


Conclusions: on every normal roll, Elf A has 22% more chance to hit than Elf B (12% when Weary). Only when invoking an Attribute bonus, Elf B has a slight advantage of 5% more chance to hit than Elf A (which becomes 10% more when Weary).

No impressions, no opinions, no extensive experience, just sheer probability for a hit.

With the goal of becoming a DEADLY ARCHER, are those 6 Experience points better spent in Widsom 3 to get Deadly Archery, OR to get Great Bow 3? In my house, I would definitely choose the second option, unless my Loremaster is overtly generous when awarding Hope refills.

So practically the only two builds to whom the Virtue really makes sense would be:

Roc wrote:-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.

Well, melee elf will pump up Valour and take a Bitter Great Spear coupled with a Leaf Buckler, and won't certainly waste a single Exp on Deadly Archers when he could make that opening volley way more efficiently by throwing another spear he's already very proficient with. Especially because he also should spend Hope to make that Bow shot work.

Shooty elf who always shoots and wants to be able to produce piercing blows on his terms will either take Confidence as his only other Virtue besides Deadly Archery, because he will spend an awful lot of Hope to make that work... OR he will simply get his bow skill as high as possible, attempting Called Shots as much as possible and adjusting the roll with a simple Attribute bonus when he misses on a potential Extraordinary Success.

Also, you're emphasizing the fact that your build can score a lot of Piercing Blows: but that's more thanks to Stinging Arrow, which is a very effective Virtue in comparison to Deadly Archery, which simply increases chance to hit by that insignificant 5% I said above. In other words: Deadly Archery won't make you score Piercing Blows on your terms, it's Stinging Arrow that will do that. Your choice if you want to increase your hit chance by 5% at the price of a Virtue AND only when spending Hope to invoke an Attribute bonus, or to increase overall Bow efficiency by 22% with no Hope expenditures.

Again, the choice is pretty obvious for me, at least if probability still counts against personal impressions in a dice game. Otherwise, let's just say that Deadly Archery is a colourful choice without a noticeable impact in-game, and from a statistical point of view we'll definitely agree.

Oooh, I've just had an interesting thought. Why not have it add Heart directly to a bow's (and only a bow's...no great bows) base damage? That'd be a solid Virtue with a name that made sense, stack with Grievous, and make up for Elves using bows instead of Great Bows. That's a solid and unused mechanic. Simple, too, if that's all the Virtue does.

And makes Elven archers the premier baseline (and thus reliable) damage dealers in the game. With (assuming optimized characters for this purpose) base damage 11 and a Damage stat of 5, they're nicely on par with Shepherd's Bow using Woodmen who manage a 9 with Damage stat of 4 but an extra 5 if they roll any tengwars. So...with no tengwars, 11 to 9, with 1 tengwar 16 to 18, with two or more tengwars 21 to 22. Add in a Woodland Bow (and maybe Wood-Elf Magic for Stinging Arrow) and they're definitely ahead of the Woodmen in the damage competition (if only slightly). Bardings are also around on par (with 9, 18, 27) though better if they get lucky. Hobbits are way more accurate, but with very low damage comparatively (7, 11, 15).

Deadmanwalking wrote:Oooh, I've just had an interesting thought. Why not have it add Heart directly to a bow's (and only a bow's...no great bows) base damage? That'd be a solid Virtue with a name that made sense, stack with Grievous, and make up for Elves using bows instead of Great Bows. That's a solid and unused mechanic. Simple, too, if that's all the Virtue does.

[...]

I will spare you the maths (I'm very much used to make mathematical calculations to have an deeper insight of certain game mechanics, as you can see from my previous posts, but I realize that it may not be very appreciated sometimes), but your suggestion will make Deadly Archery just a little too good in comparison with Sheperd's Bow.

In fact, considering a sample of cases between Bow skill 1 and Bow skill 5, shooting against an average TN of 16 (Parry 4), "Deadmanwalking's Deadly Archery" would perform dealing on average 2 points of Damage more than Sheperd's Bow. That's considering average scores for an Elf and Woodman respectively, and same conditions in all other respects. However that's far from game-breaking, and the difference tends to get lower increasing Bow skill (at 5 dices, average Damage difference is just 1.3) so I would definitely approve such a rule, also from a statistical point of view

Michebugio wrote:I will spare you the maths (I'm very much used to make mathematical calculations to have an deeper insight of certain game mechanics, as you can see from my previous posts, but I realize that it may not be very appreciated sometimes), but your suggestion will make Deadly Archery just a little too good in comparison with Sheperd's Bow.

In fact, considering a sample of cases between Bow skill 1 and Bow skill 5, shooting against an average TN of 16 (Parry 4), "Deadmanwalking's Deadly Archery" would perform dealing on average 2 points of Damage more than Sheperd's Bow. That's considering average scores for an Elf and Woodman respectively, and same conditions in all other respects.

Interesting! Are you taking into account the difference between a Bow and a Great Bow? Because Woodmen are proficient with Great Bows and can have a Shepherd's Great Bow, while Elves are (by my version of this) restricted to ordinary bows.

Michebugio wrote:However that's far from game-breaking, and the difference tends to get lower increasing Bow skill (at 5 dices, average Damage difference is just 1.3) so I would definitely approve such a rule, also from a statistical point of view

Indeed! Assuming you're taking into account the Bow/Great Bow divide, other factors that help make up for this disparity include a Woodman's greater Parry much of the time, and their Injury rating being 2 points higher (the latter no small advantage). Plus access to the Hound of Mirkwood Virtue (which is just amazing).

Deadmanwalking wrote:Interesting! Are you taking into account the difference between a Bow and a Great Bow? Because Woodmen are proficient with Great Bows and can have a Shepherd's Great Bow, while Elves are (by my version of this) restricted to ordinary bows.

No, I'm making a comparison between two Bows of course ("...and same conditions in all other respects"), since I'm taking for granted that the greater Damage of a Great Bow is compensated by its higher Encumbrance!

Glorelendil wrote: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.

Maybe I'm losing something, but Deadly Archery only allows to "guarantee" that you hit. It might not even be a Piercing blow, and even if it was, the Injury of Bow is still low against well armored adversaries.
Just allowing you to hit at will with a weapon that is in the medium-weak range doesn't make (in my eyes) elves "deadly archers".

Falenthal wrote:Maybe I'm losing something, but Deadly Archery only allows to "guarantee" that you hit. It might not even be a Piercing blow, and even if it was, the Injury of Bow is still low against well armored adversaries.
Just allowing you to hit at will with a weapon that is in the medium-weak range doesn't make (in my eyes) elves "deadly archers".

Exactly. But collecting what I've been saying so far: at Bow skill 4, a normal Attribute bonus is enough to guarantee a hit against a high TN of 18 (95%), making Deadly Archery largely wasted on a character who is already a trained archer.

And at lower skills, you'll spend a tremendous amount of Hope just to get a trivial increased chance (5% or 10% if Weary, compared to a character who increased by 1 dice his bow skill) to get low Injury Piercing Blows: why should a character do that? If he's primarily melee, he'll fight in melee since he'll be much more efficient in that way; if he's primarily ranged (but for some reason he didn't put so much Experience on his Bow skill), he surely won't risk spending 2 (2!) points of Hope to get a Piercing against a 3D armored monster.

Just to say, my players never spend more than 1 or 2 Hope points per combat, and one of those points is always saved to boost a bad Protection roll.

If I want to be a "deadly archer", I'll put as much Experience points as possible on my Bow skill to rain Called Shots on my enemies, and I certainly won't take a Virtue that will be almost useless as soon as I hit Weapon skill 4. Heck, even Dour-handed is more appealing for an archer, in my opinion.

Falenthal wrote:

Glorelendil wrote: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.

Maybe I'm losing something, but Deadly Archery only allows to "guarantee" that you hit. It might not even be a Piercing blow, and even if it was, the Injury of Bow is still low against well armored adversaries.
Just allowing you to hit at will with a weapon that is in the medium-weak range doesn't make (in my eyes) elves "deadly archers".

I basically agree, but was looking for common ground with Roc.

Want I meant was that if you spend the Hope you know for certain what the result will be. In Roc's example, if the goblin is almost dead, and he is about to push your companion off the cliff, and you are the only one who can respond, and you miss by slightly more than your favoured Body...well in that case you save the day by using Deadly Archery, guaranteed.

I'm not being a very good salesman for the virtue, am I?

Glorelendil wrote:Want I meant was that if you spend the Hope you know for certain what the result will be. In Roc's example, if the goblin is almost dead, and he is about to push your companion off the cliff, and you are the only one who can respond, and you miss by slightly more than your favoured Body...well in that case you save the day by using Deadly Archery, guaranteed.

I'm not being a very good salesman for the virtue, am I?

The Hobbit with Fair Shot and his trusty Bow of the North Downs aiming at the same goblin looks at his elf companion, shrugs and drops his bow: "well, let him have his moment of glory, he deserves it".