forums.cubicle7.co.uk
archive

Seems to me the poor Mirkwood Elves still need a buff. Basic Heart on a 2-4 heart culture just doesn't seem worth a virtue.

I noticed Shadow Bane got buffed to granting an extra dice in forward stance instead of +3 or +Valor

Perhaps Deadly Archery should do the same?

OPTION 1
Credit: Michebugio

Swap the effects of Deadly Archery and Bow of the North Downs.



OPTION 2
Credit: Angelalex

Swap the effects of Deadly Archery and Fair Shot.



OPTION 3
Credit: Falenthal

1) When firing with a Bow or Great Bow, roll the Feat die twice and keep the best result.
2) Spend 1 XP and a Fellowship Undertaking to learn: When scoring a Piercing blow with a Prepared Shot or Stinging Arrow with a Bow, the opponent substracts one success die for his Protection roll.

while Fair Shot becomes:
When doing a ranged attack, if the Hobbit spends 1 Hope point to add his Body attribute to the roll, he can also add his basic Heart.



OPTION 4
Credit: Doctheweasel

When scoring a Piercing Blow with a bow attack, the target rolls the Feat Die twice on their Protection Test and keeps the worst result.



OPTION 5
Credit: Dunkelbrink

Adds you basic Heart to the attack roll and to damage when you invoke an Attribute bonus.



OPTION 6
Credit: Glorelendil and Zedturtle

Adds you basic Heart to the Injury rating of your Bow.



OPTION 7
Credit: Rocmistro

1. You can always adopt a Rearward stance and fire, even when you are outnumbered.
2. You can fire ranged attacks from Open Stance.



OPTION 8
Credit: Zedturtle

Deadly Archery

their small knives... would have been of no use against the arrows of the Elves that could hit a bird's eye in the dark.

Like many of your kin, you seem to possess a natural affinity for hitting the mark with your bow. But you have honed it to a remarkable degree, and are able to hit the smallest of targets, given any opportunity. Your arrows are more likely to injure your foes than those shot by less trained archers.

When you are successful in producing a Piercing Blow with a Bow, the target makes his Armour Protection test as if he was Weary.



OPTION 9
Credit: Michebugio

Deadly Archery

...their small knives... would have been of no use against the arrows of the Elves that could hit a bird’s eye in the dark.

Most members of your kin possess a natural talent for hitting the mark when using their bows. You seem to
possess that quality yourself, as your arrows find their target with uncanny precision.

When making an attack roll using a bow, the difficulty of your attack is unaffected by any complications or hindrances, like shooting at medium or long range, in the darkness, or aiming at a very small target.



OPTION 10
Credit: Deadmanwalking, developed from Michebugio's Option 9

Deadly Archery

...their small knives... would have been of no use against the arrows of the Elves that could hit a bird’s eye in the dark.

Most members of your kin possess a natural talent for hitting the mark when using their bows. You seem to
possess that quality yourself, as your arrows find their target with uncanny precision.

When making an attack roll using a bow, the difficulty of your attack is unaffected by any complications or hindrances, like shooting at medium or long range, in the darkness, or aiming at a very small target.

Additionally, when you score a piercing blow against a foe*, he must subtract one die from their Protection roll, as you successfully aim through the tiny chinks in even the best armor or weak points in even the thickest hide.

* a lot of different, additional circumstances have been proposed.

We just need to compare Deadly Archery with Bow of the North Downs to see that there is a real problem of balance here.

A +2/+4 bonus on bow attack rolls only when spending Hope, against a +3/+6 bonus without spending Hope.

Fun thing is that the Bow of the North Downs doesn't require Hope expenditure, and it belongs to a culture with plenty of Hope points; vice-versa, Deadly Archery requires Hope and it belongs to the culture with the lowest Hope scores.

So... we have the solution here. Swap the effects!

Deadly Archery v.2 gives a bonus equal to +3 or to Valour score (whichever is higher) to bow attack rolls, no Hope expenditure required.

Bow of the North Downs v.2 allows to receive an additional bonus based on Heart score (which is high, for Hobbits!) when spending Hope to invoke an Attribute bonus on bow attack rolls.

I was thinking of perhaps trading with Fair Shot instead of Bow of the North Downs. If anyone deserves to roll the feat die twice and keep the better, it's elves.

Deadly Archery is definitely a weak Virtue and could do with some improvement...but Bow of the North Downs and Fair Shot, while nice, don't seem like they should be de-powered or stolen to pay for such a boost. There was a thread about precisely this sort of issue in general about a month back, so have a look there for some ideas.

Personally, I'm not sure quite what I'd do to fix it (though poaching Stinging Arrow from Wood-Elf Magic seems useful as a part of any such fix)...but something definitely should be done. Maybe just have it add Heart on all shots with no Hope cost and then have Stinging Arrow on top of that (possibly for an extra xp). That'd be a solid, if perhaps slightly unoriginal...

When scoring a Piercing Blow with a bow attack, the target rolls the Feat Die twice on their Protection Test and keeps the worst result.

It's a different mechanic than the others, and is "deadly."

For my group I've house ruled that Deadly archery adds you basic Heart to the attack roll and to damage when you spend a hope. That makes it more useful, but the cost of Hope still doesn't make it too powerful.

I agree that the elves' archery Virtues need a revamping. I already explained my view in the other thread that Deadmanwalking linked, but I'll summarize my opinions:

1) In Wood-Elf Magic, swap the first (and forced) spell from Stinging Arrow to Elf Lights. Thus the elven spearmen don't need to learn a spell that isn't useful for them.

2) Whatever change is made to Deadly Archery (and maybe also to Stinging Arrow) shoud improve their chance to hit or to score a Wound, but not to Damage or to the Injury rating. Mirkwood elves can achive difficult and accurate hits, but they're also known for being at disadvantatge when facing armored oponents.

Thus, I would say that adding a dice to the attack as with Shadow Bane is not a good idea (it improves the chance to hit, but also of obtaining a Tengwar and doing extra damage. Besides, if we compared the best elven archer with 6 skill in bow with the best barding archer with 6 skill in long bow, this change wouldn't make the elf a better hitter because of the "to a maximum of 6 dice" part).

To me it would seem more logical that one of the Virtues (maybe Stinging Arrow) improved the chance to hit with a fixed bonus, and the other (maybe Deadly Archery) improved the chance to obtain an Edge (rolling the Feat Dice twice, for example, which also improves the chance to hit)

3) Hope points shouldn't be a requirement for archery Virtues.

With that in mind, there're myriad of options, both messing with the Hobbit's virtues and not.

A simple option, IMHO, and reading your ideas would be this:

DEADLY ARCHERY: Roll the Feat Die twice and keep the best result with a bow or long bow.
STINGING ARROW: Heart is added when shooting with a bow or long bow.

Hobbits could be changed or not, depending on your likings, but if we want some difference between cultural Virtues, they could get the current elven effects:

FAIR SHOT: allows to receive an additional bonus based on Heart score when spending Hope to invoke an Attribute bonus on missile (bows, dagger as throwing attacks, fanmade weapons like slings, etc.) attack rolls.
BOW OF THE NORTH DOWNS: Spend a point of Hope when you let loose an arrow and it will fly up to twice its normal range, OR spend a point of Hope after a successful ranged attack using the Bow of the North Downs to produce an automatic Piercing blow.

Falenthal wrote: STINGING ARROW: Heart is added to the attack roll when shooting with a bow or long bow.

The problem I see with this is that Stinging Arrow isn't very "magical" then.
I propose this:

On a successful hit with a bow or long bow, the elf can make the attack score a Piercing blow even if the Edge wasn't met. Limit the use of Stinging Arrow to as many times as Wisdom per Adventure Phase. Being a magical effect, it should also increase the Eye of Mordor rating.

EDIT: Add "For the Protection test against this Piercing blow, the adversary rolls the Feat die twice and keeps the worst result".
The final text should read something like this:

STINGING ARROW: On a successful attack with a bow or long bow, the elf can choose to automatically produce a Piercing blow. For the Protection test against this Piercing blow, the adversary rolls the Feat die twice and keeps the worst result. Stinging Arrow doesn’t grant a second Piercing blow if one was achieved in the attack, but it can be activated for the adversary’s Protection roll effect. The use of Stinging Arrow is limited to as many times as Wisdom per Adventure Phase. Being a magical effect, it also increases the Eye of Mordor rating.

Angelalex wrote:I was thinking of perhaps trading with Fair Shot instead of Bow of the North Downs. If anyone deserves to roll the feat die twice and keep the better, it's elves.

It's definitely a possibility, although then a Hobbit with Fair Shot and a Bow of the North Downs would have two almost identical stacking effects (up to +7 to attack rolls with "revised" Fair Shot, and up to +6 with a Bow of the North Downs, total +13: really unnecessary, most of the time).

doctheweasel wrote:When scoring a Piercing Blow with a bow attack, the target rolls the Feat Die twice on their Protection Test and keeps the worst result.

It's a different mechanic than the others, and is "deadly."

Not different: in fact, it's exactly what a Dalish Longbow does, only much better (it doesn't require a Gandalf on the attack roll).

Dunkelbrink wrote:For my group I've house ruled that Deadly archery adds you basic Heart to the attack roll and to damage when you spend a hope. That makes it more useful, but the cost of Hope still doesn't make it too powerful.

Nice change, though the Hope expenditure for an Elf still makes it a very poor Virtue. Also, the value of this benefit would decrease with time, since very experienced characters will rely more and more on Called Shots rather than simple damage output.

Falenthal wrote:1) In Wood-Elf Magic, swap the first (and forced) spell from Stinging Arrow to Elf Lights. Thus the elven spearmen don't need to learn a spell that isn't useful for them.

That makes a lot of sense, yes. I actually solved this allowing an elf player to learn Stinging Spear instead of Stinging Arrow

In the end, actually, you could just re-mix Deadly Archery, Stinging Arrow, Fair Shot and Bow of the North Downs swapping the benefits from one to another until you find the right combination for each Culture in terms of balance.

That's another thing I considered....

Changing Stinging Arrow to Stinging Point. "When using a piercing weapon..." instead of 'When using an arrow..."

And now it's useful for elven spearmen too.