I’m GMing for a group where everyone (including myself) is entirely new to Pathfinder. We had our session 0 recently followed by a quick practice combat. The thing I noticed from that, plus a little theory crafting of building a low level character myself, is that people using ranged combat felt very underwhelming compared to melee weapon users.
- They couldn’t add any modifier to damage
- They had far fewer feats upgrading them (particularly compared to dual wielders)
- They had fewer “third action” options
- Less ability to help out allies with things like flanking
- Can’t opportunity attack
Sure, for all that they have the advantage of being safer from getting damaged. But it didn’t really feel like a worthwhile trade-off. Does this get better as you level up? Is it just something caused by inexperience? What options can/should you take to make ranged combat feel more interesting and valuable?
For context, my party had a rogue and a ranged fighter as ranged users, as well as a barbarian and a magus in melee, and a druid and sorcerer as casters.
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I think for the rogue in particular they would be a good option as long as they have ways of triggering sneak attack like hiding behind cover. As a rogue a lot of your effectiveness comes from how you hit the enemy, not what you hit them with.
Doesn’t it take a lot of actions to do that though?
Like, Stride to move behind cover, then Hide to actually become hidden. Then on your next turn, Stride to come out from behind cover, Strike, then Stride to get back behind cover.
Or can you attack around a corner without needing to move out of your square?
Combat is not still, depending on the rest of combat, someone may move into your line of fire.
But it does in general take a lot of actions to set up a fire-from-hidden situation.
Or get a wizard to upcast invisibility to let you stay invisible while sniping. :)
You should be able to hide behind waist high cover in front of you as one action, then fire out of it immediately after as another action.
There’s probably a firing angle that you could still do that for a wall corner too. Also I want to point out that you won’t be able to stride out of a hidden position because you would lose hidden as soon as you stride. You would need to use the sneak action and end that movement behind something else that breaks line of sight because ending a move action in direct line of sight makes you “observed” instead of “hidden”.
So in the time since writing that question I’ve been reading and watching everything I can about how this should work. And apparently the official ruling is that you can lean out of cover (like lean around a corner) to shoot as an action, but pop back behind cover for free. That’d be fine if you only want the protection of being behind cover. But if you also want the bonus from them being off-guard, it’d be 3 actions: one to Hide, one to lean out, and one to attack. Pretty steep, but could be worth it in the right circumstances I guess.
That is quite steep. But I guess it makes up for it by returning behind a solid wall, so they can’t actually target you unless they move. Another alternative is to have an ally grab them. Then you can lean out and shoot twice right?
And instead of requiring cover to hide, you could create a diversion using deception and shoot them in the back which is a different kind of sneaky.
Yeah. I’m GMing some new players and I have a hard time getting my rogue to realize that there are a good number of ways to get a target flat-footed and deal sneak attack damage. I’m giving him as many suggestions as possible but it’s not clicking for him yet.
Stop “suggesting” and start “telling” him. If you’ve pointed out, step-by-step, how to do the thing, and he still doesn’t do it then that’s on him. Otherwise do just that.
Those skill actions take some time to wrap your head around coming from most other systems
You are definitely trading damage for both the protection of range as well as the reduced action requirements by not having to move.
The deadly traits on bows should help make up the difference and picking something like composite short bow will give you some of strength mod towards damage of you have one.
Most classes do have feats that improve ranged options as well, fighter in particular has great options like point blank shot and double shot. At higher levels you can take one of the strongest feats in the game Debilitating shot.
Rogue is a bit tricker because at range you give up a few easy ways to get enemies off guard (flanking and feinting). You can go thief racket though to pickup that extra dex damage and then maybe invest in intimidate and take Dread Striker?
double shot
Ah yeah interesting. So far I had only really looked at 1st and 2nd level feats, which were quite disappointing. It does seem like more options open up at higher levels (without needing to get too much higher).
You can go thief racket though to pickup that extra dex damage
How does that work? I thought thief racket only allowed dex in place of str for melee strikes’ damage bonus.
Note that what @ErsatzEidolon told you only works if rogue is your base class. The DEX mod damage bonus is only available in the class, not the archetype.
Ah you are right, thief racket is melee only. No throwing daggers or anything. I haven’t looked at that racket in a bit and remembered wrong.
For a rogue it looks like picking up a dedication like Ranger would be the best way to get useful ranged abilities.
Ranged characters work better for party comps with good CC. Being able to put a full-sized Entangle between the party and a dangerous enemy kicks ass, unless your party members all start scrambling through the weeds to thwack enemies with big sticks.
I agree with you. I think it would be a lot more valuable if not for the fact that every attack that doesn’t target you targets another party member. So while yes, you are protecting yourself, pathfinder is a team game and I don’t see how it helps the team.
In my experience my party’s flurry ranger often does less damage than their companion, which feels like it shouldn’t be the case.
I don’t think they are worse, they just do less damage. A lot of the value of ranged combat depends on the map layout, if there are places to take cover, choke points, difficult terrain. And also it requires coordination with the rest of the party to be very effective, if everyone grabs a ranged weapon they can shot at enemies while they get close, then switch to melee when they are in reach.
