Thank you very much for your input Cobwebbed. You've given me a lot to think about. Here are some of my initial reactions though:
Cobwebbed Dragon wrote:
The player of a sorcerer character when their magic points have run out can be pretty frustrating, and I'm sure the same could be said for an archer without arrows. Is the archer too much of a one-trick-pony?
I think they're relatively versatile, but they definitely have a very sharp spike in competency in one specific area, obviously. I don't see this as a bad thing though because don't think there's any merit in the notion that all professions must be "balanced" in simple rules terms, as long as they all have the potential to participate in a fair slice of the game. I think the Archery definitely fits here.
An archer without arrows is in trouble, true! Fortunately half his shooting bonus can be used for any missile weapon, so he could still be formidable just chucking rocks and furniture! I also think skill with ranged attacks has potential for less obvious use of their skill, where they can be experts at shooting out a lock from behind a fence, getting a grapnel on a parapet, distracting a guard with a well placed tossed stone etc.
Cobwebbed Dragon wrote:
Drop references to the Longbowman and Hunter and include the Archer's abilities in full - there's nothing more annoying during play than having to rifle through a rulebook to find only half the information, the other half of which you have to rifle through another book to find (or, in this case, up to two additional books!)
I feel the same way. I confess however that I'm uneasy about repeating the work of others verbatim in my own works for IP reasons, although of course in the case of Cadaver Draconis the license specifically allows this.
Cobwebbed Dragon wrote:
The ability compatibility matrix is quite complicated. I'd word the descriptions of the abilities such that it's obvious which are passive bonuses, which apply to everything, and which are active abilities, only one of which may be used with each attack. If there are special rules where one ability could stack with another, mention it in the ability description.
I did attempt to include this information in the skill descriptions themselves, and then included the matrix as a handy reference to save the reader from having to leaf through the supplement to find the right part. It looks like it doesn't come across clearly though! I'll give it another go.
Cobwebbed Dragon wrote:
Other than a throwaway mention at the beginning that the Archer is a master of his craft because he's warped his body to the needs of his weapon, what impact does this abuse of his body have on his other adventuring abilities/weapons?
Good question. I'll need to do some research to see if mediaeval bowmen and their counterparts elsewhere in the world suffered any health problems from their distorted frames.
Cobwebbed Dragon wrote:
I'd make the Archer a bow-only profession and not include other missile weapons. At the very least, I'd drop crossbows, which are simple weapons by design.
I agonised over this so many times! In the end I included other missile users simply to reflect the historical reality of slingers, spearmen, and crossbowmen. Archers get all the publicity but many other missile weapons were important in premodern warfare, and there were distinct troop specialisations for each of them.
Granted none of them have quite the same potential as the archer (particularly the crossbowmen) but I feel that that is reflected in the rules themselves. I don't think I'd choose to create a crossbowman character, in fact, due to their limited usefulness, but I'm still reluctant to exclude them, particularly as the bow alone is already emphasised in the Hunter and Longbowman professions.
Cobwebbed Dragon wrote:
An average 7th rank Archer has an Attack score of 15, a shooting bonus of 9, and is likely to have Precise Shot which, with a Defence score of 9, adds a further 3 to his Attack score. All this gives a total of 27 Attack with a bow, meaning he will hit a housefly (+13 to his) 250m away (+7 to hit) 35% of the time (40%, if he aims for a round first). If the character also has Fast Shot and Earth Quiver (again, not unreasonable at 7th rank as he'll have ), he'll more than likely hit 1 fly at that range each round (until he runs out of arrows).
You highlight an issue I was acutely aware of when devising this profession, but I see it as a problem not with the archer, but with the existing DW missile combat rules themselves, which I find basically unsatisfactory. As they stand, you have the same chance of hitting a target with an arrow at 126 metres as you do at 250 metres, even though in reality the target at the further range would present one-quarter of the area of the nearer target, to say nothing of the extra wind drift and target movement that would apply at the longer range. With a crossbow, this is even more pronounced in the standard rules (and not for any reason I can identify, incidentally, as quarrels usually actually have a flatter and more predictable trajectory). I would prefer to overhaul the ranged combat rules altogether (I'm sure Kharille would echo this!) but I was trying to stay within the established rule set. Having said that, I actually have a supplemental rule that would resolve the above problem, and its one founded on the real world: Weapon Precision.
The idea is that no matter how good your aim is, the Attack you use can never be better than your Weapon Precision; this reflects the fact that no weapon will always land its projectile on the exact same spot every time, even if all other variables are accounted for.
For instance, let's say that at short range, all weapons have unlimited maximum Attack, at medium range the maximum Attack is 30, and at long range, the maximum Attack is 20. This means that a master archer is no better than a merely very good archer with an Attack of 20 when shooting at long range, due to the many variables beyond anybody's control. Now the Archer will only hit that housefly with a natural roll of 1.
Cobwebbed Dragon wrote:
Also, a 7th rank Archer has the Evasion of a Barbarian and an Assassin, an effective combat ability (Att/Def) of a Mystic, and a goodly number of Health Points to boot. All before some professions pick up their first Skills of the Mighty.
Perhaps that Evasion is a bit high...
Cobwebbed Dragon wrote:
Significantly extend the missile rules such that any character could take advantage of some of the Archer's (and Hunter's) special skills. If a character wanted to stab his arrows in the ground to make them quicker to fire (Earth Quiver), then I'd allow it - it's not something a character that has been trained from birth has to have been trained from birth to know how to do (nor is, for example, fletching - surely anyone could learn to make arrows?)
I'm sympathetic to this idea, but I think it would need to be extended to all other professions (within reason) too. Anybody should be able to learn how to pick a lock, brew a potion etc. Only certain very special abilities, like spellcasting or Shock Attack should ever be completely off-limits to outsiders.
Cobwebbed Dragon wrote:
If a character wants to fire more arrows per turn by splitting his Attack score, then I'd allow it, but unless you've got a good Attack score (or Attack+Shooting Bonus), then you're not likely to hit.
I agree. In fact I think this should be extended to melee attacks too.
Cobwebbed Dragon wrote:
Sharpshooting could be substituted with just some additional called shot penalties to bypass armour (which, again, anyone could do). The kernel of that idea is in this thread: viewtopic.php?f=4&t=216#p1927. And there are precedents in the main rules.
I'd be very reluctant to do this; I love my Sharpshooting rules because they are simple and universal; there's no need to remember anything arbitrary like hit locations or damage multipliers for vital organs etc. The numbers decide and the player roleplays to turn the abstract into the specific. I must confess I haven't playtested the rules however, so they could be ghastly in application. On the other hand maybe it could be something anybody can learn. Spend a couple of hours being instructed by an Archer, sacrifice a couple of xp and then you've got it; at the end of the day if you're lousy at missile combat Sharpshooting won't do you much good, after all.
I'll keep tinkering and I'll try out your ideas (particularly with regard to the balance of skills at different ranks), and thank you again!
Cheers,
Kyle