Heroic Archer House Rule

[Rhino]

I don’t like the Heroic Archer having to make 3 rolls every turn to shoot the bow. I am considering a house rule to make it one roll and have an automatic miss on a natural 16 instead. Does anyone have any thoughts?

[DouglasCole]

Originally Posted by Rhino

I don’t like the Heroic Archer having to make 3 rolls every turn to shoot the bow. I am considering a house rule to make it one roll and have an automatic miss on a natural 16 instead. Does anyone have any thoughts?

One thing you might consider is to take a typical to difficult case for shooting the bow and look at the probabilities of a hit vs the cumulative probabilities of making all three rolls (including the hit). I suspect given the skill levels, that you're looking at something like a -1 penalty vs the pure hit number. So if you figure the hit number, and miss by 1, then you have messed up the quick draw or quick ready. You could probably even say somethign like:

Made it by 0 or more: drew arrow, readied bow, hit.
Missed by 1: you drew the arrow but still need to take a Ready to be able to shoot next turn.
Missed by 2: you biffed drawing the arrow too. You can take a Ready to draw an arrow, but the next turn you have to Ready the bow and then shoot (which you can try to do again next turn in one round)

I haven't worked out the math, but it's quick and easy and preserves some of the outcomes but still gives one-roll resolution.

[Expy]

Effortless Fast Draw (Arrow) and Effortless Ready (Heroic Archer) are both perks from a pyramid article... somewhere... which allowed automatic success (no roll) if final skill is 16 or higher

[tbone]

Originally Posted by Rhino

I don’t like the Heroic Archer having to make 3 rolls every turn to shoot the bow.

Me too. I was going to start a thread some day to say the same thing; glad you've done it faster!

Let's see what we have. The Fast-Draw (Arrow) part of things is standard stuff for any would-be fast shooter. The new thing that Heroic Archer adds is a roll (Bow at -3) to ready the bow instantly and shave off another second.

The effect: If you fail the new roll, you spend the usual second readying the bow, then shoot normally. If you succeed at the new roll, you ready the bow instantly, then shoot at -3 TH.

My thought: To speed up play, how about this: Do away with the new Bow -3 roll to ready the Bow instantly. Let Heroic Archer make that feat automatic. To balance this out, though, boost the shot's TH penalty from -3 to -4. (Halve that to -2 for Weapon Master.)

Does that sound workable? This option could replace the Heroic Archer speed-shooting rule, or exist side-by-side (the archer could choose either). The use of -4 is just a suggestion; maybe it should be -5 or more, but I like -4. (The kind of characters who have Heroic Archer aren't too likely to miss that Bow -3 roll to begin with, so doing away with it doesn't require big compensation.) And maybe there should be a provision for some minimum Bow skill to use this automatic speed-shooting option.

Whatever the details, the most important thing IMO is that it does away with that extra speed-shooting roll. Because it's a wee unfortunate when Heroic Archer, which is meant to speed up in-game action, slows down actual play.

(Next: If we want, it should be possible to do the same thing for Fast-Draw (Arrow): for a character with Heroic Archer, and presumably with Fast-Draw and Bow at some minimum levels, let the Fast-Draw become automatic in exchange for some subsequent penalty on the shot. But one thing at a time . . .)

[martinl]

I'm a minimalist. I have been using:

1. Heroic Archer costs an extra 5 pts.
2. Heroic Archers fast draw arrows automatically, without a roll.
3. Rapid ready requires no extra roll.

I like your solution, however. Maybe like this:

1. Heroic Archers fast draw arrows automatically, without a roll.
2. Rapid ready requires no extra roll.
3. A roll that would crit fail if it was 1 higher (usually a 16) is an automatic miss. Roll DX or drop the arrow.

[dripton]

This isn't in DFRPG, but "GURPS Power-Ups 2: Perks" has a Perk (1-point advantage) called No Nuisance Rolls that's perfect for this. Basically, you pay a point to have an annoying die roll go away. It has to be something you have at 16+ (so it really hardly ever fails), and something the GM is okay with using this for. (So the fast-draw and fast-ready are good candidates, but the actual attack roll is not.)

I have backported this perk to my DFRPG game, just to keep the Scout with Extra Attack from having to roll dice a zillion times a turn and bogging the game down. On the rare occasions that she has a Shock penalty or something that lower her Fast-Draw roll below 16, she goes back to rolling.

[ericbsmith]

Originally Posted by DouglasCole

I suspect given the skill levels, that you're looking at something like a -1 penalty vs the pure hit number.

Made it by 0 or more: drew arrow, readied bow, hit.
Missed by 1: you drew the arrow but still need to take a Ready to be able to shoot next turn.
Missed by 2: you biffed drawing the arrow too. You can take a Ready to draw an arrow, but the next turn you have to Ready the bow and then shoot (which you can try to do again next turn in one round)

I like this, with one extra caveat: The final skill roll should be capped at 15 because the cumulative chance of failing or critically failing at least one of three rolls stacks up here.

The chance of rolling an 18 on one of the three rolls is almost the same as the chance of rolling a 17 or 18 on a single roll (1.38% vs 1.85%). It gets worse when you consider that two out of the three rolls are against skill levels below 16 (the Bow-3 and Fast-Draw).

Similar cumulative chances of rolling a normal failure happen with the skill rolls. Assuming a standard Dungeon Fantasy Scout with Bow-18 and Fast-Draw-14, a moderate -3 range penalty, and remembering the -3 to Bow to Nock & Draw, the chances of failing one of those three rolls is almost 12% - the same as rolling against skill-13. Even if you max all three skill rolls, so you've got skill 16+ on all three rolls, there is a cumulative 4.11% chance of failing one of those three rolls by rolling a 17 (plus the 1.38% chance of a critical failure); this is close to a single skill roll against a 15 (2.78% chance of a failure, 1.85% chance of critical failure).

However, if effective skill would have been 16+ I'd still allow a 6 to be a critical success.

[DouglasCole]

Originally Posted by ericbsmith

I like this, with one extra caveat: The final skill roll should be capped at 15 because the cumulative chance of failing or critically failing at least one of three rolls stacks up here.

The chance of rolling an 18 on one of the three rolls is almost the same as the chance of rolling a 17 or 18 on a single roll (1.38% vs 1.85%). It gets worse when you consider that two out of the three rolls are against skill levels below 16 (the Bow-3 and Fast-Draw).

Similar cumulative chances of rolling a normal failure happen with the skill rolls. Assuming a standard Dungeon Fantasy Scout with Bow-18 and Fast-Draw-14, a moderate -3 range penalty, and remembering the -3 to Bow to Nock & Draw, the chances of failing one of those three rolls is almost 12% - the same as rolling against skill-13. Even if you max all three skill rolls, so you've got skill 16+ on all three rolls, there is a cumulative 4.11% chance of failing one of those three rolls by rolling a 17 (plus the 1.38% chance of a critical failure); this is close to a single skill roll against a 15 (2.78% chance of a failure, 1.85% chance of critical failure).

However, if effective skill would have been 16+ I'd still allow a 6 to be a critical success.

As I noted, I'd not done the math. Capping at 15 seems legit, though. I'm surprised at the -4 or -5 effective penalty to do 'em all at once. That might even suggest some tiers where if your Bow skill is >X, it's a cap of 15; if it's between Y and X, it's miss by 1/miss by 2. If it's less than Y, it's miss by 1-2 for one case, miss by 3-4 or 3-5 is the other.

Or just make it that way all the time regardless of skill level.

On the flip, an out of the gate knight can delivery 1-3 ridiculous damage melee shots per turn, and unless the Scout really gets some time to shine from a distance, having a player be able to Do Something each turn with a relatively minor chance of failure is probably good game design.

[ericbsmith]

Originally Posted by DouglasCole

As I noted, I'd not done the math. Capping at 15 seems legit, though. I'm surprised at the -4 or -5 effective penalty to do 'em all at once.

It's not so much a -4 penalty, it's a -1 penalty to the lowest skill roll in the bunch. A standard Scout has Fast-Draw-14, so he's most likely to fail that roll (which is less catastrophic than failing the to-hit roll, but still slows him down). The chances of missing the Bow-3 or Bow-Speed/Range rolls slightly lowers that 14 to an effective skill of 13 or less, unless the Speed/Range penalty is higher than -4 (so that Bow-Speed/Range becomes the lowest of the three skill rolls, with Fast-Draw and Bow-3 effectively giving a -1 to -2 skill to the core Bow skill roll when you calculate chances of failing one of the rolls).

This means that the cap should probably the lower of 15 or the lowest of the three skill rolls: Fast-Draw, Bow-3, or Bow-Speed/Range. However, this puts a weird skew where Bow skill is constantly controlled by Fast-Draw and all Scouts would automatically put 1 extra point into Fast-Draw just to raise the cap to 15 in most situations. It also complicates things far more than they need to be, since a cap of 15 is close enough but keeps it simple. A cap of 15 also mostly captures the cumulative chance of failing or critically failing at least one of the three rolls even with maxed skill levels in all three.

[InexplicableVic]

Originally Posted by Expy

Effortless Fast Draw (Arrow) and Effortless Ready (Heroic Archer) are both perks from a pyramid article... somewhere... which allowed automatic success (no roll) if final skill is 16 or higher

^ This. 100%.