Relatively speaking, there’s maybe 3 classes that will make regular use of bows, and about 8 that can use some form of sword. Also, most weapon enchantments can be moved between different weapons without issue, so the discrepancy is somewhat cosmetic.
I think 5e wanted to be more "traditional" with bows by mostly putting enchantments on arrows. My impression is that they wanted archers to have more of a Batman/Hawkeye feel where you have a few tricks up your sleeve for certain situations. This would give it a different feel than your typical always-on melee enchantment. Maybe they were afraid of potential bow/arrow combos if both could have magical properties.
The issue with that that arrows are consumables, which is fine, but 5e has made consumables so flippin' expensive (half the cost of the permanent version, plus they lose their magic upon being used) that it's ridiculous and not really viable. Unless the DM is very cooperative and has dozens of them just lying around after every fight...you just can't use them as anything other than a Hail Mary shot.
I get the mentality, but they haven't put the support into the game necessary for it to work.
If you're not willing or able to to discuss in good faith, then don't be surprised if I don't respond, there are better things in life for me to do than humour you. This signature is that response.
There are a couple of things to consider, level 1-5 bows and cantrips do about the same damage and to a large extent that holds thru L10 ( increased chance to hit with 2 shots but over all if both hit 2d8 damage vs 2d8 damage from most cantrips if they hit. Adding extra damage n some way - especially above L10 might help. Several of the crossbows create their own ammo if they don’t have any and that might be a good general rule for all magic bows. Then energy added bows start to make sense since they create their own ammo. Another simple add on would be to allow archers to have a feat that let them use a bonus action to fire an additional shot so 2 shots at L1-5, 3 shots at L6-10 and, for fighters, 4 shots at L11+. That could also be an enhancement to bows rather than a feat. Energy/elemental bows that add a D6 of their type of damage to the standard bow damage would be useful as well. An example might be a +1 short bow of necrosis that fired standard nonmagical ammo (when purchased) that the bow embues as magical (+1) and embues the arrow to do an extra D6 of necrotic damage on a hit.
I think 5e wanted to be more "traditional" with bows by mostly putting enchantments on arrows. My impression is that they wanted archers to have more of a Batman/Hawkeye feel where you have a few tricks up your sleeve for certain situations. This would give it a different feel than your typical always-on melee enchantment. Maybe they were afraid of potential bow/arrow combos if both could have magical properties.
The issue with that that arrows are consumables, which is fine, but 5e has made consumables so flippin' expensive (half the cost of the permanent version, plus they lose their magic upon being used) that it's ridiculous and not really viable. Unless the DM is very cooperative and has dozens of them just lying around after every fight...you just can't use them as anything other than a Hail Mary shot.
I get the mentality, but they haven't put the support into the game necessary for it to work.
Late reply, but I think you're missing part of the point of the original post. They specifically said that they felt arrows were "a few tricks up your sleeve for certain situations"; the arrows aren't something you rely on as a main feature, but they're there to enhance performance during crucial encounters. Plus, keep in mind that magic ammo can stack with magic bows, so making them too reusable would mean they'd need to lower the baseline power of one or both pieces if they wanted to avoid them becoming very dominant in play. Now, bow support itself has been spotty, but looking at Book of Many things with three different magic bows and several arrows, I'd say they're working to correct the issue of range of options.
There are a couple of things to consider, level 1-5 bows and cantrips do about the same damage and to a large extent that holds thru L10 ( increased chance to hit with 2 shots but over all if both hit 2d8 damage vs 2d8 damage from most cantrips if they hit. Adding extra damage n some way - especially above L10 might help. Several of the crossbows create their own ammo if they don’t have any and that might be a good general rule for all magic bows. Then energy added bows start to make sense since they create their own ammo. Another simple add on would be to allow archers to have a feat that let them use a bonus action to fire an additional shot so 2 shots at L1-5, 3 shots at L6-10 and, for fighters, 4 shots at L11+. That could also be an enhancement to bows rather than a feat. Energy/elemental bows that add a D6 of their type of damage to the standard bow damage would be useful as well. An example might be a +1 short bow of necrosis that fired standard nonmagical ammo (when purchased) that the bow embues as magical (+1) and embues the arrow to do an extra D6 of necrotic damage on a hit.
They've essentially already got the bow you described at the end in Book of Many Things: the [Tooltip Not Found] is a +1 bow with 1d6 elemental damage rider on all attacks that produces its own ammo. Yes, technically it says it's locked into a single damage type, but the DMG already specifically says that changing a damage type doesn't affect balance, so unless DMs have collectively come down with a bad case of being unwilling to tweak the material to get the vibe they want, there's no need to specifically spell out the wildcard option in the description. Not sure they'd go for bonus action attacks on ranged weapons, they seem to have pretty thoroughly kept that out of play so far; it's also interesting that they seem to feel that ranged does need to be a bit below melee, since the Moonbow is Rare and at the same tier a Flametonge does 2d6 rider damage. Personally I doubt you'd wreck play by using the Flametongue template on a bow, but I know there are some people who feel very strongly that there's a risk of DEX/ranged becoming too dominant in the game, so that might be why they decided to lower the damage slightly.
They've essentially already got the bow you described at the end in Book of Many Things: the [Tooltip Not Found] is a +1 bow with 1d6 elemental damage rider on all attacks that produces its own ammo. Yes, technically it says it's locked into a single damage type, but the DMG already specifically says that changing a damage type doesn't affect balance, so unless DMs have collectively come down with a bad case of being unwilling to tweak the material to get the vibe they want, there's no need to specifically spell out the wildcard option in the description. Not sure they'd go for bonus action attacks on ranged weapons, they seem to have pretty thoroughly kept that out of play so far; it's also interesting that they seem to feel that ranged does need to be a bit below melee, since the Moonbow is Rare and at the same tier a Flametonge does 2d6 rider damage. Personally I doubt you'd wreck play by using the Flametongue template on a bow, but I know there are some people who feel very strongly that there's a risk of DEX/ranged becoming too dominant in the game, so that might be why they decided to lower the damage slightly.
That was the Dragon Wing Bow, which actually first appeared in Fizban's Treasury of Dragons.
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Find your own truth, choose your enemies carefully, and never deal with a dragon.
"Canon" is what's factual to D&D lore. "Cannon" is what you're going to be shot with if you keep getting the word wrong.
I think 5e wanted to be more "traditional" with bows by mostly putting enchantments on arrows. My impression is that they wanted archers to have more of a Batman/Hawkeye feel where you have a few tricks up your sleeve for certain situations. This would give it a different feel than your typical always-on melee enchantment. Maybe they were afraid of potential bow/arrow combos if both could have magical properties.
The issue with that that arrows are consumables, which is fine, but 5e has made consumables so flippin' expensive (half the cost of the permanent version, plus they lose their magic upon being used) that it's ridiculous and not really viable. Unless the DM is very cooperative and has dozens of them just lying around after every fight...you just can't use them as anything other than a Hail Mary shot.
I get the mentality, but they haven't put the support into the game necessary for it to work.
Late reply, but I think you're missing part of the point of the original post. They specifically said that they felt arrows were "a few tricks up your sleeve for certain situations"; the arrows aren't something you rely on as a main feature, but they're there to enhance performance during crucial encounters. Plus, keep in mind that magic ammo can stack with magic bows, so making them too reusable would mean they'd need to lower the baseline power of one or both pieces if they wanted to avoid them becoming very dominant in play. Now, bow support itself has been spotty, but looking at Book of Many things with three different magic bows and several arrows, I'd say they're working to correct the issue of range of options.
No, I got the point and I agreed with the concept, you've mossed mine. My point was that they made arrows (and magical consumables in general) so expensive that they've made it nonsensical to go down that route - every two arrows you shoot is essentially the same as a brand new bow. The problem is that consumables are just set far to high in value compared to their permanent versions.
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If you're not willing or able to to discuss in good faith, then don't be surprised if I don't respond, there are better things in life for me to do than humour you. This signature is that response.
I think 5e wanted to be more "traditional" with bows by mostly putting enchantments on arrows. My impression is that they wanted archers to have more of a Batman/Hawkeye feel where you have a few tricks up your sleeve for certain situations. This would give it a different feel than your typical always-on melee enchantment. Maybe they were afraid of potential bow/arrow combos if both could have magical properties.
The issue with that that arrows are consumables, which is fine, but 5e has made consumables so flippin' expensive (half the cost of the permanent version, plus they lose their magic upon being used) that it's ridiculous and not really viable. Unless the DM is very cooperative and has dozens of them just lying around after every fight...you just can't use them as anything other than a Hail Mary shot.
I get the mentality, but they haven't put the support into the game necessary for it to work.
Late reply, but I think you're missing part of the point of the original post. They specifically said that they felt arrows were "a few tricks up your sleeve for certain situations"; the arrows aren't something you rely on as a main feature, but they're there to enhance performance during crucial encounters. Plus, keep in mind that magic ammo can stack with magic bows, so making them too reusable would mean they'd need to lower the baseline power of one or both pieces if they wanted to avoid them becoming very dominant in play. Now, bow support itself has been spotty, but looking at Book of Many things with three different magic bows and several arrows, I'd say they're working to correct the issue of range of options.
No, I got the point and I agreed with the concept, you've mossed mine. My point was that they made arrows (and magical consumables in general) so expensive that they've made it nonsensical to go down that route - every two arrows you shoot is essentially the same as a brand new bow. The problem is that consumables are just set far to high in value compared to their permanent versions.
Considering the DMG gives a range from several hundred to several thousand GP for Uncommon and higher tiers, you can't definitively say that consumables are set too high relative to permanents in the abstract of the game. Now, I will say that for the basics like + 1 arrows or other ones that wouldn't cause issues if they were spammed, they could stand to be sold in sets of 10 rather than singleton if they're going to be one use only, but stuff like an Arrow of Slaying is still probably best as single instances. I'll agree it's imperfect, but I don't think consumables in general are quite as overpriced as you do; arrows specifically could use a little tuning (and in fact there's at least two re-useable trick arrows in the Book of Many Things), but there's also enough variance there that I don't think you can just categorically say "all magic arrows should be reusable" or "all magic arrows should cost far less".
Instead of more magic bows, I would personally like to see more magic quivers. I mean, a +2 longbow is already a solid weapon. If it could stack with aquiver that automatically imbued ammo pulled from it with an additional +1d6 damage of any type, even the commonly resisted fire or poison damage, or a quiver that could generate the benefits of the swift quiver spell 1ce/day, that would be exciting.
While WOtC hasn’t looked at bands action damage for missiles it might be time. Real world 1 shot a round is reasonable - 10 shots a minute. The English longbowman was expected to fire 12 shots a minute or 1 shot every 5 seconds - fair enough. However I’ve seen an expert fire 18 arrows in a minute ( and hit a chest sized target at 100m with all of them) or 1 every 3.3 seconds. He could have pushed it to 20 in a minute as his pattern could have been covered by an open hand. That’s 1 every 3 seconds or 2 a round allowing for a bonus action shot after level 4 or in some cases at L1 if it’s from a feat. Having a magically self loading bow grant that would seem to make sense.
I could agree with that. It makes the Hawkeye thing viable while fixing the daft consumable pricing issue (at least in this instance) and you could even introduce limits as you mention. Once a day, you can do 1d6 of every type. I like that idea.
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If you're not willing or able to to discuss in good faith, then don't be surprised if I don't respond, there are better things in life for me to do than humour you. This signature is that response.
While WOtC hasn’t looked at bands action damage for missiles it might be time. Real world 1 shot a round is reasonable - 10 shots a minute. The English longbowman was expected to fire 12 shots a minute or 1 shot every 5 seconds - fair enough. However I’ve seen an expert fire 18 arrows in a minute ( and hit a chest sized target at 100m with all of them) or 1 every 3.3 seconds. He could have pushed it to 20 in a minute as his pattern could have been covered by an open hand. That’s 1 every 3 seconds or 2 a round allowing for a bonus action shot after level 4 or in some cases at L1 if it’s from a feat. Having a magically self loading bow grant that would seem to make sense.
Side notes:
I guarantee you that person was only half drawing their bow to its full potential at most.
2 shots per round is the rough equivalent of the standard Extra Attack feature most martials get.
Anything more than that and it’s under the purview of the Fighters Extra Attacks feature gained at 11th & 20th levels, which seems reasonable.
Wonder how much it would help to just have a few reusable Common trick arrows? A rope arrow is obvious, and maybe some kind of illumination one to work as a flare or spotlight. And a few more to round it out, of course.
I suppose to a certain degree, the thing with trick arrows is Rangers already have a number of spells to cover that kind of thing combat-wise. Along with Battlemaster and Arcane Archer, so it kinda seems that they want trick shots to be something that comes from features more than equipment.
Wonder how much it would help to just have a few reusable Common trick arrows? A rope arrow is obvious, and maybe some kind of illumination one to work as a flare or spotlight. And a few more to round it out, of course.
I suppose to a certain degree, the thing with trick arrows is Rangers already have a number of spells to cover that kind of thing combat-wise. Along with Battlemaster and Arcane Archer, so it kinda seems that they want trick shots to be something that comes from features more than equipment.
Rope arrows are actually either quite complicated or fairly ineffective. If you just tie a rope to an arrow the weight and drag of the rope will slow down the arrow dramatically. At best the arrow’s range will be cut in half (or less), or the whole shot would be made with disadvantage, possibly both. To make one properly you need to attach a tiny little pulley wheel with a length of string around it the arrow so the weight doesn’t throw off your shot, then you need to use the string and pulley, to pull the rope into place so you can actually climb it. And on top of all that you gotta pray like crazy that the arrow doesn’t come loose. That usually requires a specialized arrowhead that expands after it hits to better embed itself into the target and make it more stable, kinda like an impact driven wall anchor. That simultaneously means that the arrow would not actually be very reusable.
I think Ace of Rogue's point was a magic arrow that didn't have to deal with all the physics-related downsides.
Ahh ha ha, that would make sense. Stupid physics and practical engineering getting in my way there. But even then, some of those are just as easily covered by practical effects and cantrips such as light much of the time.
I’m sure they would.
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The issue with that that arrows are consumables, which is fine, but 5e has made consumables so flippin' expensive (half the cost of the permanent version, plus they lose their magic upon being used) that it's ridiculous and not really viable. Unless the DM is very cooperative and has dozens of them just lying around after every fight...you just can't use them as anything other than a Hail Mary shot.
I get the mentality, but they haven't put the support into the game necessary for it to work.
If you're not willing or able to to discuss in good faith, then don't be surprised if I don't respond, there are better things in life for me to do than humour you. This signature is that response.
There are a couple of things to consider, level 1-5 bows and cantrips do about the same damage and to a large extent that holds thru L10 ( increased chance to hit with 2 shots but over all if both hit 2d8 damage vs 2d8 damage from most cantrips if they hit. Adding extra damage n some way - especially above L10 might help. Several of the crossbows create their own ammo if they don’t have any and that might be a good general rule for all magic bows. Then energy added bows start to make sense since they create their own ammo. Another simple add on would be to allow archers to have a feat that let them use a bonus action to fire an additional shot so 2 shots at L1-5, 3 shots at L6-10 and, for fighters, 4 shots at L11+. That could also be an enhancement to bows rather than a feat. Energy/elemental bows that add a D6 of their type of damage to the standard bow damage would be useful as well. An example might be a +1 short bow of necrosis that fired standard nonmagical ammo (when purchased) that the bow embues as magical (+1) and embues the arrow to do an extra D6 of necrotic damage on a hit.
Wisea$$ DM and Player since 1979.
Late reply, but I think you're missing part of the point of the original post. They specifically said that they felt arrows were "a few tricks up your sleeve for certain situations"; the arrows aren't something you rely on as a main feature, but they're there to enhance performance during crucial encounters. Plus, keep in mind that magic ammo can stack with magic bows, so making them too reusable would mean they'd need to lower the baseline power of one or both pieces if they wanted to avoid them becoming very dominant in play. Now, bow support itself has been spotty, but looking at Book of Many things with three different magic bows and several arrows, I'd say they're working to correct the issue of range of options.
They've essentially already got the bow you described at the end in Book of Many Things: the [Tooltip Not Found] is a +1 bow with 1d6 elemental damage rider on all attacks that produces its own ammo. Yes, technically it says it's locked into a single damage type, but the DMG already specifically says that changing a damage type doesn't affect balance, so unless DMs have collectively come down with a bad case of being unwilling to tweak the material to get the vibe they want, there's no need to specifically spell out the wildcard option in the description. Not sure they'd go for bonus action attacks on ranged weapons, they seem to have pretty thoroughly kept that out of play so far; it's also interesting that they seem to feel that ranged does need to be a bit below melee, since the Moonbow is Rare and at the same tier a Flametonge does 2d6 rider damage. Personally I doubt you'd wreck play by using the Flametongue template on a bow, but I know there are some people who feel very strongly that there's a risk of DEX/ranged becoming too dominant in the game, so that might be why they decided to lower the damage slightly.
That was the Dragon Wing Bow, which actually first appeared in Fizban's Treasury of Dragons.
Find your own truth, choose your enemies carefully, and never deal with a dragon.
"Canon" is what's factual to D&D lore. "Cannon" is what you're going to be shot with if you keep getting the word wrong.
No, I got the point and I agreed with the concept, you've mossed mine. My point was that they made arrows (and magical consumables in general) so expensive that they've made it nonsensical to go down that route - every two arrows you shoot is essentially the same as a brand new bow. The problem is that consumables are just set far to high in value compared to their permanent versions.
If you're not willing or able to to discuss in good faith, then don't be surprised if I don't respond, there are better things in life for me to do than humour you. This signature is that response.
Considering the DMG gives a range from several hundred to several thousand GP for Uncommon and higher tiers, you can't definitively say that consumables are set too high relative to permanents in the abstract of the game. Now, I will say that for the basics like + 1 arrows or other ones that wouldn't cause issues if they were spammed, they could stand to be sold in sets of 10 rather than singleton if they're going to be one use only, but stuff like an Arrow of Slaying is still probably best as single instances. I'll agree it's imperfect, but I don't think consumables in general are quite as overpriced as you do; arrows specifically could use a little tuning (and in fact there's at least two re-useable trick arrows in the Book of Many Things), but there's also enough variance there that I don't think you can just categorically say "all magic arrows should be reusable" or "all magic arrows should cost far less".
Instead of more magic bows, I would personally like to see more magic quivers. I mean, a +2 longbow is already a solid weapon. If it could stack with aquiver that automatically imbued ammo pulled from it with an additional +1d6 damage of any type, even the commonly resisted fire or poison damage, or a quiver that could generate the benefits of the swift quiver spell 1ce/day, that would be exciting.
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While WOtC hasn’t looked at bands action damage for missiles it might be time. Real world 1 shot a round is reasonable - 10 shots a minute. The English longbowman was expected to fire 12 shots a minute or 1 shot every 5 seconds - fair enough. However I’ve seen an expert fire 18 arrows in a minute ( and hit a chest sized target at 100m with all of them) or 1 every 3.3 seconds. He could have pushed it to 20 in a minute as his pattern could have been covered by an open hand. That’s 1 every 3 seconds or 2 a round allowing for a bonus action shot after level 4 or in some cases at L1 if it’s from a feat. Having a magically self loading bow grant that would seem to make sense.
Wisea$$ DM and Player since 1979.
I could agree with that. It makes the Hawkeye thing viable while fixing the daft consumable pricing issue (at least in this instance) and you could even introduce limits as you mention. Once a day, you can do 1d6 of every type. I like that idea.
If you're not willing or able to to discuss in good faith, then don't be surprised if I don't respond, there are better things in life for me to do than humour you. This signature is that response.
Side notes:
I guarantee you that person was only half drawing their bow to its full potential at most.
2 shots per round is the rough equivalent of the standard Extra Attack feature most martials get.
Anything more than that and it’s under the purview of the Fighters Extra Attacks feature gained at 11th & 20th levels, which seems reasonable.
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Wonder how much it would help to just have a few reusable Common trick arrows? A rope arrow is obvious, and maybe some kind of illumination one to work as a flare or spotlight. And a few more to round it out, of course.
I suppose to a certain degree, the thing with trick arrows is Rangers already have a number of spells to cover that kind of thing combat-wise. Along with Battlemaster and Arcane Archer, so it kinda seems that they want trick shots to be something that comes from features more than equipment.
Rope arrows are actually either quite complicated or fairly ineffective. If you just tie a rope to an arrow the weight and drag of the rope will slow down the arrow dramatically. At best the arrow’s range will be cut in half (or less), or the whole shot would be made with disadvantage, possibly both. To make one properly you need to attach a tiny little pulley wheel with a length of string around it the arrow so the weight doesn’t throw off your shot, then you need to use the string and pulley, to pull the rope into place so you can actually climb it. And on top of all that you gotta pray like crazy that the arrow doesn’t come loose. That usually requires a specialized arrowhead that expands after it hits to better embed itself into the target and make it more stable, kinda like an impact driven wall anchor. That simultaneously means that the arrow would not actually be very reusable.
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I think Ace of Rogue's point was a magic arrow that didn't have to deal with all the physics-related downsides.
Find your own truth, choose your enemies carefully, and never deal with a dragon.
"Canon" is what's factual to D&D lore. "Cannon" is what you're going to be shot with if you keep getting the word wrong.
Ahh ha ha, that would make sense. Stupid physics and practical engineering getting in my way there. But even then, some of those are just as easily covered by practical effects and cantrips such as light much of the time.
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