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Rhett2.3 wrote:this involves heavy combat. Hero's outnumbered, enemy has archers. do archers suffer difficulty to attack? does a miss have a chance to hit line of fire damage? or does it magically dissappear?

..What's the dealio, yo? You keep asking questions like this that are way too over-thought.

..Why would archers suffer a difficulty to attack less targets? What do you mean by line of fire damage? What on earth would make an arrow magically disappear?

??? ???

-Mike

The question is a bit poorly worded, but I think it might be trying to address saturation attacks, such as when a large group of archers attack a target by simultaneously unleashing storms of arrows - if you've seen the recent films Hero or Lord of the Rings, or are familiar with the use of massed archers such as at the Battle of Agincourt, you probably have a good idea of what I'm getting at.

If that is indeed the subject of the post, in terms of rules I would simply assign a number of arrows to each person within the target area based upon the number of arrows fired and the size of the area targeted. I would not allow for a dodge, since moving from one spot to another would presumably place one in the path of other falling arrows. Instead, I would simply make attack rolls for each applicable arrow and apply it to any armor the character may have. If appropriate, especially if the person has a shield, I might allow for a parry attempt as well for some or all of the arrows.

Let me know if that addresses your question.

Well, I'm with Mike on this, but I'll try to answer the questions as best I can.

No, the archers wouldn't suffer a negative to strike unless their view is obscured or something.

I don't know what you mean about the miss. I guess you are asking if you aim at Garimor the Palladin but miss, could it hit Laskales the Ranger who's standing next to him. The answer to that is yes.

The arrows will not magically disappear.

-Vek
"Line of fire damage?"

Veknironth wrote:I guess you are asking if you aim at Garimor the Palladin but miss, could it hit Laskales the Ranger who's standing next to him. The answer to that is yes.

Im with Vek on this. But, in most groups Im in, we don't worry about it because it takes too much time. Combat is slow enough as is. The other reason we pretty much ignore this fact of life, is that, unless they are REALLY close together (or the archer totally whiffed it), it's not likely to matter.

--
GS