Not loving the chance to hit party members with ranged

[Rasputin]

If this is going to be a mechanic in the game (keeping in mind that 3.5 found it so annoying that they changed it to a flat penalty), there should be the inclusion of Precise Shot and Improved Precise Shot to mitigate them. I am hitting party members way too often for ranged weapons to be useful.

[jms123]

In the goblin arena there were a lot of ranged attackers and I think through a lot of reloads of that battle I saw more hitting of allies than enemies overall. Also, not having precise shot makes ranged touch spells much less useful.

[claiminglight]

I have to say, I don't agree. I think D&D made a mistake by making ranged weapons so accessible in melee. It allowed for characters that dealt damage each round without ever needing to risk themselves. Mechanically, that's a problem. But, apart from mechanics, it also doesn't make any sense to fire into a quick-flashing sword fight with absolute certainty that your ally won't have to shift to the side into the path of your arrow.

The precise shot feat didn't just make your character able to fire into melee accurately-- it also, somehow, made your allies not have to move into the path of your already-in-flight arrow.

That said-- it does make me think that the changes to Ranger were ill advised.

[LordSith]

Adding randomness for something like hitting.. why don't melee fighters use the same penalties, then? Fighting in close combat 2 or more to 1 is not as simple as swinging the sword.

Personally in only the first 2 fights (before it bugged and killed me so much I didn't try more), I already noticed ranged weapons were useless since the fights are always close combat. For my next team I will use melee weapon only for the fighters and their like. (Besides, the sling was a terrible ranged weapon so anyway, it doesn't matter at all.)

[Rasputin]

I found ranged weapons to be useful in cases where the enemies have lots of crowd control, which seems to be all the time these days.

Web, Stinking Cloud, Cloudkill, and more--there seems to be a lot of time that I just can't get in to get a decent attack, but I can whip out a bow and fire off some arrows for a full attack. At least I don't have to spend a move action to put away my melee weapon and possibly to pull the bow. Makes it at least a little worthwhile.

[BlueSalamander]

there should be the inclusion of Precise Shot and Improved Precise Shot

Actually, these two feats are in the game.

But yeah, when the characters are below level 10, ranged combat tends to be less effective than melee combat. At higher levels, with enchanted bows and archery feats, it's a different story.

[Rasputin]

Not sure if they were added with a subsequent patch, but when I first posted the OP those feats were not available to my character(s).

[BlueSalamander]

Thank you Rasputin. I've just checked in the party creation screen, I was able to give a Fighter the Point Blank Shot feat (prerequisite), followed by Precise Shot so I'd assume they are both in the game now. Cheers