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Quick question about Sword & Shield proficiency

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  • The user and all related content has been deleted.
    Zaghoultbone1AerakarQuartz
  • tbone1tbone1 Member Posts: 1,985

    SomeSort said:

    If your tank is firing a bow, he is tanking wrong.

    People get too bound up in these idea of roles - like "tanks." I always have my front-liners fire off a crossbow bolt before the enemy closes to melee.
    In old version 1 AD&D I took my four fighter proficiencies to match four ranges: bow for very far, spear for far, throwing axe for near, sword for hand-to-hand. That was before specialization, style, etc, of course.
    ZaghoulAerakar
  • fatelessfateless Member Posts: 330
    Sword and Shield has it's uses. It has it's uses in the same vein and reason that all that gear is listed has it's uses. You can't argue for the gear and against the pips. It is certainly an option to get those same numbers.

    For some this may be because they don't really use another weapon. And this is a fine tactic. There isn't a lot of reason to change weapons too much. And you may have decided to use one of the blunt weapons on your S&S character anyway. Blunt for undead being a main reason some have for switching weapons.

    For others there is the fact that they want to spread their gear around to help make all their characters more protected from ranged attacks. S&S helps in this respect quite well.

    S&S also has an advantage over a couple of those pieces of gear. It stacks with things that don't normally have the bonuses which can make for a wider range of choices. Because the 2 pips in this style can turn things like a buckler which normally doesn't give you ranged protection that very effect. But it also opens up the chance to use on these characters shields with other affects on them if you so choose such as Kiel's buckler Or the +2 tower shield from Durlag's Tower, or Things like the suncatcher in SoD.

    My "Tanks" tend to take almost no ranged damage from early on in the game without having to put together most of the list of gear listed above just by using a couple of pips in this skill and capitalizing on very low AC with an almost unhittable ranged modifier. Combined with certain things like Magic resistance from Balduran's cloak and say a ring of free action. I can send that character dead into things and usually not fear too much backlash from my own barrage of spells and such.
    ThacoBellQuartz
  • SomeSortSomeSort Member Posts: 859

    SomeSort said:

    If your tank is firing a bow, he is tanking wrong.

    People get too bound up in these idea of roles - like "tanks." I always have my front-liners fire off a crossbow bolt before the enemy closes to melee.
    I guess that's easier in 2.0 where you can keep crossbow and shield on switch without having to muck around in your inventory. (To say nothing about vanilla, where mucking around in your inventory as soon as you saw the enemy was a spectacularly bad idea.)

    At the end of the day, though, one extra arrow will rarely make a noticeable difference in the outcome of a battle, while an enemy who engages the wrong character certainly will, so I always have my designated tank aggressively closing on the enemy, drawing attention, and making sure he's the one to "wake up" any new arrivals.

    It's not about getting bound up in rigid archetypes so much as it's about isolating my tank(s) away from the rest of the party so I can manipulate and react to enemy AI.
  • Grond0Grond0 Member Posts: 7,305
    edited June 2017

    People get too bound up in these idea of roles - like "tanks." I always have my front-liners fire off a crossbow bolt before the enemy closes to melee.

    The way the game manages combat this won't necessarily help. When you initially fire a crossbow bolt you start a combat turn. It is possible to move slightly and continue attacking in that turn (assuming you have more than 1 APR), but if you move very far at all you will not be able to attack again in that turn (but will still have to wait until the end of the turn before starting a new one and being able to attack again).

    Thus, if you attack with a crossbow and then move to meet an attacking enemy, there will be a period of several seconds after you switch weapons before the next combat turn starts and you really start attacking. In effect, in early BG1 you've roughly swapped a melee attack for a ranged attack - whether that's a good or bad idea depends on your own strengths and what you're facing. In later BG1 and BG2, where you're likely to have tanks with multiple APR and you're unlikely to be able to kill enemies with a single shot, this tactic is probably making your tanks less effective.
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