Talk:Rapid Fire (3.5e Feat)

Troublesome Phrasing

"You reach is equal to half the range at which you could use precision damage." As far as I know, even in Tome, the range at which you could use precision damage is defined individually per class. It's almost always 30 feet (I'm sure somebody has made a class where it's not), so it's probably better to reword this. I can see the intent, but I can't think of a way of actually capturing it in English. --Havvy 15:17, 27 July 2011 (UTC)

I Have Reservations

Can I just say that even by the standards of Tome feats, this feat is ten kinds of unmanageable as written at this point. 15 feet of reach at level 1? That's ten kinds of ridiculous; even the Huge Size feat isn't available until level 9, and at level 1 even the normally reduced damage output of a ranged character is enough to kill pretty much anyone who moves within a fairly sizable distance.

It's not overpowered necessarily since it's basically a mook killer, but the +11 bonus is potentially silly. That could be a LOT of attack rolls and even more damage rolls. It would be painful to make happen. An AoE cone or circle AoE that just kind of shoots in an area would probably be just as effective damage-wise, and allowing a Reflex save would allow you to drop the ability all the way down to the +6 or +1 if it dealt scaling damage in a scaling area. Other than that, it's OK because the comparison is a ranged version of Combat Reflexes and Blitz, but the other tempting comparison is that ranged characters can get essentially the same thing with Manyshot at less than +16 BAB. So it's power is kind of all over the place, with the bar set probably too high by the +0. - TG Cid 02:08, 3 November 2011 (UTC)

Adoption

I have adopted this feat since I made the comments above, so they may seem out of place now. Just so everyone knows. - TG Cid 05:37, 20 March 2012 (UTC)

Why didn't you make a new feat instead of taking over and ruining this one? Mishra 18:29, 20 March 2012 (UTC)

Its previous incarnation was problematic for the reasons pointed out above, and since the original creator has been banned from the site for vandalism no changes were going to be forthcoming. Also, if you would care to elaborate on how I allegedly ruined it, it would be more helpful than simply stating so without any reasoning. - TG Cid 18:45, 20 March 2012 (UTC)

Aside from some ability shuffling (like delaying double damage and granting AoE shot earlier), major changes appear to be the loss of threatened area early on and the swift action attack instead of more AoOs (which don't work without threat anyway). You could make an argument for granting a minimum threatened range early on, at BAB +1 even I think, and get some of that back without unbalancing anything.

In an unrelated thought, is it intentional for people to carry around great/heavy crossbows instead of light with this feat because of the reload ability? And does it apply to catapults and trebuchets and ballista, as they are all projectile weapons? Changing to a one step reduction, with a swift attack granted if the action is already free, might work better. That would also likely turn the immediate action ability into a two step reduction, or immediate if it's already free. Or something. - Tarkisflux ^Talk 21:39, 20 March 2012 (UTC)

I was operating under the premise that reloading any crossbow is not a free action (light is move, and heavy is full-round), so while there is an incentive to have a heavy crossbow due to the increased damage and the same reload time, the idea was for crossbows to just not be a clearly inferior counterpart to bows (which I think at this point, they are). Heavy crossbows still have higher attack bonus penalties than light crossbows when reloaded with one hand (-4 versus -2); whether that is enough to dissuade players from using them akimbo or not is questionable. In addition, this was not meant to apply to siege weapons, so perhaps the addition of "handheld" would be useful. That's just been done.

With regards to the threat range, I think the best way to handle giving that at +1 would be to go back the the idea of a staggered threat range based on the number of attacks you can make in a full attack. So at +1 you threaten out to 5 feet, and with every iterative attack from BAB gained thereafter the reach is extended by 5 feet. It serves the purposes of granting the reach earlier, keeping it from getting out of hand too quickly, and eventually gives you further reach than it grants presently (20 ft. versus 15 ft.). I think it could work and would be willing to install it, although as much as the ability to interrupt casters and such is helpful I'm not sure the immediate action shot alone is worth a +11 benefit by itself. Suggestions for what to do with that, if anything, would be appreciated. - TG Cid 00:11, 21 March 2012 (UTC)

Those are penalties when fired with one hand, not reloaded. So unless you're applying them now, there's no penalty to using a bigger crossbow over a light one now that the reload action has been removed (unless you TWF with them or something). - Tarkisflux ^Talk 06:20, 21 March 2012 (UTC)

Ah, I see. Even so, though, that's not wholly dissimilar from the fact that in almost any conceivable situation a longbow is better than a shortbow (unless you're mounted). So is there a tremendous problem with creating that disparity, given that light crossbows are still better for TWF if you so desired? - TG Cid 14:40, 21 March 2012 (UTC)