Rate of Fire with a bow.

[SpiritInterface]

A question has come up on how fast a person can fire a Bow. As written the rate of fire is the number of actions from what ever HtH skill you have plus any actions from other skills, Powers, any OCC/Race Bonuses and WP Archery.

So the way it is written a 5th level human with HtH: Martial Arts, Boxing and Archery gets 10 actions per melee round. Or they only get 5 actions that WP Archery gives.

[Mack]

Only 5. It’s an exception.

[SpiritInterface]

Only 5. It’s an exception.

So does anything add to the rate of fire? Super powers, RCC/OCC abilities? Skills?

[Mack]

First thing that comes to mind is the spell Speed Weapon, which should double the rate of fire. I’d have to check the exact language.

I’m sure there’s a few super powers out there as well, but I’m less familiar with them.

[Shark_Force]

incidentally, i don't believe there's any restriction that you *must* use that rate of fire for bows. like, if you had a character that somehow could get 20 attacks per round the normal way, and that character did not have WP archery, they would presumably be able to use a bow 20 times per round. as such, i would expect the same to be true for a character that does have the WP.

(note: that's probably an unrealistic rate of fire, but 20 actions per round is a pretty unrealistic number of actions that is far beyond normal human capability, so we're clearly talking about a person that is superhumanly fast in this case, and as such i see no problem).

[ShadowLogan]

Only 5. It’s an exception.

So does anything add to the rate of fire? Super powers, RCC/OCC abilities? Skills?

WP: Sharpshooting (WB14 pg80) grants a bonus action when using that particular weapon.

Traditional Samurai and Ninja OCCs in WB8 use a different ROF progression better than the RMB version (the standard at the time), may or may not be better than RUE version.

Elves from the Palladium World per RCB1r pg86 get a bonus action with the long bow type if they take the Archery Skill AND specifically from that world.

[eliakon]

incidentally, i don't believe there's any restriction that you *must* use that rate of fire for bows. like, if you had a character that somehow could get 20 attacks per round the normal way, and that character did not have WP archery, they would presumably be able to use a bow 20 times per round. as such, i would expect the same to be true for a character that does have the WP.

(note: that's probably an unrealistic rate of fire, but 20 actions per round is a pretty unrealistic number of actions that is far beyond normal human capability, so we're clearly talking about a person that is superhumanly fast in this case, and as such i see no problem).

Technically... by the rules you do. This is because the skill lays out the speed of bows and their ranges. It does not set out the speed and range of only skilled use. More importantly we are told that anyone with out skills is allowed to use ancient weapons with out needing the skill.
Thus we are left with two options.
Option 1 is to use the rules in the Archery skill for all use of archery
Option 2 is to cherry pick out the rules for ranges and damage and ignore RoF.

That said I am perfectly fine with either ignoring the RoF or houseruling it anyway. As written it's a hold over from PF1e where it provided a higher rate of fire than you would get with your APM. The problem is that they have boosted APMs significantly over the years, but the skill has remained unchanged. Thus it is now a liability instead of an asset.

[Shark_Force]

it gives an ROF. it does not state that it is the ROF for the weapon (or that it isn't), and doesn't state that the ROF given must be used without exception.

given that we know it was intended to be an increased ROF, it is not rational to presume it was intended to replace ROF for all uses of the weapon.

[eliakon]

it gives an ROF. it does not state that it is the ROF for the weapon (or that it isn't), and doesn't state that the ROF given must be used without exception.

given that we know it was intended to be an increased ROF, it is not rational to presume it was intended to replace ROF for all uses of the weapon.

That is one way to look at it yes.
The other way is to note that the skill lays out rules... and then says "and a trained archer may..." telling us that the material in the skill is what applies to untrained archers.

So it is totally a GMs call how you want to handle the RoF issue.
Just like it is a GMs call how you want to handle the bonuses for Bows. Or the strike rules you will use. Or how you handle defense rolls...
As there are precedents for multiple ways of doing each.

[ShadowLogan]

incidentally, i don't believe there's any restriction that you *must* use that rate of fire for bows. like, if you had a character that somehow could get 20 attacks per round the normal way, and that character did not have WP archery, they would presumably be able to use a bow 20 times per round. as such, i would expect the same to be true for a character that does have the WP.

Short of an OCC/RCC or Skill Bonus or power/equipment effect that grants additional APMs, in the long run (ie by Level 15) the RoF actions favor using WP: Archery (general skill or CLASS version of skill) over HTH actions (also at level 15) under RUE, RMB, PF2E, RT (1E), and HU2E and ignoring outlier HTH: styles (like those in WB8 Japan) that I did not look at.

Under RUE @ Level 15 the ROF =9 vs HTH actions is typically 7 (Assassin is 8, None is 3). It should be noted that HTH actions are superior @ Level 1 and WP: Archery doesn't really get ahead until after Level 5 (at which point it is break even).

Under RMB @ Level 15 the ROF =8 vs HTH actions typically 5 (6 for Assassin). It should be noted HTH actions are equal @ Level 1 (generally) with Archery surpassing the ROF by Level 3. In PF2E Archery skill starts to surpass HTH actions at Level 2 but otherwise similar to RMB. Class versions of the skill (like PF2E Longbow man, or Rifts Japan's Samurai or Ninja) surpass them even sooner, and are equal or greater than even the RUE version in the long run and are more viable at lower levels (around level 5).

It might also be worth considering just what constitutes an action under the WP's ROF vs HTH action. Does the ROF action include reloading the bow with the next arrow, or is it a separate action like it would be under HTH action for someone without training (and likely experience)?

[Hotrod]

As Eliakon said, archery rules in Rifts are an artifact of PF 1st Edition game design that may not hold up well in the current rules. In PF 2nd Edition, their relatively lower attack rate is mitigated by a massive penalty to dodge/parry arrows. In Rifts, that doesn't seem to be the case. I'm actually ok with shooting arrows only half as fast as one shoots a gun, especially for less-skilled folks. Nocking, drawing, and loosing should take longer than aiming and squeezing a trigger unless the archer is highly skilled and practiced.

That said, a closer look the rules as written reveals a complicated picture. Let's look at an example. My Wilderness Scout N.P.C. Generator (see the link in my signature) has the default hand-to-hand skill, and the Naturalist variant of this generator (on Page 2 of it) has the Archery skill.

Attacks per melee for this character start at 4 and go up to 7 by level 15. This is Hand-to-Hand: Basic without the Boxing skill.

The Rate of Fire for a skilled archer starts at 2 and goes up to 9 by level 15 with the default Archery skill in RUE.

At Levels 5-7, both attacks per melee and ROF are tied at 5. They tie again at level 9 with 6 attacks. Otherwise, the archer shoots faster with a bow than with conventional attacks. Having one extra attack per melee (from boxing or whatever) pushes the tied levels higher, but archery ROF eventually evens it out. Having two extra attacks per melee ties attacks and ROF at Level 15, and any more than two bonus attacks per melee will effectively make archery slower than conventional attacks at all levels.

Of course, the number of attacks you can make in a melee is only one factor among many. Damage per shot, range, ammunition you can carry, availability of resupply, and versatility are all important to consider.

Thus, when considering archery as a choice for your character, I'd consider the following:

Attacks and Damage Output
- In the early levels, your character won't attack as often, and mixing in dodge rolls may mess up your rate of fire (depending on your interpretation)
+ At high levels, your character will attack more often.
+/- Your damage per shot is highly variable depending on your use of High Tech / Magic Arrows.

Ammunition
- Resupply is likely to be a problem for archers. In general, your character won't carry as much ammunition, and will have to spend more money on ammunition.
+ With magic and high-tech arrowheads, your character will have a lot of special attack options and effects, and you may be able to re-use some types of arrows.

Range and Stealth
- In general, your archery range will be shorter than most rifles and some pistols.
+ Your attacks will be silent and very difficult to trace (arguably more so than lasers).

Overall, I think archery remains a solid choice as a skill and weapon category, in RUE. A bow in skilled hands with a good mix of magic/tech arrows is probably the most versatile weapon in the game and still provides very respectable damage output. I would advise pairing archery with a modern W.P. to cover its gaps/weaknesses. If you want your primary weapon to be the bow, then carrying a big quiver and lots of spare arrows is important, so your backup weapon should probably be something small, but with plenty of punch, like a pistol with a pulse attack mode (or a particle beam pistol). If you want to use a bow for its versatility, then I'd say it's better to use a high-damage long gun for conventional combat and keep a quiver with arrows that offer non-damaging, but useful effects.

[Mlp7029]

The reality is mixing attack types in the same melee round makes the Archery ROF rules very difficult to implement. We gave up and just say it takes 1 attack to fire a bow.

[dreicunan]

I would disagree with archery being more difficult to trace than lasers if the shooter leaves the sound generator off. I thought lasers in Rifts were invisible.

[SpiritInterface]

I would disagree with archery being more difficult to trace than lasers if the shooter leaves the sound generator off. I thought lasers in Rifts were invisible.

In general they are, however thing like multi-spectrum goggles, full spectrum bionics eyes, or full spectrum vision for robots can see the laser beams that are outside of the visible spectrum.

[Hotrod]

I would disagree with archery being more difficult to trace than lasers if the shooter leaves the sound generator off. I thought lasers in Rifts were invisible.

In a vacuum, absolutely, In pristine air, probably. In practice, kind of? Directed energy weapons in real life that put that much energy tend to zap things like dust, pollen, and other tiny airborne particles, which would tend to make their beam path visible. Since all this energy passes through the air in a tiny fraction of a second, this would also create a crack-like noise.

The counter-argument is that the impact of a laser is likely to be so bright and so loud that it will tend to overwhelm the dimmer and quieter path of the laser, making it difficult to trace.

The counter-counter-argument is that laser impact will be loud and tend to ablate and vaporize armor where it hits, which will likely give folks on the receiving end a good idea of the general direction of the shooter.

The counter-counter-counter argument is that the person hit or folks who see the impacts will likely be too dazzled, shocked, or dead to figure out where they came from beyond a vague and broad arc.

By comparison, an arrow that hits will give a good idea of where it comes from (unless it's an exploding arrow), but it will also be a very quiet impact (unless it's an exploding arrow). In any case, it's an arguable point that's likely to be very dependent upon the situation.

If you want to dive into the noise and effects of laser weapons, this is a good starting point.

If you care more about this than any healthy, well-adjusted person should, this is a very in-depth page on the same topic.

[Flakpanzer]

So how do you folks implement dodges and actions (that are not attacks) when using Rate of Fire?

If a player has a RoF with a bow of 4, and Dodges, does the RoF simply become 1 less?

What about that same character having a RoF 4 with a bow, but 6 Melee Attacks and doing the following:
- Firing 2 shots from the bow
- Dodging
– Switching to a Melee Weapon
– Attacking with a Melee Weapon

How do you handle that situation in your games?

Thanks.

[HWalsh]

So how do you folks implement dodges and actions (that are not attacks) when using Rate of Fire?

If a player has a RoF with a bow of 4, and Dodges, does the RoF simply become 1 less?

What about that same character having a RoF 4 with a bow, but 6 Melee Attacks and doing the following:
- Firing 2 shots from the bow
- Dodging
– Switching to a Melee Weapon
– Attacking with a Melee Weapon

How do you handle that situation in your games?

Thanks.

Rate of fire doesn't mean "automatic number of attacks" each attack costs an action. It means that no matter how many actions you have, you cannot shoot more than X times in a 15 second combat round.

6 total actions
Player 1 - Action 1: Shoot with bow (actions remaining 5)
Other players go...
Player 1 - Action 2: Shoot with bow (actions remaining 4)
Other players go...
Player 1 Is attacked: Player 1 Dodges (one action removed from player 1) (actions remaining 3)
Player 1 - Action 3: Switch to melee weapon (actions remaining 2)
Other players go...
Player 1 - Action 4: Close and attack with melee weapon (actions remaining 1)

[Flakpanzer]

So how do you folks implement dodges and actions (that are not attacks) when using Rate of Fire?

If a player has a RoF with a bow of 4, and Dodges, does the RoF simply become 1 less?

What about that same character having a RoF 4 with a bow, but 6 Melee Attacks and doing the following:
- Firing 2 shots from the bow
- Dodging
– Switching to a Melee Weapon
– Attacking with a Melee Weapon

How do you handle that situation in your games?

Thanks.

Rate of fire doesn't mean "automatic number of attacks" each attack costs an action. It means that no matter how many actions you have, you cannot shoot more than X times in a 15 second combat round.

6 total actions
Player 1 - Action 1: Shoot with bow (actions remaining 5)
Other players go...
Player 1 - Action 2: Shoot with bow (actions remaining 4)
Other players go...
Player 1 Is attacked: Player 1 Dodges (one action removed from player 1) (actions remaining 3)
Player 1 - Action 3: Switch to melee weapon (actions remaining 2)
Other players go...
Player 1 - Action 4: Close and attack with melee weapon (actions remaining 1)

Thanks for the response and example for clarification.

So basically, your character's HTH Combat Skill helps determine your total number of attacks, and you use that structure for all of your actions during the turn (including number of ranged attacks - the latter of which is limited by the total rate of fire allowed by your W.P. Archery skill in this example). Correct?

[HWalsh]

So how do you folks implement dodges and actions (that are not attacks) when using Rate of Fire?

If a player has a RoF with a bow of 4, and Dodges, does the RoF simply become 1 less?

What about that same character having a RoF 4 with a bow, but 6 Melee Attacks and doing the following:
- Firing 2 shots from the bow
- Dodging
– Switching to a Melee Weapon
– Attacking with a Melee Weapon

How do you handle that situation in your games?

Thanks.

Rate of fire doesn't mean "automatic number of attacks" each attack costs an action. It means that no matter how many actions you have, you cannot shoot more than X times in a 15 second combat round.

6 total actions
Player 1 - Action 1: Shoot with bow (actions remaining 5)
Other players go...
Player 1 - Action 2: Shoot with bow (actions remaining 4)
Other players go...
Player 1 Is attacked: Player 1 Dodges (one action removed from player 1) (actions remaining 3)
Player 1 - Action 3: Switch to melee weapon (actions remaining 2)
Other players go...
Player 1 - Action 4: Close and attack with melee weapon (actions remaining 1)

Thanks for the response and example for clarification.

So basically, your character's HTH Combat Skill helps determine your total number of attacks, and you use that structure for all of your actions during the turn (including number of ranged attacks - the latter of which is limited by the total rate of fire allowed by your W.P. Archery skill in this example). Correct?

Correct.

Your HtH skill (and a few other bonuses) grant you your number of attacks per melee.

Semi-Automatic actions cost 1 attack. Such as a dodge.

A weapon can be used any number of times per melee round as long as that number doesn't exceed the weapon's rate of fire.

So if your bow has a RoF of 5 and you have 6 attacks per round, the maximum number of bow shots you can make, regardless, is 5.

[Prysus]

So how do you folks implement dodges and actions (that are not attacks) when using Rate of Fire?

If a player has a RoF with a bow of 4, and Dodges, does the RoF simply become 1 less?

What about that same character having a RoF 4 with a bow, but 6 Melee Attacks and doing the following:
- Firing 2 shots from the bow
- Dodging
– Switching to a Melee Weapon
– Attacking with a Melee Weapon

How do you handle that situation in your games?

Thanks.

Greetings and Salutations. Combining RoF and ApM won't usually go smoothly, but I did write my take on it in Rifter #45 that focused on archery. To summarize ...

If you have a RoF of 4, and ApM of 6, you can fire 4 shows and you have 2 non-attack options (such as moving or dodging). Using a non-attack action causes your next shot causes you to suffer movement penalties (typically in Palladium that means half your bonuses to strike).

If you're RoF and ApM are equal, then just use them interchangeably and don't think too much about it.

If you're RoF is higher than your ApM, using an action will remove 1 from your RoF. So if you're RoF is 10 and you're ApM is 9, and you dodge (1 action). You can dodge 9 times in the round and still manage to fire off 1 shot from a bow. In general, your RoF won't overtake your ApM until higher levels, so I'm okay with the above situation.

However, I will give the reminder that this is just my personal take on the matter, as I don't believe Palladium has ever provided actual rules for trying to blend the two. Hope that helps. Farewell and safe journeys.

[HWalsh]

So how do you folks implement dodges and actions (that are not attacks) when using Rate of Fire?

If a player has a RoF with a bow of 4, and Dodges, does the RoF simply become 1 less?

What about that same character having a RoF 4 with a bow, but 6 Melee Attacks and doing the following:
- Firing 2 shots from the bow
- Dodging
– Switching to a Melee Weapon
– Attacking with a Melee Weapon

How do you handle that situation in your games?

Thanks.

Greetings and Salutations. Combining RoF and ApM won't usually go smoothly, but I did write my take on it in Rifter #45 that focused on archery. To summarize ...

If you have a RoF of 4, and ApM of 6, you can fire 4 shows and you have 2 non-attack options (such as moving or dodging). Using a non-attack action causes your next shot causes you to suffer movement penalties (typically in Palladium that means half your bonuses to strike).

If you're RoF and ApM are equal, then just use them interchangeably and don't think too much about it.

If you're RoF is higher than your ApM, using an action will remove 1 from your RoF. So if you're RoF is 10 and you're ApM is 9, and you dodge (1 action). You can dodge 9 times in the round and still manage to fire off 1 shot from a bow. In general, your RoF won't overtake your ApM until higher levels, so I'm okay with the above situation.

However, I will give the reminder that this is just my personal take on the matter, as I don't believe Palladium has ever provided actual rules for trying to blend the two. Hope that helps. Farewell and safe journeys.

Moving and shooting in Rifts is Shooting Wild. -6 Penalty