The Dilemma
Legolas, the classic elf character from the Lord of the Rings, is often held up as the example of what archery should look like in RPGs. If a player comes in and says he wants to play an "archer", there is a strong chance he's thinking of Legolas surfing on a shield and firing arrows at a very high rate of speed.
Then he goes and looks at the Mythras bow and sees the reload time of 2 actions, meaning that he can fire an arrow once every 5 seconds. This almost immediately seems dissatisfying, but the player decides to give it a go anyways. They are, after all, big fans of Legolas. You remind the player that Legolas is multiple thousands of years old and likely has broken more arrows than humans that have lived in Middle Earth, but they are set.
The first game comes around, and they are eager. They fire! And a miss. Now they spend their next 2 actions reloading. Just reloading. Nothing else. Immediately, they feel incredibly dissatisfied, and you, as the GM, are looked to for a solution.
Interestingly, this dilemma also happens when players are not trying to play Legolas, but are playing archers. The actions spent reloading a bow are, quite frankly, boring. You state an action, the action happens automatically. There is no roll, no impact on the fight. The archer, despite having advantages of not having to spend action points on defense, feels he's not really getting as much of the spotlight as the melee fighters.
The Solutions
Becoming Legolas
It's unlikely you are going to be having your player's character start with over 100% in his bow based combat style, but it isn't necessary. A starting Legolas is likely quite focused in the bow, north of 70% if possible, and 3 action points. He's not going to be able to hit every single time, but he's hitting many of them.
Combat Style Traits
A good set up for such a Legolas is to have a combat style with the Ranged Marksman trait. This trait helps the Legolas be lethal with his shots, as he does not have to spend them on Choose Location. Instead, he shifts it to an adjoining location, which means he will always be able hit an abdomen, chest, or head. This means that he now has a 100% chance to hit a location that can completely incapacitate an opponent with a Serious Wound. What's more, he has more than doubled his chance to hit the head, which has lower hit points than the chest and abdomen on humanoid opponents.
From here, this frees our young Legolas to choose Rapid Reload on every hit, meaning his shots are very fast and very deadly. This can be additionally augmented with the Skirmishing trait, which allows for firing on the run, and a slight modification which allows for reloading on the run.
Custom Combat Style Traits
An additional step further can be taken to create a custom combat trait to allow the archer to hold multiple arrows in the hand. This is a well documented skill
you can see here performed from horseback. With a little bit of skill, you can see he is able to fire essentially one arrow per action point, if he has 3 of them. This would mean he is somehow able to completely remove the reload time.
Crafting a custom trait, then, to allow a limited number of prepared arrows to remove some of the reload time seems quite reasonable. Removing 1 turn of reload, and then allowing it to stack with Rapid Reload, will give an extremely fast, Legolas style archer, particularly when combined with Ranged Marksman and Skirmisher. Options for this seen on the Mythras Discord include
- 3 arrows only
- 6 arrows only
- 1/10th of the archer's bow-based combat style
Note, the above custom trait options don't completely eliminate reload time. Instead, they shift it off - you would still have to spend a number of turns preparing the arrows outside of combat.
Becoming Hawkeye
There is a wonderful scene in the first Avengers movie where Hawkeye is on top of a building, after Captain America tells him to "call the shots". He notices the Chitauri are turning slow and calls that out to the team. The battle starts turning at this point, as the Avengers realize they can destroy Manhattan to save it. But what did Hawkeye do there?
In Mythras terms, he used Assess Situation, then followed shortly by Speak via his Avengers commlink. Assess Situation is a free action that can only be performed by Unengaged characters. Guess who is perpetually unengaged? Dedicated archers. Guess who tends to have high perception rolls? Dedicated archers. This presents a new set of options for the archer - work with free actions and make something of the situation simultaneously to reloading.
The primary downside of this is that it requires some work on the part of the player and the GM. What he may be able to assess and what benefit this can give is highly situation dependent. This can also cause the player to feel like they don't know what to do, as they have no presented options. This can also be burdensome on the GM, as they need to design encounters that can benefit from this observation.
Defining a Roll
The roll in Assess Situation is defined only as a Perception roll. It doesn't take much system knowledge to see that this could be a number of other skills, depending on the situation. Various Lore skills, Culture, or even Survival could easily be substituted in, perhaps even with a bonus.
What is even more interesting is that the roll is not defined as Unopposed, Opposed, or Differential. This open space allows us to propose some interesting options. We are going to ignore Unopposed because it really doesn't add much drama to the scenario, but rather work with the other two.
Defining an Opposed roll in this situation would allow the archer to look over the battlefield and discern enemy plans. Perhaps he uses his strategy and tactics to see a particular formation, or is able to see a weakness. Taking cues from Ships and Shield Walls, the opposition to this roll is likely the command skill of the other team - Lore Strategy and Tactics, or Influence at a more difficult skill grade if it does not exist in their party. This would give a direct effect while combining with the Ready Weapon action.
Alternatively, one could define a Proactive version of Assess Situation. This version would act similar to an evade check - an Opposed roll, but levels of success would allow for the use of specific special effects - like Rapid Reload. The end result would be that a bonus is imparted to one or more characters while allowing the archer to continue reloading his weapon. One downside of this version is that you will need to define defensive special effects that the opposition can use.
Defining Effects
Simply defining a few widely applicable benefits from Assessing the Situation will go a long ways towards giving the archer the feeling they are doing something relevant. Some examples might include
- Augmenting another character's skill with your Perception or Lore (Strategy and Tactics)
- Allowing a modification to initiative, perhaps up to 1/20th of skill to another character
- Granting another character a Prepared Counter effect against a particular foe
Note, most of these are going to require some communication as well, so Speak or even Signal may come into play. The spells Mindspeech and Mindlink, precast, may even allow the knowledge to be instantly and covertly shared.
Combining Roll and Effect
Using the free action Opposed roll option is simpler that pulling out special effects, but it also is designed to represent a much quicker action. To that end, it would make sense for any of the effects listed above to require communication to the beneficiary. This will require another free action, and may be limited to happening on the character's turn. Augmenting another character's skill would fit very well in this action
On the other hand, using a Proactive version of Assess Situation is a bit more serious alteration to the rules. It requires more investment by the character, and presents some risk. Thus, rewards should likely be greater. Modifying initiatives and granting Prepared Counters would fit well into this space.
