Prerequisite: Intelligence 13 or higher
You know how to use ranged weapons to greater effect by firing at targets indirectly. When making a ranged attack with which you are proficient you may choose to use one of the following benefits:
You know how to use ranged weapons to greater effect by firing at targets indirectly. When making a ranged attack with which you are proficient you may choose to use one of the following benefits:
- When making attacks against enemies which are prone and more than 5' away from you, their being prone does not impose disadvantage on you.
- When making attacks against a target benefitting from half cover, the target only gains a +1 bonus to AC.
- When making attacks against a target benefitting from three-quarters cover, the target only gains a +3 bonus to AC.
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I like rules that let characters "dive for cover," jumping behind things or, more interestingly, effectively creating their own cover by dropping to the ground. It is a tactically interesting and generally sensible rule. It also always makes me want to immediately start dropping indirect fire on them. Fortunately, every edition seems to eventually get around to something of the sort (4e had Grounding Shot in PH3, 3e had millions of books by dozens of publishers). The interesting thing here, though, is the tension between tactical options and strategic options. Essentially; such indirect fire isn't something that should always be the immediate, go to option available to all characters. One of the key goals in any quality game is to force interesting choices.
An choice is anything that requires giving up something else. The choice between feats, or between a feat and a substantial increase in ability scores are key decisions. In economics it's referred to as an opportunity cost. Choices are only "interesting" if they have a roughly equal value to you and that value is fairly high. In 5e, if there are no interesting feats and your primary ability score is less than 20 the choice is a given. It's uninteresting. Even if you have options of equal value, if that value is low it's still uninteresting. If you still have no interesting feats, but the ability scores you care about ARE 20, nothing about that decision excites you. Meanwhile, if you have lower than 20 ability scores and lots of feats that will give your character both mechanical punch and flavor you become far more engaged with the decision process, and more attached to the result of that process. These are all strategic choices. Decisions that will continue to impact the character (and player) over the course of not just an encounter, but the remainder of the campaign. Consequently, the value of these decisions can be much higher. If a player doesn't feel they're interesting the results are generally commensurately larger. This is part of the reason I'm such a fan of creating new feats, spells, and abilities.
Meanwhile, on a minute-to-minute basis, what makes an individual session of a game interesting is the tactical choices that can be made. While the terms strategic and tactical have a "military" background, they aren't limited to combat. The choice of how a party approaches an empty passageway (does the rogue sneak ahead searching for traps, does the tank charge in trusting their ability to evade or endure) or how you approach an NPC (do you intimidate them or befriend them) are all tactical choices. They are decisions made within a single momentary encounter that change the shape of that encounter. Tactical decisions can have strategic consequences (do you alienate a prominent NPC through your intimidation?), but often, unless something goes horribly awry, they don't have any more long term impact than their contribution to your success or failure within the scene.
Which brings us back to ranged attacks and being prone. Disadvantage against prone individuals is a huge cost. Especially if a ranged character wants trick shots it essentially closes out anything related to tripping because it cuts their own ability to follow on. Similarly, cover is, by design, the bane of ranged attackers. This makes anything that helps against these two situations of immense interest to characters whose primary weapon is ranged. On the flip side, closing out concerns of cover and the option to dive prone automatically reduces the tactical options for everyone. So, the goal is to create an option that can be taken at some cost, provides a specific type of benefits, but doesn't raise to the level of being either a "must have." Similarly, by adding a prerequisite that is linked closely to the normal concept to which it would be applied, but not directly aligned (ie; an Int 13 prerequisite for Dex based attackers) you can add additional strategic choices that need to be made.
I have gone back and forth several times on whether the line should instead be "When making a ranged weapon attack with which you are proficient." Currently, the feat benefits casters, and is much more directly lined up for intelligence based casters...
An choice is anything that requires giving up something else. The choice between feats, or between a feat and a substantial increase in ability scores are key decisions. In economics it's referred to as an opportunity cost. Choices are only "interesting" if they have a roughly equal value to you and that value is fairly high. In 5e, if there are no interesting feats and your primary ability score is less than 20 the choice is a given. It's uninteresting. Even if you have options of equal value, if that value is low it's still uninteresting. If you still have no interesting feats, but the ability scores you care about ARE 20, nothing about that decision excites you. Meanwhile, if you have lower than 20 ability scores and lots of feats that will give your character both mechanical punch and flavor you become far more engaged with the decision process, and more attached to the result of that process. These are all strategic choices. Decisions that will continue to impact the character (and player) over the course of not just an encounter, but the remainder of the campaign. Consequently, the value of these decisions can be much higher. If a player doesn't feel they're interesting the results are generally commensurately larger. This is part of the reason I'm such a fan of creating new feats, spells, and abilities.
Meanwhile, on a minute-to-minute basis, what makes an individual session of a game interesting is the tactical choices that can be made. While the terms strategic and tactical have a "military" background, they aren't limited to combat. The choice of how a party approaches an empty passageway (does the rogue sneak ahead searching for traps, does the tank charge in trusting their ability to evade or endure) or how you approach an NPC (do you intimidate them or befriend them) are all tactical choices. They are decisions made within a single momentary encounter that change the shape of that encounter. Tactical decisions can have strategic consequences (do you alienate a prominent NPC through your intimidation?), but often, unless something goes horribly awry, they don't have any more long term impact than their contribution to your success or failure within the scene.
Which brings us back to ranged attacks and being prone. Disadvantage against prone individuals is a huge cost. Especially if a ranged character wants trick shots it essentially closes out anything related to tripping because it cuts their own ability to follow on. Similarly, cover is, by design, the bane of ranged attackers. This makes anything that helps against these two situations of immense interest to characters whose primary weapon is ranged. On the flip side, closing out concerns of cover and the option to dive prone automatically reduces the tactical options for everyone. So, the goal is to create an option that can be taken at some cost, provides a specific type of benefits, but doesn't raise to the level of being either a "must have." Similarly, by adding a prerequisite that is linked closely to the normal concept to which it would be applied, but not directly aligned (ie; an Int 13 prerequisite for Dex based attackers) you can add additional strategic choices that need to be made.
I have gone back and forth several times on whether the line should instead be "When making a ranged weapon attack with which you are proficient." Currently, the feat benefits casters, and is much more directly lined up for intelligence based casters...
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