Back in the spring (2025), I ran an archery tournament over the course of 5 weeks. Due to the great response to the competition and the rules we used, I would like to suggest we use them to build out an interactive archery target ingame that makes use of these rules.
I'll make my base suggestion first, then below it, I will put some context as to why I am suggesting using
I'd like to propose an interactive archery target placable that is set up to be heavily weighted in favor of high level Ranged-AB characters in terms of scores verses lower level AB characters, or characters who are not so range-optimized.
I was thinking it could be done in a way where in the toolset, there is a "Target" placeable object, either added into the area or placable by a DM. When you shoot/attack the Placeable Target, the target determines the distance between the attacker/user and itself, and rounds down to the nearest 10 or 20, with a minimum of 10 (to ensure there is no divide by 0 errors), compares the attack roll against a scoring matrix, and spits out a score between 0 and 6 (0 being a miss, and 6 being a bulls-eye). The difficulty of the scoring should increase the further the archer stands from the target.
But we ALSO want characters of significantly higher Ranged-AB to do very well against characters that don't have as good Ranged-AB. This is a test of aim, not combat. The goal is to score points with well placed shots, not deliver the most damage.
Let's say the target object is oArcherTarget.
The idea is to calculate the distance between the shooter and the target, round to the nearest 10 and then multiply by 0.1 (could clamp the distance to 10, so if they are created less than 10 ft or whatever, it just uses 10) whatever that number comes out to be needs to be a whole number, and not less than 1.
Lets call this number nTargetDistanceAdjust.
Then, when the character 'shoots' an arrow (or bolt or throwing axe or whatever) the scoring scale is adjusted by the distance (nTargetDistanceAdjust) so that the further away you are from the target, the more difficult it becomes to score well... That way, two characters with really high AB can compete against each other at very far distances, and it becomes competitive, but characters with low AB don't have a chance... but.. if two characters with low AB just set things up close, they can be competitive with each other, .... and if a high AB character joins at that distance? They should still smoke the low AB characters.
This is the scoring matrix that we determined works best to keep similar RangedAB characters competitive with each other, while giving a significant advantage to higher AB characters when competing against significantly lower AB characters... while also allowing for high natural rolls to score.
The scoring of Base Attack multiplied by 3, than adding it to the d20 roll gives more weight to high ranged-AB characters because specilaized archer builds -should- reguilarly be defeating non-specialized archer builds, even if they are of similar level.
this is what I was thinking the score generation would be like, taking into account distance.
If nArrowShot < 24 + nTargetDistanceAdjust→ message: "Miss, 0 points."
If nArrowShot >= 25 + nTargetDistanceAdjust and <= 30 + nTargetDistanceAdjust→ message: "Ring One, 1 point!"
If nArrowShot >= 31 + nTargetDistanceAdjust and <= 35 + nTargetDistanceAdjust→ message: "Ring Two, 2 points!"
If nArrowShot >= 36 + nTargetDistanceAdjust and <= 40 + nTargetDistanceAdjust→ message: "Ring Three, 3 points!"
If nArrowShot >= 41 + nTargetDistanceAdjust and <= 45 + nTargetDistanceAdjust→ message: "Ring Four, 4 points!"
If nArrowShot >= 46 + nTargetDistanceAdjust and <= 50 + nTargetDistanceAdjust→ message: "Ring Five, 5 points!"
If nArrowShot >= 51 + nTargetDistanceAdjust→ message: "Center Ring, Bulls Eye! 6 points!"
There would still need to be an override for low skill characters who may not be able to hit the target, but roll well to give them a chance to score, that way characters without any skill will completely miss on a roll of 14 or below, while still be able to get a few points if their natural d20 roll is 15 or above... this keeps things interesting.
I don't know the best way to script it out fully, but that is what I was thinking (with the help of ChatGPT to figure out some of the variables)
--- Context ---
Why make this suggestion: Well, it was borne out of some previous In Game competitions we ran.
Goal: Be able to hold an archery competition where high-level archers regularly defeat low-level archers, but also keep it random enough that ANY characters within 2 or 3 levels of each other can still have a reasonable competition that may favor the higher level, but doesn't guarantee victory.
We don't want 2 characters of dramatically different levels, like level 6 and level 11 to be competitive, it should be a no-brainer that the higher level always wins over the lower level at these larger differences in level, but characters that are, say, level 9 and 11, this should be MUCH closer with the outcome not a guarentee for the 11, but definitely the 11's chances should be much higher chance of victory... while level 10 and 11 would be much much closer... and, say level 8 and 11, maybe not impossible, but highly unlikely the 11 would lose.
Previous rules we used: We first tried doing a d20 + (Ranged AB) but this did not prove enough advantage to the higher level, and in competitions we found it was just as likely that the high level archer would lose against a low level archer... and not just lose by a small margine... we found that low level characters would defeat the higher level character by a commanding difference. This just felt wrong to us.
Example: it is not unusual to have a streak of bad d20 roll, like 2, 2, 5, 4, 13, <-- meanwhile, another character could have an equally long streak of good rolls: 16, 18, 19, 17, 19 *
If we play this out with d20 + AB, with an optimized level 6 vs an optimized level 11... the difference would be +6 to the level 11's rolls. This is not enough to overcome the bad streak.
These would be the results: Optimized level 6 with 19 dex = 11 AB vs Optimized level 11 with 20 Dex = 17 AB
Level 6 rolls: 16, 18 ,19, 17, 19 --> +11AB = 27, 29, 30, 28, 30
Level 11 rolls: 2, 2, 5, 4, 13 --> +17AB = 19, 19, 22, 21, 30
How did we feel when we used the simple d20+AB rules in game? Overwhelmingly the RP reactions were generally surprise when we used the rules of d20+AB to determine the scores of competitors. It felt random and not really much like a competition that exhibited the skill of the archer. Although the RP was fun for the moment, characters with no real specialization or even martial training were defeating highly specializised trained archers in an archery competition just felt wrong to everyone we talked to. Yes it was entertaining, but in the end it just felt TOO random.
Solution:
We revised the rules to be much more weighted in favor of the highly skilles/specilized ranged character, while still keeping an element of randomness.
That's where the d20+(ABx3) was born.. and that's why we dropped the simple d20+AB in favor of the weighted (ABx3) roll
* These were actual rolls from the tournament, btw...
-----
if you want to see the results of the 5-week tournament we ran using these rules, the link to the spreadsheet is here:
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1cixOhvhzByDrPzUrXGIU5w6gF-UsskV30jt3yn_FWt0/edit?usp=sharing
you can see how these rules played out in an actual competition with various characters, who as they leveled, some had increases in AB, which had a dramatic effect on their scores. You will see how the high AB characters stayed at the top, but how close the scoring was.
it was a very dramatic tournament, and everyone involved had a great time over the 5 weeks we ran it. It really created tons of RP for us. I'd really like to see this be automated in-game so we can easily run more of them.
I'll make my base suggestion first, then below it, I will put some context as to why I am suggesting using
I'd like to propose an interactive archery target placable that is set up to be heavily weighted in favor of high level Ranged-AB characters in terms of scores verses lower level AB characters, or characters who are not so range-optimized.
I was thinking it could be done in a way where in the toolset, there is a "Target" placeable object, either added into the area or placable by a DM. When you shoot/attack the Placeable Target, the target determines the distance between the attacker/user and itself, and rounds down to the nearest 10 or 20, with a minimum of 10 (to ensure there is no divide by 0 errors), compares the attack roll against a scoring matrix, and spits out a score between 0 and 6 (0 being a miss, and 6 being a bulls-eye). The difficulty of the scoring should increase the further the archer stands from the target.
But we ALSO want characters of significantly higher Ranged-AB to do very well against characters that don't have as good Ranged-AB. This is a test of aim, not combat. The goal is to score points with well placed shots, not deliver the most damage.
Let's say the target object is oArcherTarget.
The idea is to calculate the distance between the shooter and the target, round to the nearest 10 and then multiply by 0.1 (could clamp the distance to 10, so if they are created less than 10 ft or whatever, it just uses 10) whatever that number comes out to be needs to be a whole number, and not less than 1.
Lets call this number nTargetDistanceAdjust.
Then, when the character 'shoots' an arrow (or bolt or throwing axe or whatever) the scoring scale is adjusted by the distance (nTargetDistanceAdjust) so that the further away you are from the target, the more difficult it becomes to score well... That way, two characters with really high AB can compete against each other at very far distances, and it becomes competitive, but characters with low AB don't have a chance... but.. if two characters with low AB just set things up close, they can be competitive with each other, .... and if a high AB character joins at that distance? They should still smoke the low AB characters.
This is the scoring matrix that we determined works best to keep similar RangedAB characters competitive with each other, while giving a significant advantage to higher AB characters when competing against significantly lower AB characters... while also allowing for high natural rolls to score.
The scoring of Base Attack multiplied by 3, than adding it to the d20 roll gives more weight to high ranged-AB characters because specilaized archer builds -should- reguilarly be defeating non-specialized archer builds, even if they are of similar level.
this is what I was thinking the score generation would be like, taking into account distance.
If nArrowShot < 24 + nTargetDistanceAdjust→ message: "Miss, 0 points."
If nArrowShot >= 25 + nTargetDistanceAdjust and <= 30 + nTargetDistanceAdjust→ message: "Ring One, 1 point!"
If nArrowShot >= 31 + nTargetDistanceAdjust and <= 35 + nTargetDistanceAdjust→ message: "Ring Two, 2 points!"
If nArrowShot >= 36 + nTargetDistanceAdjust and <= 40 + nTargetDistanceAdjust→ message: "Ring Three, 3 points!"
If nArrowShot >= 41 + nTargetDistanceAdjust and <= 45 + nTargetDistanceAdjust→ message: "Ring Four, 4 points!"
If nArrowShot >= 46 + nTargetDistanceAdjust and <= 50 + nTargetDistanceAdjust→ message: "Ring Five, 5 points!"
If nArrowShot >= 51 + nTargetDistanceAdjust→ message: "Center Ring, Bulls Eye! 6 points!"
There would still need to be an override for low skill characters who may not be able to hit the target, but roll well to give them a chance to score, that way characters without any skill will completely miss on a roll of 14 or below, while still be able to get a few points if their natural d20 roll is 15 or above... this keeps things interesting.
I don't know the best way to script it out fully, but that is what I was thinking (with the help of ChatGPT to figure out some of the variables)
--- Context ---
Why make this suggestion: Well, it was borne out of some previous In Game competitions we ran.
Goal: Be able to hold an archery competition where high-level archers regularly defeat low-level archers, but also keep it random enough that ANY characters within 2 or 3 levels of each other can still have a reasonable competition that may favor the higher level, but doesn't guarantee victory.
We don't want 2 characters of dramatically different levels, like level 6 and level 11 to be competitive, it should be a no-brainer that the higher level always wins over the lower level at these larger differences in level, but characters that are, say, level 9 and 11, this should be MUCH closer with the outcome not a guarentee for the 11, but definitely the 11's chances should be much higher chance of victory... while level 10 and 11 would be much much closer... and, say level 8 and 11, maybe not impossible, but highly unlikely the 11 would lose.
Previous rules we used: We first tried doing a d20 + (Ranged AB) but this did not prove enough advantage to the higher level, and in competitions we found it was just as likely that the high level archer would lose against a low level archer... and not just lose by a small margine... we found that low level characters would defeat the higher level character by a commanding difference. This just felt wrong to us.
Example: it is not unusual to have a streak of bad d20 roll, like 2, 2, 5, 4, 13, <-- meanwhile, another character could have an equally long streak of good rolls: 16, 18, 19, 17, 19 *
If we play this out with d20 + AB, with an optimized level 6 vs an optimized level 11... the difference would be +6 to the level 11's rolls. This is not enough to overcome the bad streak.
These would be the results: Optimized level 6 with 19 dex = 11 AB vs Optimized level 11 with 20 Dex = 17 AB
Level 6 rolls: 16, 18 ,19, 17, 19 --> +11AB = 27, 29, 30, 28, 30
Level 11 rolls: 2, 2, 5, 4, 13 --> +17AB = 19, 19, 22, 21, 30
How did we feel when we used the simple d20+AB rules in game? Overwhelmingly the RP reactions were generally surprise when we used the rules of d20+AB to determine the scores of competitors. It felt random and not really much like a competition that exhibited the skill of the archer. Although the RP was fun for the moment, characters with no real specialization or even martial training were defeating highly specializised trained archers in an archery competition just felt wrong to everyone we talked to. Yes it was entertaining, but in the end it just felt TOO random.
Solution:
We revised the rules to be much more weighted in favor of the highly skilles/specilized ranged character, while still keeping an element of randomness.
That's where the d20+(ABx3) was born.. and that's why we dropped the simple d20+AB in favor of the weighted (ABx3) roll
* These were actual rolls from the tournament, btw...
-----
if you want to see the results of the 5-week tournament we ran using these rules, the link to the spreadsheet is here:
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1cixOhvhzByDrPzUrXGIU5w6gF-UsskV30jt3yn_FWt0/edit?usp=sharing
you can see how these rules played out in an actual competition with various characters, who as they leveled, some had increases in AB, which had a dramatic effect on their scores. You will see how the high AB characters stayed at the top, but how close the scoring was.
it was a very dramatic tournament, and everyone involved had a great time over the 5 weeks we ran it. It really created tons of RP for us. I'd really like to see this be automated in-game so we can easily run more of them.
