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How The Legendary Archer Single-Handedly Ended A War
Hi everyone.
All Things DnD is back with another story and a special guest narrator!
Runesmith!
He posts a lot of amazing dnd content on a weekly basis and is one of my favorite creators.
We are super stoked to have him with us tonight narrating this amazing story written by Felix,
the same author who wrote your favorite necromancer story, Astoshan.
Runesmith plus Felix equals greatness and that is exactly what we have for you here.
An overpowered archer who is probably the most badass character you’ve ever seen.
Let us know what you thought of him after you listen to this:
I’m playing 3.5 with a group of buddies from back when I taught pioneering.
The campaign will mostly be outside, big areas - mobility is huge.
Two of the guys, who have played with me before, pick the Magic classes before the DM even
offers me a choice.
They rolled a Knightly Paladin, Armored Cleric, weird Wizard.
So they need some non-magical range damage.
The guys who have played with me before start smiling.
They know I can't screw that up.
I’ve been teaching survival and archery for weeks, Welsh blood flows through my veins,
I know what to do.
I channel my heritage and historical knowledge.
Llywelyn ap Maelwys, human Fighter/Cragtop Archer and his falcon Saeth (Welsh for arrow),
older retired military vet with a full beard and long hair.
He doesn't talk much, and he carries a big stick.
And by big stick I mean Item Familiar Composite Dragonbone Greatbow.
All of his feats go to range, accuracy, and power.
He has different arrows for different tasks, bodkins, broadheads, barbed - he makes every
shot count.
I don’t give a damn about the rate of fire, and work it out with the DM in exchange for
more damage and crit chance.
He refuses to use spells or magic, the most he will use are his Bracers, his family Bow,
and enchanted arrows if necessary.
This man can reach out and touch someone at 400 feet without even getting a penalty - maxes
out at about 4000.
Eat your damn heart out, Legolas.
The party says this range is nuts - even the initial range is BS.
I grab my longbow and take everyone to the range.
Go behind the range, keep going, then proceed to lob a few arrows 600 feet.
The top historical range is about 1200 feet; 600 was the minimum for practice - anything
shorter, you used heavier arrows.
The party still says it's BS.
Historical archers didn't have Bracers of Greater Archery or talking bows larger than
them made out of goddamn dragons.
Fine.
They let me keep him.
Nobody else can pronounce his name.
It sounds like they are coughing up organs.
So everyone calls him Lewie instead.
I run some numbers; at max range it would take 2 turns before the arrow hit the target.
I am the artillery.
The party gets summoned up by a lord to assist in a massive battle that his army is marching
to.
The heroes are already somewhat legendary, thus the summons and solid starting levels.
Most of the party is honored.
Lewie is pissed that they summoned him up again after he retired.
He’s got a nice little cabin up in the mountains with his wife.
His kids are starting to raise families.
He’s done with this life; he just wants to go home.
We set off on our magical adventure.
Saethe is almost always in the air.
I'm constantly rolling d20's and handing notes back and forth with the DM.
The party is confused and worried.
Halfway through the second day Lewie stops, pulls his bow string out from under his hood
and strings up his bow.
He knocks an arrow and fires it off into nowhere down the trail.
Then knocks another and does it again.
The party freaks out and gets ready.
Nothing happens for five rounds; Lewie just stands there.
Then he starts shooting again.
THIRTEEN ROUNDS LATER the remnants of a patrol reach us.
The party kills all fifteen soldiers pretty quickly.
The party looks back at the archer nervously and continues down the trail.
They find another fifteen men lying dead in the dirt, spaced out every 120 feet except
for a stretch of about 700 feet.
Two were near each other just under half a mile away.
The Cleric asks what in the name of the gods just happened.
Lewie calmly explained the situation.
Saethe spotted the 30 man patrol half a mile away.
Lewie fired and the arrow hit one the next round.
The captain told the men to form up and move forward.
He got hit the turn after that.
The troops weren't stupid: they broke formation and started to zig-zag while sprinting.
Lewie waited for five turns until they got within a third of a mile when the arrows took
less than a turn to travel and Lewie didn't need to guess where they were running.
He didn't want to risk wasting any arrows.
The party is now visibly terrified of the archer.
As expected, Lewie doesn't fight "normal".
Rather than prancing around the encounter, firing arrows all over the place like a shield
riding elf that wanted to grow up and be a ballerina, he prefers to fight the traditional
way.
Whenever the fight starts he stops wherever he happens to be, picks out the arrow he wants,
nocks it, and gives some poor fool a third eye socket.
Then he repeats this process every turn until he runs out of things to shoot.
He flat out refuses to move unless absolutely necessary, even if the fight starts carrying
on down the street, into another block, out of town, and then cascades out into the countryside.
As long as the fight is less than a third of a mile away, someone is going to grow a
3 foot long branch out of the side of their head every round.
Any farther than that and it just takes another turn or two to get there.
He would have to guess what square people are going to be in the next turn.
It's like playing battleship with a railgun.
Gods help anyone if he's on higher ground - he gets a damage and accuracy bonus for
that too.
Saethe makes sure that he can see absolutely everything all the time.
His feats let him ignore cover, the arrows just punching straight through whatever is
in the way.
Regular arrows are pinning people to trees and knocking them off their feet.
The party craps a brick whenever he pulls out the magic arrows.
Explosive arrows turn him into a mortar.
Splitters hit twice.
Seekers turn him into a heat-seeking ballista of pain.
There is no escape.
They finally make it to the army after multiple sidetracks and encounters that followed the
usual theme.
The enemy army is positioned across a field.
They break out the big formation’s rules.
Lewie takes control of ALL the archers.
He leaves his normal arrows back at the supply train.
He just wants to get this over with.
He takes his archers over to a hill and has them start cutting trees down.
The next day there is a wooden tower, light wooden wall, and a crapload of stakes in the
ground.
He won't budge.
The rest of the army forms up and gets ready.
The evil champion rides out to meet with the paladin.
Typical heavy dark armor, extremely loud and full of himself, he has to yell everything.
Demands to go up against our greatest fighter.
Lewie was a very literal man and that was a very poor choice of words.
One round later a phasing arrow goes flying past the paladin, ignores the champion's armor,
and turns him into a new kind of unicorn.
The enemy army charges.
Lewie goes up in his tower and starts blasting captains and commanders into another plane
of existence.
All the archers begin to volley arrows wherever his shots land, after they get in range of
course.
The two armies collide in the middle of the field, blade on blade.
Barbaric.
Every turn or so a captain explodes and his unit gets hammered with hundreds of arrows.
The Paladin and Cleric are buffing everyone into the stratosphere as they turn the front
lines into a blender of holy fury.
The Wizard is just chucking random spells around.
In other news, enemy morale is at an all time low.
They are starting to break when they unleash their secret weapon.
Golems.
A full regiment of golems.
Lewie starts lobbing Adamantine arrows into them.
But he can only hit one at a time.
The Wizard starts transmuting en masse to mud and anything else to slow down the golem
death train.
Lewie fires explosive arrows into the muck, sending chunks of mud flying, but we can't
stop them.
The cleric and paladin find some loophole in the programming involving something holy
and cause a mass case of Berserk.
The golems are going nuts, destroying absolutely everything including each other.
Both armies are getting the hell away.
A few turns of staying a safe distance away and blasting the ones that get too close to
Fort Bowman.
They get it back under control.
The enemy army is routing, but they need to get the dark lord or he will be back.
Lewie knows he's somewhere out there.
Saethe sees a black suit of armor a mile away.
Lewie pulls one of the magic Flight arrows of Distance to boost his range out to a mile
which puts it almost max range: 18 to hit penalty.
The arrow needs to fly for 2 turns.
The cleric and paladin both throwing blessings and prayers like crazy.
The Wizard cast some spell I can't remember, and patted Lewie on the back.
Buffs are absurd to hit.
They cancel out the penalty, but still need to predict the movements of a frightened lord
on horseback two turns in advance.
Remember, he's frightened - he needs to move max distance away from us every turn.
Lewie takes a breath, calm as always.
Whole army prepares for the longest twelve seconds of their lives.
He nocks an arrow.
Adjusts for distance.
Fires.
While the world holds its breath, Lewie turns around, unstrings his bow, and starts going
home.
He didn't miss a shot the whole campaign.
Now I regret every archer I’ve ever played.
But with my luck my DM would have us in dungeons every session and punish this kind of character.
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