Just what i thought tosidusar wrote:Yep, I've thought about it a lot while being stuck in camp because there were a dozen enemy nukers waiting 50 meter from the entrance. The only way to really counter such a force is by having a numerical advantage.
Ranged doesn't do much damage, but used with a hitrate stanza can reach over 40 hpm for a rifle (over 50 hpm for a pistol). Theoreticly it makes a great way to break incantations. Maybe throw in an aim head stanza to avoid the 10% damage reduction of light armor and get an occasional stun, and you could be a real annoyance for a mage. That is, if you didn't have only 30 meter (20 meter for a pistol) range meaning the mage has 20 meter to blast you before you get close.
Now if the range were doubled, rifles could outrange elemental. With just 450 damage per shot, they wouldn't flat out kill the mage in seconds, and the rifleman would have to carefull not to get too close as the mage would kill him within seconds. Pistoleers would be even better at breaking incantations, but would have to get just within range of the mage to do so. Ranged does physical damage, so there'd be a lot more use for heavy armored meleers around, who'd only take 200 damage from a rifle. True, a ranger can run away if a melee comes at them, all the while doing 200 damage per shot to the melee. But firstly, that would mean retreating, secondly, they couldn't run far without running into a pack of kitin. Rangers would probably be in light or medium (a heavy armored ranger kills himself pretty fast) and thus vulnerable to melee weapons.
So then we have ranged beats mage, melee beats ranged, mage beats melee. Sounds a lot more balanced, in theory ofcourse.
