In our campaign, the guy packing the heat is Ispher, but really it works for anybody with a penchant for shooting and at least 4 fatigue:

Weapon: Ripper

Items: Gauntlets (the ones that allow fatigue recovery on a surge), and Archer's Charm

Skills: Master Archer, Rapid Fire, Eagle Eye

Oh, and: 2 ranged upgrades for a total of 4 black dice in shooting.

In this combo, from full fatigue against enemies up to 6 squares away, he got off around 20 shots and stopped only because he had run out of targets (in the graveyard, no less. Our OL was mightily hacked)

Mathwise: two free surges from master archer guarantee a fatigue point, and 7 dice being rolled average out at least another 2. The combined Pierce of the combo is 5 (from the Ripper, Eagle Eye, and the Charm). Short of rolling a miss, and the Ripper allows the reroll of a single die, so a series of misses, it is highly improbable that this combo will not kill everything within LOS and 6-8 spaces.

Even as a player, this is overkill.......

As a solution, we have instigated this house rule: The number of bonus shots that may be taken in a single action is limited to the base number of Fatigue points the character has (in this case, 4). This seems to work reasonably well, since the rest of us were feeling left out of the action while Ispher dominated the scene (with his snazzy Van Helsing crossbow)

The Rapid Fire / Gauntlets combo is another thing talked about in a number of other threads. It is another thing which is 'broken'. There are a number of ways to fix it. One of them is to limit either rapid fire or the gauntlets as you have. I'd even be tempted to limit it further, as allowing even 4 attacks seems a bit too much.

Remove Gauntlets and/or change Rapid Fire to work in the same way that Quick Casting - i.e. Two Fatigue + Exhaust = +1 Attack. Quite why Rapid Fire should ever have been functionally different from Quick Casting is anybody's guess.

Probably because Magic attacks tend to do more damage than Ranged. If anything, Quick Casting probably did start off the same as Rapid Fire and was changed. Can you imagine a caster with the Guantlets and a Blast Rune and a Gold Level staff in reserve? They'd be able to do a dungeon by themselves.

Best solution to the Guantlets: Crushing Blow them

Hey if that is the penultimate machine gun combo what is the unltimate combo?

Get Laurel of Bloodwood can outdamage any other character. If you add Lucky skill she will get even more damage. With rapid shot she it just crazy damager. + Take her skill that gives Aim (I think it Precise) and she can kill anyone in one turn. Including lieutenants and OL. Skill just too powerful.

Yesterday we had Laurel with Precise and Born to the Bow. She quickly found Ripper.

Needless to say, when Dark Charm turned up, she shot Brother Glyr point-blank. It was very funny.

Well, Laurel's ability doesn't work unless you spend fatigue (the OL cannot force a charactere to spend fatigue), so I imagine it was funny for other reasons.

Paul Grogan said:

We first nerfed rapid fire to 4 extra attacks/attack, but we went further down to 1 extra attack per attack.

We've also reduced Rapid Fire to 1 extra attack per attack (i.e. 2 attacks on an Advance, 4 on a Battle).

Well, the trigger condition "attack" only appears once per attack, arguably an extra attack isn't an attack, and thus doesn't trigger the condition necessary for rapid fire. That's the way I read it, anyway.

Hi,

haslo said:

Not sure I can follow you here. Why should an extra attack not be an attack? It even has the word "attack" in it...

-Kylearan

Thundercles said:

Mostly the initial player reactions, the Pierce and other skill combo effects of the attack and the fact that the attack could actually finish off their tank. I played this after they'd entered the final room. The young lady playing Laurel let out a rather uncharacteristic string of profanity when I declared it.

Actually, once she calmed down, she showed true strength as a Descent player. Born to the Bow made her attack aimed, so she re-rolled to get a miss.

Slev said:

Given that she was under the influence of Dark Charm, could SHE elect to ‘Aim’ i.e. force a re-roll? If she’s Dark Charmed wouldn’t it be down to the Overlord to choose the dice to re-roll? Doesn’t the Overlord get control of this skill for the Dark Charm? If no, does that mean no Weapon Mastery, Mighty etc to be added to the roll as they are skills too?

Also, what about the Silver/Gold item that makes all Ranged attacks Aimed? Does the Overlord have control of that for a Dark Charm? If no, does that mean no Belt of Strength etc to boost damage?

I had a look through the list of unanswered questions but couldn’t find anything on this.

OL playing dark charm takes control over hero with all his skills and items, but he cant force hero to spend fatique.

Kylearan said:

I don't think it's strictly by the rules, but Rapid Fire seems to have been meant to trigger off an attack half action - not off any attack. The wording on the Rapid Fire card (which I don't have at hand) doesn't necessarily indicate this, as it was released before AoD, and it wasn't changed in an errata, so it could be exploited in ways that I and others don't think make sense. I'll certainly house rule Rapid Fire like that: No triggering off any attacks but those that directly come from attack half actions.

About her aiming, I'm with Slimak. I don't see why she could aim away from her tank if her attack was controlled by the overlord - quite the opposite really, he should have been able to aim in order to do even more damage. But if that stopped her whining , then it was certainly a good move in the end, as the point of playing games is having fun together.

Yes, it is the OL who should have decided which dices to reroll with born to the bow, definitely not the player, as the OL is controlling the character for the attack.

That’s how I understand it.

Well, it was very clever, so I don't mind rewarding the clever thinking.

Big Remy said:

But it works perfectly on silver and gold level (on copper lvl you can buy or win gauntlent again)