I'm GMing for a group where everyone (including myself) is entirely new to Pathfinder. We had our session 0 recently followed by a quick practice combat. The thing I noticed from that, plus a little theory crafting of building a low level character myself, is that people using ranged combat felt very underwhelming compared to melee weapon users.
- They couldn't add any modifier to damage
- They had far fewer feats upgrading them (particularly compared to dual wielders)
- They had fewer "third action" options
- Less ability to help out allies with things like flanking
- Can't opportunity attack
Sure, for all that they have the advantage of being safer from getting damaged. But it didn't really feel like a worthwhile trade-off. Does this get better as you level up? Is it just something caused by inexperience? What options can/should you take to make ranged combat feel more interesting and valuable?
For context, my party had a rogue and a ranged fighter as ranged users, as well as a barbarian and a magus in melee, and a druid and sorcerer as casters.
Doesn't it take a lot of actions to do that though?
Like, Stride to move behind cover, then Hide to actually become hidden. Then on your next turn, Stride to come out from behind cover, Strike, then Stride to get back behind cover.
Or can you attack around a corner without needing to move out of your square?
Combat is not still, depending on the rest of combat, someone may move into your line of fire.
But it does in general take a lot of actions to set up a fire-from-hidden situation.
Or get a wizard to upcast invisibility to let you stay invisible while sniping. :)
You should be able to hide behind waist high cover in front of you as one action, then fire out of it immediately after as another action.
There's probably a firing angle that you could still do that for a wall corner too. Also I want to point out that you won't be able to stride out of a hidden position because you would lose hidden as soon as you stride. You would need to use the sneak action and end that movement behind something else that breaks line of sight because ending a move action in direct line of sight makes you "observed" instead of "hidden".
So in the time since writing that question I've been reading and watching everything I can about how this should work. And apparently the official ruling is that you can lean out of cover (like lean around a corner) to shoot as an action, but pop back behind cover for free. That'd be fine if you only want the protection of being behind cover. But if you also want the bonus from them being off-guard, it'd be 3 actions: one to Hide, one to lean out, and one to attack. Pretty steep, but could be worth it in the right circumstances I guess.