[Adjudication] Using Ranged Weapons in Melee in AD&D 1st Ed
Question: What if an archer is in a very small room with a door, bow at the ready and a fighter opens the door quickly weapon in hand wanting to strike the archer, (in melee range) , the archer can’t fire the bow at close to point blank range?
Answer: I assume we're talking about a room so small that whoever walks through the door doesn't need to "close to striking distance." If that is the case, this falls under "weapon strikes during the course of the round with respect to opponents who are engaged in activity other than striking blows"--which is the same rule for striking someone casting a spell. The tricky thing here is whereas the PHB tells us how many segments a spell takes to cast, it doesn't tell us how many segments missile fire takes up. Not directly, anyway. You can infer this from RoF. A bow & arrow, with a RoF of 2 normally takes 5 segments. In this situation, though, the archer is already ready, and presumably already aimed at the only means of egress. The archer needs only let the arrow go, something that should take less than 1 segment (figure 1/10 of a segment, like casting Feather Fall)..
Now mind you I'm actually having difficulty imagining a situation where the fighter has to literally take zero move to get into striking range. That would make this easy. Archer gets to shoot while the fighter closes to melee, and then actual melee begins next round. The missile weapon is never used in melee. But for the sake of argument, let’s just assume no close to striking range is necessary.
The rule, then, would be (as is the case for striking vs spell-casting) that if the fighter's side wins initiative, his strike (for pronoun convenience, let’s assume the fighter is male and the archer is female) goes before the arrow. If he loses initiative, then his losing initiative die is subtracted from his weapon speed (treating negatives as positive). If that is less than the archer's activity time, then the fighter strikes first. Basically that only happens if the losing initiative die happens to be exactly equal to the fighter's weapon speed. A slight chance, and only if he's using one of the faster weapons.
On a tied initiative, it is generally assumed that the weapon goes first, but that’s only because most casting times are at least 1 segment. Since that is not the case here, the DM would either have to come up with a weapon speed equivalent of releasing a readied arrow or else simply call it what it is--a tie, and let the action be simultaneous.
Answer: I assume we're talking about a room so small that whoever walks through the door doesn't need to "close to striking distance." If that is the case, this falls under "weapon strikes during the course of the round with respect to opponents who are engaged in activity other than striking blows"--which is the same rule for striking someone casting a spell. The tricky thing here is whereas the PHB tells us how many segments a spell takes to cast, it doesn't tell us how many segments missile fire takes up. Not directly, anyway. You can infer this from RoF. A bow & arrow, with a RoF of 2 normally takes 5 segments. In this situation, though, the archer is already ready, and presumably already aimed at the only means of egress. The archer needs only let the arrow go, something that should take less than 1 segment (figure 1/10 of a segment, like casting Feather Fall)..
Now mind you I'm actually having difficulty imagining a situation where the fighter has to literally take zero move to get into striking range. That would make this easy. Archer gets to shoot while the fighter closes to melee, and then actual melee begins next round. The missile weapon is never used in melee. But for the sake of argument, let’s just assume no close to striking range is necessary.
The rule, then, would be (as is the case for striking vs spell-casting) that if the fighter's side wins initiative, his strike (for pronoun convenience, let’s assume the fighter is male and the archer is female) goes before the arrow. If he loses initiative, then his losing initiative die is subtracted from his weapon speed (treating negatives as positive). If that is less than the archer's activity time, then the fighter strikes first. Basically that only happens if the losing initiative die happens to be exactly equal to the fighter's weapon speed. A slight chance, and only if he's using one of the faster weapons.
On a tied initiative, it is generally assumed that the weapon goes first, but that’s only because most casting times are at least 1 segment. Since that is not the case here, the DM would either have to come up with a weapon speed equivalent of releasing a readied arrow or else simply call it what it is--a tie, and let the action be simultaneous.
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