Archery Character - Ranger or Fighter?

[StreamOfTheSky]

You can spend a swift action and a ki point to make your arrows do damage equal to unarmed strike, it's a unique ability of the Zen Archer Monk. This doesn't even produce a benefit till level 10 or so and won't be doing 2d10 till near epic. Even then, I think it's more worth it to use that swift and ki point for an extra attack over unarmed damage.

 

[Dingo333]

Let me spell it out to you this way, fighter/ranger vs zen archer monk

level 1 BAB DMG
F/R +1 1d8 long bow
ZA -1/-1 1d8

Level 5
F/R +4/+4 1d8
ZA +3/+3 1d8

level 8
F/R +6/+6/+1 1d8
ZA +6/+6/+1/+1 1d10

Level 10
F/R +8/+8/+3 1d8
ZA +8/+8/+3/+3 1d10

Level 15
F/R +13/+13/+8/+3 1d8
ZA +13/+13/+8/+8/+3/+3 2d6

Level 20
F/R +18/+18/+13/+8/+3 1d8
ZA +18/+18/+13/+13/+8/+8/+3 2d10


yes, you can argue the ranger has had 2d6 since level 4
yes, the fighter gets greater focus and greater specialization

But the Zen Archer, after level 8, gets 1-2 more shots a full attack, higher bonuses on 1 of the attacks and has higher damage.
Not to mention, if you are large (via an enlarge person potion for example) you are doing even more which nulls the ranger spell and makes final damage 4d8 a shot at level 20

you do not need rapid shot for the Zen Archer as flurry comes and improves on it. Many shot is a seperate story, but I still feel the monk wins out over all

 

[VanceMadrox]

Using a Ki point for an extra attack basically evens out with Many shot.

So as long as you have a KI point to spend you can even out the difference with Many Shot.

Of Course then you can't use it to increase your damage to your unarmed damage though as you only get 1 swift action per round.

Even without the extra attack from KI at 15th and higher a Monk has more shots than either Ranger or Fighter, it's manyshot versus 2 extra attacks from flurry.


The other real big advantage of Zen Archer though is that it splits your attack stat off to a mental stat.

You can boost both attack and damage without having to stack both onto the same item. A big cost savings.

 

[Victim]

Getting the extra attack from Ki and the unarmed strike damage are both swift actions; they can't be combined.

Moreover, if you're including limited use class features for the monk, why the heck are you not including fighter class features? At level 10 on your chart, for instance, Weapon Training 2 more than makes up for the slightly lower damage die (1d8+2 > 1d10) in terms of pure damage. At level 15, Weapon Training 3 on the d8 bow is still a bit ahead of 2d6. And that's completely ignoring feats; Monk only has an advantage with 2d10 versus just Weapon Training bonus. Damage is damage, whether it's coming from dice or bonuses.

Doing some rough calculations assuming the monk and fighter each have the same attack stats, if the fighter needs a 10 to hit with rapid shot at level 14, he gets 1.45 hits per full attack, and Many Shot means the first shot counts twice (I think everything the fighter has adds again, so the only loss is from potential critical damage), so that's 2 full hits worth of damage. The monk is 3 points behind from Weapon Training, and thus needs 13. Using Ki for an extra attack with his flurry, the monk ends up with 1.55 hits per full attack. Since the fighter should be able to do at least as much damage per hit with better Weapon Spec access and Weapon Training, the fighter should be ahead. Similarly, if the fighter needs a 5 to hit, he ends up with 2.45/3.25 hits, while the monk ends up with 2.85 hits.

So the fighter is getting more hits even with the monk using ki points. However, I ignored criticals - the monk's extra attacks give it more chances for a crit (especially since Many Shot can't crit), but the fighter's sheer number of feats and base attack allow it to get critical boosting feats easily. Plus I think the I slighted the fighter his bonus from Greater Focus.

Having the extra class attack bonus really matters - and if the enemy AC is sufficiently low that it doesn't, having the feat for Deadly Aim can still allow the fighter to turn better attack bonus into more damage.

Of course, considering the Zen Archer monk still has better skills and saves than the fighter, it makes sense that it's less effective at simply turning foes into pin cushions. And the monk is only a level away from getting another bonus attack.

 

[Victim]

Oh yeah. Armor Training seems really good on a bow fighter, since it lets you get more out of the DEX you're getting anyway. So the Archer Fighter variant isn't necessarily the best option for being an archer. Normal fighter seems to have more defense, whereas the big gain on archer seems like the trick shooting - it doesn't wreck enemies with its arrows any more than the vanilla class features.

 

[StreamOfTheSky]

I think Archer Fighter is terrible, overall, and it's a shame. Trick shooting is only really nice if you're bored of just rolling attack and damage every turn. Even the useful ones like bull rush are arbitrarily held back till higher levels, and the grappling one is beyond worthless.

Again, I would do Mobile Fighter. Losing the last two Armor Trainings doesn't hurt that much, and it gets +7/+7 by level 20. Though up until level 9, it's the same bonus as any other Fighter, if your game is a low level one.

 

[Kaiyanwang]

You are joking right?

Try to shoot to a spellcaster or outsider. Either they melee, or must expend the nex standard action, unless minion are involved. And in this case, you forced two targets in the same place.

And let not start on the tactical utility of bull rushes + teamwork with spellcasters. being able to perform them from that distance is amazing.

I agree that mobile fighter and standard fighter are excellent archers too, and tat's good. Mobile fighter is an excellent 2whatever you want", indeed.

But don't understimate the fighter archetypes. barring 1 or 2, they have a place if you know what you want.

 

[StreamOfTheSky]

I'm not joking. Until level 11, your only options are disarm, feint, and sunder. Disarm is probably the best, though of limited use. Feint is useless without multiclassing, both to get SA and to actually have Bluff as a class skill. It's also its own action, whether you have Improved Feint or not. Giving up your full attack action when you don't have to as an archer = bad. Sunder I just plain don't like. It doesn't outright destroy treasure anymore if you just want to use sunder to give some small debuffs out, but it can still mess with your treasure haul if the item you "break" has a higher CL than the party. In all cases, the -4 CMB penalty seems harsh, considering a melee guy enlarged with a reach weapon can do his thing up to 20 ft away (as opposed to your 30 ft), no problemo. Add in that your str is almost certainly much lower than a melee guy's and...yeah.

At level 11, you FINALLY get the good stuff. Trip and bull rush both help you keep your distance from an enemy and give you viable battlefield control options. Whether it's worth suddenly going out and spending your (now high level) feat slots on a completely worthless feat (Power Attack or Combat Expertise) just to be able to spend another 2 feats on Imp/Greater Trip/Bull Rush is anyone's guess. And yes, again, the grapple option is useless. The arrow has 1 hp and 5 hardness. You spend an attack action to use it, the enemy spends an attack action and destroys it. Except you have a fair failure chance, he's almost guaranteed to suceed in destroying that arrow. I guess it could screw up a mage, but so does shooting them up for lots of damage.

I'd rather have armor training.

EDIT: To make matters worse, Safe Shot is a curse. At best, it's delaying your Point Blank Master feat till level 6 (as a bonus feat, since those are by RAW the only ones you can retrain) when any other Fighter could have it at level 5. At worse, someone who is newer to character building sees it at level 9 and figures its worthless to get the feat, and spends 4 levels needlessly getting AoO'd for shooting his bow. Actually, worse case scenario, the player takes PBM at level 5 and from level 9+, is stuck forever with a worthless feat...

 

[Kaiyanwang]

I meant "grappling is beyond worthless".

and "I don't like" is not that an argument for sunder. You are not foced to loot everything in every campaing. If you don't consider the valiue of sundering, say, an holy symbol or a scroll with a prepared action, I don't know what to say.

 

[tylermalan]

Try to shoot to a spellcaster or outsider. Either they melee, or must expend the nex standard action, unless minion are involved. And in this case, you forced two targets in the same place.

Sorry, but what does this mean?

And also, is the tactical utility of bull-rushing an enemy in combination with an allied spellcaster actually better than just outright attacking that same enemy, at level 11? Somehow, I think the damage output at level 11 would be high enough that you would usually much rather just full-attack than spend your entire turn trying to push an enemy one square so that your Wizard can hit just one more guy with some AoE spell (the damage of which is probably not going to rival your potential damage output if you just tried to shoot the guy).

If you don't consider the valiue of sundering, say, an holy symbol or a scroll with a prepared action, I don't know what to say.

Lastly, how often does this happen? I never know when a guy is going to pull out a scroll until it happens, and I already used my last turn/action to shoot him.