Help with The Arcane Archer

[MensurB]

Thank you all very much for your help, now is there a way that I can save this thread because the campaign won't start until 3.5 comes out?

 

[FANGO]

When you're using well over 50 arrows a day, it can be pretty impressive ;-) Not to mention the fact that the enhancement stacks with any other enchantments you put on the arrows, and also that the enhancement does increase up to epic power in epic levels. Also, I don't like to make characters that rely on the rest of the party to help me, so that's one of the reasons arcane archer is nice. Deepwood sniper just didn't seem nearly as good to me.

Also, in 3.5, you will still be able to put special abilities on your bow, and use the full enhancement bonus of your arrows. And your arrows will be more magical than they would be if you had the party magic user casting GMW on them, because it's going down to +1/4levels. So it doesn't nerf the enchant arrow ability, really. And the fact that shield has changed still doesn't change the fact that the ability to carry around a whole bunch of cheap wands that you're able to use (I like having the flexibility...even though there aren't many game-breaking ways that you can exploit this ability, it's still cool and useful to have in a pinch, and can make fun roleplay opportunities as well...and the message spell is great on an archer/scout character, for coordinating ambushes and such). And I'm not planning on switching my character when 3.5 comes out, because I'm not planning on playing 3.5 when it comes out ;-)

Spellsword I had never thought of using, but is a pretty weak class, really...wearing armor as an archer is also not necessary if you play him well, because the archer is usually not going to be in the thick of the battle, and it was never my intention with my archer to make him into a casting character, so the arcane spell failure thing was at least useless to me and so is channel spell. Further, I think trying to make an archer who is also a caster will fail in most cases...splitting your classes between a caster class and a non-caster class has not been very effective in most every example I've seen (in my group, at least)...perhaps making one who used only "buff" spells, but spellsword seems to be focused on using spells offensively, and I don't think it would work too well on an archer. Order of the Bow Initiate is a pretty nice class for archers, but there are a lot of limitations on it's abilities, and I prefer abilities that can be used under most circumstances (zen archery, close combat shot, and sneak attack are only effective at close range (and zen archery really isnt that necessary, because you already have a huge attack bonus and you aren't going to have a very large wisdom, most likely)).

There are certainly plenty of other ways to make archers without using arcane archer, but I think that arcane archer is a good choice that isn't too commonly taken, and can be made to be at least as powerful as most other archer builds, and besides that's what the author was originally asking anyway ;-)