D&D 3E/3.5 Whats a good 3.5E Archer race

[Vadanrinz]

Okay here's the deal my buddy is a D&D nut he spends all his money on food rent and d&d books

He always has to make a big deal about how his archer kicks all our asses


So I want to write the god of archery to take him down a few notches so any tips on great magic items, mundane items,
and most essentially I NEED a great race

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

Hmmmm...

• Elves get free proficiency in bows, so you can easily make ANY Elf PC into an archer. For instance, right at 1st level, a no-frills Elf Wizard, Sorcerer or Battlesorcerer can pull that fletching back to his cheek and be virtually assured he'll hot the target because he used True Strike. In addition, many of the archery feats also apply to ray and orb spells.
  
• Humans get that bonus feat, which is always useful.
  
• Halflings get a dex bonus...but trade accuracy for damage.
  
• Races w/LAs often have unusual stat mods: githzerai and Anthro apes (and possibly others) have a +6 Dex mod which is a nice boost to accuracy, AC, and initiative- all key for archers.
  
• The four-armed thri-kreen can put more arrows in the air...or be fully prepared for melée in case foes close.

 

[Nifft]

What level are you playing?

If it's above 10 or so, class is where you kill him, not race. Play a Cleric Archer.

Cheers, -- N

 

[StreamOfTheSky]

Wood Elf is my favorite. Bonus to dex and str, handy favored class for dipping (ranger levels mean you can use a wand of Arrowmind, which even at CL 1 will last you for 1 min per use; all the other obvious low level ranger boons), and the proficiencies definitely help out for classes that don't have them. Like the cleric archer Nifft mentioned. In the case of cleric archer, opens up the Elf domain, just by virtue of your race. Bow of the Wintermoon (from Magic Item Compendium) is also elf-only, and the only cheap way I know of to get a self-adjusting str bow. Nothing sucks more as an archer than eating 1 str damage/penalty/drain. Well, Wind Wall sucks more I guess...

 

[Vadanrinz]

okay so we are level 6 about to hit level 7 and right now im a quickling/rouge but being so short on hp should be easy to kill him off and the problem is my buddy is playing a wood elf so i don't want to copy him and what ever I do pick I hope it to be straight archer it doesn't have to be able to tank ranged and melee JUST ranged and the chars get 150,000gp to start off with and im not against buying some crap armor and crap bow until I can buy a 200,000gp epic item.

 

[BENINHB]

150,000gp!! Holy Crap!!

That is more that 10x the normal WBL for a level 6 character, are you sure that's right or was it a typo??

 

[paigeoliver]

150,000gp!! Holy Crap!!

That is more that 10x the normal WBL for a level 6 character, are you sure that's right or was it a typo??

It doesn't surprise me since his goal seems to be building an archer character to kill his buddy's archer character, which well, makes me think that nothing at all would surprise me.

Anyway, there are a zillion super powerful archer builds out there. If you are just looking to defeat him then you want two things, a high DR (most archers are weak against DR), and a way of accessing improved invisibility which will make targeting you very difficult.

I suggest the Mineral Warrior Template for the DR 8 it provides, this is going to reduce his damage by 25 to 75 percent (depends on his build).

Get your improved invisibility from an item, your 150,000 could easily handle that.

Being able to fly will be useful (in making targeting your invisible self more difficult) and a cloak of elemental protection (miniatures handbook) should help turn off at least one type of elemental damage that he may have on his bow.

Favored enemy elf and an elf bane weapon wouldn't hurt.

 

[StreamOfTheSky]

This seems so pointless...

 

[Vadanrinz]

1. Im not trying to kill him just write a better Archer
2. 150,000 gp is because of the last campaing the dm killed a person on accident and felt really really bad
3. It might be a little pointless but it's boat loads of fun trying to think up how to outshine my buddy

 

[Dandu]

Archery Handbook