Anyone know how to make a good Archer
- Thread starter Lagmastor
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Darklone
Registered User
Depending on how good your point buy is: Bard/Ftr heading to eldritch knight or forget about the EK. You'll be a bit weaker than the pure builds and have less feats (BAB two lower than pure fighter builds), but you may boost yourself and the group much more if you have only one round of preparation (Haste or Singing will make up for your BAB loss and increase your damage/no. of attacks).
Go human for more feats. Or as mentioned, woodelf for more damage, wildelf for dex and no hitpoint loss.
PBS, Rapid Shot at level 1 and Precise Shot with the first ftr level. Manyshot and Greater Manyshot at level 6 (take here your second or already fourth ftr level).
Depending on how fast you take how many ftr levels, you'll get Weapon Focus and Weapon Spec around level 8. For extra goodness, take that Greatbow and go Exotic Weapon Master for Close Range Shot. ASAP as your BAB hits +8, get Ranged Weapon Mastery (It does stack with Weapon Specialisation, right?).
This is not optimized yet... but you'll have a lot of options without being much weaker (if at all) than a pure fighter.
Go human for more feats. Or as mentioned, woodelf for more damage, wildelf for dex and no hitpoint loss.
PBS, Rapid Shot at level 1 and Precise Shot with the first ftr level. Manyshot and Greater Manyshot at level 6 (take here your second or already fourth ftr level).
Depending on how fast you take how many ftr levels, you'll get Weapon Focus and Weapon Spec around level 8. For extra goodness, take that Greatbow and go Exotic Weapon Master for Close Range Shot. ASAP as your BAB hits +8, get Ranged Weapon Mastery (It does stack with Weapon Specialisation, right?).
This is not optimized yet... but you'll have a lot of options without being much weaker (if at all) than a pure fighter.
VonRichthofen
First Post
Scout 3/Ranger 14/Pious Templar 3
A simple build, no cheese at all.
Take the feats Improved Skirmish, Swift Hunter & Greater Manyshot as essential to the concept. Ranged Weapon Mastery is recommended.
At high levels, you can move your base landspeed of 40 ft. and fire four arrows with Greater Manyshot. That's an extra 28d6 skirmishing damage. Your AC will be at +6 in every round you moved at least 20ft.
You take undead, outsider (neutral), plant creatures & constructs as Favored Enemy, you can now do skirmishing damage to nigh every creature in the game.
Unlike some others have said, mobility is very crucial for archers in my games, since you don't want to get stuck in melee combat. A DM that lacks ideas and handles his evil guys as dumb morons might do you the favor to grant you full attacks and not take you into melee, but an inventive and clever DM will try to make things challenging for you. Thus, movement + attack is a fine option for archers.
Should you feel like melee can't be avoided, cast Lion's Charge and get up to 49d6 bonus skirmishing damage on your charge. (With the Two-Weapon Fighting tree)
If possible, try to sneak the "Splitting" enhancement into your game (It's Forgotten Realms).
With a splitting bow, you can make use of your move action every round and fire eight arrows for up to 56d6 skirmishing bonus damage - with hardly any creature immune to it.
Assuming a +4 splitting frost longbow, a Str 18 and Ranged Weapon Mastery (easy at high levels), that's up to: 8d8 (bow) +8d6 (cold) +32 (str) + 32 (magic) + 32 (mastery) + 56d6 (skirmish) = or an average of 352 points of damage, critical hits or FAvored Enemy damage bonuses not yet included.
As a matter of fact, you will pump all your stat increases & free resources into Dex - your damage output is well taken care of, you just have to hit as good as possible
Apart from that, you have BAB +19, 4th level ranger spells, nigh all the other ranger goodies, fast movement, uncanny dodge, smite 1/day, DR 1/-, Mettle, Evasion, and whatnot plus many skilll points. Your saves will be base 14/13/8, not too shabby as well. Just the package for an archer.
A simple build, no cheese at all.
Take the feats Improved Skirmish, Swift Hunter & Greater Manyshot as essential to the concept. Ranged Weapon Mastery is recommended.
At high levels, you can move your base landspeed of 40 ft. and fire four arrows with Greater Manyshot. That's an extra 28d6 skirmishing damage. Your AC will be at +6 in every round you moved at least 20ft.
You take undead, outsider (neutral), plant creatures & constructs as Favored Enemy, you can now do skirmishing damage to nigh every creature in the game.
Unlike some others have said, mobility is very crucial for archers in my games, since you don't want to get stuck in melee combat. A DM that lacks ideas and handles his evil guys as dumb morons might do you the favor to grant you full attacks and not take you into melee, but an inventive and clever DM will try to make things challenging for you. Thus, movement + attack is a fine option for archers.
Should you feel like melee can't be avoided, cast Lion's Charge and get up to 49d6 bonus skirmishing damage on your charge. (With the Two-Weapon Fighting tree)
If possible, try to sneak the "Splitting" enhancement into your game (It's Forgotten Realms).
With a splitting bow, you can make use of your move action every round and fire eight arrows for up to 56d6 skirmishing bonus damage - with hardly any creature immune to it.
Assuming a +4 splitting frost longbow, a Str 18 and Ranged Weapon Mastery (easy at high levels), that's up to: 8d8 (bow) +8d6 (cold) +32 (str) + 32 (magic) + 32 (mastery) + 56d6 (skirmish) = or an average of 352 points of damage, critical hits or FAvored Enemy damage bonuses not yet included.
As a matter of fact, you will pump all your stat increases & free resources into Dex - your damage output is well taken care of, you just have to hit as good as possible
Apart from that, you have BAB +19, 4th level ranger spells, nigh all the other ranger goodies, fast movement, uncanny dodge, smite 1/day, DR 1/-, Mettle, Evasion, and whatnot plus many skilll points. Your saves will be base 14/13/8, not too shabby as well. Just the package for an archer.
Last edited:
AbeTheGnome
First Post
you may want to seriously consider poisons. at low level, the good ones are too expensive. at high levels, you can cover every arrow with black lotus. 3d6 Con both primary and secondary. also, a poison that does Str damage will ruin any paladin's day. 2d6 Str might not sound that bad, until you can't move in your full plate.
VonRichthofen
First Post
Darklone said:
By taking the feat.
As soon as you qualify for it. A scout 3/ranger 3 with Swift Hunter can take it as his regular 6th level feat. Where did you get that 4d6/4 AC nonsense from?
VonRichthofen
First Post
Darklone said:
How exactly do you presume they made Two-Weapon Fighting any worse with the Two-Weapon Pounce feat? They just offered a new feat to the path, not a very good one.
My TWFers are still the same, maybe yours have changed ?!
Apart from that, lion's charge calls for a ranger 8+ to cast it, so no, not every spellcaster can whoop it out of the wrist.
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