Does the ranged character stink?

[Ridley's Cohort]

Before making generalizations about a style of combat and second class citizenship, one should stat up a pure Fighter or two with the PHB feats and run that through a few trial combats.

Until you have a feel for what works in a simple case, multiclassing is often more difficult to do effectively.

 

[Ridley's Cohort]

How's that a clear archery advantage? you can do exactly the same thing with melee weapons. Get a holy, flaming, frost longsword +1, then cast greater magic weapon on it. Same thing happens. Heck, you're actually even better off with a melee weapon, you can use a scabbard of keen edges with a sword, you can't with a bow.

A vanilla archer relies on Rapid Shot from character level 1 and tries to set up full iterative attacks -- not difficult if the party cooperates.

In my experience, unless you are extremely skilled at picking up Cleaves, an archer averages about twice as many attacks in a combat compared to a melee specialist. Therefore every little nugget of damage boost is twice as valuable to the archer.

 

[udalrich]

While it won't help much at this level, start collecting bane arrows as soon as you can afford them. A single bane arrow is 80 gp and gets +3 to hit and 2d6+3 damage against the appropriate foe. Move 10 feet for skirmish, then fire an arrow for 1d8+3d6+3 damage.

The last archer I played was a cleric with craft arms and armor. His spare time was generally spent making bane arrows.

 

[nittanytbone]

While it won't help much at this level, start collecting bane arrows as soon as you can afford them. A single bane arrow is 80 gp and gets +3 to hit and 2d6+3 damage against the appropriate foe. Move 10 feet for skirmish, then fire an arrow for 1d8+3d6+3 damage.

The last archer I played was a cleric with craft arms and armor. His spare time was generally spent making bane arrows.

Excellent advice, although aren't bane arrows (equivalent of +2) 160 GP each?

+2 weapon = 8000 GP / 50 shots = 160

 

[Darklone]

A vanilla archer relies on Rapid Shot from character level 1 and tries to set up full iterative attacks -- not difficult if the party cooperates.

In my experience, unless you are extremely skilled at picking up Cleaves, an archer averages about twice as many attacks in a combat compared to a melee specialist. Therefore every little nugget of damage boost is twice as valuable to the archer.

Right. Then get two levels of bard, Inspire Courage boosts, 4 levels archer class from the 3 arrows for the king thing... and you look at 4 attacks at level 8 without being hasted at nearly full BAB since the archer gets a bonus to attack with his favorite weapon.

 

[udalrich]

Excellent advice, although aren't bane arrows (equivalent of +2) 160 GP each?

+2 weapon = 8000 GP / 50 shots = 160

Uh, yeah. I was remembering what my cleric paid for them, which was 80 gp and a few XP.