Order of the Bow Initiate is INCREDIBLY broken.

[HeavyG]

Besides, the point was that the build that was presented for the OotBI in this thread wasn't out of line that much.

We can at least agree about that.

 

[Kaji]

I read a lot of these "Blah Blah is broken" threads, and its always the same old story. Allow me to help balance your Prc:
1. As has been said before, if you can do it, so can your DM. Hell, if I was your DM, I'd probably just take a copy of your character, name his Bob, Master of Evil, remove a level or two, and use him against you. I'd change his race to whatever was appropriate and thrown him behind some cover.
2. This thread has already mentioned the obvious, which is to have a decent fighter run up on you and slash you to ribbons
3. There are a number of great spells that will weaken your approach. Protection from Arrows comes to mind, or Reverse Arrows (Magic of Faerun, I believe) will quickly dissuade you from any further antics against that particular tactics. I could go on...
4. The Dispel MAgic/Greater Dispel must not be popular in your campaign. Your DM should re-evaluate this benefit. Most spell casters of any stripe will first attempt to weaken their opponents via this tactic. It's very useful.

That all being said, as a DM, I rarely get all crazy and give every monster some interseting PrC, or even bother to PowerGame him into awesomeness. Who has the time? I figure out a combat challange, attempt to create a balanced party, and give most NPC's straight classes, because it's a lot easier for me. And if I thought your Powergamed character was out of contol, I'd make adjustment to the EL to help balance this out. It's not a problem.
And besides, at 12th level, someone would be able to fly at you, or dispel your stuff, or summon a monster to get in your face. There are tons of options.

 

[Grog]

I read a lot of these "Blah Blah is broken" threads, and its always the same old story. Allow me to help balance your Prc:
1. As has been said before, if you can do it, so can your DM. Hell, if I was your DM, I'd probably just take a copy of your character, name his Bob, Master of Evil, remove a level or two, and use him against you. I'd change his race to whatever was appropriate and thrown him behind some cover.

Any DM that would pull an incredibly lame trick like that isn't anyone I'd want to game with. And anyway, if the only way the DM can match your character is with another character just like it, isn't that proof right there that it's overpowered?

2. This thread has already mentioned the obvious, which is to have a decent fighter run up on you and slash you to ribbons

And die before he gets there. Or, he runs up and does one attack, archer shrugs it off, steps back 5 feet, and slaughters the fighter.

3. There are a number of great spells that will weaken your approach. Protection from Arrows comes to mind, or Reverse Arrows (Magic of Faerun, I believe) will quickly dissuade you from any further antics against that particular tactics. I could go on...

Protection from Arrows will always be outpaced by GMW, unless the enemy spellcaster is much higher level than the party. Stoneskin is a better bet, but that works just as well against meele fighters.

4. The Dispel MAgic/Greater Dispel must not be popular in your campaign. Your DM should re-evaluate this benefit. Most spell casters of any stripe will first attempt to weaken their opponents via this tactic. It's very useful.

How many creatures in the Monster Manual have access to Dispel/Greater Dispel? The fact is, dispels just don't happen often enough to be a balancing factor.

There are tons of options.

Most of which are "die screaming under a barrage of insanely powerful and damaging arrows."

 

[AuraSeer]

Or, he runs up and does one attack, archer shrugs it off, steps back 5 feet, and slaughters the fighter.

Only if the fighter is a complete bloody moron!

Assuming he has a brain, the fighter makes his attack to sunder the bow. Even if the archer has 26 Dex, the bow is only AC 22 (10 + 8 dex - 1 size + 5 in hand). That leaves plenty of room for a Power Attack, and the fighter needs only 15 points of damage to turn your bow into kindling.

Every archer's Achilles heel is the fragility of his bow. If he's foolish enough to come within charge range, as your build requires, a vanilla Ftr12 can take his weapon out nearly infallibly My party's tanks would do it on anything but a natural 1.

If the archer steps back 5' and pulls out another bow, he gets one attack with it. The fighter then steps up and takes his three attacks, one of which destroys the new bow, leaving two more to hurt the archer himself. Repeat until the archer runs out of backup weapons (or dies).

As an aside, note that your character strongly depends on stacking GMWs on the weapon and ammo. Whether that stacking is broken is an argument all by itself; check one of the other umpty-hojillion threads about it.

 

[Numion]

Only if the fighter is a complete bloody moron!

Assuming he has a brain, the fighter makes his attack to sunder the bow. Even if the archer has 26 Dex, the bow is only AC 22 (10 + 8 dex - 1 size + 5 in hand). That leaves plenty of room for a Power Attack, and the fighter needs only 15 points of damage to turn your bow into kindling.

Only if the archer is a complete bloody moron!

Assuming he has a brain, the archer makes his attacks from behind his partymates, whose job is to prevent people running up to the archer / wizard / sorcerer who can't handle melee combat.

 

[Shard O'Glase]

Even though 18kgp is 20% of the money, it is money well spent, since just the weapons boost from +2 -> +3 costs 10k. And at level 12 GMW makes the weapon at least from +1 -> +4, depending on its abilities.

Go for a rod of lesser metamgic, chain spell. That way the wizard can chain haste for the party, and chain a GMW which can include your bow a bunch of arrow batches and many other weapons as well. I can't remember the cost, but I don't think its much more than 18000, and with its utility for the whole party you might be able to get others to pitch in.

 

[Shard O'Glase]

Every archer's Achilles heel is the fragility of his bow. If he's foolish enough to come within charge range, as your build requires, a vanilla Ftr12 can take his weapon out nearly infallibly My party's tanks would do it on anything but a natural 1.

If the archer steps back 5' and pulls out another bow, he gets one attack with it. The fighter then steps up and takes his three attacks, one of which destroys the new bow, leaving two more to hurt the archer himself. Repeat until the archer runs out of backup weapons (or dies).

This requires that you don't have people in the way, that the bow is of a lesser enchantment(which means facing intelligent foes, with either = GMW or = weapons which most NPCs don't deliver with their lesser money allotment).

And this also means the archer doen't have quick draw, and also strike a weapon/sunder are standard acitons not aprt of the attack aciotn so no full attacks with them.

It's still a weakness but it's usually vastly overstated.

 

[kigmatzomat]

Take a gander at this situation I set up:
also assume the character is an elf.
gear:
+1 composite longbow (@ 2500gp)
+1 arrows (@2200gp)
bracers of archery (@5,000gp)
some dex and wis enhancing items

this is really the kicker though. This assumes you have around +12 with both Wis and Dex ( not too hard if you anticipate the Wis bonus and stick your 2nd highest stat into it and with magical enhancement)

Ahh, the error is found. You have too much loot grasshopper.

At 12th level you've got 3 stat adjustments (4,8,12). Assuming 18s in dex (19 from elf) and wis and you max out at 20s in both. Assuming two +6 stat buff items (36k gp ea=72k gp) you're at 26 (+8).

Total cost for listed items is about 82,000gp out of a typical wealth of 88,000gp for 12th level. Exactly how do you plan on getting the extra +4 to two stats in 6,000gp?

 

[Storm Raven]

This requires that you don't have people in the way,

Thos people can be bypassed.

that the bow is of a lesser enchantment(which means facing intelligent foes, with either = GMW or = weapons which most NPCs don't deliver with their lesser money allotment).

Just disdarm the bow instead.

And this also means the archer doen't have quick draw, and also strike a weapon/sunder are standard acitons not aprt of the attack aciotn so no full attacks with them.

All but Quick-Draw solved by a disarm action instead of a Sunder.

Personally, I prefer the Knock-Down method. The archer cannot get more than one shot per round if he has to stand up every round.

 

[Rackhir]

+8 dex +4 Wis= +12 stats total. Not too hard to get, if you've got a Wizard willing to cast a few buff spells on you, or if you're willing to shell out a lot of cash for the items to increase it. And really, at 12th level, a Wizard just got 6th level spells. With the exception of buff spells, 2nd level spells are inconsequential (Melf's isn't that good at that high a level). By 12th level the Wizard will be using Cone of Cold or empowered Fireball in lieu of Fireball as it's main attack spell, so 3rd level castings won't matter much either.
[/B]

Speaking from practical experience you are underestimating the difficulty of persuading a cleric/wiz to part with 2 GMW a day. I a group with both a wiz and a cleric, I was only rarely able to persuade them to give me two for my archer. There are a ton of extremely useful third level spells and they are not going to want to spend a sigificant chunk of them simply buffing the archer so he can kill everything while they sit back and twiddle their thumbs. Other characters are also going to want buffs and GMWs as well, especially if you are the only one getting to do anything because of your buffs.

Your character also takes advantage of a flaw in creating high level characters. You don't have to take the feats and stats that would enable you to survive until you hit the level your character was designed for. Your exceptionally high wisdom is largely useless until you hit level 7? of OoBI, which is a substantial discouragement to creating characters of that type at 1-3rd level and then trying to get them to survive up until you hit sufficient level for your "broken" combination to actually kick in.

Unless you have an outragous number of high stats you probably also don't have very good HP given that you are an Elf and have put your two highest scores in to Dex and wis. This does mean that you are susceptible to being taken out on the first round as you probably only have 65-70 hp, given your -2 con mod (assuming average rolls and no stat bonus). There are a number of monsters at those CR ratings that can crank that out in a single round (Giralions and the Mooncalf in Nightfang Spire spring to mind...).

Furthermore in my experience running an archer, you will only get that <30' shot in about half the time, which means that your bonuses do drop substantially a significant percentage of the time.