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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Chun-tzu" data-source="post: 335545" data-attributes="member: 1441">Can an elven cleric of Labelas be an effective archer? Yes. Is it as good as an Arcane Archer, Peerless Archer, or one of the other PrCs? That's debatable.The biggest difference is the cleric's reliance on spells. This is an important limitation, although it's not necessarily limiting if you've got a lenient (or naive) DM. Spells take time to cast. Spells can be dispelled. Spells don't work in antimagic areas. Spells run out. Spells must be prepared (i.e., don't get caught unprepared). Maybe 80 or 90% of the time, none of these things will be problematic. But that's not the same as having real skills.From a balance perspective, a super-buffed character probably should be better than a non-buffed or mildly buffed character. That's more an issue of the level of magic in a D&D game than character effectiveness, and at high levels, everything is skewed towards high magic characters.Clerics archers have no cover penetration. If your opponents never fight from cover, no problem. But a character with nine-tenths cover gets a +10 AC bonus! The Peerless Archer can cut that to only a +2 bonus, effectively gaining an additional +8 attack bonus on top of everything. An Arcane Archer's seeker arrow or phase arrow will completely ignore that +10. "Then my cleric casts True Strike," you say. Okay, but how many of those do you have prepared, and it takes an action to cast it. The Peerless Archer can penetrate cover all day long.How many Greater Magic Weapons does the cleric have prepared? In a high level, combat intensive campaign, I imagine it would be quite easy to go through more than 50 arrows a day. The cleric runs out; the Arcane Archer does not.And clerics just suck in their skills. Even with their spells, they're no match for the Arcane Archer's or Deepwood Sniper's stealth. Clerics can't Spot to save their lives. Spot is such an important skill to an archer that every archery-focused PrC seems to have it (all the WotC ones do). What do you do if you're in the middle of a jungle and being pelted by arrows, but can't tell where they're coming from?So, yes, the cleric archer is an effective archer and very effective character. Does it outdo a real archer at his own game? I don't think so.</blockquote>

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