Prestige Class Optimizer - Way of the Arcane Archer
Published by Ronin Arts, and written by Patrick Younts, this 18 page (16 without cover & OGL) black-and-white PDF is the first in a line of products that expand upon and discuss the strengths and weaknesses of a prestige class, as well as discussing the best methods for entering the class.
This PDF opens with a short introduction to the line of PDFs, and then goes straight into the nitty-gritty. In a very personal - almost conversational - style, the author discusses the strengths and weaknesses of the Arcane Archer. While there is nothing here that an experienced d20 gamer wouldn't get from a read-through of the class, it does help to explain some of the choices the author makes later in the product.
The next section is an ideal character progression - the section starts by discussing the strongest options for a character (elf or half-elf, fighter or ranger, wizard or sorcerer) and then goes into a single example of a 20-level progression for optimized usage (in this case, a half-elf ranger/sorcerer). Until this point, the layout has been fairly average for this kind of product - 12 point Times New Roman, no graphical elements of any kind, etc, but the progression charts for the sample character are ugly and hard to read. To top it off, the character presented uses new feats and a new prestige class presented later in the PDF.
Here we hit an asside - some people take issue with the fact that this requires that the DM adopt third-party material if you want to play an optimized Arcane Archer, whereas I would take issue with the product not including any such material - a book explaining how to use the core rules is of little enjoyment to me, I would rather see this new material in the book and in use. But anyways.
The next section explains the benefits and penalties of the progression detailed above. It goes into detail on attack bonus, saves, skills, class abilities (favored enemy, combat style, spells), hit points & feats. The author then goes on to explain what options he recommends to fill out the character build presented - what kind of bow to have & what spells to prepare.
Finally, the new material is presented - a three level class (The Archer Mage) that requires the character be an Arcane Archer to join - a three level class with full caster progression (finally increasing the arcane archer's spellcasting level), and a few additional abilities (armored casting, stacking arcane archer enhancements, additional uses of existing arcane archer abilities). The class is obviously an attempt to power up the arcane archer's abilities. There are also four new feats that require the character be an arcane archer to take - the ability to fire from within melee combat without provoking an attack of opportunity, enhancing the imbue arrow ability, making your bow harder to break or disarm, and the ability to imbue arrows with raw spell energy instead of actual spells.
While an interesting book at times, most of it ends up being a read-it-once affair on how to optimize your own character which is fairly obvious in most ways, followed by a single prestige class (which is self-admitedly an expansion on the Arcane Archer class proper, not a fully independent class) and four new feats.
In all, the useability of this book is much lower than I had expected... I was disappointed with the overall product in content and physical design (no art, no graphical elements, again looks like it could be MSWord output except for the cover page). It's not a horrid product by any stretch of the imagination, but it is definitely of very limited use and even more limited reusability.
