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Message: <blockquote data-quote="(Psi)SeveredHead" data-source="post: 5531714" data-attributes="member: 1165">So I'm being confronted by my own psychology. I hope it's no different than that of other gamers.First, a little background about the issue. I'm going to take part in a Pathfinder game as a player, and intend to play a ranger/sorcerer/arcane archer. Of course, we're starting at 1st-level, so it's possibly a forlorn hope.This is a PrC I've wanted to play since I saw it or at least make an NPC of it, but through the run of 3.x I never had the chance to do so, and now I only run 4e. (There is an arcane archer "monster" somewhere that I've seen though.)In 3.x it was cool but not particularly powerful or well-designed. The requirements were a BAB of +5 and 1st-level arcane spellcasting abilities, so it seemed like you only needed one level of wizard or sorcerer. Or bard.It gave abilities every level. Half of them were straight-up enhancement bonuses you didn't have to pay gold for, and the other half were (generally) daily abilities like Phasing Shot, etc.However, it's 2nd-level ability Imbue Arrow caused grief, despite being powerful. Archery is actually longer-ranged than even long-ranged spells, if you don't mind the attack penalty. Imbue Arrow let you cast a spell at your bow's range, but there's no attack roll: the best of both worlds. The kinds of spells you could put in it would be anemic if you didn't take any more levels in arcane spellcaster. The benefits of casting, say, Sleep at long range are pointless. The save DC is low, there's a Hit Dice cap, and by the time you get to the bad guys their buddies have slapped them awake.If I'd played this class in 3.x I wouldn't have cared. It's not unusual for a PrC to have the occasional useless ability.However, the Pathfinder version is much more powerful. In addition to giving more hit points than a ranger (weird, this is based on a multiclass of ranger and something with fewer hit points), it also gives several levels of spellcasting ability, more than 5.And that leaves me cold. Now I can't ignore Imbue Arrow. I'm being levels of spellcasting ability that I'm starting to think I don't actually want. I'm going to have to boost my character's Charisma score pretty high or ignore the spellcasting. Even if I don't care about the save DC, I still need the minimum Charisma to cast those spells. Then I'm going to have to restrict spells mainly to things that are useful for imbuing, since an arcane archer isn't a fire-and-death mage; while I can't stand the idea of rangers getting spells by themselves, at least a few of the spells (like Longstrider) fit a ranger's flavor.So that's how an unexpected power-up seems to have nerfed a class's quality.*Sigh*</blockquote>

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