Who can be a superior archer-extraordinaire: A Ranger or Fighter?
- Thread starter johnsemlak
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Elder-Basilisk
First Post
Precise shot is a tolerable ability but archers should have less trouble than anyone else punching through DR. All you need is a holy bow (maybe lawful or chaotic if you fight Slaad or Inevitables) and a good selection of normal, silver, cold iron, and adamantine arrows and you're set for penetrating DR. Other types of fighters actually need to spend extra money to have a magic adamantine weapon and a holy cold iron weapon and then either take an action to silversheen their cold iron weapon if they run into a pit fiend or Cornugon or have a holy silver weapon as well. And they're no better off against lawful or chaotic DR. An archer needs only one enhanced bow to penetrate DR /Silver, DR/Cold Iron, DR/adamantine, DR/Baatorian Green Steel, and DR/Whatever other kind of cheese the DM comes up with. And the archer can also more easily account for a variety of DR/Material AND alignment than other fighters since his bow is effectively enhancement plus any material he happens to have arrows made of as needed. A normal fighter's weapons are fixed material and fixed enhancement.
So punching through DR doesn't impress me as a particularly useful thing for the archer to be able to do.
More to the point, the OotBI gives up Greater Weapon Focus and Greater Weapon Specialization--two feats that are immensely useful for archers. I would say 12 levels of fighter are more important than however many Order of the Bow levels a character has.
In 3.5, I think Exotic Weapon Master (for greatbow users) is a better way of getting close-combat shot and Occult Slayer has far better defensive abilities than OotBI so combining those two for six levels is far preferable to taking OotBI for 8.
So punching through DR doesn't impress me as a particularly useful thing for the archer to be able to do.
More to the point, the OotBI gives up Greater Weapon Focus and Greater Weapon Specialization--two feats that are immensely useful for archers. I would say 12 levels of fighter are more important than however many Order of the Bow levels a character has.
In 3.5, I think Exotic Weapon Master (for greatbow users) is a better way of getting close-combat shot and Occult Slayer has far better defensive abilities than OotBI so combining those two for six levels is far preferable to taking OotBI for 8.
Votan said:
johnsemlak
First Post
Actually, he considers Kalamar stuff to be 'Official' (it is of course)Darklone said:Woah????? I hope he doesn't argue that the stuff he allows will be less broken that way?
Edit: Guess he doesn't consider Kalamar stuff as official, eh? It is
However, he's not allowing stuff specific to FR or Kalamar, or Eberron for that matter.
Elder-Basilisk
First Post
Yeah, it's funny. In 3.0, the world seemed full of Fighter/Ranger/Wizard/Order of the Bow Initiate/Arcane Archer/Deepwood Sniper/Peerless Archers.
All of them were good prestige classes with useful abilities (especially with front-loaded abilities) and extremely similar prerequisites. Now 3.5 has come along and I can't think of a single archery focussed prestige class that's consistently better than fighter or ranger. Order of the Bow is decent for one level and Close Combat Shot (though as I said, Exotic Weapon Master has easier pre-reqs and can net you a few occasionally useful and still worthwhile side abilities if you take all 3 levels). But none of the archery focussed prestige classes published thus far for 3.5 are as good as simply continuing mostly in core classes.
All of them were good prestige classes with useful abilities (especially with front-loaded abilities) and extremely similar prerequisites. Now 3.5 has come along and I can't think of a single archery focussed prestige class that's consistently better than fighter or ranger. Order of the Bow is decent for one level and Close Combat Shot (though as I said, Exotic Weapon Master has easier pre-reqs and can net you a few occasionally useful and still worthwhile side abilities if you take all 3 levels). But none of the archery focussed prestige classes published thus far for 3.5 are as good as simply continuing mostly in core classes.
Votan said:
ForceUser
Explorer
Persistent Spell is a broken feat and I don't allow it in my campaign. That said for the benefit of the cleric-lovers 
, hands down fighters make the best archers. Rangers might edge them out a bit in damage verses their favored enemies, but a fighter's consistency in damage verses any foe makes him the better damage dealer over the course of a campaign.
Someone mentioned the arcane archer as being weak. Hah! I have a player in my game who is a ranger/AA varient and he's, quite simply, a nightmare. Arcane archers are quite powerful in my experience - the ability to make every arrow magic alone is worth the price of admission into the class. And later - +5 arrows all the time. The guy in my campaign craps out somewhere in the neighborhood of 60-80 points of damage per round, depending on whether he's fighting his favored enemy or not. I can't possibly see how by any stretch of the imagination that this makes for a "weak" prestige class.
, hands down fighters make the best archers. Rangers might edge them out a bit in damage verses their favored enemies, but a fighter's consistency in damage verses any foe makes him the better damage dealer over the course of a campaign.Someone mentioned the arcane archer as being weak. Hah! I have a player in my game who is a ranger/AA varient and he's, quite simply, a nightmare. Arcane archers are quite powerful in my experience - the ability to make every arrow magic alone is worth the price of admission into the class. And later - +5 arrows all the time. The guy in my campaign craps out somewhere in the neighborhood of 60-80 points of damage per round, depending on whether he's fighting his favored enemy or not. I can't possibly see how by any stretch of the imagination that this makes for a "weak" prestige class.
ruleslawyer
Registered User
I'd say Elder_Basilisk is pretty right on about the PrC thing. If Peerless Archer ever got updated to 3.5, it might be a worthwhile class to take, but otherwise, the work of building a better archer is now done in feats (which, IMHO, was a better way to go). It does disturb me, though, that the one obvious power-up for archers is to learn how to shoot people 5' away with an even bigger weapon than the standard longbow. This has (OT alert!) made me all the more committed to getting rid of the EWM and replacing it with a standard Weapon Master class which is open to all fighters (req'ment: Greater Weapon Focus, replaces EWP), since I like the weapon stunts but don't think they should be limited to funky weapons.
Back onto topic: I'm a big fan of Ftr4/Rgr16 or Rgr6/Ftr14. IMHO, ranger levels past Combat Style II are wasted unless you go the whole hog and get the stealth abilities. (Poly self now sucks for a ranger because of the low-low HD cap.)
I've been thinking that another reasonably good archer type (although not combat-focused, it has other neat abilities) is a Rgr2/Ftr2/Rog16. This build has +16 BAB, can easily acquire all the archery feats, has SA +8d6 within 30 feet (and can pull this off often with an item of greater invisibility or, better still, blink), has a boatload of skill points, and has some abilities (in particular, evasion, UMD, and nasty stuff like crippling strike) that dovetail well with ranged combat. It's missing hp (but what archer needs those, especially with evasion?) and some archery bonus feats (two less than the ranger, eight(!) less than the fighter), but, given situational advantage, is a force to be reckoned with. 27,000 gp (see ring of blinking, DMG) makes every attack a sneak attack (unless your opponent has uncanny dodge or can see ethereal), which knocks the OOtBI's precise shot ability into a cocked hat. Imp Precise Shot allows you to overcome one of the rogue's most frustrating SA obstacles, concealment, while crippling strike, should you choose to take it, allows you to inflict up to 10 Strength damage in a round! Plus there are the great skill points and nifty special abilities.
Back onto topic: I'm a big fan of Ftr4/Rgr16 or Rgr6/Ftr14. IMHO, ranger levels past Combat Style II are wasted unless you go the whole hog and get the stealth abilities. (Poly self now sucks for a ranger because of the low-low HD cap.)
I've been thinking that another reasonably good archer type (although not combat-focused, it has other neat abilities) is a Rgr2/Ftr2/Rog16. This build has +16 BAB, can easily acquire all the archery feats, has SA +8d6 within 30 feet (and can pull this off often with an item of greater invisibility or, better still, blink), has a boatload of skill points, and has some abilities (in particular, evasion, UMD, and nasty stuff like crippling strike) that dovetail well with ranged combat. It's missing hp (but what archer needs those, especially with evasion?) and some archery bonus feats (two less than the ranger, eight(!) less than the fighter), but, given situational advantage, is a force to be reckoned with. 27,000 gp (see ring of blinking, DMG) makes every attack a sneak attack (unless your opponent has uncanny dodge or can see ethereal), which knocks the OOtBI's precise shot ability into a cocked hat. Imp Precise Shot allows you to overcome one of the rogue's most frustrating SA obstacles, concealment, while crippling strike, should you choose to take it, allows you to inflict up to 10 Strength damage in a round! Plus there are the great skill points and nifty special abilities.
Nifft
Penguin Herder
IMHO, the Ranger is quite good. Our party has one that just reached 11th level, and man, Improved Precise Shot is the SHIZZLE. The fact that you don't need a super-human (19+) Dex and get it 1 level early does not hurt at all.
He's gotten good use out of both Rapid Shot and Multishot, too.
Sure, Weapon Spec (Bow) would make his day a bit happier, but the ability to self-buff (cat's grace and barkskin, for example) makes up for quite a bit.
-- N
He's gotten good use out of both Rapid Shot and Multishot, too.
Sure, Weapon Spec (Bow) would make his day a bit happier, but the ability to self-buff (cat's grace and barkskin, for example) makes up for quite a bit.
-- N
I'm a big fan of the options open to Rangers as well. One of the problems I see with all the 20-level builds that people come up with for "best X" threads is that they're not really viable for a lot of those levels. I have recently started a campaign (now at 3rd level) and I'm playing a Cleric 1/Ranger 2 of Solonor Thelandria (elven god of archery and hunting). As a third level elf, he has 6 feats (Forester, Point-Blank Shot, Rapid Shot, Weapon Focus (longbow), Weapon Finesse, Track) and decent skills. The Forester feat helps offset the loss of stealth from the Cleric level and the Weapon Focus makes up for the loss of BAB.
Down the line I figure I'll pick up a wand of align weapon to help with DR and other wands so I can be a secondary healer (re: stabilizer) in the party. A straight Fighter would probably be able to plunk away for more damage, but I'm finding that I'm more versatile.
Down the line I figure I'll pick up a wand of align weapon to help with DR and other wands so I can be a secondary healer (re: stabilizer) in the party. A straight Fighter would probably be able to plunk away for more damage, but I'm finding that I'm more versatile.
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