Would the real Peerless Archer please stand up?

[Kai Lord]

All right, with a plethora of archer-type prestige classes to choose from, who's the real king of the hill? Arcane or Peerless Archer? Order of the Bow Initiate? Deepwood Sniper?

Who's the best non-epic WOTC archer? With 20 levels, how would the Master Archer choose his classes? The Peerless Archer's Power Shot class ability combined with Manyshot is pretty nice....

 

[Crothian]

I'd have to look it over, but I think the best would be taken a few levels in each class (or as many as one can). For instance the first two levels of Deepwood sniper Increase your range increment by 20ft, Make all your arrows keen, up your crit multiple to x4, conceal ment reduction and magic arrow 1/day.

 

[Lord Ben]

Where is Peerless Archer from? I never heard of it.

A player in my group was ftr5/OotBI9 when temple of EE ended and he was exceptionally good.

I had a ftr4/clr1 who was decent, but I wouldn't say the best. My plan was to continue cleric levels the rest of the way for the eventuall GMW that gives me +5 to my bow and arrows. I mostly did it for the RP aspects because I worshipped Herionious as a fighter and grew stronger as I progressed in levels and eventually took a cleric level before dying. But the mechanics behind it were strong. By Ftr4/Clr11 I'd have a +5 bow and +5 arrows with a bead of karma.

 

[Crothian]

Peerless archer is from FR: Silver Marches

 

[Artoomis]

Magic properties of Arcane Archer, et. al. notwithstanding, the best archer just might be a fighter, if non-core feats are allowed.

Think about it. 17 feats at 20th level, if human. Pretty damn impressive if everyone of those was archery-related.

I won't even attempt to list all the known archery-related feats here, but trhere are quite a few, and there's no reason why others could not be created.

 

[Mr.Binx]

I would probably shoot for a 5th level Fighter/10th level Deepwood Sniper/5th Level Peerless Archer class progression till I hit 20th level or 10th level Fighter/10th Level Deepwood Sniper. The damage that can be done from long range is ridiculous with Deepwood Sniper levels and too good to pass up. With the addition of 2 applications of Greater Magic Weapon cast by a 15th+ level caster (+10 to hit and damage for 15+ hours) you will be doing lotsa' damage from way off the battle matt. Add in whatever magical gear you would have by mid to high level it can get pretty ridiculous for anyone to try and pinpoint where the arrows are coming from outside of 500+ feet away.

 

[Rackhir]

Magic properties of Arcane Archer, et. al. notwithstanding, the best archer just might be a fighter, if non-core feats are allowed.

Well, that gets into messy questions as to what is broken or not in non-WotC stuff. I think the "Quintisential Fighter" book had a prestige class that gave you a 30' threat area for an archer. WotC used that same ability in the Master of the Order of the Bow (epic prestige class) as it's 10th lvl ability. So according to one, you should be able to get that ability at 14th or by the other at about 34th. Does that mean one is broken and the other is not?

As to the original question. None of the classes are clearly superior to the other (though AA is definitely inferior). They all have strengths and weaknesses. OoBI is great if you want to mix it up in close combat or are sneaky and can get benefit out of the sneak attacks. DWS has some tremendous damage possiblities, especially with a well designed bow and a host of useful secondary abilities. AA moderately sucks since few of the abilities are any good aside from the +arrows ability and that gets trumped by GMW in most cases. Still with the rate that a high level archer goes through arrows, it's not a feature to be underestimated and hail of arrows is a great class ability. I'm not familiar with Peerless Archer, so I can't comment on that.

A mix of the classes clearly offers some tremendous advantages as Crothian mentions. With 20 levels you can take the better part of both DWS and OoBI and have someone who kicks ass in so many ways. Between the two, you can't help but have an effective character. Unless you're an elf fetishist, AA is typically not worth bothering with.

 

[Chun-tzu]

The best archer? That's a tough one. Of the WotC PrCs, we've got the Arcane Archer, Order of the Bow Initiate, Deepwood Sniper, Peerless Archer, and the Heartseeker (a dragon fighting variant of the Arcane Archer). Some might also consider Sean Reynold's Serpent Archer as a bit more official than archery-focused PrCs from other designers. In 20 levels, you can't get all the best benefits from these PrCs, so you'll have to pick and choose.

Which is better, the Arcane Archer's free +5 enchanted arrows (stacked with a magic bow, that's pretty powerful), or the sneak attack damage of the Bow Initiate and the Peerless Archer? The Bow Initiate specializes in close range combat, while the Deepwood Sniper specializes in long range combat. Which is better? Clearly, it depends on the situation.

I'm also interested in what combinations people can come up with.

One character idea I had was to create an Arcane Archer that took several Wizard levels, in order to maximize the Imbue Arrow ability. With the hit you're taking in BAB due to the Wizard levels, this isn't really the most min-maxed of characters. But some of the low-level spells work really nicely with Imbue Arrow. The character becomes something like a mystic version of Hawkeye or Green Arrow.

Grease Arrow - make any 10 foot square within range slippery
Obscuring Mist or Fog Cloud - smoke arrow
Web - glue arrow
Stinking Cloud - gas arrow
Dispel Magic - disruptor arrow
Darkness - blackout arrow (Note: you don't need Imbue Arrow to do this)

 

[Lord Ben]

Do you suffer armor check penalty with imbue arrow?

 

[Chun-tzu]

Do you suffer armor check penalty with imbue arrow?

Imbue Arrow is a spell-like ability, so arcane spell failure doesn't apply to the act of imbuing. It would apply to the actual casting of the spell, though.