Same Game Test Request: 3.0E Fighter Archer

[Lago PARANOIA]

I can't look at this objectively and I also don't have my 3E books on me.

So just to prove (or be disproved) on my point that that rat bastard Andy Collins killed a perfectly good non-magical sword-based class archetype in 3.5E, I'm putting through a fighter on the SGT. Levels 5, 10, and 15.

You were something like this: Elven Fighter 4 / Ranger 1 / Order of the Bow Initiate 2 (you want close combat shot and ranged sneak attack so hard) / Peerless Archer 4 (you want ranged sneak attack, fletching +2 for spell-storing arrows, power shot, and sharp shooting so hard) / Deepwood Sniper 2 (you want keen arrows, concealment reduction 10%, and improved criticals so hard) / Order of the Bow Initiate 8 (rest of the levels continue to give you sneak attack and some pretty nice class features to boot, such as improved Weapon Specialization to make up for that sneak attack bonus you're not getting, +WIS + 1 bonus to attacks, and opportunist).

Suggested Feats:
1: Point Blank Shot, Rapid Shot
2: Weapon Focus: Composite Longbow, Precise Shot
3: Far Shot
4: Weapon Specialization: Longbow
6: Manyshot (there's some dumbass item somewhere that handed out Quick Draw--I forgot which one, but if not, you can just be a human instead)
9: Improved Critical
12: Zen Archery
15: Hamstring

Restrictions: You can only use 3.0E sourcebooks, only use 3.0E books (i.e. haste works the same way it did back then), and only FULLY 3.0E sourcebooks (so no Miniatures Handbook or Savage Species). You can't get any direct help from spellcasters for buffs, but you do have standard WBL to blow on a 3.0E item.

Suggested Items: Wings of Flying Boots of Springing and Striding, some haste item, Oathbow, Bracers of Archery, something to help you see invisibility/have true seeing, a ring of blink, some ghost touch arrows, infinite arrow quiver.

If you have any feat or item suggestions/swaps that you think would help, feel free to share them.

[shau]

I never played 3.0, but I did do some 3.5 archery. Here are some suggestions.

Horse archery is really powerful. Having a horse and a bow will even kill traditional stumping monsters like that giant fucking crab. Even just having a regular horse will pump your speed up to uncatchable, but 3.0 also had really cheap mounts. The Warbeast template (MM2) lets you buy anything you want for like 50 gp per HD so you can always have a level appropriate pet. Or just go crazy and ride a T-rex at level five, whatever. Even in 3.5, which had more sane prices, you can buy a griffon for 3000 gp, and just use that until you can afford a flying broom which can't be shot down. Mounts also give a plus one to hit height bonus that's on all the time.

Economics can be really important as an archer. You want to pile a bunch of bonuses together. Figuring out when you should just pump your bow and when you should invest in arrows can be difficult. If you are using spell storing arrows it is a lot easier. If 3.0 has any bullshit items like the capsules in CA or whetstones in 4e those are worth a look.

Isn't 3.0 the game with decent sniping. Going stealth based and doing the shoot then hide tango might be worth it. Maybe try going into that bullshit hide in plain sight class.

Just my notes from 3.5 games, might not apply.

[Psychic Robot]

Elven Fighter 4 / Ranger 1 / Order of the Bow Initiate 2 (you want close combat shot and ranged sneak attack so hard) / Peerless Archer 4 (you want ranged sneak attack, fletching +2 for spell-storing arrows, power shot, and sharp shooting so hard) / Deepwood Sniper 2 (you want keen arrows, concealment reduction 10%, and improved criticals so hard) / Order of the Bow Initiate 8 (rest of the levels continue to give you sneak attack and some pretty nice class features to boot, such as improved Weapon Specialization to make up for that sneak attack bonus you're not getting, +WIS + 1 bonus to attacks, and opportunist).

If you actually had to do this much work to make the character viable, then he wasn't really viable.

[Crissa]

No, that's how much work it took to become awesome. It was always viable.

-Crissa

[Username17]

You want Haste Armor from DotF, because it is awesome.

The basics of the Fighter Archer in 3e is that you usually hit, and you get a lot of attacks and you do a lot of damage. At 10th level, an arrow does d8 (bow) +3 (bow enhancement) +3 (arrow enhancement) +2 (Specialization) +3 (Strength) +1 (point blank shot) +2 (Bracers) +2d6 (ranged sneak attack). 24 points of damage, and it penetrates any DR on anything you'll see for the next 6 levels or so. And you get 4 attacks, three of which are at full to-hit bonus. That's 2 rounds to mow down a Fire Giant, probably actually more like three once you factor into account that ranged sneak attack won't always work.

If you actually had to do this much work to make the character viable, then he wasn't really viable.

While the notation is kind of weird, the character really isn't doing "this much work" - he's literally just taking an archery bonus every level. It's how a 3rd edition fighter worked. From level 6 onwards, you took a fighting prestige class level every level rather than fucking with feat chains, because there were no high level feat chain extensions. The high level "feats" were just "class levels" in classes with names like "Knight of the Middle Circle" and shit. You might as well flip out that Wizards weren't viable because they had to pick two spells every level.

-Username17

[Lago PARANOIA]

If you actually had to do this much work to make the character viable, then he wasn't really viable.

If you have one of those DMs who get all whiny about taking more than one PrC, you can have all of your levels be in Order of the Bow Initiate. And then the next set of them you can finish off with Peerless Archer or Deepwood Sniper. If your DM sucks the anus of Gygax and is like 'One PrC! EVER!' and you're going past level 15, you can grab rogue levels instead of ranger levels to bring it home. So you're like a Rogue 1 / Fighter 4 / Rogue 1 / Order of the Bow Initiate 10 / Rogue 4 and you're definitely going to be a human.

Order of the Bow Initiate is pretty much rock solid for all 10 levels, with only one real dead level in it. I just wanted Power Shot, because it rocks your face off very, very hard.

[Psychic Robot]

But you really don't have a "3.0 fighter archer." You have "a 3.0 archery build."

Question, though: did the OotBI 3.0 version just give bonus damage that worked like sneak attack but only with ranged weapons? Because that would be really awesome and not the shitty "+5d8 as a standard action" attack in the 3.5 version.

[Kaelik]

But you really don't have a "3.0 fighter archer." You have "a 3.0 archery build."

Question, though: did the OotBI 3.0 version just give bonus damage that worked like sneak attack but only with ranged weapons? Because that would be really awesome and not the shitty "+5d8 as a standard action" attack in the 3.5 version.

Yeah, that's one reason why Lago bitches about 3.5 archery nerfs. Because Order of the Bow went from totally killer to the shittiest class ever because it fucking tries to make you not fucking full attack.

[Psychic Robot]

Is this something we can blame on Andy Collins?

[Lago PARANOIA]

Yeah, that's one reason why Lago bitches about 3.5 archery nerfs.

That's not the only 3.5E archery nerf, but it's definitely the biggest one. The loss of that extra standard action for manyshot, bracers of archery being bumped up in price, improved critical and keen no longer stacking, the speed property being rendered superfluous, the Oathbow being nerf, GMW arrow stacking being killed off, the cost of skill bonus items gong up, the enhancement spells being nerfed in duration, and sniping becoming non-functional completely killed the idea of a fighter-archer. All this, along with the New And Improved Zen Archery and making metamagic rods core completely cemented the idea of cleric archers being > you.

Fucking Andy Collins. I bet he dreams of being the centerpiece in a dwarven fighter/barbarian horde gangbang.

[Kaelik]

Yeah, that's one reason why Lago bitches about 3.5 archery nerfs.

That's not the only 3.5E archery nerf, but it's definitely the biggest one. The loss of that extra standard action for manyshot, bracers of archery being bumped up in price, improved critical and keen no longer stacking, the speed property being rendered superfluous, the Oathbow being nerf, GMW arrow stacking being killed off, the cost of skill bonus items gong up, the enhancement spells being nerfed in duration, and sniping becoming non-functional completely killed the idea of a fighter-archer. All this, along with the New And Improved Zen Archery and making metamagic rods core completely cemented the idea of cleric archers being > you.

Fucking Andy Collins. I bet he dreams of being the centerpiece in a dwarven fighter/barbarian horde gangbang.

There is a reason I said "one of the reasons."

[Lago PARANOIA]

Oops. I apologize for misquoting you.

Is this something we can blame on Andy Collins?

Andy Collins was the lead designer of the 3.5E PHB and also wrote the Complete Warrior book (which had the OotBI nerf). So yes. We can directly blame that rat bastard.

[shau]

The 3.5 archer is actually pretty doable. It's rough in the beginning and you probably just want to carry a halberd or something and chop fools up. But once you can get a decent composite bow you can generally put out enough damage to drop a level appropriate foe.

You can generally get a decent bow by level 3 and do the horse archery thing for a while or just be head of the shooting gallery that web using wizards or entangle druids set up. By four I think you can swing a gryphon or pegasus egg if you really want it and then you got the whole flying archer thing down. From five to ten you are gunning people down that the wizard set up with stinking cloud, tentacle rape etc. You can be falling behind in damage but with spell storing arrows or enough splats you are fine. At level 11 it's gets harder to keep up with the damage but the wizard has hit the wish economy and the idea that you are can keep up is something of a joke anyway.

Yeah it ends at level 11, but there isn't a mundane character that can deal with an optimized mage at that level anyway, and spending most of your life with access to flight and just enough damage to kill somebody is pretty cool. I'm not sure how it compares to a decent cleric archer because I have never plaved a cleric archer, but I was actually pretty satisfied with my archer, which surprised me.

[Murtak]

If you actually had to do this much work to make the character viable, then he wasn't really viable.

All that class shuffling really only gets you a couple only extra points of damage. Basically you can mix and match Order of the Bow Initiate, Deepwood Sniper and Peerless Archer and they will nicely complement each other, unless you chose bad cutoff points. The same goes for equipment and feats. The most painful part is actually qualifying for your first prestige classes without having to take too many levels in bad or just plain non-shooty classes.

[Lago PARANOIA]

Fortunately for you (assuming you were still in 3.0E-land) all of the archer prerequisites are feats that you wanted to take anyway, except for Weapon Focus and maybe Far Shot. The latter of which can be situationaly awesome depending on how far away you start encounters.

The turkey levels are level 3 and 5, unfortunately. Ranger was picked so you could get your ass some skill points and it was a full-BAB class.

[erik]

I always liked Deepwood Sniper. The first 2 levels were so tasty. Almost made me want to gut it out to get the extra +1 crit at level 7 in the class.

Take an Oathbow and rock out with your 18-20/x6 crit arrows. Yes please! I always felt sad that the Oathbow misses out on mighty-strength damage bonuses, but double damage is almost always better than that potential +4 anyway.

[Lago PARANOIA]

Oh yeah. I forgot about the Mighty Bow change from 3.0E to 3.5E. That was one of the few good things that happened from 3.5E.

So begrudgingly I give credit where it's due. ... too bad that the only people who could take advantage of that were people playing in Maj-stat games and clerics, due to the quadratic costs of magic items and MAD of Order of the Bow Initiates. Oh, well.

But you could still make Oathbows Mighty Strength. Along with stacking a bunch of other enchantments on them. You had to reverse-engineer the costs and put a bunch of stuff on it. But Oathbows kicked enough ass that even if your DM didn't allow it it was solid for quite awhile, especially with Mighty Shot.

[RobbyPants]

Oh yeah. I forgot about the Mighty Bow change from 3.0E to 3.5E. That was one of the few good things that happened from 3.5E.

It's been a while. How did that work in 3.0 again? Was there a cap on short bows, or something?

[Username17]

Oh yeah. I forgot about the Mighty Bow change from 3.0E to 3.5E. That was one of the few good things that happened from 3.5E.

It's been a while. How did that work in 3.0 again? Was there a cap on short bows, or something?

Instead of there being a "+1 more strength for X gold" line, there was just an arbitrary list of mighty bows with costs. So there wasn't a Mighty Shortbow +4 to buy in the PHB. They existed, because some monsters had them. And the costs were linear, so you could figure out what they were supposed to be. But they weren't on the list of things for purchase, so some DMs wouldn't let you get them.

Of course, the whole "mighty bow" bullshit is the bane of the archer fighter in 3e and 3.5. No way in hell should PCs paying like a grand for the priv of getting their full second stat bonus to damage.

-Username17