To be an Arcane Archer or not to be, that is the question.

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Ramnza
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To be an Arcane Archer or not to be, that is the question.

Post by Ramnza »

I've been toying with the a new character for a campaign that will probably happen sometime next year. I thought it would be interesting to play an Arcane Archer, but with prestige classes there's always a great deal of preparation and as usual, one risks the chance of spending several levels preparing for the class and then by the time they arrive there, it's useless. Is the Arcane Archer all that, or pretty much sucky? :roundnround:
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Re: To be an Arcane Archer or not to be, that is the questio

Post by Username17 »

Suck.

The only tangible benefit of the entire class is five once/day attack spells and a single casting of Greater Magic Weapon on your arrows each day.

In short - by 17th level you can gain 6 mid-level Clerical Spell Slots and no other abilities at all.

Dumb!

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Count Arioch the 28th
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Re: To be an Arcane Archer or not to be, that is the questio

Post by Count Arioch the 28th »

If you are in low magic world, then it's a good class.

Of course, if you are in a low magic world, then most likely you won't be able to take the wizard levels to get the AA class anyway.

My opinion:

Every level you increase you magic arrow thingy, give yourself +1 arcane spellcaster level.

More work will be needed, of course, but that's a nice start.

The arrow tricks are pretty cool, but the limits on them blow. Big time. Perhaps give them more uses per day, 'cause once a day is not cutting it. Really, this class should be buitl around your special arrows, in my opinion, wiht some decent spellcasting added in. I don't think it should recieve full spellcasting values, but the arrow trickes need to be improved.
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Re: To be an Arcane Archer or not to be, that is the questio

Post by Jack_Lurch »

What Frank and the Count said, and I'll add that giving up that many caster levels is never worth it.

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Ramnza
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Re: To be an Arcane Archer or not to be, that is the questio

Post by Ramnza »

Alright, so what if I wanted to make an a homemade Arcane Archer of my very own? Say I focus on Cleric, Wizard, or Sorcerer as my class but figure out a way to enchant arrows. Now I only have the PHB 3.0 and have been trying to look for a feat that would allow that to happen. Should've known that it would require taking a look at some other books I don't have. But soon my birthday will be here:thumb:
Anyhow, the closest feat I found was Craft Magic Arms and Armor, which let's face it was not meant to be used that way. It would take way too long to enchant a single arrow, it would cost too much, frankly I'd be selling myself to old men just to make ends meet, and then there's the XP cost. So it's not worth it. But that ability to enchant arrows is pretty sweet. I bet there's an easier way:jump:
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Re: To be an Arcane Archer or not to be, that is the questio

Post by fbmf »

Frank, over at Nifty wrote:
OK, now it's time for everyone's favorite piece of cheese - the Artjer Cleric. I've drawn on elements from FRCS, Tome and Blood, and Defenders of the Faith. Everything else, including the character's race - comes directly from the Core Books.

For the purpose of this discussion, the Character will be a Lawful Good:

Cleric 6/ Church Inquisitor 3/ Divine Disciple 2/ Contemplative 6/ Sacred Exorcist 3


Race: Grey Elf
Domains: Elf, War, Inquisition, Exorcism, Mysticism, Time, Plant
Feats: Point Blank Shot*, Weapon Focus: Longbow*, Improved Initiative*, Extend Spell, Extra Turning*, Rapid Shot, Precise Shot, Persistant Spell, Power attack, Divine Might, Empower Spell

Abilities:
Str 9 (18)
Dex 21 (25-31)
Con 13 (17-23)
Int 15 (17)
Wis 28 (34)
Cha 16 (24-28)

Spell Slots:
1st: 8+1
2nd: 8+1
3rd: 8+1
4th: 8+1
5th: 6+1
6th: 6+1
7th: 6+1
8th: 6+1
9th: 5+1

Spell Usage per day:
1st: Endure Elements: all 5.
2nd: Undetectable Alignment
3rd: Water Breathing, x2 Extended Deathwatch (twice)
4th: Extended Magic Vestment (Shield), Extended Magic Vestment (Tower Shield), Extended Magic Vestment (Armor), Extended Spikes (morningstar)
5th: Persist Divine Favor, Extended GMW (Bow), Extended GMW (Arrows), Persist Entropic Shield, Extended GMW (morningstar)
6th: Extended x2 Empowered Cat's Grace (Domain Slot- Rod), Persist Speak with Animals, Wind Walk
7th: Extended x2 Empowered Eagle's Splendor (+4-10 charisma), Extended x2 Empowered Endurance (+4-10 Constitution), Persist Blessed Aim, Extended x5 Barkskin (domain slot), Persist Speak with Plants
8th: Persist Divine Power, Persist Weapon of Diety, Persist Repel Vermin, Persist Freedom of Movement, Extended Foresight (Domain Slot- Rod), Extended x5 Magic Circle Against Evil
9th: x2 Extended Foresight (Domain Slot- Rod), x5 Extended Tongues, x5 Extended Deathward, x5 Extended Air Walk

Equipment:
+1 Animated Darkwood Tower Shield (9630)
+1 Animated Steel Shield of Speed and Command (64170)
+1 Mithril Chain Shirt of Greater Fortification (37300)
+1 Mighty Darkwood Longbow of Shock, Fire and Frost (32730)
100 +1 darkwood arrows of spell storing (16750)
50 +1 darkwood Ghost Touch Arrows (8375)
+5 Cloak of Resistance (25000)
Ring of Counterspells - Greater Dispelling (4000)
Ring of Protection +5 (50000)
Bracers of Archery (5100)
Rod of Greater Extension (48600)
Clear Ioun Stone (20000)
Quiver of Ehlonna (1800)
Periapt of Wisdom (36000)
Robe of Eyes (90000)
Tome of Understanding +4 (11000)
Tome of Leadership +3 (82500)
Payment for gate invoked wishes adding +1 to all stats (13200)
Karma Bead (5000)
Boots of Striding and Springing (6000)
Eyepatch of True Seeing (75000)
Gloves of Storing (4400)
Headband of Intellect +2 (4000)
10 Pearls of Power I (10000)
Darkwood Morningstar (388)

Attack
+1 Weapon Focus
+2 Morale
+6 Luck
+10 Enhancement
+2 Competance
+8 Dexterity
+20 BAB
DaMaGe
+6 Luck
+10 Enhancement
+1 Competance
+8 Divine Might
+4 Strength
Saves
+5 Resistance
+8 Charisma
+3 Luck
+1 Competance
+2 Insight (Reflex Only)
AC
15 Cover
+7 shield
+9 Armor
+5 Natural Armor
+6 Dexterity
+5 Deflection
+2 Insight
+4 Haste
10 Base


Ranged Attacks: +49, +47/+47/+42/+37/+32
Ranged Damage: d8+3d6+29 (average 44 19-20 threat, critical adds 2d8+58 average 110) + spell effect (such as 3d8+15 damage of inflicted wounds - 28.5 damage save for half)
Melee Attacks: +33, +33/+28/+23/+18
Melee Damage: d8+33 (average 37 19-20 threat)
Saves: Fort: +31, Ref: +25, Will: +36
AC: 63

Every morning prayer begins with the activation of the karma bead - meaning that each day's worth of prayers are at caster level 24. The first greater dispelling cast upon her is automatically dispelled, and since she is hasted at all times, restocking the ring of counterspells is a trivial matter.

She is immune to poison, death effects, charm effects, critical hits, alignment detection, surprise, flat-footedness, 6 HD or less vermin (including that generated by creeping doom), disease (even magical disease), and effects that restrict movement such as paralysis or hold.

She can breathe water or air, and can walk on earth and sky with impunity. She can see the invisible and in the dark and through illusions for 120 feet. She can assume cloud form or detect evil at will and is resistant to fire, acid, sonic, electricty and cold.

She can speak with plants, animals, or any creature which has a language, and has a diplomacy bonus of over +30. She can dispel illusions with a touch at will, and gains a +4 bonus on all dispelling checks. She is resistant to possessing entities - but that generally doesn't matter because she is constantly in a MCaE effect that prevents possession and bodily contact from extraplanar creatures.

She still has spells left over, and her Implosion has a not-inconsiderable Save DC of 31, but primarily she is a warrior and diplomat, leaving the "spellcasting" to wizards. Several of her stats are given a range, as they are based on multiply empowered enhancement spells that last for two days. I have assumed that between the two copies of each which are active on her at all times, she rolled at least a '2' on the d4 - obviously her stats would rise considerable were she to roll a 4 instead. Note Also: when engaging in melee she has to store her animated tower shield, which drops her AC - a lot.

PS: Her Spot bonus is very large, over +30 before adding any actual ranks to the skill.


I play one in my twice monthly campaign. They rock!

Note that Frank's example was mostly for illustration purposes and represents the best case scenario, but if you were anywhere near this, you'd be awesome.

Game On,
fbmf
Ramnza
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Re: To be an Arcane Archer or not to be, that is the questio

Post by Ramnza »

:jawdrop:
Now, wait, some of these classes I'm not familiar with. All except the cleric. Care to elaborate?


fbmf quoting cheese wrote:Cleric 6/ Church Inquisitor 3/ Divine Disciple 2/ Contemplative 6/ Sacred Exorcist 3


Mod Edit: It wasn't


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Re: To be an Arcane Archer or not to be, that is the questio

Post by Username17 »

Church Inquisitor, Contemplative, and Sacred Exorcist are all from Defenders of the Faith.

Divine Disciple is from the FRCS book.

All of them are there in order to give a Prestige Domain, and for no other real purpose at all. After all, the character is replacing her BAB with her character level - and is thus looking at the the ability to trade base BAB fro base Saves (the inherent trade of multiclassing in D&D) as pure gravy.

Almost all of her abilities come from her spells, simply layered on top of one another - most of them are in the Player's Handbook - the exceptions being Spikes, Weapon of the Deity, Blessed Aim, and the mental stat raisers (all from DotF or Skip Hates Sorcerers).

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Re: To be an Arcane Archer or not to be, that is the questio

Post by Ramnza »

This may be me not knowing the explicit details of the classes, but what gives her the ability to lay the smack down with magical arrows?
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Re: To be an Arcane Archer or not to be, that is the questio

Post by Username17 »

Well... she buys +1 Arrows of Spell Storing in the store (at 160 gp a shot), and then she casts Greater Magic Weapon on them every day. That gives 50 of them a +5 enhancement bonus for 24 hours.

And the rest is her massive list of spells she casts upon herself.

This was written in 3e. In 3.5 there would, of course, have to be a major readjustment. But since in the 3.5 rules Karma Beads stack, and have a listed cost of zero gp - I regard Cleric cheese builds in 3.5 rules to be a trivial piece of powergaming at best.

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Re: To be an Arcane Archer or not to be, that is the questio

Post by Count Arioch the 28th »

Although I am perhpas more forgiving on WotC mistakes, and realize that they perhaps don't analyze things to the point that we do (Which is perhaps a very bad thing), I gotta say that I just shake my head in disgust every time I think about that oversight.

Free karma beads. SOMEONE shoudl have checked that.
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Re: To be an Arcane Archer or not to be, that is the questio

Post by Tae_Kwon_Dan »

Count_Arioch_the_28th at [unixtime wrote:1070505372[/unixtime]]Although I am perhpas more forgiving on WotC mistakes, and realize that they perhaps don't analyze things to the point that we do (Which is perhaps a very bad thing), I gotta say that I just shake my head in disgust every time I think about that oversight.

Free karma beads. SOMEONE shoudl have checked that.


Who cares about the free karma beads? I make money and XP every time I craft a Bead of Healing. They cost -11,000 GP to make. :uptosomething:
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Re: To be an Arcane Archer or not to be, that is the questio

Post by Username17 »

However, since they take negative time to make - you actually have to be travelling faster than the speed of light to make one.

So obviously, they exist only as a reward for surviving an adventure where you are hurled to supraa-relativistic velocities.

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Re: To be an Arcane Archer or not to be, that is the questio

Post by Tae_Kwon_Dan »

Damn you Albert Einstein!!!!!!!!
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Count Arioch the 28th
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Re: To be an Arcane Archer or not to be, that is the questio

Post by Count Arioch the 28th »

There's a way to do it.

Hire a lot of commoners. Order them to hold their action. Oreder them that when you are handed to them, to walk 30' to the next guy and hand you to the next guy.

You can go anywhere in the world in 6 seconds. (One round.)

With some math, determine how many commoners it would take to move you faster than the speed of light. Craft your items while being moved.
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Re: To be an Arcane Archer or not to be, that is the questio

Post by Username17 »

The speed of light is 299792458 meters/second.

That's 983319262 feet every second. Which is 5899915573 feet in 6 seconds.

But in order to be travelling backwards in time at one day/day - you'd have to be travelling at twice that speed - which is 11799831147 feet per six seconds.

That's 393,327,705 commoners with readied actions in the first round. In the modern world, that's about one person for every fifteen people on Earth. In the ancient world - that's significantly more people than there are.

But it gets worse - while you have now travelled backwards in time 6 seconds - noone else has. And you can only ready an action for something that hasn't happened yet. So you need another 393 million people for the very next round, and so on - for 11 days straight.

I don't think that's worth it.

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Re: To be an Arcane Archer or not to be, that is the questio

Post by Maj »

Frank wrote:That's 393,327,705 commoners with readied actions in the first round. In the modern world, that's about one person for every fifteen people on Earth. In the ancient world - that's significantly more people than there are.


You forgot to mention how many there were (or weren't) in the D&D world.

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Re: To be an Arcane Archer or not to be, that is the questio

Post by Machine_Kiss »

I used to think the 2 level dip into AA for the Imbue Arrow ability was a worthwhile investment. In real practice though, you're usually better off taking those 2 levels as your base spellcaster levels and just casting without the arrow accompaniment.

One Half-Elf build I made a while back does integrate AA-2 into it with some semblance of efficacy:

Bard16 / Ftr2 / ArcaneArcher2

You can substitute 1 level of Ftr for 1 level of Soldier of Light (Deities & Demigods book) to get the Turning/Divine Might feat combo working for you (best with a super-high CHA). In this build, you still get Bard 6th level spells, and you can still emphasize the Bard's one saving grace in martial activity - Archery. All the while gaining what a Bard20 build does not give you - 4 attacks per round. There are plenty of good area effect spells for the Bard, especially when you use non-core WotC D&D material. While this build is not a power-build per se, it is vastly more versatile than a standard Bard20 build while sacrificing very little. AA also gives you the key Hide & Move Silently skill ranks to really let you max out your Bard's stealth capabilities. :wave:
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Re: To be an Arcane Archer or not to be, that is the questio

Post by Count Arioch the 28th »

FrankTrollman at [unixtime wrote:1070992758[/unixtime]]The speed of light is 299792458 meters/second.

That's 983319262 feet every second. Which is 5899915573 feet in 6 seconds.

But in order to be travelling backwards in time at one day/day - you'd have to be travelling at twice that speed - which is 11799831147 feet per six seconds.

That's 393,327,705 commoners with readied actions in the first round. In the modern world, that's about one person for every fifteen people on Earth. In the ancient world - that's significantly more people than there are.

But it gets worse - while you have now travelled backwards in time 6 seconds - noone else has. And you can only ready an action for something that hasn't happened yet. So you need another 393 million people for the very next round, and so on - for 11 days straight.

I don't think that's worth it.

-Username17


You know what that puts into my mind?

Some sort of stupid demilich or something that makes thousands up thousands of a sheap golem he's created just to do that trick.

Hey, I never said it made sense. :uptosomething:
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Re: To be an Arcane Archer or not to be, that is the questio

Post by da_chicken »

FrankTrollman at [unixtime wrote:1070504545[/unixtime]]But since in the 3.5 rules Karma Beads stack, and have a listed cost of zero gp - I regard Cleric cheese builds in 3.5 rules to be a trivial piece of powergaming at best.


You're assuming that because no cost is listed that the cost to create is 0. That's quite a leap of logic. You can't create them at all. Minor artifacts have no cost to create and have no prerequisites. Can a 1st level rogue go around making Talismans of Ultimate Good?

You can't craft beads of karma alone. You can only craft entire strands since those are the only things listed. Even if you could make just the bead, it would be worthless to do so, since "the power of a special bead is lost if it is removed from the strand."
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Re: To be an Arcane Archer or not to be, that is the questio

Post by Username17 »

You're assuming that because no cost is listed that the cost to create is 0.


No. I'm assuming that since they have a listed market value of zero gp that their market value - as listed - is zero gp.

Since there in fact are standard rules for transfering market price to creation costs - and by following those rules we get that a zero gp market price likewise costs zero xp to manufacture - I don't think we are really leaping through any logical hoops at all here.

In fact - the supposition that somehow every option which does not inherently reaffirm the completely standardized item creation costs cannot be made (even when the market price is listed explicitly) would lead to the following conclusions:

* You cannot make a +1 Keen, Flaming, Scimitar.
* You cannot make a +2 Mithril Breastplate.

After all, the creation costs of those two items are not explicitly laid out anywhere. However, the guidelines for their construction are. You add up the pieces they have, you determine the market price of the enchantment, and you multiply by fractions to get the creation cost in xp and gold.

We have no earthly reason to believe that the procedure for building Prayer Beads is in any way different. You add up the abilities and costs, find the price of the enchantment (zero gp in this case) - and then multiply through to find the creation cost (also zero).

Remember, this isn't a cost of "no listed cost" - this is an actually listed cost of pocket lint. The two aren't even close to the same. Now, it's obviously a case of "Andy Collins can't do simple addition and subtraction" rather than a "It is now the design intent that Karma Beads should be free". However, that really doesn't matter - the RAW is currently that Karma Beads are free, and any game where they aren't is based on some arbitrary house rule.

That house rule is going to vary from group to group - some people are going to set the price very high as a backlash, and others are going to set the price back to what it was in the 3rd edition DMG. The point is, the only common ground where we can even have meaningful discussions about how powerful a "cheese build" is - the Rules As Written - simply and unambiguously says that you can have as many of them as you want for free. If you sit around activating one after another you can activate 99 of them before they start running out of duration as fast as you can activate new ones. And with +396 caster levels you can cast a Holy Word that automatically kills any susceptible creature ever printed, regardless of hit dice or spell resistance, without a die roll.

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Re: To be an Arcane Archer or not to be, that is the questio

Post by Psifon »

My DMG says that if you remove a bead of Karma from a SoPB's then the price of the strand comes down by 20k. How does this extrapolate into a zero price?
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Re: To be an Arcane Archer or not to be, that is the questio

Post by Username17 »

The generic strand has a bead of healing, a bead of karma, and a bead of smiting. It costs 25,800 gp. It reduces the price by 16,800 to jettison the bead of smiting. It reduces the price by another 9,000 gp to jettison the bead of healing. Thus, the bead of karma on its own is free were you to simply purchase one.

Whatever. It's all part and parcel of the fact that the new Holy Word is crazy broken for no good reason. Old Blasphemy was bad - certain CR 6 creatures could kill an entire 6th level party with no save (although ironically, they did behave as CR 6 horde monsters properly against 12th level parties). New Blasphemy is simply insane.

Andy shouldn't be allowed to write rules, let alone rules that scale into epic levels.

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Re: To be an Arcane Archer or not to be, that is the questio

Post by Psifon »

no shit.
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Re: To be an Arcane Archer or not to be, that is the questio

Post by Ramnza »


Machine_Kiss wrote:There are plenty of good area effect spells for the Bard, especially when you use non-core WotC D&D material.


Sadly, being a college student leaves me poor (yes, I work too) and I only have the core books. So what other spells did you have in mind?
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