Artificer Archer

[faceroll]

I'm in a campaign right now where my current character has a pretty decent chance of dying, so I'm trying to think up a replacement character. We're playing pretty high powered- we regularly face of against encounters at 4+ above the party. We get a ton of loot, but most of it's fairly junk, and the DM let's use sell it for about 40%-60% of it's value while virtually anything we want to buy is around 4x more expensive than the listed costs.

As you can see, playing any character with a lot of gear reliance (T3 & below), will be sort of rough, since getting another +4 stick of stabbing will only take you so far.

That's why I'm thinking artificer. With the heaps of virtually useless junk we're accumulating, I could turn it into useful items. Really sweet enchantments, like collision & splitting, would be entirely trivial to get. I've never played an archer before, either.

So, with that said, what's a good artificer archer build? What spells should I look out for? I want to go with the Great Crossbow cause it's badass. Starting level would be around 6-8.

Houserules in effect:
Ludicrous stats (typically 2 18s and 2 16s)
3.0 haste
3.0 arrow enhancement rules (I don't even know what they are; something to do with bonus stacking)
No crit confirmation rolling.

Books:
Defenders of the Faith
Sword & Fist
Tome & Blood
Masters of the Wild
PGtF
ECS
Explorer's Handbook (from ECS)
Magic of Eberron (has eternal wands I think)
Spell Compendium
All the Completes
Stormwrack
It's Hot Outside
Expedition to Castle Ravenloft
Champions of Ruin
Champions of Valor
Races of Stone
Races of Destiny
Planar Handbook
Manual of the Planes
MM1-3, FF
BoVD, BoED
Complete Book of Eldritch Might
Savage Species
Unearthed Arcana

[Sstoopidtallkid]

Most of the good spells are Ranger and in the SPC. You'll want to Polymorph into an Arrow Demon(MMIII). There's the Force enhancement, which is always nice. You need a way to swap wands and scrolls as free actions, because anything more than that is too expensive. Ehlonna's Quiver from the MIC is great(use it for wands and staves, not just arrows). Haste is on the Trapsmith list as a 1st level spell, use that. 3.0 Haste is godly, so make sure you have both Rapid Shot and Manyshot. Make sure you have access to 2 sources of GMW, you want it on both your arrows and your bow all the time.

[Lycanthromancer]

Also make sure you have at least 2 dedicated wright homunculi, as they can craft for you while you're adventuring.

In the DMGII there's a feat called Apprentice, which you must take at 1st level, and which gives you bonus benefits which depend on which version you take. If you can get it, take Apprentice (Craftsman), which lowers the base cost of everything you craft by 10%, which stacks with Legendary Artisan and Extraordinary Artisan (from the ECS). If you go warforged, there's an alternative class feature in Races of Eberron which doubles your crafting points for the purposes of crafting and enhancing weapons, armor, and constructs (this includes warforged components). There are a couple of other really great ACFs in there, too (but don't exchange your ability to drain item XP, whatever you do), as well as some awesome infusions.

I'd suggest making a warforged artificer, and you can stretch your resources REEEEALLY far, especially with a couple of flaws and those three feats (you can craft magic items at Base Price * 65/200 gp and Base Price * 65/2500 xp [and Base Price * 65/5000 for crafting points]). Very, VERY nice. Plus you can heal yourself of damage whenever you use infusions on yourself.

Likewise, make sure you have at least one wand of either an orb of force/sound or scorching ray. Metamagic them to hell and back and you can one-shot virtually anything with enough charges. Great for a single-use panic button. :smallbiggrin:

Also, make sure you drain the XP from any magical traps and locations, and (if you can) from any golems you come across. Pull out as many as you can, and use them well.