[PF] cOdzilla - as a mounted archer?

[Arutema]

Missing my old halfling paladin, and getting tired of my human healbot oracle. I somehow decided to combine 2 similar concepts into a halfling nature oracle (with the haunted curse) as my new Pathfinder Society character.

I'll be taking the mount revelation at level 1, and riding a wolf till level 4, then a dog (I need my mount to stay medium thanks to how many PFS fights take place indoors.)

Here's the complication though, I want this character to fight using a bow rather than getting into melee. Fortunately, there's a campaign trait I can take that grants proficiency with the longbow.

Stats so far looks like this:
Str: 10
Dex: 16
Con: 12
Int: 12
Wis: 9
Cha: 18

Getting to my actual question, what feats and spells should I take to boost my bow's damage, as a composite bow is unlikely. I'm thinking Point-blank shot at 1 and Precise Shot at 3. But after that what's the better way to boost damage? Spells, feats that let me shoot more arrows? deadly aim?

How would you do this with only Pathfinder sources allowed.

[Arutema]

Addendum: Does Ultimate Combat have anything that would be relevant to such a character?

[Luckmann]

Can you even fire Longbows when mounted?

As for Ultimate Combat - and this is obviously not immediately relevant to your build - the Samurai (http://www.d20pfsrd.com/classes/base-classes/samurai) alternate class for the Crusader gets Mounted Archer at 4th level. Only thing I can think of on-hand.

[Bhaakon]

UC has what purports to be an archer variant for Paladin, but it's not very good (it trades some of the paladin's class features for the ability to grant high-level archery feats to its allies, who probably won't be using them for anything, and it forces you to use the bonded weapon option, though you do get to use it on a ranged weapon and it adds a couple ranged enchantments).

The most important ranged feat is in UC clustered shot, which lets you stack all the ranged attack damage accrued against a single target in a full round attack to help bypass damage resistance (instead of applying DR to each hit, you apply it once to the combined damage total of all your hits)

There's the snapshot and improved snapshot feats, which let you threaten out to 5 ft and 10 ft, respectively, with a ranged weapon and make attacks of opportunity w/o provoking any, but it comes with a weapon focus feat tax.

Impact critical shot lets you potentially perform a bull rush or trip maneuver on a target when you critical with a ranged weapon.

There are a couple others, but they're either teamwork feat, or just not very good (or both)


Can you even fire Longbows when mounted?

Normal, no. Composite, yes.

[TurtleKing]

Deadly Aim for a ranged Power Attack. Vital Strike is great for when you get 2 attacks you can give up one to add the die damage to the other attack. This great for skirmishing by riding and shooting.

[Arutema]

Can you even fire Longbows when mounted?


I just checked. You can't unless they're composite. Since this char isn't going to have the strength for composite, that pretty much kills the build.

Next question. Are there traits that give proficiency with good martial melee weapons. (Not counting Heirloom Weapon, which got nerfed into useless by eratta.)

Alternately. I may play an Elf and ditch the mount.

[Bhaakon]

If you want to stick with the whole half-pint oracle on canine mount thing, you can go gnome and take the master tinker alternate racial trait. Bingo, you're automatically proficient with any weapon you craft yourself.

As for traits that give you free weapon proficiencies, I don't know of any (besides heirloom weapon).

[Bayonet Priest]

I just checked. You can't unless they're composite. Since this char isn't going to have the strength for composite, that pretty much kills the build.

Can't you get a Str +0 Composite Longbow? I thought you could but maybe that changed in Pathfinder.

[Bhaakon]

Can't you get a Str +0 Composite Longbow? I thought you could but maybe that changed in Pathfinder.

Not only can you, it's the default (you've got to pay more for strength modifiers).