Weapon Familiars and Arcane Archers, they still suck?

[Azraile]

Most sorcess and oppentions seam to all point to Arcane archers being underpowered and generally full of suck.

With a bow familiar though they can store several touch and ray spells into there bow and unleash them, at higher familiar levels they can free a stored spell as a free action so they can release a spell and cast a second touch/ray spell through the familiar or imbue a bow with an area affect spell.

So general question here is if your using a bow-familiar and the rules (pathfinder I think?) with AA's getting spell levels each level..... is being one actually worth it?

Or are weapon familiars best used with other prestige classes.

[Azoth]

If you remember Arcane Archer is only 2 levels long, then it isn't horrible.

[Azraile]

x.x

So your saying if you have weapon familiar the only reason to get AA is for the second level skill to add ranged AoE spell arrows to your repatriate and then ditch it?

lol great maybe some one will make a version of arcane archer that is worth taking levels in past 2 >.>

[Eldariel]

x.x

So your saying if you have weapon familiar the only reason to get AA is for the second level skill to add ranged AoE spell arrows to your repatriate and then ditch it?

lol great maybe some one will make a version of arcane archer that is worth taking levels in past 2 >.>

If you search the homebrew forum or Google, you'll find probably thousands of Arcane Archer Reduxes of one kind or another. It's worth noting that PF Arcane Archer is slightly less useless than the 3.5 version, and it can actually enable taking levels sometimes. It could afford to be much better regardless though.

[Sir Chuckles]

The two main issues with it are the 1) It does not progress casting and 2) Action Economy is funky.
The rehashes generally address those two main points.

[aleucard]

For general use, you're probably better off ignoring the Item Familiar feat's existence. Of the few DM's that will let you even utter its name at their table, even fewer won't take advantage at some point, which immediately means your character is completely hosed. I'd like to see if people could make it more sensible, to be honest. It's an interesting idea, it's the implementation that's bork't.