The Slayer as an Archer

[fendrin]

Hi folks, with the release of the Advanced Class Guide and with it the Slayer hybrid class, I've have a couple of build ideas that I would love some commentary on. I will present an overall build framework up to level 12 or so, then a few snapshots at various levels. This is not explicitly an exercise in optimization, though if I miss something obvious, please do tell. Note that I am being simplistic with items; you can probably do better with a little effort.

Why does the slayer make a great archer? Slayer Talents. You can get up to 5 bonus feats, including some without having to meet prereqs. This means that up through level 11 you will be only one feat behind the fighter (and if you are human you can catch up at level 6!). Plus, because three of those 5 are ranger combat styles, you can get some really nice feats much earlier than the fighter. Studied Target, Sneak Attack, and the other Slayer goodies are icing on the cake. Add to that better reflex saves and more skill points and you have a well rounded archer with good, consistent damage.

Han
Han is that guy that, no matter what, can always shoot first, no matter what big-eyed & green-skinned thing he's up against.
The vanguard archetype probably isn't worth it, but if you REALLY like going first and REALLY don't like being surprised, this is a good build for you.

Human Slayer(Vanguard)

Stat priority: Dex -> Str -> Con/Wis -> Int -> Cha

Favored Class: Take the human special for an extra talent at 6 and again at 12. Beyond that take whichever option you'd like.



Level
Feats/Relevant Special Abilities.
Comments


1
Lookout (Vanguard ability)
Point Blank Shot
Precise Shot
A scaling bonus to initiative is a good start; by level 8 it's like getting Improved Initiative for free.


2
Tactician (Vanguard ability)
Ooh, a teamwork feat. You have to meet the prereqs, so Enfilading Fire is out.
Lookout has great synergy with this build, so it's a good bet.
You probably won't get a feat here that helps you, so look for something that helps the party.


3
Deadly aim
Why not rapid shot? As per the discussion in the next few posts you MUST take a feat off of the level 2 list the first time you take the Ranger Combat Style talent. There only 3 feats on that list that Han wants. PBS is a prereq for too much else to wait, and you don't want until level 6 for precise shot. Waiting on Rapid Shot is the least penalizing of the three.


4
Vanguard's Bond
Another Vanguard ability I would rather not take. Give up a full attack to grant a small bonus for a (very) short period of time? No thanks.


5
Combat Reflexes
This isn't all that useful to you now, but in another 6 levels you will have Improved Snap Shot and threaten in a 35'x35' square(ish?) area around you. In small spaces (i.e. most dungeon rooms) your enemies will not be able to move much at all without getting an arrow to the face. Why take it this early? In a feat-hungry build you take what you can when you can... there really isn't much else to take here. In the meantime, wear a spiked gauntlet to get AoOs without having to draw another weapon. If you really really don't want to take Combat reflexes here, Iron Will is never a bad idea, and Improved Initiative will boost your init into the stratosphere (diminishing returns on that, though.)


6
Rapid Shot
Improved Precise Shot
Finally your first slayer talent. And look, you get your second one at the same time. Take Ranger Combat Style to for Rapid Shot and then immediately take it again for Improved Precise Shot


7
Ever Ready (Vanguard Ability)
Manyshot

This is really why you gave up your slayer talents at 2 and 4. You always act in the surprise round. Jumped by invisible goblin ninjas? Yeah, you saw them coming. Sort of. If you go before them you may have to delay until they are no longer invisible, but hey, at least you're not flat-footed. At worst this is just an extra arrow, but at best you will end a fight before it really begins.



8
Weapon Training(Longbow)

Weapon Focus is a weak feat at this level, but it is a prereq for lots of other good stuff (the snap shot line and Point Blank Master)


9
Snap Shot (the feat)



10
RCS: Point Blank Master OR Combat Trick(Improved Snap Shot)
Have you ever notice that Improved Snap Shot implies you no longer provoke with your ranged attacks? Look at both the fluff and the "Normal" section. It's not explicit though, so by RAW it doesn't do it. Check with your DM on this one.


11
Clustered Shots
If you want Clustered Shots earlier, you can take it as early as level 7, and just shift everything else down one.
Why not Improved Critical? I assume that you'll have Bracers of Falcon's Aim (Ultimate Equipment) well before this.


12
???
If you've somehow not taken Combat Trick yet, take it here. Otherwise, you've gone through many the best of the talents at this point. I'm a big fan of Evasion, especially with such a good Reflex save. Deadly Range isn't a bad idea, as your sneak attacks also allow you to free-action designate a studied target. Really this is all up to your individual play style and what you want to be doing other than shooting arrows.


Assuming 20 point buy: Str 14, Dex 18, Con 12, Int 10, Wis 14, Cha 8; put the +2 racial bonus into dex to bump it up to 20.
Level 1: Str 14, Dex 20, Con 12, Int 10, Wis 14, Cha 8
Feats/Abilities: Lookout(+1), Studied Target(Move, 1, +1), PBS, Precise Shot
Gear: Longbow, Studded Leather
Init +6 [+5 dex, +1 Lookout]
To hit +6 [+1 BAB, +5 dex](+7 with PBS or Studied Target, +8 with both)
Damage 1d8 (+1 with PBS or Studied Target, +2 with both) Crit x3
CMB +3, CMD 18
AC: 18 [10 +3 armor +5 dex] (13 flat-footed, 15 touch)
Fort: +3, Ref: +7, Will: +2
HP: 11
You're a level one character; not much to say. You have a decent chance to hit with your arrows but try watch out for cover penalties. Damage is weak, but consistent. You are only getting one attack anyway, so you will probably have lots of move actions to throw into studying your targets for a small boost. Your AC is probably amongst the best in the party, but that's not saying much. You should try to maintain your distance. Sure, you can get the PBS bonus if you are closer, but you can also be charged, surrounded, and killed.

Level 4:Str 14, Dex 21, Con 12, Int 10, Wis 14, Cha 8
Feats/Abilities: Lookout(+2), Studied Target(Move/Immediate, 1, +1), Tactician, Sneak Attack +1d6, PBS, Precise Shot, Lookout(feat), Deadly Aim
Gear: +1 Mighty (+2) Composite Longbow, +1 Studded Leather, Cloak of Resistance +1
Init +7 [+5 dex +2 lookout]
To hit +10 [BAB +4 dex +5, +1 enh.] (+11 with PBS or Studied Target, +12 with both)
OR [Deadly Aim] +8 (+9 with PBS or Studied Target, +10 with both)
Damage 1d8+3 [Avg 7.5] (+4 with PBS or Studied Target, +5 with both), Crit x3
OR [Deadly Aim] 1d8+7 [Avg 11.5] (+8 with PBS or Studied Target, +9 with both), Crit x3
CMB +7, CMD 21
AC: 19 (14 flat-footed, 15 touch)
Fort: +6, Ref: +10, Will: +4
HP: 30.5 (avg)
You should be hitting regularly, and you most of the time you will be using your move action to study a target, then deadly aiming them in the face. You are not losing anything by studying a target (unless you need to move, of course), so you should almost always have it up. Sneak Attack on the other hand is not going to be used all that much, really only if you get the drop on somebody in the surprise round. With a good perception checks and good init mod this may happen more often than you think, but it's still not much to write home about. You still have no real reason to venture into the vicinity of melee combat, so stay safely back, but be careful of cover penalties.

Level 8:Str 14, Dex 24, Con 12, Int 10, Wis 14, Cha 8
Feats/Abilities: Lookout(+4), Studied Target(Move/Swift 2, +2), Tactician, Sneak Attack +2d6, PBS, Precise Shot, Lookout(feat), Rapid Shot, Deadly Aim, Combat Reflexes, Improved Precise Shot, Weapon Focus(Longbow), Ever Ready, Manyshot
Gear: +3 Mighty (+2) Composite Longbow, +1 Mithril Shirt, Cloak of Resistance +2, Bracers of Falcon's Aim, Belt of Incredible Dex +2
Init +11 [+7 dex +4 lookout]
To hit +20 [+8 BAB +7 dex +3 enh.+1 w.focus, +1 competance] (+21 with PBS, +22 with Studied Target, +23 with both)
OR [Deadly Aim] +17 (+18 with PBS, +19 with Studied Target, +20 with both)
OR +18/+18/+13 (+19/+19/+14 with PBS, +20/+20/+15 with Studied Target, +21/+21/+16 with both)
OR [Deadly Aim] +15/+15/+10 (+16/+16/+11 with PBS, +17/+17/+12 with Studied Target, +18/+18/+13 with both)
Damage 1d8+5 [Avg 9.5] (+6 with PBS, +7 with Studied Target, +8 with both), Crit 19-20/x3
OR [Deadly Aim] 1d8+11 [Avg 9.5] (+12 with PBS, +13 with Studied Target, +14 with both), Crit 19-20/x3
OR 2d8+10/1d8+5/1d8+5 [Avg 38] (+12/+6 with PBS, +14/+7 with Studied Target, +16/+8 with both), Crit 19-20/x3
OR [Deadly Aim] 2d8+22/1d8+11/1d8+11 [Avg 62] (+24/+12 with PBS, +26/+13 with Studied Target, +28/+14 with both), Crit 19-20/x3
CMB +10, CMD 27
AC: 21 (15 flat-footed, 16 touch)
Fort: +10, Ref: +15, Will: +6
HP: 56.5 (avg)

Here's how it works. You always act in the surprise round. With a +11 Initiative, you are almost always going first. Needless to say, it is highly likely that your opponent will be flat footed, so a) you are going to hit and b) if they are in range (30'), you WILL get a sneak attack off. This isn't just a measly extra 2d6 damage. It also means a swift action to make them a Studied Target. If they are smart, they will find some full cover/total concealment, or just teleport away in the surprise round. If not, you are going to be shooting them in the face for 74 damage on average (min 60, max 88). If you're up against a caster, instead of sneak attacking, ready a shot for their casting. The resulting concentrating check for casting Fickle Winds has an average DC of 30. You ignore anything less than full cover or total concealment, so you no longer take penalties for shooting through your allies. Or, for that matter, for shooting past the BBEG's mooks. It might be worth dropping a point of enhancement bonus for Seeking to deal with more types of miss chances than IPS covers; alternately drop to a +1 and make it Holy. That's up to an additional +8d6 damage per turn (you lose 2 damage to get 2d6, at the cost of accuracy and overcoming DR/cold iron and DR/silver.

I'm not going to get to the other ideas just yet, but to give a quick preview:
Straight Slayer, no archetype: Will get some things faster than Han thanks to not giving up those two talents to Vanguard. Not as fast, and needs better perception than Han (he can just wait for the enemies to reveal themselves).

Finally, the double hybrid: 6+ levels of slayer with either fighter or barbarian (or hey, maybe both) to increase damage potential.

[grarrrg]

I do believe you are confused as to how the "Ranger Combat Style" talent works.

Ranger Combat Style (Ex): The slayer selects a ranger combat style (such as archery or two-weapon combat) and gains a combat feat from the first feat list of that style. He can choose feats from his selected combat style, even if he does not have the normal prerequisites. At 6th level, he may select this talent again and add the 6th-level ranger combat feats from his chosen style to the list. At 10th level, he may select this talent again and add the 10th-level ranger combat feats from his chosen style to the list.

The First time you take it, you get to choose a Bonus Feat from among those available to a Ranger at level 2.
From here on, you may ignore any requirements for any other Ranger Feat available at level 2 (must be the same combat style).

The second time you take it, you can ignore the requirements of the 6th level Ranger Feats (same combat style).
You do NOT get another Bonus feat.

The third time you take it, you can ignore the requirements of the 10th level Ranger Feats (same combat stye).
You, again, do NOT get a Bonus Feat.



On a semi-related note, the Sniper (http://www.d20pfsrd.com/classes/hybrid-classes/slayer/archetypes/paizo---slayer-archetypes/sniper) Slayer archetype has a completely worthless bonus.

At 2nd level, a sniper increases the range at which he can apply his sneak attack damage by 10 feet. Whenever the sniper is able to select a new slayer talent, he can instead choose to increase this range by an additional 5 feet.
There is already a Slayer Talent called "Deadly Range" that increases Sneak Attack range by _10_ feet. It can be taken multiple times.

[Nihilarian]

I do believe you are confused as to how the "Ranger Combat Style" talent works.


The First time you take it, you get to choose a Bonus Feat from among those available to a Ranger at level 2.
From here on, you may ignore any requirements for any other Ranger Feat available at level 2 (must be the same combat style).

The second time you take it, you can ignore the requirements of the 6th level Ranger Feats (same combat style).
You do NOT get another Bonus feat.

The third time you take it, you can ignore the requirements of the 10th level Ranger Feats (same combat stye).
You, again, do NOT get a Bonus Feat.I'm not so sure of that. It says he may select the talent again AND it adds the higher level feats to the list. Since the talent gives a bonus feat, taking it again should give you another one. Has there been an official ruling to the contrary?

[grarrrg]

I'm not so sure of that. It says he may select the talent again AND it adds the higher level feats to the list. Since the talent gives a bonus feat, taking it again should give you another one. Has there been an official ruling to the contrary?

My interpretation is definitely on the weak side, and given the amount of "editing" and "quality" control in ACG it is very possible it was intended to give you a Bonus Feat each time. If so, it could have been worded a LOT clearer.

In the OP's example build he is taking the talent _once_ at 6th level and attempting to grab a 6th level Ranger feat. Going by either interpretation this is not possible.
The first time you take the Talent, regardless of your actual/total level, you are limited to "Ranger-2" feats.

[fendrin]

My interpretation is definitely on the weak side, and given the amount of "editing" and "quality" control in ACG it is very possible it was intended to give you a Bonus Feat each time. If so, it could have been worded a LOT clearer.

In the OP's example build he is taking the talent _once_ at 6th level and attempting to grab a 6th level Ranger feat. Going by either interpretation this is not possible.
The first time you take the Talent, regardless of your actual/total level, you are limited to "Ranger-2" feats.

Good catch on having to take the first one from the level 2 list. As for the repeat times not giving you a feat, that invalidates anyone ever wanting to take it additional times- you would be adding feats to a list that you never get to draw from. I am going to continue to assume that you are intended to get a feat. Given that the class is a ranger hybrid, my guess is that the intent is that if you take it at 2, 6, and 10 it should function identically to the ranger class feature. Most Slayer builds will do exactly that; it's only because of the Vanguard archetype that I did not.

As for fixing the build... oof. Initially I had thought that at level 3 you could take Extra Slayer Talent to get RCS(Rapid Shot) and move RCS(Point Blank Master) to 10th. Unfortunately, as written the Vanguard does not get a talent until level 6 and thus does not qualify for the Extra Slayer Talent feat until level 6. So instead, we need to take Ranger Combat Style for both the regularly gained talent AND the human favored class bonus talent at 6th.
The question becomes what feat off the 2nd level ranger list do we want?

Option 1: We could push rapid shot back from level 3 and take deadly aim at 3rd instead. However, not having rapid shot at 3 is going to impact the damage potential at low levels. For the sake of simplicity, let's compare them at level 4. First, both rapid shot and deadly aim impart a -2 to attack rolls at this level. Second, we already have stats to use as a comparison. For ease of math, let's assume that all shots will hit. Using the level 4 snapshot above, Han does an average of 15 damage per round (1d8+3 per arrow x2 arrows). Using Deadly Aim instead, it would be one arrow at 1d8+7, for an average of 11.5. On the plus side there is no reason to full attack, so you can use your move actions to study a target each round if you wanted to. That means you would have +1 to hit & damage vs. any enemy you would have been able to use rapid shot on. That only increases the average damage to 12.5, so you are still down 2.5 damage per round, though at a slightly higher chance of hitting. The situation improves at level 5 as your Studied Target bonuses increase by 1, so you are down to a 1.5 average damage deficit with a decent boost in accuracy. In situations where you can only get a standard action your damage will be increased significantly (5-6 points, depending on level). Net result: a small drop in DPS and you play with slayer goodies a little more.

Option 2: leave rapid shot where it is and take Far Shot or Focused Shot. Far Shot is of limited utility (how often do you really have to shoot far enough for the range penalties to matter?) and Focused Shot is even worse with this build- you don't even have an intelligence mod to add, even if for some reason you wanted to forgo the full attack. Option 1 really seems to be the better option; why introduce useless feats into a feat-hungry build if you don't have to? I'm going to go with option 1 when I update the first post.

Either way, Point Blank Master has to be pushed back at least to level 10 (5 levels after a fighter can get it), and weapon training fits in nicely at 8. It might be best to take another 6 levels of the human favored class bonus to get a 2nd talent at 12 as well (ask yourself if you would rather have the talent, another 6 hp, 6 skill points? Maybe the skill points). That would allow for Combat Trick and Snap Shot at 12. Feat-wise levels 9, 11, and the bonus from Combat Trick are pretty much the same: snap shot and improved snap shot, with clustered shots before or after. Combat reflexes is looking good as an option for the now vacant level 5 feat- just make sure to wear a spiked gauntlet in case you actually get to use your AoOs (you should be doing this anyway).

I'll update the first post tomorrow when I'm not failing my save vs. sleep.

[grarrrg]

Good catch on having to take the first one from the level 2 list. As for the repeat times not giving you a feat, that invalidates anyone ever wanting to take it additional times- you would be adding feats to a list that you never get to draw from.

It'd be weak not getting extra feats, but it does say you get to ignore the requirements for them, so it wouldn't be totally worthless.
Being able to nab Shield Master as early as 6th/7th level is still great.
Being able to get Norm/Imp/Greater TWF without needing 19 DEX is still solid.
Shot on the Run without needing Dodge or Mobility is handy.

[fendrin]

It'd be weak not getting extra feats, but it does say you get to ignore the requirements for them, so it wouldn't be totally worthless.
Being able to nab Shield Master as early as 6th/7th level is still great.
Being able to get Norm/Imp/Greater TWF without needing 19 DEX is still solid.
Shot on the Run without needing Dodge or Mobility is handy.

Ah, I see where you are going, that you could select the feats on your list with your normal feats, regardless of prereqs. I think that makes the ability too powerful, especially for a melee slayer. I believe the line about selecting a feat without prerequisites only applies to the bonus feat given by the talent. Note that the same language is used with the ranger class:

Ranger Combat Style (Ex): The slayer selects a ranger combat style (such as archery or two-weapon combat) and gains a combat feat from the first feat list of that style. He can choose feats from his selected combat style, even if he does not have the normal prerequisites. At 6th level, he may select this talent again and add the 6th-level ranger combat feats from his chosen style to the list. At 10th level, he may select this talent again and add the 10th-level ranger combat feats from his chosen style to the list.

Combat Style Feat (Ex): At 2nd level, a ranger must select one combat style to pursue. <stuff about what styles are available>
The ranger's expertise manifests in the form of bonus feats at 2nd, 6th, 10th, 14th, and 18th level. He can choose feats from his selected combat style, even if he does not have the normal prerequisites.
It is generally understood that rangers can only take the feats without prereqs if they take them as the bonus feats.

Given that the slayer is hybrid of ranger and rogue, I think it is reasonable to expect Ranger Combat Style to work like the ranger's Combat Style Feat.

Btw, in a similar vein: the way the ability is worded, when you take RCS again you choose a style and add it's level appropriate feats to the list. It doesn't say it has to be the same style. I don't think that's supposed to be how it works, though, so I'm not even going to explore how it might be useful.

[Nihilarian]

I can definitely agree that it's poorly written.

[grarrrg]

I can definitely agree that it's poorly written.

I think with the whole "hybrid" idea floating around they got a little carried away with the *copy/paste* in some areas.

I'm done wasting brain power trying to figure out just what the heck they meant.
Lets just go with the "each time you take it you get a feat" interpretation.
You'll get a 2nd, 6th, and 10th (at best, with option to take lower), but you still can only take the Talent 3 times.