Secondary Character Help please.

[Cyussu]

The title isn't explanatory I know.

So, my DM had a "Deck of Many Things" drop last session, and I ended up getting the Lv4 Fighter from it. As far as the group composition is concerned, we're already melee heavy, we're lv6, almost 7, and I'm personally getting smashed for 1/2 my HP in single attack. My character being a Battle Dancer/Rogue, not a lot of HP... I digress.

I was hoping for some help making a Ranged Fighter, Player's Handbook ONLY. DM's call on that and I wanna make her SOMEWHAT useful. I have 6 feats, 14's across the board, bar 1 stat @ 15 due to 4HD. What do? Any and all (non-troll) help appreciated ;n;

[Seerow]

The title isn't explanatory I know.

So, my DM had a "Deck of Many Things" drop last session, and I ended up getting the Lv4 Fighter from it. As far as the group composition is concerned, we're already melee heavy, we're lv6, almost 7, and I'm personally getting smashed for 1/2 my HP in single attack. My character being a Battle Dancer/Rogue, not a lot of HP... I digress.

I was hoping for some help making a Ranged Fighter, Player's Handbook ONLY. DM's call on that and I wanna make her SOMEWHAT useful. I have 6 feats, 14's across the board, bar 1 stat @ 15 due to 4HD. What do? Any and all (non-troll) help appreciated ;n;

PHB only with ranged attacks? Not really a ton of options. Given 6 core-only feats on a ranged Fighter I'd give him a longbow and go for:

Point Blank Shot
Precise Shot
Rapid Shot
Weapon Focus
Weapon Specialization
Improved Initiative


If you have direct control of him above level 4, I'd look into having him multiclass to Rogue, Ranger, or really anything else because you're already running out of Fighter feats to take. But if that's not an option, going forward look to grab GWF/GWS, and maybe switch over to dual wielding hand crossbows just because you have way more feats than you can use anyway, so may as well grab Rapid Reload, TWF/ITWF/GTWF, and Exotic Weapon Proficiency... but without Crossbow Sniper you may still be better off just unloading a single Longbow. Or if you spend a lot of time outside, Mounted Combat/Mounted Archery might not be bad picks. Really a straight core only fighter doesn't have a lot of good options.

[nedz]

Core only.
Three choices: Crossbow, Longbow or Thrown
Crossbow is a bit rubbish

Bow:
Point Blank Shot, Precise Shot and Rapid Shot
Far Shot — maybe

I wouldn't normally recommend these outside of core, but you have a lot of feats and not many good ones
Weapon Focus, Weapon Specialization
+1 to hit and +2 damage just isn't very exciting.

Thrown:
Point Blank Shot, Precise Shot, Far Shot, TWF, Quickdraw and Rapid Shot
This requires that you put your 15 in dex, though you can only qualify for TWF at level 4 for this reason.
This should get you 3 thrown weapons per round — now you just have to work out how to carry them.

[Seerow]

Oh I forgot about thrown weapons. That is a better alternative to crossbows for the higher level pure fighter (but honestly in a core only environment simply having enough throwing weapons to be viable at high level is really rough)

[Cyussu]

I personally was thinking Light Xbow, Rapid Reload, and just pelting every turn long-range. Also, with the low AC... I was thinking mostly a slow yet reliable long-range "Tank" in the terms of Full-Plate. But my character, a Catfolk, moves 50ft base... so... That's another problematic factor to add in. Unreliable speeds. PHB-only sucks, and is honestly the only reason I come to the playground. Otherwise, I could make a decent one through dndtools.... >.<; Thank you all for the help thus far.

[nedz]

Efficient Quiver / Quiver of Ehlonna can carry 18 javelins, you just need several quivers.

There are more options outside of Core.

You could go for
Fighter 4 / Cleric 5 / Stormlord
grabbing Endurance, Great Fortitude and Weapon Focus (any spear or javelin) in order to do this.

Bow Bows are generally better.

Actually picking feats to allow the character to enter a PrC in the future is also something you should consider.

[Cyussu]

Well, to my knowledge. It's Character Creation that is PHB locked, if it IS like that, I already know the build-path I'm gonna go in the end. c:

[Cyussu]

Update from DM: Available Books from 5th lvl onward: Complete Adventurer, Complete Warrior, PHB 2. Goddess be damned, the (lack) of variety is horribly painful...