Halfling Hunter Archer feat progression

[Roan_Spence]

Here's a quick little story to explain what's going on here. A couple of days ago, while bored at work I started brewing up character concepts for the lols. One idea I came up with was a Halfling Hunter. He was intended to be a party scout and archer with a big cat animal companion. The idea was he'd be relatively stealthy, take advantage of his small size, put arrows into things and have his animal companion help meat shields flank things. I rolled the stats for him and ended up with this:

13, 14, 15, 15, 17, 16

And then went with this array

STR-16 (-2) = 14
DEX-17 (+2) = 19
CON-14
INT-15
WIS-15
CHA-13 (+2) = 15

I figured I'd need to put a bit more into his strength to get that bonus off of a composite bow eventually and as I'm plotting this out in my head I realize I usually do bowmen type characters as human or do them as Fighters or Rangers to take advantage of access to bonus feats to set them up faster. I've never considered putting something like this together with a Halfling before.

My question is, with all the feats necessary for a decent bowmen, and the fact that the Hunter is more focused on teamwork feats as its bonuses rather than the combat style feats and the only bonus I can really get for this idea is Precise shot at level 2, what order would you take them and is this idea and is it even worth it to try?

I'm not looking for crazy levels of optimization (for me here the concept is more important) but even though I like this idea I'd rather not be 100% useless until the higher levels. Thoughts and comments appreciated. :)

[Florian]

*Shrugs*

Hunter is not the best class to go ranged - you miss out the synergy here.

[Roan_Spence]

*Shrugs*

Hunter is not the best class to go ranged - you miss out the synergy here.

This is entirely fair and if I have to I have no problem taking him over to the Ranger with a Beastmaster archetype. It still plays into his concept well... I do however miss the flavor of the animal focci. My wildling forest halfling will just have to wait until level 4 to get his buddy.

[Barstro]

*Shrugs*

Hunter is not the best class to go ranged - you miss out the synergy here.

I suggest looking at Inquisitor with the Animal domain to pick up a companion. Judgements and Bane cause so much damage and teamwork feats grant all sorts of bonuses.

[Geddy2112]

As everyone has said, the archer hunter loses out on the big strengths of the hunter-namely flanking with your own companion and drowning enemies in melee attacks. A big cat in particular wants to run in, pounce/rake enemies and you want to stay behind and shoot. If you are set on hunter, pick a faster animal to ride and you can ride around combat shooting arrows. There are not as many teamwork feats that are defensive/noncombat, but enough to make it not completely useless(coordinated defense, shake it off, bonded mind, tribe mentality, stealth synergy).

For a ranged bow build the general progression is point blank shot, precise shot, rapid shot, deadly aim. Eventually you want clustered shots at higher levels, and things like improved precise shot and snap shot are decent choices.


I suggest looking at Inquisitor with the Animal domain to pick up a companion. Judgements and Bane cause so much damage and teamwork feats grant all sorts of bonuses.
You can also get a mount through the chivalry domain, or trade out judgements and become a mini hunter(including animal foci) by taking the sacred huntsmaster inquisitor archetype.

[Roan_Spence]

Thanks everyone for the assistance. Side note, I don't know if this is anything I'd ever get to play. I'm still really new to D&D in general and so I'm just messing around with all kinds of things.