Need help improving a character

[Elmin_Star]

Hi everyone,

I have a character that I need a bit of help with.

Within our playgroup (usually three to five people) I am known to build not the most conventional characters that strangely enough do work as I intend them to.

Right now I'm building a level 10 character that I want to make a ranged Annointed Knight, for a party of three in total, the other two being cleric or shaman healer and a melee dps respectively, so I'm going to build mostly ranged and scout here.

I don't really want to go the OP route of Swift Hunter build here (that is one I have planned for another campaign), so any help you can give me will be most appreciated.

I have permission from my DM to change the melee-focused bonus feats from the class to ranged ones, and as it stands now I have a Fighter4/Ranger2/Anointed Knight4
Most things Dragon related are banned because of the setting, but that is on a case by case basis.

Mostly I'm looking for help Feat wise, and as for legal sources, they are Core, Complete series, Race Series. Anything else I have to ask permission for.

My stats are
STR: 17
DEX: 24 (includes gloves of Dex +4 and lvl 4/8 increases.)
CON: 17
INT: 14
WIS: 15
CHA: 22 (includes +2 racial from the Iron Kingdoms human subrace Ryn, and a +2 Cloak of Cha)

Feats
Human 1: Able Learner
1: Weapon Focus (Composite Longbow)
Ftr1: Point Blank Shot
Ftr2: Precise Shot
3: Ancestral Relic (BoED)
Ftr4: Dead Eye (Dragon Compendium
Rgr1: Track
6: Weapon Specialisation (Composite Longbow)
Rgr2: Rapid Shot
9: Sharp Shooting (Complete Warrior)
Ank3: Ranged Weapon Mastery (PHB2)

Gear:
Gloves of Dex +4
Cloak of Cha +2
Ring of Sustenance
+1 Good Composite Elvencraft Longbow of Seeking
+2 Mithral Blueshine Studded Leather
Enemy Spirit Pouch (MIC)
Boots of Elvenkind
Ring of Protection +2

Anointed Knight Bonuses
1st Anoint Self: DR3/-
2nd Anoint Self: +1 Wis
Anoint Weapon: Good Aligned (mostly because I expect to go up against a lot of evil creatures)

Thank you in advance for the help

[Darrin]

Feats
Human 1: Able Learner
1: Weapon Focus (Composite Longbow)
Ftr1: Point Blank Shot
Ftr2: Precise Shot
3: Ancestral Relic (BoED)
Ftr4: Dead Eye (Dragon Compendium
Rgr1: Track
6: Weapon Specialisation (Composite Longbow)
Rgr2: Rapid Shot
9: Sharp Shooting (Complete Warrior)
Ank3: Ranged Weapon Mastery (PHB2)


Sharp-Shooting is a garbage feat. There are different ways to ignore cover, including Improved Precise Shot and the guided shot spell from the Spell Compendium. Since you have Ranger levels, you have access to Ranger wands. If you can, put a few wand chambers (100 GP, Dungeonscape) in your composite longbow and load up some wands of instant of power (Forge of War) and guided shot.

As far as feats go, I'd take Woodland Archer (Races of the Wild) at 9th. If you can get flight, then Plunging Shot (Races of the Wild) is nice. At higher levels... it hurts a little to take Combat Expertise, but Sense Weakness (Draconomicon) might be worth it to cut through some DR.

Have you considered going Dragonborn of Bahamut? It would ding your Dex a bit, but extra HP are also nice to have. As per the rules in RotD, you can lose any other feat instead of your human bonus feat, so you can lose Track instead. If you want a breath weapon instead of the Wings aspect, you can also lose one of your existing feats (I'm looking at you, Tower Shield Proficiency) to pick up Dragon Wings or Dragon Tail. Flying + Archery = Death From Above.



+1 Good Composite Elvencraft Longbow of Seeking


I would recommend switching Seeking to Corrosive. Not every opponent is going to have concealment. Very few enemies are going to be resistant or immune to acid. An enhancement that you get to use every time you hit is going to be worth more in the long run than an enhancement that only works against a certain small subset of enemies.



+2 Mithral Blueshine Studded Leather


Studded leather can't be made out of mithral. Leafweave (A&EG) would be the upgrade for leather armor, but it only increases Max Dex by +1. If it's available, consider the Spidersilk armor from the FR Underdark book: 750 GP, +3 Armor bonus, and +8 Max Dex. If that's not available, a mithral chain shirt will give you the same AC bonus as Spidersilk (+4 armor, +6 Dex vs. +3 armor, +7 Dex). A +1 mithral chain shirt with the Nimbleness property will allow you to max out your Dex bonus and get you a +12 AC bonus overall.

The Durable property (500 GP, Dungeonscape) is cheaper than Blueshine, and can be applied to any armor, even non-metallic armors such as leather, hide, spidersilk, etc.

[Dread_Head]

If you can then I would switch the order of your levels around taking Ranger to start with and then Fighter. This allows you to get the x4 skill points of first level on rangers higher skill points and better list. For feats I would drop Sharp Shooter, it's benefit isn't all that great and you could take improved Precise Shot (PHB) in a level or two which is strictly better. In its place I would suggest Woodland Archer (RoW) as the adjust for range option is very good and the other two options can be of use.

Make sure to load up on a wide variety of arrows. You'll want some for piercing each type of DR (cold iron, silver, adamantine). You should also consider the special arrows from Races of the Wild, of particular use are serpents tongue for slashing damage and blunt arrows for non-lethal and bludgeoning. Remembering that ammunition costs 1/50 the price of regular magic weapons speak to your dm and see if you can buy individual or small bundles of magic arrows. If so pick up some bans arrows (roughly 166gp each) of common creature types for your setting. The Efficient Quiver / Quiver of Ehlonna (DMG) is very cheap and will help with carrying and using these arrows.

If you can make your bow Splitting from Champions of Ruin do so as soon as you can afford to.

See about using Wand Chambers from Dungeonscape to store wands in your Elvencraft Bow. You have ranger levels so can cast spells of the ranger list from wands without a check. There are a bunch of decent spell options for an archer ranger although many of them aren't from books you listed, I'll list some ones I've found useful on the past in any case. Arrow Mind (CAdv / SC), Guided Shot (CAdv / SC), Hunters Mercy (SC), Arrow Storm (CAdv / SC), Arrowsplit (CoR), Swift Haste (CAdv / SC). Even if you can't have a wand chamber some of these would be useful to have as wands anyway.

[Elmin_Star]

I had a little talk with my DM and got approval for Woodland Archer, so since we haven't started yet, I got the okay to swap out Sharp Shooter for that


Have you considered going Dragonborn of Bahamut?
Unfortunately this and most other Dragon related things are banned, so that is a no go as well as the entire Draconomicon


Studded leather can't be made out of mithral. Leafweave (A&EG) would be the upgrade for leather armor, but it only increases Max Dex by +1. If it's available, consider the Spidersilk armor from the FR Underdark book: 750 GP, +3 Armor bonus, and +8 Max Dex. If that's not available, a mithral chain shirt will give you the same AC bonus as Spidersilk (+4 armor, +6 Dex vs. +3 armor, +7 Dex). A +1 mithral chain shirt with the Nimbleness property will allow you to max out your Dex bonus and get you a +12 AC bonus overall.
That is indeed something I noticed as well after I read it again. So I got the okay to change it to change it to a Mithral Chain shirt of Nimbleness


If you can make your bow Splitting from Champions of Ruin do so as soon as you can afford to.
This has already been discussed and approved by my DM at a later level.

[Zsaber0]

As a mid level archer it's your duty to try and use Hanks Energy bow.

[Falontani]

As a mid level archer it's your duty to try and use Hanks Energy bow.

If he can make his ancestral relic into a hank's energy bow, yes. Otherwise I dont think that will be beneficial at the moment. Consider ranged smiting

[Elmin_Star]

If he can make his ancestral relic into a hank's energy bow, yes. Otherwise I dont think that will be beneficial at the moment. Consider ranged smiting

Hank's Energy Bow isn't going to be allowed, so that is not an option. Ranged Smiting might be, but I have to take a level of paladin or something similar, and that doesn't really fit the look of my character, since I'm chaotic good and the paladin variants are not allowed.

[Falontani]

Hank's Energy Bow isn't going to be allowed, so that is not an option. Ranged Smiting might be, but I have to take a level of paladin or something similar, and that doesn't really fit the look of my character, since I'm chaotic good and the paladin variants are not allowed.

Crusader, Soulborn, and Cleric with the Destruction domain all also get a smite attack