Ranged Gestalt

[Buterbean]

Hello all!

Im playing in a gestalt game currently at level 10 and I fear the upcoming battles may be lethal for me. I was wanting to make a ranged character for my next go, my first idea was an Arcane Archer with the race restriction being lifted. My thinking is get a splitting bow and be able to get double the effect of the imbue arrow feature. Double fireball seems fun for the price of one cast. I was thinking Pixie as my race being chosen for synergy of int/dex + invis while going wizard20//archer6/AA2+?/X. Would there be a better combo of classes for this idea? and any must have feats?
We already have a wizard//warlock in the group so idk if putting another wizard in will conflict with them, other members are an atrificer//crusader mix and a bard//dragon (using one side to level up in dragon HD for all things dragon). Idk if its possible to have an AA with cleric spells for buffs/healing when needed. Thanks for taking the read, will check back when I can while at work to answer questions if needed.

All 3.5 books open/3.5 and up dragon mag, no psionics allowed
We get +4 LA total free in character creation and 36 point buy.

[liquidformat]

brain farting on what it is called but there is an alternate ranger from dragon mag that has full casting it is pretty amazing and very good for the first 10 levels. Also in general the ranger spell list is better for archers than it is for melee and has a lot of good spell choices. That might be a good choice. Will look it up and update once I am home

[Mike Miller]

brain farting on what it is called but there is an alternate ranger from dragon mag that has full casting it is pretty amazing and very good for the first 10 levels. Also in general the ranger spell list is better for archers than it is for melee and has a lot of good spell choices. That might be a good choice. Will look it up and update once I am home

Mystic Ranger, I believe is what you are trying to think of.

[Buterbean]

Does this mystic ranger get arcane spells or divine? Or is it just better than regular ranger all around?

[GrayDeath]

If you combine it with Sword of the Arcane Order, both.
(Might be iffy, depending on interpretation of what is exchanged for being a Mystic Ranger, or if Ranger part of the mystic Ranger counts as Ranger ^^).

otherwise its simply a T1 class for the first 10 levels and then....stops gaining new spells.

[Buterbean]

So with that feat I would qualify for AA by just ranger alone then since I could cast arcane spells?would I be better off taking the wizard side as cleric then for buffs/healing or keep wizard on that side for the extra spell caster level and better spells later? Then maybe after taking 2 AA levels go into cleric on the other side of the gestalt?

[liquidformat]

Mystic Ranger, I believe is what you are trying to think of. Bingo precisely what I was thinking thanks! Mystic Ranger Dragon Magazine #336


So with that feat I would qualify for AA by just ranger alone then since I could cast arcane spells?would I be better off taking the wizard side as cleric then for buffs/healing or keep wizard on that side for the extra spell caster level and better spells later? Then maybe after taking 2 AA levels go into cleric on the other side of the gestalt?

Hold your horses, first off it is very controversial that you can mix mystic ranger with Sword of the Arcane Order. To take sword of arcane order you have to be a ranger 4th of Mystra; member of the Knights of the Mystic Fire, the Order of the Shooting Star, or the Swords of the High One. And a lot of people believe you need to take the shooting star acf. So you have a campaign world specific god requirement and screwy rules about being in a specific knightly order to start as hurdles to jump through.

Beyond that, the feat doesn't give you any actual arcane spell casting it just allows you to use your ranger spell slots to cast arcane spells from a spellbook.

So you will probably want to be a wizard. Might I suggest going warmage 5/mage of arcane order x with arcane preparation, it is an interesting mix that would actually work quite well with arcane archer. ranger spells are an interesting mix between utility, buffs, bfc, and ranged combat/archery where as warmage will give blasting spells, armor, and you can add int to spell damage. Granted it does add some mad...

[Buterbean]

My DM is real easy when it comes to restrictions of God's/campaign so I'm sure he would lift those fairly reliably. The thing I've been thinking about while at work is wether it would be better to have divine spells, since most our party is arcane. This would also open the zen archer of a cleric/ranger combo.

And I'm sure there is plenty of divine spells that work well with imbue arrow for blast and support

[ben-zayb]

Caster:
Beguiler / Rainbow Servant would provide you with cleric buffs to boost your attacks, and base skill points + cleric skill buffs would also turn you to a decent skillmonkey.

Ranged
While an archer with Imbue Arrow is a neat little trick, I prefer a thrower build. A minimum of Duskblade 13 / Bloodstorm Blade 2 gets you the combo of Thunderous Throw + Arcane Channeling, allowing you to channel any touch spell from your Beguiler / RS to be applied on your full attack routine--that's easily 3+ targets being affected by a single touch spell.

I love the sheer versatility this brings, too, in that a minimal-damage nonlethal throwing weapon can channel beneficial spells like Heal on a full-attack.

Theoretical Optimization
You can go for Wizard or Wu Jen / Archmage || Duskblade 13 / Bloodstorm Blade 2 / Crinti Shadow Marauder 5. Almost same idea, except using Shadow Pounce you can channel Dimension Hop for a full-attack. The last attack is dealt to you, which triggers another full-attack.

For additional pure damage, make sure to use Body Outside Body SLAs and (Teleportation) descriptor SLAs on your clones.

[Buterbean]

Caster:
Beguiler / Rainbow Servant would provide you with cleric buffs to boost your attacks, and base skill points + cleric skill buffs would also turn you to a decent skillmonkey.

Ranged
While an archer with Imbue Arrow is a neat little trick, I prefer a thrower build. A minimum of Duskblade 13 / Bloodstorm Blade 2 gets you the combo of Thunderous Throw + Arcane Channeling, allowing you to channel any touch spell from your Beguiler / RS to be applied on your full attack routine--that's easily 3+ targets being affected by a single touch spell.

While this sounds really fun I'm still 5 levels away from the minimal reqs. Seems like till then I'm just another melee with some magical qualities

[Buterbean]

Might I suggest going warmage 5/mage of arcane order x with arcane preparation, it is an interesting mix that would actually work quite well with arcane archer. ranger spells are an interesting mix between utility, buffs, bfc, and ranged combat/archery where as warmage will give blasting spells, armor, and you can add int to spell damage. Granted it does add some mad...

That's an interesting combo, maybe not so much cause of the mad, but it could work. I'm currently a CHA based character and it pretty nice socially

[liquidformat]

That's an interesting combo, maybe not so much cause of the mad, but it could work. I'm currently a CHA based character and it pretty nice socially

ya it really depends on where you want to go and what you want to do, though warmage is cha caster it only has intimidate, mage of arcane order has nothing and rainbow has diplomacy. I always like the idea of going rainbow since it adds all those divine spells to your repertoire especially if you can go full caster with rainbow instead of 7/10. Beguiler is a pretty cool choice since it has the skill points and the skills to do very well in social roles; however, its spell list would be taking you in a very different direction than an arcane archer since it really doesn't have any blasting support what so ever.

Either way going zen archery isn't a bad choice and will help reduce mad some.

if you are going to go cleric/mystic ranger elf and taking the elf domain is a good choice for a ranger build, though you would have to jump through some hoops to get into arcane archer at that point.

[ben-zayb]

While this sounds really fun I'm still 5 levels away from the minimal reqs. Seems like till then I'm just another melee with some magical qualities

The standard action Arcane Channeling should be available by Duskblade 3, so you could easily go Duskblade 3 / whatever X (maybe Warblade?) / Bloodstorm Blade 2, which should be online as early as level 7.

[Buterbean]

ya it really depends on where you want to go and what you want to do, though warmage is cha caster it only has intimidate, mage of arcane order has nothing and rainbow has diplomacy. I always like the idea of going rainbow since it adds all those divine spells to your repertoire especially if you can go full caster with rainbow instead of 7/10. Beguiler is a pretty cool choice since it has the skill points and the skills to do very well in social roles; however, its spell list would be taking you in a very different direction than an arcane archer since it really doesn't have any blasting support what so ever.
.

I was looking more into this last night, and I might go this way. I could play a succubus for a huge CHA bonus and some nifty things, Albeit at a+2 la after my free la. But then I could take marshal 1 for cha to Cha with warmage6/rainbow10 on one side of the gestalt.
The take the other side as my martial side to get my bab and feats up

[Buterbean]

The standard action Arcane Channeling should be available by Duskblade 3, so you could easily go Duskblade 3 / whatever X (maybe Warblade?) / Bloodstorm Blade 2, which should be online as early as level 7.

I see, maybe I'll take a deeper look into this tonight