martial manuevers for an archer?

[jdizzlean]

if you were going to pick up martial study in the early stages of a build (before level 3 for example), are there any manuevers that would be beneficial to an archer?

my ToBfu is still a bit weak

[Zaq]

What’s your base going in?

[Saintheart]

Drawing off min/max boards: (http://minmaxforum.com/index.php?topic=6869.0)


The following martial stances are at least somewhat useful for ranged combatants
Desert Wind
Flames Blessing
Holocaust Cloak
Rising Pheonix

Devoted Spirit
Aura of Perfect Order [law]
Aura of Triumph [good] *6
Aura of Tyranny [Evil]
Immortal Fortitude

Diamond Mind
Hearing the Air
Pearl of Black Doubt
Stance of Alacrity
Stance of Clarity

Iron Heart
Absolute Steel
Supreme Blade Parry

Setting Sun
Ghostly Defense
Giant Killing Style
Shifting Defense
Step of the Wind

Shadow Hand
Assassins Stance
Balance on the Sky *7
Child of Shadow
Dance of the Spider *7
Step of the Dancing Moth

Stone Dragon
Giants Stance
Stonefoot Stance
Strenth of Stone
Roots of the mountain

Tiger Claw
Blood in the Water
Hunters Sense
Leaping Dragon Stance

White Raven
Bolstering Voice
Leading the Charge
Press the Advantage
Swarm Tactics

The following martial maneuvers do not require melee attacks
Desert Wind
Blistering Flourish
Distracting Ember
Dragons Flame
Fan the Flames
Fire Repost ****
Fire Snake *****
Hatchlings Flame
Inferno Blast
Leaping Flame
Ring of Fire
Wind Stride
Wyrm's Flame
Zypher Dance

Devoted Spirit
Shield Block ***

Diamond Mind
Action Before Thought
Diamond Defense
Mind over body
Moment of Alacrity
Quicksilver Motion
*Time Stands Still

Iron Heart
Iron Heart Endurance
Iron Heart Focus
Iron Heart Surge

Setting Sun
Baffling Defence
Feigned Opening *6
Mirrored Pursuit
Scorpion Parry
Stalking Shadow

Shadow Hand
Cloak of Deception
One With Shadow
Shadow Blink
Shadow Garrote
Shadow Jaunt
Shadow Noose
Shadow Stride

Stone Dragon
*Adamantine Bones
Boulder Roll
*EarthStrike Quake
Mountain Avalanche

Tiger Claw
**Dancing Mongoose
Fountain of Blood
**Raging Mongoose
Sudden Leap

White Raven
Lions Roar
Order Forged From Chaos
White Raven Tactics

* strikes that work with ranged weapons
** boosts that grant extra attacks that work with ranged weapons
*** debatable: only when using a bluckler or shield. It does not specificy if you must be recieving the shields bonus yourself, so with a loose interperetation a bow user could use this with a buckler.
**** Debatable: While you do make a melee touch attack, it does not specify if this is a weapon related attack or not.
***** Broken: Duration is instantanious, but the firesnake moves at 60ft per round? What action is it to control a fire snake? none is indicated. How many firesnakes can one control at once? no limit is specified? What is to stop me from having nigh infinate firesnakes running around? and dealing 6d6 damage to everything in sight (In this case evasion is actually bad because if I deal no damage on a successful reflex save the fire snake can keep passing through your square until you fail a save.) Can a target he stuck by different fire snakes in the same round? if so we are looking at an infinate damage loop. I recommend as a houserul a duration of concentration, IE 1 standard action per round to mantain or a 5 round effect limit (like salamander charge).
*6 partial: while you don't benifit, a melee using ally can.
*7 while using a 1 handed ranged weapon.

[jdizzlean]

What’s your base going in?

mystic ranger, martial wizard, back to ranger

martial wizard gives a bonus fighter feat, and i'm not keen on precise/PBS, and in fact might even do the build w/o them, but you can take martial study as a bonus fighter feat, which seems like it could be good.

there aren't any particularly useful caster based bonus fighter feats, other than maybe improved init, but i'm not hurting in that dept so it'd be overkill i think to take that on top of the +7 i have to init right now

[Biffoniacus_Furiou]

Moment of Perfect Mind allows you to replace a Will save with a Concentration check. Not necessarily worthwhile, other than you don't auto-fail a skill check on a natural 1.

Counter Charge gives you a check to ruin an opponent's charge attack. Pretty useful if you find yourself out of position as a ranged character.

Sadly, the absolute best utility maneuver at 1st level is Sudden Leap, but it requires another Tiger Claw maneuver or stance to learn it.

6th level is much better for a utility Martial Study, you've got Wall of Blades or Baffling Defense to avoid attacks, and Cloak of Deception or Shadow Jaunt are also superb choices.


For the build, consider using Frostblood Half-Orc in Dragon Magic, which gets Endurance as a bonus feat with the ability to pick any feat you qualify for if you would gain it a second time, such as from Ranger. The Mystic Ranger version delays the Endurance bonus feat to the 4th class level, which is exactly the number of Ranger levels you need to take Sword of the Arcane Order. So going Frostblood Half-Orc basically gives you Sword of the Arcane Order as a racial bonus feat at Mystic Ranger 4.

You can also use the Half-Humans and Humanlike Races variant in the sidebar on Races of Destiny p150 to count as a human instead of counting as an orc. This way you can take Magical Training in PGtF to get a few 0-level spell slots and a spellbook which you've already scribed a few 0-level spells into. Per the Rules Compendium, since you prepare and cast spells from a spellbook, you automatically have the ability to learn new spells and add them to your spellbook via a mechanic that's identical to the one used by Wizards.

[jdizzlean]

i'd considered magical training previously, but was under the impression it didn't grant access to the wiz list and that you had to take a level that did to effectively use SotAO, so i have another fun, but not really neccessary race picked out. the race does give me +dex, and +int, both things help the build out however, whereas i don't really need the +2 str from frostblood

likewise, the wiz dip does get me that sweet hummingbird familiar, which is basically free imp initiative anyways. i could just not do martial wiz and go back to the regular version and keep scribe scroll for later on i suppose, i just figured another feat might be worthwhile, but as i said, it doesn't appear that for what i'm trying to accomplish that any of the fighter feats after all are very worthwhile, unless i want to make sure i always go first by having an initiative of +11...

plus, i traded off endurance for shooting star

[Saintheart]

Sort of related: RAW on Mystic Ranger could be a problem for your intended direction - you explicitly can't take levels in Ranger if you have levels in Mystic Ranger, and vice versa.

[jdizzlean]

Sort of related: RAW on Mystic Ranger could be a problem for your intended direction - you explicitly can't take levels in Ranger if you have levels in Mystic Ranger, and vice versa.

sorry, i wasn't specific, when i said back to ranger, i meant back to mystic ranger. i'm not taking any regular ranger levels :)

sure there could be some extreme interpretation that because i'm doing mystic ranger, i can't for example take the shooting star sub level, but i'm still trading in ranger class features to do so, just from another ranger class. however, given the dm, i don't think that'll be an issue.

[Efrate]

If you dm is ok with pathfinder 3pp, DSP path of war gives 2 fully ranged disciplines in solar wind and tempest gale. And more options in various other disciplines. Power level is a bit higher than ToB by a bit because pathfinder has a higher floor and is not afraid to give martials nice things, but nothing obscenely op generally.

[animewatcha]

Main thing behind mystic ranger and wizard is the Sword and arcane order and the sub levels under mystra. From there continuing to take ranger for absurd caster levels. If you do reserves of strength, uncap fireball.

Also, there is splitting enchantment ( requires precise shot ). Doubles range attacks so it would be a nice add-on to any maneuvers you do.

[WhamBamSam]

Covering Strike and Defensive Rebuke both work with archery, since you just have to 'strike' the target. You can use something like Evasive Reflexes, the Ghostly Tail spell (though it's Sorc only, so a SotAO Ranger wouldn't get it), or maybe Stormguard Warrior to take advantage of weirdly getting AoOs you're too far away to make from Defensive Rebuke.

[PraxisVetli]

If you dm is ok with pathfinder 3pp, DSP path of war gives 2 fully ranged disciplines in solar wind and tempest gale. And more options in various other disciplines. Power level is a bit higher than ToB by a bit because pathfinder has a higher floor and is not afraid to give martials nice things, but nothing obscenely op generally.

Came here to say this.
To elaborate further:
Solar Wind specializes in damage, with multiple AoE attacks, and comes in variants, in case Fire damage isn't to your preference.
Tempest Gale has a lot of trick shots, disarming and tripping opponents with your arrows. It has options to ignore cover, in case you like to curve the bullet.

[Eldariel]

I'd consider simple Mystic Ranger 10/Warblade (or Eternal Blade) 10. That would give you 5th level Mystic Ranger spells, some of the better maneuvers (no Time Stands Still though; you could go Mystic Ranger 6/Crusader 4/Ruby Knight Vindicator 10 to remedy that though at the cost of needing to feat for the useful disciplines). The best maneuvers are utility but for direct combat, Dancing Mongoose [Tiger 5], Raging Mongoose [Tiger 8] and Time Stands Still [Diamond 9] are golden. Blood in the Water is the only offensive stance with utility but utility stances like Alacrity are great.

[jdizzlean]

right now i'm mystic 4, wizard 1.

next level i can take SoTAO, and then I plan on going into stormcaster for great fun.


assuming i take all 10 level sin that, that still leaves me w/ 4 more levels to play around w/, so a dip into one of the ToB classes for manuevers/stances is possible. i also only have plans so far for 1-2 more feats, so that also leaves 3-4 open feats to play around w/ to get those later level maneuvers for example that way.

as for the pathfinder stuff, i have zero exp w/ it myself, so i don't even have the books, let alone know how to approach using it in a 3.5 system.

[PraxisVetli]

as for the pathfinder stuff, i have zero exp w/ it myself, so i don't even have the books, let alone know how to approach using it in a 3.5 system.

Path of War and Path of War: Expanded are very similar to ToB, using the same subsytem of Strikes, Counters, Boosts, and Stances.
You could do something as simple as asking your DM if you can play a ToB class but switch out 2 Disciplines for Solar Wind and Tempest Gale, that way the chassis is the same, and you don't have to deal with a whole new class.