WHAT BOW and Enchantments For my Archers Wwapon

[Nosta]

Got a Level 12 Archer.

Looking at a STR and DEX of 20 Each

Ideally What should be my Bow. SHORT , LONG , HORN ?

Enchantments (Bane is not Allowed)
Dealing with Dragons what Enchanments should I give this Weapon. Needs to be able to land hits when there are powerful storms

I'll have wealth of 12 level character But will need gold for other items. Such as Armor A ring of evasion , saving Throw Booster and Stat Booster

[pabelfly]

Composite Bow, to get your STR to damage.

As for the enchant, if you can swing Splitting (+3), it doubles any arrows you shoot, which doubles your damage output.

[Ramza00]

Complete Arcane's Magebane +1 I joke (bane with arcane spells currently prepared or spell slots available to cast arcane spells without preparation, or against creatures with the ability to use arcane spell-like abilities instead of a creature type like dragons, stacks with bane) yet I do not think your DM would be cool with this.


Splitting (+3),
Force (+2),
Exit Wounds (+2),
Pathfinder's Cyclonic (+2) When the wielder makes a ranged attack with a cyclonic weapon, a sheath of whirling air surrounds the weapon or the ammunition fired and prevents the attack from being impaired by wind, water, and other liquid or gaseous environmental factors.
Seeking (+1), Bypass Concealment, Miss Chance, Illusion
Blood Seeking (+1), Bypass Cover, works only on Living

Blood Seeking and Seeking together you can get almost a magic seeking arrow that needs to be fired in a general direction but due to things like gravity the arrow will seek out the enemy around corners or wall cover.

I had a list for previous archers builds but I need to look at it and I am away from that computer. I am respond here right now with incomplete information to remind myself to try again when I am on that other device.

[MaxiDuRaritry]

Did the DM ban bane, or is it that you don't want it?

If it's the latter, I generally don't take it because it's far, far too specific. Plus, it's much better to take a weapon crystal in the MIC and stack all of the bane weapon crystal properties and the flaming/frost/shock/etc weapon crystal properties (as well as ghost touch and quick draw) all onto one weapon crystal for stupidly cheap.

If it's the former, is there a reason?

[Anthrowhale]

Ring of Blinking makes targets flat-footed, providing a variable but sometimes quite significant bonus to hit. If you add in the seeking enhancement, you avoid the miss chance downside. If you pick up sneak attack via (say) Rogue 4/Fighter 8 + Craven, your arrows can hit quite hard.

[Biggus]

Splitting (+3),
Force (+2),
Exit Wounds (+2),
Pathfinder's Cyclonic (+2) When the wielder makes a ranged attack with a cyclonic weapon, a sheath of whirling air surrounds the weapon or the ammunition fired and prevents the attack from being impaired by wind, water, and other liquid or gaseous environmental factors.
Seeking (+1), Bypass Concealment, Miss Chance, Illusion
Blood Seeking (+1), Bypass Cover, works only on Living



Where are Exit Wounds and Blood Seeking from?

I think you've got the best ones covered there, only other one which occurs to me is Collision (MIC) which helps with a bow's relatively low damage output.


Plus, it's much better to take a weapon crystal in the MIC and stack all of the bane weapon crystal properties and the flaming/frost/shock/etc weapon crystal properties (as well as ghost touch and quick draw) all onto one weapon crystal for stupidly cheap.


Where are bane weapon crystal properties from? Or are you talking about Fiendslayer, Truedeath and Demolition?

[Rebel7284]

The best Bow is generally considered Hank's Energy Bow. https://web.archive.org/web/20201112032517/http://archive.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/ask/20061227a

The best Bow ability bar-none is Splitting, literally doubling your damage output.

Everything else is gravy, either increasing your damage or accuracy slightly.

Splitting Hank's Energy Bow would cost 64,600 gp, which fits into the wealth by level of a 12th level character (88,000 gp), but leaves very little for other items.

Edit: If you have any spellcasting ability whatsoever, adding a Wand Chamber during construction is only 100 gp if I recall correctly (Dungeonscape).

[MaxiDuRaritry]

Where are bane weapon crystal properties from? Or are you talking about Fiendslayer, Truedeath and Demolition?Sorry. I think I got my item properties messed up.

I was thinking of raptor arrows. They have bane (everything), as well as the returning property.

[Ramza00]

Where are Exit Wounds and Blood Seeking from?


Exit Wounds is splitting mini (I am not really a fan of splitting, it is too expensive so you can not really access it till later levels, and then it is a double damage, it is all or nothing and I do not like that.)

Exit Wounds is from Complete Warrior and your arrows go through your enemy for they are so power, doing 1d6 extra damage. Furthermore an enemy behind them can be hit by the arrow but they get +4 to the ac for each previous target in the path. So yeah splitting light but with different rules so it is a mower down of mooks and armies.

Blood Seeking is from Complete Warrior as well. But like I said earlier you really need to pair it with Seeking for while you can fire an arrow in the air and it readjusts angles on the fly to avoid cover, enemies may still have concealment or total concealment but Seeking fixes that.

[Telonius]

Dealing with Dragons specifically? Wounding. Dragons have an absolute load of hit dice, and CON damage adds up quickly. Just a regular Adult dragon, depending on what color they are, it's 18-22 hit dice, so let's say 20. You need to hit it twice to get a CON reduction, so you're getting an average of +10 damage per hit; more, the older the Dragon is. (Wounding is one of those rare enchantments that effectively scales with level. +2+2d6 is huge at low levels; nice but not as great as the enemies get stronger. Wounding hurts more the stronger your enemies get).

[Crake]

Dealing with Dragons specifically? Wounding. Dragons have an absolute load of hit dice, and CON damage adds up quickly. Just a regular Adult dragon, depending on what color they are, it's 18-22 hit dice, so let's say 20. You need to hit it twice to get a CON reduction, so you're getting an average of +10 damage per hit; more, the older the Dragon is. (Wounding is one of those rare enchantments that effectively scales with level. +2+2d6 is huge at low levels; nice but not as great as the enemies get stronger. Wounding hurts more the stronger your enemies get).

Right, but its also easier to become immune to ability damage. On the other hand, 2d6+2’s average damage is 9, but also gives you +2 to hit, and you can fit two on it for the price of wounding, so if you can score say, dragonslaying and mageslaying, you can get an average of 18 damage and +4 to hit for the same price, without the vulnerability to ability damage.

The enemy would need 36 hit dice to match just the damage, not even considering that +4 to hit is nothing to laugh at.

[MaxiDuRaritry]

Morphing (+1, MIC), sizing (+5,000 gp, MIC), skillful (+2, CAdv), and aptitude (+1, ToB) are my go-to's whenever possible, especially if I can stick them on a Hank's bow so any ranged weapons will create their own ammunition.

Massive utility, and you can swap between ranged (and melee) weapons whenever you like. The sand blaster (https://forums.giantitp.com/showthread.php?444154-MM3-Sand-Blaster-Exotic-Weapon-Optimization) and the gnome calculus (https://forums.giantitp.com/showthread.php?615285-Let-s-Have-Fun-With-the-Gnome-Calculus!) are both very, very good weapons you can use when they'd be more useful than a bow.

I'd suggest metalline (+2, Underdark) on a riverine (Stormwrack) melee or throwing weapon, but they don't do so well on a bow. Although they'd still occasionally be useful with morphing.