Heike Archer

[Zaq]

I know that D&D doesn't support archery very well. Sure, it's possible to make a really powerful and versatile archer, but you have to work at it far harder than you do for many other character archetypes, especially if you want to 1) keep your level lowish (say, 6th-8th level) and 2) minimize the magic used.

Lately, I've been rereading the Heike Monogatari (Wikipedia it if you're unfamiliar, but it's a classic. Literally.) and there's a lot of really amazing archers in it. If you'll indulge me in a few quotes...

(From Burton Watson's translation of the Heike Monogatari)

From his quiver of twenty-four he drew one arrow after another, fitting them to his bow and sending them winging. Twenty men dropped dead at once, and eleven others suffered wounds, until only one arrow was left in the quiver.

(For those of you keeping count, that was a total of 31 injured or killed with 23 arrows.)

"What's the good of your shooting arrows at deer!" objected Moritoshi of Etchuu. "With just one of those arrows, you could have held off ten of the enemy. Killing is a sin to begin with, and then you waste arrows!" he grumbled.

I'd like to see a D&D character who can match, or at least emulate, this kind of archery. Obviously the 31 hits with 23 shots is going to be a little bit tricky (I guess there's that one feat from PHB2, Penetrating Shot, but that requires a BAB of 10, and that's much higher than the level I tend to play at.), but that's the kind of thing I want to do. One of my players is trying to make an archer, and I want to offer him some suggestions to help him do the kind of things that the great Minamoto and Taira archers could do. He's level 6, and no arcane or divine magic is allowed. (Psionics, Incarnum, ToB, ToM, etc. are fine, but nothing arcane or divine.) Even if we can't actually hit the goal of "with one of those arrows, you could have held off ten of the enemy!," how close can we get? Where would you start?

[Person_Man]

Exit Wound enhancement: 1d6 extra damage, and the arrow continues in a strait line beyond the original target. Each additional target beyond the first gets a +4 cumulative bonus to AC. +2 bonus, Comp Warrior.

Splitting enhancement: Each arrow fired becomes two arrows, and each gets its own attack roll. +3 bonus, Champions of Ruin

Fitting that in at ECL 6 will be nearly impossible. But you could always take the Ancestral Weapon feat (Book of Exalted Deeds) which essentially cuts down on the cost of a single weapon by 50%.

Also, anyone can use various Fear effects. A good DM will also let you use Intimidate to hold off enemies (or at least delay combat), just as you can use Diplomacy to convince them to be friends.

Good archer PrC include the Soulbow and Kensai, or a Swift Hunter build. Most others are garbage.

[Sstoopidtallkid]

There are a few good archer builds, the rest are junk.

Swift Hunter builds are usually low magic. It's a feat that stacks Ranger and Scout levels for Skirmish and Favored Enemy. Go spell-less Ranger(CWar) and you can be pretty powerful, especially with Greater Manyshot. The issue with them is that they don't do enough damage at higher levels, and it usually requires a way to move and full-attack, but those shouldn't matter too much until level 10.

Buff Archers are either Artificers or Clerics and use buff spells and Polymorph to have 2 bows firing for massive damage per arrow. Not thematic, not a part of your setting, and hard to do, but oh-so good.

The Soulbow PrC, from CPsi(yes, it's one of the few good things) is incredible. I don't use Psionics much so I can't go in-depth, but it makes the Soulknife class good. Besides, who doesn't love shooting arrows with your brain?

It's possible to make a good Crusader Archer using maneuvers for bonus damage, but it requires a very careful reading of the maneuvers for those that don't require a melee attack.

[Eldariel]

Without spells, magic items, homebrew:

Wood Elf Ranger 2/Fighter 1/Barbarian 1/Warblade 6/Eternal Blade 10

Relevant feats:
Weapon Focus, Weapon Spec, Ranged Weapon Mastery, Knowledge Devotion, Rapid Shot, Precise Shot, Improved Precise Shot, Woodland Archer, Extra Rage

Say:
Ranger 1 - PBS
Ranger 2 - Rapid Shot
Barbarian 1 - Precise Shot
Warblade 1
Warblade 2
Warblade 3 - Weapon Focus
Warblade 4
Warblade 5 - whatever
Fighter 1 - Weapon Specialization, Ranged Weapon Mastery
Warblade 6
Eternal Blade 1
Eternal Blade 2 - Woodland Archer
Eternal Blade 3
Eternal Blade 4
Eternal Blade 5 - Knowledge Devotion
Eternal Blade 6
Eternal Blade 7
Eternal Blade 8 - Improved Precise Shot
Eternal Blade 9
Eternal Blade 10

Extra Rage would need to be a flaw due to Warblade's dumb bonus feat list. You could pick Quick Draw (to do this at whatever point), Improved Initiative (to go first) or Combat Reflexes or something though.


Turn 1 of combat:
Whirling Frenzy, Time Stands Still - base 6 attacks into a total of 12 attacks
Island in Time, Eternal Training to recover Time Stands Still - base 6 attacks into a total of 12 attacks

In other words, in the span of 6 seconds he has shot 24 arrows, each at 20+7 Dex (20+5 levels) + 2-5 Knowledge Devotion + 3 Weapon Focus + 1 Mw. Weapon - 4 Whirling Frenzy + Rapid Shot = ~+30.5 (and every miss adds +4 to the consecutive attacks), and the damage is 1d8 + 7 Str (20+4 Frenzy) + 4 Weapon Spec + 2-5 Knowledge Devotion (+2 FE) = ~19 + FE. Oh, and they ignore all but total cover & concealment, and the second round attacks can even ignore total concealment.

So average of 456 damage if the attacks hit, and that's without criticals (and he has Int to Crit Confirmation); not all of 'em will hit. Oh, and he ignores damage reduction thanks to the Eternal Blade-ability. He could also add Int to attacks and damage instead, but he rather chooses extra Time Stands Still (and 6 more attacks to really benefit of Woodland Archer). For the record, he could quite reasonably sink ~100 damage to a creature with AC in 100s. All this without any magic. Oh, and he has a Range Increment of 120', and with his bonuses, targets up to 1200' are a fair game (thanks to the Ranger-levels, maxing Spot is doable; Eternal Knowledge handles Knowledges for Knowledge Devotion).


There's the Penetrating Shot feat in PHBII, but it doesn't work with full attacks so it's rather worthless here. Magic could fix that part (see Exit Wounds), but the whole point of this was no magic.

Magic items could add stuff like Haste (4 more attacks), stat bonuses, Dancing+Raging Mongoose through items (for 4-8 extra attacks with your swift action from Island in Time-turn), bonuses to skills and so on.

Additional sources would add among others the awesome Arrow Swarm (Fighter ACF from Dragon; gets you 2 more attacks in a full attack, but -5; awesome here, replaces the feat though making Flaws more necessary), and such. Homebrew Falling Star-discipline would of course change everything.


Oh, and the build is actually quite able to detect opponents even without magic thanks to Hearing the Air, the "Clarity of Vision" skilltrick and such. This'd probably be my character in a no magic game.

He's also a competent commander thanks to White Raven and all the defenses are bolstered by maneuvers and Elvencraft Bow. And if you cram Power Attack in there, you can suddenly smite arse in melee too.


EDIT: Oh yeah, and depending on your reading, you could take the Fighter ACF from Drow of the Underdark to lose Heavy Armor & Tower Shield Prof (who cares?) and instead gain the ability to add Dex to damage and to hit against flat-footed opponents within 30'. An awesome Sneak Attack-substitute. If the targets were close, y'know.

If not allowed for non-Drow races (case can be made for either; I personally support the reading of any race being eligible, mostly 'cause the book has tons of great material and it's a pity for PCs to be unable to use it), you could still be Half-Drow [RoF] or Lesser Drow [PGtF] for no Str-bonus (meh), but access to these ACFs instead.


Do realize that this is just about the best you can do; the tools for insane archery aren't there on that low levels. This build gets 4 arrows per round on level 6, which is the best I can think of without going for Arrow Swarm (which means you won't be hitting that much). I'd simply guess the said archer was higher level than level 6.

That said, the build is fine on all levels, but the additional attack speed from maneuvers only starts to step in on level 11 or so. With Weapon Spec, Ranged Weapon Mastery and all the archery-related skills though, you'll be fine early on.

[Draz74]

For another spiffy low-level archer trick that doesn't work with full attacks (and thus doesn't scale well):

With 1 level of Binder, you can bind Leraje, allowing all of your standard action ranged attacks to target 2 foes instead of one.

[d13]

Say:
Ranger 1 - PBS
Ranger 2 - Rapid Shot
Barbarian 1 - Precise Shot
Warblade 1
Warblade 2
Warblade 3 - Weapon Focus
Warblade 4
Warblade 5 - whatever
Fighter 1 - Weapon Specialization, Ranged Weapon Mastery
Warblade 6
Eternal Blade 1
Eternal Blade 2 - Woodland Archer
Eternal Blade 3
Eternal Blade 4
Eternal Blade 5 - Knowledge Devotion
Eternal Blade 6
Eternal Blade 7
Eternal Blade 8 - Improved Precise Shot
Eternal Blade 9
Eternal Blade 10

Unless you're stacking levels with SOMETHING, you can't do that.

It's specificaly stated that:

Weapon Specialization [General]

Choose one type of weapon for which you have already selected the Weapon Focus feat. You can also choose unarmed strike or grapple as your weapon for purposes of this feat. You deal extra damage when using this weapon.

Prerequisites
Proficiency with selected weapon, Weapon Focus with selected weapon, fighter level 4th.

Benefit
You gain a +2 bonus on all damage rolls you make using the selected weapon.

Special
You can gain this feat multiple times. Its effects do not stack. Each time you take the feat, it applies to a new type of weapon.
A fighter may select Weapon Specialization as one of his fighter bonus feats.

[Sstoopidtallkid]

Unless you're stacking levels with SOMETHING, you can't do that.

Warblade and Fighter stack, at a penalty.

Also, really, at low levels little is as good at archer as a Scout or a Swift Hunter with Improved Skirmish. There's other options, but the downside of Archery is lack of bonus damage and a dire need of feats. Scout fixes that, and Ranger helps.

[Eldariel]

Unless you're stacking levels with SOMETHING, you can't do that.

It's specificaly stated that:

Sigh. See Warblade. Counts as Fighter-level -2. Why do you think I took the Fighter-level that late?