Ye Olde Arcane Archere

[Grynning]

Has anyone ever posted a fix for the Arcane Archer class, either here or somewhere else? I've been wanting to use it, well, forever, and I figured adding half-casting would help, but it still doesn't quite work. Any suggestions or links would be appreciated. Overall I think it's a good class; enhance arrows saves you $$, the imbue arrows could be good with the right spells, and Phase Arrow is cool, but it's just never seemed worth taking, and I'd like it to be in my 3.5/heavily house-ruled campaign I'm working on (It's essentially my "Break glass in case 4th ed. sucks" campaign).

I've actually been thinking about re-working it as a Duskblade PrC. Basically, continue Duskblade casting (maybe 6/10 levels or so) let you use your Arcane Channeling through arrows to replace the Imbue Arrow ability, and then make the Seeker and Phase arrows cost a spell slot instead of being 1/day. I'd like a different capstone ability though, Death Arrow isn't that great for a save-or-die and I dislike save-or-dies anyways.

[Renegade Paladin]

It can be fine as-is with the right feats, spells, and classes going in. One of my campaigns features an arcane archer who, at level 15, slaughtered two adult red dragons in as many rounds... after the party had already wasted their big gun spells on the frost giants guarding the entrance (they had come expecting the giants; no one told them about the dragons lairing further down the caves) and some cunning uses of permanent image on the part of the dragons. She just pincushioned them. One almost got her, but she shot it in the face while within its melee reach, courtesy of arrowmind.

[Tsotha-lanti]

Go with Smiting Spell (feat from PHB2) and a more traditional gish build (duskblade, spellsword, whatever). You'll do the same things (shoot arrows with spells on them), only better.

[ShneekeyTheLost]

One spell, Greater Magic Weapon, duplicates the majority of the classes abilities. A standard ClericZilla with pure Cleric20 would do better. He could cast Greater Magic Weapon on himself every morning when he casts Divine Power and Righteous Might and persists them. He doesn't need to persist GMW, though, it's duration of hours/level.

My proposed fix:

1) Take out the enhance arrow progression. Give him a SLA GMW 1/day, usable on self only.

Most of the Arcane Archer abilities are 1/day. I despise 1/day abilities. So here's how I changed them

2) Imbue Arrow. Leave alone. It's the only decent one.

3) Seeker Arrow. Replace with Elemental Arrow. He can apply 1d6 of elemental flavor of choice (Fire, Cold, Lightning) to any of his shots. He can change the flavor as a swift action.

4) Seeker Arrow becomes Free Bonus Feat: Improved Precise Shot. Does the same thing, only all day long.

5) Phase Arrow makes all arrows shot have the Ghost Touch property.

6) Hail of Arrows grants the ability to shoot one additional arrow in a full attack or multishot. This stacks with the additional shot granted by Rapid Shot.

7) Death Arrow is removed. It was never really good, and in this case, doesn't serve any purpose. Instead, you auto-confirm critical threats made with your bow. So any threaten of a critical hit is an actual critical hit.

8) Where there is normally Enhance Arrow progression, you now have caster level progression.

[TempusCCK]

You dont' even have to gish to create an effective arcane archer.

Since you're an elf anyway for Arcane Archer, just go with full Wizard+ Smite Spell feat and you can put any spell into an arrow as many times a day as you want. Since you get the free proficiency, you're alright. Oh, want the slaying arrow? Put Disintegrate into an arrow for poor Fort saves, put Slay Living, Wail of the Banshee, Finger of Death. Come on, skies the limit here, you get the same flavor, only better mechanics.

[JaxGaret]

Shneeky has some good ideas there.

An alternative is simply to change all of their 1/day abilities to 1/encounter, or even just make them at-will.

An at-will Arcane Archer would be fearsome indeed.

[Rachel Lorelei]

It can be fine as-is with the right feats, spells, and classes going in. One of my campaigns features an arcane archer who, at level 15, slaughtered two adult red dragons in as many rounds... after the party had already wasted their big gun spells on the frost giants guarding the entrance (they had come expecting the giants; no one told them about the dragons lairing further down the caves) and some cunning uses of permanent image on the part of the dragons. She just pincushioned them. One almost got her, but she shot it in the face while within its melee reach, courtesy of arrowmind.

Either the rest of your party was DOIN IT WRONG, in internet terms, or the AA was rolling criticals like there was a clearance sale on natural 20s.

I'm sorry, but there's no real way to redeem the AA. I'd even go so far as to use it as a textbook example of How Not To Design A Prestige Class.

[Renegade Paladin]

4) Seeker Arrow becomes Free Bonus Feat: Improved Precise Shot. Does the same thing, only all day long.

Improved Precise Shot lets you fire around corners now?

[Grynning]

Ok, so I've been mulling it over, and decided on my own fix, kind of in between the original class and what Shneeky suggested. Here goes nothin:

Hit Die
d8
Good BaB, Good Ref and Will, poor Fort (switched Fort and Ref)

Requirements

Elf or half-elf, Base Attack Bonus +5

Feats
Point Blank Shot, Precise Shot, Weapon Focus (longbow or shortbow).

Spells
Ability to cast 1st-level arcane spells.

Special: 1 of the following:
Smiting Spell (feat), Arcane Channeling or Channel Spell (Class Features)

Skillz: 4 + Int modifier.
Concentation (Con), Craft (Int), Hide (Dex). Listen (Wis), Move Silently (Dex), Ride (Dex), Spellcraft (Int), Spot (Wis), Survival (Wis), and Use Rope (Dex).

Class Features:

Spellcasting: At 2nd, 3rd, 5th, 6th, 8th, and 9th levels, gains one level in an existing Arcane spellcasting class (6 total caster levels).

Spell Knowledge: The Arcane Archer adds Arrow Mind, Guided Shot, Sniper's Eye, Sniper's Shot, and Arrow Storm (SpC), to their available spells. If they prepare spells, the spells are added to their spell book and may be cast as arcane spells of the same levels. If they are a spontaneous caster, the spells are added to their class spell list. (note that Arrow Storm is actually better than the old Hail of Arrows class feature, so it basically replaces it)

Enhance Arrow: The progression is slightly altered
1st level: +1, 3rd level +1 Special Ability (any ranged), 5th level +2, 7th level +2 Special Ability (does not stack with 3rd level, so you may select two +1 abilities or one +2), 9th level +3. The Special Abilities may be changed with 5 minutes of uninterrupted concentration.

Imbue Arrow: At 2nd level, an arcane archer gains the ability to channel magic through their arrows. If the character has the Smiting Spell feat, he may use it to place a spell into an arrow without adjusting the spell level or casting time of the spell once per encounter. Using this ability and firing the arrow is a standard action (which includes casting the spell).
If the character has the Arcane Channeling or Channel Spell class feature from a previous class, they may use this ability on arrows as they normally would with a melee weapon.
Additionally, at 4th level, the Arcane Archer may imbue area or ray spells into their arrows, rather than only touch range spells. If the spell normally affects an area, the area of the spell is centered on the arrow. If the spell is a ray, the arrow must hit normally (i.e. it is no longer a ranged touch attack) but the effect of the ray is transfered to the arrow's target. In both cases, the arrow does normal damage, then the effect of the spell is resolved.

Seeking Arrows: At 4th level, the Arcane Archer gains the benefit of the Improved Precise Shot. Additionally, by expending a spell slot of 2nd level or higher, the Arcane Archer may negate ALL miss chances or bonuses from cover or concealment, including total cover, total concealment, invisibility, or effects such as that from Entropic Shield, for all ranged attacks made before their next turn. The Arcane Archer must still target the correct square to hit the target. Activating this ability is a swift action.

Spirit Arrows: At 6th level, all arrows fired by the Arcane Archer gain the Ghost Touch special property.

Phase Arrow: At 8th level, the Arcane Archer may expend a spell slot of 3rd level or higher to treat all ranged attacks made before their next turn as ranged touch attacks. Activating this ability is a swift action.

Death Arrows: At 10th level, the Arcane Archer gains the ability to make their arrows particularly deadly to a designated foe. Designating a foe is a free action, and the ability lasts for the duration of the encounter or until the foe is slain. It may only be used once per encounter, therefore you may only have one designated foe at a time. Arrows fired against the designated foe gain the Bane special property against that enemy (+2 enhancement bonus and an additional +2d6 to damage). Additionally, all critical threats against the enemy are automatically confirmed, so every threat is a critical hit.

So, what do we think?

Edit: Fixed the Enhance and Imbue arrows for clarity and to remove suck Also reduced BAB req. to +5 to make the class available to poor BAB classes.

[MorkaisChosen]

That looks good- I like the tying of special abilities to spell slot usage.

[The Mormegil]

Give him full casting, prereq. are that he will need to burn CL if he wants to get it before ECL 12 or if you want add to the prerequisites two or three other feats, requiring a dip into fighter if he wants to get it before 15th. It is still balanced, because he WILL lose CL, and continues casting because otherwise it would suck. Yes, EK doesn't give you that much stuff, but I would change EK too, because as it is, it sucks...
Maybe you'll need to cut down bab to 3/4 but either way...

[Eldariel]

We had a rather succesful Arcane Archer-fix here. It's the most intriguing out of the bunch I've seen thus far although as you can see by the thread, we never really nailed everything down (mostly how to learn different enchantments, or if he should know them to start with). My version is in post 9; I'd rather not copy that post here as it's really long. But yea, I'd say that's a fairly functional variant with a good amount of casting, a bunch of intriguing abilities usable often enough to be relevant, and a number of improving abilities to generate an incentive for taking all 10 levels. Also, it has both, advancing Magical and Mundane abilities; I find it fitting my image of the class, but of course, that's just me. Note that it's balanced vs. Swiftblade, so it's fairly high powered. Still, losing 4 caster levels better give you goodies.

All in all, I'm very happy with how that turned out and would play one in a heartbeat if I wanted to build an Arcane Archer. As for the present AA, the only real use for it is a 2-level dip. The best build I've seen for it thus far is in Bard 8/AA 2/Sublime Chord 2/Abjurant Champion 5/Sacred Exorcist 3 (the last can be any full casting 3/4 BAB class).

[Telonius]

I would add an "Ignore Wind" ability. At 2, 4, 6, 8, and 10, the Arcane Archer ignores attack penalties due to Strong, Severe, Windstorm, Hurricane, and Tornado-force wind. No more "Wind Wall" immunity for you, Mr. Wizard!

[Eldariel]

I would add an "Ignore Wind" ability. At 2, 4, 6, 8, and 10, the Arcane Archer ignores attack penalties due to Strong, Severe, Windstorm, Hurricane, and Tornado-force wind. No more "Wind Wall" immunity for you, Mr. Wizard!

We're talking about a high level caster though; you can just Dispel Wind Walls with little trouble. Still, that could be an intriguing option for yet another advancing ability.

[Grynning]

My main goal was to make the class appealing to a Duskblade, since there are few PrC's that are worth taking for that class. Since the Spellsword is so similar (if, well, crappier) I decided to open it up to Spellswords as well (Fighter 2/Wiz 4/Spellsword 4 can easily enter), and I wanted a full Wizard to be able to enter as well, but have a more difficult time of it (right now a Wizard 10 could enter if they used all of their feat slots on the pre-reqs, including the bonus metamagic feat spent on Smiting Spell).

So, I guess my question is, if you were an elf, would you actually work towards this class, or switch to it if you found, say, a +1 Composite Longbow of Speed in a treasure pile?

PS: Could someone link me one of those nifty brown and white tables everyone uses, and explain to me how to use them?