Evil Archer help

[roulette]

So I'm going to be joining an epic level evil campaign in a couple weeks, and I'd like to play an archer/sniper type character, but since I've never actually been in a campaign that went higher than level 10, I'm turning to the wisdom of the boards for help building this character. Any race will do, but I would like to steer as much away from spellcasters as possible, I'm not opposed to some magic, but I would rather not use a full caster. Any help?

[RTGoodman]

We're gonna need more information. What books are allowed, and what books (if any) are banned. Also, what level of optimization are you going for? Super-powerful, just moderately-powerful, or do you not care.

The first thing that popped into my head was maybe some sort of standard Ranger/Scout Swift Hunter build (Complete Adventurer). Otherwise, I'm not sure off the top of my head.

[roulette]

sorry, I meant to specify that any 3.5 books are open to use. I'd like the character to be pretty powerful, but without getting too complicated.

[Harp]

You can do some interesting things with archers.

Since its epic pretty much any race is a go I figure, but some of the best races that come to mind are actually campaign specific. While anything with arms and wings is good, Avarial Elves from FR are nice because of their natural mobility. Another route you can go is to roll up a Dolgrim, a small creature with four arms (meaning two bows). A more setting universal choice might include Thri-kreen (multiple arms and ridiculous jump modifiers useful for taking advantage of remaining mobile and out of reach). Since you're going epic, you can be just about any creature you can find in the manual, so you should choose one that offers you good mobility and an extra set of arms or two.

Aside from that, there's not a lot of help I can offer you. Characters without full spell progression tend to suffer a lot at epic levels because of the mechanics.

[Sstoopidtallkid]

Casters win Epic. Play a Cleric with Epic spellcasting and use long-term self-buffs to make your archery insane. Damage actually matters more in Epic than it does before(due to Deathward/Mindblank/FoM being so common) so you just need to build some custom Epic spells to crush everything. Abuse Polymorph and win.

[Darrin]

So I'm going to be joining an epic level evil campaign in a couple weeks, and I'd like to play an archer/sniper type character, but since I've never actually been in a campaign that went higher than level 10, I'm turning to the wisdom of the boards for help building this character. Any race will do, but I would like to steer as much away from spellcasters as possible, I'm not opposed to some magic, but I would rather not use a full caster. Any help?

Dragonborn (wings) Kobold, add Desert or Wild template (Dragon #306) to switch favored class to Ranger.

Scout 3/Ranger 6/Dragon Devotee 4/Unseen Seer 4/Highland Stalker 2/[Something] +1

Feats: 1=PB Shot, 3=Precise Shot, Rgr2=Rapid Shot, 6=Swift Hunter, Rgr6=Manyshot, 9=Improved Manyshot, 12=Improved Skirmish, 15/18=Travel Devotion, Improved Rapid Shot, or Draconic Reservoir.

This gives you 8d6 skirmish damage, or 10d6 with Improved Skirmish (roughly even with a straight rogue). You can fly 30' (briefly) at ECL 6, fly 30' continuously at ECL 12. You get some spellcasting: 1st level Ranger spells so Entangle and CLW, and up to 3rd level Sorcerer spells if you use the Greater Draconic Rite of Passage.

[jcsw]

+1 to the Cleric Archer.

One thing to do is to DMM persist a Polymorph Spell into an Arrow Demon (MM3). They can fire two bows any time they could normally fire one, with a -2 on the attack roll. This allows you to more or less double your attacks.

Multiply your attacks once more with Splitting Arrows, a +3 enchantment. These can get expensive though, even at epic levels, considering you can fire upwards of 8 of these in a round.