This guide is for arcane archers who chose to use the base classes of fighter and sorcerer. Fighter is chosen here because of their bonus feats and the fact that archers are very feat starved. Any +1 attack class could fit this role as easily, trading feats for other class features. Sorcerer was chosen because I prefer spontaneous casting and charisma over prepared casting and intellect. Wizard or witch can substitute sorcerer just fine if you prefer those classes. This will be the only standard level guide made for mix base classes. There are so many options that covering all of them would just take too long. So, here is the breakdown on how to build your fighter/sorcerer arcane archer.
The plan:
Starting with the end in mind, our character will end up 6 fighter, 1 sorcerer, 10 arcane archer, 3 eldritch knight. This will give us +19 base attack bonus and casting skills of an 10th level sorcerer. This character is much more tilted towards the physical side of the arcane archer than if you were to simply use magus or bard. It is an archer with some magic, not a mage who shoots a bow.
This time around I'm going to build the character as if I was playing it. I will build stats and spend money each level according to the wealth based level breakdown.
Stats: 15 point buy:
13 str 15 dex 12 con 10 int 10 wis 13 cha. Dex is our most important stat affecting our + to hit. Archers actually use many abilities that lower our to hit and we need some dex to make up for it. Str affects our damage output, obviously the more str we have the better. Con is where we get our health, as a back line character it's not extreemly important, but we still want to be able to take a hit. Int and wisdom only affect skills for us. Charisma will eventually be used to cast spells. We will need to be able to get cha to 15 to cast 5th level spells. As we level we will put points in str/dex, then 3 in charisma. If we used a higher point buy we would first raise str to 15, then cha to 15 then focus on getting con 13, int 12, wis 12 putting 2 points into getting an extra skill per level is better than spending 3 points on 1 extra dex or str.
Race: Gnome or halfling.
I'm picking halfling. Any race can work, but I would avoid dwarf as we don't want to loose charisma. Loosing strength hurts but as we gain dex this can just be worked backwards by tweaking our starting stats to 15,13,12,10,10,13. giving us after racial stats of 13,15,12,10,10,15. Also not as we level up we only need 1 point in charisma so we can go str/dex, cha, 2 str(or dex). Our bow will only do 1d6 instead of 1d8, but that will be made up for by hitting more often. +2 perception and +1 to all saves are a nice bonus and help to make up for low wisdom.
Starting gear: Assuming 175g starting package:
A longbow costs 75, Arrows cost about 5 (100 arrows), Hide armor costs 15 gold, this leaves us with 80 gold. We also want a melee weapon, just in case which will leave us with over 50 gold to spend on random traveling gear (lantern, bedroll, pack, ect).
For all gear I'm assuming that I pay the difference between the current gear and the upgraded item or that the difference is made up by loot obtained.
Level 1: Fighter 1
Feats: Point blank shot for our normal feat (I will not count this in attack or damage, just know that you do 1 more damage and +1 to hit within 30 feet.) Precise shot for our fighter feat, attacking into combat sucks without it.
AC: 17 (10+ 2 dex, 1 small, 4 armor)
Attack: +4 (1 bab, 2 dex, 1 small) dealing 3.5 ave (1d6) damage.
Level 2: Fighter 2
Feats: Rapid shot, our first of many - to attack and + to damage abilties. This one gives us an extra shot while all shots are at a -2 attack.
Gear: at this point we have 1k gold. We want to get a composite longbow with a +1 str modifier costing 200g. I wouldn't suggest spending any more money at this point.
AC: 17
Attack: +3/+3 (2 BAB, +1 small, +2 dex, -2 rapid), damage 4.5 ave (1d6+1)
Level 3: Fighter 3
Feats: Deadly Aim -1 attack +2 damage for all our ranged attacks. This is our power attack.
Gear: At level 3 we should have 3k gold. At this point I would still be focusing all of your $ on your bow. A +1 Composite Longbow with a +1 str mod will cost 2200g.
AC:17
Attack +4/+4 (3 BAB, +2 dex, +1 small, +1 bow, -1 deadly aim, -2 rapidshot), damage 7.5 ave (1d6 arrow, +1 str, +1 bow, +2 deadly aim)
Level 4: Fighter 4
Feat: Weapon Focus- we need this for prereqs and +1 to hit never hurt anyone.
Stat: +1 dex. At this point we need to start hitting higher ac's and our damage is already really respectable. Deadly aim also increases it's contribution so adding to dex will help offset.
Gear: At this point we have 6k to spend. 2200 is spent on the bow leaving 3800 for new items. I suggest a +1 ring of protection. Leaving 1800, which can be spent on bane arrows or something similar if you are getting ready to fight a known big bad guy. 1600 gold could buy you 10 bane arrows. I would save money at this point, but it is an option.
AC 19 (10, +3 dex, +1 small, +4 amor +1 deflection)
Attack: +6/+6 (4 BAB, +3 dex, +1 small, +1 bow, +1 weapon focus, -2 deadly aim, -2 rapidshot)
Damage: 9.5 (1d6, +1 str, +1 bow, +4 deadly aim)
Level 5: Fighter 5
Feat: Weapon Specilization- one of the main reasons to go with fighter is for this extra 2 damage per shot.
Class skill: Weapon training- the other real reason to go with fighter as an archer's class. +1 attack and damage.
Gear: 10,500 gp, If we did not get arrows last level we can now spend our money on a +1 seeking bow. Which would leave us with 2300, 2 k was spent on the ring leaving us with 300g.
AC: 19
Attack: +8/+8 (5 BAB, +3 dex, +1 bow, +1 small, +1 weapon focus, +1 weapon training, -2 deadly aim, -2 rapid shot)
Damage: 12.5 (1d6, +1 str, +1 bow, +2 weapon spec, +1 weapon training +4 deadly aim)
Level 6: Fighter 6
Feat: Clustered Shots- Damage reduction starts to get annoying. this is one of the easiest ways around it. Also this comes at the point where you get the third shot in your series.
Gear: 16000, with 10,200 spent on the bow and ring. I would get a belt of incredible dex +2, which leaves 1800 unspent.
AC: 20 (10 +4 dex, +1 small + 4 armor, +1 defelction)
Attack: +10/+10/+5 (5 BAB, 4 dex, +1 bow, +1 small, +1 weapon focus, +1 weapon training, -2 deadly aim, -2 rapid shot)
Damage: 12.5
Level 7: Fighter 6/sorcerer 1
Picking a sorcerer's bloodline:
Draconic, when you cast a spell dealing damage of that type add 1 to the damage per die. This turns and end game fireball into 45 average damage vs 35 average damage. Not a terrible choice.
Fey, increases your low DC on compulsion effects. If you intend on using these get this bloodline (and feats to improve further). Laughing touch is also not useless with only a few levels of sorcerer.
For this guide I will pick draconic. Just look through the bloodlines and choose one that suits your character.
1st level spells: Spell guide will be saved till the end.
Feat: Point Blank Master- At this point giving attacks of opportunity when I shoot my bow is getting annoying.
Gear: 23,500 -8200 for the bow, 4k for the belt, 2 k for the ring, leaves us with 9k to spend. A cloak of resistance +2 sounds like a good buy at this point for 4k. Saving the other 5 for later.
At this point I would leave my armor on most of the time just failing 20% of the time. Level 1 spells are not that important and out of combat we can remove the armor and cast spells we need to.
AC: 20
Attack: +10/+10/+5
Damage 12.5
Level 8: Fighter 6/Sorcerer 1/Arcane Archer 1
At least we have an attribute point to spend: +1 str
Gear: 33k, At this point we want to take our +2 bow to a +3 bow, the bane enchant is not the worst idea if you commonly fight one type of enemy, but for this guide I'm going to suggest making the bow +2 seeking composite longbow with +2 str mod. That costs 18,300, 4k for the belt, 2k for the ring, and 4k for the cloak. This leaves just over 4k left to save til the next level or to spend on consumables.
AC: 20
Attack: +12/+12/+7 (7 BAB, +4 dex, +2 bow, +1 small, +1 weapon focus, +1 weapon training, -2 deadly aim, -2 rapid shot)
Damage: 14.5 (1d6, +2 str, +2 bow, +2 weapon spec, +1 weapon training +4 deadly aim)
Level 9: Fighter 6/Sorcerer 1/Arcane Archer 2
Feat: Snap Shot- now instead of provoking attacks of opportunity they do.
Gear: 46k, -29k spent leaves us with 17k to spend. The difference between +3 and +4 is 14k, thus we will give our bow an additional +1 making it a +3 seeking comp bow with +2 str mod.
We also get the ability to imbue our spells into our arrows, while we don't have many spells that can benifite from them at this point it will be useful later. Also helps that it can get around our armor spell casting failure, not that we will have to deal with it much longer.
AC: 20
Attack: +13/+13/+8 (8 BAB, +4 dex, +3 bow, +1 small, +1 weapon focus, +1 weapon training, -3 deadly aim, -2 rapid shot)
Damage: 17.5 (1d6, +2 str, +3 bow, +2 weapon spec, +1 weapon training +6 deadly aim)
Level 10: Fighter 6/ Sorcerer 1/Arcane Archer 3
Enhanced arrows now lets us add an element to our arrows. This will deal an extra 1d6 damage per hit.
Gear: 62k. we spent 32k on our weapon, 4k cloak, 2k ring, 4k belt. Gloves of Dueling cost 15k and give our weapon training a +2 bonus. This leaves around 5k for misc items.
AC: 20
Attack: +16/+16/+11 (9 BAB, +4 dex, +3 bow, +1 small, +1 weapon focus, +3 weapon training, -3 deadly aim, -2 rapid shot)
Damage: 23 (1d6, +1d6 elem, +2 str, +3 bow, +2 weapon spec, +3 weapon training +6 deadly aim)
Lets take a second to compare to where we were with the bard. At this point the bard was doing 17.5 points of damage per hit (without me paying attention to stats), so I think we are doing well. He also had many shot, the only reason we don't have it is due to stat restraints that the bard was not limited with. I think this character is coming along quite nicely. The bard does have a lot more spell casting and tricks up his sleeve, so it balances out a little bit.
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