I've been looking to do something different and getting back into BGII after a few months and I've been thinking that I want to try an Archer.

I've been curious on what kind of bows would be best. I know that Gesen's is nice and been wondering if the archer's special shots work on those arrows. I know that Tasheron's doesn't need ammunition either.

Then there is the Mana Bow which is a long bow and +4 at that.

on my Party for others going along I've been thinking about taking along

Saerelith( just to see how she stacks up as a Paladin)
Aerie because she can double up the healing and the Magic.
Kelsey because I just like him as an NPC.

Not sure who I will use as a thief yet. I'm not fond of Jan, Nalia is well.... Nalia, I don't feel like taking Imoen yet again, and Yoshimo suffers his own fate or I think he'd be great to use.

So...Thoughts? Advice?

In my humble opinion, your best bow for most encounters would be the Tuigan Bow. Keep Gesen on hand for the 2 encounters that actually require a +4 weapon. Gesen, by the way, works just fine with called shots and whatnot. You are going to be swimming in +3 arrows by the time you are actually going to need them and since you are also going to have lots of bonuses to hit and damage from being an Archer, the extra attack is going to be lots more valuable to you than a couple extra points to hit. The only enemies that require better than a +3 weapon are Demogorgon in Watchers Keep and the Loup Garou that you encounter Near the Umar Hills Temple.....neither of whom you actually have to fight, anyway.

You know Gesen's bow? IS it just me, or is it that when you fire an arrow from that particular bow, it launches REALLYYYYYY slowly??

That's basically the reason I never use that bow..

The tuigan bow works well for most of the early game, as drew said, although I think heartseeker is a fine replacement later on :)

I said it before, and I'll say it again. I prefer longbows to shortbows, just for the coolnes factor :p So, Heartseeker all the way.

An remember that even if the bow itself is considered a +4 weapon, it's the arrows that are important. So, if you're firing +1 arrows from Mana bow at Demogorgon he still won't be hurt by them. Luckily, there are plenty arrows of pirecing around that are considered +4, so use them. But sparingly, there are not that many of them.

Bows are pretty annoying in BG2. I'm with Mordokai in that I find longbows to be much cooler than short, but there are a couple problems with them. If you're going to use longbows, you need a strength of 18, since composite longbows require 18 strength, and they are the only longbows in the 1st dungeon. Seems reather incredible to me that all those goblins are as strong as Minsc ;) If you don't have 18 strength, you're playing an Archer without a weapon until you can get your hands on a common longbow.

The second problem is that shortbows are just more useful, especially for an Archer - and that is mostly due to the Tuigan bow. Its really easy to obtain, you can get it really early, and I'm with Drew on this, the 3 shots per round beats any advantage you can get from any other bow for an Archer.

I think the Gesen Bow is really over-rated. If you use it without arrows, it does very little damage, although it will damage things like Golems or stoneskinned mages that other bows won't because of the electrical damage. If you use it with arrows, you give up the electrical damage, and the advantage of a bow that doesn't require arrows - and as an Archer, you will be using vast quantities of arrows.

I'd have to say I'd go with short bows, I'd pick up the Tuigan the first day out of Irenicus' dungeon, and I'd probably still be using it when turning Mellisan into a pincushion ;)

Like Drew said Tuigan bow is the best choice for an Archer.

Attacks/Round are more important than other bonuses (THACO and Dmg is no problem for an Archer anyway).
Gesen's bow or Tansheron's for enemies that require weapons of higher enchantment or use Mantle.

Also Arrows of Biting get a bonus from high STR (unlike all the other arrows). Very effective against Dragons.
And the 80 arrows of Dispelling can help a lot against spell-casters (also ignore SI:Abjuration).


@Mordokai

Arrows of Piercing have a +1 enchantment in the original game.
It's Improved Anvil that changed them to +4 ;)

Shows what I know :p Oh well, they worked well anyway :)

Arrows of biting.. ahhhh don't you love em :D

I was just wondering, does whirlwind attack work with ranged weapons?? Just a thought:

*Arrows of biting
*10 shots per round
*Every failed saving throw is A LOT of poison damage (33% of maximum i think?)

Umm solo just got a whole lot easier :D

Gesens tends to fire like once a round. I'm not sure but part of that may be because it tends to get tossed into the hands of like Imoen and such who doesn't exactly get a whole lot of attacks a round anyway. I'm gonna play with it a little and see what it does either way just for curiosities sake but from reading what you guys say I'm probably going to pass it off to somebody afterward to put it back into it's typical role of mage disruption.


here's a question after I posted last night though as I was working out more details.

how many proficiencies can rangers/archers put into their bows.


On a side note from bows. Does anybody have any ideas what I should do for a thief?

Plain rangers and stalkers can put ** in bows, archers can put ***** in bows and crossbows, and ** in slings. I'm not sure about beastmasters.

About the thief, I'm not sure. I think you ruled every NPC thief in vanilla game out of commision, so there are only custom NPCs that you can use. I don't know which thou, since I haven't tried any of them. Or, you can make a multiplayer thief that will be under your control, and use that one.

I may break down and use the Yoshimo/Imoen combination if nothing else. They just get kind of old you know?

I don't really install mods that make things more difficult just add content and playable NPC's really.

I was just wondering, does whirlwind attack work with ranged weapons??It does. With the archer's almost auto-hit it's three shots and done for most opponets with arrows of biting. Three opponets of any HP in one round is incredible if it would work out.

Wait, just checked, they do 30% of HP damage, so you may need four hits incase the extra 10% isn't picked up by the initial damage.

I know it won't be good for very long but what I find would be interesting would be ranged Death Blows and Greater Death Blows...

With the rangers ability to specialize so greatly wouldn't that push the bows attacks per round higher than they normally are? Is like 5 or 6 attacks around with Tuigan possible?

I'm pretty sure that the Tuigan bow just sets attacks per round at 3. Also three is the most a character can get without enhancements/enchantments IIRC.

@Mordokai

Arrows of Piercing have a +1 enchantment in the original game.
It's Improved Anvil that changed them to +4
Shows what I know Oh well, they worked well anyway
Togan (the halfling in planar sphere) enjoys very much using those powerful arrows against your party ;) . Just try to see how fast you can kill him to collect more +4 arrows from his corpse. Try it Mordokai! The battle has changed since the last time you played Improved Anvil.

Told you at my last report that I'm putting BG "On hold" for a year or so :) That is why you haven't been getting any more reports from me, since the game was not on my hard drive from that time. I'm sorry that I haven't told you that.

It has been, what, couple of months from then? Certainly not enought time. But next time, I'll give it a try, you can be sure of that :)

Just to get back on the bows thing, you might consider using Strong Arm bow for the +3 dmg (of course you would need 19 STR but a little trip through BG1 takes care of that). I played an Archer some time ago and I didn't want to go with short bows for pure RP reasons. So I used the Strong Arm through most of the game and it worked just fine.

It's weird that you need to be as strong as a hill giant just to use a simple bow..

I'm pretty sure that the Tuigan bow just sets attacks per round at 3. Also three is the most a character can get without enhancements/enchantments IIRC. You may be right. But what I can remember, with the GM fix installed, I had 5 attacks a round with my archer, regardless of which kind of bow I had equiped. Whether or not Tuigan gives you 6 attacks a round, I can't remember. I do know that the fighter HLA's (whirlwind, deathblow, etc.) function normally with a bow.

And regarding Gesen's damage, I find that all ranged weapons do very little damage, with the exception of that sling that adds your strength modifier to damage. And biting arrows, but they tend to be fairly rare.

Also note that by the end of ToB you'll have had enough proficiency points to max both short and longbows.

The damage is kind of small. Specially compared to Melee and all the strength and damage enhancing items in the game. it's not that hard to make the +damage to a melee weapon something like 2 or 3 times that of a bow depending on the setup.

For example just starting with the possible max strength of 25 that alone is like +13 damage.

1 3/4 the ammount of the max damage of a normal arrow.

The Archer from my understanding can mitigate some of that. Particularly at high level considering the kit alone gives you +7 damage at level 21 for Kit bonuses combined with the particularly low thaco of a Kensai. They also further mitigate the damage issue by tacking on extra affects that weaken opponents in battle critical ways which some of us will give up a bit of extra damage to inflict on the opponents.

This is part of what has me curious about them as well as the fact that I've never done much ranged stuff in BGII that wasn't spells.

As for the Arrows of Biting yes they are nice but they become less affective over time. They have a save vs. death for that extra poison damage and that save gets made more and more in general the farther through the game you get let alone in critical battles like those against bosses.

Melee damage is higher, but ranged damage is useful for hard to reach enemies and for finishing off smaller easier enemies without running up to each of them.

Problem with archers is that many enemies are immune to normal missiles, so you need to equip at least arrows +1 (or better) all the time, which just gets irritating.

Yes but there are plenty of magical arrows in BG2 so you should be fine with that.

At higher levels I don't think that the Archer can measure to melee characters in terms of damage but then again he's not supposed to; he's more of a support character than an actual sweeper. He's is handy for any party though and even though the damage is not that great it is still delivered and from a safe distance.

But what I can remember, with the GM fix installed, I had 5 attacks a round with my archer, regardless of which kind of bow I had equiped. Whether or not Tuigan gives you 6 attacks a round, I can't remember. No, five is the highest you can get without being Improved Hasted (which Whirlwind and Greater Whirlwind do). Also, you no doubt had some item equipped that boosted your ApR, as without effects in play, you can only get to 4.5 ApR (2 bow + 1 thirteenth level + 1.5 GM). Gauntlets of Extraordinary Specialization would do it, as would the Boots of Speed unless you get the fix.

As for the Arrows of Biting yes they are nice but they become less affective over time. They have a save vs. death for that extra poison damage and that save gets made more and more in general the farther through the game you get let alone in critical battles like those against bosses. Yes it's true. But the bonus to damage from STR that gets the Archer from those arrows is what makes them so effective.
An improved hasted Archer with Tuigan bow and high STR can kill a Dragon from a safe distance in just 1 round ;)

And a high level Archer with the bonus to damage from his kit and the higher number of Attacks/Round (Tuigan) can be even more effective than most of the melee classes, since he also attacks from distance and rarely misses (excellent THACO).



And regarding Gesen's damage, I find that all ranged weapons do very little damage, with the exception of that sling that adds your strength modifier to damage. You can get that bonus to damage with every sling if you use magical bullets.The STR bonus applies to all of them.

Grand Mastery Fix changes the 1.5 ApR given in the core game to the book listed 2 full ApR If the cap in the game is indeed 5. That would mean an Archer is actually losing a full attack around with Tuigan if it doesn't just set your ApR to a flat 3.

2 bow +1 thirteenth level + 2GM Fix = 5

going bythese numbers if Tuigan would be

3 bow +1 thirteenth level +2GM Fix = 6 with a cap of 5 Tuigan would actually be a waste to use because you'd actually be losing an Attack even without the fixpack

3 bow +1 thirteenth level +1.5 GM = 5.5 ApR

on the other hand if it sets your attacks to a flat 3 then it would seem rather than losing out on attacks because it actually gives to many it would hold you back because you can actually do more attacks with other weapons.


I was a bit of a math wiz in another life so I can usally at least tell if numbers make sense.


by the way. Monks can achieve 5 ApR at high level with probably the highest maximum damage per hit when unarmed since ammount of damage was brought up a little (by me I think) with a base of:

1-20 + 12(24str) = 13-32dmg no equipment

They will as often as not get at least one hit first. The drawback is that they have the largest range of damage as well. 19 points.

I actually bring this up because while the damage is smaller. Part of the advantage of ranged weapons is actually consistancy of damage. They have a much smaller range than the big hitters that the melee people tend to rely on (many of which tend to be d10 or even a few d12 weapons).

This can be important at times because It can give you that confidence of just how well you will fair against an enemy because you have a better idea of what it will take you.

Grand Mastery Fix changes the 1.5 ApR given in the core game to the book listed 2 full ApR If the cap in the game is indeed 5. That would mean an Archer is actually losing a full attack around with Tuigan if it doesn't just set your ApR to a flat 3. Nope. In the original game you get +0.5 ApR only from Specialization. Grandmastery doesn't grant any ApR.

With the fix instead Grandmastery grants an additional 1 ApR.

So Tuigan with the fix should give 5,5 ApR.But since they are capped you get only 5.

Still +0,5 ApR more than the other bows.

Without grand mastery Fix I was playing around just to check damage a bit with an Archer Kitted Ranger of level 16 just made in the start of ToB

The Ripper which is a long bow had 4 ApR. I was getting no extra attack from having GM in long bows. My Max damage was like 18 with the bonus from the bow and the kit and the arrow bonuses.

If that bow is giving me 4 without the GM fix that would mean that Tuigan.

I explain this because this is what I used to check my math but with a flaw.

I keep forgetting that boots of speed grants +0.5 attack.

So you are indeed right and that's why my math was off by the 0.5