I remember having a ranger (or was it a fighter? I don't remember) in my first ICW2 party, back when the game came out. I also remember that he seldom did more than 10 damage (unless using magic arrows, which are kind of rare and expansive, IIRC) and that he had less kills (by far) than a halfling rogue dual wielding 2 longswords without the DW feats (heh).

I was interested in doing something new for my latest party, and thought about an archer character. I did some forum searching, and ended up on a topic with people playing HoF solo with archers... Is there a secret trick I am not aware of to make archers viable characters?

Thanks!

Hmm... my paladin/monk/fighter/ranger kept scoring criticals for 30 and more before she was level 10 IIRC.

I suggest Improved Criticals and Weapon Specialisation in bow with also some great DEX. It's possible to make a nice build with the paladin class because of the nature of paladin spells (increasing damage etc), but this is quite strange. You could probably make a nice archer out of a fighter/wizard or fighter/sorcerer.

Yea, my archer (druid) isn't so great with just arrows, but I usually use her to disrupt the spellcasters. Her shapeshifts are what I like. :)

Archers are useful in many situations. It is true that will usually not do as much damage as a brute wielding a two handed weapon but they are great for disrupting spellcasters, for special damage (e.g. arrows of impact, fire arrows, ice arrows) and also allow you to stay out of melee range.

That too.

Even considering their talent at disrupting casters, I am still not convinced.

With a normal bow and normal arrows, the damage potential will never be more than 1-6. A melee character will hit easily in the 15s with a low strength and a normal weapon.

Well, I suppose it may be because in early infinity engine games archers decimated all. Certainly in Baldur's Gate a few web spells and a brace of archers would see you through the vast majority of the game. Did get a bit tedious, however, and its nice to see that using such tactics has been made harder in games such as IWD2.

Also, remember, that a bow no longer has the special ROF that it used to in the 2nd edition-based IE games, thus your Archer characters don't get to throw as many arrows at full BAB like they used to. That's part of what made archers so effective in the old games... they could fire twice to everyone else's 1 to 1.5 attacks.

I gave my sorcerer high DEX and proficiencies in crossbows... There left me with a few major advantages:

1) when you click an enemy to attack him with your sorcerer, he gets in position and starts shooting away... at the same time, he positions himself for casting spells later on...

2) you can switch between spells and ranged attacks, because the range between you and your enemy stays the same...

This way, your sorcerer always stays on a safe distance, but can still take out a lot of enemies... In our party of four, he's the second best enemy slayer after our fighter...

Well, if your main concern for your archer character is lack of damage, one ranged weapon is one heck of a meat grinder: (SPOILER)....


....Big Death. Not only does this throwing axe deal out 1d10+1+1d6 damage, it benefits from the 1.5x strength modifier of 2 handed weapons. The major weakness of throwing axes in the game is that they all have atrocious range. Well, the Big Death eliminates that flaw by featuring twice the range as other thrown axes. This beast is no stranger to critical hits of well over 60 damage.

[ June 24, 2005, 18:04: Message edited by: Hahkeal ]

That's part of what made archers so effective in the old games... they could fire twice to everyone else's 1 to 1.5 attacks.Yeah and that was a tad bit unrealistic. Sure, you can learn to fire even ten arrows in a minute but come on... a quick swing with a sword surely doesn't take longer than firing an arrow.

Yes and no, Chevalier. It's a lot easier to defend against a sword stroke than it is against an arrow, so each "to hit" roll in old D&D with melee weapons represented the culmination of several feints, missed attempts, and blocked strikes (in the core book of 2nd edition, a round was one minute long!).

Two arrows in a minute, however, is frightfully SLOW, and means you're taking fairly careful aim, and unless your target is using a shield, they've got little defense against an arrow at any reasonable range; its too small a target, at too great a speed, to defend against. Your best hope is to get a chunk of something sizable between you and it, and hope that the odds favor you.

Thus, two arrows a round wasn't unreasonable for the rules as they stood. When 3e cut the round down to 6 seconds, however, 2 arrows a round from every archer became unrealistic, and melee moved way to the fore; the rationale that lowered the rate of melee attacks previously was abandoned, and now every attempted strike is counted, not just one or two every minute that have the best chance.