Solid archer build?

[johniemi]

Hello, I don't have the Conan Atlantean book with me here, but could you suggest a good archer build. The stats I'm using are 16,14,12,12,10 and 8 which I have distributed like this:

STR 14
DEX 16
CON 12
INT 12
WIS 10
CHA 8

I was thinking of a straight "Fighter" at least up to level 10 (sorry don't remember what the "fighter" class was called in Conan). Suggestions?

 

[MGBM]

Well, I would suggest that you choose as a race for your PC the Bossonian, they have a +1 bonus to attacks with the Bossonian bow.

The Borderer class would be nice for an archer as well, due to their Combat Styles.

Choosing Point Blank Shot as your starting feat also seems a must. Precise Shot and Rapid Shot are good bets for an archer as their next Feats.

Still, of all my groups I GM I only have one archer, so it's not a PC concept I have played with much. No doubt there'll be people here who'll give better advice than me.

 

[Ganconer]

I don't have my book handy either but there is a feat called ranged finesse I believe. It will come in handy if your opponent is armoured.

 

[Krushnak]

go a bossonian soldier(fighter equivilant in conan) and take all the range combat feats and also wpn focus and spec in the bossonian longbow. if not borderer is the best to take straight or mulitclassed. also make sure you have a lot of ranks in craft bowyer just so you can always make yourself a bow if you lose it and to resupply yourself with arrows.

feats you must take, point blank shot, rapid shot, far shot, precise shot and ranged finesse, although in my game i allow finesse as a combat procedure if they have precise shot.

one also theres a feat from d20 modern military called 'marksmanship' requires wpn focus in a wpn and whenever using that wpn you ignore one range increments worth of penalties for every 4 ranks you have in spot. might be worth asking your gm if you can use it.

 

[Sutek]

Bossonians are good at ranged combat with thier Bossonian Longbows, but that's about it. Two other races might be worth looking at instead, in my opinion:

• Shemites get +1 with any bow, and an additional +1 when targeting any fow within 100 feet. Shemite bows also have a longer effective range increment. Very adept at short range shooting where most of ConanRPG combat tends to take place.

• Hyrkanians get +1 with any bow also, can take 'Far Shot' with out needing the prerequisites, and get +1 for targets 6 range increments away or more, so they are better at long range shooting.

8)

 

[quigs]

Definately do NOT use the Ranged Finesse feat. Its pretty much useless and very clunky to use. I allow anyone in my game to use finesse with any ranged weapon, as long as they are within 30 feet of their target.

Basically, it follows the same rules as ranged sneak attacks, and I have other feats that I borrowed from Iron Heroes that allow an archer to extend this finesse range. So far it has worked very well. Otherwise, archers just aren't a threat unless used in mass warfare.

 

[Conan-the-Librarian]

I agree about Ranged Finesse, it is pretty much useless unless you have no Strength at all (which is not the case for your PC). According to the write-up, by the time you can even use Ranged Finesse you should have a pretty solid AP anyway (since it will be well within the 1st Range Increment). Honestly I find the Ranged Finesse feat to be pretty much useless as it is written. Even using it as a Combat Maneuver is not all that much better (unless you're facing very heavily armored enemies... in which case you're probably screwed anyways as an archer).

While both Shemite & Hyrkanian are good, you'll need to go Nomad to make the most of them (for the Favoured Class feats)... but that's not bad either since Nomads do get bonus feats (although not as often as Soldier). I admit I'm not as keen on Soldier as a Class. Also remember that Soldier's depend on Parry while Nomad's are about equal for Parry & Dodge. This in important because Archers are often not going to have a shield ready to use for Parrying if they're using their bow.

One thing to remember, if you're planning on shooting from horseback then only the Shemite & Hyrkanian bows (along with the dinky Hunting Bow) can be used while on horseback.

I have to admit that the amount of "long range" combat tends to be fairly low compared to archery within 1, 2 or perhaps at most 3 Range Increments... so the Shemite might be better than the Hyrkanian (also the Shemite Bow is slightly better than the Hyrkanian in that it has +1 AP more, but the Crit range is 20/x3 instead of 19-20/x2).

As for taking the Far Shot feat free... well that's not such a big deal since almost any true archer worth his arrows is going to take Point-Blank Shot anyway (I never saw why that was such an "advantage"... who is going to take Far Shot without taking PBS first!?).

As for taking Weapon Focus & Weapon Specialization... in Conan it can be really tough to get too "focused" or too "specialized" with one's weapon because often you find your PC stripped of gear and perhaps far away from the region where one may find one's "favorite" bow.

As for using Craft (Bowyer) to replace lost or to create one's favorite bow... well that all depends on whether you have: 1. the material or coin for the material and 2. the time to use Craft. Many games simply have too fast a pace and are tight on resources to really use the Craft skill... at least not as written. Some GMs do make it easier, cheaper and/or quicker to use Craft skills but those are House Rules.

The Shemite & Hyrkanian advantage of +1 to all bows is quite a bit more useful than the Bossonian +1 to just the Bossonian bow because you never know what you'll have to make due with (the most common bow one is going to find is the plain old Hunting Bow).

However whatever direction you take, you may find that once you're up against serious DR the decreasing bow AP over long range is apt to cut into your kill rate. Dedicated archers are good for armies but they may not always make the best "adventurers". Still they can be fun, it may depend on your GM's plans for the campaign.

 

[argo]

Soldier's make the best archers by far. Wep Focus/Specilization and Imp Crit are essential for boosting ranged damage output which is otherwise hard to do. Furthermore archery is very feat-intensive so bonus feats are always good. However, Borderer and Nomad also make competent archers with the added benefit of more skill points. Mounted archery can be incredibly powerfull if your campaign sees a lot of open-ground combat, but of course soldiers can take the mounted feat tree as well.

Shemite is probably the best race plus you get the choice of favored class Nomad (for desert shemites) or soldier (for meadow shemites). All around a powerful combo. Second I would say is Bossonian, the racial bonus to DV is nice for archers who tend towards light armour and the Bossonian longbow is pretty buff. Hyrkanians and Stygians also get bow profeciencies but they are not as impressive as the first two races.

Your stats look good, I have no advice there.

Feats are prety straightfoward, there are a lot of them so get started early. If at all possible try to deversify a bit though. Quick draw is good so that you can switch to melee if the battlelines change sudenley. Heck, with your Str you could even justify taking Power Attack (never a dull feat in Conan! ). Fleet-footed is also good for archers who want to get into position quickly and then camp there making full attacks, same goes for improved initative.

I also agree that Ranged Finesse is pointless as written. My houserule is to change the effect of the feat so that archers can simply make finesse attacks against targets within 30 feet. Paying a feat and then getting that close to melee ought to be enough to balance it IMO. Or you could simply not bother with it, unless you are facing a lot of opponents in heavy armour your AP should be ok.

Hope that helps.

 

[Trodax]

STR 14
DEX 16
CON 12
INT 12
WIS 10
CHA 8

Stats look OK, although I *might* actually put my highest score inte Str. This may sound odd as Dex is used for attack rolls, but the biggest weakness of archery is it's inability to do a lot of damage and, even more so, to penetrate armour (and yes; Ranged Finesse as written is pretty crappy). Str helps with this, and is very important for an archer.

As others have pointed out, an archer-character in Conan will probably always belong to one of the "archery-races" (Bossonians, Hyrkanians, Shemites and Stygians) since otherwise you have to stick with a hunting bow (which is next to useless!) or spend feats on Exotic Weapon Proficiency. Bossonians and Shemites have Soldier as a favoured class, making them a good choice, as Soldier is probably your best bet if you want to be a highly specialized archer (which might not actually be a great idea, see below for more on this!). Borderer or Nomad might also work, but Soldier will give you more bang for your buck with all its bonus feats (and Weapon Specialization is one of the few ways for an archer to boost his damage).

Also remember that Soldier's depend on Parry while Nomad's are about equal for Parry & Dodge. This in important because Archers are often not going to have a shield ready to use for Parrying if they're using their bow.

Soldiers are as good at Dodge as Nomads. It's just that they are also much better at Parry. :wink:

The Shemite & Hyrkanian advantage of +1 to all bows is quite a bit more useful than the Bossonian +1 to just the Bossonian bow because you never know what you'll have to make due with (the most common bow one is going to find is the plain old Hunting Bow).

True. The biggest advantage for the Bossonians is probably that their bow has the highest damage and the highest AP (which is important as archers can have a very hard time against armour).

As for taking Weapon Focus & Weapon Specialization... in Conan it can be really tough to get too "focused" or too "specialized" with one's weapon because often you find your PC stripped of gear and perhaps far away from the region where one may find one's "favorite" bow.

Very true. I would extend this to say that even having the character concept of "archer" might almost be a bit too specialized. In Conan, as I envision the game, you have much less of character roles common to D&D, and PC's are often thrown into very variable cirumstances. A character who has focused totally on becoming an archer, and can't really do much else, will be not so useful when the game starts out in a dungeon cell and all you've got is a loincloth and a dagger you've managed to steal from a guard.
How big of a deal this is depends on your GM's style, though.

 

[Trodax]

Quick draw is good so that you can switch to melee if the battlelines change sudenley.

Johniemi, I thought I'd just add that you should be aware that their are some important changes to how attacks of opportunity in Conan work as opposed to in D&D. Basically, if you end up in melee and you can't fight hand-to-hand (whether you're a sorcerer or an archer), you're pretty screwed. :wink:

 

[quigs]

One last thing about the ranged finesse stuff. I'd probably allow an archer with Improved Precise Shot to do ranged finesse out to 1 range increment.

They have almost identical rules for this kind of thing in the True20 system and it doesn't unbalance anything.

 

[Krushnak]

i treat ranged finesse exactly like the melee version. if you can beat the ac by ac+dr then you bypass all the armour, either hitting an eye or some other exposed area.

was thinking of another ranged feat to include, 'power shot' (requires str 13) subract from BAB and add that number to your bows AP. or 'instinctive archery' (requires wis 13) allows you to add your wisdom bonus as well as your strength to the AP of all bows.

 

[Sutek]

The best combo isnt' ranged finesse, but rather a successful hide check or high initiative count along with plenty of bonuses to hit and damage. With the hide or high initiative, the target can't Dodge (and arrows can't be parried) so its effective DV is 10. Do a measily 20+ points of damage (very easily done with Sneak Attack, BTW) and you've taken out that guard like a silent wind...

lol

Tangent
Actually, I'm considering a house rule of my own that take 10% of the arrow damage rolled and adds it as a bonus to AP. Since the AP reduction at range increments is supposedly due to a decrease in velocity, having a high impact makes little sense - damage should reduce too if the velocity is reducing. Since that doesn't happen, what I'm gonna do is have high damage rolls make up for long range AP reductions. Damage rolls, after all, are an abstraction of how hard a target is hit, so it makes sense in my mind to do this.

In essence, it'll balance out most of the time, but it makes arrows into the armor piercing weapons they werre constructed to be - armor in terms of hides and the like. Chain was the armor of choice to mitigate arrow wounds, because, like modern Kevlar, it spread the force of impacts due to it's flexibility.

I intend to do it for arrows, and may just alow it for all Puncture calssified weapons.
Let me know what you think via PM, or if you really want to yak about it, propose another thread and I'll start it up.

 

[Ichabod]

Hello, I don't have the Conan Atlantean book with me here, but could you suggest a good archer build. The stats I'm using are 16,14,12,12,10 and 8 which I have distributed like this:

STR 14
DEX 16
CON 12
INT 12
WIS 10
CHA 8

I was thinking of a straight "Fighter" at least up to level 10 (sorry don't remember what the "fighter" class was called in Conan). Suggestions?

I've been playing a character for some time that has sunk a lot of feats into ranged combat. Besides two totally ridiculous occurrences, ranged combat has sucked.

Why?

First, the damage output on arrows is weak. Maybe a better word would be "outclassed" except when you can trigger sneak attack damage, which is a pain a lot of the time due to the range limitations and inability to flank once the enemy can act. Second, if you are the only one using ranged attacks, you have a synergy problem with the rest of the party - the more "archers", the better a ranged combatant is.

Of course, it all depends on what sort of opposition you face. I was just chatting with my GM and noting that a single archer is good for clearing out scholar-bombs (low level scholars, see threads on defensive blast and how it can be obnoxious if you play it as written). I don't think our experiences have been that unusual, however, and my character is largely ineffectual in combat.

I believe strongly that trying to max out damage in this game should be the focus if you want to be effective in combat.

If you want to "game" the system for a weak archetype, I'd think of something like this to try to get a max mid to long term benefit:

Put the 16 in INT unless your campaign isn't that skill-rrific and the 14 in STR. If you can get by with suck skills (... you know, given the atrocity that is soldier skill ranks per level, just ignore what I'm about to say and put the 16 in INT), put the 16 in STR.

Being able to hit things is not terribly difficult (in general), so having the high DEX is not that crucial. Put another way, it doesn't help a whole lot to hit things and not do enough damage that they care. It's just no fun to be doing your threes and sixes of damage when the bardiche-wielding, power attacking barbarian is routinely in the thirty damage range.

Be a Bossonian to get the big damage weapon and get one built to your STR. Start out as a thief (like pretty much every character should) for the copious skill ranks and the sneak attack damage. Second level switch to soldier to get the double feats and start working on some of the feats people have mentioned. Then, probably, take two levels of borderer to get Rapid Shot (min DEX 13, which I'm suggesting you don't get until 6th level as the 4th level could go into STR) but never more than two levels of borderer. Switch back to soldier to work on getting the 5th level favored class feat or dabble some more in thief because thief is awesome (can probably stop at 4th level thief as that's 3d8/3d6 sneak attack unless you feel you have to wear armor and 5th level will lose you another BAB).

 

[Krushnak]

also check out the hyboria's finest book, the feat 'combat master' allows you to attune to a combat and add your wisdom bonus to attack rolls for that encounter, handy for firing out to the long range distances.

one thing you have to realise archery really only comes into its own when used in massed combat(units dont get dr, its added to hp) or you can sneak attack them. which is pretty much how it worked in real life.

two other feats from Hyboria's finest worth getting for ranged attacking:
"eagle eye"- point blank range now at 60ft, which allows you to wpn spec and sneak attack out to that range.
"sniper's .." you added a further +2 to hit and +2 damage while in point blank range.

also check out the feats in the free companies book, the disciple of archery feats were pretty awesome.

 

[Foxworthy]

My suggestion would be a Aquilonian Soldier/Thief. Put Adaptability in Hide and Spot.

At first level you take Thief and the feats, EWP (Bossonian Bow) and Point Blank Shot

You follow thief up to about 5ith level, and nab the feats Precise Shot and Skill Focus (Hide)

Than you use your levels of Soldier after that to get eagles eye, sniper, out of thin air, weapon focus, and weapon spec, stealthy...

The goal of the build isn't to be the best long distance shot with the bow, the goal is to be able to hide and fire getting sneak attack dice. Two dice of sneak attack have the ability to counter act most armor. The average damage for two senak attack dice is 7, and with sneak attack style that goes up to nine. Add a third sneak attack die and that goes up to 10.5 and 13.5 respectively. Using eagle eye you can be up to sixty feet away and get sneak attack. Giving your opponents a -6 to their spot. Which helps counter act the -10 to your hide for using out of thin air.

The plus two bonus to your hide skill through adaptability is wortht he feat to use the bossonian bow and all classes are considered favored. And since stealthly and skill focus are unnamed bonus they stack so with the you have a +7 to your hide skill. Plus adaptability allows hide to be a class skill all the way through your career so you don't have to worry about using cross class points as a solider.

It's a deadly build.

 

[slaughterj]

i treat ranged finesse exactly like the melee version. if you can beat the ac by ac+dr then you bypass all the armour, either hitting an eye or some other exposed area.

I'm thinking I might make this a house rule. Ranged weapons do less than melee (e.g., limited STR up to the bows' rating, no 1.5x for 2-handed, or power attack, or power attack x2 for 2-handed, etc.), and while they make up for that somewhat by being ranged, I doubt that enabling ranged finesse for everyone will amount to much - e.g., how likely is it that the focused archer will finesse the guy in DR 6 armor at 2 range increments (i.e., effective -10)? And given the reduced AP for finesse attacks, those missed shots due to armor will do next to nothing, so that's a big risk to take anyway. The only concern I would have it that people might try to argue "why not allow ranged sneak attack at any range as well, since it's a matter of hitting a vital point, similar to finesse."

 

[Maximo]

IIRC Hyboria's Finest had a Soldier/Borderer combo called Master Archer which can be what you want. I remember it to be a quite solid build with the bonus of being more of a "Hyborian Spec-Ops" archer than a line soldier.

Also, IIRC, there were some suggestions as to which feats to take with this build (and its rules variants were quite powerful).

 

[Sutek]

I'm thinking I might make this a house rule. Ranged weapons do less than melee (e.g., limited STR up to the bows' rating, no 1.5x for 2-handed, or power attack, or power attack x2 for 2-handed, etc.), and while they make up for that somewhat by being ranged, I doubt that enabling ranged finesse for everyone will amount to much - e.g., how likely is it that the focused archer will finesse the guy in DR 6 armor at 2 range increments (i.e., effective -10)? And given the reduced AP for finesse attacks, those missed shots due to armor will do next to nothing, so that's a big risk to take anyway. The only concern I would have it that people might try to argue "why not allow ranged sneak attack at any range as well, since it's a matter of hitting a vital point, similar to finesse."

Effective -10 what?

Two handed & Power Attack don't do anything for bow use.

Range Sneak attacks already work at any range. No target can Parry a ranged attack, and if they can't Dodge (from surprise or doing something that prevents them from doing so) then Sneak Attack can be applied.

I think you are confused about how ranged AP works.

 

[Foxworthy]

I'm thinking I might make this a house rule. Ranged weapons do less than melee (e.g., limited STR up to the bows' rating, no 1.5x for 2-handed, or power attack, or power attack x2 for 2-handed, etc.), and while they make up for that somewhat by being ranged, I doubt that enabling ranged finesse for everyone will amount to much - e.g., how likely is it that the focused archer will finesse the guy in DR 6 armor at 2 range increments (i.e., effective -10)? And given the reduced AP for finesse attacks, those missed shots due to armor will do next to nothing, so that's a big risk to take anyway. The only concern I would have it that people might try to argue "why not allow ranged sneak attack at any range as well, since it's a matter of hitting a vital point, similar to finesse."

Effective -10 what?

Two handed & Power Attack don't do anything for bow use.

Range Sneak attacks already work at any range. No target can Parry a ranged attack, and if they can't Dodge (from surprise or doing something that prevents them from doing so) then Sneak Attack can be applied.

I think you are confused about how ranged AP works.

The effective -10 he's describing is from allowing ranged finesse at two ange increments. -4 for two additional range increments and -6 because of the DR 6.

And ranged sneak attack only extends out to thrity feet, not any ranged increment. Unless you have eagle ye feat which increases it to sixty feet.