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Author Topic: D&D 3.5 / Pathfinder questions  (Read 7876 times)

Tobel

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D&D 3.5 / Pathfinder questions
« on: September 11, 2013, 08:40:12 pm »

Hey all,

I'm still really new to D&D (only one campaign) and am starting a new Pathfinder campaign soon with some friends. I am thinking about doing a Fighter Archer and have some general ideas on what feats to select (Point blank, rapid shot, precise shot) off the bat. I have read it is also important to delve into stealth but I'm not really up to speed on stealth mechanics though and was wondering if someone could explain if I will be getting a bonus to my rolls when firing from stealth or not.

Also, any other recommendations about feats, skills or equipment would be greatly appreciated. We will be playing with Pathfinder rules in the Forgotten Realms universe.

I didn't see any general Q&A threads so I figured this might be helpful for any other newcomers like myself.
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Fanofgaming

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Re: D&D 3.5 / Pathfinder questions
« Reply #1 on: September 11, 2013, 09:08:06 pm »

When you shoot somebody out of stealth and they don't detect you, they are considered flat-footed. They are denied their dexterity bonus to their AC, which will make some enemies much easier to hit. I've never tried turning a fighter into a stealthy archer, but make sure you don't end up taking too much of an armor check penalty or your stealth skills will really suffer for it. It really depends on your playstyle, honestly -- bows don't reliably deliver very much damage, especially at high levels. A rogue would get sneak attack damage, which could add considerably to their damage output, but fighters don't get that (unless there's a feat for it that I don't know about). Be sure to get the bow which adds your strength bonus to damage; I think it's the composite bow. I would personally never try that build myself, but it could be a fun one if you do it right.
« Last Edit: September 11, 2013, 09:09:43 pm by Fanofgaming »
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KoE

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Re: D&D 3.5 / Pathfinder questions
« Reply #2 on: September 11, 2013, 10:05:16 pm »

re: stealth, you should probably check how your DM intends to use it. The printed rules are somewhat confusing and kind of terrible (since they try to avoid MMO-style total-cloaking and wind up making it very hard to do more than find a dark corner and hide). They can be finicky and game-boggy to play, though I think they posted some alternate rules on the blog some time ago. It all depends heavily on playstyle of course, so don't let my grinching scare you off.

Fanofgaming is right about flat-footed and sneak attacks (which I think is probably why you've heard Stealth is important which as I've alluded to is a can of worms in itself). I do have to dispute the bit about bows being unreliable in Pathfinder (it's mostly true in 3.5, if memory serves). Early on they may be a bit lackluster compared to the guy body-blocking and swinging his falchion, especially if you're a non-human eating up all the prerequisite feats. But by level 6 with Manyshot and Rapid Shot you are firing three arrows at -2 to your BAB - one of which is two arrows in the same attack roll, but that's three chances to roll damage and you've still got an iterative attack. It's honestly kind of nuts, especially with a Fighter's bonuses - and in a lot of settings, you can bring a ranged full attack to bear easier than a melee one. If memory serves, some of the Paizo numbercrunching threads came to the conclusion that archer fighters were one of the best for dealing out damage, both in a sterile, numbers-only setting and in a 'real game' setting (given the full attack thing). And in my personal experience, I've more than once had an archer character stealing the show a little bit (even if I had intentionally built it sub-optimally).

As for actual suggestions:

You do want a Composite Bow equal to your strength bonus as soon as you can get it. They are moderately expensive early on, though. It's generally good practice to keep a melee weapon just in case, too - generally something two-handed will suit you best. Don't bother with Weapon Finesse or anything like that, though. As soon as you can afford it, try to get a handy quiver of 'sometimes' arrows - cold iron, silvered, whatever, to bypass damage reduction. There may or may not be some magic arrow types that are handy for this when you have the cash. (I think a few +1 arrows are actually fairly cheap and are nice in a fight with something with dr/magic). If you decide not to go the stealth route, grab the heaviest armor your DEX bonus can be maxed out in (and if you're a straight Fighter, that's only going to go up with Armor Training). Even if you do go Stealth, between Armor Training and mithral armor, you can eliminate the penalty from full plate (although it's definitely a higher level thing given the cost of mithral full plate).

For feats, you probably won't have too much room to work with just because of all the silly prerequisites and such. You need Point Blank Shot and Precise Shot for sure; Rapid Shot follows after that. Deadly Aim is effectively power attack for bows, and in Pathfinder it's almost always better to power attack. The Fighter-class-features-disguised-as-feats are obvious (Weapon Focus, Weapon Specialization, and the improved versions). Get Many Shot as soon as it comes up. I'm pretty sure that's everything in the core rulebook that really define an archer; there are doubtless a few in the APG and Ultimate X books. My group has always sworn by Toughness (especially at low levels where you're getting a precious extra 3 HP), and a Fighter can always stand to shore up his will saves with Iron Will and Improved Iron Will.

I can't remember if the crit feats were considered worth it or not for bows; they're never going to happen often, since you can only expand the range of a bow to 19-20, but you can get some nifty effects. They're very high level in any case.
« Last Edit: September 11, 2013, 10:10:22 pm by KoE »
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Fanofgaming

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Re: D&D 3.5 / Pathfinder questions
« Reply #3 on: September 11, 2013, 10:51:14 pm »

-snip-

This individual knows more about bows than I do. Listen to him.

KoE, you have no idea what you've just done to the people for whom I am DMing Pathfinder. I'll give them your regards.
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Sensei

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Re: D&D 3.5 / Pathfinder questions
« Reply #4 on: September 12, 2013, 01:17:11 am »

I don't know about Pathfinder, but I know 3.5 has a lot of useful feats and abilities in the splatbooks. For example, if you happen to have a wisdom score, you can take Zen Archery (feat from Complete Warrior) to add your wis mod to attack and damage- extremely useful!

KoE covered the usual archer stuff except for one thing: When you make a ranged attack, you trigger attacks of opportunity. If a melee guy gets up to you, make sure you get out of his reach before attacking- usually you can just five-foot-step and still get a full round attack, unless you're being flanked or dealing with an enemy who has reach and threatens more than one square around him.
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Tobel

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Re: D&D 3.5 / Pathfinder questions
« Reply #5 on: September 12, 2013, 01:20:12 am »

Cheers to all for the info. I'm not dead set on Fighter persay, just looking to find different approaches between rogue/fighter/ranger. I'd like to have some utility with my character as well. I'll read more!
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Sensei

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Re: D&D 3.5 / Pathfinder questions
« Reply #6 on: September 12, 2013, 01:22:05 am »

Say- what level are you at, and what books do you have open?
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Tobel

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Re: D&D 3.5 / Pathfinder questions
« Reply #7 on: September 12, 2013, 03:41:43 am »

We're starting at level 1. All books are open, but obscure/3rd party sources need approval
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GobbieMarauder

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Re: D&D 3.5 / Pathfinder questions
« Reply #8 on: September 12, 2013, 04:45:33 am »

If you plan on taking any levels in Rogue, take levels in Ninja instead. They can do anything a Rogue can do, plus at level 5 or something they get a ki pool that lets them do some other cool things. Even if you don't plan to go to 5, there's no reason to pick Rogue over Ninja.
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tompliss

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Re: D&D 3.5 / Pathfinder questions
« Reply #9 on: September 12, 2013, 05:40:15 am »

Aren't there some feats that require both levels in Fighter & in Rogue, that let you count some fighter tinhgs to make sneak attack ?
I remember there was something like that, for the SwashBuckler (a rogue-y figther) in a weird book of 3.5 ...
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Girlinhat

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Re: D&D 3.5 / Pathfinder questions
« Reply #10 on: September 12, 2013, 10:05:52 am »

For a ranged character, there's essentially 3 choices I see...
1: The Ranger has some class skills, but is more build for handling the wilderness, with bonuses to tracking and terrain and whatnot.
2: The Fighter is pure martial prowess with the bow.
3: The Sorcerer/Wizard can supply a lot of VERY nice spells to utilize with the box.

The Rogue is decent, but not really suited for archery, despite what some people may say.  A decent dagger, sure, they can WRECK enemies, but with a bow it's difficult to get off sneak attacks.

Ranger is decent, they get an animal companion, a few spells, and lots of utility abilities, like tracking or favored terrain/enemy.

Fighter is where it gets really fun.  With a fighter in PF, you get a feat every level, so you can stack up your tricks and get some VERY nice firing support, as well as high BAB advancement and the ability to wear heavier armor - depending on how you play this, you can become a mounted archer taking riding skill and feats, a quick skirmisher using movement related feats, or a pure mobile artillery platform wearing plate armor and composite longbows.

Spellcasters, particularly wizards and sorcerers, can get some VERY powerful abilities if they have the chance to load them up.  True Strike gives a +20 to the next attack roll you make.  Gravity Bow upgrades your bow's damage by one size category, in this case a 1d8 Longbow becomes 2d6!  These are both 1st level spells, and you have access to them immediately, so even ONE multiclass into Wizard and a few Pearls of Power can make a HUGE difference.  For 2nd level spells you have access to Enlarge Person, which makes your weapon a size category larger AND stacks with gravity bow for a Longbow to deal 3d6 damage as a Huge weapon!  You can further stack this with Bull's Strength for +4 str (Enlarge gives a +2 already) and Deadly Aim, to get something like 3d6+9 damage if you've built a heavy hitter.  Or with a Repeating Heavy Crossbow, you could pump out 3d8 x2 (or x3) shots once you start getting Rapid Fire and Multishot and BAB+6 - crossbows have no strength bonus, so you could focus entirely into dex.

One huge thing to note though, is the Archer archtype allows you to perform combat maneuvers through a fired arrow.  If you take Power Attack (useless for an archer) you can unlock Improved Sunder (+2 to attack rolls on sunder) and then Greater Sunder, which transfers overkill damage to the wielder of the item.  For a 1-handed weapon, like a longsword or rapier that so many enemies tend to use, that's hardness 10 with 5 HP - deal 15 damage and it's destroyed, anything over that is applied to the user.  For an axe, that's hardness 5 and HP 5.  You start stacking this with damage enhancements to your weapon, or firing particular arrows like the Slow Burn Arrow (1d6 after 1 round, as it explodes) and Clustered Shot, you can start taking a shot at someone's armor, destroy it, and leave them crippled in one strike, with the bomb arrow going off the next round!

Tobel

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Re: D&D 3.5 / Pathfinder questions
« Reply #11 on: September 12, 2013, 10:34:31 am »

For a ranged character, there's essentially 3 choices I see...
1: The Ranger has some class skills, but is more build for handling the wilderness, with bonuses to tracking and terrain and whatnot.
2: The Fighter is pure martial prowess with the bow.
3: The Sorcerer/Wizard can supply a lot of VERY nice spells to utilize with the box.

The Rogue is decent, but not really suited for archery, despite what some people may say.  A decent dagger, sure, they can WRECK enemies, but with a bow it's difficult to get off sneak attacks.

Ranger is decent, they get an animal companion, a few spells, and lots of utility abilities, like tracking or favored terrain/enemy.

Fighter is where it gets really fun.  With a fighter in PF, you get a feat every level, so you can stack up your tricks and get some VERY nice firing support, as well as high BAB advancement and the ability to wear heavier armor - depending on how you play this, you can become a mounted archer taking riding skill and feats, a quick skirmisher using movement related feats, or a pure mobile artillery platform wearing plate armor and composite longbows.

Spellcasters, particularly wizards and sorcerers, can get some VERY powerful abilities if they have the chance to load them up.  True Strike gives a +20 to the next attack roll you make.  Gravity Bow upgrades your bow's damage by one size category, in this case a 1d8 Longbow becomes 2d6!  These are both 1st level spells, and you have access to them immediately, so even ONE multiclass into Wizard and a few Pearls of Power can make a HUGE difference.  For 2nd level spells you have access to Enlarge Person, which makes your weapon a size category larger AND stacks with gravity bow for a Longbow to deal 3d6 damage as a Huge weapon!  You can further stack this with Bull's Strength for +4 str (Enlarge gives a +2 already) and Deadly Aim, to get something like 3d6+9 damage if you've built a heavy hitter.  Or with a Repeating Heavy Crossbow, you could pump out 3d8 x2 (or x3) shots once you start getting Rapid Fire and Multishot and BAB+6 - crossbows have no strength bonus, so you could focus entirely into dex.

One huge thing to note though, is the Archer archtype allows you to perform combat maneuvers through a fired arrow.  If you take Power Attack (useless for an archer) you can unlock Improved Sunder (+2 to attack rolls on sunder) and then Greater Sunder, which transfers overkill damage to the wielder of the item.  For a 1-handed weapon, like a longsword or rapier that so many enemies tend to use, that's hardness 10 with 5 HP - deal 15 damage and it's destroyed, anything over that is applied to the user.  For an axe, that's hardness 5 and HP 5.  You start stacking this with damage enhancements to your weapon, or firing particular arrows like the Slow Burn Arrow (1d6 after 1 round, as it explodes) and Clustered Shot, you can start taking a shot at someone's armor, destroy it, and leave them crippled in one strike, with the bomb arrow going off the next round!

So for the fighter archer you're focusing most of your starting points into dex and str? Because the point of using composite is to get the str bonus correct?
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Girlinhat

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Re: D&D 3.5 / Pathfinder questions
« Reply #12 on: September 12, 2013, 11:44:15 am »

For ranged combat you basically have three options - Composite Longbow deals 1d8 + str, with dex for accuracy.  Longbow deals 1d8, but you can have higher dex for more accuracy.  Heavy Crossbow deals 1d10, with dex for high accuracy, but you really need Quick Reload feat to make it work.

If you can make a Heavy Repeating Crossbow work, it's better than a Longbow, but most people don't end up using it...  When discussing firearms, treat them as crossbows for all practical purposes.

Sensei

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Re: D&D 3.5 / Pathfinder questions
« Reply #13 on: September 12, 2013, 12:09:39 pm »

IMO crossbows are not worth it. If you have a +1 strength mod and a Stage 1 composite longbow, you average same damage (2-9 instead if 1-10) as a crossbow without annoying feats. Composite Longbows are the only way to go in my opinion; as a 10 strength leaves little room for advancement. Heck, at higher levels you can get strength enhancing magic items.

Looking at pathfinder, it looks like fighters get Weapon Training in lieu of the Focus and Specialization feats, so yeah, take those with bows. IDK if there's an equivalent in Pathfinder but in 3.5, there was an Elf variant in the monster manual called the Wild Elf: +2 STR, +2 DEX, -2 CON, -2 INT, which might be nice if you can persuade your DM to let you use it.
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Girlinhat

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Re: D&D 3.5 / Pathfinder questions
« Reply #14 on: September 12, 2013, 12:14:54 pm »

Pathfinder is more balanced, NOTHING gives +dex AND +str.  That's just asking for trouble...

Crossbows are also decent as they're simple weapons, clerics and wizards can use them.
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