Elven Archers
Most of you have no idea what Allyson has to live with on a daily basis. You’re about to hear a tale so chilling, so geeky that you’ll want to immediately send Allyson an email to express your condolences on having married such a sad nerdy mess.
Last night, when I went to bed, I had trouble getting to sleep. No, I hadn’t had coffee (and caffeine doesn’t affect me all that much anyway). No, I wasn’t worried about work/family/global politics. I had trouble falling asleep because my mind was so busy that it wasn’t prepared to shut off. Was I pondering a particularly difficult CSS issue from work? Was I trying to figure out finances on my mental calculator? Was I trying to understand some new scientific concept?
No. I was trying to make the “perfect build” in the D20/D&D system for the iconic elven archer.
In the end, I decided that arcane archer was really the best way to go if your DM/video game engine allows that prestige class. In that case, I fight with the best distribution to get you there. I initially thought Ranger 5/Rogue 4/Wizard 1 because Both Ranger and Rogue have Hide/Move Silently as class skills. Then I realized that if you took Fighter instead of Ranger, you could gain an extra two points of damage on each arrow hit—six in the event of a critical. Why the rogue levels? Quite simply, the extra sneak attack damage makes arrows more worthwhile. If you have access to the Shadowdancer prestige class, it might be fun to throw in a bit of that for the hide in plain sight class ability, which allows more frequent use of your sneak attack damage. Once you take Arcane Archer though, you should just ride it into epic levels.
Now then, this isn’t a perfect solution. I see problems with the build right off the bat. Each level of Rogue depletes your base attack bonus and gives you fewer possible attacks per round. I’d have to make a spreadsheet(1) to determine whether it would be better statistically to take the lack of sneak attack dice in favor of more chances to hit.
Allyson doesn’t deserve this fate.