Larkas's page

Hello there guys! I've been throwing around the idea of playing an Arcane Archer, and I'm not quite sure on how to best do this.

I guess that a more traditional build would be Fighter 4/ Wizard 4/ Arcane Archer 10/ Wizard +2. You'd end up with BAB +17, 7th level spells and everything else you'd expect from the build.

However, I've been wondering if I could come up with something better using Magus. By going Magus 8/ Arcane Archer 10/ Magus +2, I'd end up with the same BAB +17 and 6th level spells.

Now, the problem is that Magus doesn't really offer anything to ranged combat short of ranged spells, so the character would only really take to the bow at level 9. The build wouldn't flow very well. It would be better able to cast spells armored, even though they don't have "discounted" spells like the bard (this isn't really an issue, though).

Do you guys have any advice regarding this? I don't care much for uber optmization (though I'm not against it either!), but I'm sure there must be some way to do it better than this. For now, all I can think of is getting an Elvencraft Composite Longbow ported from 3.5 so I can at least use the same weapon both for melee and ranged combat. Am I missing something? Any archetype I should be aware of? Any help would be greatly appreciated!

So, one of the rules changes in Pathfinder that always baffled me the most was rolling Acrobatics against an opponents CMD in order to move without causing Attacks of Opportunity. Now, I understand that rolling against a flat DC 15, like it was in 3.5, is way too easy, to the point of being pointless to roll at all after a few levels.

However, CMD is not a solid choice to be rolling against. Too many things add to CMD. It isn't only about BAB, Strength and Dexterity, it also about size modifier and anything that adds to touch AC. Not only is that mechanically difficult to succeed, it makes no sense fluff-wise: I can see Dexterity helping you react faster against a creature that is trying to avoid your attacks, but Strength? BAB? SIZE? If anything, size should be a NEGATIVE modifier here, not a positive one.

So, I've been thinking: Reflex already is the measure of how quickly a creature can react to anything, so why not make that an opposed check? It adds a bit of dice rolling, sure, but not a lot, and it enables some more combat options that were rendered virtually useless with the change. Plus, it is just a more logical approach to the problem at hand.

What do you guys think? Is that a good change?