I plan on making an archer bard soon. He'll be at level 13, so that's 8 feats to play with, since he'll be Human. The main restrictions of him are that he absolutely must be Human, and that he must have one metamagic feat. This is a reimagining of a character I'm playing now, hence the restrictions.
He'll have about 16 Dex and 14 Strength as base scores. He'll be using a +2 Shocking Screaming Shortbow.
Here's what I have so far:
H PBS
1 Rapid Shot
3 Arcane Strike
5 Deadly Aim
7 Precise Shot
9 Many Shot
11 Toughness
13 Persistent Spell (or piercing, I want to be able to affect some enemies)
With Good Hope / Inspire Courage / Haste, I'll have 5 attacks at this level. One from Many Shot, one from Rapid Shot, one from Haste, and two iteratives.
Just from all the things listed, my bonus to damage will be about +22, including the average damage of Screaming (1d4 sonic damage, from MIC) and Shocking on my bow.
My to-hit will be about +19 without doing RS or DA. Doing both, it's +14. On my second attack, it's +9.
That seems far too low for level 13.
What can I do to change this? Bracers of Archery are of no help, since Inspire Courage is a competence bonus. I do plan on getting a belt of dexterity once I have the funds. But even a +4 from that seems measly.
Should I swap out Arcane Strike for Weapon focus (shortbow)? I'd lose out on 3 (and soon to be 4) damage, but I could hit more often. I could also take the Precise weapon ability from MIC and drop out Precise Shot, but that'd drop my bow down to +1 (32k is about all I can spend right now).
What are my options?
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The Arcane Duelist Bard gets Arcane Strike for free. At 6th level he also gets the ability to increase the enhancement bonus of a weapon, similar to a paladin or magus. Normally, that would prevent him from using inspire courage, but by 13th level, he will have access to the Exquisite Accompaniment, Virtuoso Performance and Shadowbard spells from Ultimate Magic, allowing you to have multiple performances active at the same time.
Archetypes unfortunately aren't an option for this character. He's using a custom archetype that's basically a mix of Magician and Soundstriker, and the abilities overlap with Arcane Duelist.
Come to think of it, Weird Words would do about 115 damage on average for me if I all use them against the same enemy, since I have 24 charisma. Maybe I should just stick to that and not worry about archery...