Building an Archer

[Camlo Alban]

So I'm building an archer paladin of Shelyn for a Carrion Crown campaign, and I'm looking for some advice on which build to pursue. Both are using a human paladin as a base for roleplay reasons. I've poked around the boards a bit, but still having trouble settling on an option.

The first is straightforward - either straight paladin or divine hunter. Likely vanilla paladin, possibly with Oath of Vengeance.

Feats:

H): Point-Blank Shot
1): Precise Shot; Smite 1/day; Detect Evil
2): Divine Grace; LoH
3): Rapid Shot; Mercy (Shaken or Fatigue); Aura of courage; Divine Health
4) Channel; Smite 2/day; Spells
5): Deadly Aim; Divine Bond (Weapon)
6): Mercy (Diseased?)
7): Manyshot; Smite evil 3/day
8): Aura of Resolve
9): Weapon Focus: Longbow; Mercy (Frightened / Exhausted)
10): Smite evil 4/day
11): Improved Precise Shot; Aura of justice

With divine hunter, I'd probably just put Weapon Focus in at level 3 or so.

The second option is a paladin/bard/arcane archer build that I like because it seems a little more versatile and fits with the flavor of the character. It sacrifices LoH progression and Smite damage/use per day progression but gains lots of skills, some spells, and the Archaeologist's Luck ability (which makes up for some of the loss in BAB and Smite).

Paladin (Divine Archer) 6 / Bard (Archaeologist) 1 / Arcane Archer 10

H): Point-Blank Shot
DA): Precise Shot
1): Rapid Shot; Smite evil 1/day; detect evil
2): Divine Grace; LoH 1d6
3): Weapon Focus: Longbow; Divine Health; Aura of care; Mercy (Fatigue or Shaken)
4): Channel energy; Smite Evil 2/day; Paladin spells; LoH 2d6
5): Deadly Aim; Divine Bond (Longbow)
6): Ranged Mercy; LoH 3d6; Second attack
7): Manyshot; Archaeologist's Luck +1; Bard Spells
8): Enhance Arrows (magic)
9): Lingering Performance; Imbue Arrow; +1 Bard casting
10): Enhance arrows (Elemental); +1 Bard casting
11): Improved Precise Shot; Seeker arrow; +1 Bard casting

etc

Thoughts?

[Fromper]

If you do go straight paladin, you might consider the Greater Mercy and Ultimate Mercy feats. They'd slow your archer feat progression to take them early, but that just brings up the question of how important is it for you to do more damage. If the rest of the party are good damage dealers, then taking on more of a healing role, and being able to raise people from the dead, could be useful.

As for the Divine Hunter archetype, we had a conversation about that here maybe a week ago. I'm too lazy to look up the thread, but you should be able to find it pretty easily. I think we all pretty much agreed that the archetype isn't worth it, and that Oath of Vengeance is nice if you're focused on damage dealing.

[Joanna Swiftblade]

How did you meet the pre-req for Arcane Archer with only one level of bard? Don't they require at least level 2 arcane spells?

[Camlo Alban]

Joanna Swiftblade wrote:

How did you meet the pre-req for Arcane Archer with only one level of bard? Don't they require at least level 2 arcane spells?

Nope, it only requires level one spells.

Fromper wrote:

If you do go straight paladin, you might consider the Greater Mercy and Ultimate Mercy feats. They'd slow your archer feat progression to take them early, but that just brings up the question of how important is it for you to do more damage. If the rest of the party are good damage dealers, then taking on more of a healing role, and being able to raise people from the dead, could be useful.

As for the Divine Hunter archetype, we had a conversation about that here maybe a week ago. I'm too lazy to look up the thread, but you should be able to find it pretty easily. I think we all pretty much agreed that the archetype isn't worth it, and that Oath of Vengeance is nice if you're focused on damage dealing.

Yeah, I saw that thread, and I agree. I think DH is only worth it in the second case where some of the later abilities like Aura of Justice aren't replaced because I'm taking Arcane Archer with that build.

With the straight paladin though, I like where your head is at with Greater / Ultimate Mercy. They are certainly feats I'd like to take. Possibly in place of Deadly Aim (pushing it back to 9th?) and then Ultimate Mercy later on.

The rest of the party is a sword-and-board paladin with the Warrior of the Holy Light archetype, a melee archivist bard, a dwarven fighter specializing with a longhammer, and an oracle planning on going mystic theurge. It'd probably be the fighter and I doing most of the damage, I'd imagine, but I certainly don't need to be completely optimized for damage for the character to work.