I was thinking about building an aasimar wood oracle as a melee guy with strong magic as backup. But while toying around with the idea I noticed that, apart from their lack of bow proficiency, wood oracles make nice archers.
Wood bond gives a bonus to hit wich wooden weapons that scales with level to even out the lesser BAB. This is explicitly called out to work with bows. when adding the aasimar favored class bonus you get even more to hit than the full bab (yet with less/later iteratives) which ofsets things like favored enemy or weapon training.
The thorn burst revelation lets you deal damage as a swift action and creates caltrops in a 10ft burst for one round, possibly keeping melees away.
Wood sight helps ignore concealment from underbrush.
So, would an aasimar wood oracle with favored class bonus in wood bond and a dip into any class that gives bow proficiency (or taking the feat) work out as a switch hitter?
And would you go mainly dex and cha for high to hit or would you depend on wood bond and take more str to use with a composite bow for more damage and better to hit/damage in melee?
For melee I'd stick to a weapon which benefits from wood bond to double dip it. Shillelagh seems interesting at first glance but for a switch hitter casting a spell after entering melee doesn't sound that good an idea.
If I go the dip route to get the bow proficency I could see me going zen archer. By doing so I could flurry of arrows. And I would threaten even when holding the bow because I'd have imp. unarmed strike.
So, would an aasimar wood oracle with favored class bonus in wood bond and a dip into any class that gives bow proficiency (or taking the feat) work out as a switch hitter?
I'm sure you could make it work, but 10 levels of favored class advancement for a +1 competence bonus to hit (which doesn't stack with Bracers of Archery, for instance) seems like a pretty weak return on investment.
An elven archer oracle with the Ancient Lorekeeper archetype (for Gravity Bow, etc.) might be interesting, though.
That the competence bonus doesn't stack with bracers of archery is a good catch. I did only thing about inspire courage. And it is the same with bracers of falcon's aim.
When I calculated how much gain I have from the favored class bonus I looked at when I get the increases not how much bonus it is in the end. As you put it it seems much less worth the investment.
Perhaps the switch hitter or pure archer doesn't really work better than the pure melee wood oracle.
Thanks for the input, for me opening this thread was already well worth it.
There is currently a Wood Oracle Changeling in my party who has done nothing but stack Strength. We're running Rappan Athuk, and he's managed to survive to level 19. Between long duration buff spells, items, eldritch heritage (abysal), and tree shape, he's has 48-50 STR at the moment. He walk around as a huge sized treant with a greatclub and beats on people. His vital strikes are hitting for an average of 120-some, and his fist attack is being made at some rediculous number (+45 or something). His full-rounds are absolutely devistating. If anything, I'd recomend doing this. It's pure and simple hilarity.