Achery and Crossbow Combat Styles for Rangers

[Owen K. C. Stephens]

So, in the APG, the Crossbow combat style for rangers lists Crossbow Mastery and Focused Shot feats as options.

The descriptions of those feats mentions they are also options for the archery combat style.

If true, that means the archery style has more feat options than any other style, and can be used to master a crossbow, even though there is a separate crossbow combat style that offers rapid reload... which you don't necessarily need if you take Crossbow Mastery (which, as a ranger, you can take as a combat style without meeting its prerequisites, although you may still want Rapid Reload to avoid taking AoOs from reloading).

And Crossbow combat style gives you Deadly Aim, while Archery does not.

So an archer might prefer Crossbow combat style for Deadly Aim (since Far Shot is the similar option for archery style, and doesn't come up as often), while a crossbow user might prefer the Archery combat style since it gets him Rapid Shot and he can still take Crossbow Mastery.

This strikes me as odd.

[Michael Sayre]

That has to be a typo. Maybe they were originally playing with the idea of just adding the crossbow feats to archery and then decided to make it it's own style? Seems like a target for errata.

[Owen K. C. Stephens]

That would actually be my guess, yes.

[Michael Sayre]

Owen K. C. Stephens wrote:

That would actually be my guess, yes.

Good catch though. I've never really seen a reason to create a crossbow-wielding Ranger before, so I hadn't ever put the feats and styles side-by-side and noticed that discrepancy before.

[d20pfsrd.com]

Let me know if people think an editor's note is necessary on the page on d20pfsrd.com.