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After a few posts and discussions with my DM we overhauled the Arcana Archer to make it more interesting.
Changes:
Additional Requirement:
Must be able to use an arcane bond (weapon)
No additional Armor or Weapon Proficiency
Enhance Weapon
Ath the first level the Arcane Archers Weapon becomes his bonded object (all previous bonds are broken).
Also he get an Arcane Pool equal half his AA level + his primary caster attribute. This pool regenerate every morning.
The AA can use his pool to enhance his bow for a short time. As a swift action he can spent one point of his pool to add an +1 enhancement bonus to his bow for 1 minute. This bonus stack with existing boni but the total bonues can be never higher then +5.
At 3rd level he can also adding fire, frost, shock or corrosive enhancement to his bow by reducing the bonus by 1 (the bow has to have at least a +1 bonus)
At 5th level he can also at Distance by reducing the bonus by 1
At 7th level he can also add the elemental burst enhancement to the bow by reducing the bonus by 2
At 9th level he can also add the holy, unholy, chaotic or lawful enhancement to the bow by reducing the bonus by 2
He has to choose at the beginning of the day (while preparing his spells) which bonus he want to apply to his bow for the day.
Also it's not possible to add different elemental affects with this ability to the weapon.
You can add multiple elemtal affects to the bow with this ability (which all reduce the bonus) but you have to choose once you activate the ability which elemental affect you want use.
Example:
an AA level 5 decide to add fire and frost to his bow for this day, the Enhance Weapon Bonus will be: +1 fire or +1 frost
Imbue Arrow (Su)
Changed so you can also add touch spells to the bow
Seeker Arrow
Now it's a swift action, last for one round and cost one Arcana Pool
Phase Bolt
Standard Action, cost one Arcana Pool
Hail of Arrows
Full-Round Action, cost one Arcana Pool
Arrow of Death
DC changed to 20 + primary caster stat
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What do you think? Overpowered, underpowered, intressting, boring?
P.S.:
We also made a "crossbow" variant which had as additional requirement "Knowl. Engineering 5" and the Enhance Weapon also reduce the reload time by one step (effectively it counts as rapid reload and did not stack with the feat!). Also the ability descriptions are more tweak toward merging engineering with magic ("Charges" instead of "Arcana Pool" etc.)
Update:
Forgot to add this to Enhance Weapon:
At level 1 the enhancment bonus is +1, for every two additional levels of AA the bonus is increased by 1 to a maximum of +5 at AA Level 9
Update:
Due to the specific magic arrow mechanism and wording in the CRB I changed the description of "enhance arrows" to:
The AA can use his pool to enhance his arrows for a short time.
A few things that bug me. You've forced only wizards into being arcane archers (or the rare arcane bloodline sorcerer). That makes the prestige class horribly narrow. Before you could become an arcane archer as a bard, magus, a wizard with a familiar, or a sorcerer with any other bloodline.
Likewise you've forced the arcane archer to use only one bow, his new bond. Which means that if his bow gets smashed he can't use a spare or pick up a new one. So now the class basically shuts down if someone sunders an object that is normally pretty frail, or if they disarm him of said object.
IMHO you've stripped the AA of his primary benefit, and that's having always on enhancements to his ammunition. I'll admit that it wasn't a great ability before and needed to be ramped up (I gave some suggestions for making it on-par with real class features in your other thread), but now he has to expend a resource to do anything. A resource that's going to be pretty limited for most arcane archers for a long time, and forces them to be even more multi-ability dependent than they already are.
Meanwhile there was no significant improvement to the abilities or versatility of the bow. You still have to choose what effects you add at the start of the day, and those effects are still mostly lame.
You have essentially put a tax on sucking. :(
You can't even use Arcane Strike anymore in the round that you start fighting, because you don't have enough swift actions. At this point you'd be better off ignoring Arcane Archer entirely and going Eldritch Knight with Arcane Strike. At least then you will have strong magic, strong to-hit chances, can magic up your bow anyway (spells like greater magic weapon and flame arrow), and deal more damage to boot.
Arcane Archers really only get "shoot magic arrows" as a sustained class ability and now you've taken that away from them too.
Valid point with the bonded object:
The idea behind it was to give it a more "bonded to my weapon" feel. Maybe removing this would be better.
About the "always enchanted arrows":
I like class options were you have to take decisions, an ability which give you a flat, "always on" damage bonus is boring (from my point of view). That's why I looked at other classes and many have this "charge & Bonus exchange vor enchantment" System (which i like).
So I thought how to bring it into the AA, so it's not a no-brainer but you have to think "should I use it now or maybe later?", so you have to choose.
For the "A ressource to do anything":
Seeker Arrow & Phase Arrow already had a ressource mechanism (1/day etc.), I just streamlined it, so you can use these "ressources" also for other abilities.
I'm not sure about how much "Arcana Pool" the AA should have, thats what this post is also for. ;)
For "Multi Ability":
The AA has still the same three primary attributes (Dex > primary caster Stat > Str), I also reduced it by one by putting the Arrow of Death to the prim Caster Stat instead of Charisma.
For "Arcane Strike":
Valid Point! Maybe changing the "enchantment" option from swift action to no/free action, would be better.
Thanks for the feedback, showed me a lot of weak spots on this.
Question:
What do you think would be an appropiate pool for an AA? (Level+Prim Attribute?, 2x Level + Prim Attribute)
10 + Level + Primary Attribute is the one most frequently used for prestige classes as in the 1-20 range it gives results similar to 10 + 1/2 level + primary ability on 20 level base classes. It's the same formula used for the assassin's death attack, for instance.
If you're playing in a game that can exceed 20th level, I'd actually recommend changing the DCs to 15 + 1/2 prestige class level, because that will scale more appropriately in the long run, or 10 + level for the first 10 levels and +1/2 level therafter works too.
As for Seeker Arrows and Phase Arrows, I have no problems with them using some sort of resource (I think that's a great idea), but making all of their offensive abilities consume resources is overly harsh, especially since they lack the mechanical power to justify it. Their enhance arrow is not really worth needing a resource expenditure, any more than a fighter's ability to swing a sword does. That's basically how I see it when I look at EA using a resource, it's like seeing someone telling a Fighter that they need to spend a resource to make attack rolls.
Perhaps instead of nerfing Enhance Arrow, you'd be better off adding a feature such as "Arcane Shot" where you pick an special ability off of a list of special abilities and can then apply it by expending your pool.
Both Seeker and Phase Arrow could just be abilities selected off the list. You could add other special abilities to boot, which would add variance to the arcane archers of the world (instead of all of them having the same abilities all the time).
As an example, I rewrote the monk a while back into a class that's pretty solid. I didn't get rid of their monk features like wholeness of body or diamond body and stuff like that. Instead, I gave them "Secrets" that you could select and included those abilities as possible secrets to select.
It works well.
I like the idea with the special abilities (similar to the oracles mysteries).
Could work this way:
Enhance Weapon will only provide a flat +X Bonus (1 +1 every two additional levels).
At level 2, 4, 6, 8 you can choose one "arcane archer secret".
Some of them can be used spontaneous by spending pool points (e.g. seeker arrow) other improve all arrows (e.g. adding 1d6 elemental damage, but reduce the magic bonus by 1).
Interesting...
I think that's a good direction. A nice mix of static and dependable abilities (enhance arrow) and a set of activated / customizable abilities. It'd give the AA not only a more rounded skillset but it would also improve replay value, and would support more creativity in your tactics.
I feel if you are going to rework arcane archer it should be to a full class instead of a prestige class. To make it feel not the same as magus, make the arcane pool usable to buff the arrows at the start of the day and last all day. He could have some extra arcane points to switch it mid day or use on other abilities.
I agree on making it a base class I tried it once as a charisma based 4-level caster but never completed it.
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I imagine that the best way to make a better Arcane Archer, would probably be an archetype, or possibly an alternate class, to the Magus.
Like the mymidarch magus?
Mymidarch has a similar feel, yes. It's not quite what I would want though. Mainly when I think Arcane Archer, I think full attack bonus.
I had the chance to play the crossbow-tinke "re-build" and here is my feedback (giving feedback to yourself is somewhat strange^^).
Background:
From a pure roleplay-fluff point the rework as "crossbow tinker" is simply nice (if you like a little bit steam-punk flair in pathfinder^^)
Mechanics:
Enhance Weapon
We kept the "enhance Weapon" as an ability which needs to be activated. Keeping it this way don't add an interesting option to the game at all. Most times I don't activate it, because "I could use it later, too and +1 isn't THAT needed here".
=> So I would change this back to "always active" & "enhancement has to be decided when preparing spells for the day"
Maybe add an option to change the "enhancement setup" by spending a Pool Point.
Imbue Arrow
I don't really used this often as it would mean I loose all iterative attacks and the selection of appropriate spells is very limited. (I've only 3rd level spells yet).
=> can't really think of a solution here, making it part of a full attack seems to be to powerful.
Arcane Pool
I would change this so it will only be used for the Seeker Arrow, Phase Arrow and Hail of Arrows. (not tested yet)
others
I also thinking of adding some sort of "Arcane Spell Failure" Ignore mechanic to embrace the AA to wear armor (I think this would fit and make him more visual as "Combat character")