+1 with adaptive would be where I would start (so you can take advantage of strength buffs, potions etc).
Then I would buy some Bracers of Falcon's Aim (they are cheaper than the cost of an item to increase your perception skill, get a +1 to hit and keen your bow).
After that is almost situational. If you are fighting a lot of a certain type of creatures bane is always a good buy. After that one of the elementals for extra damage isn't ever a bad thing either.
Pimp your bow? I don't know man, even followers of Zon-Kuthon want splinters down there.
And now onto actual discussion.
-if you fear DR due to outsiders, then planar seems fantastic- it ignores 5 of the DR for outsiders of all types. That might bide you long enough to get actual damage with your shots.
-You could just get a basic +2. Boring, but it is best crunch-wise.
-energy weapons might seem nice (giving an average of +3.5 damage to each shot)...but a lot of the enemies with high DR often have energy resistance as well. So ignore them unless you know what you are facing for the whole campaign (or maybe have it as a side arm; also, if you just happen to find a nice bow with other good enhancements as well, it doesn't hurt)
-huntsman might be interesting though. If you are the one tracking these enemies down, then that is the +1d6/ave. +3.5 just there. No resistance stops that.
+1 with adaptive would be where I would start (so you can take advantage of strength buffs, potions etc).
Then I would buy some Bracers of Falcon's Aim (they are cheaper than the cost of an item to increase your perception skill, get a +1 to hit and keen your bow).
After that is almost situational. If you are fighting a lot of a certain type of creatures bane is always a good buy. After that one of the elementals for extra damage isn't ever a bad thing either.
Skylancer4 has good advice though I would go with +1 Adaptive, Seeking Long Composite bow.
Negating any miss chances is always nice, especially firing into a melee to support a friend or at creatures in cover or darkness.
That and the bracers would cost you a little more than 11,000 of your 14K.
I'm going to agree with the others, +1 Adaptive is a minimum. Honestly, I'd just make it +2 Adaptive. It's always on extra attack and damage and remember that +3 bypasses dr/cold iron and dr/silver, +4 bypasses adamantine, and +5 bypasses good, evil, lawful, and chaotic. So the sooner you get to +5 the better (for ignoring most DR). Or you can take clustered shots and only face DR once on your full attack.
Well, those are not as immediately dire as with melee weapons, since you can just get arrows of the special material.
Sure, more expensive in the long run, but still, it is an easy switch.
If you go for the +'s, it should be for the general number crunching advantage. More damage, better accuracy.
RPG Superstar 2010 Top 16, Contributor
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I know a lot of folks think investing in arrows is a bad call, but you might think about getting a collection of bane arrows for critical fights. The nice thing about bane is it's damage bonus stacks with whatever your bow does. Most other arrows are too expensive.
I kind of disagree on seeking, it's a great enhancement but it's situational. Often if you can't see the enemy you don't know what space he's in either. Consider buying 50 seeking arrows and if you go through them all buy the upgrade on your bow.
The bow is one of the few weapons that allows stacking enhancements. Granted it's with arrows which are expendable, but it lets you get situational enhancements can be pretty sweet.
I know a lot of folks think investing in arrows is a bad call, but you might think about getting a collection of bane arrows for critical fights. The nice thing about bane is it's damage bonus stacks with whatever your bow does. Most other arrows are too expensive.
I kind of disagree on seeking, it's a great enhancement but it's situational. Often if you can't see the enemy you don't know what space he's in either. Consider buying 50 seeking arrows and if you go through them all buy the upgrade on your bow.
The bow is one of the few weapons that allows stacking enhancements. Granted it's with arrows which are expendable, but it lets you get situational enhancements can be pretty sweet.
I've always found that I like to put named enhancements on my bow, and bribe the party wizard to cast GMW on my arrows everyday. I like the idea of keeping bane arrows around, and they could benefit from GMW as well.
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RPG Superstar 2010 Top 16, Contributor
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I've always found that I like to put named enhancements on my bow, and bribe the party wizard to cast GMW on my arrows everyday. I like the idea of keeping bane arrows around, and they could benefit from GMW as well.I know a lot of folks think investing in arrows is a bad call, but you might think about getting a collection of bane arrows for critical fights. The nice thing about bane is it's damage bonus stacks with whatever your bow does. Most other arrows are too expensive.
I kind of disagree on seeking, it's a great enhancement but it's situational. Often if you can't see the enemy you don't know what space he's in either. Consider buying 50 seeking arrows and if you go through them all buy the upgrade on your bow.
The bow is one of the few weapons that allows stacking enhancements. Granted it's with arrows which are expendable, but it lets you get situational enhancements can be pretty sweet.
GMW is a rockstar, but it really doesn't matter if you put it on the bow or the arrows because it doesn't stack... the difference is if you cast it on arrows you can split it among multiple archers. Though with arrows there is the chance you can run out.
GMW is a rockstar, but it really doesn't matter if you put it on the bow or the arrows because it doesn't stack... the difference is if you cast it on arrows you can split it among multiple archers. Though with arrows there is the chance you can run out.I've always found that I like to put named enhancements on my bow, and bribe the party wizard to cast GMW on my arrows everyday. I like the idea of keeping bane arrows around, and they could benefit from GMW as well.I know a lot of folks think investing in arrows is a bad call, but you might think about getting a collection of bane arrows for critical fights. The nice thing about bane is it's damage bonus stacks with whatever your bow does. Most other arrows are too expensive.
I kind of disagree on seeking, it's a great enhancement but it's situational. Often if you can't see the enemy you don't know what space he's in either. Consider buying 50 seeking arrows and if you go through them all buy the upgrade on your bow.
The bow is one of the few weapons that allows stacking enhancements. Granted it's with arrows which are expendable, but it lets you get situational enhancements can be pretty sweet.
The +'s won't stack, but if you have a +1 seeking, cyclonic, adaptive, shocking, ghost touch longbow and a stack of arrows that are +4 from GMW, then your shot counts as a +4 seeking, cyclonic, shocking, and ghost touch.
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RPG Superstar 2010 Top 16, Contributor
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My suggestion is if you are getting a situational enhancement on your bow (seeking, cyclonic, adaptive, ghost touch, unholy, bane, etc), only get it if you're sure it's something you need in your campaign a lot. If you are playing carrion crown undead bane is going to be vastly more useful than cyclonic or seeking.
The stuff that you use less often figure out other ways around it. I mentioned buying arrows, another possibility is getting a couple back-up bows. If you are in an undead heavy campaign you can have a +1 undead bane bow, a +1 seeking bow, and a +1 cyclonic bow and it costs you about 26,000gp. A +1 adaptive cyclonic bow costs about 19,000 gold.
Incidentally, I don't get the love for adaptive at all. Unless you have some consistent way of getting very high Strength bonuses, it's just plain bad. A +1 corrosive bow averages 3.5 points extra damage most every round. Someone did the math and a straight +2 bow frequently beat even that due to being able to pull off deadly aim and rapid shot more frequently.
Look hard at what your group encounters frequently and build your main bow based on that then work around your weaknesses. In my campaign, if our archer had bought 50 +1 cyclonic arrows and 50 +1 seeking arrows he probably would have never run out of them. If your GM lets you buy arrows in smaller lots, just buy 10 of each.
One of the guys in my group just thrashed undead with a +1 unholy undead bane bow. If you are playing the Giantslayer AP I'd suggest a +1 giant bane bow... and likewise add unholy later on.
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Just want to point out that even though it's not a bow enchantment, or magic of any kind, unbreakable arrows are something you should really be looking into. Especially for your special material arrows. It's much cheaper in the long run to have a couple quivers worth of Cold Iron/Silver/Adamantine unbreakable arrows than it is to buy a few weapon blanches. Having them also allows you to put off getting the + enchantments for a while. Although I will say Ghost Salt weapon blanch is the one that's still incredibly useful, and should be part of any archers gear at higher levels.
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RPG Superstar 2010 Top 16, Contributor
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+1 seeking, cyclonic, adaptive, shocking, ghost touch longbow and a stack of arrows that are +4 from GMW, then your shot counts as a +4 seeking, cyclonic, shocking, and ghost touch.
You can simply cast it on the bow and have a +4 seeking, cyclonic, adaptive, shocking, ghost touch longbow. Though maybe not because of the +5 thing.
Regardless... there are a lot better ways to spend I don't think you've spent your gold well if you buy a seeking, cyclonic, adaptive, shocking, ghost touch longbow at all. There are much better ways for an archer to spend 73,000 gold.
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Incidentally, I don't get the love for adaptive at all. Unless you have some consistent way of getting very high Strength bonuses, it's just plain bad. A +1 corrosive bow averages 3.5 points extra damage most every round. Someone did the math and a straight +2 bow frequently beat even that due to being able to pull off deadly aim and rapid shot more frequently.
I'd have to disagree with you on this Dennis. It's 1000 GP to make sure that strength penalties don't reduce your attack modifier, that any increases to strength increase damage, and make sure that you don't need to upgrade to a new bow to make use of a higher strength stat, which most archers will get at some point, through one of the numerous means to do so. For 1000 GP, that's a bargain. It's maybe not the best use of Gold at low levels, but every archer should have an adaptive composite bow at some point in their career.
Also, I'd take a +2 to damage from a 14 strength (which every archer should be able to achieve, even while maximizing Dex) over a +3.5 energy damage. I'd rather take the damage that isn't subject to energy resistance, and although it's not as bad for bows, also requires a standard action to activate the enchantment.
Heck, even the OP, with a +1 bonus on strength, it a bull strength away from doing +3 damage, and last time I checked, bull strength isn't that hard to get.
Yeah, I think the low price-tag is what really makes adaptive so incredibly appealing. 1000 gold becomes chump change pretty quickly.
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Yeah, almost forgot to add that it doesn't make every subsequent enhancement more expensive. So going from a +1 adaptive longbow to a +2 adaptive longbow takes 6000 GP. Going from a +1 corrosive longbow to a +2 corrosive longbow is 10000 GP. And the difference only gets worse the higher the enhancements get.
I've never been a fan of any of the elemental enhancements, really. The extra damage is nice but even five points of elemental resistance more-or-less completely shuts that down.
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RPG Superstar 2010 Top 16, Contributor
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Ah, my apologies, I'd forgotten adaptive isn't a +1 enhancement. GP based enhancements have much better bang for the buck. I still think it's pretty situational, but if it's a straight GP bump then it works.
You've still piled a lot of +1 enhancements on a bow which are only occasionally useful.
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RPG Superstar 2010 Top 16, Contributor
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I've never been a fan of any of the elemental enhancements, really. The extra damage is nice but even five points of elemental resistance more-or-less completely shuts that down.
Nor I. I was just using it as an example... and not a good one since I'd forgotten about adaptive being a +gp enhancement.
It's been touched on upthread, but I find weapon blanches to be very handy for the DR issue.
Apply your weapon blanch to cold iron arrows (which only cost double) and both materials apply for piercing DR. So you can have cold iron silver arrows ready to go.
I don't really bother with the adamantine weapon blanch as it does nothing for hardness on animated objects.
The real, massive bonus for me has been ghost salt arrows. This makes your arrows ghost touch which can make you one of the only people in the party effective in a fight vs an incorporeal foe.
Admittedly this was PFS, but my ninja with ghost salt arrows saved the group I was with several times, and this wasn't too high level either. If you're playing a specialised archer I'd recommend some ghost salt arrows as soon as you can afford it. 5 treated arrows is 200gp plus the arrows I think. Quite cheap for killing that shadow your party meets at level 2.
I also have a barbarian alchemist who uses a bow. You can bet adaptive is a great ability on that character!