PrC Review: AA

[Dragor]

NWN Definition:
"Master of the elven warbands, the arcane archer is a warrior skilled in using magic to supplement their combat prowess. Beyond the woods, arcane archers gain renown throughout entire kingdoms for their supernatural accuracy with a bow and their ability to imbue their arrows with magic. In a group, they can strike fear into an entire enemy army.
Fighters, rangers, paladins, and barbarians become arcane archers to add a little magic to their combat abilities. Conversely, wizards and sorcerers may take this prestige class to add combat capabilities to their repertoire. Monks, clerics, druids, rogues and bards rarely become arcane archers."

FRwiki Definition:
"The arcane archer is a prestige class whose members mix archery with magic, making them fearsome combatants."

MY VIEW

There is a differences in the FR AA and the NWN AA that make it less flexible mechanically, the difference in imbue arrow.

RP wise an AA is an elf, probably closer to your stereotypical elf than any other elf.

This is probably the one class where taking the minimum amount of wizard/bard/sorc levels I can accept since all the magical talent is focused on the arrows.

I think it would be much less prevalent however if imbue arrow worked like it does in PnP.

[ThePaganKing]

I can't believe that it says bards do not make good AAs. My AA Aellian is pretty awesome IMO, he has the bard flexibility with the combat power of an AA. I have made a couple archers and my bard (11), and AA (9), is the best by far.

[roguethree]

Yeah, the writers of the game seldom have any idea of what's going to be crazy good. Bardcane archers are sick.

[Dragor]

I can't believe that it says bards do not make good AAs. My AA Aellian is pretty awesome IMO, he has the bard flexibility with the combat power of an AA. I have made a couple archers and my bard (11), and AA (9), is the best by far.

Notice that it doesn't say they make bad AA's, it says that they rarely become AA's

[Mournas]

Yeah, the writers of the game seldom have any idea of what's going to be crazy good. Bardcane archers are sick.

With or without AA, Archers are sick period. A 2Fighter18Cleric Zen Archery build is just as nasty if not more nasty than AA builds.

[Root]

Hate this class, personally. Balance-wise I don't really care, it's a glass cannon that can be sick-good if built with HiPS.

But the RP of it is garbage. You like bows and magic. :|

[Thief Of Navarre]

Hate this class, personally. Balance-wise I don't really care, it's a glass cannon that can be sick-good if built with HiPS.

But the RP of it is garbage. You like bows and magic. :|

The RP is only any good if you live exclusively in an elven city (Suldanessellar maybe?) otherwise like the samurai it makes no sense one ever being seen in Sundren. You could argue that there are elven warbands in sundren.. Im not convinced its a strong enough tie to make a reclusive elven PrC viable. You can see there being Darkwood stalkers in dark woods but Arcane archers seem much like dwarven defenders in my eyes and should be closely bound to their communities (like Breachgnomes as well while im here).