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If you want to rain down ranged weapon vengance on your foes from the rear lines, I would suggest a fighter or rogue (or starting out as one and adding a few levels of the other). Go with whatever they call a baseline elf (+2 dex, -2 con), and put your best scores into dex and int. Then give yourself a fairly decent str and con. I'd suggest trying for a better charisma since a lot of thief skills use it... at least getting a score that doesn't give you a penalty in it would be good.

The nice thing about these two classes is that a fighter archer would get a lot of extra feats (one extra at first level and one every even level after that IIRC), which will let you do stuff like trick shots, critical hit more often, rapid fire (taking a small penalty to hit on all your shots in return for just one more attack per round... useful when thinning out crowds), evade attacks of opportunity, and other fun stuff. And if for your melee weapon you choose something like a shortsword or rapier, you can use a feat on the weapon finesse skill to make your high dex work even harder for you. If you want an elven archer that can literally fill the sky with arrows, then a fighter would be a good choice.

If you go with a rogue you'll be able to use sneak attacks (used to be called "backstab", they're shots aimed as especially vulnerable targets that do extra damage... but there's special conditions applies to them like you either have to catch them by surprise or distracted) if you're within 30 yards to tear up tougher foes. You'll also have a wide arsenal of skills to choose from, like lockpicking, trap disarming, and the like. The class also works nicely if you want to buy into the image of an elf being graceful, clever, and highly skilled in many things.

If you combine the two classes (I'd suggest starting as a rogue for the extra skill points at creation), I'd suggest starting as a rogue then taking a level of fighter and alternating from there, putting any extra stat points you get at levels 4, 8, 12, etc into your dex.


Or... there's a very special class open to elven and half-elven archers... the Arcane Archer. It'd be a while before you could take it (if the class is allowed, which I believe it would be since it is one of the basic prestige classes), but you'd need to have the ability to cast arcane magic either as a bard, wizard, or sorceror. I'd suggest taking a level or two as a wizard and either taking enough levels as a fighter or thief (you'd have to choose only one, and while a rogue/AA is badass, it'd take longer to get there) to meet the other requirements.

With a single level as a wizard you'd be able to become an AA at either 10th level (rogue 8/Wizard 1) or at level 8 (Fighter 7/Wizard 1). The requirements would be to be either an elf or half-elf, have a total Base Attack Bonus of +6 or higher, have the ability to cast first level arcane spells, and know three specific feats (point blank shot, precise shot, and weapon focus in either longbow or shortbow). In return, the class has some really awesome magical archery abilities. At first level of Arcane Archer and every two levels afterwards you'll get a magical bonus of +1 to your arrows as they become enchanted while you fire them. Other fun abilities you get are the ability to place one of your memorized spells into an arrow and fire the arrow, giving the spell the effective range of your arrow... this is good fun with stuff like disintegrate and whatnot. The only downside is that by mixing classes with few wizard levels, you're not gonna have many spells to put in there. You'll eventually get the ability to fire a seeker arrow (once per day you can fire an arrow at a target you know is within range and it'll go around corners and whatnot to get to them... moxious.), a phase arrow (again, once per day, but this one flies THROUGH any non-magical wall or obstacle in its way... including armor), and eventually even an arrow of death (It takes a full day to craft the arrow, it has a lifespan of one year, and you can only have one at a time, but this arrow forces the target to make a dc 20 fortitude save or die immediately). Oh, an then there's the Hail of Arrows ability, where you give up your normal attacks for that round to (once a day) fire a single arrow into the air... which turns into one arrow for every level you have as an arcane archer and each targets a separate enemy with your full attack bonus.

Yes Virginia, your arrows CAN blot out the sun.

After last night, you owe me breakfast. talk2hand

Just.. one thing.

Did you do that from memory? gonk

I made Miis. 4laugh

I need to figure out how to get this thing on the intarwebs.

But first...breakfast. sweatdrop

This is awesome. I'd be worried if you weren't amused writing it.

cool The link I just posted was to the whole 500-word story in my LJ. I'm actually quite entertained by the idea of making this a full story.

Alternatively, she can mix and match Rogue and Fighter levels as PnP doesn't have the 3 class restriction that NWN has.

NEERDS.