Archer Fun

I made an archer to Baldur's Gate (Tutu) to see how powerful they are. And yup, that is what they are, powerful. Although, not overly so - if something gets into melee with the archer, his power is all but gone. But as long as there is someone tanking the mobs, archer can dish out some serious damage.

The race choice was obvious - an elf for high dexterity and the +1 to hit with bows, both long and short. I decided to specialize in the long ones, as they are, after all, cooler than the short ones - and, as far as I knew, better. Apparently, the intertubes disagrees with me. Well, in BG2 anyway, where you get the Tuigan shortbow, which gives +1 attack, making it very attractive choice.

Too bad I already got grand mastery in longbows and used the extra point (at level 8 currently) to halberds to have some skill in melee combat too. But I guess I can live with that. Too late to start putting points in short bows now - won't get grand mastery in them before I'm well past the point Tuigan was looted. Not like there's any other sensible weapon group to spend them in, though.

What makes archer so powerful is his +1 to hit and +1 to damage bonuses (with missile weapons) he receives every three levels. Archer also has an ability called called shot (see what I did there?), in which he gains one daily use per four levels. Called shot gets better every time a new daily use is gained, maxing out at level 16, when it makes every shot within the next 10 seconds to reduce target's thac0 (to hit), save vs Magic, and strength by one and also dealing +2 extra damage. (the effects stack)

Weaknesses of the kit are the inability to use metal armor and specialize in melee weapons. Basicly, he abandons the ranger's close combat prowess and becomes very deadly in ranged combat.

Now at level eight, Daeron (the archer) already has thac0 of -1 (+21 to hit) and three attacks per round. Minimum damage with normal arrows (and a +1 composite longbow) seems to be 12, stupidly higher with acid arrows. Daeron is doing over 50% of the party's kills. Fun times.

I'll update my progress later, when I'm in SoA/ToB part of the series.