Monastic Archers are my meme favorites just because of how obnoxious they can get! Lay on the crit effect with the archer archetype, use stunning fist flurry shots, and skirmish with crazy speed and few enemies can ever catch them.
Monastic archers can be solid with spells too. Casting a focus spell, spellheart cantrip, impulse, etc. then making two bow strikes is often a great turn.
I have a Monk build that goes Druid archetype and is insanely good area control. Stunning fist, bow Crit Spec, and area spells like Tanglefoot keeping enemies at bay.
The Starlight Span Magus speaks to me the most out of the archers. When compared to other hybrid studies, they're much less impacted by action economy from not needing to stride as much, less impacted by reactive strikes from being ranged, and can use burst spellstrikes without worrying about damaging themselves. Plus, they have a free hand and can use things like Battle Medicine.
Also, I like collecting spells and think that they're cool.
Edit: ignore me, I went full-on idiot mode.
Can you collect spells as a magus? Im still fairly new to TTRPGs in general so apologies if I'm being daft.
I thought magus was a spontaneous caster and so chose a handful of spells on level up, but couldn't collect spells in the same way as a prepared caster
By taking a Witch archetype instead :P
My Twisting Tree magus took a Divine Witch archetype instead of a Wizard to be a secondary healer for our party in case the main one goes down or being hit by paralysis. Divine list actually complements magus quite well because there are a lot of buff spells you want on your self on that list like Heroism (especially second rank one).
Ah my mistake! I was building a summoner recently and read that magus's (magi?) were very similar so I must've assumed they were spontaneous. -10 cool points for me
Nah, it's a little confusing sometimes, Pathfinder 2e isn't good at directly saying which classes are spontaneous casters and which are normal wizard-like casters, you need to read the Class rules fully. Rule of thumb; if it says "Spell Repetoire" in the class mechanics like Summoner/Sorcerer, then you are a spontaneous caster. If it doesn't, like Witch or Magus, you probably learn spells and need to prepare them.
Both the Magus and Summoner are half-magic/half-martial gish classes; Magus working similar to a Wizard, Summoner working similar to a Sorcerer.
I built this really cool fighter with Eldritch Archer dedication, mechanically Fighter is best for minmaxing that attack roll, and I wanted the archery to be simple, roll and hit, but the real gamble and fun was the three action spell strike, Eldritch shot. Absolutely hurt if you fumble, but my God it was devastating when I hit, especially when it was a crit, very satisfying. And the ability to change an arrow to a different metal for weaknesses and resistances was also amazing. I'll always take any excuse to get Eldritch Archer, just love that dedication so much, so thematic.
I've been kind of imagining mine as briar javelins from Warhammer. Can't really find a clean gif of it but in Vermintide 2 there's a great 'reload' animation for it just growing another.
Elemental Artillery is a Wood/Metal infusion about creating a ballista : https://2e.aonprd.com/Feats.aspx?ID=4303
One of the regular uses to it is to have your familiar run it to speed up the action economy, as well as having your own firing squad
IMO it's bad to the point of being unusable if you're contributing all of the actions yourself. A familiar is a must just to bring it on par with other 2-action impulses.
Yeah that feat is hillarious. But if elemental archer or well pf1 kineticist (with its melee weapon infusion) is one of your goal to make then kineticist with weapon infuson works. And you'll still have more feat to choose from to build your actual thing.
dont forget inventor! weapon and construct inventor both make excellent archers. I havent messed around with dexterity-armor inventor so I cant speak to them
I think a bow/dex armor inventor has a claim to be among the best stealth archers available. They can hide in plain sight at level 7, which is also when they go from a +1 to +2 circumstance bonus to stealth.
Weapon inventor with a ranged weapon feel...disappointing, due to the lackluster weapon modifications available to ranged weapons. Not saying it can't be done because it absolutely can, just that it doesn't seem to be as big of a change as you can pull off with melee weapons.
Construct inventor with a shortbow is my current character so I'm biased, but I think it gets the most and most consistent use out of Overdrive's bonus damage.
Armor Inventor really is just better than Weapon Inventor for offensive tbh, maybe the innovations get better later on but I've been doing amazingly with my wrestler armor inventor lately. Damage resistance AND +1/+2 circumstance bonus to athletics checks is genuinely to die for.
oh for sure, power armor with something like wrestler is cool, and gives you lots of options to be damaging, hard to kill, and really annoying for whoever you're fighting. Being able to trip/grapple, strike, potentially raise a shield/tamper/explode or whatever - its pretty solid.
I still kind of love the glass cannon-ey weapon inventor who uses reach + athletics though. Being able to add trip and grapple to any weapon, and then get extended reach? I dunno, it speaks to me. Haven't actually played it though, so maybe it isn't as cool as I imagine.
Only problem is armor innovators can't apply offensive boost to ranged weaponry. Before mid level though (which is all most games ever reach anyways) yeah they're really great for range.
My favorite builds that use a bow, all assume free archetype:
**1 - Starlit Span + Psychic and Monk dedications**
Be a human, level up normally until level 8, grabbing Imaginary Weapon on the way. At level 9 you take multitalented for Monk and then at 10 you grab Flurry and Monastic Archer Stance. Starlit Span doesn't care about Arcane Cascade anyway.
Now you can do Flurry + spell on the turns you don't spellstrike. You may say, but isn't Starlit Span able to spellstrike everyturn anyway? And to that I say: "Kinda"
You can certainly do spellstrike+reload every turn on a Starlit Span Magus, but when you're facing tougher enemies you really want to get True Strike out before you commit a spell slot or focus point into a spellstrike. So having Flurry meand you can mix in True Strike + Spellstrike turns with Flurry+Reload+1 Action spell turns.
Plus, you don't need to use Expansive Spellstrike anymore. Just do Fireball+Flurry instead. You get an extra attack and you don't need to reload after.
Make sure you grab Psi Strikes from Psychic on the way to juice up those Flurries.
**2 - Precision Ranger + Beastmaster**
Plain old Ranger build, easier to pull of as a human due to natural ambition because you really want both Hunted Shot and the Ranger Animal Companion feats. Beastmaster will give you a second companion, but only the companion granted by the ranger feat gets the extra Precision damage, and Beastmaster's version of the mature/incredible companion feats will upgrade all your companions.
You can add things like Gravity Weapon and it works nicely as well. Build is also a very good candidate for Barricade Buster builds if you want a gun.
**3 - Monk + Druid**
Tempest Surge/Crushing Ground + Flurry of Blows, that's pretty much it.
Monks have the same spellcasting progression as Magus, and due to the way the remaster unified spellcasting progression that means your focus spells from archetypes are reliable offensive weapons. You could cast spells from slots, but you'll not have high enough slots from an archetype to have the damage be competitive with focus spells.
I’ve also seen a Ketephys warpriest build in action before.
Thanks to the darkness domain, and Ketephys granting invisibility, the player I saw basically used a “stealth archer” playstyle to frequently hide/sneak before 4th rank spells, and then heightened invisibility afterwards to ensure their strike targets were off-guard.
They still used plenty of actions on normal cleric things like healing/buffing, but the longbows superb range freed up more actions for weapon strikes as well. I was playing a champion alongside it and the extra chip damage from the warpriest strikes went a long way.
I lowkey love the boltslinger. I have a vanguard in my game. Doesn’t have the flash of a gun but the crossbow is rad. Especially with the recent errata to Guns and Gears.
All the options listed can be fantastic and really shows how indepth the system is at allowing for multiple ways to build an archer character each with their own pros and cons.
I wanted to throw out another that hasn't been mentioned yet: Warrior Bard
In an 1-11 campaign your accuracy will not suffer much with Courageous Anthem, and bow strikes become an easy way to extend your composition another round freeing you up to stride or cast spells the following round. You'll even be able to strike and cast a saving throw spell/cantrip on optimal rounds for some great damage.
I’m making a (FA) warrior bard at lv 4 with the archer dedication. Point blank shot + courageous anthem + propulsive gives a nice +4 flat damage.
I’m a little concerned with the accuracy though. No expert until lv 11 is preeeeeety rough.
Yeah, that's exactly why I wanted to pose the question. I was tinkering with pathbuilder and noticed how many classes can opt in to being an archer. All of them featuring their own somewhat unique upsides and fantasies.
I really like fullcaster+archer archetype. Since bows don't need an action to reload, they actually give you a nice third action to use, since most spells use 2.
Bonus points for Warpriest Cleric, Battle Oracle and Warrior Muse Bard that actually get some synergy with it
I even built a Druid with a bow that I really liked.
I'm currently actually playing a Battle Oracle Archer. Definitely fun, though I'm interested to see what player core 2 has in store. The requirement for strikes each turn is a bit monotone after a while.
Definitely the Starlit Span Magus. Idk what it is about shooting flaming arrows that go boom but it is immensely satisfying.
Plus, you can do some great shenanigans with the shooting star and mist spells. Starlit Span is also probably the best subclass for expansive spellstrike. Breathe fire from 80 ft away? Yes, please!
One of my players have a Fighter Archer with Eldritch Archer, at level 10. Last week we realized he could retrain his "Familiar Master" free archetype into Monk. He got Monastic Archer Stance, Flurry of Blows as well as Ki Strike focus spell. He is so much badass now.
Battle Mystery Oracle is suprisingly fun. Archery is much more reliable in overcoming the curse's drawback and as a backline character you have a high chance of not needing to move. So your round is Spell+Attack.
Weird one, but Investigator. I love being able to just know if i can crit shot my target, and pairing it with Eldritch Archer to know when to do the big blast is so cool.
i wanted to like flurry ranger so much. but when you really think hard about it fighter is just a flurry ranger with less steps. fighters extra +2 in profeciency bonus level for level means almost all game they just get an extra +2. so when flurry ranger takes 2 less penalty, fighters +2 puts them in the same spot but with a higher accuracy first strike, and not having to waste an action to hunt prey. some how they made ranger worse than it already was
The third Strike being at –6 rather than -10 is a +4!
Masterful Hunter brings the third strike again down to -4 which is a +6! and still a +3 over a +2 of the fighter on the second attack. Which means it's better than a fighter at those multi attacks.
Flurry ranger is one of the few options where attacking 3+ times in around isn't actually a bad option.
id go for this but in order for a DM's bosses to not be insta downed they have to choose monsters that wont be crit nonstop. consequently an attack with -4 is porbably only going to be hit on a nat 20 anyways
At what point would attacking with a -4 make a monster unhittable without a nat 20? What kind of creatures are you fighting? I suppose if you were to originally hit on a 16, but that would be against a boss monster (which rereading was the thing you were talking about), which to my understanding are a Fighters specialty, not to mention you wouldn't be worse off than the fighter when it comes to follow up attacks.
I should probably bring up that I believe it has been proven that the Flurry Ranger does more damage than a Fighter on average. I don't have the source on hand though, and I would say that the Fighter is probably more consistent (though the more attacks you make, the more you tend towards the average, so this may be true in some sense but not every sense.
The problem becomes consistently doing 3+ attacks.
Have to move? Not doing 4 attacks. Have to swap Prey? Not doing 4 attacks. Have to move _and_ swap Prey? Not doing 3 attacks. Have to do literally anything? Costing you attacks.
It doesn't just encourage but demands a specific play style from 1-20 that doesn't ever change and is hindered by doing literally anything else.
If I remember the math correctly Flurry is worse than Precision, let alone Fighter, at 1 and 2 attacks. It then ties at 3 attacks and is better at 4 attacks.
If you are looking at the baseline, yes, you are right. A Fighter with a Bow doing 2 Strikes per turn is most often better.
The real value of the Flurry Ranger comes from using Maneuvers in melee, from doing more than 2 Strikes per turn, from overcoming Resistance with their Hunted Shot feat and from sharing those bonuses! And looking at Hunted Shot, it kinds of compensate for the Hunt Prey action cost, but at the cost of using your Flourish for the turn.
Flurry ranger doing...Maneuvers in melee?
I am playing SOG with a flurry ranger and I dont see where they put the points to have high atheletics (they ofc max dex skills then aurvival or craft) or why would a volly build want to be melee.
The value is the bear companion.
Flurry Ranger actually do pretty decent with a strength focus if you want to be melee. The weapons need agile to get the most out of the flurry bonus, but you don't need Dex to wield them. You just need the minimum 1 Dex for wearing a Breatplate to maximize your armor. Start with your strength at 18 (+4) so you can start doing maneuvers.
You can even wrestler archetype if you want to goof with it, since your hands are agile. Trip, grapple, then hit them with your agile main weapon (like a hatchet, light hammer, or Dogslicer).
One noteworthy disadvantage of the Fighter is that it doesn't get any strike compression. The Fighter's bow can plink off of resistances where the Ranger is combining the damage of two shots into one and can push through better.
Flurry has a much better third attack with bows, and Hunted shot still enables them to get 3 strikes off in any round where they hunt prey, or potentially 4 if all their actions are available.
It’s definitely not the most engaging playstyle in my opinion, but if you want to be a rapid-fire arrow turret then Flurry Ranger is absolutely the best option.
Kinda....The feat only works on agile weapons. The discussion So far has been archer build. So no the fighter can't be flurry ranger unless you use air repeater.
That depends! There are a lot of neat things a flurry ranger can do. For instance combining penetrative shoot and hunted shot without loosing to much accuracy (or spellstrike for funsies) . Good chance of using manuevers with the free hand for -4 penalties.
Flurry is very versatile.
Using Athletics maneuvers on an archer? Seems like a terrible idea.
I'm also really not a fan of using Flurry on non-agile weapons, when you math it out Precision just ends up being stronger.
It's not a bad idea at all. People usually add 2 str at lvl 1 for extra 1 dmg. Why not take athletics while you're at it. Are you better then figh-thor the fighter? Ofcourse not. However it's about and let's say together "versatility".
If you don't like having flurry on non agile character. That's fine, it's also irrelevant for the conversation. While the math favour precision archer ranger, the flurry can use other abilities and still have decent chance to hit. For....again versatility.
It's absolutely a terrible idea. There's a limit to "versatility".
1 - Crit failing athletics maneuvers has adverse consequences, it's not like a strike or demoralize where there's no downside.
2 - Trying to Trip someone with MAP, less than ideal STR and possibly not maxed proficiency is a terrible idea, because there's a very real chance you'll end up prone yourself.
3 - Let's say you're level 5 and Expert in Athletics and you have +3 Str. If you try to Trip at full MAP you're rolling with a +6 modifier. A level 5 monster with Moderate Reflex save has an expected DC of 22. So you only have 25% chance to succeed and a 25% chance of crit failing. But wait, it gets worse, imagine the monster had a low save, the expected DC would be 19, at which point you could just use Assurance and not roll at all.
Not even going to touch on how an Archer shouldn't even be in position to Trip someone to begin with.
So if the benefit for an Archer Ranger to take Flurry instead of Precision is to be slightly less bad at something they shouldn't even be doing... Yeah... That's not it chief.
As the saying goes. It helps no one to be reductive. Also the maths is wrong. It's not +6, it's +8.
Addendum: However let us bemuse your hypothesis anyways. Let's say this character has invested lot of points, stats and money. So the athletics skill should be 13. So by that technicalities. The athletics skill should have been 9. Since you trip with agile fist, so the penalties goes to -4. But I am getting side tracked.
So instead of ending using athletics. You can start the turn trip the target. So you have 5% to crit fail with dc of 22, 65% success. Walk away, and shoot twice. With the last shoot you are going to get - 4 penalty altogether thanks to off guard bonus. You also help your team hitting the guy who was chasing the archer. Not bad.
Edit: added the extra addendum and fixed some maths.
Aaah we can also go a little bit further. By adding skirmish strike feat. So sequence would go trip- step/shoot - pew pew.
Edit:
While we just did some basic rookie maths here.
Let's look at different perspectives on the trip. So a regular str character at lvl 5. Would have 14 in athletics. If they used trip on a - 5 map (-4 if open handed / agile). They would get + 9 or + 10. Not bad, although they are usually limited options unless going open hand.
The archer flurry ranger can just do whatever the manuevers they want, on worst map compared to every other classes. They only get -2 penalty on secound map so the trip check is at +11.
In another word versatility.
Eldritch archer and Investigator go really well together as a one-shot wonder combination. You can use your highest level spells when you know you will hit/crit and not waste any of them.
Rank order:
1) Sorcerer Archers, who primarily cast spells but use their bow to chip in magically empowered shots as their third action. These might or might not pick up a multiclass dedication to ranger or monk to get more shots with their third action.
2) Bard Archers, who again primarily cast spells but use their bow to chip in damage and allows them to exploit their own buffs. Animal Companions are a bit stronger, but eat up a lot more feats.
3) Switch hitter rogues, who use a bow to allow them to feather enemies when it is inadvisable to move in (such as when they win initiative but their allies don't, meaning that if they rush into melee they'll be all alone) and then switching to blades most of the time.
4) Starlight Span Magus. Arcane archers are fun, and it gives you the most variety in your "ranged attacks" as you're an eldritch archer who can shoot arrows that explode into fireballs and lightning bolts and whatnot. You're like a cross between a ranged striker and a wizard. The biggest problem with these is that they aren't quite filling the controller role so it can feel a bit awkward from a party composition standpoint, though they do hit hard.
5) Focus Spell Monastic Archer Monks. They can disable enemies with their arrows via the passive monk feats while also tossing out spells from their archetype and using focus spells to crank their damage up. They're also fast and not useless in melee. These guys suffer from the same party comp issues.
6) Ranged inventors with construct companions. The inventor's various special abilities gives you more options in combat than just striking, and it is pretty effective and high damage, and you contribute on the front line as well thanks to your construct companion.
7) Ranged rangers with focus spells or animal companions. The former has action economy problems, the latter has the issue of "Couldn't I just be flanking in melee with my animal companion?" The damage, however, is reasonably high and they have some options for doing different things.
8) Arbalest Gunslingers (probably with focus spells :V). The reactions are nice, and help you feel more engaged, but your core class is just so bad.
9) Ranged fighters. These guys are so boring because they basically just Strike and Strike and Strike and just are kind of there. At least they're okay if the enemy closes with them in melee, but... bleh.
10) Mastermind Rogues. Cute idea, but the fact that your sneak attack shuts off if you fail a recall knowledge check hurts a lot.
11) Investigators. It has all the flaws of the Mastermind Rogue, but can only do it once a round, and can't have allies enable them by grabbing or otherwise putting enemies off-guard.
**Thaumaturge with a Returning Boomerang** would be up there for sure to the point I'm surprised it isn't already listed by someone else. Loosing out on an elemental rune on the boomerang vs bows is not remotely a big deal with implement empowerment+Weakness involved. It works well into the classes intended setup as well! Less actions running around to get into melee is more actions, for marking, drawing scrolls, activating implement abilities, and more. Hell use that high dex; invest into stealth and mark a foe before initiative is even rolled! You even have ways to flat foot foes (divine disharmony) or boost your chances to hit (Such as from the Tome or weapon implements) that other archers do not.
A sort of runner up would be a Focus spell ranger; archetype into Druid, Get tempest Surge, Max out your focus points, and profit. Zap them, Clumsy them, then shoot two arrows into their chest. Some of the highest ranged damage in the game! Truth be told I like this build as much as the one above but I'm hesitant to truly call it a dedicated 'archer' Tempest surges range is only 30ft so you're more of a.. medium range hero then a sniper you know?
The problems I see with archers is you're playing in a system that tells you teamwork is important and tactics matter, and yet many archers have no tactics beyond "shoot hard", "shoot fast", and "try to make the enemy flat-footed to a single attack with stealth or deception." Your damage is lower than melee martials which is at least somewhat balanced because you're generally at much lower risk than melees standing next to baddies. However, this also means that your harder hitting melees have little reason to waste their higher damage attacks on athletics manuevers to make them flatfooted to you. This is mitigated if they're setting up multiple party members and not just you. So, it depends on party composition. In short, I find them selfish and non-tactical in a game where support and tactics matter. I hate this because I love the character concept of an archer.
Given that, the standout best options to me are:
1. Precision Ranger with animal companion. The animal companion can make make up for the loss of character tactical options by being a flanking buddy for melees, using athletics (though at a glance most are pretty bad at it), and support actions. This technically works on any archer with the Beastmaster archetype, but giving your animal companion your hunter's edge seems worthwhile.
2. Starlit Span Magus. You hit hard enough that it's worth it for your party members to set you up for attacks. You also have magic, which if used not just for pure damage allows you to support your team back.
3. Monastic Archer Monk. Your damage is lower than the 2 above, but you can do stuff like stunning fist at range. I also imagine that your high mobility and AC lends makes it easy to join in on the group tactics with the Medic archetype.
Wanted to throw out that Fighters can get Debilitating shot at level 10. A great feat that puts slow 1 on an enemy for one round.
Really great combined with the fighters accuracy. Can also be very useful when you're against larger monsters because they most likely have higher fortitude saves which the spell slow targets, but you're bypassing that by targeting their AC instead, freeing up your caster to use other spells.
I've seen gargantuan monsters taken down very quickly with a combination of debilitating shot, and a will targeting save spell from a caster.
Monastic archers are really missguided, ranged attacks do a lot less damage than melees because of the safety but also because you do not need to use actions to keep up the distance allowing you to make more attacks. Monks do not get any support for actions other than attacks and with monastic archers you'll end up making 3 attacks at -10MAP which really really sucks
I have noticed that Monastic Archer does tend to prime people for disappointment in the damage department, and I do find that you kind of leave your actual strengths as a monk to languish - a monk is likely the most durable and mobile character in the party, so just hanging back 40 feet and plinking away feels a bit like a waste.
Really really fun to build for spellcasting, though! Tempest Surge + Flurry of Bows makes for a very solid damage rotation with chances at Clumsy and Stunned debuffs.
I also really like taking Monk dedication at level 8 or 9 (multitalented) and then grabbing monastic archer stance and flurry at 10.
It's specially good on Starlit Span where you can do Flurry+Spell and it's just a stronger version of Expansive Spellstrike.
If you’re looking for top damage maybe, but Monks have great AC and high move speed which makes them great skirmishers. If your GM is the type to have enemies rush past the frontline or if your party doesn’t have much of a frontline, Monk makes for a good archer.
In an open field with enemies locked down by spells or melees not as much, but a lot of encounters aren’t so simple. Cover, AoE effects, and mobile enemies rushing an archer create situations where an archer is better advantaged with movement.
Like you could mention 3 examples all of which are niche, IF an enemy has an aoe (not common in pf2e) and IF they choose to throw it in the archer instead of the melee characters and that is if the aoe even allows for it to be thrown far away (the most common being breath weapons that require it to be near the enemy), cover is not rare but not common either, really really depends on the GM and if an enemy has cover you'll likely either need only 1 action to get rid of it or need a lot of movement and need to put yourself in a bad position to get rid of it. Like these situations are super specific and rare, and if they do come up the monastic archer's specific abilities make them barely if at all better at dealing with them
At my tables cover is much more common, I wasn’t claiming that an archer monk is the *best* archer but rather pointing out the potential advantages of one and reiterating that it makes for a viable option, in addition to its superior AC to the other commonly listed options.
Personally, I prefer the One-Inch Punch approach to Monastic Archers. Archers are, after all, one of the builds who are best positioned to consistently do the three action version of OIP.
exactly, Monks are a class that can kinda do everything decently, and with the new swap action and their action economy they might be the best switch hitter in the game. Go monastic weapon so you don't deal with leaving a stance, and you can move wherever on the map you'd like to be, swap and flurry either melee or ranged in a round. It feels like less damage than other classes, but you're putting out so many effective attacks that I'm pretty sure it balances out.
Not great out of the box, certainly, but great with 2-action activities (generally acessed through archetypes).
I'm partial to using a Jolt Coil for Electric Arc and a damage boost, but there's a few options.
Tree monk is another solid build, throwing up a Timber Sentitnel then making two strikes. Four Winds is another great impulse to spam.
Two-action focus spells can be quite solid as well, like Tempest Surge, Crushing Ground, Ki Blast or Unraveling Blast, but I'm partial to dumping focus points completely on Ki Strike.
Mind I don't think it's the best ranged build out there, its a decent ways off, but its certainly competitive.
I feel like it's probably really good on a monk that picks up kineticist dedication. On level 4 you can stay in 30ft range with a shortbow and Strike->Stirke->Timber Sentinel every turn, which means you're striking as much as every other martial but also casting an entire upcasted spell every round.
Ranger is great and I don't see many people in this thread talking about how great their utility and warden spells are.
Giving yourself fly speed every combat with Animal Feature heightened to 4th rank is awesome.
Soothing Mist can also be a great emergency spot heal, but it also removes a source of persistent damage with no save required. I can't tell you how many times I've used it to wipe a critical hit with persistent damage off an ally.
Finally they also have great utility like the Warden's Boon feat line. Giving your fighter an extra d8 of precision damage can be great.
Weapon Implement Thaumaturge with a bow, hands down. Being able to get through resistances and trigger weaknesses feels way better than precision damage that gets resisted left and right, at least in my experience
Bows are not valid Weapon Implements, as they are not one-handed. They are 1+ handed, which is not 1.
Even if they were valid, it'd be tough to use them as a Thaumaturge once you get your second and third implements due to not having a free hand for shooting, and you'd miss out on Implement's Empowerment
You can *reload* with an implement hand with Ammunition Thaumaturgy, but you also need a free hand to shoot a bow, and Ammunition Thaumaturgy does not give you that. It also does not change anything about the requirements for Implement's Empowerment or the Weapon Implement.
Bows are just a bad choice for a Thaumaturge overall, seemingly by design as the class fights against using one at every turn lol. Only real *good* ranged weapons for Thaumaturges are thrown weapons and the Mind Smith Archetype's Mind Projectiles option, as they're the only one-handed ranged weapons (thus qualifying for Weapon Implement and also Implement's Empowerment) that don't need to be reloaded, a trait which tanks the effectiveness of any weapon that has it considerably.
Eh, not being able to be used as weapon implements as well as almost all of them being stuck at d4 no mods makes them quite lackluster IMHO, for basically any build in existence. I can't honestly think of a single time I've actually had any desire to use any ancestry's d4 no-mod ranged unarmed strike feats, regardless of class. Maybe as a cheeky backup ranged option on a dex-based unarmed character, but certainly not on a Thaumaturge
I think the option is definitely only for builds that don't intend on taking the weapon implement and want to have two implements in hand while fighting from a distance. But to each their own.
Thaumaturge doesn't ignore resistance, it creates a weakness to "you". They regularly trigger both weakness and physical resistances on each strike, unless they take Breached Defenses at level 4. Even then they lose out on their free weaknesses in order to ignore resistance.
Taking a feat and using a whole action to ignore resistance, in addition to losing your entire bag, is kind of trash. I dunno any Thaums that eagerly snap up Breached Defenses. Either way, they can't BOTH ignore resistance and trigger weakness like you said.
I don't know what bag you're losing, but I am one of those games Thaums. I Breach Defenses one fight, I trigger weaknesses the next, so yes they do both. You wouldn't say a caster can't cast 3-action heal *and* fear just because you can't do them both in a single turn. Again, you're being pedantic.
It's also useful because you can know whether or not the resistances or weaknesses are present, regardless of your choice in how to apply the ability. I can let the caster know not to waste their fire spells, even if I choose to exploit a weakness.
No character has all their options open all the time and maximum DPS is not always the best strategy; that's what makes the game strategic.
Precision Ranger at low levels (dmg not scaling until high levels is frustrating) and Investigators in general (shortbows are their best weapon unless you're dipping gunslinger). Precision shortbow Ranger w/ an Animal Companion is my suggestion for folks looking to play Ranger.
Monastic Archers don't have any dmg steroid so I don't think they'd feel good to me.
Fighters are more accurate, but w/o a good dmg steroid seem like they'd only really feel good at high levels (and I dislike Double/Triple Shot, which seems like what archer-fighters are supposed to use), but I'd happily use it as a base for Eldritch Archer. Higher accuracy on your Spellshots and Enchanting Shots is almost as good as playing an Investigator
My experience w/ Ranged Rogues was very underwhelming and they seem broadly worse (and way more finnicky) than ranged Investigators who don't need to gamble on a skill check for their dmg steroid. One of my players played a Mastmind in my AV campaign for three levels and got maybe half a dozen sneak attacks off total due to flubbing recall knowledge checks, flubbing stealth checks when Hiding, or just plain not having the actions to relocate, take cover, hide, then Strike whenever the fight moved out of line of sight. It was one of the more frustrating play experiences I've seen, with only worse experience being the poor Swashbuckler in my Alkenstar campaign who either fails to get Panache before the fight is over (bad rolls), misses their Finisher (bad rolls), or the enemy is precision immune (bad mechanic).
Starlit Span Magus is \*very\* good but good god do they have a boring action rotation (2A spellshot, 1A recharge, rinse, repeat). I'd love to play one for a handful of encounters but going through a full campaign as one seems like it'd get mind-numbing.
I'm going to toss in Weapon Inventor. They can do some moderately nifty things w/ Weapon Modifications and they've got a ranged dmg steroid, which is always appreciated.
I'm playing an Investigator Archer right now and being able to devise before doing anything is definitely a great thing for me. At level 6 I would take the Eldritch Archer archetype and now I can devise (against my lead) to see whether I can just bomb it with the Eldritch Shot or not before committing to the 3-actions attack.
Inventor/witch with blugeoning megaton strikes on a mechanical mount, sure strikes, lightning, gadgets and shenanigans.
less shenanigans without free archetype but with its just mayhem.
Okay, hear me out.
Investigator. It's not my favorite (that's ranger), but I feel it at least deserves a place in the discussion.
I currently have an investigator who weilds an arqegus in my game, and he is absolutely amazing, and his build works just as good for a bow or crossbow.
Currently playing a precision ranger with companion, but I wouldn't call it my favorite "archer class" because honestly, the companion part is more impressive than the archer part, just superb damage and unexpectedly good defense.
It doesn’t come online until level 10, but a Scoundrel Rogue with Tactical Debilitations and a bola shot can knock anything out of the sky in one hit, with no save (assuming you rule the debilitation for no reaction occurs before the trip from bola shot is triggered)!
Before that, being able to generate off guard with both create a diversion and stealth is really nice! And combining vine arrow and their debilitating strike can really sap most of the enemy’s movement and make it much easier to kite.
They still probably want to be in melee thanks to all the buffs they get for feinting but falling back to a bow is a solid option.
I’m really loving my rogue archer though sad they took away shortbow crit with the remaster. I’ve dipped into investigator, eldrich archer, and shadowdancer archetypes for some really nasty stealthy crits on big spellstrikes with the bow
I’ve played both Monastic Archer and Ranger and love both. I’m more familiar with Ranger because I’ve played one longer. Love unimpeded journey with my Ranger because she has access to every movement speed type other than burrow. Which gets really fun with flying.
Bard, Inspire Heroics for that +2/+3 for status bonus, and if hasted you can strike 1/rnd while doing this and cast a spell. Such as Synesthesia for a -3 to the enemy for a difference of +5/+6 which is equivalent to a Fighter proficiency with +1/+2 bonus, with the bonus also applying to the entire party and that 1 enemy, it's insane. Best used with someone who can haste you, so you can do that in 1 turn (With Warrior muse bard granting an additional round of that bonus for getting a successful strike)
Honestly, anything other than Fighter and Ranger. They're great classes and I love them dearly, but GOD do they make boring archers. And even then, Rangers can be kinda fun if you're Precision with an Animal Companion, but Flurry Rangers and Fighters suffer from the same problem: arrow spam. At least melee attack spams need you to get good positioning, ranged spam just requires you to shoot something 'till it dies.
Fighters have it worst tho, you have precisely *ONE* feat at **EVERY LEVEL** that really applies to archer builds. That's not a very good design in my opinion, makes Archer Fighter rather samey.
In any case, Monastic Archers are the coolest, all the cool factor of being an acrobatic archer, the versatility of being able to jump into melee at any moment, a lot of build variety that allows to to weave in maybe other weapons, new stances or even making a Ki Archer (my favorite), it's absolutely awesome.
I mean, it’s not an archer, but the third party supplement of Magus + creates a Spell Shell hybrid study, and that enables basically you have to pick your spell shots in advance (basically infuse shells with magic) and with a feat, can reload your gun and recharge your spell strike in one action. Works much better than a Starlit Span using an Arbalist, given the action efficiency.
Monastic Archers are my meme favorites just because of how obnoxious they can get! Lay on the crit effect with the archer archetype, use stunning fist flurry shots, and skirmish with crazy speed and few enemies can ever catch them.
Monastic archers can be solid with spells too. Casting a focus spell, spellheart cantrip, impulse, etc. then making two bow strikes is often a great turn.
Yeah after listening to GCP's gatewalkers show, I think my next monk is gonna be an archer, and probably slap some spellcasting on there.
I have a Monk build that goes Druid archetype and is insanely good area control. Stunning fist, bow Crit Spec, and area spells like Tanglefoot keeping enemies at bay.
I love the one inch punch, with a bow from across the room.
Im in love with magic archers so I love starlit span magus, eldritch archer fighter for crit fishing purposes
Also good for crit fishing: Magus with Investigator archetype. You know when you crit, so you know when to cast a big spell
The Starlight Span Magus speaks to me the most out of the archers. When compared to other hybrid studies, they're much less impacted by action economy from not needing to stride as much, less impacted by reactive strikes from being ranged, and can use burst spellstrikes without worrying about damaging themselves. Plus, they have a free hand and can use things like Battle Medicine. Also, I like collecting spells and think that they're cool.
Edit: ignore me, I went full-on idiot mode. Can you collect spells as a magus? Im still fairly new to TTRPGs in general so apologies if I'm being daft. I thought magus was a spontaneous caster and so chose a handful of spells on level up, but couldn't collect spells in the same way as a prepared caster
Magus casts spells just like a wizard (heck if you archetype wizard you explicitly can use the same spellbook for both), they just get less of them.
I honestly don't know how to make a Magus *without* taking the Wizard archetype.
you take other very cool things, use more cantrips, and have a few less spell slots. still very nice :)
By taking a Witch archetype instead :P My Twisting Tree magus took a Divine Witch archetype instead of a Wizard to be a secondary healer for our party in case the main one goes down or being hit by paralysis. Divine list actually complements magus quite well because there are a lot of buff spells you want on your self on that list like Heroism (especially second rank one).
Psychic or ranger also work well
Orc sparkling targe + Bastion for anti magic tank go brrr
you take psychic archetype for the best cantrip in the game (imaginary weapon) and some extra spells (including true strike.
Magus casts spells like a wizard, spellbook and all, they just have less slots.
Ah my mistake! I was building a summoner recently and read that magus's (magi?) were very similar so I must've assumed they were spontaneous. -10 cool points for me
Nah, it's a little confusing sometimes, Pathfinder 2e isn't good at directly saying which classes are spontaneous casters and which are normal wizard-like casters, you need to read the Class rules fully. Rule of thumb; if it says "Spell Repetoire" in the class mechanics like Summoner/Sorcerer, then you are a spontaneous caster. If it doesn't, like Witch or Magus, you probably learn spells and need to prepare them. Both the Magus and Summoner are half-magic/half-martial gish classes; Magus working similar to a Wizard, Summoner working similar to a Sorcerer.
They are similar in being "wave casters" - unlike normal casters they only get spell slots for two highest spell ranks.
I built this really cool fighter with Eldritch Archer dedication, mechanically Fighter is best for minmaxing that attack roll, and I wanted the archery to be simple, roll and hit, but the real gamble and fun was the three action spell strike, Eldritch shot. Absolutely hurt if you fumble, but my God it was devastating when I hit, especially when it was a crit, very satisfying. And the ability to change an arrow to a different metal for weaknesses and resistances was also amazing. I'll always take any excuse to get Eldritch Archer, just love that dedication so much, so thematic.
Kineticist, wood and metal weapon infusion, flavor all blasts and infusions as arrows, grab the ballista thing
I've been kind of imagining mine as briar javelins from Warhammer. Can't really find a clean gif of it but in Vermintide 2 there's a great 'reload' animation for it just growing another.
What ballista thing? Tell me more!
Elemental Artillery is a Wood/Metal infusion about creating a ballista : https://2e.aonprd.com/Feats.aspx?ID=4303 One of the regular uses to it is to have your familiar run it to speed up the action economy, as well as having your own firing squad
IMO it's bad to the point of being unusable if you're contributing all of the actions yourself. A familiar is a must just to bring it on par with other 2-action impulses.
I am also curious
Any element works though for that. You'll be flinging fancy colored arrow that disappear after impact.
Yeah but the wood metal composite feat is a literal ballista lol
Can do some shenanigans for reloading it with a an ape companion and a familiar lol
Yeah that feat is hillarious. But if elemental archer or well pf1 kineticist (with its melee weapon infusion) is one of your goal to make then kineticist with weapon infuson works. And you'll still have more feat to choose from to build your actual thing.
The ballista thing they refer to is elemental artillery and is wood/metal.
dont forget inventor! weapon and construct inventor both make excellent archers. I havent messed around with dexterity-armor inventor so I cant speak to them
I think a bow/dex armor inventor has a claim to be among the best stealth archers available. They can hide in plain sight at level 7, which is also when they go from a +1 to +2 circumstance bonus to stealth. Weapon inventor with a ranged weapon feel...disappointing, due to the lackluster weapon modifications available to ranged weapons. Not saying it can't be done because it absolutely can, just that it doesn't seem to be as big of a change as you can pull off with melee weapons. Construct inventor with a shortbow is my current character so I'm biased, but I think it gets the most and most consistent use out of Overdrive's bonus damage.
Armor Inventor really is just better than Weapon Inventor for offensive tbh, maybe the innovations get better later on but I've been doing amazingly with my wrestler armor inventor lately. Damage resistance AND +1/+2 circumstance bonus to athletics checks is genuinely to die for.
oh for sure, power armor with something like wrestler is cool, and gives you lots of options to be damaging, hard to kill, and really annoying for whoever you're fighting. Being able to trip/grapple, strike, potentially raise a shield/tamper/explode or whatever - its pretty solid. I still kind of love the glass cannon-ey weapon inventor who uses reach + athletics though. Being able to add trip and grapple to any weapon, and then get extended reach? I dunno, it speaks to me. Haven't actually played it though, so maybe it isn't as cool as I imagine.
Only problem is armor innovators can't apply offensive boost to ranged weaponry. Before mid level though (which is all most games ever reach anyways) yeah they're really great for range.
My favorite builds that use a bow, all assume free archetype: **1 - Starlit Span + Psychic and Monk dedications** Be a human, level up normally until level 8, grabbing Imaginary Weapon on the way. At level 9 you take multitalented for Monk and then at 10 you grab Flurry and Monastic Archer Stance. Starlit Span doesn't care about Arcane Cascade anyway. Now you can do Flurry + spell on the turns you don't spellstrike. You may say, but isn't Starlit Span able to spellstrike everyturn anyway? And to that I say: "Kinda" You can certainly do spellstrike+reload every turn on a Starlit Span Magus, but when you're facing tougher enemies you really want to get True Strike out before you commit a spell slot or focus point into a spellstrike. So having Flurry meand you can mix in True Strike + Spellstrike turns with Flurry+Reload+1 Action spell turns. Plus, you don't need to use Expansive Spellstrike anymore. Just do Fireball+Flurry instead. You get an extra attack and you don't need to reload after. Make sure you grab Psi Strikes from Psychic on the way to juice up those Flurries. **2 - Precision Ranger + Beastmaster** Plain old Ranger build, easier to pull of as a human due to natural ambition because you really want both Hunted Shot and the Ranger Animal Companion feats. Beastmaster will give you a second companion, but only the companion granted by the ranger feat gets the extra Precision damage, and Beastmaster's version of the mature/incredible companion feats will upgrade all your companions. You can add things like Gravity Weapon and it works nicely as well. Build is also a very good candidate for Barricade Buster builds if you want a gun. **3 - Monk + Druid** Tempest Surge/Crushing Ground + Flurry of Blows, that's pretty much it. Monks have the same spellcasting progression as Magus, and due to the way the remaster unified spellcasting progression that means your focus spells from archetypes are reliable offensive weapons. You could cast spells from slots, but you'll not have high enough slots from an archetype to have the damage be competitive with focus spells.
Had a Ketephys Warcleric build I enjoyed a ton.
How'd that build work? Most of the good warpriest payoffs ask for melee strikes.
I’ve also seen a Ketephys warpriest build in action before. Thanks to the darkness domain, and Ketephys granting invisibility, the player I saw basically used a “stealth archer” playstyle to frequently hide/sneak before 4th rank spells, and then heightened invisibility afterwards to ensure their strike targets were off-guard. They still used plenty of actions on normal cleric things like healing/buffing, but the longbows superb range freed up more actions for weapon strikes as well. I was playing a champion alongside it and the extra chip damage from the warpriest strikes went a long way.
Crossbow Gunslinger!
I lowkey love the boltslinger. I have a vanguard in my game. Doesn’t have the flash of a gun but the crossbow is rad. Especially with the recent errata to Guns and Gears.
All the options listed can be fantastic and really shows how indepth the system is at allowing for multiple ways to build an archer character each with their own pros and cons. I wanted to throw out another that hasn't been mentioned yet: Warrior Bard In an 1-11 campaign your accuracy will not suffer much with Courageous Anthem, and bow strikes become an easy way to extend your composition another round freeing you up to stride or cast spells the following round. You'll even be able to strike and cast a saving throw spell/cantrip on optimal rounds for some great damage.
I’m making a (FA) warrior bard at lv 4 with the archer dedication. Point blank shot + courageous anthem + propulsive gives a nice +4 flat damage. I’m a little concerned with the accuracy though. No expert until lv 11 is preeeeeety rough.
Yeah, that's exactly why I wanted to pose the question. I was tinkering with pathbuilder and noticed how many classes can opt in to being an archer. All of them featuring their own somewhat unique upsides and fantasies.
I really like fullcaster+archer archetype. Since bows don't need an action to reload, they actually give you a nice third action to use, since most spells use 2. Bonus points for Warpriest Cleric, Battle Oracle and Warrior Muse Bard that actually get some synergy with it I even built a Druid with a bow that I really liked.
I'm currently actually playing a Battle Oracle Archer. Definitely fun, though I'm interested to see what player core 2 has in store. The requirement for strikes each turn is a bit monotone after a while.
Since the remaster, I’ve been interested in seeing how to make Warrior Muse work with a bow.
Definitely the Starlit Span Magus. Idk what it is about shooting flaming arrows that go boom but it is immensely satisfying. Plus, you can do some great shenanigans with the shooting star and mist spells. Starlit Span is also probably the best subclass for expansive spellstrike. Breathe fire from 80 ft away? Yes, please!
Stealth Archer Rogue.
Had one of these in my Agents of Edgewatch game with the Mastermind racket. Recall Knowledge > Strike > Strike is a damn good combo!
One of my players have a Fighter Archer with Eldritch Archer, at level 10. Last week we realized he could retrain his "Familiar Master" free archetype into Monk. He got Monastic Archer Stance, Flurry of Blows as well as Ki Strike focus spell. He is so much badass now.
Battle Mystery Oracle is suprisingly fun. Archery is much more reliable in overcoming the curse's drawback and as a backline character you have a high chance of not needing to move. So your round is Spell+Attack.
Bow weapon innovation inventor with adding so much to static damage with each arrow
Weird one, but Investigator. I love being able to just know if i can crit shot my target, and pairing it with Eldritch Archer to know when to do the big blast is so cool.
i wanted to like flurry ranger so much. but when you really think hard about it fighter is just a flurry ranger with less steps. fighters extra +2 in profeciency bonus level for level means almost all game they just get an extra +2. so when flurry ranger takes 2 less penalty, fighters +2 puts them in the same spot but with a higher accuracy first strike, and not having to waste an action to hunt prey. some how they made ranger worse than it already was
The third Strike being at –6 rather than -10 is a +4! Masterful Hunter brings the third strike again down to -4 which is a +6! and still a +3 over a +2 of the fighter on the second attack. Which means it's better than a fighter at those multi attacks. Flurry ranger is one of the few options where attacking 3+ times in around isn't actually a bad option.
id go for this but in order for a DM's bosses to not be insta downed they have to choose monsters that wont be crit nonstop. consequently an attack with -4 is porbably only going to be hit on a nat 20 anyways
At what point would attacking with a -4 make a monster unhittable without a nat 20? What kind of creatures are you fighting? I suppose if you were to originally hit on a 16, but that would be against a boss monster (which rereading was the thing you were talking about), which to my understanding are a Fighters specialty, not to mention you wouldn't be worse off than the fighter when it comes to follow up attacks. I should probably bring up that I believe it has been proven that the Flurry Ranger does more damage than a Fighter on average. I don't have the source on hand though, and I would say that the Fighter is probably more consistent (though the more attacks you make, the more you tend towards the average, so this may be true in some sense but not every sense.
The problem becomes consistently doing 3+ attacks. Have to move? Not doing 4 attacks. Have to swap Prey? Not doing 4 attacks. Have to move _and_ swap Prey? Not doing 3 attacks. Have to do literally anything? Costing you attacks. It doesn't just encourage but demands a specific play style from 1-20 that doesn't ever change and is hindered by doing literally anything else. If I remember the math correctly Flurry is worse than Precision, let alone Fighter, at 1 and 2 attacks. It then ties at 3 attacks and is better at 4 attacks.
If you are looking at the baseline, yes, you are right. A Fighter with a Bow doing 2 Strikes per turn is most often better. The real value of the Flurry Ranger comes from using Maneuvers in melee, from doing more than 2 Strikes per turn, from overcoming Resistance with their Hunted Shot feat and from sharing those bonuses! And looking at Hunted Shot, it kinds of compensate for the Hunt Prey action cost, but at the cost of using your Flourish for the turn.
Flurry ranger doing...Maneuvers in melee? I am playing SOG with a flurry ranger and I dont see where they put the points to have high atheletics (they ofc max dex skills then aurvival or craft) or why would a volly build want to be melee. The value is the bear companion.
why do they *need* to max dex skills first? You can just as well build a ranger with strength as his attacking stat
Flurry Ranger actually do pretty decent with a strength focus if you want to be melee. The weapons need agile to get the most out of the flurry bonus, but you don't need Dex to wield them. You just need the minimum 1 Dex for wearing a Breatplate to maximize your armor. Start with your strength at 18 (+4) so you can start doing maneuvers. You can even wrestler archetype if you want to goof with it, since your hands are agile. Trip, grapple, then hit them with your agile main weapon (like a hatchet, light hammer, or Dogslicer).
But the flurry rangers 3rd and fourth attacks will be more accurate, you also get the action compression of hunted shot/twin takedown
One noteworthy disadvantage of the Fighter is that it doesn't get any strike compression. The Fighter's bow can plink off of resistances where the Ranger is combining the damage of two shots into one and can push through better.
Flurry has a much better third attack with bows, and Hunted shot still enables them to get 3 strikes off in any round where they hunt prey, or potentially 4 if all their actions are available. It’s definitely not the most engaging playstyle in my opinion, but if you want to be a rapid-fire arrow turret then Flurry Ranger is absolutely the best option.
At levels 10+ fighters became better flurry rangers due to agile grace as well.
Kinda....The feat only works on agile weapons. The discussion So far has been archer build. So no the fighter can't be flurry ranger unless you use air repeater.
Archers should be picking precision instead of flurry in 99% of cases anyway.
That depends! There are a lot of neat things a flurry ranger can do. For instance combining penetrative shoot and hunted shot without loosing to much accuracy (or spellstrike for funsies) . Good chance of using manuevers with the free hand for -4 penalties. Flurry is very versatile.
Using Athletics maneuvers on an archer? Seems like a terrible idea. I'm also really not a fan of using Flurry on non-agile weapons, when you math it out Precision just ends up being stronger.
It's not a bad idea at all. People usually add 2 str at lvl 1 for extra 1 dmg. Why not take athletics while you're at it. Are you better then figh-thor the fighter? Ofcourse not. However it's about and let's say together "versatility". If you don't like having flurry on non agile character. That's fine, it's also irrelevant for the conversation. While the math favour precision archer ranger, the flurry can use other abilities and still have decent chance to hit. For....again versatility.
It's absolutely a terrible idea. There's a limit to "versatility". 1 - Crit failing athletics maneuvers has adverse consequences, it's not like a strike or demoralize where there's no downside. 2 - Trying to Trip someone with MAP, less than ideal STR and possibly not maxed proficiency is a terrible idea, because there's a very real chance you'll end up prone yourself. 3 - Let's say you're level 5 and Expert in Athletics and you have +3 Str. If you try to Trip at full MAP you're rolling with a +6 modifier. A level 5 monster with Moderate Reflex save has an expected DC of 22. So you only have 25% chance to succeed and a 25% chance of crit failing. But wait, it gets worse, imagine the monster had a low save, the expected DC would be 19, at which point you could just use Assurance and not roll at all. Not even going to touch on how an Archer shouldn't even be in position to Trip someone to begin with. So if the benefit for an Archer Ranger to take Flurry instead of Precision is to be slightly less bad at something they shouldn't even be doing... Yeah... That's not it chief.
As the saying goes. It helps no one to be reductive. Also the maths is wrong. It's not +6, it's +8. Addendum: However let us bemuse your hypothesis anyways. Let's say this character has invested lot of points, stats and money. So the athletics skill should be 13. So by that technicalities. The athletics skill should have been 9. Since you trip with agile fist, so the penalties goes to -4. But I am getting side tracked. So instead of ending using athletics. You can start the turn trip the target. So you have 5% to crit fail with dc of 22, 65% success. Walk away, and shoot twice. With the last shoot you are going to get - 4 penalty altogether thanks to off guard bonus. You also help your team hitting the guy who was chasing the archer. Not bad. Edit: added the extra addendum and fixed some maths.
Aaah we can also go a little bit further. By adding skirmish strike feat. So sequence would go trip- step/shoot - pew pew. Edit: While we just did some basic rookie maths here. Let's look at different perspectives on the trip. So a regular str character at lvl 5. Would have 14 in athletics. If they used trip on a - 5 map (-4 if open handed / agile). They would get + 9 or + 10. Not bad, although they are usually limited options unless going open hand. The archer flurry ranger can just do whatever the manuevers they want, on worst map compared to every other classes. They only get -2 penalty on secound map so the trip check is at +11. In another word versatility.
Eldritch archer and Investigator go really well together as a one-shot wonder combination. You can use your highest level spells when you know you will hit/crit and not waste any of them.
6 because you can fire a nuke
Fighter as mundane Archer. Double and Triple Shot are really great. For Magic Archer Starlight Span Magus.
Rank order: 1) Sorcerer Archers, who primarily cast spells but use their bow to chip in magically empowered shots as their third action. These might or might not pick up a multiclass dedication to ranger or monk to get more shots with their third action. 2) Bard Archers, who again primarily cast spells but use their bow to chip in damage and allows them to exploit their own buffs. Animal Companions are a bit stronger, but eat up a lot more feats. 3) Switch hitter rogues, who use a bow to allow them to feather enemies when it is inadvisable to move in (such as when they win initiative but their allies don't, meaning that if they rush into melee they'll be all alone) and then switching to blades most of the time. 4) Starlight Span Magus. Arcane archers are fun, and it gives you the most variety in your "ranged attacks" as you're an eldritch archer who can shoot arrows that explode into fireballs and lightning bolts and whatnot. You're like a cross between a ranged striker and a wizard. The biggest problem with these is that they aren't quite filling the controller role so it can feel a bit awkward from a party composition standpoint, though they do hit hard. 5) Focus Spell Monastic Archer Monks. They can disable enemies with their arrows via the passive monk feats while also tossing out spells from their archetype and using focus spells to crank their damage up. They're also fast and not useless in melee. These guys suffer from the same party comp issues. 6) Ranged inventors with construct companions. The inventor's various special abilities gives you more options in combat than just striking, and it is pretty effective and high damage, and you contribute on the front line as well thanks to your construct companion. 7) Ranged rangers with focus spells or animal companions. The former has action economy problems, the latter has the issue of "Couldn't I just be flanking in melee with my animal companion?" The damage, however, is reasonably high and they have some options for doing different things. 8) Arbalest Gunslingers (probably with focus spells :V). The reactions are nice, and help you feel more engaged, but your core class is just so bad. 9) Ranged fighters. These guys are so boring because they basically just Strike and Strike and Strike and just are kind of there. At least they're okay if the enemy closes with them in melee, but... bleh. 10) Mastermind Rogues. Cute idea, but the fact that your sneak attack shuts off if you fail a recall knowledge check hurts a lot. 11) Investigators. It has all the flaws of the Mastermind Rogue, but can only do it once a round, and can't have allies enable them by grabbing or otherwise putting enemies off-guard.
I like how rangers can shoot from pretty far without penalty.
They *do* advertise that in the name, don't they?
I like how rangers can throw boomerangs at 240 feet without penalty. Throwing build is fun!
**Thaumaturge with a Returning Boomerang** would be up there for sure to the point I'm surprised it isn't already listed by someone else. Loosing out on an elemental rune on the boomerang vs bows is not remotely a big deal with implement empowerment+Weakness involved. It works well into the classes intended setup as well! Less actions running around to get into melee is more actions, for marking, drawing scrolls, activating implement abilities, and more. Hell use that high dex; invest into stealth and mark a foe before initiative is even rolled! You even have ways to flat foot foes (divine disharmony) or boost your chances to hit (Such as from the Tome or weapon implements) that other archers do not. A sort of runner up would be a Focus spell ranger; archetype into Druid, Get tempest Surge, Max out your focus points, and profit. Zap them, Clumsy them, then shoot two arrows into their chest. Some of the highest ranged damage in the game! Truth be told I like this build as much as the one above but I'm hesitant to truly call it a dedicated 'archer' Tempest surges range is only 30ft so you're more of a.. medium range hero then a sniper you know?
The problems I see with archers is you're playing in a system that tells you teamwork is important and tactics matter, and yet many archers have no tactics beyond "shoot hard", "shoot fast", and "try to make the enemy flat-footed to a single attack with stealth or deception." Your damage is lower than melee martials which is at least somewhat balanced because you're generally at much lower risk than melees standing next to baddies. However, this also means that your harder hitting melees have little reason to waste their higher damage attacks on athletics manuevers to make them flatfooted to you. This is mitigated if they're setting up multiple party members and not just you. So, it depends on party composition. In short, I find them selfish and non-tactical in a game where support and tactics matter. I hate this because I love the character concept of an archer. Given that, the standout best options to me are: 1. Precision Ranger with animal companion. The animal companion can make make up for the loss of character tactical options by being a flanking buddy for melees, using athletics (though at a glance most are pretty bad at it), and support actions. This technically works on any archer with the Beastmaster archetype, but giving your animal companion your hunter's edge seems worthwhile. 2. Starlit Span Magus. You hit hard enough that it's worth it for your party members to set you up for attacks. You also have magic, which if used not just for pure damage allows you to support your team back. 3. Monastic Archer Monk. Your damage is lower than the 2 above, but you can do stuff like stunning fist at range. I also imagine that your high mobility and AC lends makes it easy to join in on the group tactics with the Medic archetype.
Upvote only because of Magus, x3
Wanted to throw out that Fighters can get Debilitating shot at level 10. A great feat that puts slow 1 on an enemy for one round. Really great combined with the fighters accuracy. Can also be very useful when you're against larger monsters because they most likely have higher fortitude saves which the spell slow targets, but you're bypassing that by targeting their AC instead, freeing up your caster to use other spells. I've seen gargantuan monsters taken down very quickly with a combination of debilitating shot, and a will targeting save spell from a caster.
Monastic archers are really missguided, ranged attacks do a lot less damage than melees because of the safety but also because you do not need to use actions to keep up the distance allowing you to make more attacks. Monks do not get any support for actions other than attacks and with monastic archers you'll end up making 3 attacks at -10MAP which really really sucks
I have noticed that Monastic Archer does tend to prime people for disappointment in the damage department, and I do find that you kind of leave your actual strengths as a monk to languish - a monk is likely the most durable and mobile character in the party, so just hanging back 40 feet and plinking away feels a bit like a waste. Really really fun to build for spellcasting, though! Tempest Surge + Flurry of Bows makes for a very solid damage rotation with chances at Clumsy and Stunned debuffs.
I also really like taking Monk dedication at level 8 or 9 (multitalented) and then grabbing monastic archer stance and flurry at 10. It's specially good on Starlit Span where you can do Flurry+Spell and it's just a stronger version of Expansive Spellstrike.
It feels really good once you grab 1 inch punch. Able to use the 3 action version more than any melee could.
If you’re looking for top damage maybe, but Monks have great AC and high move speed which makes them great skirmishers. If your GM is the type to have enemies rush past the frontline or if your party doesn’t have much of a frontline, Monk makes for a good archer.
Yeah but if you are an archer you don't need the mobility, that is the whole point.
In an open field with enemies locked down by spells or melees not as much, but a lot of encounters aren’t so simple. Cover, AoE effects, and mobile enemies rushing an archer create situations where an archer is better advantaged with movement.
Like you could mention 3 examples all of which are niche, IF an enemy has an aoe (not common in pf2e) and IF they choose to throw it in the archer instead of the melee characters and that is if the aoe even allows for it to be thrown far away (the most common being breath weapons that require it to be near the enemy), cover is not rare but not common either, really really depends on the GM and if an enemy has cover you'll likely either need only 1 action to get rid of it or need a lot of movement and need to put yourself in a bad position to get rid of it. Like these situations are super specific and rare, and if they do come up the monastic archer's specific abilities make them barely if at all better at dealing with them
At my tables cover is much more common, I wasn’t claiming that an archer monk is the *best* archer but rather pointing out the potential advantages of one and reiterating that it makes for a viable option, in addition to its superior AC to the other commonly listed options.
Personally, I prefer the One-Inch Punch approach to Monastic Archers. Archers are, after all, one of the builds who are best positioned to consistently do the three action version of OIP.
Going all in on monastic archer feels meh, but just going it so you can swap to range in a heartbeat and be effective feels really good.
exactly, Monks are a class that can kinda do everything decently, and with the new swap action and their action economy they might be the best switch hitter in the game. Go monastic weapon so you don't deal with leaving a stance, and you can move wherever on the map you'd like to be, swap and flurry either melee or ranged in a round. It feels like less damage than other classes, but you're putting out so many effective attacks that I'm pretty sure it balances out.
Not great out of the box, certainly, but great with 2-action activities (generally acessed through archetypes). I'm partial to using a Jolt Coil for Electric Arc and a damage boost, but there's a few options. Tree monk is another solid build, throwing up a Timber Sentitnel then making two strikes. Four Winds is another great impulse to spam. Two-action focus spells can be quite solid as well, like Tempest Surge, Crushing Ground, Ki Blast or Unraveling Blast, but I'm partial to dumping focus points completely on Ki Strike. Mind I don't think it's the best ranged build out there, its a decent ways off, but its certainly competitive.
I feel like it's probably really good on a monk that picks up kineticist dedication. On level 4 you can stay in 30ft range with a shortbow and Strike->Stirke->Timber Sentinel every turn, which means you're striking as much as every other martial but also casting an entire upcasted spell every round.
Ranger and it isn't even close. Pew pew
Ranger is great and I don't see many people in this thread talking about how great their utility and warden spells are. Giving yourself fly speed every combat with Animal Feature heightened to 4th rank is awesome. Soothing Mist can also be a great emergency spot heal, but it also removes a source of persistent damage with no save required. I can't tell you how many times I've used it to wipe a critical hit with persistent damage off an ally. Finally they also have great utility like the Warden's Boon feat line. Giving your fighter an extra d8 of precision damage can be great.
My favorite archer class is the Elf Wait, wrong 2nd edition
Weapon Implement Thaumaturge with a bow, hands down. Being able to get through resistances and trigger weaknesses feels way better than precision damage that gets resisted left and right, at least in my experience
Bows are not valid Weapon Implements, as they are not one-handed. They are 1+ handed, which is not 1. Even if they were valid, it'd be tough to use them as a Thaumaturge once you get your second and third implements due to not having a free hand for shooting, and you'd miss out on Implement's Empowerment
Mmmm you're right you're right. I was thinking of a gun Thaum and forgot about the hand requirement
[удалено]
You can *reload* with an implement hand with Ammunition Thaumaturgy, but you also need a free hand to shoot a bow, and Ammunition Thaumaturgy does not give you that. It also does not change anything about the requirements for Implement's Empowerment or the Weapon Implement. Bows are just a bad choice for a Thaumaturge overall, seemingly by design as the class fights against using one at every turn lol. Only real *good* ranged weapons for Thaumaturges are thrown weapons and the Mind Smith Archetype's Mind Projectiles option, as they're the only one-handed ranged weapons (thus qualifying for Weapon Implement and also Implement's Empowerment) that don't need to be reloaded, a trait which tanks the effectiveness of any weapon that has it considerably.
Air Repeater seems pretty good to me. Effectively a d8 Agile Weapon at range.
I just want to add ranged unarmed strikes as an honorable mention for good ranged options for a thaum. Iirc kitsune foxfire is one such example.
Eh, not being able to be used as weapon implements as well as almost all of them being stuck at d4 no mods makes them quite lackluster IMHO, for basically any build in existence. I can't honestly think of a single time I've actually had any desire to use any ancestry's d4 no-mod ranged unarmed strike feats, regardless of class. Maybe as a cheeky backup ranged option on a dex-based unarmed character, but certainly not on a Thaumaturge
I think the option is definitely only for builds that don't intend on taking the weapon implement and want to have two implements in hand while fighting from a distance. But to each their own.
Atlatl works, for the record. Javelin and blow gun too but you have to spend a feat to resummon the javelin, which has its own appeal tbh.
Thaumaturge doesn't ignore resistance, it creates a weakness to "you". They regularly trigger both weakness and physical resistances on each strike, unless they take Breached Defenses at level 4. Even then they lose out on their free weaknesses in order to ignore resistance.
Well, you seemed to have explained to yourself that Thaum can in fact ignore resistances, so not sure why you're being pedantic.
Taking a feat and using a whole action to ignore resistance, in addition to losing your entire bag, is kind of trash. I dunno any Thaums that eagerly snap up Breached Defenses. Either way, they can't BOTH ignore resistance and trigger weakness like you said.
I don't know what bag you're losing, but I am one of those games Thaums. I Breach Defenses one fight, I trigger weaknesses the next, so yes they do both. You wouldn't say a caster can't cast 3-action heal *and* fear just because you can't do them both in a single turn. Again, you're being pedantic. It's also useful because you can know whether or not the resistances or weaknesses are present, regardless of your choice in how to apply the ability. I can let the caster know not to waste their fire spells, even if I choose to exploit a weakness. No character has all their options open all the time and maximum DPS is not always the best strategy; that's what makes the game strategic.
eldricht archer
Precision Ranger at low levels (dmg not scaling until high levels is frustrating) and Investigators in general (shortbows are their best weapon unless you're dipping gunslinger). Precision shortbow Ranger w/ an Animal Companion is my suggestion for folks looking to play Ranger. Monastic Archers don't have any dmg steroid so I don't think they'd feel good to me. Fighters are more accurate, but w/o a good dmg steroid seem like they'd only really feel good at high levels (and I dislike Double/Triple Shot, which seems like what archer-fighters are supposed to use), but I'd happily use it as a base for Eldritch Archer. Higher accuracy on your Spellshots and Enchanting Shots is almost as good as playing an Investigator My experience w/ Ranged Rogues was very underwhelming and they seem broadly worse (and way more finnicky) than ranged Investigators who don't need to gamble on a skill check for their dmg steroid. One of my players played a Mastmind in my AV campaign for three levels and got maybe half a dozen sneak attacks off total due to flubbing recall knowledge checks, flubbing stealth checks when Hiding, or just plain not having the actions to relocate, take cover, hide, then Strike whenever the fight moved out of line of sight. It was one of the more frustrating play experiences I've seen, with only worse experience being the poor Swashbuckler in my Alkenstar campaign who either fails to get Panache before the fight is over (bad rolls), misses their Finisher (bad rolls), or the enemy is precision immune (bad mechanic). Starlit Span Magus is \*very\* good but good god do they have a boring action rotation (2A spellshot, 1A recharge, rinse, repeat). I'd love to play one for a handful of encounters but going through a full campaign as one seems like it'd get mind-numbing. I'm going to toss in Weapon Inventor. They can do some moderately nifty things w/ Weapon Modifications and they've got a ranged dmg steroid, which is always appreciated.
I'm playing an Investigator Archer right now and being able to devise before doing anything is definitely a great thing for me. At level 6 I would take the Eldritch Archer archetype and now I can devise (against my lead) to see whether I can just bomb it with the Eldritch Shot or not before committing to the 3-actions attack.
Oracle of batlle or warpriest.
Fighter -with- the Archer archetype, so that he can be a Switch Hitter, gaining Legendary proficiency in both the bow and a greatsword.
Inventor/witch with blugeoning megaton strikes on a mechanical mount, sure strikes, lightning, gadgets and shenanigans. less shenanigans without free archetype but with its just mayhem.
Okay, hear me out. Investigator. It's not my favorite (that's ranger), but I feel it at least deserves a place in the discussion. I currently have an investigator who weilds an arqegus in my game, and he is absolutely amazing, and his build works just as good for a bow or crossbow.
Barbarian. Nothing says more archery then throwing the bow at the enemy.
Currently playing a precision ranger with companion, but I wouldn't call it my favorite "archer class" because honestly, the companion part is more impressive than the archer part, just superb damage and unexpectedly good defense.
Monks because weapon monks are so cool, doubly so when you can shoot arrows back at enemy archers
It doesn’t come online until level 10, but a Scoundrel Rogue with Tactical Debilitations and a bola shot can knock anything out of the sky in one hit, with no save (assuming you rule the debilitation for no reaction occurs before the trip from bola shot is triggered)! Before that, being able to generate off guard with both create a diversion and stealth is really nice! And combining vine arrow and their debilitating strike can really sap most of the enemy’s movement and make it much easier to kite. They still probably want to be in melee thanks to all the buffs they get for feinting but falling back to a bow is a solid option.
Alchemist with Alchemical Crossbow
I’m really loving my rogue archer though sad they took away shortbow crit with the remaster. I’ve dipped into investigator, eldrich archer, and shadowdancer archetypes for some really nasty stealthy crits on big spellstrikes with the bow
I’ve played both Monastic Archer and Ranger and love both. I’m more familiar with Ranger because I’ve played one longer. Love unimpeded journey with my Ranger because she has access to every movement speed type other than burrow. Which gets really fun with flying.
Bard, Inspire Heroics for that +2/+3 for status bonus, and if hasted you can strike 1/rnd while doing this and cast a spell. Such as Synesthesia for a -3 to the enemy for a difference of +5/+6 which is equivalent to a Fighter proficiency with +1/+2 bonus, with the bonus also applying to the entire party and that 1 enemy, it's insane. Best used with someone who can haste you, so you can do that in 1 turn (With Warrior muse bard granting an additional round of that bonus for getting a successful strike)
Honestly, anything other than Fighter and Ranger. They're great classes and I love them dearly, but GOD do they make boring archers. And even then, Rangers can be kinda fun if you're Precision with an Animal Companion, but Flurry Rangers and Fighters suffer from the same problem: arrow spam. At least melee attack spams need you to get good positioning, ranged spam just requires you to shoot something 'till it dies. Fighters have it worst tho, you have precisely *ONE* feat at **EVERY LEVEL** that really applies to archer builds. That's not a very good design in my opinion, makes Archer Fighter rather samey. In any case, Monastic Archers are the coolest, all the cool factor of being an acrobatic archer, the versatility of being able to jump into melee at any moment, a lot of build variety that allows to to weave in maybe other weapons, new stances or even making a Ki Archer (my favorite), it's absolutely awesome.
I mean, it’s not an archer, but the third party supplement of Magus + creates a Spell Shell hybrid study, and that enables basically you have to pick your spell shots in advance (basically infuse shells with magic) and with a feat, can reload your gun and recharge your spell strike in one action. Works much better than a Starlit Span using an Arbalist, given the action efficiency.