Didn't want to dredge up the old thread by posting a reply to it, but here it is for reference.
http://www.ironworksforum.com/ubb/cg...c;f=2;t=022480
Something was nagging at me back when I first read this thread. Shouldn't a simple Kensai be able to implement this concept, without the need for the Generic Archer mod? Kensais can certainly get 5 stars in Daggers. But I figured that Kensais probably couldn't learn Darts, seeing as they are a missle-only weapon.
Last night I was playing around with a new Kensai character (a Halfling) that would be a throwing weapon master, and since I am using plain patched SOA (Baldurdash + Bonus Merchants, no mods) there's no need to go beyond two stars in a weapon. So she already had two stars each in Dagger and Axe, so I looked down the list for anything else that she might find handy. And I found... Dart! I was able to assign her points in Dart... I could have gone up to 5 although I just put in two. Checking just now at Baldurdash, I find that this is not a bug... in fact according to Baldurdash, Kensais and Cavaliers NOT being able to use Darts was initially a bug, which that patch corrects. They are both restricted from using launched weapons, but are deliberately not restricted from using throwing weapons, including Darts.
So my point is: you can have a Dartmaster in unmodded SOA as a Kensai who specializes (up to Grandmastery if you so choose) in Darts. Relative to the Generic Archer, you lose out on Called Shot and the ability to wear armor up to studded leather, gauntlets/bracers, and shields. In return you gain access to Kai (which is pretty pitiful when just granting you max damage on a dart's D3 damage die), but you can also Grandmaster in Dagger and have the out-of-character option of using melee weapons with the full Kensai damage bonuses. And, of course, you don't have to mod your game.
One more point: I speculated about the utility of Single Weapon Style for such a character in the previous thread, and did a little checking on that. So far, just testing with a plain old throwing axe, it looks like the game only applies the benefits of Single Weapon Style when you are using a weapon for melee. With the throwing axe, I was actually able to get my character's AC to change simply by changing the axe's current "mode" from melee to throwing and back... and the AC bonus was only present with the throwing axe in melee mode. I also had that character (a Skald with a single point in Axe and Single Weapon Style) chuck it at the Lesser Clay Golems until she rolled a 19, and saw that it did not cause a critical on a 19. Again, this is plain SOA with only Baldurdash and Bonus Merchants. So, although I should test more, I think I was pretty conclusively wrong: Single Weapon Style seems to only help in melee, not for thrown weapons.
Not sure if this will actually be useful to anyone, but enjoy or ignore at your leisure [img]smile.gif[/img]