What's up with archers?

[sunder]

Ouch that hurt my eyes. Well I rolled up a Archer character and yes, they are really good with the bow. At max level 17 they are pounding with +5 to hit and +5 damage just being a archer. You don't miss alot. Your TARGET ability will add +2 damage to the shot also.
With a +3 bow, you are usually at +12 or greater to hit (+5 archer, +3 bow, +2 GM, +2 dex) so you don't miss much, shooting pretty fast, about 3 arrows per round, and doing good damage.
Your melee of course isn't much, just basic strength and weapon ability, but thats not bad at level 17 with a +3 or 4 weapon. You can survive in melee.


Yes, your archer is going to do some damage with a bow, give him some boots of speed and he can run circles around enemies who can't attack him with spells or such good. I had a archer character play with a dragon quite easy, just ran out of reach, stopped, shoot, run stop, shoot, etc. He didn't get hit by anything except maybe a wing gust attack, he could run away from any breath weapon or dragon melee attack, and hit shots hurt.
A well equipted archer will mow down the non-casting opponents by hit and run attacks. He barely ever misses, and does good damage. Just keep him out of melee. He did good against beholders also. Ran into bow range, shot once, and ran away.
If you have some good upline fighters already, a archer will work at ranged attacks just as good as your backup mages and such. I didn't use a archer in the game my 2 fighters were made to be both ok with missile and melee. GM in one weapon, GM in one missile. So they could shoot when needed, or melee when needed.
If you specialize your characters into pure melee fighters, or pure ranged fighters it works just as well, but just a different tactic.

I'm sorry about that. The computer didn't appear to reply when I pushed the submit reply button, so I tried again (and again, and again) until I gave up.

[Memnoch]

Gwhanos, there's more to BG2 than just powergaming to get the "best" character. I played a jester solo just to try something totally different. It was almost like a different game, I had to use different strategies than your usual hack and slash or cast and run. That's why the archer is there, so that people who like to roleplay through the game can do so.

If you want to powergame, there's always the kensai mage.

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[Leagle]

Originally posted by Memnoch: I played a jester solo just to try something totally different. It was almost like a different game, I had to use different strategies than your usual hack and slash...

Like hiding and confusing them, hehehe...