Note: I opted for variant human to get the Sharpshooter feat right away. Toggle navigation I never realized Arcanum had archetypes focusing on Archer abilities so it’s time to finally do it. It would be almost rude not to use this evil weapon. This is easily one of the most powerful features in our arcane archer build. The key to this build is going to be staying as far away from danger as possible. Save this for when you need to deal some massive damage very quickly. Once you’ve used this feature you will regain it on a short or long rest. how is 16 possible with point by as I’m looking in the PHB and it has a max of 15. This should come as no surprise to you that your arcane archer should be taking the Archery Fighting Style. You gain 1 point in either Dexterity, Intelligence, Wisdom, or Charisma. 2. Armor upgrade system offers an array of styles from skimpy to elegance. When you consider the fact that even the humblest of bows imbued with minor frost damage is capable of slowing an enemy by 50% you begin to realise how devastating this character can be once they commit perks into archery. Request A Quick Quote. The Poisoner When someone brings up the subject of poison in Skyrim, they’re usually talking about the harmful concoctions that you can make via Alchemy. This is my optimised build of an arcane archer that packs a serious punch on any opponent.If 500 damage per round average is to your tastes, then come have a taste at this build. The Arcane Archer subclass of Fighter says that it has two uses of Arcane Shot at level 3, and regains used charges on short and long rests. Blacksmithing - To make this build viable, you'll need to use the best Iron weapons and armor you can get your hands on. Note that Arcane Accessories is significantly more powerful than vanilla, so you may want to restrain yourself in terms of Destruction perks. 15-20th Level: Fighter. You’ll focus on dealing damage by rushing to get Improved Extra Attack at 16th total level. If that creature is surprised your hit is a critical hit. This thing is absolutely beastly. Xanathar's Guide never specifies; it only says that I gain additional options at 7th, 10th, 15th, and 18th levels. Quick Build. INT: 16 (+3) Just like Alert, this feat has some great synergy with our build since Assassinate gives us a pretty reliable source of advantage for our longbow attacks in round 1 of combat. Option 1 of this build is focused on being a true glass cannon. In addition to this, cunning action is a great rogue ability that will help you with putting some distance between yourself and the target. For this build, you’ll want to put 2 of these ASIs into Dexterity, meaning that you’ll increase the stat from 16 -> 18 -> 20 through the course of two ASIs. Note: Dexterity is by far the king of this build. At 6th you can choose two more or one & your thieves’ tools and gain the same bonus. When your characters primary weapon is two handed you're placing certain limitations on your build; they cannot use spells seamlessly during battle. For the first one, you’ll want to grab expertise in at least Acrobatics if not both Acrobatics and Stealth. There are merits for choosing all of these depending on your play-style. 1) 16 is possible in point buy as variant human gets +1 to two ability scores. We don’t have a lot of bonus action abilities or features outside of Curving Shot and the occasional Second Wind. Also note that many colored items are also links to the Paizo SRD. This build definitely met its original goal of being a glass cannon. I'm playing a Bound Bow using Archer Mage right now and the build is super viable. Athletics can also be a great option if you decided to opt for a bit more strength than what this build suggested. I made a calculator for this portion of the feat because of how integral it was for this build. Paired with Smithing and Alchemy, you will be able to craft enchanted weapons, armor, and jewelry that will render you virtually invincible. I prefer option 1, but if you find yourself at the brunt of AoE attacks and taking a lot of damage option 2 has its merits. Draugr are already slow beasties and have a weakness to fire that should maximise this bows effectiveness. After that, you’ll have 2-3 more to put into your other stats. You want to focus on being an arcane archer and rush to get Magic Arrow and Curving Shot. This helps to guarantee that you go before your enemies on round 1 of combat which gives you advantage on your attacks against them. This npc just provides icing on the cake; an arcane archer is already capable of finishing most fights before they even get started. You’ll also gain another Arcane Shot option quicker this way and an additional ASI sooner than option 2. While elemental cloaks are usually used for mild damage during combat, the specialised elemental perks ‘Intense Flames’, 'Disintegrate' or ‘Deep Freeze’ can ensure that weakened enemies that draw near are either directly repelled, turned to ash or paralysed from cold. Source: Class Features. Stats are equal to Daedric Light Arm You are probably one of the better characters to annihilate mages and long-range threats in the party. As a whole I found the arcane archer to be a pretty fun archetype. Fiery soul trap is obviously a great enchantment for an entry level arcane archer. An archer with the ranger perk and a bow of frost is capable of outflanking the quickest of enemies, combine this with the fact that your attacks will be staggering 50% of the time and will render foes incapable of performing power attacks or sprinting and you have a cocktail for disaster. First, Dexterity should be your highest ability score, followed by Intelligence. While this doesn’t have great synergy with the arcane archer portion of the build, it’s amazing for our Assassinate feature from the assassin rogue archetype. Gaining expertise with Thieves’ Tools is also a pretty awesome bonus if you don’t already have a dedicated trap disabler. People (myself included) often say that the speech skill in Skyrim is completely useless. CON: 14 (+2) Background: Urban Bounty Hunter This is a great feature to help bolster your survivability. Using these links and purchasing something through them gives Dungeon Solvers a small kickback which is used to reinvest in the site and its content. Copyright © 2021 | MH Magazine WordPress Theme by MH Themes, Kobold Fight Club: Balanced Encounters on the Fly, Product Review: Yeti X World of Warcraft Edition, made a calculator for this portion of the feat, Making Custom Monsters Using D&D Monster Maker, Great Weapon Master and Sharpshooter 5e Calculator, D&D 5e Character Build: Swashbuckler Rogue, RPG Math: Calculating the Average Dice Roll. Expect to use this blow plenty during the rookie levels for harvesting souls. This patch is not supported by the original author(s), in any way, shape or form, and is an independent mod with its own responsibilities and faults. The rest of the stats are less desirable mechanically, but still, have their uses in the game for this build. 8-10th Level: Rogue This bow comes in very handy, plenty of undead to be purged in the various tombs of Skyrim. Stats: This was done using point buy. Spells like Hold Person and Blindness/Deafness will be the bane of your existence and can take you out of combat or hinder the use of your abilities. The way I see it all characters are merchants in their own right; this character is just an exceptionally good one and I was able to reclaim my lost speech perks from the points I saved in the destruction skill by not levelling it the traditional way. Choosing the arcane trickster archetype instead of the assassin archetype is also a viable option. The reason this is so great is that at level 5+ you’ll be able to make 4-6 weapon attacks in a single turn of combat. There’s always something you can be doing which significantly improves your personal action economy! Crossbow Expert – While RAW arcane archers specifically only use bows your DM could you to use crossbows without any major repercussions. However, elves work very well for this build especially high elves, wood elves, shadar-kai, and eladrin. STR: 8 (-1) Couple this with the fact that you have a very high Dexterity modifier you’ll be able to skirt out of these AoEs with 0 damage taken a fair amount of the time. You get the choice between gaining proficiency in either the Arcana or the Nature skill, and you can choose between learning prestidigitation or druidcraft. Showing 1-15 of 31 comments ... mod the game with ordinator and make some new, non-bow builds its pretty easy #9. You do have two uses of Indomitable to mitigate this issue, but that’s not going to allow you to get out of every save. You should not frequently have to use this ability as you should aim to be far away from the battle. You gain proficiency with the disguise and poisoner’s kit. I think the two are pretty interchangeable in this case. This opens up a ton of different options for what you would like to do on your turn. Arcane Archers are some of the most elite warriors among the The Build. Gaining a skill and thieves’ tools (if you background doesn’t give it to you) is a pretty nice perk. Second, choose the folk hero background. Whenever you fire a nonmagical arrow from a longbow or a shortbow it is now considered magical for overcoming resistance and immunity to nonmagical attacks and damage. Granted it'd be a different build entirely, as Enchanting more or less IS this build, but I just love the idea of a naturalist Archer who makes his own potions and poisons to slow his enemies to a crawl as he picks them off, rather than Frost magic. Once per turn you can deal an extra xd6 to a creature you hit with an attack if you have advantage on the roll or an enemy of the creature is within 5 ft. of it. Intelligence is up next as it dictates the save DC of our Arcane Shots. For example, you could use the Dodge and Attack actions on the same turn if you used Action Surge. Sure, we could wait and level skills over time, but when are you ready to get on with playing your character? Im also going to have the glowing bow and arrow mod to add to it. Constitution is a good stat as well. It’s a solid feature if you do not already have a magical bow. 17-20th Level: Rogue. Also at 3rd level, you can learn 2 of the 8 different Arcane Shot options on page 29-30 of Xanathar’s Guide to Everything (XGtE). Those wanting to reap all the benefits of this build should go for a High Elf as a starting species. So you take the 15 in two stats initially and then add +1 in each of those to gain 2 16’s. They all have their uses, but here are my top 4: Bursting Arrow and Grasping Arrow are my recommendations for level 3 as they give you a  good mix of AoE damage and crowd control. Time to take a look at what this character is really about; enchanted ranged weaponry. After a quick inner-city miscellaneous quest Revyn will happily train us up to 50 in speech so we can unlock the merchant perk and dominate all other traders in Skyrim. Your ranged weapon attacks ignore half cover and three-quarters cover which is another huge bonus. A risky tactic for a level 1 ‘dead is dead’ (RuneRed) player but the stamina damage enchantment is incredibly expensive and will provide a ton of early cash once disenchanted, we are after all creating a character that just buys filled soul gems without thinking. The downside to glass cannons is that they are not very sturdy. How many times have you had 40+ enchanted iron daggers for sale with no place to go to unload them? I'm going to mix the two examples a bit and maybe add a bit of illusion. Whatever your build, Enchanting will make it better. You’ll have 5 ASIs to allocate if you chose variant human, and 4 if you did not and need to take the sharpshooter feat. In order to do this I didn’t want to go through the hassle of juggling spell craft during battle just to reach key perks. A glass cannon is a ranged character that sits in the back of the group and deals massive amounts of damage. Make sure at least one of your options for breaking out of a grapple gets the benefit of expertise. I was able to deal a large amount of damage as a martial character while still having plenty of weaknesses that the DM could use against me. This is a solid amount of single target burst damage that is a major perk for this build along with some of the other great rogue features that focus on defense and maneuverability. Strength saves are not as much of an issue since you at least have proficiency in those. This is an amazing ability for this build as it gives us yet another way to minimize the damage we take. This feature is excellent and finally gives you a use for your bonus action outside of second wind. It's sometimes fun to try a little of both Snakes, there is no reason why a character skilled primarily in alchemy can't enjoy a little enchanted warfare... For example the Black Bow of Fate should work great with alchemy! If you’re a big fan of the class, you’ll be useful once you pick up the Sharpshooter feat (get to 20 Dexterity first!). Fear: Level 37 (Level 46 for a vampiric archer). If you see a group of enemies in an open field ahead of you, you can probably kill most of them before they even reach your party. The clawing hunger to try my hand at another sorcerer build finally got the best of me recently. After we dip at least 2 levels into rogue you won’t need to use Action Surge for this, but until then it’s an option. Here is where things get a little tricky and you’ll want to pre-plan your next steps as we’ll be multiclassing from here on out. The Black bow is king over zepher. Using this feature you can reroll a saving throw you fail. Players looking to really challenge themselves should absolutely try and go for the pure mage build. My Thoughts on the Arcane Archer. WIS: 10 (+0) Regardless, this doesn’t affect the combat prowess of our arcane archer a whole lot unless you are picking up Stealth or Acrobatics at this point. 11-16th Level: Fighter On your turn you can use a bonus action to gain hit points equal to 1d10 + your Fighter Level. Blue Butterfly Wing & Blue Mountain Flower creates an expensive low level potion without needing to perk alchemy. It’s also useful for instances where you may need to use your action for survivability, but still, want to make some attacks. The trolls will enter their usual fit of rage when you enter the cave but due to the cells unique design you can easily stroll past both of them grab the bow and walk out before they lay a finger on you. Optional Races: Mordenkainen’s Tomb of Foes. This feature is purely based around flavor. This build will be able to dish out some heavy single-target burst damage as well as sustained long-range attacks. Constitution is useful for survival, but despite being called an arcane archer, we won’t be casting many spells. Combined with strong archery skills this bow is capable of reducing a bandit chief to a terrified crawl. WIS: 10 (+0) I say, the dwarven bb, a's bow and bow of the stag prince from both dragonborn and dawnguard would be good for this character. 1-7th Level: Fighter The interesting thing about bows created with a fear or the turn undead effect is that they are strong no matter what difficulty you choose to play on. I really loved playing this build in my homebrew campaign. Mason, the only thing I dislike about this build is that the old picture was way better than that cartoony new piece o' crap. Elven Accuracy – This is a pretty solid feat for this build. The combination of fire and frost means no dragon is safe from its awesome power. 1-7th Level: Fighter DEX: 16 (+3) However, it did have some issues with scaling since you only get a max of 4d6 damage with your shots at level 18 and only 2d6 prior to that. I guess I will just leave arcane archer for my modded playtrough in the future and just play some other itinerant build on this one P.s. What if we could unleash them all on a powerful trainer like Faralda in exchange for some expensive destruction training? Red: Bad, useless options, or options which are extremely situational. As a pawnbroker Revyn can already barter in any goods we see fit to sell him. Being a thief takes an entirely different mindset from every other playstyle. So once destruction has reached its potential my next concern was defence, Grelka is an expert trainer in light armor and can happily train you up for the Wind Walker perk (an incredibly powerful perk for any archer skilled in steady hand). Revyn Sadri (Sadri’s Used Wears – Windhelm). The listed effects are created without the use of enchanting potions. I wish Alchemy made for a more seamless substitute of Enchanting with this build. Check out my article on multiclassing if you want some more information on how it works in D&D 5e. So with the full weight of the merchant perk at our back we can refine our archers skills as we play, there is absolutely no reason to pass up on training 5 times every level if you really want to push for a specific perk. Augmented flames will give the effect a little boost. I found more value in multiclassing into rogue than I did if I’d opted to continue to learn more Arcane Shots and getting the Every-Ready Shot feature. Use coupon code DungeonSolvers10 for 10% off your order! Outside of combat, you are pretty useless. 2 of these ASIs will have to go into Dexterity to cap you out at 20 total. It had some great flavor through the Arcane Archer Lore and Magic Arrow features. Curving Shot is also a very cool mechanic, but that was about where I felt I got the most out of the archetype. Sharpshooter* – This feat is absolutely required for this build. Arcane Archers are rangers that use missile based weaponry as conduits for their spellcraft. This means that an Arcane Archer will ultimately dominate any difficulty they choose to play on. "Arcane Archer Pack" from the Creation Club; Disclaimer I am not the original author of the Creation Club file that this patch depends upon. 2) As you level up you’ll gain ASIs (ability score increases) these give you one of the following: +2 to one ability, +1 to two different abilities, or 1 feat. In fact they’re all pretty decent options for this arcane archer build outside of Piercing Arrow. Any cool build ideas to go with this build? With the sharpshooter feat you’ll have no issue with fighting from hundreds of feet away from the battlefield. January 18, 2021 posted by Category: Uncategorized 0 Comment posted by Category: Uncategorized 0 Comment Because of your high initiative bonus from your Dexterity modifier, you’ll have a great chance at being at the top of the initiative order meaning you’ll get a lot of mileage out of this feature. Just from dipping a level into Rogue you’ll gain proficiency in light armor, one skill from the rogue’s skill list, and thieves’ tools. There is a typo in XGtE where it states this can only be used when firing a magic arrow. Jeremy Crawford corrected that here. Any arrow can be used for this feature! You’ll almost have a free reaction ready that you can now use to reduce your damage taken without second-guessing yourself as to whether or not you should’ve held it to deal a bit more damage this round. A nice perk, plus applying poison to your arrows will give you some added damage or crowd control options. Here is a list of some sample poisons in D&D that you might be able to convince your DM to let you find or make! This is excellent since we will rarely gain attacks of opportunity due to being almost exclusively ranged and those can only be done with melee attacks. Thanks for the comment m8. The Arcane Archer is an incredibly flavorful class, heavily inhibited by the limit on Arcane Shot. An Arcane Archer studies a unique elven method of archery that weaves magic into attacks to Although enemies encountered while playing on master difficulty hit harder and have more health they are still bound by their character level. And a gig worth of story mod like Rigmor to play. Faralda is going to teach us destruction, for my character I wanted the deep freeze perk that requires a skill level of 60. Combining fear and frost means that enemies will be running away slower than usual; in tight dungeons there are few places to hide often forcing foes to run further into unexplored areas and alerting their friends, inviting them to come and join the party of the damned. Unfortunately vendors don't really sell upgraded stuff, so you'll need to make/improve it yourself. That all changes once we are a level 2 rogue and gain this feature. At level 7 & 10 you will learn an additional one from the list. This is a basic 13/7 split build where you’ll be able to grab all of the great stuff from the rogue class while still gaining 3 attacks per action with your fighter levels. We are a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for us to earn fees by linking to Amazon.com and affiliated sites. You also gain a second use of this feature at level 13. Pretty cool, but doesn’t add much to our arcane archer build in terms of combat mechanics. elves. 2 of these ASIs will have to go into Dexterity to cap you out at 20 total. Auiriels bow is only bow better than it. However, thanks to heavy armor proficiency from the fighter class as well as the evasion and uncanny dodge abilities from your rogue levels you’ll be able to avoid a fair amount of damage coming your way. However, I longed to add something a little different to this build and in doing so discovered a perk that was instrumental when it came to streamlining this characters creation. The concept of an arcane archer is nothing new; there's obviously a ton of potential in taking an average bow and imbuing it with powerful magic, but to comprehend what this character brings to the table you need to understand the basic weaknesses of pure archers and how to turn these weaknesses into strengths. This feature has a ton of great synergy with our arcane archer build no matter how you slice it! We can now Dash, Disengage, or Hide using a bonus action! This is a very solid amount of damage for being up to 600 ft. away from your target. At level 5 you can make 2 attacks, and at level 11 you can make 3 attacks per action. As I’m sure you know I’m a big fan of this background! The main focus is the max AA bonus, so please do not compare with level 28 arcane archer who has 1 less Arrow enhancement. This also recharges on a short rest or long rest so it’s a pretty reliable source of survivability. Note: Proficiency in acrobatics or athletics is pretty much required to ensure we can avoid grapples. I just don't see Alchemy providing anywhere near the same degree of utility and damage as Enchanting does here though, unless I'm missing something. The Poisoner is a build that utilizes poison damage (and to a lesser extent, Paralysis) in almost all its forms. CHAR: 8 (-1). These ingredients can easily be picked up in the areas surrounding Riverwood and Whiterun. At this point, there’s no reason to not be taking a bonus action on your turn, even if you don’t miss any of your attacks. After level 5, when you take the attack action you get to make extra weapon attacks. This is my own build made for PW Arkhalia and its intented to be the better version of the 10/1/29 combination.