Quote Originally Posted by jedipotter View Post
Arcane Archer such a great idea fluff wise, but mechanicaly it sucks. First off, who is this class for martial character archers or spellcasters? The class is quite odd about that point. The martial archer can't really make use of the adding spells to the arrow ability without lots of levels in a spellcasting class. And a spellcaster does not get much from the class other then adding spells to arrows, but they have the huge drawback of not being able to hit anything as they have low BaBs and no archery feats.

Now the plus arrows and adding spells to arrows is a good start, but then the class just kinda sputters out. The seeker, phase, hail and death arrows are kinda ''ok'' abilities....but each is only once a day. Sure shooting an arrow through an adamaintimum wall once a day is ok, but what about the rest of the day? And the death arrow ability is a very low powered ability. Considering you won't get the death arrow until at least 16th level, a DC of 20 is a bit pointless for foes of that level.
I think the purpose is "Casters that decide they want to go martial."


Frankly - I think it's a problem inherent to the whole prestige class system. They're supposed to be about tradeoffs. Unfortunately, because they're not something always taken into account at character creation, it emphasizes just how much you have to give up in order to gain the benefits. The Arcane Archer is a D8, Full BAB class. Unfortunately, Prerequisites are also a killer to the concept, because they force you to split your tradeoffs - You can only enter a PrC after you prove you don't need to.