Sublime Archer; A ToB/Ranger/Scout Hybrid. PEACH!

[Frog Dragon]

Sublime Archer
"The traditional warriors of the sublime way wave their axes, but who is to say similar beauty cannot be found in the precise flight of an arrow?"

Sublime archers grew from a need to elevate the arts of ranged combat to the same level as the more traditional sublime artists. They set out to perfect everything abut archery, and to account for every need of an archer, and integrate it into their training. Now, sublime archers come from all walks of life, with their uniting factor being their choice of weapons. However, many of them take their skills to ranging the woods, as the skills of an archer are naturally suited for that.

HD: d8

SUBLIME ARCHER
{table=head]Level|Base Attack Bonus|Fort Save|Ref Save|Will Save|Special

1st|

+1

|

+1

|

+2

|

+0

|First Shot +1, Archery Focus: Weapon Focus

2nd|

+2

|

+1

|

+3

|

+0

|Mind of Soaring Steel
3rd|

+3

|

+2

|

+3

|

+1

|Bonus Feat, Fast Movement +10ft, Silent Sniper +3

4th|

+4

|

+2

|

+4

|

+1

|Archery Focus: Weapon Specialization

5th|

+5

|

+3

|

+4

|

+1

|First Shot +2

6th|

+6/+1

|

+3

|

+5

|

+2

|Evasion, Silent Sniper +6

7th|

+7/+2

|

+3

|

+5

|

+2

|Archery Focus: Precise Shot
8th|

+8/+3

|

+4

|

+6

|

+2

|Bonus Feat

9th|

+9/+4

|

+4

|

+6

|

+3

|First Shot +3, Silent Sniper +9

10th|

+10/+5

|

+5

|

+7

|

+3

|Archery Focus: Canny Shot

11th|

+11/+6/+1

|

+5

|

+7

|

+3

|Fast Movement +20ft

12th|

+12/+7/+2

|

+6

|

+8

|

+4

|Silent Sniper +12

13th|

+13/+8/+3

|

+6

|

+8

|

+4

|Bonus Feat, Archery Focus: Ranged Defense

14th|

+14/+9/+4

|

+6

|

+9

|

+4

|First Shot +4

15th|

+15/+10/+5

|

+7

|

+9

|

+5

|Silent Sniper +15

16th|

+16/+11/+6/+1

|

+7

|

+10

|

+5

|Archery Focus: Archer's Recovery

17th|

+17/+12/+7/+2

|

+8

|

+10

|

+5

|Improved Evasion

18th|

+18/+13/+8/+3

|

+8

|

+11

|

+6

|Bonus Feat, Silent Sniper +20

19th|

+19/+14/+9/+4

|

+9

|

+11

|

+6

|First Shot +5, Archery Focus: Dual Strike

20th|

+20/+15/+10/+5

|

+9

|

+12

|

+6

|Stancemaster Archer[/table]

Skill Points: The sublime archer gains 6+int modifier skill points per level (4x at first level).
Class Skills: The class skills for a sublime archer are: Balance (Dex), Climb (Str), Concentration (Con), Craft (Int), Hide (Dex), Jump (Str), Knowledge: Geography (Int), Knowledge: Nature (Int), Listen (Wis), Move Silently (Dex), Ride (Dex), Search (Int), Sense Motive (Wis), Spot (Wis), Survival (Wis), Swim (Str), Tumble (Dex) and Use Rope (Dex)

Weapon and Armor proficiency: A sublime archer starts play with proficiency in light armor, all simple weapons and all martial ranged weapons.

Maneuvers
A Sublime Archer chooses maneuvers from the disciplines of Iron Rain, Falcon's Eye, True Arrow, Phoenix Arrow and Diamond Mind.
A Sublime Archer has 4 maneuvers at the start of his career, and gains more as he gains levels.
Once you know a maneuver, you must ready it before you can use it (See maneuvers readied). A maneuver useable by a sublime archers is considered an extraordinary ability unless otherwise is indicated on the maneuver description. Maneuvers are not affected by spell resistance and initiating them does not provoke attacks of opportunity. However, the associated ranged attack often does.
You learn additional maneuvers as you gain levels, as indicated in the the table below. You must be high enough level to learn a maneuver and you must fulfill all the prerequisites for a maneuver before you can learn it.
Upon reaching fourth level, and every even numbered level after that, you may replace a maneuver you already have with another maneuver that you qualify for. Essentially, you lose the old maneuver to gain a new one. The new maneuver may be any maneuver you qualify for and you can exchange a lower level maneuver for a higher level one this way.

Maneuvers Readied
You can ready three of your four maneuvers at first level and as you gain levels, you can ready more maneuvers, but you must still choose maneuvers to ready. You ready maneuvers by exercising and practicing shooting for 5 minutes. The maneuvers remain readied until you decide to exercise to ready them again. You need not sleep or rest to ready maneuvers.
You begin an encounter with all maneuvers unexpended, regardless of how many times you may have already chosen to use them. When you initiate a maneuver, it becomes expended, and must be recovered to be used again (see below).
You can recover all expended maneuvers by making one ranged attack as a full-round action. You may not initiate a maneuver or change stance, but you can remain in a change in which you started your turn.

Stances
You begin play with knowledge of one first level stance open to sublime archers. At levels indicated in the table, you can choose additional changes. Unlike maneuvers, stances are not expended and you do not have to ready them. All the stances you know are available to you at all times, and changing stance is a swift action. A stance is a extraordinary ability unless otherwise indicated in the description.
Unlike with maneuvers, you may not learn new stances in the place of old ones.

Level	Maneuvers Readied	Maneuvers Known	Stances Known
1	3	4	1
2	3	5	1
3	4	5	1
4	4	6	1
5	4	7	2
6	5	7	2
7	5	8	2
8	5	9	2
9	6	9	3
10	6	10	3
11	6	11	3
12	7	11	3
13	7	12	4
14	7	13	4
15	8	13	4
16	8	14	4
17	8	15	5
18	9	15	5
19	9	16	5
20	9	17	5

First Shot
The Sublime Archer gains the indicated bonus to initiative checks.

Archery Focus
The sublime archer may choose one of these three categories, bows, crossbows or slings and thrown weapons. As she gains levels, she gains the benefits described below when using her chosen group of weapons.
Weapon Focus
The sublime archer gains weapon focus with her chosen group of weapons.
Weapon Specialization
The sublime archer gains weapon specialization with her chosen group of weapons.
Precise Shot
The sublime archer gains her wisdom modifier to attack rolls when initiating maneuvers using her chosen group of weapons.
Canny Shot
The sublime archer gains her wisdom modifier to damage rolls when using her chosen group of weapons.
Ranged Defense
The sublime archer does not provoke attacks of opportunity for shooting in melee while using her chosen group of weapons.
Archer's Recovery
Times per day equal to her wisdom modifier (minumum 1), the sublime archer may recover maneuvers as a free action when using her chosen group of weapons.
Dual Strike
Times per day equal to her wisdom modifier (minumum 1), the sublime archer may initiate two strike maneuvers at the same time with the initiation action of the one that takes a longer time to initiate when using her chosen group of weapons.

Bonus Feat
The sublime archer gains a bonus feat from the following list. She must meet all prerequisites for the feat.
From Player's Handbook
Point Blank Shot, Manyshot, Far Shot, Precise Shot, Rapid Shot, Shot on the Run, Improved Precise Shot, Lightning Reflexes and Improved Initiative.
From Tome of Battle
Blade Meditation.
From Complete Warrior
Improved Rapid Shot, Ranged Disarm, Ranged Pin, Ranged Sunder, Sharp-Shooting and Zen Archery.
From Expanded Psionics Handbook
Greater Manyshot.
From Player's Handbook 2
Crossbow Sniper and Deadeye Shot

Evasion
As the rogue ability.

Improved Evasion
As the rogue ability.

Fast Movement
The Sublime Archer gains the indicated bonus to her land speed as an untyped bonus.

Mind of Soaring Steel
The sublime archer may use diamond mind strikes with ranged weapons and at range, even if the maneuvers would not normally allow that when initiating as a sublime archer.

Silent Sniper
The sublime archer gains the indicated bonus on hide checks to conceal herself after attacking at range. In short, sniping. This does not stack with any other bonus to hide checks made while sniping.

Stancemaster Archer
When wielding a ranged weapon, the sublime archer may have two stances active at the same time. When using a swift action to change or initiate stance, you may initiate or change both stances.

So here it is. I had a bit of trouble making the last abilities, so I essentially nicked the capstone from the warblade. This uses quite a lot of homebrew.

[Dead_Jester]

Very nice, and the class seems balanced but I think the 2 dead level (especially lvl 12 because they don't gain anything but Bab and saves) should have something in them, like a small bonus to hide and/or move silently for the snipers out there.

Also, a small nitpick, I think lvls 3 and 9 should grant maneuvers known to enable players to immediately take maneuvers of the highest level possible (maybe move the maneuvers gained at lvls 4 and 10 down).

[demidracolich]

Very nice, I like it, the only problems I see have already been mentioned by the above post.

[JKTrickster]

Wow this is an amazing class! I like how you basically got more or less everything ranged characters needed! Definitely an amazing class!

About those two dead levels: they're not actually dead levels. If you pay attention to their maneuver progression, the Sublime Archer gets 1 more readied maneuver at those two levels, which is a pretty nice feature. If you want Frog Dragon, feel free to add some small bonus but I wouldn't overdo it unnecessarily.

But wow this is really a sweet class. I really have nothing to say!

[Frog Dragon]

Readied maneuver is quite a small boon though. I'd "fix" the progression, but I really like my progressions to be in a simple pattern. That makes it pretty much impossible to fix.
The dead levels are there because I didn't come up with anything fitting. My ideal solution would be a scaling ability that goes 3, 6, 9, 12, 15, 18. Would stamp out the dead levels quite neatly, but I got nothing. Though, now I got an idea, editing.
Edit: Dead Levels 0 - Frog Dragon 1
Edit: Added Concentration to the class skill list. Not sure how I managed to miss that.

[Blueiji]

Hi, I think this is a really awesome class, and it's perfect for a player of mine who can't figure out what class he wants to use for his archer character.

I was wondering though, what tier would you rank this class? It's probably not tier one because it doesn't have full spellcasting but perhaps it's tier two or three? It seems a tad more powerful than the other ToB classes because it has so many class features.

If you're unfamiliar with the tier system, here's a link: http://brilliantgameologists.com/boa...p?topic=1002.0

One last thing, the way I wrote this question makes it sound geared to the author of the class, but I'd be happy for anyone familiar with the tier system to answer this.

[Morph Bark]

First Shot makes me think that this Sublime Archer goes into battle shouting "FIRST!" before shooting and commenting throughout the battle like it was a YouTube video.

My main gripe with the class is that it doesn't have anything original about it, no real special class features. It is really just a ranged Warblade with a few adaptations to make the class chassis and features more like the Ranger's.