A Mile and More - Adding magic to a mile long range

[Voidstar01]

Right So yesterday I posted a thread asking about achieving an attack range of 1 mile without magical assistance, we successfully achieved that.

The solution, as presented by Saintheart:

Spoiler:

Show

Composite Greatbow: 130
Dragonbone: +20
Long Range: +20
Flight Arrows: +25
Ranged Weapon Mastery: +20
Far Shot: x1.5
----------
322.5
+ 100 feet from 10 levels in Deepwood Sniper. Deepwood Sniper adds to the range increment, not the maximum range. (Albeit we got lucky with the RAW on this one, I suspect the writers really meant to add 100 feet to overall range, not to one range increment.)
---------
422.5 feet range increment. Cragtop Archer gives us 15 range increments; accordingly, the maximum range is 6337.5 feet (422.5 x 15). About a mile and a quarter, shoot from the San Francisco shoreline and the shot will plunk down on the beach of Alcatraz Island.

Very elegantly, you'd hit dead on one mile at Deepwood Sniper 3 with this setup. That gives us a range increment of 352.5, multiplied by 15 = 5280 feet, precisely one mile.

If you ditch Ranged Weapon Mastery because it takes too many feats, Deepwood Sniper 5 still gets you to dead-on one mile. Definitely have to have Cragtop Archer, though, there's no way to get to that number without it.

This thread is about what Magic/Psionic items or magic archer PrCs we could add (i'm a sucker for flavor so all classes should maintain atleast some archer flavor). I'd like to keep the bow I have now, so please refrain from suggesting specific magic bows (like that one elf bow with a base range increment of 230ft)

This is a pre-existing lvl 3 character so it has some things that can't be optimized:

Race: Goliath (i'ts written into his backstory that he's trying to become a dragon born)
Str: 18
Dex: 16
Con: 14
Int: 12
Wis: 10
Cha: 7

Resources to work with:
Either 13 levels and 2 feats
Or 11 levels and 5 feats
(though realistically it's more like 10 and 8 class level respectively, since without the level 4 cragtop archer ability i'm not going to be making shots at my max range)

[daremetoidareyo]

You're gonna need a way to see that far away

[Voidstar01]

You're gonna need a way to see that far away

To quote some of my favourite MTG flavour text:

"What's their strike range, you ask? Let's put it this way: sagittars aim their bows using maps."
—Otak, Tin Street shopkeep

I'm joking of course, the flavor of cragtop archer implies they can totally see that far, but assuming that doesn't work for my DM i'll buy a telescope (or use a crystal ball to scry the barbarian and shoot whichever mook he's currently trying to flatten)

[daremetoidareyo]

Extend range is a 1st level lurk/psywar power that doubles the range increment and adds 100% of the base range increment to it for every 4 pp you spend on it. Complete psionic p.89

So hidden talent alone would save you a ton of hassle. Psywar 5 is worthy of consideration, buy some pp recepticles and go to town. Practiced manifester adds another 100% because of the manifester level increase. Your psicrystal could even do recon for you. Grab perfect archery as a second level power. Boom.

Heroics, a second level spell can grant a fighter feat, so a wand of that may be helpful and just use farshot as a wand.

[Saintheart]

In terms of magic options, the simplest one is the Distance weapon quality, out of the DMG. It costs a +1 bonus -- therefore a minimum of 8,000 gp because you have to enchant the bow to at least a +1 first -- but it indicates the weapon "has double the range increment of other weapons of its kind".

The trick to this is going to be where your DM allows you to place the multipliers. My original tally --

Composite Greatbow: 130
Dragonbone: +20
Long Range: +20
Flight Arrows: +25
Ranged Weapon Mastery: +20
Far Shot: x1.5
----------
322.5
+ 100 feet from 10 levels in Deepwood Sniper. Deepwood Sniper adds to the range increment, not the maximum range. (Albeit we got lucky with the RAW on this one, I suspect the writers really meant to add 100 feet to overall range, not to one range increment.)
---------
422.5 feet range increment

-- assumes that your DM allows you to put Far Shot at the bottom of that list, rather than just multiply the weapon's base range increment of 130. (I should also add that adding 20 feet via Dragonbone requires a DM to be just a little lenient, because the Composite Greatbow is not mentioned amongst those bows that can be made out of dragonbone.)

Because Distance says the weapon has double the range increment of other weapons of its kind, a conservative DM might rule that means you can take into account whatever range increment increases are derived from the bow itself, but not those coming from other sources (Flight Arrows, Ranged Weapon Mastery, and Far Shot - these are not bonuses from the weapon itself, they're coming from you as the archer or the ammunition the bow is firing.)

So a conservative calculation using Distance might be as follows:

Composite Greatbow: 130
+20 (Dragonbone)
+20 (Long Range)
------
170 feet
Distance: x2
------
340 feet
+25 (Flight Arrows)
+20 (Ranged Weapon Mastery)
------
395 feet
Far Shot: x1.5
-------
592.5 feet range increment. With Cragtop Archer, the maximum range accordingly is 8887.5 feet. Notice not one level in Deepwood Sniper is required for this, it's about 1.66 miles already as the maximum.

In this area we are perhaps fortunate that the writers weren't as keen to lock down multipliers for range increments like they did with critical hits - in that area they're far more onto what happens when you double a double and consequently it's not easy to get a critical threat range past about 15-20 unless you have a very specialised and arguably cheesy build. But on the other side of the coin, this means these calculations are going to be subject to DM fiat: if your DM decides to mess with you, all he needs to do is insist that all your multiplying tricks like Distance or Far Shot are to be taken on the base weapon, and everything else get added. It's still not entirely impossible because Cragtop Archer gives you a final, mostly-unassailable multiplier of 15 to determine your maximum range, but for that very reason be prepared for a DM who doesn't want melee to have nice things to either nerf it or ban it, just because for some reason breaking reality with Wishes, Miracles, PAOs and all the rest is "contemplated" by the system but a semi-mythical archer who spends half his career focusing on maxing out range and then behaving as such is not.

Anyway, then we have spells. You're a Ranger 4 I think, so you've got access to Hawkeye - Ranger 1 spell, explicitly increases the range increment of projectile weapons by another 50%.

If you have a friendly druid on the team, there's the Druid 5 spell Wind Tunnel which grants a +5 competence bonus on ranged attacks and explicitly doubles the range increment of such weapons.

Accuracy doubles range increments, but it's a Warmage/Wu Jen 1 spell.

Arrow Storm (Ranger 3) doesn't increase range increment but it provides a hilarious application of it, because it expressly allows you to fire an arrow at every foe (1 per character level) within a distance equal to the weapon's range increment. No limitations for whether the enemy is in sight or in cover or invisible, so if your range increment is already up to a quarter of a mile or something and you're intending to assault an enemy castle or something this could be a brutal rain of projectiles out of nowhere on the enemy.