Ok...so just got back into D&D myself and I took my 13 year old son to my first game (he wanted to check it out). So one of the other guys had some pre-made PC's from the Essentials Kit I believe, so he picked the fighter. We played a pretty long session and he absolutely loved it. He figured out that he really likes playing ranged. So I figure that fighter probably isn't going to be the best ranged class but I'm sure there's some things we can focus on to make it better.
Our DM is very gracious and is allowing us to mess with his character some. He (my son) really wants to play fighter so not sure about changing class even if it means being a better archer. He really wants to play Dragonborn and already order a miniature for me to paint so I don't think that is up for negotiation...lol. I haven't asked if we can just re-roll the whole character and then boost him up to level 3 where we are currently. But if that's not possible, we can re-allot stats and re-choose skills, so that could be helpful.
Current stats are: Str - 14, Dex - 16, Con - 15, Int - 11, Wis - 13, Cha - 10. Skills are Animal Handling, History, Perception, Survival. Traits are Second Wind, Fighting Style Archery, Rustic Hospitality, and Action Surge. He hasn't picked a Martial Archetype yet.
So....let me know if you need more info and I really appreciate any help you can provide.
In my opinion dexterity and constitution should be your top stat. For your martial archetype arcane archer is nice for it for the simple fact of the magical arrows you get. Later on you could go into ranger which are pretty much the top archers in the game and second level rangers can cast spells like hunters mark
I would probably do 3 just so you can get the martial archetype then go into ranger and do 3 level in that yo get either the gloom stalker or the horizon Walker for the ranger archetype. Then you can keep switching between the fighter and ranger classes as you level up
I would say battlemaster or samurai and go straight fighter honestly. I assume your game has feats, grab sharpshooter.
Battlemaster has a handful of solid maneuvers that can be used by both ranged and melee attacks that give you good damage, plus you have things like action surge to get extra attacks. Samurai trades some of that maneuvers utility for better durability and advantage on attacks, which translates to roughly +5ish average to attack roll. Sharpshooter trades your chance to hit for an amazing +10 damage per attack. You want to go straight fighter until at least level 8 likely so you can grab sharpshooter and use other ability score improvements for just pumping that Dexterity up to 20, and hitting even higher levels like level 11 gets you three attacks per round. If you wanted to you could also instead take magic initiate to take hunter's mark or hex.
Multiclassing into ranger isn't a terrible idea, but delaying hitting level 5 in one of those classes literally halves your damage output because that is what extra attack does for you. Ranger does end up giving you some nice extra dice on your weapon hits though so it is worth it eventually, but the base fighter package actually already gives some solid progression for just being good at archery, it ends up really coming down to how much you want the extra dice per hit versus bonuses to just hitting with sharpshooter and doing that well.
In terms of sheer effectiveness, fighters actually make pretty fantastic archers. Most class features of most of their subclasses work as well with bows and crossbows as they do swords and axes. The Crossbow Expert/Sharpshooter fighter is a pretty well-respected and well-understood murder machine. There's no need to change class to be an excellent archer.
In terms of martial archetype, do you want to favor a lot of cool, intricate tricks, or something that's simple and easy to learn? The former is Battlemaster all over. Most of the Battlemaster's maneuvers work on 'weapon attack', which includes bows. If your son is a tactician who enjoys making clever plays, Battlemasters make phenomenal archers (they are, in fact, almost strictly superior to the awful Arcane Archer archetype).
If the son is more into just doing his shooting and not worrying about the particulars, I'd consider the Champion, which was specifically built to be as simple to pick up and play as possible, or the Samurai. The Samurai is more complex than the Champion, but it's also only really got one special ability to keep track of (Fighting Spirit), as opposed to the several different Maneuver types of the Battlemaster. That ability is really cool and fun to use, which helps, and frankly a dragonborn samurai is just a cool idea.
Obviously Sharpshooter is the definitive and iconic "Archer" feat, and since fighters get two extra ASIs it's easy to find room for in your build. Probably pick it up at 6, after using your level 4 ASI to bump Dex to 18. If you want to use crossbows specifically for their higher damage, you need Crossbow Expert for it to not suck at high levels, since normally crossbows cannot ever make use of all the Extra Attacks fighters get. XbowXpert turns heavy crossbows into monsters though, especially combined with Sharpshooter. At that point your character is basically a Space Marine, dealing 1d10+DX merderdeth on every attack from crotch-kicking distance to Over The Horizon. Heh, I honestly like longbows better myself simply because they omit the need for Crossbow Expert, but it can go either way.
There's not really ever a need to take ranger levels unless you/your son want to. Fighter can handle all your archery needs perfectly well by its lonesome.
Awesome. Just the info I was looking for and great to hear that fighter archer is actually not a compromise but a legit butt kicker. Not sure if he'll want to stay simple or get tricky. I guess we'll see how his mind works as we progress and I'm sure we can switch back and forth to get the right fit for him as we go.
I feel that the best archers in the game are Assassin Rogues. With Cunning Action, a good Dex score, Stealth Proficiency and some good tactical awareness, you should be Hiding each turn to give you Advantage on your attack, and even if you fail your roll just target whatever the main tank is wailing on to give you a Sneak Attack (and obviously if you're an Assassin, in the first round of combat you'll go nuts). As a fighter obviously you can spam more arrows, but launching big damage sneak attacks and running around is a lot of fun, and since you need good Dex for a ranged Fighter, you gain the rest of the rogue class benefits whilst the other benefits of being a fighter (high AC, access to martial close combat weapons etc.) is somewhat lost for a ranged Fighter.
Fighter makes for a great ranged fighter.Arcane Archer, Battlemaster, and Samurai are all great options. At 5th level if he was a samurai he could use his bonus action to make attacks at advantage then attack twice, action surge, and attack two more times. For a total of 4 attacks at advantage. On top of this he isn't strictly limited to being ranged as he could always use a rapier if people get too close. Fighters get extra ASI's which will help him max his DEX and perhaps take a feat like sharpshooter. He could dip rogue, ranger, or warlock for a little extra damage if he wanted. Also fighters get three attacks as an action at level 11. If its his first character don't worry about fighter being to underpowered. He will also get a chance to try other classes in the future as well.
To be fair, 'martial weapon proficiency' also includes longbows and heavy crossbows, i.e. the best long-range weapons. You can wear heavy armor as an archer (if you have the Strength for it), but realistically heavy armor is more of a tax than a benefit on most builds. An archer in studded leather at 20DX is only one point behind a platemail wearer, and his armor weighs thirteen pounds and cost him forty-five gold as opposed to weighing fifty-five and costing him fifteen hundred gold. And taking ten years to get in/out of while compromising his Stealth. Heh.
Rogues are great archers, yeah. But fighters can absolutely do the job. Action Surge is and always will be a thing.
Ok...so just got back into D&D myself and I took my 13 year old son to my first game (he wanted to check it out). So one of the other guys had some pre-made PC's from the Essentials Kit I believe, so he picked the fighter. We played a pretty long session and he absolutely loved it. He figured out that he really likes playing ranged. So I figure that fighter probably isn't going to be the best ranged class but I'm sure there's some things we can focus on to make it better.
Our DM is very gracious and is allowing us to mess with his character some. He (my son) really wants to play fighter so not sure about changing class even if it means being a better archer. He really wants to play Dragonborn and already order a miniature for me to paint so I don't think that is up for negotiation...lol. I haven't asked if we can just re-roll the whole character and then boost him up to level 3 where we are currently. But if that's not possible, we can re-allot stats and re-choose skills, so that could be helpful.
Current stats are: Str - 14, Dex - 16, Con - 15, Int - 11, Wis - 13, Cha - 10. Skills are Animal Handling, History, Perception, Survival. Traits are Second Wind, Fighting Style Archery, Rustic Hospitality, and Action Surge. He hasn't picked a Martial Archetype yet.
So....let me know if you need more info and I really appreciate any help you can provide.
In my opinion dexterity and constitution should be your top stat. For your martial archetype arcane archer is nice for it for the simple fact of the magical arrows you get. Later on you could go into ranger which are pretty much the top archers in the game and second level rangers can cast spells like hunters mark
How far into fighter should he go before taking a couple levels of Ranger?
I would probably do 3 just so you can get the martial archetype then go into ranger and do 3 level in that yo get either the gloom stalker or the horizon Walker for the ranger archetype. Then you can keep switching between the fighter and ranger classes as you level up
I would say battlemaster or samurai and go straight fighter honestly. I assume your game has feats, grab sharpshooter.
Battlemaster has a handful of solid maneuvers that can be used by both ranged and melee attacks that give you good damage, plus you have things like action surge to get extra attacks. Samurai trades some of that maneuvers utility for better durability and advantage on attacks, which translates to roughly +5ish average to attack roll. Sharpshooter trades your chance to hit for an amazing +10 damage per attack. You want to go straight fighter until at least level 8 likely so you can grab sharpshooter and use other ability score improvements for just pumping that Dexterity up to 20, and hitting even higher levels like level 11 gets you three attacks per round. If you wanted to you could also instead take magic initiate to take hunter's mark or hex.
Multiclassing into ranger isn't a terrible idea, but delaying hitting level 5 in one of those classes literally halves your damage output because that is what extra attack does for you. Ranger does end up giving you some nice extra dice on your weapon hits though so it is worth it eventually, but the base fighter package actually already gives some solid progression for just being good at archery, it ends up really coming down to how much you want the extra dice per hit versus bonuses to just hitting with sharpshooter and doing that well.
In terms of sheer effectiveness, fighters actually make pretty fantastic archers. Most class features of most of their subclasses work as well with bows and crossbows as they do swords and axes. The Crossbow Expert/Sharpshooter fighter is a pretty well-respected and well-understood murder machine. There's no need to change class to be an excellent archer.
In terms of martial archetype, do you want to favor a lot of cool, intricate tricks, or something that's simple and easy to learn? The former is Battlemaster all over. Most of the Battlemaster's maneuvers work on 'weapon attack', which includes bows. If your son is a tactician who enjoys making clever plays, Battlemasters make phenomenal archers (they are, in fact, almost strictly superior to the awful Arcane Archer archetype).
If the son is more into just doing his shooting and not worrying about the particulars, I'd consider the Champion, which was specifically built to be as simple to pick up and play as possible, or the Samurai. The Samurai is more complex than the Champion, but it's also only really got one special ability to keep track of (Fighting Spirit), as opposed to the several different Maneuver types of the Battlemaster. That ability is really cool and fun to use, which helps, and frankly a dragonborn samurai is just a cool idea.
Obviously Sharpshooter is the definitive and iconic "Archer" feat, and since fighters get two extra ASIs it's easy to find room for in your build. Probably pick it up at 6, after using your level 4 ASI to bump Dex to 18. If you want to use crossbows specifically for their higher damage, you need Crossbow Expert for it to not suck at high levels, since normally crossbows cannot ever make use of all the Extra Attacks fighters get. XbowXpert turns heavy crossbows into monsters though, especially combined with Sharpshooter. At that point your character is basically a Space Marine, dealing 1d10+DX merderdeth on every attack from crotch-kicking distance to Over The Horizon. Heh, I honestly like longbows better myself simply because they omit the need for Crossbow Expert, but it can go either way.
There's not really ever a need to take ranger levels unless you/your son want to. Fighter can handle all your archery needs perfectly well by its lonesome.
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Awesome. Just the info I was looking for and great to hear that fighter archer is actually not a compromise but a legit butt kicker. Not sure if he'll want to stay simple or get tricky. I guess we'll see how his mind works as we progress and I'm sure we can switch back and forth to get the right fit for him as we go.
I feel that the best archers in the game are Assassin Rogues. With Cunning Action, a good Dex score, Stealth Proficiency and some good tactical awareness, you should be Hiding each turn to give you Advantage on your attack, and even if you fail your roll just target whatever the main tank is wailing on to give you a Sneak Attack (and obviously if you're an Assassin, in the first round of combat you'll go nuts). As a fighter obviously you can spam more arrows, but launching big damage sneak attacks and running around is a lot of fun, and since you need good Dex for a ranged Fighter, you gain the rest of the rogue class benefits whilst the other benefits of being a fighter (high AC, access to martial close combat weapons etc.) is somewhat lost for a ranged Fighter.
Fighter makes for a great ranged fighter.Arcane Archer, Battlemaster, and Samurai are all great options. At 5th level if he was a samurai he could use his bonus action to make attacks at advantage then attack twice, action surge, and attack two more times. For a total of 4 attacks at advantage. On top of this he isn't strictly limited to being ranged as he could always use a rapier if people get too close. Fighters get extra ASI's which will help him max his DEX and perhaps take a feat like sharpshooter. He could dip rogue, ranger, or warlock for a little extra damage if he wanted. Also fighters get three attacks as an action at level 11. If its his first character don't worry about fighter being to underpowered. He will also get a chance to try other classes in the future as well.
Your secret is safe with my indifference - Percy
To be fair, 'martial weapon proficiency' also includes longbows and heavy crossbows, i.e. the best long-range weapons. You can wear heavy armor as an archer (if you have the Strength for it), but realistically heavy armor is more of a tax than a benefit on most builds. An archer in studded leather at 20DX is only one point behind a platemail wearer, and his armor weighs thirteen pounds and cost him forty-five gold as opposed to weighing fifty-five and costing him fifteen hundred gold. And taking ten years to get in/out of while compromising his Stealth. Heh.
Rogues are great archers, yeah. But fighters can absolutely do the job. Action Surge is and always will be a thing.
Please do not contact or message me.
Or lvl5 fighter because that extra attack is pretty nice.
After 3 years, chances are he's way past level 5 if still playing. ☺