How to play an archer in D&D (EVERY CLASS)

Dungeons and Dragons is an incredibly creative game limited only by your imagination and a complex and extensive set of rules it has a wide and varied range of character classes available all of them with their own Niche and if you like using swords and melee weapons all of them have a way to do that effectively but what about those of us who prefer bows if you read through these things you'd be forgiven for thinking that someone up there doesn't actually like bows and the general assumption is that if you're play and the general assumption is that if you're playing an art you'll be a Ranger a rogue sneak attack or a fighter but there is another way and if you're able to get creative with your flavor and your descriptions I truly believe there's quite a wide range of viable Archer Concepts out there and to prove it I'm going to make an Archer of every single class even that one I'm going to talk about the Feats and the races delve into the subass options come up with some hopefully interesting Concepts and show you what I think their shooting style might look like in real life so that not every combat is just I uh I roll to attack that's a one and this roll again oh nice 18 cool eight points of damage some of these are going to be highly effective builds which can make multiple attacks and deal lots of damage some of them not so much but hopefully they can provide you with some cool ideas and help to inspire you for your next Archer character but before I get too deep into the class mechanics I'd like to say a quick word about our sponsors dragon air silent Gods join D and D Legends in dragon air by clicking on the link in the description where you'll also find exclusive bonus content codes Dragon air is a fantasy RPG that uses many elements that you'll find familiar if you're used to Dungeons and Dragons It's got that familiar kind of Western fantasy medieval setting it's got dice rolls and unpredictable combat grid-based battle systems tactical fights and of 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the other thing it does is lets you make a bonus action attack with a hand crossbow making it faster than any other range weapon in the game I hate this feat with a passion not just because I really like bows and the whole value of bows is that they're faster in trained hands equivalent crossbow would be to load and shoot but also because I don't like any feature which makes one's play style strictly Superior over another and there is no doubt that for a lot of builds the hand crossbow with crossbow expert is going to be a lot more viable than any other type of range weapon the main thing that crossbow expert does for some builds which I really like is it lets you use your ranged weapons when you're close in melee with an opponent so it lets you shoot someone who's close up but it also lets you fight someone close up and then shoot further away and that's why I want to mention Gunner because Gunner does the same thing as well as some firearm proficiency but you can ignore the firearm proficiency because it also gives you an exra one point in deck so if you've got a floating deck score and you want to round it off Gunners are potentially quite a good option for doing that the other feet that's really good if you've got a floating ability score is piercer piercer will apply to any ranged weapon barring perhaps slings um and it just increases your damage on a critical hit and makes your damage output more consistent nothing bunkers but but it does help to narrow the Gap with people who've got fighting styles that kind of keep their damage output consistent rather than their accuracy and then there's Sharpshooter and on paper Sharpshooter is great it removes the penalties for shooting around cover and for shooting at longer range and it also lets you do additional damage at the cost of some accuracy whenever you make an attack which makes you an absolute monster if you've got multiple attacks and anything else that Buffs your accuracy like the arch fighting style but like anything that's considered essential for optimization it can lead to a quite repetitive and boring style of play so if you do start taking Sharpshooter have a think about what that looks like for your character is the damage increasing because they're drawing it past their normal Anchor Point meaning that they get more power out of the bow but they not as used to aiming it that way or are they increasing the damage by adding multiple arrows to the same shot making it slightly less likely that they'll pierce the armor but when they do they do a lot more damage or perhaps perhaps they have a particularly vigorous form of Catra where they push the bow forward on release to generate extra power or if they've got some spell casting ability they might imbue the arrow with some magic as they shoot whatever you choose to do just think about how that will look and it will help to make your character more fun to play and more fun to play with I should mention while I'm talking about Feats the archery fighting style it's not technically a feat in and of itself but you can take it as a feat if your character wouldn't otherwise have it um but it's available as standard for level one Fighters and level two Rangers this gives you a flat plus two bonus to your attacks with all range weapons and because it's available only really to characters who would have extensive training in the use of bows I imagine that it's takes the form of a much more consistent and reliable shooting style some classes might use a bow in a fairly like ha Hazard way with whatever works but I feel like if you've got the archery fighting style you at the very least have a consistent Anchor Point at the same place so you're always going to draw the same point on your face every time you shoot but I personally think that the creators of the game shot themselves in the foot no pun intended when they made this because it puts archery outside of their bounded accuracy rules it makes bows and crossbows and darts and slings just that little bit more likely to hit as a rule and consequently I've noticed that most of the magical items that you can get as an Archer tend to lack any kind of to hit bonus in the same way that like magical swords so you start off at an advantage but gradually over time as everyone picks up plus two and plus three weapons you're actually worse off overall so I personally would prefer it if archery had had a fighting style similar to everything else where it does something for your damage that said if accuracy is a huge part of your character and that kind of skill and training and experience is useful consider taking that feat as well and then there's races or lineages or whatever you want to call them for the most part they cover the standard fantasy gamut and for and largely for these builds I'm not too interested in prescribing a particular race for a particular build but as a general rule there are a handful of races which are really useful for Archers number one elves you just you just you just can't beat them the thing about elves is that they naturally have Proficiency in short bows and long bows so if you're playing a build that wants to use short bows and long bows but you don't have it in your class elves are a fantastic choice but the interesting thing about that is that if the class that you're playing as already has those proficiencies it's kind of mood you don't need extra Longbow proficiency it doesn't do anything to have it twice so an elf Ranger only gets just as much Advantage as any other Ranger in using a bow the main other thing that I would say that you might want to get from your race aside from like fun flavor and for the most part pick the one that you think is coolest um but the only other thing you might sometimes want is something that helps to get you out of trouble one of the main features of ranged weapons is that they have disadvantage when you're in melee with an enemy but moving out of that Mele range means that you're quite liable to get shanked by the enemy on your way out but some races have a way around that goblins for example as a bonus action can disengage from an enemy move out of their way and then use their entire action to pour arrows into that opponent meanwhile gith can have the ability to Misty step out of trouble and then do the same while her and gon have a ridiculous bonus action leap which doesn't provoke opportunity attacks but the king of ridiculous Archer Concepts in the races is either the Aladin or the shadow Kai both of these get a bonus action teleport but they can do it multiple times a day to get in and out of trouble and they also have the ability to choose weapon and Tool proficiencies when they take a long rest so if you need that extra long well proficiency you can get it and if you don't you can use it for something else and if that wasn't enough their teleports come with additional abilities that can help add flavor and durability to your character also special mention to the Shifter race who are kind of like semi wear person they get the ability to move out of the way as a reaction when an enemy moves close to them okay that's enough rambling let's get on to the classes so in no particular order except for alphabetical we're going to start with artificer or artificer I don't know how you say it artificers are intelligence-based half casters who are normally portrayed as Engineers or scientists but their stick is that they can use any tools that they're proficient with to cast their spells and use their abilities which means they're just as dangerous with a set of alen keys as they are with some seasoning and a frying pan but when it comes to archery there is one particular subclass I want to talk about battles Smith gets a bunch of combat oriented spells they can get their extra attack once they hit level six and they also get a steel Defender which is in theory some kind of construct robot but if you went the chef's utensils route it could just as easily be an unhinged cheese Golem either way this thing can assist you in battle and gives you a bit of that kind of Beast Master Ranger Vibe while keeping you much less nature grounded but the key thing I want to talk about for fighting style is the fact that they can use any magical weapon with their intelligence modifier and because they're artifices all they have to do is spice up their weapon a little bit and it becomes magical so they can take an ordinary range weapon and suddenly it no longer needs ammunition and they can just shoot all day and because they're using intelligence they're one of the only classes whose backup weapon can then be some kind of ridiculously oversized sword without needing to specialize in every single ability score but in visualization terms this also creates a really interesting feature cuz these archers are no longer relying on dexterity to shoot their bow they're not doing fast instinctive aiming they're not relying on their body to aim them they're using their mind so of all of the classes this is probably the one that spends the most Time full draw slowly working out the windage and then making the shot very careful and placed because they don't need to actually draw a knock and arrow each time they've got the extra few seconds think how Olympic archers shoot if you ever watch them they spend a lot a lot of time aiming getting everything as precise as possible and that's the kind of vibe that I pick up from an intelligence-based Archer they might even add little things like Spirit levels and such to their bow to help them figure out what kind of range they need to shoot at the other thing to remember about this build is that they spellcast through their magic weapons obviously you could just crack out your set of alen keys or what have you but why not try and flavor your spells as coming from the bow either through magical arrows that working away a bit like hawy in The Avengers or by using the bow itself to Yeet magic at your opponents if you've got a particular vibe that you want from your tools see how you could work that in to what you're actually doing with the weapon as for races anything you like can be fine with this build because you can use melee and range weapons equally you don't need to worry too much about getting away from combat for me I'd be tempted to go something like simic hybrid and take some weird and wonderful animal features um and go into like a whole Dr Frankenstein Vibe with additional Parts added to the weapons that are taken off slain enemies that kind of give it different abilities and flavor the spellcasting and the second class which is by no means second class is the Barbarian they're known for not really needing armor soaking up lots of damage and dealing heavy hits to their opponents barbarians are highly associated with melee weapons to the exclusion of ranged combat and of all of the classes I'm not really mad about it in this case because if you're going to fulfill the role of a battlefield tank and protect your allies you're going to need to be in close or are you because the ancestral Guardian subclass lets you draw on ancestral spirits to protect your allies and you don't need to be in melee and you don't need to be using a melee weapon for that to work all you have to do is hit an enemy with a weapon attack and they are going to have disadvantage on attacks against anyone other than you and anyone other than you has resistance to the damage of their attacks which actually works very well if you're a long way from them cuz if they're in melee with your ally they're then going to have to make a choice between coming out of that melee and Prov voking an opportunity attack or staying there and having a harder time fighting the other feature you get from this which is really really cool is the ability to absorb some of the damage that is meant for an ally taking 2d6 off it which later becomes more and more and more and you only need to be within 30 ft to do that so A mid-ranged Archer character focusing on Dex and con will have a reasonably good armor class and they'll be able to really annoy your enemies you'll miss out on some of the strength weapon based features that the Barbarian gets but as long as you keep your strength okay you always have the option of bringing out a melee backup and using your Reckless attack to continue to be at least a bit effective with it as for the archery style I imagine that a barbarian archery is going to be reasonably aggressive in how they shoot using both hands with quite dramatic motions the release is probably quite forced and Powerful which produces a very kind of lunging shot that makes it feel like they're itching to get into melee with their enemy alternatively when you enter your range you could portray it as becoming possessed by one of these ancestral spirits and so you could choose different archery Styles depending on which Spirit you've chosen to draw on in fact this is exactly the play style that I recently did in a game called the shattered Shard which you can find links for on my page I chose to play as the new type of hobgoblin which kind of emphasizes the assisting allies thing with some bonus action help actions um and helps make up for the lack of archery fighting style with the fortune from the many which lets me add a slight bonus to my ranged attacks when I miss I'm getting cold so I'm gonna put a shirt on next up is Bard which incidentally was my nickname at University bards are a great class full spellcasters who can Channel their magic through their instruments I can't play that they have access to a wide range of buff and debuff spells and some great crowd control options but when it comes to using weapons they've also got a couple of great subclasses for that too the College of Valor can use any weapon they like and gets their extra attack at level six along with some combat based B options while the College of Swords lets them Channel their magic through a melee weapon instead and use fancy blade flourishes to achieve unusual effects in combat and this is the first time I'm going to get a little bit mad because for my money there's absolutely no reason why College of Swords couldn't also apply to range weapons and to an extent it does so that's the class I'm going to focus on right now now if we're playing a ranged character College of Swords has a few features which are completely useless to us the first is proficiency with scimitars the second is a fighting style which is either for one-handed or dual wielding melee weapons both of which we can ditch but if you've got a nice DM they might be willing to let you swap that fighting style for the archery one or at least something else like a feat maybe and the other thing is the ability to use melee weapons as a spellcasting focus and again if your DM's nice they might might let you use a ranged weapon for that if they don't see if you can get hold of a ruby of the war Mage to get the same feature it's a really cool thing and it's just a big shame that this is specific to melee weapons given that the flourishes they get aren't and that's the key thing we're going to rely on here the weapon flourishes that you have as a college of Swords bar allow you to do things like make an attack with a weapon that then puts you into defensive stance that increases your AC which for my money involves some kind of really dramatic flourish that keeps you low or even shooting during some sort of evasive maneuver the second maneuver you get allows you to shoot an enemy knock them back and then use your and then use your reaction to move up to your speed towards them it's intended to help you get across the battlefield quickly but with a bow you could flavor it as some kind of magical grappling hook effect that you hit and then pull yourself inwards or you could just use it to Boulders gate style e people off cliffs remember you don't have to move inose close afterwards your reaction is optional remember there's no save associated with this flourish so you can use it even on enemies who are very strong but don't tell your DM I said that the third flourish is a little harder to manage with a bow it lets you deal bonus damage to an enemy in the distance while also damaging something within 5T of you now most of the time you're going to have disadvantage if you've got an enemy Within 5T of you but if you've got room for the Gunner feet or if you wanted to take crossbows and you do crossbow expert that allows you to make that shot as normal think of it as like ducking under their attack and then catching them with the arrow as you shoot the further opponent there's some real potential for very horrifying flavor on this and it's a quite fun feature when you're picking races for this build try and pick one that has the ability to get out of melee range because you've got a few features which only work when you're in trouble eladrin in particular have a really cool thing that lets them teleport in and charm opponents which is useful out of combat as well if you fancy giving that a go not to mention that will give them proficiency with long bows as for how a Bard would shoot they're using dexterity which means that they're probably relying on a relatively instinctive shooting style but they don't have that kind of formal weapons training that say a fighter or a ranger has I imagine they'd shoot a bit like modern day trick shooters using whatever technique works in the moment to get their shot and then practicing relent in different styles and techniques that they can use for different tricks remember your extra attack and blade flourish give you some excellent damage for your bread and butter attacks but you still have access to the bar's full spellcasting prowess so don't forget to use that to create effects that can enthral your opponents and change the nature of The Battle Before busting out the trick shooting well you concentrate on a spell but with magical secrets you also get access to arguably the best range weapon spell in the game Swift quiver which lets you make two ranged attacks as a bonus action every turn so if you've taken sharp shoot you can have range damage output equal to any fighter in the game and if you haven't it lets you continue making your regular attacks while also using your action to cast damaging and debilitating spells on your opponents it's a great play style that should not be slept on and then you have cleric clerics draw their strength from the powers of the gods they have access to a wide range of healing magic and are often portrayed beating the ungodly with the equivalent of a Papal scepter but as a rule they're no worse with bows than they are with any other kind of weapon but the thing is with your wide range of defensive and offensive spells you're going to spend most of your time using magic if you want to really lean into the use of weapons then go for a war cleric they can use their Channel Divinity to make one of their attacks obscenely accurate even if they're not looking what they're doing that was actually really accurate and later on they can also attack as a bonus action allowing them to semi keep up with other Marshall characters but while that's quite effective it's not particularly exciting and if it was up to to me I would go for a Twilight cleric with 300t of dark vision that they can share with their allies lots of see invisibility features and some nice cloaks of safety and the ability to fly they effectively become the party Scout seeing threats in the darkness long before they can see you with advantage on initiative to start taking them out and while they don't get any extra attacks their regular attack starts to add increasing amounts of radiant damage as they get more powerful to burn up those Unholy foes the cloak of Twilight effectively creates a sanctuary around them which later on can give them half cover and if if they're also using their limited flight ability they can stay well out of range of enemies and then quickly Dart in where they need to to do healing to their allies and while they could use all sorts of different archery Styles my favorite one is that they're actually not that good at it they worship a God Like sanine moonbo who's a variant of saloon who has archery as part of her domain while The Archers themselves might have really inconsistent and bad form drawing like this with the bow to the chest and not full draw or drawing it somewhere up like that and not being able to pull it all all the way back they worship a God that can correct their shots and so they always seem to hit just as well as anybody else not only that but I would flavor the spiritual weapon as being a magical Arrow you shoot it out as a bonus action and it spends the rest of combat flying around zapping everything like yand do that way it can keep dealing damage while you focus on other stuff obviously for a race for this one I'd go for something with high levels of movement speed a bonus action disengage or teleportation is nice but also going with something like a toi who can when they need to just zoom across the battlefield allows you to stay at a distance and keep shooting but still provide that support when you need to for allies in the front line next up we have Druids and Druids make me Furious because I would absolutely love to have a druid who's great at using a bow it feels like something that would kind of fit in with their Vibe and I know Ranger covers that to an extent but after playing God of War I have a hankering for someone that's effective with a bow in combat who can then also just change into a bear and more people but alas we do not have that Druids have some of the worst spread of weapon proficiencies in the game and despite claiming to like mostly things made of wood and natural materials they don't get any archery proficiencies while also getting scimitars Riddle Me That Batman which means that if you want to use bows you're either going to have to multiclass or you going to need to play a race that has bow proficiencies which probably restricts you mostly to elves that said and we're going to get sneaky here if you do want to play a druid who uses a bow there is a subclass which kind of has it covered and again I don't like it I don't like it but it's there this is the circle of Stars now don't get me wrong I like the subclass circle of Stars I think it's phenomenal but for creating an Archer character they have this ability where they summon a mantle of stars which draws on the constellation of an Archer and that allows them to use their bonus action to make a ranged attack on all of their turns it's wonderful it's incredible flavor it's highly evocative and it's not a ranged weapon attack it's a ranged spell attack so I feel dirty even including it in this selection but it explicitly says it's an Archer it explicitly says it shoots a Celestial arrow and it's about as good as we get with the Druid so take that keep your decks reasonably High Take Your Bow and then you can make two very different range weapon attacks on your turn uh my favorite way of flavoring this would be to do them both at the same time on the same opponent if you can it's not always optimal so you shoot like this and at the same time like behind you and Beyond you this Starry form comes and takes the same shot um and with any look it creates this really cool effect of both flying towards the target at one so take your circle of Stars take your Elf astral elf is a particularly good one because you get your lovely little bonus action teleports and it really fits in with the starry theme you've traveled Among the Stars you've come down and you brought back some of that astral Radiance with you to channel the Stars into your archery but yeah someone needs to either massively improve Magic Stone or make a range version of fele because Druids are crying out for some way to effectively use these things and then there's fighter fighter my beloved what can we say about you well firstly we can't say anything about fighter without getting our arms out fighter is a solid Contender for the best Archer class in the game regardless of the subass you choose you get access to proficiency with all weapon types including long bows and any kind of crossbow you might wish to use you get proficiency with all armors you get more ability score improvements than anyone else and you get more attacks than anyone else and with your action surge that means you can be making eight attacks in one turn without any extra shenanigans going on it also has as far as I can tell the only subclass in the game that is specifically geared towards using ranged weapons unfortunately Arcane Archer is often malign because it's bread and butter the magical arrows that it can Infuse can only be done twice per rest which doesn't feel like a lot when you've got a Battle Master churning out way way more trick attacks than that but for what it's worth it's the only class in the game that lets you curve arrows around obstacles or even shoot them through multiple targets and later you can use a b action to curve a shot that misses into a different Target which is a very cool feature and well worth picking up especially if you want to use your Sharpshooter to reduce your accuracy on attacks for bonus damage that lack of chances to use your magic arrows can grate after a while so if you want to recreate the kind of trick Arrow shots that people like Hawkeye and green arrow use you might be better going off for Battle Master they have more chances per rest to use a wider variety of tricks to trip opponents disarm them frighten them and even create openings for other allies to use attacks but even Battlemaster is not my favorite for this build we're going to go for the slightly lesser known echo knite echo Knights can create duplicates of themselves around the battlefield and can make attacks from any of those positions this effectively lets them ignore some of the restrictions on bows since if they're stuck in melee they can get their range duplicate to make the attack or or they can use a bonus action to switch places with them they do have one feature which has to be melee and that's an additional attack they can make on their turn from the position of their duplicate but that's actually a good thing for this build because for our race since we don't need to worry about Mobility we're going to pick dampier now dampers have a load of cool stuff they can move quickly they get dark vision they get like permanent spider clim meaning they can stand on the ceiling and shoot and stay out of range they also have a bite attack that runs off of their constitution and that lets them either heal or Draw power from an enemy to empower their next attack or ability check and because it runs off their Constitution which is something you want to be reasonably High anyway they're probably not too bad at it even if they're an Archer and they don't have to draw an extra weapon because they do it with their face so this opens up the option of playing a build who mostly shoots from a distance but occasionally that shadowy duplicate steps in draws some blood from an enemy and allows them to make their next shot with even greater accuracy or heal themselves mid combat for their fighting style Fighters are ostensibly very highly trained they're probably going to use a quite formalized and militaristic way of shooting which means if they use War bows they'll probably start high draw down like this with the arched back but as they progress and get extra attacks they're probably going to go from this very military relatively formal style into something a bit wackier and more speed shooting based as they become more of an adventurer and less of a soldier eventually moving to the kind of styles where you hold multiple arrows in your hand to speed up your shooting or even using modified speed shooting Quivers like this to maximize their rate of shooting okay just had a lunch break back in time for monks monks are a classic combination of spiritual Warriors who draw their energy from the harmony of the universe and low down dirty Brawlers that will punch your kidneys out through your back and whether the character does or not the players tend to take an unhinged amount of Glee in the number of powerful blows they can strike to an enemy they're also incredibly fast highly agile great at dodging and fit in with a large number of the general agile Archer tropes that you sometimes find except for one thing they do not typically use bows but that doesn't mean that they can't there is a subass of monk that is specifically designed to be able to use range weapons as well as melee kensei is by no means the flashiest of monks and if you're planning on fighting mostly in melee it's probably not the best option but for a ranged character it gives you the option of using a bow as a monk weapon making your weapon attacks magical and then later on enhancing them so you can take a normal bow and make it into a plus three weapon you also get a free bonus action which is rare for monks that you can use to increase the damage output of your ranged attacks but if you've got enemies close up you can shoot at them and then immediately run in and kick the crap out of them and while it's not the most optimized way of fighting it's a very very fun Archer build and with the addition of some of the new Tasha's cauldron features you can also spend a key point to make your shots more accurate and if you've already spent a key point on your turn you can make a weapon attack as a bonus action which is one of the only ways you can do that with a longbow is it the best way to play a monk probably not is it one of the more fun ways to play an Archer I would say probably and especially if you've got room in your build for a sharpshooter feet then there are a lot of things as you progress that that make the Ki very very good at consistently hitting the Target and getting that bonus damage because monks have a lot of bonus actions actions and reactions many of which are linked to each other you probably want to be quite careful choosing a Race So that you don't conflict your options however because this is a slightly non-standard build there are a lot of options for taking feet to enhance it some way of making ranged attacks in melee like the Gunner feet allows you to use your bow and your kicks and punches in the same turn or alternatively taking something like Crusher or mobile can let you get out of range after using your kicks without needing to spend key points on disengaging it's also worth noting that a lot of the magical bows in the official rules don't have a plus one plus two or plus three modifier so you could combine something like the oathbow with the Ki sharpen the blade to make it a much more effective weapon so Ki very fun option I do recommend it but if you want something a bit weirder Tasha's cauldron of everything has added a new optional rule where you can take one of your weapons at dawn and you can turn it into a monk weapon and the rules for that are quite restrictive but one of the things that does qualify is a short bow so if you want to play a monk who uses a short bow then you can play them as any subass you like so I present to you the way of Mercy Archer the way of Mercy Archer is a conflicted character who mostly uses a bow because they know that if somebody gets in close they can really cause them a bad day so they stay back and use the bow as a kind of like peaceful way and then when they do encounter an enemy right up close then they will almost always pump a key Point into it to do hands of harm which deals additional damage and potentially poisons the target there's no saving throw required they will have disadvantage on their attacks you're then free to proceed to retreat to a safe distance you also can use that phenomenal movement speed you've got after you've taken your shots to fly in close and hands of healing one of your friends right in the face it's it's a nice Mobile support Archer and gives you some fun options but the actual range damage output is not phenomenal as for the shooting style of a monk it's going to vary a little bit depending on your character a kensei in particular using kensei shot has the potential to be relatively slow and be using a kind of Cudo style of archery which has a very very long draw but I could also see a monk as a candidate for a very like fast and brutal archery style keeping their hand mostly free kicking things and they're making their shots quickly like The Bard they're probably adapt at shooting from a variety of positions to make the most of their ridiculous agility and allow them to get the drop on their opponent okay slight Switcheroo I just had a new bow arrive in the post so I'm going to give that a try while I talk about Paladin like the monk paladins Are Holy Warriors unlike monks they almost certainly wear shoes paladins are typically portrayed as a knight in shining armor with a big heavy sword or even a sword and shield that they use to power Divine energy into their deadly smites they also have access to a large number of prepared spells that they can change daily buil-in healing that doesn't require any spell slots a damage option that doesn't require one of their Spell choices and Powerful auras that protect their allies and have additional effects as they level up so someone out there really likes paladins unfortunately it's not me because for reasons that I can't particularly fathom they explicitly exclude range weapons from the majority of their class options but given but given how stonkingly powerful paladins are at base a slight disadvantage probably isn't the worst thing it can be a bit difficult going into a game knowing that you're not optimizing your character but it can also be a refreshing choice that lets you focus a little bit more on the roleplay side of things so here's a couple of options that you could take number one an oath of redemption Paladin who uses bows because because they know the bows are less dangerous than their other weapons and is afraid that they might lose control if they go into melee like they have in the past you play this character is actively avoiding using Mal weapons at all costs and Only When Things become extremely dire do they break out the sword when they finally do break out the sword they become an absolute monster burning through P spell slots as they power everything they have into slaying their opponent for the majority of the time this might feel frustrating if you're not geared up for it but if you play right it can lead to some absolutely fantastic moments but if you want to have fun with the ranged options while you play them my recommendation is to go the oath of the Ancients also known as the Fay Knight this has heavy Fay wild style connotations and I'd recommend playing a race that plays into that such as the Aladin or or the new hobgoblin or even a fairy or something like that grab your bow take it up and make you use of the options that the Fay Knight has such as Misty step for getting into and out of trouble and since you're not using your spell slots on Divine Smite you can use your level one spell slots on and snaring strike to entangle opponents and debilitate them in combat level two level two can go on your Misty step but you can also pump spell slots into your branding Smite which also only just requires a weapon to hit fantastic if you find yourself in a place where you have lots of invisible opponents and if you think that's going to be a problem take the blind Fighting fight style at the beginning because you don't have access to archery so you might as well take something that gives you a little bit of utility level three and four paladin spell slots can go into lots of the non- Smite spells use them to actually take advantage of the rang of spells that paladins have that never get used because they keep Divine smiting and don't sleep on find greater steam because flying around the battlefield is a huge buff to range characters but once you get access to your fifth level spell slots you can use your branding Smite to actively take an opponent out of the fight and deal a chunky amount of damage to them you've got a bunch of auras that can not only help your allies to resist saving throws but also protect them from the damage of spells so you're going to stay back as an Archer and protect your spellcasters from enemy spells while your melee guys go and do whatever your melee guys do and if somebody does happen to come in close and start threatening them in melee not only have you got your control spells and your enineering strike but you can also just whip out a short sword and lay them out with some incredibly powerful smites cuz you haven't burned all your spell slots on them already as for the shooting style I personally think a paladin is going to go somewhere between a cleric and a fighter they're not quite as inexperienced in combat as a cleric and they do have some weapon training as part of their background but they didn't train exclusively in bows so they're probably a little bit uncertain and someone like a ranger or a fighter might mock their shooting style but the way they pump magical power into their attacks is very unique so whatever their draw style they might whisper a player into their Fletching before shooting or else call down on their gods and then draw down bringing the power into the arrow before release they probably have a very esoteric and unique style particularly with their Fay wild connotations so lean into that and allow them to Smite the mighty with their bows and then we get to my sweet cheese my good time boys Rangers rangers are as close as D and D gets to having an Archer class and by reput they seem to be the only class that people think of as being archers they have access to all of the spells in the game that explicitly pertain to range weapons all what like four of them all Ranger subclasses have proficiency with all weapons access to the archery fighting style and snaring strike hail of thorns Swift quiver later levels lightning Arrow Midway through so you probably only want one of those in your kit and you've got a really limited number of prepared spells that you can't change easily so you pick your faves and you go with them and most most people's fave for a ranger is going to be Hunter's Mark it's a level one spell that allows you to add bonus damage to your attacks against a particular chosen Target allowing you to hone in and make all of your shots count so build wise you're probably going to just do as the ranger do but I would like to give a special mention to a couple of particular subclasses the first one is the hunter hunter is the classic Ranger subass um it's often slept on but it's really really cool albeit not always for D and D cuz what Hunter special izes in is shooting multiple enemies in a single turn so very early on they have the option to shoot two enemies close together when they would ordinarily just shoot one giving them a very early extra attack that you could flavor as a kind of twin shot with two arrows going in different directions later on they can absolutely pepper a battlefield filling a a small area with arrows and hitting everything in the Target which is really really cool for characters like Hawkeye or Legolas in a setting where every single arrow that meets its Mark kills a moo but in D and D that just doesn't happen and you're much better focusing your fire on a single Target which renders a lot of this stuff moot especially when one of the key balance features according to the designers of the game is Hunter's Mark which only works on one particular Target so that's why we're not going to go with Hunter for our favorite build here and I'm instead going to tell you about swarm keeper swarm keeper is ridiculous it's a Looney Tunes level of character they have swarm of whatever you like bees Birds bats twiglets fairies whatever it is macm fagle they follow the character around and when they make a shot or a melee attack and hit an enemy they can activate one of three features the first feature is that they are moved away so if you're too close to your enemy you stab them get carried back because it's forc movement you don't take an opportunity attack and you can then proceed to shoot from range as normal the second feature is that you shoot an enemy and they are carried 15 ft in a direction of your choice by the Swarm so this flock of bees just zooms over grabs hold of a creature and if they fail a saving throw yeets them across the battlefield putting them either into some terrain effects that you've set up chucking them off a cliff or just getting them away from you it's particularly hilarious because there is no specific size restriction for this so as long as you can get it to fail a saving throw you're on a winner and even for creatures with legendary resistances it's no cost to you and it can force them to burn through one of those resistances just to avoid getting humiliated by a handful of butterflies the final thing you can do is add some bonus damage to your attack we get that it's cool it's simple it works at later levels those things improve the damage gets higher you can also knock an enemy prone when you move them around and you when you're carried back are surrounded by this swirling storm that gives you half cover until your next turn turn it's an incredible list of defensive and offensive abilities that gives you control and can be used every single turn I cannot stress how much fun it is to play this build and if you lean into it with a nature-based race that kind of ties in with your swarm it can create some incredibly fun moments in terms of shooting style I'd say Rangers are a little bit like modern day Hunters they're going to carry their arrows in a way that keeps them out of their way either in a hip or a back quiver I professionally I personally prefer back Quivers because they don't snag on undergrowth quite as much and they you a bit more free to move your legs and run around then when they shoot they're probably using a form of shooting that works for them they won't shoot in a necessarily in a very formalized Olympic target shooting way but they will be highly trained and they will have a style that they really enjoy it's probably instinctive Rangers probably shoot instinctively drawing and releasing as part of the same smooth motion and given that they can sometimes be being carried around by a swarm or something like that they will have a style that works whether they're standing still or in a different position somewhere and then have fun changing it up every time you use a different feature from your swarm do your swarm cling to the arrow and then fly out and grab do they just materialize when the arrow hits they're not physical creatures they're face Spirits so you've got a bit of leeway in how you describe that and it keeps every round fun and different next up is rogues rogues are another potential Contender for like a good archery class they have a core ability sneak attack which increases the damage of the attacks that they make as long as they have advantage against the Target or there's another Ally within 5T of it which means that they're mostly going to Harry the same enemies as your melee characters but they're going to do it from a distance their other thing that they have is their bonus action cunning action which lets them on the same turn that they use their action to attack do something like Dash disengage and of course hide careful use of the these options along with your uncanny Dodge can keep you protected in combat until you're able to get to a secure position to shoot from but if you're constantly finding yourself trapped in melee you might struggle to still get your sneak attack if you're constantly using your bonus action to disengage just to get a decent shot off one of the ways around this is to take the scout subass scout is designed for the kind of well basically for people who want to play Rangers you get all of the lovely expertise skills that Rogues get but also anytime an enemy ends its turn near you you can use your reaction to run the hell away which not only gives you an effective increase to your movement speed if it's happening often but means you're never having to use your bonus action to disengage and leaves you open to use it to duck back into cover after taking a shot Scout pairs very well with almost any race that you might want to play as an Archer with the exclusion of goblin cuz you've already got the burnus action options that they've got as a rogue and of the Swift stride shifter because you've got a better version of their shifting reaction feature but I'd also like to give a little bit of a spotlight to one of my other favorite Rogue so glasses Inquisitor Inquisitor is not the most optimized and it doesn't give you the most options in and out of combat but what it does do is let you Sherlock Homes scan an enemy so that you can get your sneak attack bonus against them even if they're not within 5T of an ally meaning it works a little bit like a sneak attack version of Hunter's Mark you take a bonus action you use your Insight on something and then you very carefully place your shot and take it out in terms of races pair this one with either something that has some wacky abilities to keep yourself feeling like you've got some fun options such as the Aladin or some or otherwise something that has a nice bonus to Insight a con padels for example constantly have advantage on their Insight checks which means you're much more likely to succeed on those Insight checks and much more likely to get your sneak attack bonus because these Rogues don't need to hide in the shadows they can do more dramatic Grand standing a bit like the swashbuckler as they stand in front of their enemy and face them down before placing an arrow right between their eyes for the combat style of Rogues I would say they're not unlike BS and that they will have a style that works for them that they can do from multiple places because they're often crouched down and because they're often crouched down and hiding when they shoot or shooting downwards from a vantage point or quickly making a shot before disappearing into the trees but because they only make one attack per turn feel free to portray the Rogue as being a bit slower and more methodical drawing back and then taking that time to aim before shooting maybe they take a breath before every shot just to make sure they've got everything lined up cuz you can't afford to miss a sneak attack okay fair warning things are about to get silly because now we come to sorcerer because Sorcerers are the schmancy classes much like Elon Musk or Donald Trump they inherited the majority of their power and they're just abusing it as best they can as although they are fully spellcasters with no particular reason to be Adept with any kind of weapon they do also have access to green flame blade and booming blade which are two cantrips which can consistently increase your damage output of only melee weapon attacks but it does mean that it's a little harder to come up with a sorcerer concept that uses a bow so we're going to go daft Sorcerers are excellent at spell casting and any sorcerer build is genuinely most of the time going to rely on spells rather than weapons but this particular sorcerer is an elf which gives us the proficiency with bows that we need they grew up and were raised shooting bows they didn't have a character class yet but they did discover that they could vaguely harness the natural energies around them Channel it into their bow and allow them to shoot more accurately and as they discovered this they began to abuse it more and more and more but they did also notice that every now and then when they did that something weird and magical would happen that's right we're going wild magic the wild magic sorcerer can give themselves advantage on a weapon attack which then gives the DM the option to activate one of their wild Magic surges if you're very nice to your DM and you talk to them and agree on it then you might be able to get them to let you activate it instantaneously or on your next turn meaning that your character deliberately uses a bow in order to force their wild magic to activate as a bit of a gamble to produce a cool magical effect your sorcerer isn't going to rely heavily on archery in fact in fact they're barely going to use their bow at all but it is always there as a part of the character it's almost like a comfort blanket that they have left over from their old days if you can get hold of a ruby of the warm agage slap that on your bow and you can use it as a spellcasting focus and make it a little more present during most of your turns in terms of shooting style this particular sorcerer is surprisingly good um they have a very formal archery style that comes from being raised as an elf and trained in lots of formal techniques they will draw all the way back but they're a little shaky they haven't ingrain this to the point where their technique remains perfect throughout their release is dodgy they're constantly anticipating these magical effects and so they have a reasonable likelihood of missing because Dex isn't their main score if you want a slightly weird way to play an Archer and especially if you're in a game where you don't have to tell everyone in advance what your class is this going to be quite a fun character for a ones shot who turns up as an elf wielding a bow cracks out the bow and then starts having weird magic happen to them all the time instead getting towards the end now so the next one that I want to look at is Warlock and you can't really play a warlock without looking edgy so I'm just going to crack up a hood here warlocks are sworn and beholden they have a pack with an ancient or powerful entity that they can draw upon to gain their abilities they have a relatively limited number of spell slots especially for what is nearly a full Caster in many ways and that suits us nicely because we want to create a character that most of the time isn't casting spells so we're going to ignore the the eldrich blast warlock route and we're going to take our hex blade hex blades are sworn to an entity that embodies a magical weapon and the majority of the time they rely specifically on melee weapons but there is a couple of things which can help us out one is that if you take the Packa of the blade then your hex blade weapon can be any weapon you summon as you're packed two is that if you take the eldrich invocation improved packed weapon you can summon bows as your packed weapon which can run off their spellcasting modifier Charisma instead of dexterity when they use it it also then benefits from things like their hex blades curse where they can curse a particular Target to deal more damage to them and be more likely to score Critical Hits it also benefits from hex and then any of the additional features you can get that improve your packed weapon like thirsting blade they also have a version of divine Smite eldrich Smite which uses their warlock spell slots to deal incredible amounts of damage and then knock a Target prone the end result of which is actually a surprisingly effective Archer you can make your two attacks a turn your hex brings your damage up to be competent with that of a ranger and then your additional hex blade features take it even further and then you have the option to go Nova and pump some smites into the thing when you hit it in terms of shooting style you've got some really fun leeway here because you're not shooting using decks you're not instinctively shooting you're not even using intelligence to think about it you're using Charisma which means that you basically shoot however feels right to you at the time you grab your arrow and you effectively just fling it in the direction of the Target and hope for the best if it feels like a big flourish is required then you do your fancy flourish and you still land on the Target because it's magical you can make that as cool and Flowery and wonderful as you like and now we come to the run of the litter the bottom of the Heap the last and arguably least the wizard sorry I'm really demeaning them there I actually quite like Wizards I think they're a really cool class uh but when I'm trying to come up with archer Concepts they annoy the hell out of me Wizards are prime spellcasters they learn their spells from a book which may or may not look suspiciously like the player's handbook and they use them abundantly but they can also use weapons lightting a subclass combines a wonderful mix of dextrous combat with powerful magic keeping you protected increasing your damage and giving the option to use C trips and weapons in the same turn but it has a condition you can't use two hands to make an attack with a weapon it leaves a one-handed hand crossbow as basically the only option that you can use so if you're wanting to use one of these and take crossbow expert play a blade singer it's genuinely really really fun you can cast a big concentration spell and then spend the rest of their time plinking away with your crossbow or interspersing it with Firebolts and things like that it's frustrating to me that this only works with a hand crossbow if your DM is kind you might be able to remind them that a short bow does the same damage as a hand crossbow so balance-wise you could probably get away with using one of these but it's fun if it's a build you want to play however however I feel like I can't really leave it there I can't make my last build in the playing archers in D and D thing be a build that you can't actually use with a bow so I won't we're going to get silly again I think we're going to go for a shadow Kai probably Entertainer or something like that as our background we want anything that gives us proficiency with a disguise kit and we're going to spend our time disguised as a random Undead Muk why would you do that people shoot at random Undead muks yes they do but we're going to play a necromancer we're going to summon hordes of skeletons that wander and shamble around with weapons and bows and things and we are going to wander and shamble around in the middle of that horde with a bow of our own indistinguishable from the other Undead minions meaning that as we plink away taking shots at our Target we are not the prime target of our enemies they don't know who to shoot at when they try to take us down and if they do figure it out we have our bonus action support which also gives us resistance to all damage as an excellent defensive backup get as much mileage out of this as you can at the lower levels as you start getting a bit higher level you'll get some buff spells which can help to improve your ability to actually shoot things with a bow if you really want to actually make this a thing you'll hit the point where you get sixth level spells or if it's a one shot you might have that right away and then you're going to take tensor's transformation and then as your shambling horde of zombies is picked off one by one you're going to rise up grow into the most horrific version of yourself which frankly is a life goal take up your weapon which you now have Advantage with an extra attack and an additional 2D2 damage on every shot and absolutely waste a fool dealing powerful damage powerful attacks repeat shots and lay them out and at the end of it you're exhausted you don't want to do it again and you've played your character to the max in terms of shooting style this particular wizard shoots like a zombie they move slowly and in jerky motions knock that Arrow at a weird angle and shoot in a way that does not make any sense but keeps up the facade only when they use something like tensor's transformation do they start using genuinely proper archery technique and even then it's still got vestages of that Undead motion to it keep the vibe keep the fun and mostly cast spells on your turn it's it's a better thing this is just decoration so that was the last one last thing I want to do is basically just chuckle this into a tier system so at the B bottom of the rung we've got Wizard and sorcerer and arguably Druid mainly because those are the ones that just aren't really using bows properly the the bows are just there for decoration good for one shots though and a bit of fun the Druid actually is a viable build it just doesn't tickle my archery buttons in quite the same way next up the wrong I'm going to just go for three tiers here the middle tier is going to be things like cleric possibly Paladin and Barbarian although those are still kind of fun and monk also is pretty fun but they're they're the ones where you're losing something by playing an Archer like you get some cool stuff and there's really fun play style but you have to be aware that you are not optimizing this build if that's what you choose to do warlock kind of fits into this just because you have to take so many invocations to keep your archery up to date with everything else it gives you slightly less flexibility than some of the other warlock builds most of these I'd still recommend playing you just got to bear that in mind and then you've got the top tier and for me the top tier is anything that is either either designed to play as an Archer or just not designed to not play as an Archer so this one includes Ranger obviously fighter reasonably obviously Rogue as well and Bard Bard is a surprise hit when it comes to playing archers they don't get the fighting style but neither does a rogue they get multiple attacks and they've still got their full spell casting progression to fall back on when they need to plus the flourishes are really fun even the ones that require you to be in melee range give you some really cool options so go get out there play more Archer characters because God knows you can watch a lot of podcasts before you find a decent one and then call me when you get back darling I enjoy our visits

Channel: blumineck

Views: 168,688

Keywords: D&D, Dungeons and dragons, Nerd, Gaming, TTRPG, Archer, Archery, Bard, Artificer, Rogue, Ranger, Barbarian, Cleric, Druid, Fighter, Monk, Paladin, Sorcerer, Warlock, Wizard

Id: ZwKYxJotbSo

Length: 57min 35sec (3455 seconds)

Published: Sun Nov 26 2023