Archer Character Assistance

[Ronan37]

  I'm thinking about starting my current campaign over, and wish for a little advice on the creation of my character.

  I've always gone the path of a lancer / knight before.  My characters usually used a sword and shield, lance and 2-hander on the field...... and sword and shield, siege crossbow and steel bolts in sieges.  However, the further along I've gone I've realized that lances seem to have become somewhat useless..... and I've heard a lot of the effectiveness of a war bow vs crossbows at high levels.

  Before I have only pushed my characters strength and agi up to 12 each, and pumped Int and Cha entirely after that for trade, leadership and trainer. 

  What should be done differently with a character focusing on archery, one handers and two handers?  I assume I will have to stop my Int and Cha boosting in order to boost strength fairly high in order to get enough power draw to max out those best bows..... but just where would everyone recommend me to stop with the Trainer and Leadership?

  Oh, I'll be using a horse too..... sorta like a bow using knight.... so I imagine I'll hvae to put some into Horse Archery too.  I suppose it'd be best to pull a bunch of party members for the party skills with this char?

 

[StinkyMcGirk]

Personally, I always think horse archery is too much of an investment of valuable points to utilize as a player character.  If your set on it, though, I'd say...

18 strength for 6 power draw.  Use a regular nomad bow to get the best accuracy possible with 6 in power draw.

21 agility for 7 in weaponmaster, riding, and horse archery.

Keep charisma as low as you can, but maybe get as much leadership as you can from character creation.

Rest into intelligence.  You'll probably have to assign the utility skills to your companions in order to focus on inventory, trainer, etc.

ALTERNATIVELY, you could try leaving strength at 12 for a masterwork light crossbow, and putting the other 6 points into agility for more weaponmaster/riding/horse archery, or the other 6 points into charisma or intelligence for more utility.  That frees up any need to add to power draw at all.

The damage on the nomad bow with 6 PD would work out to 42 / shot, the masterwork light Xbow would be 49 - accuracy would be the same.  You could give up the accuracy of the nomad bow for higher damage, though...  a warbow, while much less accurate, would be roughly 52 damage / shot.  Bows also fire much faster than Xbows.  My gut feeling is, that you might be better off just using the highest damage bow you can, and firing at close range instead of going for accuracy.  Accuracy is better suited to sieges.

Perhaps to get the most out of horse archery, however, you need to really take away from your intelligence and charisma stats for around 24 strength / 21 agility.  At around 8 power draw, maybe 7ish horse archery, you're doing significantly more damage than a crossbow would do - but you pay the price with your lower utility skills.

 

[Nameless_Terror]

I am a horse archer. I stopped at 18 str for a power draw 6. 6 PD bow require plus 4 from my stats themselves gives the bow a 100% damage increase. It was effective for killing First 2, some 3rd tier troops in one hit, body. You can go higher to get the stronger bows, but they also require a massive proficiency to use very accurately. I dont use cheats or tweak. I got one of my characters to 400 proficiency in range. With a bow of PD4 and under, I had a pin point accuracy on a horse full gallop, horse archer 5.

With the Power draw 6 bow, I had decent enough accuracy that I could hit a router half way across the map if I stopped and took aim. You won't need a bigger bow hat that, but you can if you want. It just means that you need to spend that much more time learning proficency for the same accuracy. For secondary weapon, your favorite 1h and a reinforced huscarl or steel shield. In sieges, attack or defend, bow, all arrows. pick up a weapon if you need melee later into the siege.

My stats looked like 18 str, 15 agility, 21 intelligence, 15 Char at lvl 33 I think it was.

I would use a great hammer to take prisoners and that is where I got all my 2 hand proficiency from.

I gave all my companions 2 party skill at trainer on top of their skills. Every one had to max out trainer, and 2 party skills such as first aid and wounded treatment. I had lezalit, Bahestur, Borcha, Artimere and that was all.

 

[Ronan37]

  Yeah, I was thinking of riding around with a bow and arrows, bastard sword and shield on a horse..... and bow and all arrows or 2 arrows and my bastard sword in sieges.

  How effective would I be if I kept Horse Archery down to 4 or 5..... keeping Agi low, 12ish.  Maybe even lowering Int enough to pump STR more?  I could put more points into Iron Flesh, Power Strike and Power Draw and pull out those big masterwork war bows?

  The main use I had in mind for a bow was standing in a tower to the side of a ladder in a siege, and popping off headshots as folks slowly walked up it.  In a field battle, I imagine I'd pull off a few shots now and again, but I'd probably be charging in with my sword to assist before long.  My troops usually can't really last without me. 

  When you get high enough Renown, does it make up for having a lower leadership skill?  Can you eventually still lead around armies of over 100 men, without pumping leadership much at all?  That's always been my main worry. 

 

[Nameless_Terror]

Renown is the biggest boost to your troops. However leadership helps with moral... I patrol with 40 or less soldiers, do raids with 70-80 men, and attack castles/towns with 140ish. Most of the boost comes from renown, but I would say at least 4 leadership is good.

I have a cavalry army so I am more use to them by sniping off the units that could challenge them. I would say eventually you want 15 agi. I was 12 since practically the start of a game, but I got it to 15 to give me one more horse archer and weapon master. I put no skill points into ironflesh.

in sieges, bow and 3 arrows, or bow, 2 arrows and a shield. you can pick up a weapon from a corpse. In the field, you can be effective with just 4 horse archery, but it needs to be raised once you get a bigger bow.

Str of 18 is fine. 6 PD PS is more than adequate to fight effectively. I am making a new character to test maxing strength out as we speak. At the cost of charisma and intelligence. 12 agi

 

[Ronan37]

  Thanks for all the help. 

  I'd be very interested in knowing how that str boosted character turns out as well. 

 

[Kellick]

I did run around for ****s n giggles on a toon with all maxed out skills and stats.

I could make some ridiculously amazing shots with a mastercrafted warbow...like firing at enemy I could barely even see and hitting them in the head.
Now I think I have a pretty good grasp of the projectile physics in the game, and once I get around 200 archery I am pretty accurate about gauging how much higher I have to aim to compensate for distance but these were just silly, I was aiming very high up in the air and it wasn't that dense of a formation and I did it a few times in a row. So I am sure the ranged weapon proficiencies do include a bit of aiming correction.

I also am inclined to disagree about how much emphasis people put on using a bow rated several points lower than your PD skill allows.
As when I was a noob I went right for archery (cause I've always been more inclined to play ranger types) and of course without any guidance I went for the biggest strongest bow I could get my hands on at every turn. I feel weapon proficiency has a more profound effect on holding steady aim than PD. That being said once I have my skill up around 200 and I've got my rythym down I tend to draw and fire very rapidly. The longest I tend to hold it is to wait for a sharpshooter on the walls to just about finish reloading so he stands up just in time to get an arrow in the head.

Horse archery...3 or 4 seems to be plenty. Again probably skill has more effect. Lower skill and low HA just drive a little slower. Granted I prefer the heavy charger which at a speed of 39 isn't the swiftest.

You guys suck. All this talk about archers makes me want to go back to playing mine, but I deleted all the 1.113 saves . I been doing the knightly thang lately (although I wonder how knightly an xbow during sieges is...probably realistic but not very chivalrous). While the crossbows effectiveness, especially vs skillpoints invested is indisputable there is just something more satisfying about using a bow.