Divine Sniper - FS(18),Brd(2),Clr(1),AA(9)

Advantages & Disadvantages
Advantages
 * Damage output greatly increased by epic divine might.
 * With divine power, can get 30 BAB.
 * Haste and improved rapid shot gives 8 attacks per round.
 * Manyshot essentially gives 3 extra attacks per round, for a total of 11 attacks.
 * Has access to level 9 divine spells and various useful buffs to boost AB/damage.
 * Plenty of buffs and healing spells to go around for the party.
 * Relatively good saves (30+ buffed) due to favored soul levels and buffs like battletide and recitation.
 * Gets weapon focus and specialization (longbow) for free due to Favored Soul levels.
 * Due to decent strength and high AB from buffs, the character is quite effective in close-quarters.

Disadvantages
 * Relatively low AC (Low 40s).
 * Relatively low hit points.
 * Lacks skill points.
 * Highly ineffective offensive casting due to poor wisdom.
 * Buffs are time consuming and short duration ones expire at varying time intervals, requiring constant rebuffing.
 * Misses out on the feat, One Shot.

Character Creation

 * Wood Elf was chosen as the +2 racial modifiers for str and dex were important. Another option is Drow (for the SR?), but it's ECL +2 and will be slow to level up given a 20% penalty from level 12 onwards.
 * Alignment: I'm not familiar with which alignments Solonor Thelandira can be but it definitely can't be lawful as the build contains bard levels.
 * Favored Soul was chosen instead of cleric since the relatively high charisma complimented this class' spells per day and means that you don't need to pump points into wisdom (in addition to str, cha and some dex).
 * Bard was chosen mainly for inspire courage and qualifying for AA.
 * 1 level of cleric was needed to get divine might, and also gives you two free feats from the domains.
 * AA is pretty self explanatory considering this is an archer build. The enhance arrow +5 by level 9 AA is nice. The fortitude save on arrow of death is not that great (20) hence only 9 levels of the class.

Development

 * FS 18/bard 1/cleric 1/RDD 10: This was one of the initial ideas I had in mind for a divine archer build. The main issue here is no AA levels meaning the build missed out on +5 to hit AND damage. The advantages that this has over the Divine Sniper is better AC from RDD and 30 tumble, and can focus on cha a little more, which would boost EDM damage. However, the slightly better EDM damage did not compensate for the loss of +5 hit/damage. So damage and AB wise, the Divine Sniper is still superior in these aspects.


 * cleric 15/bard 2/AA 9/RDD 4: continuing on from the previous idea, I wanted those AA levels for enhance arrow +5, and the only way to do this is to remove some of the RDD and FS levels to allow for it. The problem now is that 15 FS/2 bard/9 AA/4 RDD can not qualify for divine might due to the missing cleric level. The solution? Switch FS to cleric. At this point, I believed this would be my final build for a long while. The main thing that I was unhappy with was starting with horrible wisdom (9), relying on wisdom boosting items to be able to cast spells and the lack of spells per day. I didn't feel good taking RDD simply for the str bonus so I decided to try achieving 21 str/cha without any RDD levels. This lead to me coming up with the Divine Sniper.

Variations

 * FS 16/bard 4/cleric 1/AA 9: this is a nice variation if you're not really keen on level 9 divine spells. You get level 2 bard spells, allowing access to heroism. Remember to cast it before you put on your armor.


 * FS 19/sorceror or wizard 1/cleric 1/AA 9: for those that are big fans of true strike. You could also drop a FS level for a divine shield from the extra cleric level. However, you miss out on inspire courage.