Out of curiosity, which of the big 4 roguelikes has the best archer class?

[Derakon]

Um, what spell are you talking about? And carrying ammo would presumably take up just as much space as carrying a bow.

It does occur to me that if we switched to branded bows, then bows with Slay Evil would have to be horrifically rare or nonexistent. Ditto for elemental bows. The general-purpose damage multiplier would be too powerful to be readily-available.

[Timo Pietilä]

Originally Posted by Derakon

Um, what spell are you talking about? And carrying ammo would presumably take up just as much space as carrying a bow.

N:54:Elemental Brand
I:90:7:5
D:Brands one stack of ammunition with fire, cold, or poison
D: (selected at random) and at the same time attempts to improve
D: the to-hit bonus and the to-dam bonus of the same ammunition.
D: The spell has no effect if the ammunition is already branded, has a
D: slay, is broken, or is cursed.


That is available for rangers still in 3.5 dev. Makes getting x3 ammo really easy. Almost nothing resists both fire and cold. All you need is brand non-ego ammo to get both stacks. And poison to boost the probability of getting resistance hole.

One extra bow takes one inventory slot. Two stacks takes also one slot, but difference here is that those ammo can be shot from extra might/shots bow. Branded bow would not be as powerful as branded ammo because you would not get benefit of the both egos (naturally you could add slays to Belthronding and Bard to compensate).

Consider non-rangers: Shooter +1 shots doubles your shots making all your ammo doing double-damage. Shooter "fire brand" doubles damage only to monsters not resistant to fire. Less if the comparison is against HXbow.

Cubragol has fire brand. How often do you use that as your main weapon? Without extra might or shots it's mediocre weapon even with that brand.

[kaypy]

Originally Posted by Estie

Being able to kill a GHW earlier than others is certainly nice, but imho doesnt make up for the hours wasted with picking up arrows (or with "suboptimal" melee, which I prefer). Others milage may vary.

I tend to play mages because all the uninteresting fights resolve to 'press the "magic missile the boring critter till the problem goes away" button'

Once upon a time I hacked in a pair of commands
"run towards target"
and
"get input character and target nearest location of that character"

which combined with existing functionality gave single buttons for
"target the nearest critter and put a default arrow through it"
"target the nearest critter and melee it"
"go and pick up arrows"

[taptap]

Counting Sil as a major roguelike (anyway the only one I play): It certainly has strong and viable archers. You can even build towards different types of archers (with or without stealth, with or without melee, light or heavy bows) and you can decide what makes a "class" and come up with a working combination yourself.