What would be the best class for an archer character?

[Masakan]

I honestly cant think of anything other than rouge.
Can someone help?

[faeryn]

Ranger - quite literally designed to be an archer...

Fighter - a large number of useful archery feats are available as fighter bonus feats

Scout - more-or-less a rogue designed for ranged combat



Personally I'd build Fighter2/Ranger6/ScoutX for an archer with some useful prCs added in where available.

[linklord231]

Cleric.

[awaken_D_M_golem]

Some history here, going all the way back to early 3.0e
there were some Unexpected details to archers.

The Cleric Archer is as good an archer as the average
PHB based combat class archer, and  to go with it,
it gets to be a level 20 caster all the rest of the time.

Quickstart Cleric Archer is the end result  :
http://www.minmaxboards.com/index.php?topic=8756


Now that doesn't mean going Archer something proper
is somehow not do-able, rather you can build all sorts
of kaboom into it.  KSB Snow Owl's is the oldest  :
http://brilliantgameologists.com/boards/index.php?topic=194

[Argent Fatalis]

Barbarians can be made into effective archers, using rage variants more than anything along with your standard prestige classes and or dips, and still be remarkably reliable in melee as well. If you would rather be a "not-archer" archer, Soulbow is always an interesting option if you have a love of psionics.

Also, not that I know anything about their builds or long term viability, but Swift Hunters were a fairly popular means of achieving it as well.