Paladin Archer suggestions

[Kerrus]

I've been considering putting together some sort of paladin archer as a backup character for an ongoing medium lethality eberron game I'm running in. Archer style characters are something I really enjoy, and I'm currently running a mystic ranger.

None of this really factors into anything, but I thought I'd get it out of the way first.


What I'm looking at is something like paladin 5/bone knight 10/whatever 5. I know there's a 'ranged smite' feat, which is total garbage, but fortunately dragon magazine material is allowed, and there's a ranged smite variant that I can take that loses out on heavy armor (oh well) but can ranged smite instead of normal smite (it's an either or unfortunately, not an extra option). I'll also be grabbing Serenity to re-key everything to Wis. I'm looking for a non-evil paladin variant that gets a smite that isn't 'smite evil', because being a bone knight bans you from smiting evil. If one doesn't exist... eh. Not sure then.

[Kerrus]

Well this is annoying. I can't seem to find any non-evil smite variants that a good paladin can take. No smite law/chaos or anything. I'm sure there's feats, but ugh. Bah.

[Empirate]

How about not making a Paladin, but some other divinely inspired archer character? Coz Clerics make the best archers ever (with Zen Archery), and Smite is really overrated by the designers, making it hard to get in meaningful uses/day.

[Kerrus]

Aye, smite isn't as good as some things. Paladin provides the earliest entry into the bone knight class, which is what I'm really looking forward to.

I took a glance at dragon 349, and it has a 'hunter of fiends' feature that swaps smite evil for favoured enemy (evil outsiders), with the bonus equal to 1/2 your paladin level. While a 5th level paladin going on bone knight would only have a +2 on bonuses, if you waited until paladin 10, you'd have a +5 bonus which isn't terrible (but paladin ten, gods)

Still, it's a way of getting favored enemy as a class feature, which conceivably could let you trade it again for mage hunter from complete mage (favored enemy arcanists), which would definitely be more useful to you.

Probably more into the realm of DM fiat there, but workable. it'd also get around the class feature loss from bone knight.

[ClayQ]

Warforged paladin gets smite construct, regardless of alignment.

Champions of valor has 3 or 4 sub levels that replace smite.

Half-orc paladin from rod loses smite also.

[Unbeliever]

If you're gunning for smiting the Ordained Champion has a smite anything ability. 

But, if I was aiming for a paladin archer -- something I've considered every so often -- I'd probably say do an Archivist.  You should still be able to get into Bone Knight fairly easily. 

[Jackinthegreen]

The elf paladin racial substitution gets ranged smite too.

[linklord231]

Crusader gets Smite at 6.  Not all maneuvers require a melee attack - stick to mostly counters and boosts.  If homebrew is allowed, there's a couple disciplines that specialize in ranged attacks.  Falling Star, for instance.