Fighter Martial Archetype: Arcane Archer 5e

Review by Sam West, Twitter:@CrierKobold

Editions of old alongside classic flaming arrow fantasy imagery paint the Arcane Archer as a mythical missing element of 5th edition up until its introduction in Xanathar’s Guide to Everything. Marvel’s Hawkeye is the modern look for the character: an arsenal of sweet trick shot arrows that can explode, transform, become rope, or do any other number of unusual effects when they connect. The Arcane Archer in its current form fails to deliver on this fantasy in a spectacular fashion that leaves the user frustrated and disappointed.

3rd Level: Arcane Archer Lore and Arcane Shot

Arcane Archer Lore gives you a bonus skill and a cosmetic cantrip to enhance the flavor, either Druidcraft or Prestidigitation. Skill proficiencies aren’t all created equally, and Arcana and Nature both tend to come up more infrequently than the big hitters like Stealth and Perception, but any skill proficiency is typically a solid addition to a character sheet.

As far as cantrips go, these two are at their best when acting as ribbons to dress up your character's feel; for a character whose premise is magical arrow enhancement, they are welcome additions for sure. Not particularly powerful, but useful for feeling like a magic bowman.

Arcane Shot is the meat of the option, but with only two learned shots per long rest and no other bonuses, there are… issues.

You get to pick from eight shots that scale up once at 18th level, which feels less like scaling and more like a reminder that these don’t get better as you level up. The eight are based on the schools of magic; they are Banishing, Beguiling, Bursting, Enfeebling, Grasping, Piercing, Seeking, and Shadow Arrow.

Banishing Arrow starts out real strong, acting as a on hit one turn Banishment effect. There is a pretty massive difference between Banishment and Banishment that always lasts one round, but the cost here is a lot cheaper than a 4th level spell slot. It gets a bonus 2d6 damage at 18th level, which is technically an improvement.
Beguiling Arrow deals a bonus 2d6 psychic damage on hit and forces a save or be charmed by a nearby ally until the start of your next turn, which will shut off its ability to attack or attempt to bring harm to the charmer, which can be pretty handy.
Bursting Arrow adds a no save 2d6 explosion out 10 feet around the hit target that scales in damage up to 4d6 damage at 18th level. This is the area of effect damage option you get.
Enfeebling Arrow deals a bonus 2d6 necrotic on hit and forces a constitution save or suffer a negative condition that halves their weapon attacks damage until the start of your next turn. I’m a big fan of conditions outside the norm of resistance/vulnerability or disadvantage as that allows more features to work together, making this pretty appealing to me.
Grasping Arrow is probably the coolest option presented here, although it definitely isn’t functioning as I’d expect. You deal a bonus 2d6 poison damage, then for the next minute it takes 2d6 slashing damage if it moves by a means other than teleportation. It or another creature can spend an action attempting to remove the condition with an Athletics check against your spell save DC. What’s critical about this feature is the move doesn’t have to be willing, meaning any incidental pushes or pulls will cause the 2d6 bonus damage. With no save requirement out the gate, either, Grasping Arrow seems like a very clear and easy build around option.
Piercing Arrow transform your attack into a line spell-like ability that scales with your weapon, but crucially not with feats and abilities that empower hit attack rolls like Sharpshooter. Still, a 1 x 30 ft. line dealing 1d8+1d6+Dex mod is pretty reasonable.
Seeking Arrow is… underwhelming. It turns the attack roll into a Dex save (which typically is going to be worse for you), but has some niche utility when it comes to finding invisible or otherwise obscured creatures. The fact that the floor does guarantee at least half damage makes it usable, but probably never one of the first two I’m picking up.
Shadow Arrow closes out the shots with a pseudo-blind to 2d6 psychic damage. I am unreasonably annoyed that this doesn’t use the blinded condition explicitly, and makes you infer that the creature is blinded when attempting to see creatures beyond 5 feet away from it. In play, this seems like a pretty clear winner for worst option, but its still giving you a minimum smite-like burst with a bonus 2d6 damage twice per short rest.

Here is the fundamental problem with this feature: none of these effects are so potent that being gated at twice a short rest feels that satisfying. When you look at Paladin for comparison, which gets a far larger long rest pool of spell slots it can do a whole suite of things with, the difference in short/long rest recharge becomes blatantly evident. A lot of tables aren’t taking short rests every session, either because of few combats generally between long rests, or because only one character benefits from it and it slows down the game beyond that. This can leave the Arcane Archers stranded with two empowered abilities as their entire subclass they have to space out over two or more encounters, or all at once in one single epic encounter.

Half-casters still get more uses as they level up as well. Every other level as a paladin, you get more smite opportunities alongside new ways to use those spell slots. Arcane Archer only gets new ways to use the “shot slots” they get back on short rest. That’s just not enough in either case for the power presented here, especially given so many can result in a single passed save and a little damage bonus.

7th Level: Magic Arrow and Curving Shot

Magic Arrow is a quality of life feature to make sure if you don’t have a magic bow you can still deal damage to mundane resistant monsters. This mechanic is awful, always has been awful, and needs to be put down so we can stop making these waste of space abilities to compensate for garbage game design of years gone by.

Curving Shot is the actual 7th level feature you get access to, which is super neat. Getting a way to use your bonus action on ranged fighters is really meaningful, and Curving Shot having unlimited uses paired with the requirement to hit something other than the primary target leads to a lot of interesting decisions and on the fly thinking. I’m a huge fan; this ability absolutely contributes towards the trick-shot style archer character.

10th Level: NO NEW FEATURES.

Beyond just learning a new shot, you get nothing. Literally nothing. You have, in the fighter class table, a space denoting their is supposed to be a martial archetype feature here. There isn’t. There is a scaling progression of the base feature, but seeing as you aren’t getting additional uses of your shots, you aren’t actually getting an expansion of resources or abilities here. You’re not able to do more than a 9th level Arcane Archer who just picked different shots can do.
I genuinely can’t believe they just didn’t print a 10th level ability here. It feels like a mistake. Usually it's a defensive feature I somewhat write off for being niche and bland, but at least it contributes something. The bar can’t be something, yet apparently it is. If this was homebrew I’d point to it as an error, but this made it to print in a $50 supplementary book that supposedly went through playtesting and positive feedback.

I need to know what fighter got to 10th level, learned a new shot to compete with their precious two uses per short rest, and said “yup, that’s enough for me! I’m happy with this!”

15th Level: Ever-Ready Shot

Ever-Ready Shot finally gives you additional uses of your shots up from twice per short rest to twice per short rest plus one per fight. If the objective is to make a character feel like the magical trick shot archer with a giant toolbox of various gimmicks using arrows, getting just one bonus per fight really isn’t enough. It's a huge boon, don’t get me wrong, as going from two shots over three fights to five is a massive improvement, but at this stage I’d much rather be getting three or for shots per fight, especially given how many attacks you’re making, and how much smaller a comparative impact these shots have been making since third level.

If you get this far, you absolutely should be burning shots as often as possible now. There is no more saving them. You’ve only got two anyway: use them so you get more as you go.

18th Level: NO NEW FEATURES.

Like 10th level, the feature you’re technically getting here is the upgraded Arcane Arrow feature which staples a bonus 2d6 damage to each of your shots. You don’t get expanded uses, or a new cool arrow type, or some means of firing out a bunch at once.

You don’t actually get a capstone, you just finally help the abilities that have been falling further and further behind other characters' abilities a bonus 2d6 damage.

I’m genuinely baffled that this made it to print this way. Again, it feels like a mistake, like there was supposed to be an ability here that was just forgotten.

In a situation where you’re getting three fights between short rests, this will end up being a bonus 8d6 damage over three encounters, assuming you use both your shots from your last rest. 8d6 is the same damage as a 3rd level Fireball. A 3rd level Fireball you have to spread out over three encounters isn’t worth an 18th level feature.

There needed to be something else here. But there isn’t.

All Together

Arcane Archer feels like half a well developed subclass they just forgot to add meaningful scaling to. This option could offer your Proficiency Bonus number of shots a short rest and we’d have so much more to talk about; as is, you’re going to be limited to only ever using the two best possible shots, which you’re highly encouraged to throw out immediately so you can get a new shot every fight between now and your next short rest.

Even in the best case scenario, where you’re short resting after every fight, two shots a fight is just comparatively so small when you’re making three or more attacks a round, every round for however long the fight goes. If you’re in a fight for six rounds, you’re getting to use your cool subclass abilities in a third of those rounds in the best possible scenario.

What really is disappointing here is how excellent some of the concepts are. Curving Shot is a genuinely excellent improvement for the archetype, and with two more features like that and an expansion that actually encourages you to use different arrows, we’d have a subclass I’d be all about. It feels like they just forgot to finish this. With both 10th and 18th level lacking actual features, I can’t recommend this to anybody unless you only want three levels in fighter to give a ranger or other ranged martial character some more arrow options on short rest.

This option deserved grappling hooks and other out of combat arrow tricks. It deserved reasons to actually mess around with the pool of arrows to do cool tricks all over the place.
I have reread Arcane Shot over and over assuming there had to be a mistake, but no. It is limited to two shots total per short rest with no expanded 10th or 18th level features outside new shot options and scaling up the damage dice. If you want the Arcane Archer fantasy, ranger with no subclass will provide you more opportunity for it than this will.

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