The Death of the Zen Archer

With Update 49, the major changes in bow feats and power brought a sudden hiatus to my love of archery.

None of my Zen Archers have a true monastic connection now.

I know Standing Stone Game’s devs are hard at work at reducing lag while keeping performance and weapon effectiveness going. Early in U49 development I put in my two cents on the forum threads on not screwing with the Ten Thousand Stars feat (commonly used by “monkchers” to add a 2nd classic Manyshot option) by at leaving that feat effectively unchanged for Monks and for the use of stars.

I got my request. Ten Thousand Stars still does what it has for shuriken.

But TTS no longer works at all for bows.

This broke the effective use of bows for my Zen Archers, which were all single-class Monks.

That doesn’t mean I couldn’t play any of them. Far from that. The U49 changes actually improved a few bits. For starters, one of the changes made all bows inherently DEX to-damage for any class unless you add another feat or enhancement with higher ability stats (such as a Ranger and its Bow Strength feat, or the universal tree’s special INT, WIS or CHA to-hit and to-damage enhancements).

So that meant that the being an Elf of some sort was not required to gain the Grace racial enhancement to add DEX-to-hit later if that build needed it.

Using TTS allowed my archers to use their ki for their Manyshot-like feature, which had a smaller cooldown of 60 seconds. TTS also saved a feat–Manyshot itself. It took longer for the Zen Archers to qualify for that feat, anyway, based on Monk BAB.

My problem is that there’s no ki connection to the use of bows.

That is, bows cannot use any of the melee-based ki strikes. Likewise, finishers cannot work with ranged weapons. A Zen Archer can switch to handwraps or other melee weapon to activate light or dark finishers, but there’s not a lot of point to that as that removes the bow from the equation and perhaps more vulnerable.

There is still the benefit of the miss-chance powers (Dodge, Incorporeality, Concealment) and monastic evasive powers inherent in many Monks that can make the current builds work fine. And adding the new Manyshot feature works just fine as well.

And when I don’t play my Monks, I love love love my Rangers. If I ever quit my love of Monks, you’ll see me fawning over the Ranger.

There’s also my starthrowers, which are now just as deadly (if not more so) with new flavors, thanks to variations from the universal trees. The performance changes to Doubleshot is still up in the air for me in terms of effects per apparent throw with stars, but it’s not a showstopper.

So what’s the future for my Zen builds?

The answer comes from the devs. In the near future, there are plans to add more trees or feats to expand the use of bows for other classes.

Maybe, just maybe, options might arrive to add true support for Zen Archery feat users so that Monks:

• Could integrate ki for special bow-only abilities
• Give bow Weapon Proficiency as part of such enhancements. That means you don’t have to be an Elf to use a bow without a harsh feat deficit.
• A weak Arcane Archer-like use of ki to imbue bows or ammo or provide extra offensive and defensive things while adding a flair that no other archer class possesses (reading up from other D&D designs might be nice here)
• Bonus points for enhancements that give one thing for dark Monks and other for light ones in archery

Such feats and enhancements would require specific Monk levels and might be anti-prerequisites to the Arcane Archer, Elf or Ranger abilities to avoid performance or overpowered class issues.

Until that day, there’s not a lot of reason to play Pynthetica or any of the new ones. But, as they say, Soon.