What is the best class+race for a ranged character in Dungeons and Dragons?

Answer 1

All the following is for Dungeons and Dragons 3.5 edition pen and paper roleplaying game. If you mean D&D Stormreach, the MMORPG, then the answer is different. It also assumes you mean a physical range class, since a spell casters are techincally ranged.

If you are refering to a ranged weapon character, your best options for base-classes are Warrior, Ranger and Scout.

Most peole think of warriors as hack and slashers, but with high dex they are prefectly fine archers, just not as special as other classes are. Their MANY bonus feats let you build a prefectly good ranged specialist though.

Rangers get lots of special ablites, spells, and an animal companion. They can choose to be specialized in either two-weapon fighting or ranged specials. Not as may feats as a warrior, but they can make up with for it with all their special ablities, espetially Favored Enemy.

Scouts (Complete Adventurer) are desgined from the ground up to be a ranged class. They get bonuses to their movement speed and can ignore terrain penalties. They also get a ranged sneak attack called skirmish, which is absolutely devasating against things that take sneak attack damage.

For presitge classes, the only long ranged classes I've herad of are Arcane Archer (DMG) and Dread Commando (Complete Adventure? maybe Heroes of Battle). I've heard a lot of good things about Dread Commando's and with the right build, good things for Arcane Archers too.

Good feats to have for ranged characters are:
Point Blank Sot: Gives extra damage if you are close enough to your opponets. This range is the same as skirmish, so you can stack the damages.
Precise Shot: When shooting into melee the penalty to hit is removed. This will happen to you all the time, so get this asap! If you are starting with a high level character you might be able to skip this, the penalty ins't that bad once your levels get high enough.
Crossbow Sniper: (and there is a bow version in Complete Rouge) Increases the range of Skirmish. All scouts should get one or the other of these.
Shoot on the Run: Alows you to shoot while moving. This gives you incredable flexablity to stay out of range of your opponet.
Zen Archer: Allows you to use Wisdom instead of Dex to shoot. This can be used to make a magic heavy archer, or a cleric archer who can still cast spells.

As for races, most people think of elves when they think archers, but they aren't the only choices. Depending on how you build your character, race doesn't matter that much. Admitably, you want to aviod dex penalties, but with Zen Archery, dex isn't the most inmprant skill anymore. Small characters have several benfits when shooting, espetially with a crossbow, where strenght isn't a factor.

I've seen a very powerful kohbald scout/dread commando once. The DM started throwing a lot of stuff at us that was immue to sneak attacks to limit the devestation. All he had to do is move enough to trigger skirmish, shoot, move the rest of his range (with shoot on the run) and then hide with a scout's stealth skill. The only things to ever hit him where ghosts that could go imaterial and area attack spells.