i have long had issues with archer templates.
i can never seem to find one that is both playable and fun.
tonishiki has gone thru several iterations, starting witht he stock bowhunter template from turbine, 6 rerolls of different 3 school mage or tank templates, and finally coming full circle to finish with the stock bow hunter template from turbine.
i like bow and crossbow characters. being able to do real damage at range is a real bonus, especially when teamed with a tank who can keep monsters at bay and save me from getting womped on. i have only done this a few times, but the results were *awesome*.
i also would like a mage template that uses a bow or crossbow. those are among the hardest templates to play, in my opinion, since you end up with all of the liabilities fo being botha tank and a mage, without the shield or the cool spells.
anyway, nom has taken on another account, so i can fold some of his dudes in to my tree and some of mine in to his, and take to opportunity to reroll vampira, my xbow/dagger/life thing for the kerbillionth time.
this time around, i am going to make an item only xbow tank with lockpick, essentially, tonishiki with an xbow, or a one school version of ratspike. his template has served me well, and thanks to the 4 extra credits i will get for taking xbow, i will be able to spec magicD at 40th, which was my original plan for tonishiki, but he is going to go in another direction.
i am going to redo tonishiki as a life archer, only this time, i am not going to reroll him. instead, i am going to get him to 40th and then use the skill spec/buyback quests to move him to the life archer template.
the tank template is the only one i have had any real success with on an archer, and i am hoping to sidestep some of the problems i have had with starting bowcaster templates by "starting" at 40th, and essentially template complete. i need to untrain/unspec a bunch of skills, and move a bunch of attribute points, but with a little patience i should be able to finally have my coveted bowcaster. my plan is to move bow and meleeD to trianed, dump lockpick, lore, and fletching, then train creature, life, and manaC then to specialize life magic. on the attribute front, i want to pull the creation points from strength and quickness and put them in to focus and self. i don't know how well this is going to work, but it is worth trying since shiki is now part of the survivor's rank tree cannot simply be rerolled.
he will need to be 3 schooled now, since i will be taking all his gear to give to vampira's reroll once i him/her rolled.