Feinter epic feats & Strength bowman build

[Kobamw]

Hello everyone!

I wanted to pick up your minds regarding 2 builds issues.

First is epic feats for the not-so-powerbuilt feinter. The build looks more or less like this:
http://nwn2db.com/build/?239734.
I’m just hitting level 24 and I wonder what feats to choose in the future. Apart from Improved Evasion which comes as a bonus feat of Rogue there are still 5 feats to spend. 2 are not even selected in the build. 3 shown in the build are more flavour/situational rather than game changers.

So I wanted to ask what I could add/exchange in the current build. One obvious alternative is to forego dex increase, improved 2 weapon fighting and other flavour feats and go all Great Strength. Are there any other options?

Second is a bowman build which can handle himself (survive?) if the enemy closes in on him. The build concept is Rogue 3/Fighter 12/ OOBI 10/ Elemental Archer 5.

With feat slots: 7 regular, 5 epic, 6 fighter and 1 OOBI (Greater Weapon Focus) I plan to squeeze in all shooting feats (Manyshot, etc., except One Shot), all bow feats (up to Epic Weapon Specialization), plus Luck of Heroes, Able Learner, Toughness, Iron Will, Dodge, ICE, Steadfast Determination and Expose Weakness.

Rogue is for skills (with Able Learner) to provide solo versatility (e.g., search, disable device, tumble, etc.). Elemental Archer may be exchanged for Anointed Knight for more skills, access to Spellcraft and 1 feat slot thanks to free Toughness (at the cost of +2 AB and +1 elemental damage). The AK may be increased to 7 levels for damage reduction, but I don’t know what I would have to give up... I could go Fighter 10 and lose Epic Weapon Specialization but is it worth it?

But the key question is if such a build would work if I maxed strength instead of dexterity? On paper it seems to me that 1-2 missed attacks (with OOBI benefits) would be more or less off-set with higher damage on Manyshot attacks. Does anyone has any experience with it? I worry that lower AB of the strength build would gimp it too much... Especially as the strength build can forget about One Shot...

[aaron22]

One shot is not a make or break feat. Also expose weakness cannot be used with a ranged weapon. I would also like to say that there are a lot of penalties in ranged combat that getting ab way up really helps. It helps damage and hit rate.

In conclusion. You will be able to play this toon. It's not gimped, but it will not be as effective if you had just gone all the way archer or all the way melee. Instead of a combo of both.

[Kobamw]

Expose Weakness is for hand-to-hand combat - it's a part of this "combo approach". If I went all dex and with Elemental Archer it would be all the more important, I guess. I'm thinking about going this way and maybe squeezing Weapon Finesse somewhere.

[Kobamw]

So, I talked and read some more, did some thinking and put this build together:

http://nwn2db.com/build/?260378

Fighter levels 5-8 and 17-22 are OOBI levels (i.e., no bonus feats). OOBI grants GWF at level 10, so GWF taken as a feat at 14 is in fact GWS, GWS takes as feat at 16 is in fact CE, thus making the CE taken as a feat at 16 an ICE

There's still one non-epic and one epic feat left. Does anyone has an idea how I could make this build more archery (even if it takes away the melee feats like CE/ICE, etc.)?

My ideas are:
1. Go Bard instead of Rogue and Arcane Archer instead of Fighter (but it's a different concept essentally and one that gives up a lot of Fighter goodies)
2. Add more Great Dexterity at epic levels and try to grab One Shot
3. Any other ideas?

On a related note - does anyone has any ideas for that feinter guy? Or is the silence indicating just how hopeless the build is at this point?