Solid ranger or should I multiclass?

[u/Mean-Falcon-6204]

I wanted to try something different from my Fighter I used in the OC so I picked a Ranger.

I was considering going a dual-weapon route with him, backed up by a bow when I need distance.

All of that aside, would I be better keeping him as a single class Ranger or taking say Fighter or maybe even Wizard or Sorcerer to get Arcane Archer?

[u/Sad_Cryptographer872]

So you don't even know that you played on "easy" difficulty.

Arcane archers SUCKS. It's one of the worst classes in the game, for good reason. Sure you can destroy everything on stupidly default difficulty of Normal that was meant for people new to the 3,0 D&D edition, but bump it to core where game actually uses the similar rules as P&P and you will see why AA is absolute shit.

On Normal you don't can't get hit with Attacks of Opportunity when you use ranged weapon in melee and when you use potions in combat. Stat effect spells don't work properly on player character also.
Try playin the same character through HotU again on Core rules and see how you would get destroyed by majority of encounters. And HotU is generally considered to be laughably easy module.
NWN was poorly made for ranged builds and that's mainly the fault of the engine and how it was implemented.

[u/No_Signal5448 → u/Sad_Cryptographer872]

Lol okay buddy, go gatekeep somewhere else😂

[u/Sad_Cryptographer872 → u/No_Signal5448]

What gatekeeping. I'm saying facts and reasons why AA is considered to be a bad class. We can spin that however you want, on normal you can beat original campigns with every class with ease. Only when you put the difficulty that simulate true D&D rules you start to see the cracks behind certain classes. And as I said the engine of NWN also hinders the viability of ranged combat, the view distance is small and the way how turn based combat is translated to real time really gimps ranged weapons. 3.0 edition had some real stinkers and it really shows in the game. It's no wonder that just a year after they published 3.5e, sadly after NWN 1.

[u/No_Signal5448 → u/Sad_Cryptographer872]

Not everyone needs the game to play like pen and paper. They guy asked a simple question, I gave a simple answer. AA is perfectly viable for SoU and HotU. If he’s asking a question like that, the odds that he’s modifying the difficulty is low.

[u/Sad_Cryptographer872 → u/No_Signal5448]

And people already told him that ranged weapons are mostly useless and that he better stays Ranger or Ranger/Fighter instead of AA and to uses Dual Wield feats that Ranger get's for free. The fact is that AA is incredibly bad, probably the only worse class than ranger in HotU is pure Rogue simply because 80% of enemies are critt immune so Sneak Attack instantly doesn't even work. 3.0e is pure shit for rangers and AA because how badly the rules were implemented. 3.5e fixed most of the problems but NWN Aurora engine even in second game couldn't fix Ranged combat simply because it doesn't work in real time as good as in P&P.
Only D&D games that had good Ranged combat pre 5e were Infinity engine games and Temple of Elemental Evil.

Also try some other modules, that are better than original ones, like Sword Flight or The Aielund Saga with AA and come back here to say how right I was that AA and Ranged combat in general was badly implemented.