That's not how it works.

If you have 4 or more attacks, you get 2 attacks instantaneously when you click on an enemy. Both these attacks will be sneak attacks.

So, with 3 attacks, your attack pattern is "poke backstep hide." With 4 attacks, it's "double-poke backstep hide." Double-poke is much better, since you get twice the sneak attack bonus.

If you go up to 7 attacks (possible with 4 attacks, a haste item and improved two weapon fighting) the pattern becomes "triple-poke backstep hide." A monk could even get 10 attacks and gain a quadruple-poke, but that's an extreme exception.

As Jason already explained, you aren't waiting around. If you have 4 attack you get two instantly in the time you get one.

And you only get your one sneak attack if it hits. You have a better chance that one of your sneak attacks land when you have two, than only one. 6d6 is a lot more damage than 0d6, when you have a miss in each case.

No matter how you slice the extra attack is worth it.

Again, these are not mutually exclusive, you can have SD at level 8 and 4 attacks at level 20. The whole point of my first previous post is you can have your cake and eat it too, WRT to SD and 4 attacks.

It's just sensible building to stick to getting Rogue/SD level in groups of 4 (or fill with a fighter type class).

Neither here nor there, but I obviously need to play an arcane archer at some point. He will be a rogue archer and I will name him Clint Barton. Or maybe Bard Archer to save on the mage level.

The Fighter Archer will be named Oliver Queen.

'cuz Standards must be kept.
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Edit: or - not. There's really no single class that meets the Arcane Archer prerequisits is there? Either you don't have spells or you don't have martial weapons? Interesting. Still looks fun though.

Elf.

Elves get Weapon Proficiency: Longbow by default, so an Elven wizard or bard qualifies without needing any feats. Plus, you get the DEX bonus, which obviously is incredibly good for an archer build,

Elf Rogue/Wizard/AA does a ton of damage up close, and gets a versatile skillset to back up the archery.

Fighter/Bard/AA is tougher and gets weapon specialisation, but an Elf with this class-combo risks getting an experience penalty. You can avoid that by keeping the fighter and bard levels close together, or be a half-elf, but half-elves are rather... useless.

One build I like a lot is bard/arcane archer/Shadowdancer, which combines nasty archery with ninja-like stealth and hide in plain sight. The ultimate hit-and-run sniper. It's something of a flawed build, because you'll always be short on feats and skilpoints, but I like the idea of the combo a lot.

I really wouldn't recommend entering AA like this. Archery is very intense on feats, and benefits enormously from Weapon Specialization, so the Fighter class is by far the best archer in the game. Doing Rogue/Wizard/AA leaves you starved of feats and permanently forecloses weapon specialization. I'd say either enter as a Fighter 6 / Wizard 1 or a Bard 8.

Eh. You get 7 pre-epic feats, and need point blank shot, rapid shot, weapon focus, improved crit and blind fight. Called shot is also a good choice. That's 6 feats. I wouldn't call that feat-starved, since you can comfortably get everything you need and still have a feat choice left.

And sure, weapon spec is nice, but for an arcane archer the extra +2 damage isn't as crucial. With a tough henchman to distract the enemy you can get in a lot of sneak attacks, which for a rogue 8/wizard 2 /AA 10 would be 4-24 extra damage. An average of 14 bonus damage on some/many shots goes a long way to compensating +2 damage on all shots.

Also, compared to the fighter/wizard you get +4 AC from Tumble, access to monk robes and boots from Use Magic Device, stealth, evasion, uncanny dodge and a bunch more skills on top of that. (The official campaigns are generaly more fun if you have Persuade.)

The fighter's +2 base attack bonus and +2 damage do help, and if you go into epic levels (which in the OC you won't) the epic weapon specialiation feat does also add up, but it's not as fun a build because it can't do anything except shoot arrows. Well, and use scrolls. But still.

I'd prefer the bard version to the fighter one, which gets a few nice low-level spells, a bard song that compensates for the lost damage and access to many of the same skills the rogue version gets. And it's more straight-forward than trying to juggle three classes.

Playing through the OC, yes this character is feat starved. You have to delay many of your feat picks and get effectively nothing elective since you have just enough to pick up everything that's a must-have. Getting to level 18 in the OC requires getting every last shred of XP (including not using henchmen) so in practice you will never get that 7th pre-epic feat. Yeah, it's feat starved alright.

It is nice to have these feats earlier, I'll agree, and a few fighter levels will help a lot with that. In that regard, a fighter-based build indeed is more forgiving.

On the other hand, I honestly don't know what I'd pick with those extra 2-3 feat choices you get. Other than those must-haves there's precious little an archer actually needs.

The bard version you suggested is worse off for feats, though. That one gets just as few feat choices, and also would like to have Lingering Song, and maybe Curse Song (though that one doesn't work as well at range) and it's hard to fit those in.

Thanks for the heads up about Elf Longbow - I had indeed spaced that completely.

As an experiment, I decided to see how that build targeting those final class levels might finish up, by feeding a brand new character XP through the console.
The stat increases I fed into INT to maximize the skill points per level
At character level 20, AA 10, I actually had one last Feat I could choose, so I grabbed Epic Weapon Focus
The resulting character would make companion gameplay pretty much a must, primarily using Tomi to disable traps and locks, and then dragging him well away from where I am working taking out the enemies. No way I'd be able to harvest as many traps as I'd like.

For a character like that, you'd be better off using Daelan or the monk as a henchman, and shooting enemies from up close whilst they're fighting him. This would get you full sneak attack damage. You made a mistake there, I'm afraid. You get a feat at character level 21, which is your first Epic feat. It's impossible to select this feat before level 21, so you probably took a rogue or wizard level too many. No big deal. If you do reach level 21, epic weapon focus indeed is a great choice. That's a very bad idea. Stat increases should go into DEX to feed attack bonus and armour class. Skillpoints are nice, but they are a secondary concern for this character. Plus, you don't get the skill bonus retroactively, so you only get a very marginal return for your investment. If you boost INT by 4 points at levelup as soon as you can, by level 20 you'll only have 18 extra skillpoints. In comparison: Boosting INT by 2 points at character creation would net you 23.

You just need to limit the amount of skills your character takes, and save some skillpoints up initially so you can raise them later. If you start at 14 INT, you get a total of 153 skillpoints, provided you start as rogue. (very important! Your first level gets quadruple skillpoints.) That's enough for 7 maxed out skills, or 8 if you keep (some) a bit lower.

That's enough for tumble, UMD, set trap, disarm trap, open locks and hide/move silently. If you keep open lock low (no problem because of your high DEX bonus) you can also take persuade. You don't really need anything else. (Discipline isn't necessary in the OC due to enemies hardly ever using knockdown on you if you have decent AC.)

You could easily skip the trap and lock stuff (not really necessary) or the stealth stuff (get some invis potions. In general, stealth isn't a big benefit in the OC because you just need to slaughter everything to get enough XP.) and so free up plenty more skillpoints to take other skills you're interested in.

The only tricky bit is that you can't raise these skills whilst taking Arcane Archer levels, so what happens in practice is that your skills start to lag a lot behind in the mid levels. That's the disadvantage of multiclassing. And you won't get high enough level in the OC to add some rogue levels in between to keep your skills up.

In that regard, this kind of character is indeed less suited to playing in the OC.

(Honestly, for a new player I'd recommend playing a single-class character that isn't a rogue, or a very simple headache-free multiclass like fighter/rogue.) Edit: But if you want to experiment with character builds and designs, give the pretty good character creator/customiser a try. It's a small user-module that lets you level, customise, equip and test your characters. The best of its kind, i.m.o. A great way to figure out what characters you like to play, and also very useful if you want to play a module that starts at a level other than 1 when you don't have such a character available.

The traditional Fighter AA is Half-elf, Bard/Fighter/AA (Typically Bard 4/Fighter 6/AA 10 pre epic).

Qualifying for AA with something other than Wizard, is the only reason to ever take Half-Elf, but it's a good reason. This is my preferred choice for building an AA.

You go Strength instead of Dex, for Mighty bows, and Melee weapons until your AA is sufficiently developed. You get plenty of AB from fighter/AA levels.

You fight almost identical to a pure fighter with Melee weapons, but your AA does extensive reliable damage, so eventually you will seldom, if ever use Melee weapons.

In HotU you will get:

+6 Damage from Epic Weapon Specialization.
+10 Mighty damage from high strength (on custom bow).

That is an extra +16 per arrow damage before you add in arrow damage and your AA bonus.

In a game full of sneak immune creatures, I much prefer having high reliable damage, than high situation damage (sneak attack).

I was averaging about 35 damage/arrow near the end of HotU. Enough to kill just about everything from a distance. IIRC only Big Meph was an issue.

Also if you go this route, you can get Devastating Critical on your Bow attacks in Epic. May or may not be beneficial in your setting.