D&D 3E/3.5 3.5 Snipers, how to beat them.

[Dark_Juggernaut]

There's many questions I have regarding sniping, but this is the most pressing. If you CANNOT spot a sniper (for any reason), can you ready a ranged attack for when they shoot you if they're performing a snipe action? What if it's a halfling rogue with sniping mastery? Thanks

 

[StreamOfTheSky]

If you really have no way of detecting the sniper -- you can at least know the general direction they fired from and launch your big area nukes to try and get lucky similar to SOP for some invisible foes -- for example, he has the ability to snipe on the move...sorry, you're basically screwed. Find somewhere with as much cover as possible. Or run away. Force him to come out of hiding. Don't fight the sniper on his terms. The battlefield you're on is clearly to his benefit, so don't cooperate and stay there. "If everything else fails, retreat".

 

[Thanael]

How about cover? Drop some Obscuring Mist :: d20srd.org or something like that on yourself

 

[Dandu]

Tower Shield. Figure out where he is judging by the arrows on the shield.

(Alternatively, hide behind the fighter and judge where the sniper is by the arrows jutting out of the fighter)

 

[Dark_Juggernaut]

That helps but doesn't answer my primary question...

Do the mechanics of sniping prevent people from freely seeing the sniper even if they're readied against the shot, or does sniping never truly reveal the sniper, just change his hide check each turn?

 

[Dandu]

Do the mechanics of sniping prevent people from freely seeing the sniper even if they're readied against the shot, or does sniping never truly reveal the sniper, just change his hide check each turn?

Given that the sniper has to make a new hide check at a penalty after he snipes, I'd say that he reveals himself.

 

[StreamOfTheSky]

If the sniper is able to hide after making the shot, his opponents should have ot make a spot check against his new hide check to shoot back at him, even with a readied action. If all you needed to do to attack someone well hidden that you can't possibly spot was ready an action, the whole hide/spot mechanic falls apart. Note that the default rule is a -20 on Hide after sniping, so it's usually not that easy to do.

And you do need to hide in a place that is viable, such as an area that gives you cover from view. If you're staying in one spot the whole time, the party will be able to figure out the general area shots are being fired from and close in around there. If you have the ability to hop hiding spot to hiding spot, most areas will only have a limited number of good sniper perches. If the area you're in happens to have a great number or near unlimited amount of easily accesible sniper positions AND the sniper has the ability to evade your spot checks even with the sniping penalty to hide AND has the ability to seemlessly jump from one area to another...GET THE OUT OF THERE!!!!!!
Sorry if that's not helpful to you, but seriously. Pick your field of battle. When an enemy has such overwhelming terrain advantage over you, and you choose to stay (or worse, were baited in due to foolishness and have had escape routes cut off), you deserve to get your ass kicked.

If not all of those conditions are true, then the problem can be dealt with by mundane methods as have been described, such as fanning out over the room to smash things up until you ruin his hiding (you can blindly swing into squares if you think an invisible foe might be there and hope to get lucky, so something similar, but with more property destruction to ruin his cover or otherwise flush him out). Or firebombing the whole area you think he's in and asking questions later. Or taking a defensive position such that you have cover from attack in certain directions, forcing him to "reveal" himself if he wants to attack you further -- if you can deduce the areas an attack can only come from, that greatly helps in narrowing down the little weasel's location.

 

[Dark_Juggernaut]

Thanks a lot for the input. There seems to be a disagreement as to whether the readied action has to spot him though. I do agree that it would eliminate the entire mechanic if a player/pc could simply ready an attack against a sniper myself.

So now here is my new question. I while back I built a sniper for my friend with some character optimization. He's a bit of a beast and I started backwards engineering defenses for him by finding different ways he could be found.

For starters he has Dark-stalker, Concealed ambush (snipe penalty reduced by 10), sniping mastery as a Halfling rogue (reduces snipe penalty by another 10), item familiar to give him a huge bonus to hide, and a ring that cloaks him in a mundane Nystul's aura. By 20 he'll be rolling 100s in his hide checks.

What ways are there left that he could be found other than the obvious AOE spells in his general area? Nothing I can really give him vs a cloud-kill, haha.

The reasons for all this are two-fold, I wanna give him as much defense against being seen as possible, and I'd like to be able to find enemies like this should I ever come across one...

 

[Dandu]

Mindsight.

 

[Shin Okada]

What ways are there left that he could be found other than the obvious AOE spells in his general area? Nothing I can really give him vs a cloud-kill, haha.

Wind Wall spell protects people (or monsters) from arrows.

Surround yourself in Wind Wall and the sniper must enter within the wall or cannot shoot you at all.