Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="StreamOfTheSky" data-source="post: 5156214" data-attributes="member: 35909">When you say a pirate sniper, do you mean like those Navy Seal snipers that killed a whole bunch of pirates recently?  Because, as a Ninja, I'm totally in favor of sniping pirates. <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" />First of all, what books are allowed?  And you're using some 3.0 stuff.  Is this a 3.0 game, or 3.5 with some leeway on older material?Okay...where to start?Drop Fighter, aside from 1-2 levels for feats if you need them.  Don't bother going for ranged weapon mastery, it's not worth the cost to get there, nor is weapon specialization.  Take all 10 levels of Deepwood Sniper, preferably early, not towards level 20.  It's a very good class.  Don't be afraid to level in Ranger, the free archery feats are helpful, Spot, hide, and move silently are class skills, and if you have access to non core books like Spell Compendium, the Ranger spell list actually became rather sexy.  Level 1 Arrowmind means never having to pull out a melee weapon again.  Another spell (Hawkeye, I think) lets your next ranged attack auto-hit.  Arrow Storm, level 4, lets you unload on every single enemy nearby.Get Rapid Shot (ideally, from Ranger 2) and Precise Shot MUCH, MUCH earlier.  Rapid Shot will be key to your offense by giving you a full extra attack (and if you go to Ranger 6 and get Manyshot for free, Improved Rapid Shot from Complete Warrior to remove the -2 attack penalty may even be worth it) most rounds.  Precise Shot is so you don't have to lay off on the artillery just because your friends got into melee.Far Shot isn't an awful choice, per say, but if you're feat starved, it wouldn't hurt to drop it and just use the Distance weapon enhancement on your crossbow.Able Sniper iirc is a pretty terrible feat.  The +4 to hide after sniping is tiny compared to the effective +10 from Concealed Ambush, and you don't really need help in hitting as an archer, so the +2 attack bonus when sniping is both situational and weak.  the only reason to take it is because Concealed Ambush requires a higher level to grab.  Getting it after the better feat just makes no sense.You will want Improved Precise Shot at some point.  If not from Ranger 11, then as an actual spent feat.  Grappling, concealment, and cover WILL come up, and will be annoying as hell to deal with.  Alternatively, the Seeking weapon enhancement will cover you.  Spell Compendium also has the level 1 spell Guided Shot as a swift action to ignore concealment and cover (other than full) for one round.  But you don't get enough spell slots to regularly cast that.Crossbow Sniper also isn't a bad feat necessarily.  But it's only half dex to damage, and only at 60 ft or closer, which if things go right, won't happen often for you.  It's ok, just keep it "low priority" when deciding how soon to take it.Good.  Just remember many games never reach anywhere close to 20, even if the DM had intended them to.  That's a long stretch of gaming, anything can happen.  Don't build just for level 20, make sure the levels leading up to it are fun and playable, too.Where is powerful build coming from?  Jotunbrud?  Note that Magic Item Compendium has Strongarm Bracers for 6000 gp.  Gives you the powerful build benefit of using a larger weapon, os that's another option.  Do you need the crossbow to lay flat on the ground or something?  A bow would serve you much better.  Especially as a "bombard" archer (you have no sneak attack requiring you to stay close, and have taken effort to increase your range), you really have no reason to not full attack very single round from as far away as possible.  I'm not sure how much the heavy repeating crossbow may hinder you in that.  Don't even worry about hiding until the enemies are actually near you (within ~100 ft).  To be honest, other than hitting flat footed AC, I'm failing to see what benefit you're getting out of hiding at all.In addition to Deepwood Sniper, look at Cragtop Archer in Races of Stone.  It's only a 5 level class, and even just a few levels helps.  It dramatically improves both your range and your long range accuracy (one class feature lets you make one attack as a full round action and shoot as far as your range increments allow, with no penalty on the attack roll; another class feature doubles your spot range and halves the range increment penalty).  The class is flavored to be shooting from mountains or high rocky points, and the requirements represent this.  The adaptation notes do mention altering the pre-reqs to fit other themes (their example is a "tree top archer"), so if your DM can work on a nautical-themed version with other requirements, go for it.Look at enhancements and weapon augment crystals in Magic Item Compendium.  The Force enhancement for +2 market price is basically required for an archer, to deal with damage reduction and (arguably) to not get hosed by Wind Wall.  The Splitting enhancement in Champions of Ruin is by far the most powerful thing you could put on a bow/crossbow.  But your DM might balk at how crazy it is (literally doubles your attacks by splitting the ammunition, but has a hefty market price mod, +4 I think).  Get Woodland Archer tactical feat from Races of the Wild, it's just SOOOOO good.</blockquote>

Verification