Please rate Sharp-Shooting

[smetzger]

Sharp-Shooting [General]
REQ: Base Attack bonus +3, Point Blank Shot, Precise Shot
You gain a +2 bonus to your ranged attack rolls against targets with some degree of cover. This feat has no effect against foes with no cover or total cover. Sword and Fist, pg 9.

 

[Li Shenron]

Since the minimum cover bonus is +2, I think the feat works fine (it would have been odd if there was a +1 cover!).

Given the small number of feats available for archers, it's a very welcome feat in my opinion

 

[Madfox]

I voted below average, because I thought cover was not really a situation that came up very often in most games. Of course, a few seconds later, I realized that cover of opponents by your own allies is actually a quite common occurance.

 

[The Souljourner]

I actually just took this feat with my 3/3 fighter/rogue who's going for the Order of the Bow Initiate PrC. And let me tell you, I'm SO glad I did. Guys get cover against me CONSTANTLY. We're running Return to the Temple of Elemental Evil, and are storming some big temple near the beginning of the campaign, and there are archers with 9/10ths cover *everywhere*. Getting +2 to hit these guys with an effective 28 (or so) AC is a damn good thing.

I highly recommend taking it for anyone who is planning on doing a lot of ranged combat. I mean, sure, it comes after PBS and Rapid Shot, but it's not far behind.

-The Souljourner

 

[Gaiden]

I have to disagree with Souljourner.

First it is one of those feats that is DM - dependent, meaning that it won't be useful unless your DM makes it so.

Second, you can get better abilities with Peerless Archer.

With Archer BAB's being so high, I would choose alot of other archery feats over this one.

 

[Zad]

The feat is not very useful at all

First off maybe you find a lot of folks with cover, maybe you don't.

Second, archers generally have great to-hit bonuses, so the +2 you get from this feat is pretty irrelevant.

Third, if you ever go epic, uncanny accuracy completely trumps this feat making it wasted.

There are better ways to spend a feat. Raise a saving throw or something.

 

[Elder-Basilisk]

Playing RttToEE, I took this as my sixth level feat with my elvish cleric archer. It worked out to be relatively useful--although perhaps not as useful as being able to have Persistent Spell at 9th level would have been. I did encounter cover quite frequently--railings, altars, shield spells, allies, and villains in between my character and what she was shooting at.

The feat benefitted from the fact that none of the archery prestige classes offer clerical spellcasting progression at all and the character is as much a cleric as an archer. Consequently other feats like Far Shot (a prerequisite for several classes) were significantly less attractive than they would be for an arcane archer or OotBI wannabe.

For fighter based archers, however, there aren't really enough feats to cover all of the feat slots available to them so opportunity cost doesn't come in as strongly there as it does for other feats.

So, I'd rate it as an average feat for most characters.

 

[Ridley's Cohort]

This is a solid average feat, not for every character but useful enough for many.

Some degree of cover happens all the time in my experience. There is often a brawl happening between me and the guy I want to tag. If you ever fight in a dungeon corridor your own ally will be giving 50% cover. If you fight in a forest, the pesky spellcaster is going to stand behind a tree and gain 25% cover to most of the battlefield. This feat also partially counter the Shield spell.

Counterarguments about prestige classes and epic levels don't apply to many campaigns.

 

[The Souljourner]

The feat should not be DM dependant. People should get cover against you a *lot* of the time. Fighting in combat? if there's a guy even partially in the way, they're getting 25-50% cover. Unless you regularly shoot at guys standing in the middle of a grassy plain with nothing around them, chances are they're going to get cover. If your DM isn't imposing cover rules or isn't making your enemies fight intelligently, then it's his fault this feat is useless.

Yes, Peerless Archer is better from what I hear. Of course, from what I hear, it's also way over the top. For those who don't allow that prestige class, or for those who simply don't want to take it for one reason or another, this is a good feat. Granted, I don't have access to the prestige class right now, but is there some reason the two couldn't stack?

Yes, if you go to epic levels, this feat will eventually become useless. In my mind, I think they should have required sharp shooting as a prerequisite for uncanny accuracy. But even so, many, perhaps even most, campaigns may never make it that high.

And yes, archers often have high attack bonuses, but when your opponent can get +10 AC by hunkering down behind a boulder, you need every attack bonus you can get. My 3/3 fighter/rogue elven archer was having a hellish time hitting guys in a breastplate with 9/10th cover.. you're talking 28 AC. Even with my very high +11 to hit, that meant 17+... that's not exactly what I would call an easy shot. The +2 made it 15+, which although not great, is still a 50% increase.

-The Souljourner

 

[Li Shenron]

Usually every kind of environment provides occasional cover, with gladiatorial arena being the most notable exception. Therefore the usefulness of Sharp-shooting should be not very campaign-dependant.

Well, if your DM always makes dungeons with empty rooms, it's not forbidden to ask him a bit more furniture... but tell him it's for more realism