This week, we’re looking into a character based around the ugly-headed stepchild of 3.X/PF ranged weapons: the crossbow.
Crossbows are in a weird place in 3.5 and Pathfinder because, for almost any character built with a ranged or archery focus, a bow is going to be better. Normal bows don’t have the reload speed of crossbows to deal with. They have better range (unless you use a heavy crossbow, in which case you worsen the reload speed problem). Perhaps most importantly, you can also get them in composite form to add Strength to your ranged attack damage. They simply have a higher ceiling in almost every aspect when wielded by a character built around them.
Paizo has tried several times to implement class archetypes built around crossbows, but most of them are still lacking on their own when compared with their bow counterparts. Feats also exist to help address some of the crossbow’s shortcomings, such as the reload speed problem, but ranged/archery builds are often feat-intensive to begin with, and having to pick up 1-2 extra feats just to be able to use iterative attacks still leaves crossbows lagging behind. The only real advantage to crossbows is the fact that they are simple weapons rather than martial, but that distinction doesn’t matter to most ranged/archery characters, since their class will likely give them at least martial weapon proficiency anyway.
Making Crossbows Suck Less
Though none of the archetypes and feats Paizo created to help address some of the shortcomings of crossbows weren’t enough on their own, we did eventually get a feat chain (ironically, one that wasn’t specifically designed for crossbows) that worked with some of these archetypes in interesting ways. The feat chain in question is the Overwatch Style line of feats from the Weapon Master’s Handbook. Specifically, these feats are built around readied actions, capping with Overwatch Vortex, which lets us prepare up to four readied actions using a full-round action.
Readied actions are significant for a crossbow character because of the Crossbowman fighter archetype: at seventh level, the crossbowman gets Improved Deadshot, which denies the target’s Dex bonus to AC whenever the crossbowman attacks using a readied action. On its own, this, along with the fact that all our readied attacks are made at full BAB, would mean that we’re rarely going to miss shots, but that on its own doesn’t fully make up for the requirement of needing to predict our enemy’s actions to be able to use all our readied attacks each round. This changes though when we add multiclassing into the mix. If we add some levels of rogue, then we are also going to be triggering sneak attack on every readied attack (as long as it is within sneak attack range). Now that’s some degeneracy we can work with.
Character Concept
Sometimes when creating characters, you start with a character concept then build on it mechanically. Other times, you start with a cool mechanical concept and build a character around that. Last week, our “Hand of God” build was an example of the former. We took the idea of a character who was a “avatar of God” and found a way to represent that mechanically. With this week’s build, we’re taking the opposite approach. We have an idea on how we can mechanically make a functional crossbow-focused build that doesn’t feel underwhelming compared to a build that uses traditional bows. Now we just need a character to build around that.
Some people out there in the gaming community argue strongly for one method of character generation over the other. Honestly, though, either method is a perfectly valid way of creating a character so long as neither the character or the mechanics are forgotten in favor of the other. A character that has a strong concept but is weak mechanically is going to cause problems in a game just as a “power gaming” character built around maximizing mechanical strengths but with no actual character is going to cause problems. As long as you keep a balance between the character sheet and the actual character, you’ll usually be in good shape no matter what order you take things in.
In our case, we have a pretty good idea of what our character is going to look like mechanically. We will be some sort of fighter/rogue multiclass built around the Crossbowman archetype and the Overwatch Style feats, and will be primarily using readied attacks. This lends itself pretty well to a sort of sniper-like character, one who hides in the shadows and waits for the right opportunity to shoot down their prey. We’re less a “stalker” sort of hunter and more of a patient, “wait as long as it takes for the right shot” type of hunter.
Although elves are traditionally seen as more of the “bow and arrow” wielding type of ranged character, that idea of patience and discipline is very well-suited to elves and their long lifespans, so an elf seemed like the right race to go for this type of character. From a personality perspective, our “hunter” is going to be more of a reserved but observant type. She is used to sitting in a vantage spot for potentially hours at a time, keeping a eye out for any sign of her prey as she waits for the perfect shot, and that demeanor will stay with her even when she isn’t hunting. Her perceptiveness will also serve as the origin of her nickname as “the Eagle.”
Because of the nature of Illodan’s hunting style, she is a bit a lone wolf, but this is more out of necessity than by choice. She isn’t opposed to working with others, even if her introversion might make it seem otherwise at times. This is an important distinction to make with “lone-wolf” characters. Your character is going to be part of a party and is going to need to be able to get along and work with a group at some level. If your character cannot do that, you have made a bad character. Similarly, if your character is so different from the rest of the party that there is simply no realistic way they would ever agree to work together, you’ve also likely made a bad character. If your character is likely to frequently be at ends with the rest of the party, you need to make sure that the other players and GM are okay with that or rethink your character. You signed up to be a part of a group when you agreed to play an RPG and if your character isn’t capable of doing that, then that’s on you.
The Build
Illodan, the Eagle
Fighter (Crossbowman) 7 / Unchained Rogue (Sniper) 13
Race: Elf
Alternate Racial Traits: Crossbow Training, Silent Hunter
Our main goal is to shoot at anything that dares to move on the battlefield from the shadows, so the Constitution penalty doesn’t hurt too badly. The Crossbow Training alternate trait reduces our reload times for crossbows right off the bat without a feat, and by grabbing Rapid Reload, we can even reload heavy crossbows for free if we want the extra range. We aren’t a magic-based class, so Silent Hunter lets us replace Elven Magic with something that helps boost our Stealth.
Ability Scores:
Dexterity, obviously, is our most important stat, followed by Wisdom for an extra boost to Perception (more on this later) and to help cover up our bad Will save. Even though we would hope to never be caught on the front lines of a fight, more Constitution and HP is never a bad thing, and a small investment in Con helps make up for our racial penalty. Either Strength or Charisma can be dumped – crossbows don’t take Strength penalties, so the only reason to care about Strength is carrying capacity or if you ever for some reason find yourself without a crossbow. We’re mostly a rogue, so we could feasibly be the party’s face, but we don’t take levels in rogue until eighth level and it doesn’t really fit with our concept of a “introverted, silent hunter,” so Charisma could be safely dumped as well.
20-point buy: Str 8, Dex 16, Con 14, Int 12, Wis 14, Cha 10
Feats:
Level 1: Point-Blank Shot, Precise Shot
Level 2: Rapid Shot
Level 3: Weapon Focus (light crossbow)
Level 4: Overwatch Style (light crossbow)
Level 5: Overwatch Tactician
Most ranged martial builds are pretty feat intensive, and ours is no exception, particularly with the three added Overwatch Style feats. Fortunately, the Crossbowman archetype doesn’t touch the fighter’s bonus combat feats, so we grab most of the prerequisite feats that we need in the early game and start working our way into the Overwatch Style line. Overwatch Style itself requires three prerequisite feats, but most of them are basic ranged combat feats that we likely would have grabbed regardless.
Level 6: Deadly Aim
Level 7: Improved Initiative
Level 9: Quick Draw, Lightning Reflexes (combat trick)
Level 11: Alertness
Level 13: Overwatch Vortex
Our feats start to taper off as we enter the midgame and move into rogue. Deadly Aim is, of course, a standard for any ranged build and needs no explanation. After that, our next major feat is Overwatch Vortex at level 13, which is the entire reason for delving into the Overwatch Style line and gives us four readied actions each round. Outside of those feats, our remaining selections are all prerequisites for us to grab Cunning Intuition in the endgame. Fortunately, most of these feats aren’t useless in their own right, either helping us ensure we can prepare a full 4 actions first thing in combat once we have Vortex, or boosting important skills or saves.
Level 15: Ready for Anything
Level 17: Cunning Intuition
Level 19: Accomplished Sneak Attacker
We use our last couple of feats to grab Accomplished Sneak Attacker for some extra sneak attack damage and, more importantly, finish grabbing Cunning Intuition, which completely changes how we can use readied actions. With Cunning Intuition, we can choose what action to take at the time of the readied action trigger rather than when we ready the action. Though there are some restrictions to this, it does let us do things like move away in response to an enemy trying to get close to our position. Things like drinking a potion or using a wand (if we invest in Use Magic Device) are also options.
Rogue Talents & Skill Unlocks
Level 9: Combat Trick
Level 11: Trap Spotter
Level 12: Rogue’s Edge: Perception
Level 13: Minor Magic (Prestidigitation)
Level 15: Offensive Defense
Level 17: Crippling Strike, Rogue’s Edge: Sense Motive
Level 19: Slippery Mind
Our 13 levels in rogue are enough to get two skill unlocks. The first we’ll grab is Perception, which with skill unlocks effectively means that we can see almost anything regardless of distance. With the Sniper archetype halving our range penalties, we can potentially use Sniper’s Goggles to make sneak attacks on foes from far enough away that Perception penalties from distance will keep our foes from seeing us even without us making a Stealth check. Since we need to put at minimum 13 ranks into Sense Motive for Cunning Intuition, we’ll grab that as our second skill unlock, as Sense Motive actually has some really good unlocks at 15 and 20 ranks that give us some nice AC bonuses and the ability to dodge attacks.
Talents are pretty flexible here, as there’s no talents that are really central to the build. Talents that apply sneak attack effects are pretty great here in particular. Since our readied attacks occur before the triggering action resolves, we can choose which sneak attack effect to apply to try and disrupt the opponent’s action further. I only opted to go with two, in this case. Crippling Strike deals 2 Strength damage on each sneak attack, which will either cause a lot of grief to melee-focused enemies or potentially leave low-Strength enemies unconscious after enough sneak attacks. The other option I went with was Offensive Defense, which gives us improved AC against the target of our sneak attack, good for helping us avoid hits if enemies try to approach us.
The other talents I went with mainly help give us some extra utility via gaining access to Prestidigitation as an at-will ability or auto-detecting traps (which will virtually never fail with our focus on Perception). There are a couple of sneak attack talents that give us some additional disruption when we target casters which I considered, but the DC of these effects is based in part on rogue level, which would make it difficult for us to consistently apply those effects due to our multiclassing. We also will still have some caster disruption even without these talents, since a successful readied attack against spellcasting will force a concentration check from the spellcaster anyway.
Skills:
Perception and Sense Motive are our skill unlocks, so we will obviously want both of these skills to have 20 ranks in them. As mentioned earlier, using a wand is a standard action, so you may want some significant investment in Use Magic Device to open up wands as an option when you declare a standard action with Cunning Intuition. Though we’ll be a bit tight on skill ranks early on, we’ll start getting a bunch of them later in the game as we move into rogue, so we can diversify our skills a bit in the late game.
Stealth is not as important for us as a traditional rogue, since we’ll mainly be relying on readied actions to deny enemy’s Dex to AC via Crossbowman for pulling off sneak attacks. Disable Device is a decent option considering our Perception will make us the most likely party member to spot traps, but we do lose the trapfinding and danger sense class features due to Sniper, so we won’t be as good at disabling traps as a standard rogue.
Equipment:
We are built around a light crossbow, so that will obviously be our primary weapon of choice. If you’re willing to spend an extra feat on Rapid Reload (heavy crossbows), you could build around that instead, but I find the cost of a feat to not be worth it for a small weapon damage die boost (1d8 to 1d10) and moderate range increment increase (which doesn’t mean much since we half range increment penalties with Sniper anyway). Repeating crossbows are traps – our alternate racial trait lets us reload a light crossbow for free anyway, so a standard light crossbow with appropriate enchantments for our level will be more than sufficient. If you’re going for the Sniper’s Goggles, “shoot enemies from a mile away” type of build, you will obviously want the Distance ability on your crossbow to double your effective range.
Though we have proficiency in all types of armor from Fighter, we will likely want to stick with light armor due to our high Dexterity, especially if we have low carrying capacity from dumping Strength. Celestial Armor, like on most non-heavy armor characters, is probably the best choice late-game. We can also use a buckler with a crossbow without penalty, so we will likely want one of those (preferably a mithril one) as well.
Magic Items:
Sniper Goggles. That is all. This item is pretty ridiculous, so some GMs might not allow it depending on the game, but if you can grab it, absolutely do so. With our Perception skill unlocks and a crossbow with the Distance enchantment, you can sneak attack foes from so far away that they’re probably not going to see you even if you don’t snipe or use Stealth at all.
Playstyle & Role
Illodan is similar to Lothar from last week in that she is sort of a hybrid between a control and DPS role. We’re kind of the opposite sort of combination of these two as Lothar, however – we are more of a DPS first and control second. We also don’t have the survivability that build did, so our control is going to be more about stopping specific enemies or actions rather than drawing enemy attention and crippling as many enemies as possible.
Admittedly, this is not the easiest build to play. Using readied actions well requires a certain degree of strategy in order to consistently predict what your enemies will do. If you can’t do that, you’re not going to be firing off enough readied attacks consistently enough to be better off than a traditional, bow-and-arrow ranged DPS build. If you can, however, you’re going to be applying consistent sneak attack damage and have many options to apply some disruption and debuffs in the late game depending on the situation. If you like trying to make these kinds of tactical decisions, this could be a very fun and very effective build.
That said, this build’s effectiveness is also going to depend a lot on how you and the GM agree to handle readied actions. Though I would hope most GMs wouldn’t do this, if you declare your trigger out loud when you ready an action, the GM could potentially use that meta knowledge to prevent the enemy from setting off that trigger. Similarly, you and the GM might disagree on how specific a trigger needs to be.
In my own games, I require a target and a trigger for a readied action. The trigger does not need to be overly specific – “attacks,” “moves,” or “casts a spell” are all valid triggers and would be about as general as I would allow. Technically, “attacks” would also include touch attacks or ray attacks made as part of a spell, and I would consider those attacks to set off this trigger as well – however, since these attacks happen after the spell has already been cast, you lose out on the chance to disrupt the spell with the readied attack.
Since no GM is going to be able to just “forget” about your readied action when controlling enemies if you declare it out loud, my recommendation for playing this build, assuming your GM is okay with it, would be to write down your target and trigger on a piece of paper and set it aside, then reveal it if the trigger is set off over the next round. If your GM insists that you publicly declare your readied action to them when you make it, I wouldn’t play this build.
When it comes to actually deciding what readied actions to take and what triggers to choose, the right answer will always be different depending on the situation. Generally, though, I think you will be using some combination of the following three approaches each round: a) maximize damage by choosing the enemies’ most likely action/s as your triggers, b) choose several different triggers on the same target to all but ensure you apply some level of disruption to that particular enemy, or c) use triggers to prepare contingency plans against specific actions.
Options A and B are both pretty straightforward. Option A just aims to predict as many actions correctly as possible to maximize the number of attacks we make. Option B, conversely, aims to maximize the odds that we make at least one attack on a specific target – for example, against a boss enemy that we know can use both martial attacks and spells, we might use “boss attacks” as one trigger, “boss moves” as another, and “boss casts a spell” as a third to ensure that we can respond to almost any action the enemy takes.
Option C is a bit more strategic and will be more reliant on the terrain, the positioning of all the combatants, and what knowledge of the enemies you have. A common example might be if an enemy is starting to approach your position. If you’re worried they might try to charge you and get close enough to attack over the next round, you might use one of your readied actions to declare that enemy moving as the trigger and respond to it by moving further away from them to keep them out of melee range. A more specific example would be if you are fighting a spellcaster that you have seen repeatedly cast fireball and other fire-based spells to attack. You might be worried that they might try to flush you out with another fireball spell, so you might have one of your readied actions be to drink a Potion of Resist Energy (Fire) if that enemy casts a spell. Option C really opens up once we get Cunning Intuition, since we can hold off on choosing our actual response until the last possible moment and get the most tactical information possible to inform our decision.
Roleplaying
As mentioned when discussing this build’s concept, Illodan is going to be a quiet, more introverted character. Her hunter instincts always keep her alert, even in times of relative safety, and she is exceedingly patient, willing to wait things out as long as needed. Despite all of these, though, she doesn’t harbor any sort of hatred towards other people – she just doesn’t have much experience working as part of a group. Growing to accept the party and treat them as true friends and comrades will be a large part of her character’s transformation over the course of the game.
You will likely want to consider the premise of the game you are playing a character with a “lone wolf” background like Illodan. Because of that “lone wolf” background, you need to make sure that your character has a good reason to band together with the party and that this reason will last long enough for you to form a strong enough bond with the party to continue adventuring even after your initial goal in teaming up has been accomplished. If you don’t do this, you are increasing the risk that your character will find themselves at odds with the party, and if that happens and there isn’t any realistic reason for your character to want to keep travelling with the party, you will hurt the realism, immersion, and quality of the game.
What Build to do Next?
Have a particular idea for a build you want to see in a future edition of Idle Rolling? Shoot me an e-mail at thegm@chaoticneutralgm.com.