Thwarting the Sniper

[isotunknown]

Hi all--this is my first post. I've lurked for some time but never felt the urge to write until know. I play in three 3.x games--each has a different spin.

We--the six players--are about to start a new campaign, which is designed to take us through 1-20 levels. The information we have, thus far, is that we are all a part of a secret society that must protect the King and his line. Apparently the King is not to know of the secret society nor does he know why the secret society is protecting him (we don't know yet either). We are allowed to interact with the kingdom and the king, but as local heroes but not in a way that would suggest some special interest in the king/kingdom that would make people suspect that we are part of a larger organization. (We have some understanding that there are others in our organization who are assigned to support others in this particular world).

It is our understanding that we'll----throughout the adventures----be dealing with some nemeses who are trying to assassinate the king and his line, likely with a sniper. We know of the other secret society trying to assassinate the king and they know of us (kind of a Chaos and Control thing for those Get Smart fans).

Given that we'll be facing snipers who are likely to be pursuing us as well as the king and his family, I was hoping for help in thinking about how to deal with the best snipers in the business, but still to be effective in other arenas.

All 3.x WoTC materials are open but the DM has final say. If we choose to bring cheese to the table, he reserves the right to bring similar cheese back (an opportunity he relishes a bit too much).

I have been assigned as team leader, which, in this particular campaign, means that I call the shots for players who can't attend a particular session and that I can make recommendations to the other players about what characters they should play, among other things.

I will likely be playing a control oriented druid who buffs an animal companion, casts spells to protect the party, and who stays hidden in a small avian form when possible. Wild shape will be all about utility and not fighting for me, so my spells will primarily be used to hinder the enemy and buff my team. But I might change my mind. That said, I have to make recommendations to the other five players.

How should we think about developing this party to last through 20 levels and to deal with a sniper who will be pursuing us as well as those we're oath bound to protect?

[Callista]

Well, you'll want divinations, obviously. And you'll want someone guarding the king at all times, either a PC or an NPC with a hand on the alarm button.

A magic-user is essential, as they tend to be. You'll also want to have a way to communicate because you'll probably be split up a lot; get the party items that will let them talk to each other at long distances. Low-level, that's probably Message, but later on you'll want more range so you can talk across the city. You also want to be able to summon anybody, anytime; some kind of teleport magic would be useful for that. You'll probably also want to whisk the king out of the way if necessary; at low levels try Benign Transposition (with an invisible caster as the other subject) or Rope Trick, but at higher levels, try to get him miles away or off-plane.

If you're worried about snipers, you will want to find some way to get the king to wear enchanted armor or clothing that will give him some DR, especially against arrows (piercing damage).

Make sure he has someone to cast Detect Poison on any food he eats and on his surroundings in general; your cleric can do that. At higher levels, you'll be working to prevent soul-stealing rather than just killing; after Resurrection spells are available, killing won't be effective enough.

Have everybody pass through a Magic Circle against Evil and Zone of Truth before they have contact with the king. This will suppress mind control and detect most deceptions. At higher levels, Dispel Magic can be added to the mix. Have Detect Magic up, though it can be fooled with Magic Aura. You can probably hire NPCs do do this kind of thing; after all, this is the king, and he's probably got the cash to spare on a few Adepts.

Have you considered Urban Druid variants? Nobody notices pigeons... house cats... heck, you could even wildshape into a hunting dog and get into the king's kennels. A druid can make an unconventional but quite effective scout or spy.

What kind of organization will you be going up against? If they're evil, get yourselves a paladin; the Detect Evil will allow him to find hidden enemies, and the Smite ability lets him take down someone quickly. Personally, if it were me, I'd go for paladin/rogue and then into a prestige class that allowed combination of both abilities; that lets you get the skills that the paladin class is weak on while still letting you specialize in anti-evil. And you'll need someone with major social skills: Diplomacy, Sense Motive, Gather Information, and Bluff.

You also want someone with Leadership, or the RP equivalent, to run a decent network of spies/informants, etc. Rogue or Bard for this one, and there are quite a lot of good PrCs for spy-type characters.

Once you have your protections set up, you might be able to leave NPCs guarding the king and go root out the enemy yourself.

Have somebody take ranks in Disguise, and have Disguise Self spell available. Double up on disguises when going undercover; let the Disguise Self spell cover up a real disguise which is somehow less desirable (a lower social class, uglier, etc.) so that it seems you're using the spell due to vanity. Actually, that's a good approach generally: Always assume the enemy will get through your first layer of defense.

Oh, and go shopping for diamonds. Somebody's gonna need a resurrection eventually.

[Zieu]

For snipers, are we talking arrows or firearms? Not sure what time period you're in.

Protection for Arrows might help (if you can make it persistent/permanent, great). Maybe go so far as to mount a Lesser Cystal of Arrow Deflection in his crown (+5 AC vs Ranged attacks). Wind Wall if the King is making a speech outdoors; not unusual to have a breeze in that scenario, and invisible to attacks. Perfect.

[AslanCross]

Wind Wall is pretty much a surefire way of protecting the king. If you're dealing with Spellwarp Snipers, Ray Deflection.

[dsmiles]

Bright lights and mirrors. Lots of mirrors.

[Codenpeg]

I play a sniper character in one of my games, here are some of the ways to counter them:
If you can get a http://www.d20srd.org/srd/spells/entropicshield.htm on the king, maybe a potion of it.

Another thing you might want to consider is illusionary magic, just have a Major Image of the king up there, the best way to beat your sniper is to never give him a chance to kill the king.

Rising AC won't work against a good sniper, what you need is to stack miss chance. Cover works toward this goal, as does displacement and blur effects.

Shield Other will split the damage with some high HP meat shield that you can hide away with a cleric for additional protection.

[Signmaker]

I recall there being an actual armor and/or shield enhancement that drew arrows to you instead of adjacent squares.

[Devmaar]

You might want to see if someone wants to use the Urban Soul PrC from Races of Destiny. Think there's a sniper in the city? They can just ask the city.

[Tharck]

Polymorphing into a good steed for the King (without his knowledge) will allow you to occumpany him on his outings, run with him if the heat is on, and heal him or buff him easily. My party once used this tactic as a "trojan horse" to enter an enemy keep.

[subject42]

Snipers tend to have one good shot in them. Put a ring of nullification (ToM pg 157) on him. That will pretty much keep him safe for one round.

[calar]

There are a lot of spells out there that can easily nullify and ranged projectile combat, many of the low level. Wind wall and protection from arrows comes to mind. Also on a larger scale, control weather can be used to increase the winds, thus crippling all archers in the area.

[Eldariel]

Yeah, Wizard would be awesome for this job (too). Contact Other Plane, Imp/Quasit-Improved Familiar for Commune (or Lesser Planar Binding), Legend Lore/Prying Eyes/Scrying/etc. and all location-shifting, protective and vision magic are absolutely stellar for locating hard-to-find individuals. Similarly, divine spellcaster with Augury/Divination/etc. can be rather useful. The good part is that much of this magic either means you don't need to be present to guard the king, or that you know when you need to be present to deal with these threats. And as few of these spells have any need to be cast on site, nobody needs to know what you're doing.

As always, finding the assassin is the hard part. Magical sight to detect auras can be a tremendous asset since most competent assassins will need to use magic (though the auras can be concealed but said concealment is never perfect). Non-magical assassination attempts are mostly thwarted by the fact that you need to be within 30' to do much to your target. Magic can sidestep that issue, but generates auras which are easier to locate than hiding assassins. By the way, Cleric (with levels in Ruathar or some other source of Spot/Listen in class) or Druid would be stellar; someone with insanely high Wisdom, racial bonuses to Spot, magic to boost Spot-checks (Eyes of Avoral, Divine Insight & so on) and Spot in class would enable you to see a lot. Seeing a lot tends to be exceedingly helpful when dealing with people who don't want to be found. Alternatively, Wizard with Keen Intellect [DR318] could perform the same for Spot, if not Listen.


So Druid is a great start. You gain vision abilities, ability to commune with all natural things and eventually even inanimate objects like stone. Don't forget that just 'cause you primarily use Wildshape for scouting doesn't mean you can't fight when necessary. It's a backup option that costs nothing to keep around. Turn into a Bear and rip faces when all else fails.

Having Wizard and/or Cleric would be stellar for expanding your repertoire of Divination-magic and getting stuff like teleportation. In fact, that'd cover everything you need. One of you being a sneaky type with conversational skills and some magic to aid in all that (not gonna name classes since there's 10-20 different options for that; everything from Wizard to Cleric to Beguiler to Bard to Factotum to...well, you get the point...could cover that), preferably part of the local underworld or at least one able to blend in, could be a tremendous asset.

Beyond that, a mobile, strong, hard-to-detect force with some capability when magic is nullified (I'd imagine your average city in D&D would contain more than one area with permanent anti-magic fields) would be what I'd go for. Everyone pick up some level of stealth abilities, have all magical bases covered, at least one guy with good conversational + observational skills (needs to be the same guy as it isn't a guarantee the entire party can go everywhere), preferably lots of guys with great observational skills, lots of Knowledges and Divinations should have you set for a war of information.

[isotunknown]

Thanks for all this great information.

I don't know how the king or our party members will be sniped, I just know that they will. We can expect to be dealing with sniping throughout the adventure, not in every scene, but consistently. Apparently, that's how the opposing faction likes to attack.

There is no question we'll have to work protections into the areas around the king, and we'll have to figure out how to do that. For the moment, as first level characters, it's unlikely that we'll be able to get close to the king; so we're hoping that the attacks against him are coming later.

The advice so far has been great. Anything else that comes along would be most welcome.

[Fouredged Sword]

A sniper's worst foe is a hidden one. Make the distance he has to shoot over a problem, not an asset. Spot/listen checks are harder the further away you are, and increase quickly. Everyone in the party having both stealth skills grants an amazing level of options to get around problems and to control when and how combat happens. Even cross class will hide you from a sniper at longer ranges.

[Callista]

Assume he will be UMD'ing scrolls of True Strike, and plan accordingly.

[megabyter5]

I second both Urban Druid and Urban Soul. Just not in one character. Also, see if your DM will let you enchant the front door to the castle with Magic Circle Against Evil.

...Also, chances are your DM plans for the king to die anyway, and the PCs will have to deal with the Eldritch Abominations that appear when the royal bloodline is in danger. (*cough*oblivion*cough*)

[JonRG]

Is there a likelihood that the sniper (or any other assassins) might try to Sneak Attack him? If so, investing 9000/25000 gp (if you or the king can afford it) in Moderate or Heavy Fortification armor would be worthwhile. A 75-100% chance to ignore SAs and crits can work wonders, especially if the sniper has access to Hunter's Mercy (next bow shot auto-crits) + Telling Blow (crits add skirmish/SA damage). Searching the forums for "sniper" could give you some other ideas - see what features make a great sniper, then counter them.

[isotunknown]

Thanks again, all, for the great advice so far.

So, we've already lost a party member to a sniper. We're starting at level 1, so even a level 1 opponent who is a dedicated sniper can get us.

I get the sense that we'll face a sniper or several snipers in each session. We get tasked to do something each session and in the midst of that the sniper just appears. We've been sniped seven times already. Four would have ended in death but for fast action by the party, two missed, and one killed. No attacks against the King yet, but a threat (which we think is fake) from the neighboring kingdom hit the King's carriage as he was traveling to a knighting ceremony.

Our problem, at the moment, is that we can't keep ourselves protected well enough, or should I say long enough. We're about to get to level 2.

[Siosilvar]

I recall there being an actual armor and/or shield enhancement that drew arrows to you instead of adjacent squares.

Indeed. An arrow catching shield (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/magicItems/magicArmor.htm#arrowCatching). A +1 arrow catching shield is a bit out of the price range of level 1 characters, though, at 4150gp.

[JonRG]

What's your party composition (including if you know what the dead guy is re-rolling as)? A bit more detail about the kinds of tasks you're engaging in (also when and where) would be helpful as well.

Off the top of my head, you could try Pass Without Trace (if you think the sniper's tracking you on your missions), Obscuring Mist (20 ft radius of 20-50% concealment, maybe with an illusion to distract the sniper), and - if you're being SAed to death - try to find a wand of Warning Shout (Paladin 1, makes allies in 30 ft no longer flatfooted) and just have your UMDer ready an action to use it.

[isotunknown]

At present were a Druid 1, Ranger 1, Barbarian 1, Sorcerer 1, Rogue 1, and soon to be either Bard 1 or Marshall 1 (at least that's what I've heard--but I'd be glad to make other suggestions).

I don't know what's coming other than our next assignment from the Idirius of Kukar (our secret society) is to venture to just north of the City of Chandradat (40 miles to the northwest) to the "River Way Road" to intercept supplies destined for the City, where the Qhat (the other secret organization) await its arrival. We are to disrupt the small caravan preferably capturing the lot at best. At the same time, we've also been asked by a local merchant (who has direct ties Prince Otar, brother to the King) to pick up 40lbs. of the prince's favorite pipeweed from a small hamlet 10 miles to the west to the City of Chandardat. Both assignments are important and there is a small window of time in which to accomplish both. Obviously, we have to complete our assignment for the IoK. At the same time, if we can please the merchant, it may give us an avenue to getting assignments from the Prince, which may give us entree into the King's inner circle.

[Fouredged Sword]

Use pass without trace and take fast mounts. A sniper following you won't be able to both sneak and keep you in sight. A sniper who looses you can't track you. Now you take the long way around to your destination. Now he can't predict where to ambush you except at your destination.

Now get the spellcasters familier to search all the likely hideing spots for a sniper (if you have a flying small thing) or search them yourself with a sneaky guy.

Remember, control the area of conflict. Control the time of conflict. Find the sniper before the sniper finds you.