Helping a new player build his Crossbow Bear

[tuesdayscoming]

I'm going to be DMing a game starting this weekend. Two of the players have never played DnD before, one has played a bit of 3.5, but mainly 4, and the last is pretty well experienced.

One of the new players expressed that he would like to play the following character: A bear with a giant crossbow strapped over one shoulder and a claymore over the other.

I intend to start the game somewhere between levels 1 and 3, mainly so that the new players don't feel overwhelmed at character creation. I am unaware of any published bear races playable at these races. We'll probably just homebrew something up – perhaps +2 Str, +2 Con, -2 Int, -2 Cha, and 2 claws.

I'm trying to come up with a way to make the new player's bear character viable. I was thinking that a ranger was thematically appropriate, and is powerful enough that he won't necessarily feel useless in combat.

I was hoping, though, that the Playground had a few suggestions for how to make his crossbowing a viable strategy. I've never played a crossbow-focused character before, but have heard that it's somewhat underpowered.

Any and all suggestions are appreciated!

[Metahuman1]

If you go with ranger, crack open Unearthed Arcana.

Take the favored environment variant. Now make sure that the fighting stays on his favored environment, and give him favored power attack as a feat.

Crossbow. Give him ranks in a suitable craft skill, and have him have a repeating great cross bow. Yes, Homebrew, don't worry about that right now.

Now, use that craft skill to have him give himself clips with higher ammo capacity's as the game progresses so that he can use his Iterative's. Maybe have him have ranks in slight of hand and homebrew a skill trick he can take to reduce changing clips to a swift action.

Lastly, make the race Large, and use the variant in Dungeonscape that gives the ranger trapfinding. Now he should be just fine.