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zachol
2007-01-21, 07:25 AM
'lo.

So, perhaps a few months ago, I was wandering around on Lockwood's site (http://www.toddlockwood.com/), looking at the fun concept art and stuff, and saw this picture, of Lidda the Halfling "Archer."

http://img221.imageshack.us/img221/7886/liddawithbowrw7.jpg

Cool, no?

I immediately fell in love with the concept, and promptly put the thing in the back of my mind.

About a month ago, I got a chance to join a new pbp game, one set in Ptolus.
Having liked what I'd heard about Ptolus, and feeling like I wanted to try out the halfling crossbowman idea, I joined, filling the always-needed spot of "person who specializes in a crappy ranged weapon that isn't the bow and isn't a ranger, and who is about as good at melee combat as a poor-quality cleric."
Yes, every group needs that position filled. Even groups with only three players.
Especially groups with three players.

So, I ran with the idea, asked a few friends for feat suggestions, and made a character, Ernin Ward.

We've already started the game, though Ernin is still in the "level 1" stage where her possible feat choices are varied.

At this point, what I want is suggestions for feats.

I have her at a level 1 fighter, and intend to advance her in fighter pretty much solidly.
I haven't been able to find any PrCs that work with crossbow people.

I have point blank shot and precise shot.
I was intending to get rapid reload next level, for the level 2 fighter feat.

After that... perhaps weapon focus (light crossbow), then maybe some rapid shot or others.


I'm unsure, and would like some input on how to make the crossbow not suck.



Here is the full sheet, including a wide variety of fluff that isn't particularly needed, but might be helpful for determining some suggestions.
Or, if you're bored and interested.


Name: Ernin Berach Artan Mac an Bhaird (approx. "iron / pointed / bear / bard's son/daughter"), or Ernin Ward.
"Ernin Birch Arten Mach ahn Vaerd"
Race: Halfling
Class: Fighter 1
Sex: Female
Alignment: NG to CG. Ernin has a very selfless personality. Usually, she doesn't really care about the local government, but if there's a conflict between the city watch and someone she considers a good person, she automatically will side with the person and assume corruption.
Otherwise, she strongly dislikes tyranny, but doesn't actively campaign against it.
Style: Strong personality, very close to being a dwarf, if a bit more playful.
Supremely short, she stands at two and a half feet.
She has vivid red hair, which she keeps mostly short, though at times she's allowed it to grow out.
She is quite light, even for her height, her weight keeping around twenty to twenty-three pounds.
She's lived to be 21, which is about equivalent to 16 or 17 for a human.


Abilities:
Str: 12 (+1) (14-2ra)
Dex: 18 (+4) (16+2ra)
Con: 12 (+1)
Int: 14 (+2)
Wis: 12 (+1)
Cha: 10 (--)

HP: 11 (1d10+1c)
AC: 19 [Tch 15] [FF 15] (10+4d+3ar+1sh+1sz)

Speed: 20'
Init: +4 (4d)

BAB: +1
MAB: +3 (1b+1s+1sz)
RAB: +6 (1b+4d+1sz)
Grapple: -2 (1b+1s-4sz)

Saves:
Fort: +4 (2b+1c+1ra)
Ref: +5 (0b+4d+1ra)
Will: +2 (0b+1w+1ra)
Notes - +2 racial vs fear

Attacks:
Light Crossbow [+6 1d6 19-20 80' P]
Longsword [+3 1d6+1 19-20 S]
Dagger [+3 1d3+1 19-20 10' P/S]
Spiked Gauntlet [+3 1d3+1 x2 P]

[AB dam crit (range) type]
Ernin is small


Languages:
Common, Halfling, Dwarven, Gnome
Note - Ernin actually speaks dwarven better than halfling, but has been making recent attempts to learn more about her heritage, making her halfling nearly as good as her dwarven.
It's still more of a "second language" than dwarven, though Boris helped by speaking halfling as much as he could to her.

Skills:
Balance +2 (4d-2acp)
Climb +3 (2r+1s+2ra-2acp)
Craft (machines) +10 (4r+2i+2cmp+2ra)
Craft (weapons) +6 (4r+2i)
Escape Artist +2 (4d-2acp)
Hide +6 (4d+4s-2acp)
Knowledge (machines) +8 (4r+2i+2ra)
Jump +1 (1s+2ra-2acp)
Listen +3 (1w+2ra)
Move Silently +4 (4d+2ra-2acp)
Profession (engineer) +5 (2r+1w+2ra)
Search +2 (2i)
Spot +1 (1w)
Swim -3 (1s-4acp)
Use Rope +4 (4d)

Notes - Knowledge (machines) replaces ride as a fighter class skill (Ernin has never ridden anything, and grew up in the home of a machinist).
A +2 racial bonus replaces rofession (engineer), craft (machines) and knowledge (machines) replace the standard halfling +1 to thrown weapons and slings (Ernin never got the same experience most halflings do with fellow halfling children, instead growing up with future craftsmen and spending her time with her "grandfather").
+2 competence bonus to Craft (machines) from Ernin's background as an engineer's apprentice.
Skill ranks so far: 16 (4x(2b+2i)). Likely will remain at 4 ranks/level (2b+2i).

Feats:
1L - Point Blank Shot (+1 attack w/ ranged within 30')
1F - Precise Shot (no penalty to shoot into melee)


Gear: (cost/wt)
Explorer's outfit (10/2)
-- (sturdy boots, leather trousers, a belt, a shirt, jacket, gloves, and a cloak. many pockets)
- Belt pouch (1/-)
-- specie (-/-)
-- ID papers (-/-)
--- (citizenship and guildship)
- Waterskin (1/1)
- Dagger [1d3 19-20 10' S/P] (2/.5)

Studded leather armor [+3 5 -1] (25/10)
Leather buckler/spiked glove [+1 - -1] [1d3 x2 P] (20/3)

Light crossbow [1d6 19-20 80' P] (35/2)
Bolts, 20 (in pack, below) (2/1)

Longsword [1d6 19-20 S] (15/2)

Sidepack (ease of grabbage) (2/.5)
- (section for bolts, tracked above)
- Flint and steel (1/-)
- Sunrods, 2 (4/2)
- Artisan's tools, masterwork (55/5)
-- (for clockworks, crossbows, weapons)
- Smallish pouch
-- Various clockwork toys (25/-)
--- (thingamajigs primarily, but also bechingalws, geemies, and jobbies)
- Spare shirts, in pretty colors (1/1)
- Chalk (.1/-)


Weight: 30 lb (light load)


Liquid cash (in beltpouch):
pp: 4
gp: 8
sp: 8
cp: 7
Gems:


Loads: (32/65/97)

Armor:
Weapon: [damage crit (range) (reach) (disarming) type]
All weapons, armor, and other equipment are sized for small characters if possible and otherwise not noted.


[B]Notes:
Small (+1 attack/defense -4 grapple +4 hide)
-2str/+2dex as halfling
+2 climb, jump, move silently
+1 saving throws
+2 saving throws vs fear
+2 craft (machines), knowledge (machines) and profession (engineer), replacing the +1 to thrown weapons and slings
+2 listen
Knowledge (machines) replaces ride as a fighter class skill.

Ernin has a strong background as an artisan's apprentice. She comes from the Guildsman's district (the "clean" machinist's quarter), which is listed as both her current residence and place of birth on official papers.

Ernin is a member in full (albeit not much of a respected one) of the Southern Ptolus Chapter of the High Clockworks Guild. This is based mainly on her being backed by Boris and on the fact that the guild in general, and especially the local chapter, is falling out of favor and that new blood, however unskilled, is still welcomed.
As a consequence, she has access to the workshops and materials of the chapter at a reduced fee over a non-guildsman (1/2-3/4), the ability to sell clockwork locally without fear of harassment, and a small vote in the direction of the guild.
As a note, there is no "Northern Ptolus Chapter," nor is there really any other guild focused specifically on clockwork. There used to be, but not anymore.


Description:
Ernin has green eyes, a slight tan, violently red hair, and the appearance of a vaguely beautiful, minature human.
She reminds many of a small, redheaded elf or faerie, and is one of the better examples of the halfling race's connection to elves.
Ernin often wears a suit of studded leather, apparently once owned by an uncle of hers.
She tends to wear bright yet "earthy" colors, rarely wears any sort of dress or skirt, and never wears a hat, allowing her short hair to stick up in odd yet "nifty" places.
She also wears a nifty arm thing that starts as a buckler, winds around her forearm a few times, and ends in a leather glove with some spikes along the knuckles. She particularly likes this because it allows her a fallback melee weapon that she doesn't have to draw, and it allows her to use crossbows perfectly fine while wearing it.
She keeps a light crossbow on her back, a longsword on her left hip, and twenty bolts and a few effects in a bag slung over her shoulder to the right.

Personality:
She has retained a light personality, but in many ways she seems unapproachable. While she reacts playfullly, it is rare that she actually seems to take any interest, and her constant unwavering cheer makes her hard to read.
She speaks with a mix of dwarven (raised) and halfling (also raised) accent, which ends up sounding (to "us") like a blend of a light irish and a sort of cockney-british mush.
She often seems to act as if she was half-Grailwarden, keeping dwarven mannerisms and standing up for the dwarven race as if it were her own, but this is reasonable considering her upbringing.

Ernin splits her worship between the pair of Teun and Tevra, Goddesses of Machines and Clockwork (standard for many engineers) and Mirresh, the Goddess of Laughter.
She tends to pray to the clockworks when working and crafting, and to Mirresh in most other situations.
Ernin's personality is very close to Mirresh's, and she tends to give more time to Mirresh in general (she'd check the little box next to Mirresh on a survey).

A somewhat major part of the character is that she is a clockwork tinker.
I could very well switch her focus to guns, as they exist in Ptolus, but am sort of focused on the crossbow.


Edit: Yes, this has a point beyond simple feat choices. There are some other issues that I'm likely going to want to bring up.

Ali
2007-01-21, 08:20 AM
Nice character!

I am no expert, but you seem to be doing fine so far. If I was in your position I would definately take rapid reload, weapon focus and later on - weapon specialization. A solid fighter is probably the best route. Perhaps you could get some grenade-like weapons to throw at your foes?

Stick with the Crossbow! Much cooler then guns...

I am no expert in archery, but I hoped this helped.

Darkshade
2007-01-21, 08:22 AM
dude repeating crossbow, works well with a tinkerer should be available if they have guns, dont need rapid reload, think about it

Thomas
2007-01-21, 08:37 AM
dude repeating crossbow, works well with a tinkerer should be available if they have guns, dont need rapid reload, think about it

The repeating crossbow is worse. It's more expensive, and you have to use a full-round action to load it after 5 shots. A light crossbow with Rapid Reload has the same damage and range and critical as a repeating light crossbow, but fires just like a regular bow (i.e. you get iterative attacks normally, reloading is a free action). You use up a feat in either case.

Ikkitosen
2007-01-21, 09:12 AM
You should get Crossbow Sniper (http://realmshelps.dandello.net/cgi-bin/feats.pl?Crossbow_Sniper,PH2) and a few rogue levels, although it's worth it for the 0.5 dex to damage since you can't get a strength crossbow. Maybe you could get ranger levels for the PHBII variant to make an opponent flat-footed then go Dread Commando to use that to get Sudden Strike. Both are full BAB classes I believe...check on details though!

Matthew
2007-01-21, 10:08 AM
Pretty cool site, that.

zachol
2007-01-21, 10:15 AM
I was considering scout, though scout has some serious deficiencies that bug me.
I can't recall them right now, but I know that anytime I actually look at the class I'm like, "what the heck? man this sucks, I'm just going ranger..."
I say this because I was trying to find a sneak attack-like class that still has full BAB.
Crossbow sniper would be worth it just for the dex to damage bonus, and I think it would be equiv. to weapon specialization. Though I don't know why it's not just flat +dex and instead 1/2.
I considered finding some sort of sneak attack trick with crossbow sniper, but decided it would be sort of inefficient.

I would maybe go with ranger, and if I did I'd do an urban ranger one (Ptolus), but I'm sort of obsessed with skills, and going into ranger without the first level skill buffet would severely annoy and depress me.

Distracting attack (PHB II, right?) combined with rogue might be interesting, though... I could imagine a snarky player who ends up figuring a way to make all his attacks sneak attacks.
Doubt that would actually work, but still.

I'm not doing repeating crossbow, rapid reload is better.

I have some deals going with the DM about tinkering, so I can always see how that works.

John_D
2007-01-21, 10:32 AM
Pretty cool site, that.

Yeah, I just wasted an hour browsing around there instead of drawing maps for next week's session. Whoops!

What kind of ranged character are you going for? I mean, if you were going by the illustration you'd probably want a sniper, and there aren't really many D&D feats / classes geared towards that.

zachol
2007-01-21, 10:38 AM
Well, the problem is that the crossbow won't be terribly efficient for just general "shoot things" style attacks, so sniping would indeed be interesting.
However, I feel like rogue comes with a lot of baggage I neither need nor want, and it doesn't really fit the character, Ernin.

Another option could be a variation on the Unearthed arcana option of exchanging sneak attack for fighter feats.
Linky (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/variant/classes/variantCharacterClasses.htm#fighter).
I might be able to convince the DM to limit this to one or two instances rather than the full progresssion.

Matthew
2007-01-21, 11:05 AM
Yeah, I just wasted an hour browsing around there instead of drawing maps for next week's session. Whoops!

I know that feeling. I did the same thing, and looked over the Elmore and Easley sites as well, for comparison.

timmy_pyromancer
2007-01-21, 03:05 PM
well my personal favorite crossbow is the great/repeating great crossbow its from races of stone. It does 2d6 18-20/x2 and i think 120ft range incroment if you take that and then use serpent-tongue bolt(based of the serpent-tongue arrows from races of the wild) you can then take rnaged sunder and sunder things for fun. but that may not be your style. but if you do anything with crossbows crossbow sniper is the way to go. another alternative is to dualweild hand crossbows tho that is a little bit more tricky to do and requires an army worth of free actions a round/

The_Snark
2007-01-21, 03:42 PM
It might not be the best out there, but the Cragtop Archer from Races of Stone is a great sniper. It's not spectacular as a PC, since most parties do not encounter their enemies at distances of over a thousand feet, but it is awesome. With four levels in it, you can reliably hit pretty much anything you can see.

The scout also makes a good skirmisher/sniper; with Improved Skirmish and Rapid Reload, you have a respectable damage output. If you've already decided against it, ah well.

If you don't want to go with the skirmish option, I'd say pick up Rapid Reload, Crossbow Sniper from the PHBII, and Rapid Shot, then go with it.

zachol
2007-01-21, 04:49 PM
Hmm.

I will give scout another chance, but likely will just go with rapid reload and rapid shot.

I think I will be considering rapid reload sort of a "necessary part" of scout... serious drag on my damage rate to try to get skirmish when my weapon takes a move action to reload.

Perhaps... fighter 4/scout x/something else x?
I'm working on a PrC. I sort of do that.
Perhaps I'll be able to get better criticism here than on my other board (you guys are awesomely fast and numerous and friendly, I must say...).

The_Snark
2007-01-21, 05:40 PM
Hmmm, just thought of something. Complete Scoundrel has a lot of those feats that allow you to mix and match class features through multiclassing. There's one for scout/ranger, but none for scout/fighter, which strikes me as something that'd work well for you. Instead of designing a prestige class, you could try coming up with a feat that lets fighter and scout levels stack for skirmish damage. Something like:

Swift Warrior
Prerequisites: Proficiency with all martial weapons, skirmish +1d6/+1 AC
Benefit: Fighter and scout levels stack for the purposes of determining skirmish benefits.
Special: This feat may be taken as a scout or fighter bonus feat.

Seems reasonable when compared with Swift Hunter and Martial Stalker; what do people think?

Incidentally, I cannot reccomend enough the Shadow Striker tactical feat, PHBII, for a sniper-style character, and it works perfectly with a scout. Has some pretty stiff skill requirements, though.

zachol
2007-01-21, 05:46 PM
I'm not sure how kosher complete scoundrel is, considering the DM doesn't appear to have it (yet), but shadow striker?

*looks*
Hmm... shadow striker seems more like a melee rogue thing than anything else.
I'll consider that if I somehow get to ninth level and have the ability to get max ranks in hide and MS.

Again, it's a pbp - I'm guessing we'll reach sixth level, tops, before the game dies.


Edit: Or maybe ftr 2/scout 3/PrC x?
That feat could be worth it, giving me +2d6/+1 for skirmish.

The_Snark
2007-01-21, 06:51 PM
Most of Shadow Striker's stuff works best for a melee rogue, true, but the fade away section (or whatever it's called) allows you to divert an enemy with an attack rather than with a Bluff check, then move away and Hide. You get skirmish damage out of the attack, since you're moving, and instead of taking the standard -20 penalty for hitting an enemy and then sniping, you get +5 (or nothing at all if the attack misses). Works well for a ranged sneak attacker, too.

But if the game probably won't last much over level six, I wouldn't worry much about this. You'll only have 1 level of a PrC anyway, so you could just stick with straight fighter, going with Rapid Reload, Rapid Shot, and Crossbow Sniper.

JaronK
2007-01-21, 11:19 PM
The first level halfing rogue racial substitution drops 1d6 melee sneak attack to add an extra 1d6 to ranged sneak attack, and that's worth looking at (though really, rogue should be level 1 for the skill points).

JaronK