Aiming [Feat]s

[Yakk]

Deadly Aim [Feat]
Requirements: +1 BaB, Dex of 13
As a Full-Round Action, you can pick a target to Take Deadly Aim at with a ranged weapon.

If you are damaged during your Take Deadly Aim or before your Deadly Aim Shot, you must make a concentration check (DC 10 + damage/2) or lose the effects of your Take Deadly Aim.

In your next round, you can take a Full Round Action Deadly Aim Shot at that target. This attack is at +2 to hit and automatically does a x2 crit. If your actual attack roll crits, this boosts the damage multiplier (a x2 crit on top of a x2 crit is a x3 crit).

Both Take Deadly Aim and Deadly Aim Shot provokes an AoO. Both actions can be split over two rounds if the character is slowed.

If you are hasted, you can get off an extra attack with no bonus damage/to hit when doing a Deadly Aim Shot.

This feat can be taken as a Fighter Bonus Feat.

Improved Deadly Aim [Feat]
Requirements: Deadly Aim, BaB +6, Dex of 15
Your Deadly Aimed Shots automatically do a x3 crit and are at +3 to hit.

Taking Deadly Aim (but not shooting) is now a Standard Action.

You can do Dex bonus to damage on Deadly Aim Shots, but if you do any Str Bonus to damage no longer applies (Str penalties to damage still apply however).

This feat can be taken as a Fighter Bonus Feat.

Greater Deadly Aim [Feat]
Requirements: Improved Deadly Aim, BaB +11, Dex of 17
Your Deadly Aimed Shots automatically do a x4 crit and are at +4 to hit.

Take Deadly Aim no longer provokes an AoO.

You can add your full Dex bonus to damage as well as your Str bonus to damage on Deadly Aim Shots. This does not allow you to apply Str bonus to damage on weapons that wouldn't otherwise.

This feat can be taken as a Fighter Bonus Feat.

Superior Deadly Aim [Feat]
Requirements: Greater Careful Aim, BaB +16, Dex of 19
Your Deadly Aimed Shots automatically do a x5 crit and are at +5 to hit.

You can now Take Deadly Aim (but not shooting) with a Move-equivalent action instead of a Standard action.

This feat can be taken as a Fighter Bonus Feat.

...

I've always thought that firing volleys of arrows to do damage was inelegant.

This progression makes a single arrow more and more accurate and deadly.

It doesn't deliver bonus damage dice that well, but it does deliver burst dice quite well.

As you progress, getting a Taking Deadly Aim gets easier and easier, generating some nice non-linearities. By L 11, you can do a Greater Manyshot on one round then a Deadly Aim Shot on the next, and back and forth.

And:
Deadly Aim Ranger Style:
L 2: Deadly Aim
L 6: Improved Deadly Aim
L 11: Greater Deadly Aim

[Eighth_Seraph]

...dangerous. Very dangerous. Imagine a Rogue/Assassin taking a build like this. Make it a full-round action to aim, because that one shot will force massive damage saving throws, carry poisons and cripple the opponent's champion before battle is even joined.

[Yakk]

I tweaked it pretty heavily.

Note that Rogue damage is not multiplied by critical hits, because it is bonus damage dice.

[icke]

Looks fun and fine to me, except for Superior Deadly Aim - take it out. Crit multipliers of x5 are just too far off, and an aiming action should need time, so the quick action part is unfitting.

[Assasinater]

Crit multipliers always scared me... :P

Really, anything above a x2, maybe even x2, is (in my opinion) overpowered when it is guaranteed because of its potential to be abused. I strongly suggest that you make it a normal attack and/or damage bonus, or something with extra effects.

[Yakk]

The quick action is probably too much, I'll admit. I'll bump some of the "specials" around so that every rank has something nice.

The goal is to emulate allowing the character to hit more times by just boosting the damage of a single shot.

If you can Deadly Aim every 2 rounds, at 5x damage that is only 2.5 hits per round at BaB+5. A two-weapon fighter with full feats gets 8 attacks per round at negatives to-hit. Every 2 rounds, the two-weapon fighter will do:
4 hits at -2 BaB
4 hits at -7 BaB
4 hits at -12 BaB
4 hits at -17 BaB

Each 4 hits delivers a grand total of strength*3, power attack*4 damage, enchantment*4, bonus dice*4 damage, and you get 4 distinct rounds of such attacks at increasing penalties.

Over two rounds, the top-end Take Deadly Aim delivers strength*5, dex*5, enchantment*5, bonus dice*1, burst dice*4 damage over two rounds, and has a +7 to hit edge.

You can't power attack with take deadly aim.

With +20 BaB, 20 strength, 26 dex, a strength bow +4 with 3 burst enchantments:
Every 2 rounds:
5d8 + 12d10 + 65 @ +33 to hit
an average of 153.5 damage every 2 rounds, or 76.75 damage per round.

Additional +damage (+4 from spec) is multiplied by x5 or x2.5 per round.

In comparison, a lance-using character with improved charge:
Round 1, cast true strike (UMD if you must)
Round 2, charge
30 strength (no MAD), using a +5 lance
Full (-20) power attack
Base: 1d8+60 damage
Charge: x3 damage
20+15+20-20+2 = +37 to hit
193.5 damage every 2 rounds.

If you don't need the high to-hit, just do a double ride-by attack and deliver even more damage -- I wanted to see if you could match the damage output and the accuracy of deadly aim.

And that was pure core.

So "just" the x5 to damage isn't all that good. The fact that at the top level you can do it as a move-equivilent action means that the character can alternate multishots and deadly aim shots.

[Arbitrarity]

I thought the entire thing looked balanced until I saw the critical increases

0.o

[icke]

Basically, the idea of using something like critical multiplier increases is the best thing one can do to simulate high precision attacks(sneak attack is fine, too, but indifferent to the weapon a character uses).
However, You should state that these damage multipliers are NOT critical hits, an therefore all feats, abilities etc. working with critical hits do not apply. No burst, no vorpal stuff, nothing.

[Yakk]

Vorpal damage only works on a natural 20.

The damage being called Critical was on purpose. It indicates that bonus dice are not multiplied, that it doesn't work on crit-immune targets, and that it activates burst damage just like a normal critical hit.

The activation of burst damage is on purpose. Just like two weapon and manyshot are synergystic with the basic elemental enchantments, deadly aim is synergystic with critical burst weapons.

Burst is just an interesting synergy -- at L 11, you can do x3 the burst damage every second round. 2x burst is about 3x normal elemental damage (for the same cost), add in the base roll and we get 5.5x normal elemental damage in exchange for a +2 enchantment.

But that's over two rounds of attacks, so it is really delivering 2.25x normal elemental damage per round in exchange for a +2 enchantment on the weapon. That is really not all that efficient in terms of damage per round per enchantment.

At L 16 it gets interesting, with the ability to alternate manyshot and deadly aim. I still don't think it will outdo a reasonably optimal melee build.

Can anyone think of a way this feat chain can do ridiculous amounts of damage on a per-round basis, taking into account that doing a Deadly Aim Shot takes most of two rounds?

It is possible there are non-core game features that will make the above abusive, or that I missed some combination in the core SRD that would break things.

[ArmorArmadillo]

1. There is no precedent for changing/increasing critical multipliers for individual attacks.

2. Try rewriting the feats, they're a bit clunky seeming as is.

3. You don't need a critical modifier to simulate percision attacks, extra damage or attack already do that perfectly well.

4. Automatic critical hits is an extremely unbalanced ability, not only because it is too powerful in its own regard as a reusable ability, but because it is so swingy with characters of varying stats or builds. (a x3 modifier on a shortbow seems fine (3d6) but what about a character with a Composite Longbow (+3 STR) (3d8+9) or a +3 Heavy Crossbow on a character with Weapon Specialization (3d8+15). Sure, that's how critical hits go, but the balance was that you get them less than 5% (occasionally 10%) of the time.
100% is a little over the top, especially because characters can do a lot of things to negate the full-round deadly aim. (5-Foot Step to partial cover, aim, 5-foot step out, shoot, repeat.)

[Yakk]

This ability is competing with abilities that let you attack more times per round.

Attacking more times per round delivers that weapon specialization, strength bonus, enchantment bonus, or what have you many times over. In addition, attacking multiple times delivers bonus dice multiple times.

I've demonstrated that the delivery of burst dice is balanced.

I am aware this ability is unconventional. My question is, is it overpowered? If so, can you demonstrate a situation where it does significantly more damage than a reasonably optimal build?

I will rewrite them. I strongly suspect the move-equivilent Take Deadly Aim is too powerful, allowing a multishot in the same round.

On a first glance, it seems the bonus to-hit may be too great for the multiplier to damage.

A normal +20 BaB attack hits about 8*P-3 times in two rounds, where P is the chance that a full BaB attack hits (P between 100% and 80%). The max Aim feat does 5*P+1.25 damage every two rounds (P between 5% and 75%).

I do like the flavour of the bonus-to-hit instead of the usual penalty-to-hit that most offensive feats grant. So I think I have to reduce the critical multiplier in order to keep the high bonus-to-hit.

[icke]

You could dismiss the last feat and add +1 to hit for the ones before. That would grant a x4 multiplier with a +5 to hit bonus in the end, for three feats. It would still be alright balance-wise then, as long as nobody comes up with a class that lets Your character do automatical crits, or adds bonus crit multipliers to attacks. Remember the Deepwood Sniper of 3.0? This one would be too good with this feat chain. Also, it improves the ranger's favored enemy bonus a lot, but that's fine too, since a full-round attack pretty much does the same damage at the same level - if one hits, that is.

[kailin]

2. Try rewriting the feats, they're a bit clunky seeming as is.

I agree with you here.


4. Automatic critical hits is an extremely unbalanced ability, not only because it is too powerful in its own regard as a reusable ability, but because it is so swingy with characters of varying stats or builds.

Hunter's mercy is, I believe, a 2nd-level spell that casts as a swift action to make your next ranged attack automatically hit an threaten a critical. That's pretty reusable. Keep in mind that ranged damage is much lower than melee.

[Duke of URL]

I'm going to (apparently) go against the tide and say that the automatic criticals are not too powerful. At low BAB, in the time you'd normally take to fire two arrows, you fire one with double damage (but without doubling bonus damage such as Sneak Attack) -- you gain a plus to hit, but that's traded off by 1) the attack being delayed (essentially, you're half a round to a round behind everyone else) and 2) the chance to lose the attack on a failed concentration check.

At higher levels, it may actually unbalance the other way. For a medium BAB (+6), you can trade 4 shots over two rounds for one shot with triple damage (except no tripling of bonus damage) in the second round. At even higher BAB, the disparity gets worse, although you are able to add both STR and DEX bonuses to damage.

Now... what this can do, that multiple single attacks can't, is overcome high damage resistances. So maybe that tips the balance scales back to level.

[Glooble Glistencrist]

I really like this idea, flavor-wise. Seems mostly balanced to me, too. As a DM, I would allow all but superior in my game - the move action seems a little powerful to me.
Could a spellcaster use these feats to take Deadly Aim with spells that require a ranged touch attack? Cause those can deal a lot more damage then arrows. Not sure if they can critical, but I think they can. Might be something to keep in mind.

[Arbitrarity]

Greater manyshot, deadly aim:

Say... flaming burst, shocking burst, icy burst, +4 composite (+5) greatbow (slight overkill :D).

Fighter, don't give a damn about to-hit.

So... 17d10 + 15d6 + 45. At +5 to hit. Though at 20'th level probably.

And the extra 4d10+36+12d6 from manyshot.

So average/round? 11.5d10+13.5d6+40.5 (62+49+40 or so, so 151, at range, with no AC penalty)

EDIT: Leap attacking, shock troopering THF +5 shocking icy keen flaming greatsword (costs 19K less), deals 5d6+35(+up to 18). Only on a charge.

On the other hand, a lance and spirited charge (same tactics) does up to 15d6+159 (210 average or so), only when charging. Taking -22 to AC. This is, of course, really cheesy.

Ummm... yeah, seems a touch OP.

[icke]

I really like this idea, flavor-wise. Seems mostly balanced to me, too. As a DM, I would allow all but superior in my game - the move action seems a little powerful to me.
Could a spellcaster use these feats to take Deadly Aim with spells that require a ranged touch attack? Cause those can deal a lot more damage then arrows. Not sure if they can critical, but I think they can. Might be something to keep in mind.


The spells really are a problem, even when a wizard doesn't get more than Improved Deadly Aim. Well, the spell states a character can use this feat with a ranged weapon, but to be on the safe side, one should explicitly exclude spells and invocations.