I Want Max Payne.

[Milodiah]

Heya Playground, got a build idea that needs development.

So I'm trying to think of goofy, fun builds for 3.5e, and I imagined a D&D Max Payne; some dumbass flying through the air, twin hand crossbows in front of him, in an absurd sideways dive straight out of a John Woo flick.

Any ideas on how best to pull that off?

The only stipulations I have are that while I want as absurd a rate of fire as possible with those hand crossbows, I don't want to end up with multiple arm grafts or with a swarm of psionically controlled weapons buzzing around me (wonderful concept, just not what I'm looking for). Also, I'd rather it be low-magic (not primarily caster-based), but I'd kinda like to see my options for some light dips here and there.

Don't really care about bullet time, if I want it my bullet time would be a chugged Haste potion right beforehand...what I want to capture is the ridiculously mobile, cinematic shooting...Shot on the Run would be the first step to creating it, and naturally this character would keep Tumbling maxed out from level 1, but where do I go from there? Also don't care about class, I suppose it's rather naturally inclined towards the roguish category, although on the other hand it'd be pretty funny to see a big tough martial type dive-rolling around like a nutter.

[Deadasadoor]

The thief-acrobat from complete adventurer helps with the mobility, giving major bonuses to climb/jump/tumble to let you dive out, shoot someone, and then get up as a free action. There's also a skill trick that lets you stand as a free action. For the hail of crossbow bolts, I'm not really sure, maybe both enchanted with endless ammunition and speed?

[Grod_The_Giant]

it'd be pretty funny to see a big tough martial type dive-rolling around like a nutter.
Hey, I can see calling Max Payne a barbarian-- the guy is definitely more tough than sneaky. If nothing else, a dip for Whirling Frenzy might be worth it for the free extra attack.

As for getting the rapid crossbow reloads, uh... would you be ok with one pair of extra arms? Then you could reload light crossbows as a free action and make a full attack with each hand.

[WeaselGuy]

Point Blank Shot and Hand Crossbow Focus (DotU) would be your friends for this. There's also a weapon style feat from DotU (the school escapes me) that gives you bonus damage when "charging" with crossbows. Pretty sure it probably requires Dodge and Mobility though, but I could be wrong.

Anyways, Hand Crossbow Focus says something to the effect of: Reloading a Hand Crossbow is a free action and doesn't provoke an attack of opportunity. This feat also gives +1 to your attack roll with a Hand Crossbow, and qualifies as Weapon Focus (Hand Crossbow) for the purpose of any prerequisites.

Point Blank Shot gives you +1 to hit and damage with ranged weapons at a range of less than 30 feet, which, incidentally, is the range on a Hand Crossbow. It's also required for pretty much every archery feat.

Crossbow Sniper doubles the range of your crossbow, and adds half dex mod to damage.

Hit and Run Tactics is a Fighter ACF (DotU) that swaps heavy armor and tower shields to add dex mod to damage versus flat footed foes.

Oh yeah, Two Weapon Fighting should help out with this, gives you an extra attack with an off-hand weapon. I don't think it specifies melee vs ranged. Improved and Greater just, well, improve it and make it greater... :smallbiggrin:

I'm at work and AFB, that's all I have for now.

[Sam K]

Hey, I can see calling Max Payne a barbarian-- the guy is definitely more tough than sneaky. If nothing else, a dip for Whirling Frenzy might be worth it for the free extra attack.

As for getting the rapid crossbow reloads, uh... would you be ok with one pair of extra arms? Then you could reload light crossbows as a free action and make a full attack with each hand.

Whirling frenzy barb does give built in bullet time. You can't have Max without built in bullet time! And it does sound like the concept needs full BAB for lots of shots. I did some googling and found this: http://brilliantgameologists.com/boards/index.php?PHPSESSID=mocu3rvb7died7c81in57imak5&topic=642.msg15068#msg15068

Very feat intensive. You'd probably want to use flaws and/or take a couple of levels of fighter. You might actually do barb 1(bullet time), fighter 2, ranger X, taking the TWF fighting style for giggles. Might want to take an initiator level or two for some mobility and extra action economy (Max shoots action economy in the face) but it wouldn't be required.

Pretty sure pathfinder have something that would let you be Max Payne, they seem to like guns. Could possibly be refluffed for 3.5.

Edit: Swordsaged by WeaselGuy.

[Azoth]

+1 self loading(10k or +2 can't remember), quick loading(+2), splitting(+3) hand crossbows.

These baddies hold 100 bolts a piece in a 5th dimensional pocket, load and draw themselves as a free action with your desired bolt from their self stored clip, and then fire two for the price of one on every attack. So that is 14 bolts down range on a full attack with the full TWF chain.

[WeaselGuy]

+1 self loading(10k or +2 can't remember), quick loading(+2), splitting(+3) hand crossbows.

These baddies hold 100 bolts a piece in a 5th dimensional pocket, load and draw themselves as a free action with your desired bolt from their self stored clip, and then fire two for the price of one on every attack. So that is 14 bolts down range on a full attack with the full TWF chain.

A wonderful thing to shoot for, when you have the 128k (or 130k, if the self loading is +2 or 10k, respectively). Times 2, since you're dual-wielding. In the meantime, the feats I listed can come online with a few levels of dexterity based fighter. Nothing says you can't combine them though, and still be viable in an AMF...

[Riculf]

Levels of scout could be good to give those bolts more of an impact after you've moved 10' (Improved Skirmish for the extra 2d6, +1AC :)

[AvatarVecna]

If you focus on charging and shooting, and you want lots of attacks, full BAB is preferable, damage sources rea great, and you're going to want tons of feats. As has been suggested, Whirling Frenzy/Spirit Lion Totem Barbarian would be great for this, along with Hit-and-Run Fighter. Scout is an obvious dip; 1 level for 1d6 damage per attack? Heck, if you take it to 3, you can use a feat to stack Ranger and Scout levels for determining favored enemy and skirmish; if you take enough Scout and Ranger levels to get 5d6 skirmish damage, the Improved Skirmish feat gives an extra 2d6 if you move 20 ft. A few levels of Martial Rogue could give you those last feats you're looking for, while keeping your skills nice and high. Of course, Ranger should be your primary focus here: Full BAB, two good saves, favored enemy, bonus feats, skirmish advancement, and skirmish against favored enemies bypassing precision damage immunity.

Now we get to the bad news: a strict RAW reading of pounce indicates that you can use ranged attacks on your pounce-charge. However, this doesn't bypass the rules of charging...namely, that the first attack must be a melee attack. Now, your ranged attacks don't need to target the person you attack in melee, but you're still making ranged attacks within melee range of an enemy. Thrown weapons have ways around this (Hurling Charge, Bloodstorm Blade, etc.), but I can't find any exceptions that crossbow wielders can take advantage of.

Manyshot only works for bows, but that's no dice. Beyond that, you're looking for some method gaining movement that doesn't prevent you from full attacking; I know there's quite a few, but I'm not sure what all they are. I think Person_Man has a list of them somewhere, though...

If you can somehow pull off a full attack after moving (let's assume 2d6 skirmish), you can us twin +5 Force Splitting Hand Crossbows and as many efficient Quivers as you can carry for a powerful volley: BAB gives attacks at AB, AB-5, AB-10, and AB -15; the TWF feat tree gives attacks at AB, AB-5, and AB-10, while reducing AB by 2; Haste gives an attack at AB; Rapid Shot gives an attack at AB while reducing AB by 2; Splitting makes every bolt loosed turn into two bolts, and Force allows them to ignore all sources of DR. In total, that's a full attack of 8 attacks at AB-4, 4 attacks at AB-9, 4 attacks at AB-14, and 2 attacks at AB-19; if you end up taking that level of Whirling Frenzy, that's another 2 attacks at AB, although it lowers AB by 2 again. If you can find a way to do bludgeoning damage with a crossbow, Greater Mighty Wallop can increase your base damage up to 3d6. Combine with the weapon enhancement and the feats/options WeaselGuy mentioned, and you're doing 5d6+5+(1.5 Dex mod) on each of those attacks, while bypassing all DR.

Not to shabby, and while it can certainly be optimized further, that's a decent base...assuming you can find a way to full attack on a move.


+1 self loading(10k or +2 can't remember), quick loading(+2), splitting(+3) hand crossbows.

These baddies hold 100 bolts a piece in a 5th dimensional pocket, load and draw themselves as a free action with your desired bolt from their self stored clip, and then fire two for the price of one on every attack. So that is 14 bolts down range on a full attack with the full TWF chain.

Firstly, the Self-Loading Crossbow from A&EG is a heavy crossbow normally; I imagine most DMs will allow you to apply the effect to other kinds of crossbows, but YRMV. Secondly, the Self-Loading Crossbow costs 10000 gp more than its +1 chassis would cost, so I'm going to say it's the +10000 gp. Thirdly, the fluff of the Self-Loading Crossbow and the Quick-Loading weapon enchantment match up (one loading the bolt and the other pulling it back), but mechanically speaking, their effect on the weapon's reload time are the same: reduce the reload time by one step. It's fairly arguable that you need both to free action reload with no free hands. But getting both costs a lot of money. Rapid Reload and a single arm graft could get you the same thing for less money spent.


Levels of scout could be good to give those bolts more of an impact after you've moved 10' (Improved Skirmish for the extra 2d6, +1AC :)

Skirmish is quite good, but just keep in mind that Improved Skirmish requires that you already have 5d6 skirmish damage, so a Scout dip won't cut it. A Scout dip on a mainly-Ranger build with Swift Hunter, on the other hand...

[Grod_The_Giant]

Skirmish is quite good, but just keep in mind that Improved Skirmish requires that you already have 5d6 skirmish damage, so a Scout dip won't cut it. A Scout dip on a mainly-Ranger build with Swift Hunter, on the other hand...
Improved Skirmish only requires 2d6/+1 AC, which I think needs only 5 levels of Scout (or 3 Scout and 2 Ranger if you also grab Swift Hunter)

[AvatarVecna]

Improved Skirmish only requires 2d6/+1 AC, which I think needs only 5 levels of Scout (or 3 Scout and 2 Ranger if you also grab Swift Hunter)

Well, that just goes to show me; when I think that a feat requires more than 5 or so levels of a class, I should double check to make sure I'm remembering correctly.

[Grod_The_Giant]

If you work out some variation of the "many crossbows" trick (is there a version of Gloves of Storing that hold multiple items?), you could drop a few levels on Arcane Archer for the automatically-enchanted arrows. (At the cost of a wasted feat and an additional 1-level dip in wizard or duskblade or something). It's probably worth asking for the Pathfinder version of the class, but if you approach it as a warrior's base class even the 3.5 version is alright.

[Zaq]

If you can get a tail attack somehow (probably by being a race that gets one, though you might be able to argue that the Dragon Tail soulmeld, from Dragon Magic, can do it), the feat Prehensile Tail (from Serpent Kingdoms) can arguably let you use your tail to load your crossbows, meaning that you can hold one in each hand and still reload them. You'll need the TWF feat, but you were going to take that anyway, right?

[Baroknik]

You could also invest in a use activated magic item of Ghostly Reload (Races of Dragon). It will automatically reload a hand crossbow 1/CL per casting.

[Grod_The_Giant]

You could also invest in a use activated magic item of Ghostly Reload (Races of Dragon). It will automatically reload a hand crossbow 1/CL per casting.
I knew there was something like that around. Ok, let's see here...

Cleric (domains: Elf and Travel) 1/Rogue (Feat Rogue) 1/Fighter (Armored Mage) 1/Wizard 1 (Abrupt Jaunt)/Barbarian (Spirit Lion Totem, Whirling Frenzy)

H- TWF
1- Precise Shot
1B- Rapid Shot
2B- Travel Devotion (trade in the domain)
3- Hand Crossbow Focus
3B- Crossbow Sniper


Start with Cleric for Travel Devotion (by trading in the domain) and Point-Blank Shot (via the Elf domain)
Dip with Rogue for hand crossbow proficiency, along with the potential for scoring a bunch of sneak attacks when diving out from behind cover. (Note: If you can access the Targeteer Fighter from Dragon 310, skip this-- you can pick up proficiency that way)
Fighter for feats-- use the Armored Mage variant from CM if you want, since our next stop is a wizard dip. If possible, see if you can get the Targeteer variant from Dragon 310, which offers some very nice options for ranged characters in place of bonus feats-- most notably Sniper (+Dex to ranged attacks, unless your DM takes an excessively literal reading of the rules) and Arrow Swarm (-5 penalty for an extra two attacks in a full attack, probably stacking with Rapid Shot).
A Wizard dip gives us native access to Ghostly Reload, along with other useful archery spells like Guided Shot, Sniper's Shot, and so on-- as well as Abrupt Jaunt, which can easily be fluffed as a slow-motion dive for cover.
Barbarian 1 gives us Pounce and Whirling Frenzy

That gets most of the basics out of the way-- you can shoot crossbows from both hands, and reload with Ghostly Reload (probably from a wand). From there, where you go is really up to you. Scout for skirmish? Factotum 8 for Cunning Surge? Abjurant Champion 5 to boost the native casting?

[Kioran]

You definitely need something like that ghostly reload, because without it, you wouldn't be able to get around the fact that while you can wield a crossbow one-handed, you would usually need a hand to reload. Unless that's take care of, the build won't work, and I see no other way to do it. Besides, that cheese is on the weapon, not the character, so you do not need to devote class features or feats to it, which is a massive relief.

Okay, lets break it down into

ESSENTIAL:
- Two weapon fighting with crossbows
- High mobility (including, possibly, tumbling)
- A way to fire off AT LEAST 2 shots per turn even while moving

NICE to have (you would want as many of these as possible, but you can't get them all)
- High DPS through precision damage
- Bullet time mode
- Max Payne toughness/sustain

The essentials basically rule out anything but light armor. Any ACP would interfere with the tumbling, running etc. and a move speed penalty from heavy armor would kill the theme even more.It also needs the following feats, skills or class features:

- Weapon proficiency with hand crossbows
- A way to fire both crossbows at the same time (two weapon fighting feat tree, ideally also "two weapon spring attack", the Level 5 Tempest class feature)
- maxed Tumble and probably ranks in Jump and Balance

The skill requirement discourages a build that uses mostly basic fighter classes (like Fighters, Barbarians etc.) who, while having a lot of Feats and full BAB, actually do not even have mobility skills on their class list (except for Jump). One could definitely splash them in to get Feats and full BAB, but the depressing worthlessness of the Fighter class (WHY DOES IT HAVE FEWER SKILLS THAN THE BLODDY WIZARD WHO ALSO HAS MAGIC FOR UTILITY AND LIVES IN AN IVORY TOWER?!?!) kinda puts a stop to it.

For the second set, the following class features seem attractive:

- Precision damage (Scout's skirmish most of all. It's sexy to have the extra damage after moving)
- Flat damage or Dex/Int scaling on damage (Crossbow sniper feat, Swashbuckler Int to damage, Weapon Specialization)
- Fast healing/DR (Barbarian, Combat Focus+Combat Stability+Combat Vigor from PHB2 - fast healing for a certain number of rounds for free every fight - keep fighting with sheer anger and painkillers)

At a glance I would probably build it as a Scout, splashing fighter levels and then going into Tempest, then building more scout, and pick up a ton of Feats (Human!)

Don't know though.