Rogue Crossbow Sniper


Advice


So, I've been trying to come up with a workable crossbow build and I think a rogue would work, since 3/4 BAB means iterative attacks won't be a source of damage for half the character's life. Build as follows:

Human Rogue (Swashbuckler) (25-point buy)
Str- 12
Dex- 16 (18 with racial)
Con-10
Int- 18
Wis- 10
Cha- 7

Traits- Pragmatic Activator, Eyes and Ears of the City

1- Point Blank, Precise Shot
2- Rogue Talent: Combat Trick - Focused Shot
3: Expert Sniper
4: Combat Trick- Rapid Reload
5: Deadly Aim
6: Weapon Training- Weapon Focus Heavy Crossbow

Is this decent?


In the nicest way... no, it's not decent.

I'm assuming you're building at level 6. If not, you want Rapid Reload much earlier. Before Precise Shot, even. Rapid Reload is how you can move (or snipe) and attack every round. If you're forced to stay still then the enemy just has to move next to you to prevent you from doing anything. Same problem with a Heavy Crossbow even with Rapid Reload. You cannot snipe and reload in the same turn.

I'm guessing you're going for sniping but I don't see anything to actually help you stealth (and so it's your Stealth-10 versus their Perception (minus up to 3), and the base numbers are probably similar). Anyone who's been keeping their Perception up (and every @#$%ing monster ever) will have a ~50% chance of beating your Stealth roll automatically before they even roll (if you roll 10 or lower).

3/4th BAB just hurts a crossbow, like it hurts any other weapon using build. "It also attacks less often" makes it worse, not better.

Why not just get Crossbow Mastery and full attack with it? Or Bolt Ace and get Dex-to-damage with it (and the ability to target touch AC by using grit). Or Ranger so you can get the nice feats for free. Basically, I don't see what Rogue is bringing to the table that you couldn't do with, say, Fighter. You've spent all the Rogue Talents on combat feats anyway.

So looking at it, you can attack once a round at +9 for 1d10, or +7 for 1d10+4. If you're within 30 feet, you attack at +10 for 1d10+4 (+8/1d10+8) or 1d10+4+3d6 if you successfully snipe/stealth. You need a move action to reload so you will never be able to snipe and reload in the same turn, and over the course of a battle you can only move once before losing a turn in which you could have attacked (with a light crossbow).

A Fighter with all the same feats (plus Weapon Specialization) and the same stats would have +1 attack, +3 damage. Switch to a light crossbow and they'd snipe twice as often for at most 2 less damage (on average 1). That's the simplest version. But we could also toss Focused Shot and Expert Sniper (letting us put more points somewhere else as well) and take Rapid Shot and Crossbow Mastery to instead get two attacks at -1 (compared to the Rogue) and an iterative attack on a full attack, which is... well, way better. +9 for 1d10+3 twice is better than +10 for 1d10+4 or 1d10+4+3d6 every other round (since you can't reload and snipe). And would let the Fighter reload as a free action (which, incidentally, would let them reload and snipe).


My suggestion, simply becuase its exactly what i am playing is going slayer with the sniper archetype. U can use your slayer talents to get ranger combat style and have crossbow mastery at lvl 6, plus its a full BAB class with decent skills and Study target!! At lvl 7 with study target and deadly aim i am no negs to hit and add +6 damage (4 from deadly aim and 2 from study target) plus whatever bonus you have on your crossbow and 2d6 sneak att. I am human and put all my fav class bonuses to 1/6 slayer talents and also had fast stealth so i could get a shot off, reload and move my full movement to my next position. Once you get master sniper, u get 2 snip shots with full bonuses to hit -2 and all your sneak att and deadly/studied on it, then move and repeat


I found a Slayer with the Sniper archetype works well, especially if you grab Expert Sniper and Master Sniper feats later on. If you went halfling you could also grab the alternate racial trait Swift as Shadows which replaces Sure-Footed. It reduces the penalty for moving while using Stealth by 5 and the penalty when sniping by an additional 10 (which combined with Expert Sniper equals out to 0). As Bob Bob Bob said above, taking rapid reload will be very important so you can not only move and shoot or make multiple attacks, but also to utilize the Master Sniper feat's ability to fire two shots as a full-round action and still be considered sniping.

Edit: Ninja'd by Dwarftr!


DM isn’t allowing ACG, so Slayer's out. I was really looking for a way to make a decent crossbow sniper without Crossbow Mastery, since at that point, I may as well take a composite longbow for less feats and better mileage with the only downside being that you can't fire a bow while prone. The Rogue also gives me a buttload of skills and (as a personal, non-power game preference) I love having a buttload of skills.

I was planning on exploiting the Perception rules for distance, but that would only net me +3 to Stealth under ideal circumstances (in the form of a -3 Perception for the target being 30 ft away). I might switch to Halfling for the crazy sniping bonuses and just take the hit to damage dice (d8 vs d10 for heavy crossbow).

Also, you guys made a really good point about the lack of Rogue abilities in my build. My main goal was to try to make the most of having one attack per round and Focused Shot.

Halfling Rogue (Sniper) (25-point buy)

Str- 12 (10 with racial)
Dex- 16 (18 with racial)
Con-10
Int- 18
Wis- 10
Cha- 7 (9 with racial)

1- Point Blank Shot
2- Rogue Talent: Combat Trick - Precise Shot
3: Expert Sniper
4: Sniper's Eye
5: Focused Shot

By taking Expert Sniper at 3, with Swift as Shadows alt trait, I have no penalty to sniping, so per the rules, once I hide, I can snipe with impunity, assuming I don't fail the roll after I snipe. I'd rather have the 1d10 and extra skill point, but Halfling just seems to work better for what I'm trying to do.


if you wanna make a viable crossbow build you need at least 5 levels of gunslinger bolt ace. anything else on top of that is just personal preference. ask your dm to look the archetype over. it really is very basic and there is no guns.


vhok wrote:
if you wanna make a viable crossbow build you need at least 5 levels of gunslinger bolt ace. anything else on top of that is just personal preference. ask your dm to look the archetype over. it really is very basic and there is no guns.

To add to this after 5 levels of bolt ace you should take at least 6 levels in Sohei, which will allow you to flurry of blows with the crossbow.

If you take this to its ultimate conclusion you will have

Haste attack
Ki attack
Rapid shot
4 shots from bab
3 shots from flurry.

10 shots with the first five being at maximum bab.

Combined with good saves, decent skills, a general lack of madness and good ac (you can flurry in light armor) and you are in an excellent place to pump out a lot of hurt.

Grand Lodge

Alternative take, be a halfling with the swift as shadows trait and go fighter. Have you and a friend take the artillery team feat. You both count as large for purposes of operating large light and heavy crossbows. Your friend uses their actions to load the weapon and you use your actions to attack.
Your friends feats and abilities apply to reloading, while your feats and abilities apply to making attacks.

Buy a heavy crossbow, put the distance enhancement on it if you can.

So your friend takes rapid reloading to bring it down to a move and you take vital strike. If your friend is a wizard/sorcerer then they can cast gravity bow for more dice. With all your free feats pick up wep focus and wep specialization, take weapon training in the ranged group. Also take far shot, sit a couple range increments out and rp being a navy seal sniper team.


Bolt Ace is also ACG, so if they can't do Slayer they can't do Bolt Ace. Which is a shame, as Bolt Ace definitely makes a solid crossbow user (mostly by making it work like firearms).

The new build looks a lot better at sniping, at least. Missing Rapid Reload though, which means you have the same "can't snipe and reload" problem as before. Also it's nearly impossible to snipe indefinitely (at least, against similar level opponents). It's a new roll every time, eventually you'll roll poorly (and/or they'll roll well). Also they can just double move in pretty much any direction and then you can't sneak attack anymore. Sniper will help, but it's still pretty easy to run.

So what's wrong with Ranger? Only 2 less skill points and they get 2 prereq-free feats, 2 more BAB, favored enemy (+4 or +2), favored terrain, spells, and a pet.

Let's run the numbers again. You're looking at one attack at +9 for 1d6+4+3d6+1 in the absolute best case. That's 19 damage on average. The monster creation guidelines for CR 6 put AC at 19 (the spreadsheet agrees) and the flatfooted AC doesn't change much (average 16.4). So you'll hit regularly (>50%) but not reliably (>75%). On the other hand, the monsters have 70 HP (spreadsheet says 67.7) so you'll need 4 attacks that hit, should happen in 6-7 rounds (on average). Honestly, I probably still wouldn't call that decent unless you're running a solo game. You can probably stay hidden that long, but you're not going to contribute much. And that's an absolute best case, if you can't sneak attack you lose slightly more than half your damage and you're officially a wet noodle.


Yeah, unfortunately this sort of thing just doesn't work.

You're trying to use Sneak Attack damage to make up for the fact that you only get 1 attack a round, but it's a losing proposition. You're not going to deal enough damage to make it remotely worth it. Everyone else in the party is going to be more effective than you and contribute a lot more to the fight than you're single hit per round for mediocre damage.

Scarab Sages

You can make something that is adequate with a rogue/fighter multiclass. Crossbowman fighter 7/Sniper rogue x, using readied vital strikes with sneak attack damage. You make a surprisingly good spellcaster killer out of box, and if overwatch style is allowed you can be very deadly, although you still need crossbow mastery then.


Sadly, crossbow and rogue are about the hardest things to get decent in Pathfinder. Getting them decent together is even harder.


Unfortunately... Rogues, crossbows and sniping are all poor options in Pathfinder, at least without heavy optimization and/or considerable house-rules.

And let's not forget the fact that something as simple as "Deflect Arrows" makes the opponent essentially immune to your character. :/

You can try, say, use the Scout archetype and Vital Strike to deal some decent damage once per round... It's still not a particularly effective build, IMO, but it's functional.

Grand Lodge

Normally I would have also advised a dip into Rouge for stealth and sneak attack then take accomplished sneak attacker for full progression with your fighter levels but your Dm bans the ACG which is where the feat comes from. Note that this build would also require you to have a set of sniper's goggles to get sneak attack at the massive range you'll be fighting from.


I can see why you would want to go the focused shot route, but it's only going to be adding 4 damage plus you can't Vital Strike with it as those are both their own actions. It also has a limiter of 30ft. itself. You also say you like having a lot of skill points. Rogue and high int are great for this. If I were to make a Rogue Sniper build using crossbows, this would be my take on it. Eventually you get in to vital strike at level 9 or you go the full attack route for the extra sneak attack dice (Built to L6 w/ 25 point buy. Assuming only CRB / APG. I did notice you had Expert Sniper from Dirty Tactics Toolbox but I wanted to keep the build simple. Plus you have to remember in combat you don't take penalties on your stealth, where as enemies have a -10 perception so once you hit LV10 you can always pick up the Stealthy Sniper advanced talent)

Halfling Rogue (No Archetype seeing as Sniper Goggles are great. You'll want to get these early anyways and giving up trapfinding, which most archetypes with the rogue do, is rough in certain settings)

Alternate Racial Swift as Shadows

STR 12 - 2 Race = 10
DEX 16 + 2 Race = 18 + 4
CON 12 = 12 + 1 (I don't like making characters with < 12 Con)
INT 17 + 1 LV4 = 18 + 4
WIS 10 = 10
CHA 8 + 2 Race = 10

Feats

1 - Point Blank Shot
2*- Precise Shot

3 - Rapid Reload (appropriate Crossbow, preferably heavy for the D8 dmg)

5 - Rapid Shot (if you want to go crossbow Mastery at level 7) or Stealthy (+2 bonus on stealth, +4 at 10 ranks. Same on Escape Artist. A bit more versatile than Skill Focus. Seeing as you have the +4 for being small too you don't really need the full +6)

6*- Weapon Focus Appropriate Weapon

Rogue Talents

2 - Combat Trick Precise Shot
4 - Sniper's Eye
6 - Weapon Training or Minor Magic to get Major Magic at 8

I know it's kind of a mess to read but hopefully I laid it out well enough.


It seems like the big take-away is that I'm only going to be getting mediocre damage, so I'm going to need to fall back on skills and being super useful out-of-combat if I try to make this work. Otherwise, I just need to go Crossbowman Fighter or Ranger and not suck in combat.

I'll probably go with vanilla Rogue to keep Trapfinding, or go with Chameleon Archetype to get the Effortless Sneak feature. Sniper Goggles and Headband of Vast Intellect are on my list of magic items. Also, I'm going with the Acrobat trait instead of Eyes and Ears of the City because I'm going to need to do a lot of climbing to get to high ground and snipe whenever I can (until get some kind of reliable flying).

Thanks for all of the tips.


Well... With Vital Strike, Sneak Attack and a heavy crossbow, you'd deal around the same damage a Kineticist's unmodified blast... Most of it is precision damage, though.

Deadly Aim is a nice bonus and the Scout archetype allows you to get a Sneak Attack every turn by moving 10 ft before attacking starting at 8th level. Since you're only making a single attack anyway, accuracy won't be an issue, even for a Rogue, so you might want to add bonus elemental damage rather than +1 enhancements to your weapon.

There's also a feat that allows you to use a Move action to add your Int modifier to your next ranged damage roll... However, using it means you're not moving 10 ft, which means no free Sneak Attack from the scout archetype, but it might be a resonable choice once you have access to Greater Invisibility.

That's... an acceptable build, I guess. It won't match an devoted archer, but it can still contribute.


Basically. There's a few things working against you.

First, flat-footed isn't much worse than regular AC on most monsters. There's a few specific super-dex ones, but most get the majority of their AC from piles of natural armor. The average gap doesn't really grow, but as you get to higher levels 3/4th BAB does fall farther behind. You, at best, make up the gap in your BAB by targeting flat-footed, but you're never going to be any better than a plain vanilla archer or crossbowman with a full BAB class.

Second, one attack a round is always going to hold you back. There are ways to make it viable (Vital Strike Furious Finish Behemoth Hippo) but especially with a Rogue, more attacks is better. Sneak attack works on every attack you can get it on and is designed with that in mind. Unless there's some feat that lets you multiply sneak attack on Vital Strike, you're always going to be operating at the lowest possible level of power. Maybe blunt bolts (are those a thing?), Bludgeoner, and Sap Adept/Master?

Third, did I say lowest possible level? There's always worse. On anything immune to sneak attack (there's less, but still enough) you're doing 1d10+1. That's level 1 @#$% right there. Wet noodle might be an improvement. You can also hit this problem if you can't actually hide from your opponent: no cover or concealment, they ignore your cover or concealment, or their senses can see through your cover or concealment. And as you go up the levels, those become way more frequent. You'll want HiPS at some point (I think a Rogue Talent might grant it?).

Again, I can't really see this working well unless there's a lot of other players (in which case your skills are meaningless) or it's a solo game. You need to fight in a place where you can hide, but at the same time the party has to keep the enemy within 30 feet of you. In a standard four person party you're leaving the big dumb warrior alone at the front and forcing the spellcasters to stay nearby you. And if the enemy forces have spellcasters, you can't take them out without blowing a round or giving your position away. And, again, you've blown anything uniquely Rogue on getting better at shooting people... but you're still not very good at it. Replace you with a dedicated archer and you'd attack more often, do more damage, and be far more flexible in targets. Replace you with a real skill user (Bard, Inquisitor, Investigator) and you'd actually get a class bonus to skills in addition to some form of combat buff. Rogues get quantity, not quality (and not even that much quantity). Hell, replace you with a dedicated skirmisher (even a Monk works here) and you'd help the warrior as a second target and be able to take out or harass back-line enemy combatants. You've basically made the most selfish kind of combatant (requires the team to work around them, only works on certain battlefields, doesn't expose themselves to any of the danger) for a benefit that amounts to "secondary fighter", at best. A bunch of skills, especially if the party already has most of them covered, doesn't make up for that.


I've never actually played an Inquisitor (or seen one played), so could you elaborate a bit on how it's better as a skill class? I know it gets better knowledges from just reading about them, but I honestly don't know much about Inquisitor.


Xaimum Mafire wrote:
I've never actually played an Inquisitor (or seen one played), so could you elaborate a bit on how it's better as a skill class? I know it gets better knowledges from just reading about them, but I honestly don't know much about Inquisitor.

High skill ranks, monster lore, and many Inquisitions use WIS for certain skills.


The base class gets 6+Int and:

Monster Lore wrote:
The inquisitor adds her Wisdom modifier on Knowledge skill checks in addition to her Intelligence modifier, when making skill checks to identify the abilities and weaknesses of creatures.
Stern Gaze wrote:
Inquisitors are skilled at sensing deception and intimidating their foes. An inquisitor receives a morale bonus on all Intimidate and Sense Motive checks equal to 1/2 her inquisitor level (minimum +1).
Track wrote:
At 2nd level, an inquisitor adds half her level on Survival skill checks made to follow or identify tracks.
Then the Inquisitions:
Conversion Inquisition (any diety) wrote:
Charm of Wisdom (Ex): You use your Wisdom modifier instead of your Charisma modifier when making Bluff, Diplomacy, and Intimidate checks.
Heresy Inquisition wrote:

Righteous Infiltration (Ex): You use your Wisdom modifier instead of your Charisma modifier when making Bluff and Intimidate checks.

Blessed Infiltration (Ex): At 4th level, when you make a Bluff, Diplomacy, or Stealth check, you may roll twice and take the more favorable result. You can use this ability a number of times per day equal to your Wisdom bonus.

Reformation Inquisition wrote:

Inspired Rhetoric (Ex): You use your Wisdom modifier in place of your Charisma modifier when making Diplomacy, Intimidate, and Perform (oratory) checks. Perform (oratory) is an inquisitor class skill for you.

Blessed Correction (Ex): At 4th level, when you make a Diplomacy, Intimidate, or Perform (oratory) check, you may roll twice and take the more favorable result. You can use this ability a number of times per day equal to your Wisdom bonus.

Wisdom is their casting stat, so lots of things let you leverage that Wisdom. Specifically, it's very easy to make an all-Wis social character. And their rerolls are Wis times a day instead of 1+1/5 levels (like the rogue talents, which also only work on one skill).


The idea I have behind this character that he was trying to get into a thieves' guild and got caught. He didn't give up any names, but somehow, his partners were discovered and arrested, so the guild blamed him. Even though he maintained his "innocence", he offered the guild their pound of flesh. The guild cut off the index and middle fingers on his shooting hand and took his left kidney. The partners also got to beat him senseless, leaving him with massive scars across his body. He learned to fire a crossbow with his other hand, and is currently trying to restore his reputation with the guild by finding out who really ratted out his crew.


The Inquisitor looks like it'd make a good party face, but the skills I was looking into were more crafting and skullduggery. All of that does give me some ideas for a back-up character though.


An Inquisitor of Nethys with the Hersey Inquisition who kills and hunts mages sounds fun to me. Keeping with the crossbow theme, what would a decent crossbow mage hunting Inquisitor look like? I'd come up with a base line, but I legitimately have no idea how to build an Inquisitor.


There are a couple of good guides floating around. Here is one.

Scarab Sages

If you are going to play a Halfer, why not just do typical Ranger for ranged feats, and then use a Halfling Sling Staff?

If the goal is the add-on damages, like from rogue SA or Deadly Aim and such, it's hard to beat the Sling Staff.

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