Just curious, but what ever happened to the Deepwood Sniper?

[Saern]

Arcmagik wrote:

One thing that is right is the double crit, 20 is 19-20, 19-20 is 17-20, 18-20 becomes 15-20, now if we just had a class that could increase the crit multiplier on a rapier... that would be all kinds of cool.

As for everything else, when I was miss reading rapid fire and many shot, I had a ranger solo a blue dragon for over 200 damage in a round, making the rest of the party feel useless and unneeded, and it was not fun, said character was an Arcane Archer so I am glad he never saw the Deepwood Sniper because once I found the correction about Rapid Fire and Many Shot, his character became more reasonable.

And yes, if enhancement bonuses stacked in 3.0 then it was broken, I didn't know they did so I must have unknowingly house ruled them the same way that 3.5e works now, or I just never had anyone play archers, can't remember.

Yeah, my first group read Many Shot and Rapid Shot wrong the same way, so the 7th level ranger or something more or less soloed a black dragon. It was amazingly deadly, although at the time, we were all so new to the game that "broken" or "unbalanced" weren't even in our vocabulary. We felt REAL DUMB when we figured out how the feats actually worked. My old group also misread two-handed weapons wrong for a long time, too, applying the 1.5 Str bonus to ATTACK, as well as damage. No one ever used a shield, because it didn't make any sense. So many things are so much clearer now....

[Saern]

More to the point of this thread: Why, oh why, isn't the deepwood sniper in 3.5?

Well, I've never even seen the class, but is it just possible that they ran out of room in the books/it just wasn't high priority enough? You're dealing with a gaming industry. The reason something does or doesn't make it into the game, or any given book, may have nothing to do with play balance, and everything to do with time/space/money limitations. It sucks for some player concepts, but it's also real.

I was going to try and write something to help resolve the argument here, too, but it's too confused. You're not really arguing the same points, you know? Kind of makes it hard to resolve anything.

[Moff Rimmer]

Baramay wrote:

Moff Rimmer did nothing more than try to convince you of the logic behind the omission of the deepwood sniper.

Thanks for the support -- I'm done.

[John Robey]

Kurocyn wrote:

...what happened to the Deepwood Sniper?

He was ambushed at point-blank range by a dozen kobolds who dragged him into a 3' cave.

He was never seen again, poor b*st*rd.

-The Gneech

[Vesuvius]

Moff Rimmer wrote:

There are things that increase a critical hit by a fixed number of dice. There are things out there that add a fixed number to damage (ranger's ability). There are things out there that improve the crit range of a weapon. But there is NOTHING that improves the critical multiplier in 3.5. Not feats, not spells, not magic items, not even ANY prestige classes.

I agree that the Deepwood Sniper's overpowered (I'm playing one in a 3.5 campaign at the moment and my damage output's far above the norm for our party- so I'm talking to the DM about either removing some of the class abilities or letting me sub out the Deepwood levels for an alternate prestige class).

That said, there ARE both magic items and prestige classes in 3.5 that increase weapon critical modifiers. Off the top of my head I can name two: the Oathbow from the DM's Guide increases the multiplier by +1, and the Master Thrower prestige class from The Complete Warrior has a special ability (deadeye shot) that increases the multiplier for a specific thrown weapon type- but the ability doesn't stack with any other crit multiplier increases (which kinda implies there are other ways to increase crit multiplier in 3.5).

[Moff Rimmer]

Vesuvius wrote:

That said, there ARE both magic items and prestige classes in 3.5 that increase weapon critical modifiers.

That's good information to have. Thanks.

The Oathbow is kind of neat, but it has some rather heafty limitations that it really isn't too much of a problem.

I had not seen the Master Thrower before. Two slightly limiting factors on Master Thrower are the limited range of thrown weapons and that it is only on one weapon type (each time the ability is chosen).

At any rate, I stand corrected and thanks again for the information.