RPG Superstar 2013 Top 32
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So, the Crossbow Mastery feat is pretty cool (if you like crossbows) but the prerequisites are pretty steep. Granted, just about any archery concept is going to want Point Blank Shot and Rapid Shot, so those aren't really a "tax" but then you add Rapid Reload and Crossbow Mastery itself to the mix, which basically don't do anything except allow you to fire a crossbow just like a regular bow (but only one specific KIND of crossbow).
I have a character with relatively low STR (13), so I thought it would be kind of cool to go the crossbow route (I have no intention of investing more points into STR going forward) since the damage die on a heavy crossbow is a tiny bit better than a longbow, and the 19-20 crit range is pretty decent. However, said character is not a fighter, nor a ranger, and so that 2-feat tax is hurting pretty bad.
My question essentially boils down to this: How badly am I hurting myself by going this route instead of settling for a mighty (+1) composite longbow? Are there any unique functions of a crossbow that I can exploit (other than the fact that they can be fired from prone with no penalty)? Any cool feat trees that might help me out? I like the idea of this concept, but I'm worried it's going to end up so weak as to be nigh-unplayable, particularly at higher levels. For the record, the character is an inquisitor, currently level 3, and is human. Our GM also let us sacrifice the two starting traits for a bonus feat at 1st level, so I've got Crossbow Mastery at level 3... and nothing else (feat wise) except the prereqs for same. Any insight is appreciated. :)
Every time I go to build a character to use a crossbow, I get about 60% of the way through the feats before wondering what possessed me to use a crossbow.
Even if the character had a +0 for strength, a bow doesn't require a feat investment to fire multiple times per round. A bow doesn't require a feat investment to not provoke AoO's while reloading. Also, a strength of +0 now doesn't always mean it will stay at +0. Belt of Giant Strength anyone?
Yes, crossbow crit range is 1 point better, but if you're going for a crit build, using any sort of ranged weapon is not your best bet.
Take a bow and you can open with Point-Blank Shot, Rapid Shot, and Precise Shot.
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RPG Superstar 2013 Top 32
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Every time I go to build a character to use a crossbow, I get about 60% of the way through the feats before wondering what possessed me to use a crossbow.
Even if the character had a +0 for strength, a bow doesn't require a feat investment to fire multiple times per round. A bow doesn't require a feat investment to not provoke AoO's while reloading. Also, a strength of +0 now doesn't always mean it will stay at +0. Belt of Giant Strength anyone?
Yes, crossbow crit range is 1 point better, but if you're going for a crit build, using any sort of ranged weapon is not your best bet.
Take a bow and you can open with Point-Blank Shot, Rapid Shot, and Precise Shot.
Well, the heavy crossbow also has 1d10 for base damage as opposed to 1d8, which makes up the difference for not being composite in my opinion (at my character's strength level).
And yeah, I could invest in a belt of giant strength, but I'm going to want to allocate that slot to DEX-enhancement instead since it's much more useful to my concept (and WIS is even more important than DEX).
I'm not particularly going for a "crit build," but I would like to see some ways of making a crossbow not suck. If there is a crit build that makes it work somehow (can't see that being a practical solution for a 3/4 BAB class), I'm all ears.
If I was going to use a crossbow instead of a bow, I would use a heavy crossbow with the Vital Strike feat and 4 levels of Ranger or 1 level of Sorcerer/Wizard to be able to cast Gravity Bow. It may be a suboptimal path when compared with Crossbow Mastery, but DR wouldn't be a problem for this character. Furthermore, readied actions against spellcasting would be quite effective. :)
Crossbows have a lot of style, but their benefits are specific to particular character concepts. A bow is, in nearly every way, a better weapon.
Benefits of a Crossbow:
- Can be used from prone,and can be used while mounted (longbows cannot).
- Stronger base damage.
- Wider crit range makes crossbows a viable candidate for crit specs.
- Many can be used one-handed, allowing you to carry a shield or even go two-weapon fighting.
- No damage penalty for using a crossbow with 9 or less strength.
- Superior range.
Benefits of a Bow:
- Requires fewer feats than crossbows.
- Easily adds strength bonus to damage with composite bows.
- Can use the manyshot feat (crossbows cannot).
If anything, bows are superior because ranged combat requires so many effing feats to be successful and bows don't add to the list. For specific concepts/high level play a crossbow can be very/more effective, but generally speaking it's a better choice to go with the bow.
Crossbows have a lot of style, but their benefits are specific to particular character concepts. A bow is, in nearly every way, a better weapon.
Benefits of a Crossbow:
- Can be used from prone,and can be used while mounted (longbows cannot).
- Stronger base damage.
- Wider crit range makes crossbows a viable candidate for crit specs.
- Many can be used one-handed, allowing you to carry a shield or even go two-weapon fighting.
- No damage penalty for using a crossbow with 9 or less strength.
- Superior range.
Benefits of a Bow:
- Requires fewer feats than crossbows.
- Easily adds strength bonus to damage with composite bows.
- Can use the manyshot feat (crossbows cannot).
If anything, bows are superior because ranged combat requires so many effing feats to be successful and bows don't add to the list. For specific concepts/high level play a crossbow can be very/more effective, but generally speaking it's a better choice to go with the bow.
You forgot one benefit of the crossbow: no martial weapon proficiency required. Thus, it's a good weapon for your non-elf alchemist, cleric, oracle, sorcerer, summoner or wizard. :)
You forgot one benefit of the crossbow: no martial weapon proficiency required. Thus, it's a good weapon for your non-elf alchemist, cleric, oracle, sorcerer, summoner or wizard. :)
I had considered that, but I don't think that a cleric/sorcerer/etc. using a crossbow is a crossbow user. In these instances you're using the weapon because it's one of the few ranged weapons you have access to. An actual ranged combatant would be dedicating feats to their choice of ranged weapons.
But yeah, nearly everyone gets access to the crossbow. It's a decent time sink, but without feats it doesn't have much use beyond the first two levels.
You forgot one benefit of the crossbow: no martial weapon proficiency required. Thus, it's a good weapon for your non-elf alchemist, cleric, oracle, sorcerer, summoner or wizard. :)I had considered that, but I don't think that a cleric/sorcerer/etc. using a crossbow is a crossbow user. In these instances you're using the weapon because it's one of the few ranged weapons you have access to. An actual ranged combatant would be dedicating feats to their choice of ranged weapons.
But yeah, nearly everyone gets access to the crossbow. It's a decent time sink, but without feats it doesn't have much use beyond the first two levels.
For a full caster you're probably right, but I think that a half-caster could be spell-starved enough to actually use a crossbow during a fight, even at mid and high levels.
For a full caster you're probably right, but I think that a half-caster could be spell-starved enough to actually use a crossbow during a fight, even at mid and high levels.You forgot one benefit of the crossbow: no martial weapon proficiency required. Thus, it's a good weapon for your non-elf alchemist, cleric, oracle, sorcerer, summoner or wizard. :)I had considered that, but I don't think that a cleric/sorcerer/etc. using a crossbow is a crossbow user. In these instances you're using the weapon because it's one of the few ranged weapons you have access to. An actual ranged combatant would be dedicating feats to their choice of ranged weapons.
But yeah, nearly everyone gets access to the crossbow. It's a decent time sink, but without feats it doesn't have much use beyond the first two levels.
In which case you're right back to the basic argument with a bit of a different leaning. Proficiency is a single feat, which means that the bow user now requires one more feat- making the two roughly equal if you stick to light crossbows. A part-time archer with poor strength will be okay without Manyshot, but it's a significant loss to a character who chooses to pursue archery as her way of dealing damage.
For a rogue/sneak attack character I'd say crossbows are a stronger choice because it's easy to use one from hiding. For anyone relying on volley damage it's probably better to go with bows- even mounted characters.
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Endless Ammunition is a +2 weapon enhancement (Ultimate Equipment page 141) which can only be used on bows and crossbows. With an Inquisitor, that makes the Heavy Repeating Crossbow actually worthwhile for the character's entire career, with just ca$h (and not Feat) investment.
That's going to cost you 18,700 gp though. (+1 endless ammunition heavy repeating crossbow). Your "entire" career? If you're level 3, then you're going to have to deal with this crap until you earn 18,000 gp to enchant it. And that's your cut of the treasure, not the party's total treasure. How long that takes is completely up to your DM.
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Endless Ammunition is a +2 weapon enhancement (Ultimate Equipment page 141) which can only be used on bows and crossbows. With an Inquisitor, that makes the Heavy Repeating Crossbow actually worthwhile for the character's entire career, with just ca$h (and not Feat) investment.
Fails on firearms. Except for the ONE unique pistol they decided to allow it on.
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Fails on firearms. Except for the ONE unique pistol they decided to allow it on.
Makes me wonder why. Normally in these games, magic is supposed to be able to solve any problem. It seems really odd that these wizards and clerics can make a sheet of paper that will allow you to resurrect the dead, but they can't enchant a gun to loads its own chamber.
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... Your "entire" career?..
Sure. We're talking about an Inquisitor here. How many combats will the guy really need to be taking more than five shots with his crossbow the entire combat? Inquisitors have a few other things to be doing than just repeated full attacks, round after round.
18,700gp (assuming the character - or any of his party of friends - doesn't bother with the Feat to craft the thing himself) is what he'd be expecting to spend on a primary weapon around what? Level 9 or 10, if the game is using standard wealth by level. The chap doesn't even get 3 iteratives from his BAB until level 15, so even a standard 5-shot repeater lasts him a shot in the surprise round and two rounds of full attack. Assuming he does other stuff as well (like cast the occassional spell) in other rounds, that's going to be enough for the whole combat a lot of the time.
Before the guy can afford his endless ammunition repeater there's, as Driver 325 yards noted above, the abundant ammunition spell. A wand of that only costs 750gp. He could afford that by what? Level 2?
So yes, a heavy repeater can serve an Inquisitor well for his entire career for nothing more than an investment of ca$h - no extra Feats required. And that's the point - a relatively modest ca$h outlay in place of spending a big chunk of the character's few Feats on just trying to get full attacks in with a crossbow.
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... Your "entire" career?..Sure. We're talking about an Inquisitor here. How many combats will the guy really need to be taking more than five shots with his crossbow the entire combat? Inquisitors have a few other things to be doing than just repeated full attacks, round after round.
Like what? I'm serious here, I'm about to start playing an inquisitor at a tabletop, first time here, and I've not seen any options for my actions other than full-attacking the first few levels. (I haven't started yet, but I'm planning things out).
So far, I've seen Knowledge checks, Intimidate checks, Judgment (which helps with full-attacking) and spells. And the only spells I know are gravity bow (DM ruled it to be on my spell list) and cure light wounds (and I plan to be too far from my allies during combat to use it then, since they're all melee except the casters). What other options do you see the inquisitor having?
18,700gp (assuming the character - or any of his party of friends - doesn't bother with the Feat to craft the thing himself) is what he'd be expecting to spend on a primary weapon around what? Level 9 or 10, if the game is using standard wealth by level. The chap doesn't even get 3 iteratives from his BAB until level 15, so even a standard 5-shot repeater lasts him a shot in the surprise round and two rounds of full attack. Assuming he does other stuff as well (like cast the occassional spell) in other rounds, that's going to be enough for the whole combat a lot of the time.
Yes, but if he's primarily ranged-focused he's going to take Rapid Shot as well, so that drops your calculations to one-and-a-half full attacks, when combat at earlier levels lasts between five and six rounds.
Before the guy can afford his endless ammunition repeater there's, as Driver 325 yards noted above, the abundant ammunition spell. A wand of that only costs 750gp. He could afford that by what? Level 2?So yes, a heavy repeater can serve an Inquisitor well for his entire career for nothing more than an investment of ca$h - no extra Feats required. And that's the point - a relatively modest ca$h outlay in place of spending a big chunk of the character's few Feats on just trying to get full attacks in with a crossbow.
And here's the difference: The wand and the enchantment are both DM-dependent or party-dependent. You have to find the wand, or receive enough ca$h from the DM in treasure and find a shop that sells that specific wand, or you have to have a wizard/sorcerer ally who is willing and able to take item creation feats and craft a wand for you (doubly unlikely if your ally is a sorcerer, since he would be wasting a precious spell known on helping one member of the party).
Then you have to get enough wealth from the DM (and absolutely every DM that I have sat at a table with has never once looked at the WBL chart and instead dishes out wealth according to story and whim) to enchant your weapon, as well as finding a city with a 7th level wizard/sorcerer/summoner/cleric who is willing and able to enchant it.
Meanwhile, the feats are completely character-dependent. You take away from your own progression, but you can always load any heavy repeating crossbow as a free action. So if you're stuck in an anti-magic field, or if your crossbow is stolen, lost or sundered, or you get disarmed, and then you have to go buy a new heavy repeating crossbow, you can still fire it just as well as the others.
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Like what? I'm serious here, I'm about to start playing an inquisitor at a tabletop, first time here, and I've not seen any options for my actions other than full-attacking the first few levels. (I haven't started yet, but I'm planning things out).
I suppose the standard 'other options' for low level Inquisitors in combat would be domain powers, spellcasting, and using Intimidate to demoralise the enemy.
While some judgements are all about attacking, and are therefore obviously best used when full attacking, there are defensive and spellcasing related judgements too.
Basically, like a Bard, the Inquisitor who only does 'one thing' is being weirdly self-limiting - which may be fine for certain builds and playstyles, but isn't going to be getting the most out of the class. A Magus is similar, but utilising Spell Combat tends to draw them into the 'melee and cast' role a great deal of the time, rather than the 'melee or cast' role of a Bard or Inquisitor.
Of course if you build towards only spells which boost your full attack capability / DPR then you may find you need more than the standard repeater's five shot capacity earlier in your career - but that's more of a build-related choice than standard for the class, IMHO. Inquisitors have a fair few of those types of spells, various buffs, and also various debuffs / SoS spells. Whether you can cast those buff spells before combat, or need to take actions in combat to do so tends to depend on circumstances. The concept of an Inquisitor who has all their buff spells up already at the start of every important combat and can then focus on full attacks is a nice goal to aim at, but one less likely to always be struck in actual play. YMMV, of course! ;)
As to whether various Wands or magic weapons would be available in any given game... well, if you're in a restricted magic game then you'd need to re-think your build, based on that lack of magic (or useful magic) - but that should be true for every character, not just Inquisitors using repeaters. Such games aren't generally assumed to be 'standard', and in such a game many different Feats and Class abilities start to look more attractive than in more usual games where the PCs can reasonably expect to find equipment which fits their character builds. Ban Cloaks of Resistence and see how popular Monks become all of a sudden, for example... ;)
But I can rarely justify a heavy crossbow, since it costs more investment for 1 more damage than the light crossbow.
Light crossbows can reload for free for the same rapid reload feat that you use as a prerequisite for crossbow mastery. And since you can get the build to even work earlier with light crossbow, you are most likely going to invest into that (rapid reload, class features, weapon focus, magical enhancement, etc.), and later turning to heavy crossbow just means you have to waste time and money with the retraining mechanics (if your gm even lets you use those).
Crossbows are fine now- bolt slinger has come around and more than made them viable, by giving them dex to damage and basically turning the light crossbow into a ranged version of the falcata (19-20/x3). It is fine, although there is always the question of whether you should stay with the class after level 5, or move onto something with more content at later levels.