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Yeah the improved critical solution in Pathfinder mitigates some of its awesomeness. It's still one high-powered prestige class though. Let's hope you don't have a high level wizard in the party moving the sniper around on the battlefield with a Floating Disc.Not looking like that at the moment. How would you tone it down to be not so silly? I like the feel of the class, but don't want to end up totally broken.
Best,
Paul
Perhaps removing the poison-use ability would be the best thing. Just because poison in Pathfinder has become pretty dangerous. With the Sniper's iterative attacks, a target already poisoned has a higher DC Fort save to make if hit by another poisoned arrow/bolt and with the sniper's ability to pretty much hit anything that means the poison-use abiity can become quite powerful.
The deepwood sniper has been my favorite prestige class since I first started playing 3.0.
Personally, I wouldn't change anything about the class. Though it is easier to qualify in PF, the DWS is over specialized. That is both what draws me to the class and what keeps it balanced in my opinion...
-Kurocyn
The Deepwood Sniper always held a fond place in my heart. I did a revamp for it a while ago for personal use. DISCLAIMER: I typically GM for my group so some things may be skewed for personal taste.
I don't have anything against 10 level PRC I just prefer 5 level ones so first thing I did was cut it to 5 levels. I disliked the fact that it had it's own spells/day and spell list, it didn't quite fit the flavor imo of a highly specialized sniper. I jumped the range increase to 20ft/level so it still gave a 100ft overall increase. The crit stuff stayed in to represent the absolutely devastating shots of a well placed sniper. Remember since Improved Crit doesn't stack with other stuff, pet peeve of mine tbh, that 19-20 is as good as it gets they just have a crazy multiplier. I kept in poison use, but I changed the way aim works there was a neat 3rd party supplement called "Masters of Arms" or something like that. I really enjoyed it's approach to aiming and subbed their feat for aiming into the class as a bonus feat as opposed to what it originally was in 3.0.
So all in all I ditched the spells, 5 levels, aiming, any original bonus feats it may have received and something I feel I'm forgetting. I kept the range increase, crit range increase, poison use, swapped aiming for a 3pp aiming feat and crit multiplier increase. I was working towards playing one with these changes and used one in a game I ran as an NPC assassin. The NPC fared well till the PCs finally managed to locate him and deal with him.
Yeah, a lot of what the Deepwood Sniper gives is found in Pathfinder already. Improved Critical, Improved Precise Shot, Pinpoint Targeting obviates the need of a large chunk (1/3) of the classes abilities.
There's a number of class archetypes that grant poison use, and some give the option to reroll attacks, or modify the crit multiplier.
A rogue can pick up major magic and get True Strike that way.
Some ideas of getting a similar build in Pathfinder:
Zen Archer: The bread and butter archery character. Gives most of what you'd want (needing only those feats above). Missing only the Poison Use ability.
Sniper: This guy would be nice to reduce the penalties for shooting at range.
Poisoner, Alchemist, Assassin PrC: These are ways to get the Poison Use ability.
Maybe do one level of Sniper (for accuracy), two levels of Alchemist (for poison use and some magic, like true strike), and Zen Archer for most of your shooting ability.
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If the plan is to make a deepwood sniper Prestige Class, I'd go with using Pathfinder's existing feats to accomplish what's needed for the most part (granting free access to feats instead of coming up with a mechanic that works nearly exactly like the feat).
If instead we go for an archetype, I'd say that a Ranger would work best:
- give up favored enemy for limited-to-ranged sneak attack (so going up to +5d6 damage)
- add poison use instead of wild empathy
- drop Hunter's Bond, and instead grant greater access to ranged precision (Sniper's Accuracy ability, and allowing sneak attack from much further out, perhaps first range increment or further)
- remove some spells and replace them with True Strike and Magic Weapon (Greater)
- replace Quarry and Improved Quarry with increasing the critical multiplier on bows (to x4 and x5)
- change the Master Hunter ability to work on enemies sneak attacked instead of favored enemies
I think that would probably work very well as a Pathfinderization of the Deepwood Sniper.