Arelith

I felt like pestering the build wizards again.

My rogue/blackguard is doing very well but with a couple friends looking to join Arelith I do need a side character. You guys shot down my shifter dreams, but I have another concept to run by you: a crossbowman.

I realize that there are some Arelith specific boons to the crossbow. Divine might adds some damage so this is definitely on my mind. I also see that there's an ashwood repeater crossbow which is supposed to grant additional attacks if you have the rapid shot and rapid reload feats, although my PGCC experience with this left me confused because clicking rapid shot led to a line of text which read something like "You cannot use that mode with your currently equipped weapon."

I really don't know how to approach the crossbow concept. Are they potentially good on Arelith or just a little less terrible? How would you build one?

I think rangers are a lot of fun, as are rogues. I'm willing to go divine champion, blackguard or possibly cleric if any of those are necessary. I'm pretty open to ideas at this point.

I'm also more or less thinking out loud and might go with a different concept entirely, so don't put excessive effort in responding.

The repeater crossbow is effectively "always on" for rapid shot as long as you have the feat and rapid reload so there is no need to activate the mode. You should see an extra attack in the combat log when you use it. That's why it has the built-in -3 for its property.

Divine might no longer applies

Any non-arcane Archer ranged builds would be good, still including divine dip classes, just don't bother with might

Edit: Still bother, it gets 1x instead of 1.5x...

xanrael wrote: Thu Apr 15, 2021 10:48 pm The repeater crossbow is effectively "always on" for rapid shot as long as you have the feat and rapid reload so there is no need to activate the mode. You should see an extra attack in the combat log when you use it. That's why it has the built-in -3 for its property.

Minus THREE?

I thought rapid shot was supposed to be minus two. So you take a penalty just for using the thing?

Yes, but the base is +4 instead of a longbow's +3 so it works out to be the same.

What you can do build wise is take something like rogue or fighter that gets a +1 to weapons at certain levels for +5 total and then have it pierce stoneskin. It is possible to do this with longbows as well with a higher investment in those classes or a different setup.

Also Divine Might still works for crossbows, you just don't get 1.5 bonus, instead the same bonus as if you were wielding a single weapon, the update text in question is:

Removed 1.5x divine might damage from crossbows to match other ranged weapons (This should have been done when it was removed from other ranged weapons but I was dumb and didn't at the time.)

27 healer 3 monk zen archer is probably the best crossbow build right now.

Thanks guys.

So the repeater crossbow does work as intended! I think I'll build a standard Archer type character and build a repeater xbow, maybe with a divine dip.

I use a Tribal Archer for my Derro crossbowan works great so far.

Archer3/TribalBarb24/Rogue3

Heavy Crossbows are slightly better then bows now actually (Repeater, Heavy Ashwood) if you have a high AB and the Crit frequency its really nice.

A thing to note is that a Heavy Crossbow CAN be used by small races, while bows cannot.

The only reason why Bows are so popular is because AAs work only with Bow. But for any other non AA build crossbows are better with arelith changes

Yes you CAN build an effective archer who is not an AA it's simply slightly harder and gotta break through the usual "go AA or go home" misconception.