Heavy crossbow build

[Malapterus]

Does anyone know a good build using the heavy crossbow as a primary weapon? All I can find is 5E stuff.

My new campaign has a weapon with the same usage rules & I am wondering if someone could optimize on that.

[Elkad]

Nothing specific, but get a self-loading crossbow (AEG p116) and Rapid Reload, and use any archer build?

[Malapterus]

Nothing specific, but get a self-loading crossbow (AEG p116) and Rapid Reload, and use any archer build?

AEG is by and large not allowed due to being 3.0 and highly questionable in many ways

[Segev]

Does anyone know a good build using the heavy crossbow as a primary weapon? All I can find is 5E stuff.

My new campaign has a weapon with the same usage rules & I am wondering if someone could optimize on that.

The Heavy Crossbow doesn't have a lot going for it over the Light Crossbow: an average 1 more damage per hit, and greater range. In exchange, it's a lot more cumbersome to load and is very hard to get to a point of more than one attack per round.

So what you're looking for is a sniper build.

I actually find Wizard to be a good class for this. Putting yourself at extreme range means that you care a lot less about attack rate than oomph-per-hit. You can thus afford to cast true strike every other round in order to give yourself +20 to hit. At absolute worst, you put yourself at maximum range increment (1200 feet) and are negating the +20 with the -20 penalty for range. Put yourself closer, and you get more accurate, and are still pretty far from your target.

Use an unseen servant that you take a free action to hand the crossbow off to to reload each round. So your round progression is: R1) true strike, R2) fire heavy crossbow, hand off to unseen servant, R3) true strike while unseen servant reloads the heavy crossbow for you, accent loaded crossbow back, R4) fire heavy crossbow, hand off to unseen servant.

If you're not worried about true strike every round, you can fire every round using two heavy crossbows and an unseen servant to reload.

However, if you're not taking advantage of the range, you're probably better off with a light crossbow, since Rapid Reload and some other tricks can get it down to the fire rate of a bow, and if you're really willing to suck penalties to hit, you can even dual-wield and rapid shot at the same time. (-6/-8 total = -2 dual wielding -2 rapid shot -2 one-handing a light crossbow -2 for the off-hand.)

Using a heavy crossbow, you need also to maximize one-hit damage. I suggest poison as a low-level solution.

There might, if I'm not mixing up 5e, be a Crossbow Sniper feat that lets you do sneak attacks from outside one range increment (or maybe it's only within one range increment, but beyond 30 ft). If so, that would make Rogue a good choice to mix with your Wizard casting, since the Wizardry only needs first level spells to make it work out. Stealth and/or invisibility would be very useful for the sniper build, for perhaps obvious reasons. (Don't forget that there's a distance penalty to spot/search/perception checks that you can use to your advantage!)

You can get away without the unseen servant if you have a hireling, too, for the record. They're cheap even at first level; just keep them alive. They're basically a caddy who reloads the crossbow for you to keep you firing at maximum rate.

When you have money to spare and have higher BAB, quick draw + lots of heavy crossbows + one manservant per can keep you firing at max rate, but your mobility will be limited by keeping your blob of manservants nearby enough to hand you your crossbows. Arguably, Quick Draw is unnecessary since accepting an item is a free action, but whether you can "ready" it as part of that action is a question that is made a definite "yes" if you do have Quick Draw. (Having a swarm of unseen servants makes moving a LITTLE easier, since they're magical and can just follow you...but be wary of moving too fast and having them pop due to falling out of range. They need to stay WITH you.)

A fighterish or fighter/rogue build for this would probably do crossbow sniper, lots of hirelings, quick draw, rapid shot, and invest heavily in a number of heavy crossbows. You'd also want to focus on magic ammo rather than magic weapons, because you're using so many different crossbows each round that you'd have to triple to quintuple the cost of enchanting your crossbows, while you could just use the enchanted ammo in all of them. Leadership will get you plenty of Followers to do the reloading and playing caddy with the specialized magic ammo for you.

At this point, you probably want the largest magic carpet you can find, so all of you can stand together on it and one of your followers can "drive." This gives you mobility, keeps you together, and lets you maintain optimal range.

[Malapterus]

I have come to accept that sniper builds are a lost cause. You'll never be on a big enough map for it to matter and if you are you're going to ruin the game.

That said, maybe some mixture of sor/wiz and arcane archer could prove interesting, if arcane archers can use crossbows, which I am too lazy to look up.

I'm looking for something mundane, though, more like a Fighter build where the heavy crossbow is the star of the show.

Come to think of it, a composite heavy crossbow could be intetesting. As a standard action, you can load it and ratchet it back a number of notches equal to your str mod, and then you can use another standard action to ratchet it back that many more notches - to the limit of the weapon's rating, of course.

[Sto]

Come to think of it, a composite heavy crossbow could be intetesting. As a standard action, you can load it and ratchet it back a number of notches equal to your str mod, and then you can use another standard action to ratchet it back that many more notches - to the limit of the weapon's rating, of course.

You'd need to have a maximum amount of notches, or my rogue with a +1 str mod is going to get it to nigh infinite damage and look very silly at the same time. And then sneak attack.

[Segev]

I have come to accept that sniper builds are a lost cause. You'll never be on a big enough map for it to matter and if you are you're going to ruin the game.

That said, maybe some mixture of sor/wiz and arcane archer could prove interesting, if arcane archers can use crossbows, which I am too lazy to look up.

I'm looking for something mundane, though, more like a Fighter build where the heavy crossbow is the star of the show.

Come to think of it, a composite heavy crossbow could be intetesting. As a standard action, you can load it and ratchet it back a number of notches equal to your str mod, and then you can use another standard action to ratchet it back that many more notches - to the limit of the weapon's rating, of course.

There really isn't a reason to use a heavy crossbow over a light crossbow if you're not going to take advantage of the range. 1d10 vs 1d8 is an average +1 to damage, and you're going to need so many damage-bonus-add-ons to make the one shot of the heavy crossbow's single-shot nature worth it that the 1 damage difference won't matter.

You can half-way force a heavy crossbow to work with a high iterative, but you can do better with a light crossbow, and you only need the one weapon rather than a bunch.

There's just nothing that the heavy crossbow brings to the table over a light crossbow except half again the range.

[TotallyNotEvil]

A Great Crossbow might be worth it, it's a very nice weapon, stats-wise.

However, Quick-Loading was apparently reprinted in Magic of Faerun, so if AEEG is out, that could do it if you pair it with Rapid Reload.

[Thurbane]

The Crossbow Mastery feat is great for any crossbow build, if you can get it approved. It was originally printed by Paizo for 3.5.

[mabriss lethe]

I mean, in theory, you could glitch the Heavy Crossbow's rate of fire using Rapid Reload (Light Crossbow) and the Aptitude weapon ability.

[Goaty14]

There might, if I'm not mixing up 5e, be a Crossbow Sniper feat that lets you do sneak attacks from outside one range increment (or maybe it's only within one range increment, but beyond 30 ft). If so, that would make Rogue a good choice to mix with your Wizard casting, since the Wizardry only needs first level spells to make it work out. Stealth and/or invisibility would be very useful for the sniper build, for perhaps obvious reasons. (Don't forget that there's a distance penalty to spot/search/perception checks that you can use to your advantage!)

Crossbow Sniper increases the SA distance to 60ft, and adds 1/2 DEX to damage. A Gnome Crossbow Sight (A&EG) allows it within the first increment, but beyond 30 ft.

[ExLibrisMortis]

A Mind Mage with +1 quick-loading splitting force heavy crossbow with spell storing splintering bolts (Dragon #349) and Searing orb of fire can do some neat damage: creatures in a 30' cone take 15d6 fire damage (twice) and must make a Will save or be dazed (twice). That's per iterative, though you need to prepare all the bolts by hand, and you need to retrieve the bolts and give them to your Truenamer cohort to recycle the enchantment (or use an artificer cohort to make temporary spell-storing bolts).

[Malapterus]

A Mind Mage with +1 quick-loading splitting force heavy crossbow with spell storing splintering bolts (Dragon #349) and Searing orb of fire can do some neat damage: creatures in a 30' cone take 15d6 fire damage (twice) and must make a Will save or be dazed (twice). That's per iterative, though you need to prepare all the bolts by hand, and you need to retrieve the bolts and give them to your Truenamer cohort to recycle the enchantment (or use an artificer cohort to make temporary spell-storing bolts).

But is there a relevant advantage over doing this with a light crossbow?

[ExLibrisMortis]

But is there a relevant advantage over doing this with a light crossbow?

Uh, one point of damage? No, there isn't, really, and I'm having a hard time coming up with a reason to use a heavy crossbow. The only useful property it has is its damage die, which is mediocre. If you can use a great crossbow (RoS), which comes in at 2d8 (tied for second best after a high-level monk's unarmed strikes), you have more to work with. Taking advantage of a 2d8 base damage die means stacking size increases, but with greater mighty whallop out of the picture, that's not going to be easy. Maybe transplanting the enchantment on Hank's energy bow (which comes with a size increase) and treating the crossbow as a melee weapon (I know there's bayonets, but you'd need something blunt) would let you get a 12d8 great crossbow, against 8d6 for a light crossbow with the same buffs--the damage difference is 26 points per shot.

[Segev]

Uh, one point of damage? No, there isn't, really, and I'm having a hard time coming up with a reason to use a heavy crossbow. The only useful property it has is its damage die, which is mediocre. If you can use a great crossbow (RoS), which comes in at 2d8 (tied for second best after a high-level monk's unarmed strikes), you have more to work with. Taking advantage of a 2d8 base damage die means stacking size increases, but with greater mighty whallop out of the picture, that's not going to be easy. Maybe transplanting the enchantment on Hank's energy bow (which comes with a size increase) and treating the crossbow as a melee weapon (I know there's bayonets, but you'd need something blunt) would let you get a 12d8 great crossbow, against 8d6 for a light crossbow with the same buffs--the damage difference is 26 points per shot.

Yeah, unfortunately, the only really big advantage of the heavy crossbow over the light crossbow is range. And that's trumped by: spells with long range (400+ feet), the fact that encounters almost always happen within 30 feet (and certainly not far enough to make extreme range useful), and the fact that most things that stack damage don't cooperate well with extreme range.

The heavy crossbow is a poorly-designed weapon for D&D.

[ExLibrisMortis]

Defenders of the Faith has a bolt of battering (3157 gp), which can only be fired from a heavy crossbow and deals 3d6 damage on a hit (against living targets only, though). If you're allowed to scale that up to Colossal size, you'd (presumably, table only goes to 8d6) get 12d6, just under a colossal monk's unarmed strike. Now to find a cheap source of infinite 3k gp bolts...

[SLOTHRPG95]

Yeah, unfortunately, the only really big advantage of the heavy crossbow over the light crossbow is range. And that's trumped by: spells with long range (400+ feet), the fact that encounters almost always happen within 30 feet (and certainly not far enough to make extreme range useful), and the fact that most things that stack damage don't cooperate well with extreme range.

The heavy crossbow is a poorly-designed weapon for D&D.

I mean, on the one hand spells with Long range are way longer than what you need in most campaigns, or indeed what is practical to keep track of and/or succeed on Spot checks to notice what you need to destroy. On the other hand, even with Circle Magic boosting you CL to 40th and then doubling your range via metamagic, that's "only" about three-quarters of a mile, which for ship-to-ship combat might not be ridiculously long enough. If you're in that sort of edge case campaign, it's important to note that Heavy Crossbow plus Cragtop Archer shenanigans can have you setting ships on fire over a mile away with exploding bolts. But at that point, just play an RPG built around nautical adventure and ship-to-ship combat.

[Couatl]

I would actually go for assassin with craft feats. I did it once for one of my NPC. It tends to be more cool than useful, but I like it.

I would craft an item (either a custom wondrous item or add it as an enchantment to the crossbow) with Sniper's shot spell from Complete Adventurer. It is level 1 spell and even making it continuous will not cost much. And with that item (let's say it is a monocle or optics attached to the crossbow or a hat or whatever you like) you can make sneak attacks regardless of distance.

So, here is your Tower Assassin, killing victims on the city square 300+ feat away.

[Climowitz]

I had a build once. Focusing on crosabow and poison using a prestige from dark sun focused on poisoning. It would have craven crossbow sniper and a sorcerer level for easy level 1 magic

[Segev]

I would actually go for assassin with craft feats. I did it once for one of my NPC. It tends to be more cool than useful, but I like it.

I would craft an item (either a custom wondrous item or add it as an enchantment to the crossbow) with Sniper's shot spell from Complete Adventurer. It is level 1 spell and even making it continuous will not cost much. And with that item (let's say it is a monocle or optics attached to the crossbow or a hat or whatever you like) you can make sneak attacks regardless of distance.

So, here is your Tower Assassin, killing victims on the city square 300+ feat away.

If you can take the range penalties, the heavy crossbow can fire up to 1200 feet away without additional feats or magic extending its range. (That's 10 range increments, so -20 to hit; true strike exactly cancels this penalty with its bonus, and incidentally helps with any "concealment" that might arise from the target being in a crowd.) Sniper's shot sounds like an excellent way to approach this.

I had a build once. Focusing on crosabow and poison using a prestige from dark sun focused on poisoning. It would have craven crossbow sniper and a sorcerer level for easy level 1 magic

Nice. Was this a heavy or light crossbow, and if heavy, why that one?