Guide:Sharpshooter
 | This is a user-operated guide, and follows different guidelines from the rest of the wiki. Ask the user before editing this page. Leave feedback on the Discussion page. |
Sharpshooter - a guide for a build that focuses on dealing 
Physical damage from a distance.
Overview
Core components for this build include:
- Any kind of
Hand Crossbows in each hand 
Sharpshooter feat
Sharpshooter provides additional damage for a penalty to accuracy. Attacking from the distance helps to mitigate the accuracy penalty (high ground, hiding) while Hand Crossbows allow using bonus action to make attacks. With the bonus damage from Sharpshooter this additional attack more than compensates the fact that Hand Crossbows have less basic damage compared to 
Heavy Crossbows.
This build does not require any specific Race or Class. Low mobility is also tolerated. Attacking from a distance allows to put less emphasis on the defence in this build.
As a result this build brings high damage while allowing a lot of options for utility and role-play.
Details
Having minimalistic core this build allows many approaches from the class perspective. The most notable options are:
Battle Master fighter - highest average damage, burst potential with 
Action Surge, utility with Manoeuvers.
Assassin rogue + 
Gloom Stalker ranger - incredible 1st turn burst damage with 
Assassinate: Ambush- Also a multiclass of 3-4 Rogue (Thief subclass), 8-9 Monk (Open Hand subclass) is very strong. Start as a Rogue, emphasise Dex/Con/Wis. The Rogue levels
- give two bonus actions, so as well as a main attack, each bonus action gives two attacks (flurry of blows) as long as you have a Ki point to spend.
Attack count
This build benefits greatly from both: doing multiple attacks for each action and having multiple actions per round.
That's why 
s, 
s and 
s are good class choices - all of them get an 
Extra Attack and can attack twice for the cost of one 
Action.
There are several ways to get multiple Actions for each turn of the battle with the most notable:
Hastened
Elixir of Bloodlust- Action Surge ( only)
This results in having, on average, 2-3 Actions per turn plus one 
Bonus action.
Ability Scores
Range weapons use 
Dexterity as the primary Ability Score so it should be maxed.
Secondary abilities are up to you. 
Constitution never hurts. For spell casting s might want to improve 
Wisdom while s - 
Charisma.
Races
This build does not rely on any particular Race.
Halfling is a good choice because of the Lucky. Their low movement speed is less relevant - as a range striker you don't need to move much around battlefield.
Drow with Superior Darkvision is nice in the darker settings.
Duergar also has Superior Darkvision and in addition brings 
Advantage against being 
Paralysed condition.
Note: sections below use numbers and precentages for various things. For an explanation of these numbers and percentages of specific builds see the Math section below.
Battle Master version
This version of the build performs great early and mid-game, while completely outperforming other options in the late game.
Action Surge and Manoeuvers provide burst, versatility and additional damage.
Build
Put all your levels into a .
Get your starting Dex to 16 (or 17 if your are going for a +1 from the Hag).
Get yourself 2 x Hand Crossbows.
Pick an 
Archery Fighting Style.
At level 3 take the 
Battle Master subclass.
Select any Manoeuvers you like. Promising options include:
Pick Sharpshooter as your level 4 
Feat and toggle the passive on.
As an extra fighter level 6 feat pick Ability Improvement to get Dexterity+2 and bring it to 18 or even 20 (depending on your game choices).
For the feats at levels 8 and 12, you can go with what you like. Some good options include:
- Ability Improvement to get your Dex to 20.
Alert to win initiative reliably.
Make sure to drink an 
Elixir of Bloodlust after each long rest.
Getting someone to cast 
Bless and/or Haste on you will be nice as well.
Enjoy an extremely high damage spread over multiple attacks, all from a relatively safe distance.
Mid-game numbers
Check assumptions in the Math section below.
Overall Battle Master brings about 50% damage increase on top of the core Sharpshooter build.
Archery provides a +2 bonus to 
Attack rolls you make with ranged Weapons - 10% damage increase.
4 x 
Superiority Dice provide 4 x 1d8
Piercing damage per short rest. This averages to 2 x 4.5Piercing damage per turn, almost 50% of an Attack - about 10% damage increase.
From an extra feat of Ability Improvement having Dexterity+2 will give +5% chance to hit and +1 damage (about +5% damage) - total of 10% damage increase.
For the turn where Action Surge is used, 2 additional Attacks will result in 40% damage increase. Per turn, for a battle, it brings around 20% damage increase.
Late-game numbers
At level 11 you are getting one more Extra Attack now making 3 Attacks for each Action.
Having on average 2.5 Actions per turn will result in 2.5 additional Attacks per turn - about 50% damage increase.
This brings damage of Battle Master version of Sharpshooter on next level, compared to all other version at level 11 and beyond.
Late Heavy Crossbow
The main argument for having Hand Crossbows in each hand is an extra attack on a Bonus action. With level 11, doing 3 Attacks on each Action, you will have on average about 9 Attacks per turn. This warrants switching to a Heavy Crossbow and using your Bonus action for non-attacking purposes.
Heavy Crossbows do, on average, 2 damage more compared to Hand Crossbows. For 9 Attacks this is additional 18 damage which comes close to doing an additional attack on a Bonus action with a Hand Crossbow setup.
For your Action Surge turn this is additional 24 damage which fully equalises with an additional Bonus action attack.
On top of this, Heavy Crossbow will give you a 
Brace (Ranged) ability.
Even more - now you have your Bonus action free. You can use it for repositioning, getting utility, etc. By this level you should have a lot of items granting you all sorts of additional abilities that require a Bonus action.
Assassin version
This variation is an ultimate first turn burst build but it comes into play only at level 8 and above.
+ 
provide a ton of damage potential but require Extra Attack from another martial class.
Classical martial pick is a 
Gloom Stalker ranger. An alternative with a Battle Master fighter is discussed a bit further below.
Build
Put first 5 levels into .
Get your starting Dex to 16 (or 17 if your are going for a +1 from the Hag).
Get yourself 2 x Hand Crossbows.
Pick any 
Favoured Enemy.
Select any 
Natural Explorer.
At level 2 pick an Archery Fighting Style.
At level 3 take the Gloom Stalker subclass.
At level 4 pick Sharpshooter as your Feat and toggle the passive on.
At level 6 subclass by selecting 
leaving at level 5.
At level 8 ( level 3) take the 
Assassin subclass.
At level 9 ( level 4) get another feat. You can select whatever you like. Some good options include:
- Ability Improvement to get your Dex to 20.
Levels 10 to 12 put into the getting one more feat.
Make sure to drink an Elixir of Bloodlust after each long rest.
Getting someone to cast Bless and/or Haste on you will be nice as well.
Enjoy an extremely high burst damage on your first turn which allows to wipe several enemies before they even have a chance to act.
Try to always 
surprise your enemies by attacking them from the outside of their cone of vision. Guaranteed crit on 
enemies adds a lot of damage.
Mid-game numbers
Check assumptions in the Math section below.
Overall Assassin brings about 73% damage increase on top of the core Sharpshooter build but most of this increase happens during the first turn.
Archery provides a +2 bonus to Attack rolls you make with ranged Weapons - 10% damage increase.
Sneak Attack (for a level 3 or 4 ) adds additional +2d6 (avg 7)Piercing damage to 1 attack per turn - about 7% damage increase.
From an extra feat of Ability Improvement having Dexterity+2 will give +5% chance to hit and +1 damage - total of 10% damage increase.
Dread Ambusher gives whole additional attack (+20% damage) and {{DamageText|+1d8 (avg 4.5)|Piercing} to this attack (+4.5% damage) for a total of about 24.5% damage increase but since it happens only once per battle - about 8% damage increase.
gives your Advantage against creatures that haven't taken a turn yet. With this build you are going to win initiative almost always, so you will have Advantage against everyone.
Advantage gives your roughly 50% of your turn in value but for File:Action Attack Ranged Icon.png range attacks it is quite easy to get Advantage in other ways, so this feature provides only about 50% of value, as another 50% of the time you will be able to get Advantage by other means - so only 25% of your turn in value. Spread over 3 turns it results in about 8% damage increase.
makes a hit against any enemy a guaranteed crit. By nature this can happen only during the first turn of the battle and you will be the first in initiative, hence having Advantage from the ability. Chance of landing a crit while having an Advantage is about 10%, so adds 90% on top. Spread over 3 turns it results in about 30% damage increase.
Honorable mentions
Hunter: an good alternative for the approach.
This version allows to specialise in killing huge number of low-health enemies with the 
Horde Breaker (Ranged) and 
Volley features.
Unfortunately this requires enemies to be positioned really tight and even than the damage increase is not that much compared to the 3 attacks per action of a .
Beast Master: overall a viable alternative for the approach.
This subclass does not bring improvements to the range combat per se. Still beasts are strong and overall 
Beast Master version will bring both firepower as well as survivability and flexibility to the party.
Champion: an alternative option for the approach.
Main benefit of this version is an Improved Critical Hit (equivalent to about 5% overall damage increase). For a ranged build a 
Champion is more interesting than for a melee one - there are a lot of ways to guarantee crits for melee strikers in bg3. Still Battle Master Manoeuvers provide a comparable damage increase together with a ton of utility and flexibility.
Do note that Champion subclass makes more sense for this build if you try to minimise amount of long & short rests.
College of Valour: an option for a approach.
This variation brings a full caster in addition to getting 2 attacks (as a or a ), especially - ability to utilise 
Concentration way better since s get a lot of great spells like 
Hold Person, 
Glyph of Warding, etc.
Main downside - 
Bardic Inspiration cannot be used on yourself. In the end while using all cool spells and abilities ends up not doing actual damage.
variation definitely trades some damage potential for support and utility.
Thief: an option for a approach (without multiclasses).
Main selling point of this variation is that 
Thiefs get an extra Bonus action which can be used to make yet another attack. In addition, investing all 12 levels into makes Sneak Attack quite powerful.
The downside is that does not get an Extra Attack. While improved Sneak Attack packs a lot of damage, Sneak Attack can be used only once per turn and cannot make up for missing Extra Attacks - doing just 3 Attacks with 3 Actions instead of 6 or 9 Attacks makes the total damage of this build variation plummet.
It's just much better to invest all levels into a and instead of one Bonus action get 2 additional attacks per each Action.
Assumptions for Math
To be able to compare build variations, some assumptions on the combat length, amount of actions per turn, etc. have to be made. Assumptions taken for this guide down were selected based on an empiric experience with the game.
Assumptions:
Combat length: 3 turns- Total Attacks per turn: 5
Total Damage per turn: 100- Actions per turn: 2
- Attacks per action: 2
- Attacks per bonus action: 1
- Damage per attack: 20
Critical multiplier: x2
Quick reference:
- Once-per-battle abilities contribute only 1/3 of their damage
- +1 action per turn = +40% to damage
- +1 attack per action = +40% to damage
- +1 damage per attack = +5% to damage
- +1% critical chance = +1% to damage
- +1% to accuracy = +1% to damage
- +1 Dexterity = +1 damage and +5% accuracy = +10% to damage
Combat length: 3 turns
Combat in BG3 lasts typically for 1-4 turns.
Sharpshooter build brings a lot of damage so if you have good buffing support and/or damage-focused party, your average combat length will be probably around 2 turns.
Still, to be on the safe side, 3 turns are assumed in this guide which will be more than enough for your to even solo kill most of encounters with this build.
Actions per turn: 2
While all characters have 1 Action per turn, 
Hastened, Elixir of Bloodlust and Action Surge can give up to 3 additional Actions.
Excluding Action Surge (as it's specific) we are left with 1-3 Actions per turn.
Since Elixir of Bloodlust has a condition for triggering and Hastened requires buffing, 3 Actions per turn will not be always possible.
Hence this guide goes with 2 Actions per turn.
Note that in reality, you can have 3 Actions per turn for a good percentage of your fights.
Attacks per Action: 2
All variations of the Sharpshooter build include a martial class that gets 
Extra Attack and can do 2 attacks per Action. Doing more than that is possible only for level 11 and seems unreasonable to use as an average. Hence this guide goes with 2 attacks per Action as the assumption.
Basic attack damage: 20
Hand Crossbows by themselves do 1d6Piercing damage, which averages at 3.5Piercing.
On top of that Dex adds 3-5 damage with an average of +4Piercing damage.
Weapon Enchantment typically adds +1Piercing damage.
Sharpshooter adds +10Piercing.
All together it totals to 18.5Piercing which is rounded to 20Piercing.
In reality you character can have multiple items adding even more damage on top of each hit so 20 damage per attack sounds like a reasonable average.