Sub?-optimal Build Starters

[One Two Three Five]

Centralized build starters for some of the less-nwn-standard classes, since these got a lot of questions in the Q&A.

Going to start off with some questions about how best to build(level spread, etc):

True Flame Sorcerer?

Generally aren't that bad as long as you go into it knowing you're going to be a pure DPS who's utterly party reliant for anything. If you're fine with that, they can be a lot of fun.

Best way to build them is probably with minimal charisma, and as much con as you can fit. Shoot for EDR if you can get it, and you obviously want autoquicken 3. You'll want maximize and empower both as well, and silent spell might be fun too. Hellball and Greater Ruin both are obviously choices in epics. Harper Mage also makes a decent dip for a true flamer, as does ranger. but fighter I think is the easiest way to get discipline, EDR, and autoquicken three.

24 true flame/6 fighter?

Alternate by Commissar

High Shadowdancer?

Fairly solid too in PvE. I personally would go STR based if you're fine being bad in PvP, but you don't really need to worry about tanking when the shadow does so for you, so you should still be fine. Dex based plays pretty identically to a regular rogue, albiet needing slightly more setup time, which is to say it's kind of lackluster, really squishy, but can get the job done if you're clever.

You want to make sure your shadowdancer levels are a multiple of three, or shadowdancer levels + 5 are a multiple of three if you plan to take epic shadow lord, since that's when the shadow scales.

9 rogue/5 fighter/16 SD, or 16 rogue/5 fighter/9 shadowdancer?

Rangers?

Solid now. The class-specific tailoring item is, when you can acquire it, equal or better than adamantine fullplate with some dex investment, on top of being runic. Very useful. Bane of Enemies is absolutely worth shooting for, and Blade Thirst is very good with 21 levels. There's a few ways to build this, mostly dependent on what weapon you choose to use. Regardless of what you use, however, you want to make sure it's a slashing weapon to get access to blade thirst.

You can go for dual wielding handaxes/kukris/short swords. This offers the most versatility, since you can swap between double weapons, or weapon/shield. It's worth noting, however, that this ranger version is significantly more blade-thirst-intensive than the other versions. You'll probably want to get Ranger Level 3 slots enchanted on some of your gear, meaning you'll lose saves in all probability.

Single weapon: Battle axe, long sword, scimitar (avoid rapier, it's piercing only), bastard sword, and probably some others. Your AC is much more constant, and you can put the shield away when you want to be in stealth mode.

Double weapon: Double axe, double sword. Don't turn your nose up at it immediatly: These weapons give you seven attacks per round while hasted, and +2 AB. Very good for going Pufferfish to the walls for damage, though you obviously lose 8 AC.

Level split is either 21 ranger/6 fighter/3 bard or rogue, or 23 ranger/4 fighter/3 rogue or bard. The latter is better on the double weapon version where the lack of fighter AC bonus for shields is irrelevant.

You also can be an absolute madman and go 21 ranger/5 harper paragon/4 bard or rogue, if you want to play a build that needs good stats in everything but puts out hilarious damage without being a WM.

Wild Mage

Actually a direct upgrade to wizards. Part of this is their commands and surges being good, part of it is their downside (Surging randomly and having to be generalist) are A) Very managable and oversold as detrimental, and B) Not actually a downside, generalizing usually being a very bad idea.

26 or 27 wild mage/4 or 3 ranger or bard

Build them identical to a regular wizard.

Rogue
Kama/Q-staff by yellowcateyes

Various Arcane Archers?
Some AAs, by Kirito

Various Paladins?
The Smiterdin, by yellowcateyes

Various Blackguards?

I'll update this post with answers/other questions when they come up.

[gilescorey]

Purple Dragon Knights and Wild Mages are both extremely powerful. Wild Mages have no sort of penalty other than "your spells mess up sometimes, but it's not always bad."

PDKs are, well... basically, as it stands, an upgrade to almost any build with their almost lack of prerequisites and extremely broad benefits.

[One Two Three Five]

Thaaaat's true. I'll pop them out. Any suggestions on what to take their place?

[Hunter548]

True Flamers
Generally aren't that bad as long as you go into it knowing you're going to be a pure DPS who's utterly party reliant for anything. If you're fine with that, they can be a lot of fun.

Best way to build them is probably with minimal charisma, and as much con as you can fit. Shoot for EDR if you can get it, and you obviously want autoquicken 3. You'll want maximize and empower both as well, and silent spell might be fun too. Hellball and Greater Ruin both are obviously choices in epics. Harper Mage also makes a decent dip for a true flamer, as does ranger. but fighter I think is the easiest way to get discipline, EDR, and autoquicken three.

24 true flame/6 fighter?

Wild Mages
Actually a direct upgrade to wizards. Part of this is their commands and surges being good, part of it is their downside (Surging randomly and having to be generalist) are A) Very managable and oversold as detrimental, and B) Not actually a downside, generalizing usually being a very bad idea.

26 or 27 wild mage/4 or 3 ranger or bard

Build them identical to a regular wizard.

High Shadowdancer
Fairly solid too in PvE. I personally would go STR based if you're fine being bad in PvP, but you don't really need to worry about tanking when the shadow does so for you, so you should still be fine. Dex based plays pretty identically to a regular rogue, albiet needing slightly more setup time, which is to say it's kind of lackluster, really squishy, but can get the job done if you're clever.

You want to make sure your shadowdancer levels are a multiple of three, or shadowdancer levels + 5 are a multiple of three if you plan to take epic shadow lord, since that's when the shadow scales.

9 rogue/5 fighter/16 SD, or 16 rogue/5 fighter/9 shadowdancer?

Knight
Broken to hell and back, in either of the non-valiant subclasses. I'm not terribly inclined to actually help people build this until it's nerfed to a sensible level, since it's currently in the running for best class in the game, probably.

Rangers
Solid now. The class-specific tailoring item is, when you can acquire it, equal or better than adamantine fullplate with some dex investment, on top of being runic. Very useful. Bane of Enemies is absolutely worth shooting for, and Blade Thirst is very good with 21 levels. There's a few ways to build this, mostly dependent on what weapon you choose to use. Regardless of what you use, however, you want to make sure it's a slashing weapon to get access to blade thirst.

You can go for dual wielding handaxes/kukris/short swords. This offers the most versatility, since you can swap between double weapons, or weapon/shield. It's worth noting, however, that this ranger version is significantly more blade-thirst-intensive than the other versions. You'll probably want to get Ranger Level 3 slots enchanted on some of your gear, meaning you'll lose saves in all probability.

Single weapon: Battle axe, long sword, scimitar (avoid rapier, it's piercing only), bastard sword, and probably some others. Your AC is much more constant, and you can put the shield away when you want to be in stealth mode.

Double weapon: Double axe, double sword. Don't turn your nose up at it immediatly: These weapons give you seven attacks per round while hasted, and +2 AB. Very good for going Pufferfish to the walls for damage, though you obviously lose 8 AC.

Level split is either 21 ranger/6 fighter/3 bard or rogue, or 23 ranger/4 fighter/3 rogue or bard. The latter is better on the double weapon version where the lack of fighter AC bonus for shields is irrelevant.

You also can be an absolute madman and go 21 ranger/5 harper paragon/4 bard or rogue, if you want to play a build that needs good stats in everything but puts out hilarious damage without being a WM.

[One Two Three Five]

Outstanding. Mind if I stick these in the first post under spoilers?

[Hunter548]

Outstanding. Mind if I stick these in the first post under spoilers?

Feel free.

[One Two Three Five]

Man it'd be super if I could figure out how to make spoiler tags like, normal bbcode ones, and not the black bars. Ah well. Added! Anyone else wants to jump in, feel free.

[Seven Sons of Sin]

This is great! I love this. I can't really contribute, but I do have ideas of what appear to be reoccuring themes I've noticed -

- different ways to build Arcane Archer
- different ways to build paladins
- different ways to build Blackguards

A lot of the above range from "competitive" to less-so. I think they'd be good topics to cover also.

[yellowcateyes]

Here's an old classic that's fallen by the wayside as sub-optimal in the current meta. It may have renewed relevance for people making quarterstaff builds.

Dual Kama / Quarterstaff Rogue

The basic concept is that you combine the many attacks of dual-wielding a monk weapon with plentiful rogue levels. The high amounts of sneak dice allow you incredible amounts of burst damage on an opponent out of stealth, damage you can sustain with knockdowns and corner-stealthing. Drawbacks include low saving throws, weakness to anything crit-immune, and the fact that DR has a pronounced effect on you.

Bonus benefits include decent melee survivability via epic dodge and monk AC, Crippling Strike, and plentiful skills which you can use to spend on classic rogue skills. When you're not dishing out boatloads of damage, you can scout around for your party and pop open chests and locked doors.

The basic setup: 16 Rogue / 8 Fighter / 6 Monk. Focus on DEX. DEX/STR gear helps you during the leveling process. During epic levels, you'll want to replace STR with CON, saving throws and/or skills.

The monk levels allow you to receive bonus APR (attack-per-round) for using monk weapons. They also give you Improved Knockdown and Cleave for free. 6 Monk also nets you a +20% move speed bonus that stacks with haste.

The fighter levels give you weapon specialization feats, and the bonus feats needed to pick up all the dual-wielding feats and appropriate melee feats. Take at least 4 fighter levels before level 20 to have max APR. Post-epic fighter feats will let you get epic weapon specialization and more epic feats.

16 Rogue is enough to pick up both Epic Dodge and Crippling Strike, two feats that will be the bread and butter of your class. It also offers plentiful sneak dice to punish opponents with. Make sure to plan your starting attributes so that you qualify for E.Dodge's steep requirements.

Variant setups:
1) Use CoT instead of Fighter. You sacrifice weapon specialization in exchange for boosting your saving throws. This variant will actually let you build for decent saving throws, but will cost you a fair chunk of damage.
2) 19 Rogue / 5 Fighter / 6 Monk is also an option for more sneak dice and skill points.

Tips: Master corner-stealthing. Having bonus movement speed will help here. It will let you re-apply your sneak damage out of stealth against an enemy resistant to knockdown. Also make sure to pick up UMD as your survivability as a Rogue-heavy character will depend very much on it.

Parry is a good option on this build as it will let you fight defensively and do heavy damage against an enemy resistant to sneak attacks. You can also use Parry to tank and solo difficult melee-focused bosses. Parry has strong synergy your epic dodge.

Starting off with Rogue gives you more skill points to work with.

You can drink an Owl's Wisdom potion for extra AC, assuming you didn't use WIS as your dump stat.

If you're using a quarterstaff, remember that you currently cannot use monk 'Flurry of Blows' with it. The upside is that you'll have +2 AB from using a two-handed weapon, allowing you to land more hits.

[Baron Saturday]

High Shadowdancer
Fairly solid too in PvE. I personally would go STR based if you're fine being bad in PvP, but you don't really need to worry about tanking when the shadow does so for you, so you should still be fine. Dex based plays pretty identically to a regular rogue, albiet needing slightly more setup time, which is to say it's kind of lackluster, really squishy, but can get the job done if you're clever.

You want to make sure your shadowdancer levels are a multiple of three, or shadowdancer levels + 5 are a multiple of three if you plan to take epic shadow lord, since that's when the shadow scales.

9 rogue/5 fighter/16 SD, or 16 rogue/5 fighter/9 shadowdancer?

A note on Shadowdancer shadows: The BASIC shadow's level is SD+5, at least according to the wiki, so before the Epic Shadowlord feat, levels 1, 4, 7 and 10 are your friend. Taking Epic Shadowlord is another +5, so 14 and 17 will net you another 1d6 sneak attack.

[Commissar]

Personally, I'm a huge fan of CHA-based true flames. Something like a 27 TF/ 3 Paladin results in some exceptionally solid saves, in addition to the usual discipline dumping. You can do a similar thing with blackguard, with the investment of a feat and a few skillpoints - which you'll likely be able to spare in a TF. Your AC will be terrible but, hey, you're a true flame. You're going to be made of tissue paper anyway. The high saves and fear immunity go a little way towards offsetting your inability to use clarity, etc.

The real advantage over going CON based is the variety in the spells you can throw out. Unlimited, high DC Bigbys? Unlimited Thunderclaps? Yes please. A CON based true flamer is a tough, solid damage dealer - and that's about it. A CHA based one has some remarkably good (and reasonably reliable) crowd control to call on as well, and I've had an absolute ball playing one (admittedly, I'm only in the teens now, so I can't vouch as to whether that effectiveness hangs around into the epics). You won't be stomping through PvP anytime soon, but popping darkness and throwing out fireballs in the hope I've guessed position right is hands down the most fun I've had on a build.

Make sure to grab all your evocation spell foci, and quicken/maximise spell, and you'll usually be okay. Maximised firebrand (available from level 16) is a flat 90 damage every turn to just about everything you can see that fails its save (which, seeing as you're CHA-based, should be nearly everything).

Just be prepared to make spell components. Dear lord, the spell components.

As a sample build;

CHA-Based True Flame
Strengths: Outstanding damage against groups, excellent saves, good crowd control. Great for group dungeoning.
Weaknesses: No UMD (including Raise Dead scrolls), extremely vulnerable in melee, difficult to solo effectively, good saves are no substitute for rolling a 1.
Race: Human
Alignment: Lawful Good (for Paladin) or any Evil (for Blackguard)
Starting Class: Sorcerer (True Flame)
Stats:
STR: 13
DEX: 8
CON: 14 (16, with gift)
INT: 14
WIS: 8
CHA: 17 (19, with gift) -> 26 (Final)
Feats & Notes
1 - Sorcerer: Spell Focus (Evocation), Greater Spell Focus (Evocation)
2 - Sorcerer
3 - Sorcerer: Toughness
4 - Sorcerer
5 - Sorcerer
6 - Sorcerer: Maxmimise Spell
7 - Sorcerer
8 - Sorcerer: Quicken Spell
9 - Sorcerer
10 - Sorcerer
11 - Sorcerer
12 - Sorcerer:
If Blackguard: Power Attack
If Paladin: Choice.
13- Sorcerer
14- Sorcerer
15 - Sorcerer:
If Blackguard: Cleave
If Paladin: Choice.
16 - Sorcerer
17 - Sorcerer
18 - Sorc: Choice (Note, if Blackguard, raise Hide to 5 here.)
19 - Blackguard/Paladin: Discipline Dump (22 Ranks. Continue through to 24 at Level 21.)
20 - Blackguard/Paladin
21 - Blackguard/Paladin: Epic Spell Focus: Evocation
22 - Sorcerer
23 - Sorcerer
24 - Sorcerer: Epic Skill Focus: Discipline
26 - Sorcerer: Epic Spell: Greater Ruin
27 - Sorcerer: Autoquicken #1
29 - Sorcerer: Autoquicken #2
30 - Sorcerer: Autoquicken #3
Skills (Ranks, unmodified)
Concentration (33), Discipline (24), Heal (33), Hide (5) (If Blackguard), Spellcraft (30), 36 Choice.
Final Stats (Without gear or buffs.)
Health: 258
Saves (Fort/Dex/Will): 25/18/28

We take the dip levels early to ensure that we can take the fun sorc feats (epic spells, autoquicken) later, since they depend on having a decent spellcraft. If you liked, you could delay taking your paladin/blackguard dip until levels 22-24 to grab a little more discipline - I'm fond of upping those saves a little earlier, so I get some time to enjoy them.

I'm sure other folks could point out many, many flaws in it, but I've found it to be good fun. Remember. If you don't accidentally fireball your own side at least once a dungeon, you're clearly playing wrong.

[One Two Three Five]

Added notes/links to the op.
And questions on: Arcane Archer, paladin, Blackguard.

I think the 'normal' blackguard is something like 16 BG/10 fighter/4 rogue-or-bard, no?

[Kirito]

7 Ranger/19 Arcane archer/4 Fighter or
7 Ranger/11 Arcane archer/12 Fighter
Do well, depending on whether you want unparalleled bow mastery or some good combat too

Ranger/Arcane Archer/Rogue helps with getting some extra ac.

[yellowcateyes]

Paladin Smiter

While buffs to Paladin are being discussed, the class is currently in a sub-optimal position. The most potent paladin characters tend to be those that merely dip into the class. These include the Bardadin (Bard/Paladin/Fighter) and the 'Brycer' (Heavy Fighter/Paladin/Rogue). Information on those builds can be found in threads detailing more optimal setups.

One of the few Paladin-heavy builds that remain are the Smiter. This setup has the character going all-out into Charisma, making full use of Divine feats, Smites, and a potent Lay on Hands.

The Smiter has a checkered reputation. Its effectiveness tends to be binary - if you are up against an evil opponent, you will most likely win. If you are not, then you are a mediocre-to-adequate melee fighter at best. In PvE, smiter paladins can be underwhelming and tedious, with a lot of limited-duration and limited-use abilities combined with poor base AB and damage. Additionally, Smitadins, by simply existing, tend to invite a great amount of scrutiny and drama.

Here's how to make one.

Basic Setup: 15 Paladin / 10 CoT / 5 Rogue
15 Paladin: Because the Smiter is not a STR-focused build, AB becomes an issue. This means the paladin cannot neglect spellcasting as one of its primary AB-boosting spells is Divine Favor. The minimum caster level to get the most out of this spell is 15. Having 15 CL also allows you to always maintain a +5 GMW for yourself, alleviating your AB issues.
10 CoT: Being a smiter requires a lot of feats. You will want both Great Smite feats and the epic melee feats (Armor Skin, Greater Weapon Focus, etc.) that will allow you to hold your own in battle even against non-evil opponents. The key to getting all these feats are the bonus feats offered by CoT. Unlike Fighter levels, CoT stacks with Paladin levels for the purpose of calculating Smite Damage and Lay on Hands.
5 Rogue: Rogue is for needed skills such as Tumble and UMD. Paladins and CoTs are extremely tight on skill points, so you'll want to get as much out of your rogue levels as possible. Evasion is also an excellent pick-up for a high saving throw character.

Counter-intuitively, despite your weakness on AB, you will most likely want to get 4 rogue levels pre-epic. To maximize your skill points, you can start off with 3 rogue levels, get another one at 18 to bump up your Tumble and UMD during the leveling process, and then another at 27 to cap out your skills. The reasoning behind this is that the Smitadin is most effective with Lots of epic feats, and you will want as many of your CoT levels to occur during epic levels as possible. Your first CoT level will be at 20, and you will get your first CoT bonus feat at 21.

The stat spread is tight on this build. To qualify for Great Smite, you need 25+ Charisma. To get 25 CHA by level 24 at the latest, you will need to start with 17 CHA and get a CHA gift. One method of doing this is to get an cheap, low CON score (say, 13) and taking the Natural Leader background to bump your high-costing CHA score up by one.

You will also want the WIS necessary to cast Divine Favor and, likely, GMW. Get just enough INT for necessary skills. Unabashedly dump DEX and then use the remaining points to prop up your STR score. Your second stat gift will be in either STR or CON. Humans tend to be the best choice to make this tight balance work.

Necessary feats include Divine Might and Shield (and their prerequisites), Extra Smiting, and the usual melee feats like Blindfight, Armor Skin, Weapon Focus, and Epic Weapon Focus. Improved Critical on a high critical range weapon is absolutely essential due to how well crits multiply Smite damage. ESF Discipline is recommended as you will have mediocre STR. All free epic feats go into Great Smite. But don't give into the temptation to sacrifice bread & butter epic melee feats for more great smite.

Strategies:

Playing a smitadin is not as straightforward as smashing the smite button. Consider yourself to be an extremely short duration but high performance character.

Aside from long-lasting stat buffs, best obtained via wands, your key moves during a battle are:
1) Divine Shield if you need the AC
2) Divine Might just before you're going on the attack.
3) Divine Favor and (CoT's) Divine Wrath to increase AB to beyond capable levels.
4) Smite when you see a good opportunity.

Divine Might and Shield key off of your Turn Undeads and have a duration lengthened by your generous CHA bonus. You actually have a fair amount of longevity in regard to those two feats, so if you want to tank and whittle down an enemy, don't hesitate to pop Divine Shield and sit in Imp. Expertise until you see a good time to strike.

Divine Favor and Divine Wrath are your most finite resources, the latter only usable once/day. Only use them when you see an opportunity to deal heavy damage to an enemy. They are also necessary for you to have decent AB against non-evil opponents.

A key note here: Smite's bonus to your AB does not count to the +20 cap to attack bonus. You can stack it with Divine Favor/Wrath or even Truestrike potions.

Unless you're confident about one-shotting an enemy, Smite should not be your opening move. As before, you can buff up your AB and stack it on top of Smite's already potent attack bonus. Additionally, burst healing is plentiful on the server - you'll want to unleash your string of Smites when you're certain it will result in your opponent's demise. Whittling an enemy down first is an effective strategy, especially since they'll need to always avoid being heavily injured or risk being smote.

Contrary to expectations, you can do surprisingly well against non-evil enemies in the window in which all your divine buffs are active. Just remember that you have durations to juggle, finite spells and abilities, and that a prolonged battle is generally to your disadvantage.

Because the divine abilities are standard actions, it pays to have Haste up to fit two of them in a round. When caught by surprise, a Smiter paladin shouldn't hesitate to double-pot an invis/haste and buy himself time to get Divine Shield and other needed buffs up and running.

Additional Tips: Taunt is a paladin skill. You can use it to offset your poor base AB against tanky enemies.

The Smiter paladin tends to be a PvP focused setup. Your limited duration abilities are difficult to juggle during a lengthy dungeon. On the plus side, you can perform positively heroic slayings of epic evil bosses.

Concealment on an enemy risks wasted smites. Always carry around dusts of appearance.

Lay on Hands essentially gives you an extra life bar. You can also use it offensively to deal major damage against an undead enemy.

If you have an extra pre-epic feat (unlikely but possible), Craft Wand will net you oodles of money as only paladins can make and sell Bless Weapon wands.

Because your saving throws start out at stratospheric and go up from there (non-gear saving throws can easily hit 40+), your gear enchant options are more flexible than most melee characters. Consider plentiful skill bonuses or even triple stat.

[One Two Three Five]

Woof! That's a build and a half. I remember seeing someone get smote for 300+ back in the day. Linked!

How about incarnations of the Harper Scout class? It's only five levels, sure, but the prereqs are pretty steep so it's a bigger part of a build than just those levels, I think.

[Mortael]

I would love to see some Cleric builds, because I've never played one ^.^

[InTheFlesh]

Get me a Crossbow-heavy Fighter.

[MissEvelyn]

True Flamers
... You'll want maximize and empower both as well ...

Any reason why you'd take both as a True Flame?

[Hunter548]

True Flamers
... You'll want maximize and empower both as well ...

Any reason why you'd take both as a True Flame?

You want maximize for IGMS, and empower for Delayed Blast Fireball.

[Baron Saturday]

Get me a Crossbow-heavy Fighter.

I'm trying one of these, but it is VERY difficult. You essentially have to build towards specific gear.

First off, the wiki is wrong about the value of the masterly crossbows. Their value is actually somewhere over 15k, meaning you're stuck with a weak enchanted crossbow (or, if you're lucky, a crossbow drop) until level 10. Now, once you hit 13, you can get yourself a grand masterly crossbow, and things start to pick up a bit.

The best crossbow fighters are going to be drow, since it takes a drow smith/carpenter to make either the Wardbreaker heavy crossbow or the Hand Spinneret light crossbow, both of which require level 21.

If you're doing heavy crossbows, you probably want at least 16 strength, buffing to 20, to get the most out of the mighty property. You'll also probably want a gonne on standby, and high strength will help with that. If you're doing light crossbows, go shadowdancer, assassin, or blackguard, as sneak attack from rogue levels will not not stack with the Hand Spinneret's +5d6 sneak attack.

Aside from that, uh... miscellaneous tips:

• Mobility and called shot are your friends, early on. Your AC wil be... less than awesome, so being able to reduce an opponent's AB and get +4 dodge vs AoO is kinda essential.
• Early levels will be painful, you'll do basically no damage, so be prepared to act as a support character using called shot to debuff enemies for your party.
• Pick up Improved Critical ASAP, since a lot of your damage will be coming from the Massive Criticals bonus.
• Nobody makes bundles of crossbow ammo, but they do exist. You'll eventually want at least 8 carpentry, for arrow shafts, 20 forging for damask arrow heads, and 1 art crafting to make casting molds.
• The best bolts are the Vlos'Khaliiz, which require a drow ranger/blackguard/assassin to make.
• If you're gonna do blackguard/assassin, might as well take some herbalism skill to make poisons. The new ones last 10 minutes (has anyone tried putting them on a bundle and splitting the bundle?) and will supplement your debuffer status.
• See all those crafting skills that are super useful to the point of being essential? Take gift of craftsmanship.

[Rabbid]

Get me a Crossbow-heavy Fighter.

I'm trying one of these, but it is VERY difficult. You essentially have to build towards specific gear.

First off, the wiki is wrong about the value of the masterly crossbows. Their value is actually somewhere over 15k, meaning you're stuck with a weak enchanted crossbow (or, if you're lucky, a crossbow drop) until level 10. Now, once you hit 13, you can get yourself a grand masterly crossbow, and things start to pick up a bit.

The best crossbow fighters are going to be drow, since it takes a drow smith/carpenter to make either the Wardbreaker heavy crossbow or the Hand Spinneret light crossbow, both of which require level 21.

If you're doing heavy crossbows, you probably want at least 16 strength, buffing to 20, to get the most out of the mighty property. You'll also probably want a gonne on standby, and high strength will help with that. If you're doing light crossbows, go shadowdancer, assassin, or blackguard, as sneak attack from rogue levels will not not stack with the Hand Spinneret's +5d6 sneak attack.

Aside from that, uh... miscellaneous tips:

• Mobility and called shot are your friends, early on. Your AC wil be... less than awesome, so being able to reduce an opponent's AB and get +4 dodge vs AoO is kinda essential.
• Early levels will be painful, you'll do basically no damage, so be prepared to act as a support character using called shot to debuff enemies for your party.
• Pick up Improved Critical ASAP, since a lot of your damage will be coming from the Massive Criticals bonus.
• Nobody makes bundles of crossbow ammo, but they do exist. You'll eventually want at least 8 carpentry, for arrow shafts, 20 forging for damask arrow heads, and 1 art crafting to make casting molds.
• The best bolts are the Vlos'Khaliiz, which require a drow ranger/blackguard/assassin to make.
• If you're gonna do blackguard/assassin, might as well take some herbalism skill to make poisons. The new ones last 10 minutes (has anyone tried putting them on a bundle and splitting the bundle?) and will supplement your debuffer status.
• See all those crafting skills that are super useful to the point of being essential? Take gift of craftsmanship.

Also worth noting - if you can fit it with the Blackguard dip try aiming for some damage off of Divine Might.

Out of curiousity I toyed around with basically the anti-bryce build (23 fighter / 4 blackguard / 3 bard) with the light drow crossbow spinnaret. By no means perfect but the divine might dip does help with damage.

I would love to see some Cleric builds, because I've never played one ^.^

Depends on what type you want.

23 cleric / 4 fighter / 3 rogue(or bard for bard harps) is ye ol' battle cleric

You can also do 23 cleric / 4 paladin(blackguard) / 3 bard(rogue) for a charisma cleric if you want divine might/shield with Strength and/or War domain power buffing.

There's also a DEX Cleric/ranger/AA build but I don't have that on hand at the moment so someone else will have to step in for that one.

[WanderingPoet]

Rangers
Double weapon: Double axe, double sword. Don't turn your nose up at it immediatly: These weapons give you seven attacks per round while hasted, and +2 AB. Very good for going Pufferfish to the walls for damage, though you obviously lose 8 AC.

Out of curiosity, 8?

Shouldn't that be 5 AC lost? Towershield +3 would be 7 AC, but dual wielding on a ranger gives you 2AC after level 14 while dual wielding. Potentially toss in the shield spell, to drop the difference down to 1/2AC?

[One Two Three Five]

I don't think double weapons get the dual wield AC bonus.

[Jagel]

They don't. Which makes me sad.

They do get the +2 ab but it would hardly be OP to let them enable the whopping +2 AC as well since focusing on a double weapon costs you AB/dmg when switching to sword 'n board for more AC

[Baron Saturday]

Rangers
Double weapon: Double axe, double sword. Don't turn your nose up at it immediatly: These weapons give you seven attacks per round while hasted, and +2 AB. Very good for going Pufferfish to the walls for damage, though you obviously lose 8 AC.

Out of curiosity, 8?

Shouldn't that be 5 AC lost? Towershield +3 would be 7 AC, but dual wielding on a ranger gives you 2AC after level 14 while dual wielding. Potentially toss in the shield spell, to drop the difference down to 1/2AC?

I think Hunter was counting the +1 shield AC from fighter level 5, but that doesn't apply anymore - shield got moved to 10, fighters now get +1 armor AC at 5. Also, the spell Shield gives deflection AC, despite the name, so wouldn't close the gap any.