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.
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.
This build benefits greatly from both: doing multiple attacks for each action and having multiple actions per round.
That's why Fighters, Rangers and Bards 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:
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.
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.
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.
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 1d8Piercing 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.
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.
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.
This variation is an ultimate first turn burst build but it comes into play only at level 8 and above. Assassinate: Initiative + Assassinate: Ambush 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.
Levels 10 to 12 put into the Ranger 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 surprised enemies adds a lot of damage.
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 Rogue) 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.
Assassinate: Initiative 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 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.
Assassinate: Ambush makes a hit against any surprised 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 Assassinate: Initiative ability. Chance of landing a crit while having an Advantage is about 10%, so Assassinate: Ambush adds 90% on top. Spread over 3 turns it results in about 30% damage increase.
Hunter: an good alternative for the Ranger 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 Fighter.
Beast Master: overall a viable alternative for the Ranger 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 Fighter 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 MasterManoeuvers 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 Bard approach.
This variation brings a full caster in addition to getting 2 attacks (as a Ranger or a Fighter), especially - ability to utilise Concentration way better since Bards 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 Bard ends up not doing actual damage. Bard variation definitely trades some damage potential for support and utility.
Thief: an option for a Rogue 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 Rogue makes Sneak Attack quite powerful.
The downside is that Rogue 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 Fighter and instead of one Bonus action get 2 additional attacks per each Action.
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.
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.
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 Fighter and seems unreasonable to use as an average. Hence this guide goes with 2 attacks per Action as the assumption.
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.
