Bolt Huge Damage

[Sean Maxhell]

I saw characters with less than 80hp hitting with a single crossbow bolt about 45 physical damage. Not critical.

How does it possible?
What feats?
What class?
An epic crossbow?
Epic bolts?

I can't explain it to me.

[TheTwiste11491]

High dex, fighter based with probably elemental archer and assassin. Though the most important thing is the Crossbow Sniper line of feats

[Rudolph]

There are several ways. A pure halfling fighter could have the following by lvl 9 (at 80 hp):
1d8 +4 EB Epic Crossbow
+1d6 bolts
+2 Weapon Specialization
+2 Ranged Mastery
+6 DEX
+2 DEX item
__
18-30
x2 Manyshot =36-60

This is why Crossbowyers make for the best low level grinders.

[Theodore01]

Yeah, these feats really should have a BAB requirement. Like BAB 6 for sniper and BAB 12+ for sniper master.
Currently a fighter can take sniper at lv1.

[KOPOJIbPAKOB]

If you see a crossbow user there is 99.999999% chance it's assasin. Assasin sneak dices are doubled on manyshot, "sneak attack" message doesn't pop up when you use manyshot. It means that basically a character with 8 assasin levels (can be reached on level 13, so 80 hp makes sense) would do 28 damage on average from death attack only, not talking about crossbow base and enhancement damage, crossbow sniper damage, bolts damage etc (they're all doubled on manyshot). I'd say 45 damage on average is not that big considering all this, heh.

[Sean Maxhell]

Thanks all for the explain.

[Truthiness]

If you see a crossbow user there is 99.999999% chance it's assasin.

Funnily enough, this isn't true at all. Sneak dice on crossbows isn't as good as other weapons (it does get the double sneak dice due to manyshot, though). Crossbows only get a single attack on the first flurry (2 if hasted), so only one or two attacks with sneak dice normally. Longbows can get up to 3 attacks on the first flurry by comparison (without using haste), making it far better for assassins. Crossbows tend to do better with non-sneak damage, ranger, fighter, etc, and I've seen just as many or more non-assassin crossbow builds as assassin ones.

As far as those damage numbers, what Rudolph said is right, you can see those damage numbers pretty early on with the right builds. They're easily some of the best low level characters, dwindling off at higher levels when people get more attacks per round.