Ammo is expensive, energy cells are prone to Rift-surge, and kinetic barriers or magical wards often shield targets. "Spray and pray" is a strategy for the wealthy or the desperate. The Sharpshooter is neither.
Sharpshooters are the "zero-waste" practitioners of violence. In the Inner Sphere, they are the rooftop Adjusters of the Commission, removing corporate rivals from three kilometers away with silent magnetic drivers. In the Frontier, they are the "Pattern-Readers" who sit motionless for days on jagged peaks, waiting for a Void-Beast to expose its single vulnerable glowing core. To a Sharpshooter, the shot isn't just an attack; it's a mathematical equation involving wind, gravity, Coriolis effect, and the unpredictable mana-currents of the Rift.
Culturally, Sharpshooters are viewed with a mix of awe and paranoia. They are the reason why high-value targets in the Ebon Syndicate never sit near windows and why Chronologist tuners wear displacement cloaks even inside their own sanctums. A Sharpshooter’s rifle is often their most prized possession, customized with "illegal" mods like Rift-phase scopes or outcome-dampening barrels.
Sharpshooter Feature
Source Player Core pg. 128
You can spot a target's weak points, letting you deal additional precision damage with most types of ranged weapons. You gain the Aim action.
Aim
(One Action)
Requirements: You're wielding a ranged weapon that doesn't have the area trait.
You take careful aim at a single creature that you’re aware of, designating it as your mark. Until the end of your turn, your ranged Strikes against your mark using the required ranged weapon deal an additional 1d4 precision damage and reduce the circumstance bonus to AC your mark gains from cover by 1. These benefits only apply if your mark is within your weapon’s first range increment. You can only have one mark at a time.
As your operative level increases, so does your ability to Aim. Increase the number of dice for the precision damage by one at 5th, 11th, and 17th levels. At 11th level, you reduce the circumstance bonus to AC your mark gains from cover by 2 rather than 1. At 17th level, you reduce the circumstance bonus to AC your mark gains from cover by 4 rather than 2.
Non-Combat Applications
Overwatch & Recon: A Sharpshooter’s scope is a powerful tool for information gathering. From a safe distance, an operative can read lips, identify VIPs, or spot traps on a facility's perimeter, feeding this data to their team via comms.
Signal Interdiction: By shooting out a specific comms dish, power coupling, or alarm relay from extreme range, a Sharpshooter can shape the battlefield before the fight even begins, isolating enemies without them knowing they are under attack.
Message Delivery: In the Silence of the Outer Sphere, where comms are jammed by static, Sharpshooters use tracer rounds or specific impact patterns to signal allies across vast canyons or vacuum gaps.
Societal Impact
Architecture of Paranoia: The existence of elite Sharpshooters has shaped the skyline of Inner Sphere megacities. "Smart-glass" that opaques instantly when targeted by laser designators is standard in corporate penthouses, and walkways are often enclosed in armored tubes.
The Optic Economy: High-quality lenses and stabilization gyros are currencies in their own right. A Sharpshooter might trade a "clean" assassination contract for a pre-Cataclysm targeting computer found in a shipwreck.
Legal Restrictions: In Celestial Accord space, possession of a "long-driver" weapon (anything with an effective range over 500 meters) without a military license is a capital offense, categorized alongside owning military-grade Rift drives.
Adventure Hooks
The Ghost of Tanago: A legendary assassin is picking off Chronologist tuners using a rifle that seems to fire through time (bullets impact seconds before the sound arrives). The party must countersnipe this "Ghost" during a Rift-storm that makes ballistics unpredictable.
The Million-Yom Shot: A wealthy eccentric in the Ebon Syndicate offers a massive bounty for anyone who can make a seemingly impossible shot: threading a bullet through the spinning fan blades of a reactor vent to hit a kill-switch, disabling a rival's factory.
The Rifle’s Memory: The party finds a damaged, sentient sniper rifle in a Frontier wreck. The AI in the scope is obsessed with "finishing the list"—three targets it failed to kill a century ago. It refuses to fire accurately at anything else until its "unfinished business" is resolved.
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