sneak attack...

[samagee]

Sneak attack is not overpowered. If you care to spend the rest of the weekend reading why you can try to look up someold threads that discuss the issue in depth.


To summarize my position: 1) Sneak Attacks only happen under limited conditions so it is OK that they do more damage 2) Thief's are easy targets to kill so they take a greater risk getting into combat, thus their sneak attack is more rewarding.

Mostly the balance rests in point #2. A thief who wishes to stay alive will take advantage of a sneak attack when he wins Initative but will retreat soon after that. Averaged out over many combats Sneak Attack is not that bad. Espically when compared to two-handed power attack.

Later.

or another way of saying it would be: 'sneak attacks for thieves are balanced in this ruleset, which is more akin to a collectible card game or boardgame than a well-written role-playing game, because it is a throwback to the 70s' .


.... which is to say i'm not a big fan of the whole class system and a lot of the racial bonuses: 'everyone from zingara gets +x sneak attack, because zingarans are sneaky'

anyway, the reason i brought this up is because there's a recurring-villain type NPC in my campaign who is a Shemite assassin. So level 4 thief from shem, with rapid shot (we won't even think about other feats...).
okay, so if he hides (being a thief from shem, his hide bonus is 12...), he can get the drop on the party pretty easily and dish out two shots with an almost assured hit (+7 to hit, against flat-footed DC!). these two shots are going to each do average damage of 20.
this is one 4th level guy against four 2nd level guys. two of them are probably down before they can react! imagine if the level counts were even; say if he had 4 1st level henchmen...? total party kill. game over.

If someone got the jump on you and put a spike into the artery in just one of your legs, then followed up with the other spike coming up into your throat. You would be dead. The thief has a lot points in dex which allow for things like this. If you don't like it, then have your barbarians invest in feats that counter sneak attack and flanking. You could also try playing more D20 style games and get a grasp of the game concepts before getting pissy that your barbarian can get dropped. What are you going to do when a thief or sorcerer walks up and poisons you with purple lotus juice, and you are laying there at their mercy? I'm betting you are going to cry about poisons being over powered.

 

[FatPob]

Interesting read, not sure why anyone is bothered. So the thief may be considered ovcerpowered in an ambush/surprise situation, but from what I have seen, the game seeks players to multiclass.

 

[Netherek]

.... which is to say i'm not a big fan of the whole class system and a lot of the racial bonuses: 'everyone from zingara gets +x sneak attack, because zingarans are sneaky'

Zingarans don't get sneak attack because they're sneaky, but because they are a treacherous lot who'd just as likely kiss you as knife you in the back.

If a people are treacherous by culture, and have a habit of murdering a foe when his guard is down would warrant such a racial feature. Most of the racial features are really cultural in nature...

 

[rgrove0172]

I havent followed this thread too closely but in my opinion trying to equate the thief's sneak attack, and hense combat ability, to a warriors is silly. He's a thief! Hes not supposed to be as good in combat. He has other advantages and is a different type of character. Why compare them.

 

[Sutek]

I've been toying with ideas for how crits would deal additional damage not related to the base damage since, currently, you can't kill anything meaningful with a d4 weapon no matter how well you roll further making smaller weapons undesirable.

Ironically, maybe, we use Torn Asunder where crits with even lame weapons can matter, except, my feeling is that it mostly matters when screwing over PCs and has little impact to the antagonists.

For instance, you could say any crit deals 1d10+5 additional damage so that a d4 weapon has some hope of doing massive damage (with a strength bonus or whatever).

that is not a bad idea.

Except that a d4 weapon is factored in as a low-end damage weapon for a reason. It isn't supposed to dish out loads of damage unless it's used to Finesse/Sneak Attack. Then you're talking 2d4 (8damage max) plus STR mod plus Sneak Damage, where the lowest maximum damage there is 12pts (Pirates don't get Styles). That's 20pts without any STR mod on a Finessed Crit at the low end of the user spectrum. Granted, the minumum damage for that same situation with no STR mod to factor in is like...4pts (lol)...but the moral of that is "Don't use a dagger then, dude!!"

I still say that Sneak is ballanced just fine with 2HW/PA just fine.

Great Cleave is screwey and noone hardley ever bitches about that one...

 

[Jhil]

Sorry for the thread necromancy, but....

We've got a party that's 7th level, and let me tell you at that level thieves force death by massive damage rolls every time they hit, and a party that can't coordinate a flank shouldn't be in combat.

We ruled that fate points could be spent to "shrug off" a death by massive damage roll, and that "named" bad guys had fate points, so you couldn't necessarily one-shot them. This gave the thieves the ability to mow through anyone they could surprise, but let the big bads harder to kill. It works for us cinematically.

Have others worked with higher level thieves? When you're talking +5d8? What do you think about how it works? At low levels soldiers may be equivalent, but it doesn't stay that way.

With a normal weapon, their damage (a pair of twins) is 31 if they successfully sneak attack.

 

[Clovenhoof]

Haven't had a higher level Thief in one of our games yet, but you can simulate it.

The point is not to just look at the sneak dice and think "Wow, this guy just needs to flank and that opponent is history".

The Thief doesn't get much in the ways of mobility (can only take the normal feat) and has a terrible fort save.

Ach, I'll just quote myself from another thread:

[...] the Thief moves in on a vulnerable enemy, or feints to be able to Sneak (note that he can't move, feint and attack on the same turn), and may succeed to kill a single opponent with the one blow he has...

[...] if the Thief's fails to kill his target, he may try to move out and will draw an AoO, but if he holds his ground the enemy may Full Attack the Thief on his action, which will be very unwholesome for the Thief...
[...]
In other words, if the Thief tries to survive the rest of the round after his damage output, he will be very limited. A Level 15 Thief may do 1d10+8d8+Str in one blow, but having to pick his targets carefully means he'll also _get_ only this one blow. Note that he has to end up with not 5' but 10' of free space between him and the next active enemy if he doesn't want to get hammered by a Full Attack.

End quote
So yes, Thieves are Nukes, but they have to be very careful about when and where they try to apply that damage, or they may end up dead in the next round.

 

[treeplanter]

yeah sneak attack do lot of damage but thief are rather easy to kill. I don't agree flanking is automatic. If you are fighting ONE big badass, yeah you'll flank. However that do not mean you'll hit him (thief have the low BAB). Also he could have either uncanny dodge or ref. parry (Or be a undead mouahahahahah).

If you fight against lot of opponent, then sneak attack is close to useless.

Thief greatest asset are the 8 skills per level imo

 

[Clovenhoof]

An afterthought:
Thieves may be able to outshine the fighting classes kill-wise on lower mid-levels. Splitting up the progression into tiers of 4-5 levels or so:

very low levels: SA damage is not bad but usually not sufficient for MD. Opponents may have so few HD that they fall from one hit. Your biggest problem may be hitting and damaging your opponent at all (bear in mind you have to get at least 1 point of weapon damage through DR before SA can apply)

lower mid-levels (say, 5-8 ): SA damage beginning to get serious, first-strike hit chance improves, while fighting classes don't have the means yet to reliably inflict serious damage.

mid levels (9-14): SA-Thief will reliably nuke one opponent at a time. However, at the same time, the fighting classes are able to turn up their damage as well to trigger MD increasingly often, while not needing to be as paranoid about getting hit in return.

high levels (15+): you can move in, make a single attack and cause damage overkill on a single opponent, then move out again to safety. In the meantime, each of your fighting buddies may kill 2, 3, even up to 8 mobs in the same round because they can either afford to stay where they are and Full Attack, or even move in, Full Attack and move out with Greater Mobility.

I re-iterate, Thieves do lots of damage on solitary opponents when they get the chance but are totally glass-jawed. The fighting classes don't do as much damage on a single hit but that doesn't matter as long as they trigger MD. At the end of the day, fighting classes will have a higher kill score than the Thief.

The consequence of this is that, at least in my opinion, it's pointless to take more than 10 Thief levels even in full-monty campaigns. Nobody needs more than +5d8 SA, but the Thief can sorely use some fighting abilities from other classes.

 

[Jhil]

We're not finding the thieves are glass-jawed, a d8 versus a d10 is only giving a 1 hp per level difference. They don't wear the heavy armor, but they can still take a few hits, and that's all they usually have to. Fighter types intercept the low level masses, they gank the big guys.

I'm not suggesting as others have in this thread that they're unbalanced, but a focused high level thief is a boss npc killing machine. Even when fighters are delivering massive damage rolls, the DC of the check is related to damage, so the thieves are doing it much more reliably, and with much higher DCs. With tumble, they can get where they need to be in almost all fights.

What I am suggesting is that if you have mid to upper level encounters designed, you need to really work out as GM/players how massive damage impacts scenario design because it comes up for us a lot.

 

[treeplanter]

1hp per level + average dodge and parry + no medium or heavy armor + no shield, no diehard and/or uncanny dodge as a class feature and weak fortitude save.

All this added together make them really easy to kill compare to the 3 fierces and the soldier, and even pirate and noble.