Sneak attacking undead and constructs seems wrong

Eh. Worrying about it isn’t worth the effort. Everything has a weak spot or moment.

[MENTION=177]Umbran[/MENTION]; makes a great point - even in cases of things like Elementals, a non magic weapon should have NO chance of damaging a wave of sentient water, and yet it does (albeit reduced damage); the metagame reason is that it’s needed for the class, but there are ways to flavor it as vulnerable to a specific moment or opportunity.

dnd4vr said:

So in our last session one of the players (fighter/rogue) was using sneak attack on undead and also a stone golem later on. Given how easy it is to use sneak attack, it bothered me about the idea of sneak attack on creatures that are animated and really don't have vitals or vulnerable spots.

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That's not necessarily true... Undead and constructs could have vulnerable locations... chinks in the armor or what not.

In 3e Sneak Attack did not apply to any undead, construct, elemental, ooze...there was a whole list.

They changed it in 5e. They changed it in Pathfinder too.

They explained the reason for the PF change: only those creatures that had a total lack of constant shape or material body remained immune to Sneak Attack. So oozes, ghosts, elementals and such are still immune to SA.

But creatures with a body that don't have the ability to morph shape at will-think the Terminator 2000's liquid metal form-actually can be messed up by being damaged. Vampires, golems and so on have a humanoid form that certainly would be inconvenienced by losing a leg or two! Or a head or an arm! Since the game doesn't have hit locations and amputations (remember RuneQuest?) but instead relies on an amorphous bag of hit points, then we represent that by being vulnerable to SA just like everyone else.

But oozes, elementals, ghosts etc don't have anything permanent to cut off! If you slice off a bit of ooze, it will just create another pseudopod to spoil your day!

That's the reasoning behind 5e's allowing SA to work against vampires and golems.

First, define what "damage" is. Once you realize that D&D doesn't define damage except as a game mechanic, you're free to fictionalize it however it works best. Rogues just do more of the undefined damage when they meet certain conditions, explainable in any number of ways. Not really that hard, unless you've decided to define "damage" in a way that limits your ability to fictionalize it. The solution here isn't to fix rogues doing sneak attack damage, but rather to realize the problem is with how you've defined damage.

For instance, rogues get sneak attack damage when they have advantage or when the target is adjacent to an ally. Why not have the extra damage come from the added skill/luck represented by advantage, or as the rogue maneuvering the enemy into their ally's attack? Or any number of other possibilities. Heck, put the burden on your players -- when the rogue lands an awesome sneak attack, ask the player of the rogue to narrate what happened.

Henry said:

[MENTION=177]Umbran[/MENTION]; makes a great point - even in cases of things like Elementals, a non magic weapon should have NO chance of damaging a wave of sentient water, and yet it does (albeit reduced damage); the metagame reason is that it’s needed for the class, but there are ways to flavor it as vulnerable to a specific moment or opportunity.

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It's a rabbit hole with a deep bottom once you start chasing it. Why does a Rogue's Sneak Attack not work but a Battlemaster's maneuvers do? Why do weapon attacks do variable damage against a creature with no vital points? Why do weapon attacks do damage at all against magically animated collections of inanimate matter?

As Ovinomancer reminds us, damage is a poorly defined abstraction. There's always been a tug of war between HP as Meat Points versus Luck Points. Introducing what are ultimately arbitrary restrictions about who's damage works when is a dangerous road. It's one thing when a creature has Fire Resistance to encourage the Wizard to pull out a different spell for once, a smart Wizard doesn't ever go all in on one element. But flat out discarding Sneak Attack is like telling the Fighter "No, I know you're 12th level, but you only get one attack a round against this monster."

D&D draws from its Sword & Sorcery roots the principle that swords work on everything, with the concession that sometimes a sword doesn't work as well as it should unless it's a magic sword. Fighters take the attitude of "Keep hitting it until it stops moving", while Rogues are specialized along the principle of "Stab you once where it really hurts". There's no good reason, either narratively or mechanically, to invalidate just one of those.

I think oozes are the one case where it might be reasonable to disallow sneak attack. I had some trouble coming up with an in-world justification for why a jelly could be SA'd.

3e's notion that skeletons and zombies don't have vulnerable spots was very silly.

Umbran said:

That depends on what you mean by "animated". If it is animated in the sense that something is magically activating the muscles, then sneak attack works just fine. If it is animated in the sense that some outside force is lifting the limbs by telekinesis, so that the muscle action doesn't matter, what you say makes sense...

But then why can't all undead levitate or fly? There'd be no reason they need to stand *on* something, like the ground.

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I think I saw someone on Reddit justify a "Skeleton Helicopter" using this kind of logic.

As for the thread topic, I have long sense adopted the idea: "Magic is the Physics of the D&D world." Once you accept the idea that the rocks, and trees, and air, and especially the people are made up of magic-stuff instead of atoms, you just go with the flow of abstractions from there. They aren't so much hacking the creature apart as they are hacking apart the magic that binds it.

Though, according to traditional folklore, Golems are defeated by changing or removing a word that is inscribed or placed upon their body. Which sounds a lot like hitting a weak spot for massive damage. So there is some precedent for such a thing.

Hit Points are abstract to begin with. There's no anatomy involved. Sneak Attack just represents the ability to land a telling blow, regardless of the opponent's type etc., when the opportunity arises.

dnd4vr said:

So in our last session one of the players (fighter/rogue) was using sneak attack on undead and also a stone golem later on. Given how easy it is to use sneak attack, it bothered me about the idea of sneak attack on creatures that are animated and really don't have vitals or vulnerable spots.

I've read some threads about this and people argue that undead still have muscles, ligaments, etc. which could be targeted, but since they are animated I can't agree with it. And a stone golem? What are you going to strike on that to warrant so much potential damage every round???

And I know sneak attack is a big part of the rogue's features, but it is hardly all and rogues can do a lot. It is like playing in a game with little to no undead, and a cleric has nothing to turn... the cleric still has a lot it can do.

I'm open to ideas, so for people who find this a non-issue, what is your logic?

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To me the logic of sneak dsmage Aldo extends into the area of critical hits and really into damage at all. What is "damage" that is being done by the dagger or arrow to the creature and how can there be or not be more and less damaging, vital or significant shots?

Last time I checked, stone statues and skeletal structures still have differentiation in points - still have joints and the like - still have places where a hit would "do more" damage than others.

So I dont see the objection there. Conceptually I as GM have no problem narratively describing a sneak or crit in a way that makes it seem like it did more - got you closer to "down."

This is especially true if you recall the original golem myth where a single letter of a word etched on that golem is the difference between life and death.

Then we come to the incorporeals, like specters, wraiths, will-o-wisps etc and again you start at "how do I describe damage"? For those I hang onto a couple different aspects...

1 - in 5e nearly every if not all invorporeals have the "takes damage if dnd up inside solid" clause which to me opens up the narrative of it draining and disrupting their essence the more solid matter is stuck inside them at points in time etc. So, I often describe them as pulsing in and out - more flickering like - which opens up timing as the "more damage" flavor - "when" you hit rather than a case of "where" you hit.

2 - I often describe some aspects of these undead spirits a still stuck in their past, as if the other side of the "veil" is re-enacting the horrific moments of their past, so for example, a critical hit may be described with a visual of another ancient blade striking at the same time in a sort of horrific augmented reality overlay - complete with noises of that other time and place.

To enhance this, these creatures may have descriptive elements such as seeping wounds, smouldering scars and all sorts of visual, audible and olfactory phenomenon embedded into their description from the first moment they are encountered. Or even before like say if the smell of burning flesh or infected wounds are a sigil or a trail they leave behind or a tell they are nearby.

So, to me, it's only if you, the GM, choose to define, depict and portray these magical entities as not having any "vital spots" by not giving them flavor and as some sort of vanilla shape without distinction that you run into a problem with critical hits or sneak etc.