1 Sneak Attack per Round?

[CRGreathouse]

Re: Re: Re: Re: 1 Sneak Attack per Round?

Aggemam: Your calculations (in addition to requiring unlikely circumstances), are off.

1. You used the pre-errata mercurial greatsword; the errata'd version deals less damage.
2. How do you figure you crit 92% of the time? Even if your condition "without any special damage from sword abilities" is ignored and we give the character a keen mercurial greatsword and Improved Critical (mercurial greatsword), you crit less than 15% against the bats. You didn't specify an attack bonus, but I don't think you'll hit a flat-foot great wyrm (AC in the low 40s) on a natural 2. Assuming an attack bonus of +30, a great wyrm white dragon, Improved Critical, and no weapon abilities:
* Crit vs. bat 9.5%
* Crit vs. dragon 5%
3. Most DMs wouldn't allow this or the "bucket of snails".

 

[rankarrog]

Offtopic:
How does a rouge get 55d6 of damage/round?
A rouge gets 3 attacks/round maybe 4 with two weapon-fighting. This with a shortsword (and presuming that all attacks hit which is more than unlikely if you look at the CR20 nasties) he'll do around 44d6. Am I missing something?

 

[Storm Raven]

Offtopic:
How does a rouge get 55d6 of damage/round?
A rouge gets 3 attacks/round maybe 4 with two weapon-fighting. This with a shortsword (and presuming that all attacks hit which is more than unlikely if you look at the CR20 nasties) he'll do around 44d6. Am I missing something?

Use Improved Two Weapon Fighting to get one more attack.

 

[Victim]

Yes, the rogue can have powerful attacks, but, in many cases, those attacks will be at low numbers. A pure fighter type will likely have a second attack at a greater bonus than the rogue's first.

 

[Mal Malenkirk]

The enemy won't be flatfooted forever and that's the only chances the rogue has to do a significant amount of damage without exposing himself too much.

After that the rogue can flank. I don't know about you, but as far as I am concerned any intelligent NPC that is facing two (or more) opponents will always try to take out the rogue first. He is frailer yet do a disproportionate amount of damage when he hits.

So if a tough NPC fighter is being flanked by the PC fighter and the PC rogue, he concentrates all his attacks on the rogue. This kind of enemy behavior (which is perfectly fair, logical and tactically sound) tend to keep the rogue's sneak attack in check IMC. They do their best to have invisibility, or try to flank opponents that can be brought down within the next 2 round at most.

 

[Albereth]

During our game last night we ran into a room with an Ogre Magi and 2 Dire Wolves. Battle opens with Ogre Magi casting Cone of Cold. Everyone misses Reflex roll except for Mage (Improved Evasion - no damage) and my rogue (Evasion - No Damage). DWolves close in and hit and trip front line fighters. Ogre Magi gets taken down by Searing Light, Magic Missile and Maximized Magic Missile. My rogue then attempts to flank the dire wolves by tumbling through the space where one is standing. With a Tumble Skill of +13 she misses and gets AoO from the DW. He hits for large amount of damage and the improved trip kicks in taking me to the floor so I can not attack. Then he turns and bites and mauls me on the floor. In that one space of time I went from 54 hit points to 8 hit points. Fortunately, the paladin and fighter took out the 2 dire wolves before they could finish me off. My rogue is now 10th level and has not died yet but has been into the negatives a number of times.

All of this is just to show that Rogues are not necessarily as over powered as folks think. They can do nasty damage and with good die rolls can out damage fighters. So far my rogue has outscored the fighter in maximum damage done in one attack but that was by a big 2 points. I did 56 pts in one attack whereas the fighter has done 54. I managed to crit and roll lots of high numbers. Oh and I was using my +2 Rapier of Shocking Burst and he has a +2 Greatsword.


Albereth

 

[EOL]

NO!

For all of the reasons made above you should not limit rogues to one sneak attack per round, but if those don't convince you then here's one more:

There may be situations where the rogue does more damage in a single round then an equal level fighter, but that's okay because these situations will be incredibaly rare, when you add to late lower hit points and armor class I don't think there is really anything to sweat about.

 

[RedShirtNo5]

I'm playing a multiclassed rogue in an 8th level campaign that is actually testing out a 1 sneak attack/round house rule.

So far, I don't think it ruins the usefulness of the rogue in combat. On the other hand, I don't think the house rule is needed either.

I can echo Albereth's experiences. The fighters can pour out damage, and with one sneak attack per round I don't keep up. Even if I had full sneak attacks, my hitpoints are sufficiently lower than the fighters that entering combat by flanking is risky.

It works OK for us because 1) we encounter very few undead or constructs, so I am regularly able to use the sneak attack ability, and 2) nobody is too concerned about rule changes. If your campaign uses lots undead or constructs, I would say definitely do not house rule it.

An alternate rule you might consider is full sneak attack dice on the first hit, and one-half normal sneak attack dice on later hits.

-RedShirt

 

[Cloudgatherer]

I had a rogue in my game that gutted a higher level fighter thanks to some flanking and sneak attacks.

As per the discussion of "max damage", at 20th level, a rogue can do +10d6 sneak damage. Assuming the TWF feats, a 20th level rogue will have 5 attacks, for a potential of 50d6 sneak damage in addition to weapon damage and potential critiical hits.

Later!

 

[Legildur]

Speaking of TWF and sneak attack, my 6th halfling Rogue (Rogue 5 / Ranger 1) put his sneak attack to good use last night.

A Kua-Toa shaman had quaffed a potion of stoneskin (don't ask) and the dwarven fighter moved to engage him, while the rest engaged the vanilla Kua-Toa.

We realised pretty quick that he had damage reduction and needed some heavy hitting. Unfortunately, the warriors were busy and so my halfling tumbled into a flank position (we use an alternative Tumble rule that does not prevent AOOs).

Using 2 finessed daggers from a flank position, he was able to beat the Stoneskin most times (with 1d4+3d6+2 damage per strike [12 Str, 2x +1 daggers]) and cause some damage. It was a close run thing though as the shaman cast defensively three times and targeted the two of us with spells that required Will saves (halfling had a +2 will save and the dwarf +1), which we both somehow managed to make.