Sneak attacking undead and constructs seems wrong

Azzy said:

There was the whole dividing XP between classes thing that meant that multiclass characters advanved real slooow.

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As [MENTION=907]Staffan[/MENTION] said, you were generally only a level behind, and, depending on what classes you had, you might not even be that. IIRC, the XP for a 10th level fighter made me something like a F8/MU9/Thief10. Hrm, give up two levels of fighter for 19 levels in other classes? Yeah, not really a trade off.

Funnily enough though, we always played that MU could never use armor. So that fighter/MU was still unarmored. At least, that's how I remember us playing. Maybe that was a 2e thing though? It's been FAR too long since I played 1e.

Hussar said:

As [MENTION=907]Staffan[/MENTION] said, you were generally only a level behind, and, depending on what classes you had, you might not even be that. IIRC, the XP for a 10th level fighter made me something like a F8/MU9/Thief10. Hrm, give up two levels of fighter for 19 levels in other classes? Yeah, not really a trade off.

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Heh, I guess I'm going on gut reactions from (way) back in the day.

Funnily enough though, we always played that MU could never use armor. So that fighter/MU was still unarmored. At least, that's how I remember us playing. Maybe that was a 2e thing though? It's been FAR too long since I played 1e.

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That's how we played it, too.

ParanoydStyle said:

But here's an interesting question. A Paladin, at full hp (100) gets hit with an attack that does 27 hp. By Gygax's reasoning, that's not getting into those "last few hit points" that directly reflect physical health. But would you ever narrate/describe that to the player as "the attack just barely misses you?". No, even though that's a correct use of the "hit points" concept, it would confuse the player with the attack not having hit their ARMOR CLASS. But would you ever even narrate/describe the same hit as leaving just a scratch or a bruise?

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Uh, yes?

Any physical structure has mechanical weak points, whether it's a building or a body. Breaking the buttress that holds up a wall, or the pillar or load-bearing wall that holds up the ceiling, is "sneak attacking" a building.

Iron golems and zombies still have knees, and if you break the knee it will go down; it isn't necessarily striking vital organs. I don't see any problem with sneak attacks on undead and constructs. It was only in 3rd Edition that that idea was introduced. For over 20 years before that Thieves could Backstab both without restriction.

dnd4vr said:

Cool. Thanks for the response. There are other things that we feel aren't quite right, either, such as rogue and clerics even only getting 1 attack. While I don't think they should have Extra Attack at level 5 or 6, giving it to them at 10th to 12th wouldn't hurt things much IMO. Most of the stuff is okay or a minor fix. Knowing now more about sneak attack, assassinate, and how we've been doing some things wrong will help.

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The assassin deals a lot of damage but only if the enemy is surprised and for one round, that's what the subclass does. Beyond that the damage for rogues is good but not that good, for example by lvl 20 we are talking about 12d6+5=47 average damage for the rogue with two shortswords vs 8d6+20=48 damage for the fighter with a greatsword. The fighter can deal more damage thanks to other features like combat maneuvers or improved criticals, fighting style and action surge. One note, the original balance could change a lot with feats and multiclassing.

As you see Rogues only have one attack but the damage is practically the same as the fighter, clerics with divine strike end with +2d8, that's like one extra one handed weapon attack. For example Paladins get up to 2d8 at level 11, that's one extra one handed weapon attack (at lvl 11 the fighter has 3). Pure mechanical differences, the rogue could gain attacks as the fighter instead of sneak attack, the cleric an extra one and the paladin another one at lvl 11, or the fighter could get d8 for his 2 attacks, or all could have something like sneak and only one attack.

My advice is to think of it as an abstraction and avoid most changes, not worth it. In this case with sneak attack against contructs or undead the rulebooks's explanation is that what matters is the distraction, but you can explain it how you want, personally if players add dexterity to weapon attacks I don't see why sneak could not also have the same reasoning behind it.

Aaron L said:

I don't see any problem with sneak attacks on undead and constructs. It was only in 3rd Edition that that idea was introduced. For over 20 years before that Thieves could Backstab both without restriction.

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I can't speak for 1E, or anything earlier than that, but 2E had pretty explicit restrictions in place:

Backstabbing does have limitations. First, the damage multiplier applies only to the first attack made by the thief, even if multiple attacks are possible. Once a blow is struck,the initial surprise effect is lost. Second, the thief cannot use it on every creature. The victim must be generally humanoid. Part of the skill comes from knowing just where to
strike. A thief could backstab an ogre, but he wouldn't be able to do the same to a beholder. The victim must also have a definable back (which leaves out most slimes, jellies, oozes, and the like). Finally, the thief has to be able to reach a significant target area. To backstab a giant, the thief would have to be standing on a ledge or window balcony. Backstabbing him in the ankle just isn't going to be as effective.

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At least as my DM interpreted it, that removed golems and undead from the equation, since they lacked significant target areas.

A knee isn't all that much more vital than an ankle, in the context of stabbing an unaware humanoid in the back. Neither location is anything like a vital organ.

Sorry for the latest in replying but it has been a busy day.

To respond in summary, the characters are:

Half-Orc Rogue/Fighter 5/5
Dragonborn Fighter/Barbarian 5/5
Dragonborn Sorcerer/Druid 5/5
High Elf Rogue/Cleric/Wizard 5/5/5 (barely made 5th in each, the others are half-way or better towards 6th in each already)
and a Tiefling Barbarian/Monk 5/5 (absent from session)

Yep, it is something the DM wanted to do. We are planing to make it well over 500,000 XP, and with the level cap at 20, he wanted to implement the old-school multiclassing system. While it seems OP, it really isn't too bad. We have a lot more options, but we're still limited to how many actions we can take and because the XP is split, generally have less HP and lower level abilities. Now, this is also because he runs a HARD game LOL!

For instance, in our session yesterday (minus the Tiefling, that player was absent and the character was otherwise engaged), we freed an archmage (little did we know at the time he was chaotic evil!!!) who we defeated (he teleported before dying), but my high elf died in the battle. Later on, the sorcerer/druid unleashed a barded devil while alone and died fighting that before the fighter/barbarian could save him (he killed the devil).

So, the remaining half-orc and dragonborn (already intending to see the Guardian Naga to raise the high-elf), left with the dead sorc/druid as well, took their retainers (4 guards and 1 orc, all in heavy armor), across the river to seek the naga. They were attacked by three green hags, who nearly toppled the boat, killing all the retainers and nearly drowning the half-orc in the process. The others killed one of the hags, and the others returned to the depths of the river with their five kills.

Since this was the day after the archmage fight, once on the other side and searching for the naga, the archmage returned--this time ready for battle. His Time Stop gave him five rounds (3 cones of cold and 2 lightning bolts). The fighter/barb was only 4 points from instant death, so unconscious and dying. The half-orc also went down, using relentless endurance (?) to have 1 HP. He made his deception check, fooling the archmage into believing he was dead as well. The DM rolled and the archmage proceeded to obliterate the fighter/barb with several rounds of magic missiles, laughing insanely the whole time.

The half-orc managed to sneak away, crawling through the high grass. Finally, when the archmage discovered this (the DM rolled his reaction), and he decided to spare him in return for releasing him from being stone. He told him to run, run little piggy, for the next time he would utterly destroy him as well! After the archmage left, the half-orc (who is LG) took the other two dead and eventually found the naga. The naga raised them, but there was nothing to do for the Fighter/Bard (the DM allowed the player to try by making some Con saves, but he failed...). The naga told the three survivors about a Druid to the north, who he believes might be able to reincarnate the Fighter/Bard if they can get there in time.

So, that was where we left off. Our next move is to warn the keep and the townspeople and flee. Now that the archmage is recovered, we can't beat him at this point. Hopefully we can reincarnate the fighter/barb, we'll see...

(Sorry for people who don't care for the tangent LOL )

At any rate, the real point to my starting all this was the issue that we were doing the assassinate wrong. The DM was allowing it in every encounter as long as the half-orc went first. Now that we are aware of the surprise condition, it isn't nearly as bad. He is still tough and deals good damage, but much closer to the other battlers.

Just going to say that if you alter a fundamental rule of the game, like multiclassing, you can't complain when it does weird things.

Ovinomancer said:

Just going to say that if you alter a fundamental rule of the game, like multiclassing, you can't complain when it does weird things.

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In this case one has nothing to do with the other. The same would be true if the character level was 10 and the character was a 5/5 rogue/fighter, in fact, he would be even worse possibly since by then he would have another feat or ASI with the standard multiclassing rules.

This issue ended up being our DM's over allowance of assassinate. Without the auto-crit every combat, it isn't as bad, although the build is still a decent one for dpr.

dnd4vr said:

In this case one has nothing to do with the other. The same would be true if the character level was 10 and the character was a 5/5 rogue/fighter, in fact, he would be even worse possibly since by then he would have another feat or ASI with the standard multiclassing rules.

This issue ended up being our DM's over allowance of assassinate. Without the auto-crit every combat, it isn't as bad, although the build is still a decent one for dpr.

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Sure, but it would be compared to a 10th level fighter in output, and that's a very different comparison. You wanted to know why the rogue did so much damage? It's a 10th level character.

What you're going to see, very soon if not already, is that the basic math of the game breaks down when you're freeing stacking 20 levels (or 30, in your case) of character abilities and synergies at "10th" level. You've made a change that undermines a core mechanic of the game -- it will break. Maybe you'll do fine with it, but your rogue is going to continue being a combat beast because they'll reliably get the 'one big' rogue hit and follow through with full fighter damage output. At 11th level, the assassin rogue will be making 4 attacks a round for 7d6 (sneak)+4d6 (4 weapon)+20 (assuming 20 dex) = 59 damage average. The regular fighter/barbarian will be doing 3d8 (longsword)+15(stat)+12(raging) = 41. It's not really close at all, because you've broken a core mechanic of the game. In the assassing crits (and I'm assuming they've gone champion?) or gets an assassinate round? Phish. In martial classes, being able to stack that free sneak attack hit onto a fighter attack routine is tremendous. There isn't an answer for it in the other martial abilities (at least with the choices you've made, a fighter/barb great weapon fighter with the right feats and your multiclassing rule would dish serious damage and almost never miss).

Your multiclassing rule will supercharge your martials and not do much at all for your casters. The reason is that martial abilities tend to stack and not consume more of the action economy while the casting classes can still only cast 1 spell a round (mostly, there's some sorcerer cheese you can pair with other classes to do some very interesting things, sorc/warlock under your multiclassing is a beast).

Heck, just spitballing, but a paladin/warlock/barbarian would be ungodly. Like, badly so. Greatweapon raging smites with GWM/GWF, PAM, Reckless Attack, and warlock slots while wearing platemail and taking 1/2 damage from everything? Maybe warlock isn't the right call, though -- sorcerer would be strong as well for the slots and the ability to close out a super nasty attack routine with a quickened twinned debuff/buff or a quickened fireball. Yeah, your M/C rule is straight out broken.