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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Tywyll" data-source="post: 1167726" data-attributes="member: 8360">I feel your painI completely agree with how powerful sneak attack is.  Sometimes (often in fact) I think its too powerful.  Meanwhile, my player's think its too weak.  Before altering the mechanic, you should perhaps look at what kind of encounters you throw at the party.  A few undead, elementals, and constructs will have the rogues on the ropes and (often) feeling helpless.  Throw other rogues at the group... a mixed party of fighters and rogues to use the same tactics against the PCs that they use on the NPCs. If you neuter the SA, at higher levels, a rogue doesn't have much to offer.  Sure he can blow through any trap built by man, but so can any spell the wiz or clr casts.  Without the SA being a fairly reliable way of boosting damage, the rogue class becomes less and less worthwhile at higher levels.Also, your idea would work if you used a Grim and Gritty system, or a Vitality/WP system.  However, with the standard abstract HP system, you run into just as many dangers.  Let me tell you, if you instituted something like what you are suggesting, you can expect to see all your rogue PCs carrying Scythes and other high multiplier weapons to compensate for the reduced damage output, and how silly will that look?Finally, why do you think pulling off sneak attacks repeatedly is 'against the spirit' of Sneak Attack?  Since Sneak Attack represents precision that can be achieved on a foe who's defenses are down, the fact that his being distracted by the fighter allows the rogue to slip a knife in his kidney seems about right to me.  Divorce what the ability does from its name (which, for the record, I think was a poor choice).Finally, you need to make certain you are using all the rules for tumble (make them have lots of negatives for fighting on slick, sharp terrain, or, better yet, use Monte Cook's contested tumble rules).  That will help prevent them from tumbling into Flanking positions, especially if that AoO is a Trip attack.  <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" /></blockquote>

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