DMs: Please critique this SA rule.

[ARandomGod]

So sneak attack doesn't make rogues as good as a fighter in melee; ...


Personally, I think nerfing SA like you're proposing makes combat rogues very unattractive (instead of only somewhat unattractive ). However, I could see in a game where the enemies typically have low ACs that the SA/PA or SA/CE combos could get somewhat crazy. I dunno, when I started running 3e I was dubious about the sneak attack rules but decided to try them out for a while by the book before I changed 'em. Never felt the need to change 'em after that. YMMV though.

Overall I agree with you there. Rogues are almost never better at combat than fighters. And the higher you level, the more often situations crop up where not only are they not as good as a fighter, but they become completely useless in combat.

 

[baeleg]

/short threadjack/ Nyaricus, what you're talking about is exactly what Iron Heroes does. It has a separate assassin class, which is the killer, and thief class, which is the swindler/mastermind. /end threadjack/

As for the topic, I used to think SA was easy to abuse, after watching my brother's high level rogue/fighter in 3.0. With 3.5, and me actually doing the math, I think it's fine. Yes, in certain situations a rogue can be brutal, but it really isn't as bad as it seems on the surface.

Oddly enough, I agree with most of the OP's reasoning behind why it shouldn't work when using PA, CE, TWF, etc. I just don't think it's a necessary change.

 

[ARandomGod]

/short threadjack/ Nyaricus, what you're talking about is exactly what Iron Heroes does. It has a separate assassin class, which is the killer, and thief class, which is the swindler/mastermind. /end threadjack/

As for the topic, I used to think SA was easy to abuse, after watching my brother's high level rogue/fighter in 3.0. With 3.5, and me actually doing the math, I think it's fine. Yes, in certain situations a rogue can be brutal, but it really isn't as bad as it seems on the surface.

Oddly enough, I agree with most of the OP's reasoning behind why it shouldn't work when using PA, CE, TWF, etc. I just don't think it's a necessary change.

I also gree with the base logic behind why it shouldn't work in those situations. I just also see the entire subject as a balance issue, and if you're going to take something away from a class, you have to give something back of equal or greater value...

 

[Baragos]

The rogue will never do as much damage as the fighter, cause as soon as he sneak attacks once the opponents will target him, and he will have (at 10th level) AC approx. five less than the fighter and 60% of the hp. In addition, to be an effective combatant he must take Weapon Finesse at 3rd level, two-weapon fighting at 6th, improved two-weapon at 9th.

The fighter will at this time have Greater Weapon Focus, Weapon Specialization, Improved Crit, and Greater Two-weapon fighting in addition to what the rogue has. So even if they are built on the same stats, the fighter will still get 2 additional attacks at a +2 (at least) to damage on each.

 

[Nyaricus]

/short threadjack/ Nyaricus, what you're talking about is exactly what Iron Heroes does. It has a separate assassin class, which is the killer, and thief class, which is the swindler/mastermind. /end threadjack/

thanks for the "heads-up" on that one; i went to buy it one day, but they didnt have any copies! yeesh! I really want to see what is in this book, and i continually seem to be told that what i am doing is already in the book (or a similar version ) again, thanks for the help; now comes the waiting for it to come in.

as for the original topic, ive said all i want too, and i am going to keep it in mind. thanks for the ideas. peace

 

[helium3]

Yes and No

Let me preface my response by first explaining that my main experience with 3.0/3.5 rogues was playing with and then DM'ing a player running a half-dragon/hafling rogue. This character originally entered the game with some weird matching short swords from a 3rd party splatbook. It was later determined (when I started DM'ing) that the matching short swords were in some sense broken, and they were nerfed down to the ancestral weapons from one of the WotC splatbooks. It should be noticed that the half dragon part of the character build gave it a very high strength and allowed the player to take and use the power attack feat. Also, the player was the type that was only really interested in being a damage monster but would never admit that if asked. Whenever the party was presented with a potential encounter that involved constructs or undead he would always argue that we should not engage because his character would be "worthless." What I noticed (with this kind of a character build being ran by this kind of a player) was that the character went through three distinct phases of ability.

Phase one was from probably level three to level 8. During this phase, the character was pretty balanced against the other players. He could only sneak attack while flanking or when under the influence of the occasional invisibility spell. His general method in combat was to tumble into flanking positions against opponents that he thought were less likely to target him (because they viewed the paladin or cleric as greater threats) or were less likely to be able to penetrate his higher than average armor class. So, while he was a death monster in the right situations, it was usually only against either peripheral foes or while tag teaming the BBEG. So, even with the munchkin swords, it wasn't so bad.

Phase two was from around level 9 through level 12. Several significant things happened during this period of time that converted the rogue from a balanced character to an unbalanced death monster that everyone sorta got sick of. Firstly, the character got enough levels under his belt to allow for the +6/+1 BAB. Then came improved two weapon fighting. Then came the realization that enough ranks in Use Magical Device allowed the rogue to cast spells from scrolls and wands. And then, finally, the player saved up all his treasure for a couple of game sessions and bought a wand of Improved Invisibility. This is what really made things out of control. Since we were at mid-levels, we weren't routinely going up against creatures that had innate abilities that negated the effects of improved invisibility. So, this character just cleaned house. Occasionally a spell caster would manage to cast invisibility purge, glitterdust or see invisibility but that was pretty rare. So, the rogue would typically wade into combat relatively undetected and whatever he targeted was usually dead by the next round.

Phase three (from level 13 on) was pretty amusing for me, as I was quite annoyed with this character and also back to the role of player (I had taken over running the game for a few months while the DM wrote his dissertation.) Basically, what happened was that more and more of the monsters we went up against, since they were at this point often outsiders, were simply able to see right through his improved invisibility. And even if they couldn't, he had a much harder time actually hitting them and penetrating their DR. Worst of all though was that the half-dragon part of his build that had helped him by augmenting his strength and AC suddenly started to hurt him by virtue of having less hit dice than a normal rogue of the same level. So, he started to fear wading into combat, because if he DID get attacked, he'd very likely die. At that point, he was pretty much relegated to lurking around while invisible and occasionally taking pot shots with his bow and complaining about how much his character now sucked.

So, while I sympathize with your concerns about uber rogue builds, from my experience it's just a sweet spot in the classes progression from 1 to 20 that can be exploited if the players knows how and wants to. If your character only thinks to make his rogue a death monster, he or she is going to hate being a rogue after about 12th level.

 

[Zaryus]

I agree with pretty much everything everyone said. But I also agree that sneak attack is already a situational ability. I'm a rogue player and in some campaigns I may have sneak attacked sucessfully 3 times for a moderatly good amount of damage. I would be lying to not say it had the potential to be "broken", but there are more broken powers. To keep it short for the lazy readers, leave the rogue as is.

 

[Lord Wyrm]

Having run yet another session with the all rogue party (actually starting to get old) I siced one moderately powerful undead on them and watched patiently as two rogues got thrashed in the first five rounds of combat before the "evil mastermind" rogue whipped out a wand of Grave Strike and spent his day bluffing the poor Vampire Spawn then casting Grave Strike and then tagging him for several hit points. The only reason the party made it out alive is because two of the rogues are the *undisputed* masters of UMD.

You want to want the SA monsters squirm fire a Vampire Monk at them, don't limit the attacks against other creatures.

On a side note wands apparently do 1d4 piercing with a x2 crit. It came up.

 

[Baragos]

On a side note wands apparently do 1d4 piercing with a x2 crit. It came up.

I guess Harry Potter got lucky against that Troll then

 

[Hawken]

I just also see the entire subject as a balance issue, and if you're going to take something away from a class, you have to give something back of equal or greater value...

I've been thinking about that too. I hate the word 'balance' when brought up in relation to game mechanics, but I also don't want to nerf something either.

Most of you have agreed, to a greater or lesser degree, with my reasons behind the SA rule I thought about. What do you think would be appropriate in recompense for implementing that rule for rogues?

I do not think allowing them to SA any monster is good because that weakens the monster while not balancing the rogue. So, it should be something that directly, not indirectly, affects the rogue and his SA.

I was thinking about maybe giving them the BAB progression of a fighter. The EQII RPG book had a lot of neat ideas, and this might open a can of wyrms here, but what about doing that for rogues? And in return, doing what EQII did for fighters and starting their BAB off at +3 at 1st level. Low level fighters would actually get some use out of power attack and would even be able to use two weapon fighting with as much skill as a 1st level rogue using a single weapon.

It's not my intention to go off on a tangent about fighters, but stick to rogues. Would a fighter's BAB progression be a good 'balance' for my rule on SA?