A 1HD skeleton also has DR 5/bludgeoning. Just a note.
A club works just fine as well.
A 1HD skeleton also has DR 5/bludgeoning. Just a note.
So your answer is essentially "yeah he's as effective as a commoner."
A skeleton has DR 5/bludgeoning so your rogue wielding a rapier does 1 point of damage 16.6% of the rounds (half that actually, since he can miss the attack as well)
Sneak Attack is not the rogue only class feature. But it is the only one in combat, which is what this thread is about: "effect everything abilities"
I would highly advise you to go and study the game a bit if this is the conclusion that you came to.
I havent read this whole thread, just going to respond to OP.
Agreed on this one. The whole "everything effects everything" 4e'ism sounded so good on paper when we started playing, but it sort of lost its luster as play went on. To me, sometimes players SHOULD be at a disadvantage. Thats just part of the challenge of the game.
The rogue cant backstab that golem? Suck it up. As a DM I will indulge you to find creative solutions to get around this foe. But dont expect that your "stab you way out of this mess" approach is going to work every time.
I always make sure that when you have enemy specific capabilities (like turn undead, or backstab, or ranger favored enemies) that you will get a chance to use it and you will get a chance to steal the limelight, but its not going to happen every time.
There is always room for adjustment (like, for instance, making sure the rogue class is more than just a "stab-monkey") but I like that not every enemy can be combatted through.
Can't xp shidaku, but this is the truth. Being at a disadvantage in a combat is fine. Setting up encounters that are beyond the players' ability to fight through, and must be circumvented by other means, is fine.
Rogues had to deal with fights that were basically in the second category for them, where they couldn't hope to harm the enemy meaningfully, but everyone else was hacking away as normal. In 3rd it wasn't a rare thing, either. Elementals, constructs, undead, and plants were all blanket immune to sneak attack, and some of those categories could fill up substantial portions of an adventure.
Setting up an extremely unbalanced fight like this might have it's place, when used extremely sparingly and spread around the group. Superman had stories where his powers were gone and he had to find ways to be a hero without being a superhero (as a random but hopefully apt example), and when that happens once or so a campaign (inserted deliberately for a certain purpose) it can be interesting.
It shouldn't happen by accident every other fight.
And also: vampires? WTF. Vampires are all about stabbing them in the heart when they're not looking!