Rogue Sneak Attacks

[cignus_pfaccari]

Seriously, I wouldn't be concerned about the ranger/rogue. He'll crumple like a rag doll if someone gets a full attack on him. Strictly speaking, fighter/rogue would be more worrisome mechanically, with better HP, better AC, and feats out the wazoo. And even that isn't terribly bad. I'd be a bit more concerned about, say, a psychic warrior/warlock.

Brad

 

[Jubilee]

Gestalt changes alot of things, and I don't see a rogue/ranger combination as any more "scary" than, say, Paladin/Sorcerer, Cleric/Fighter, or any other combination of classes. Gestalt inherently changes the power levels, so you will need some time to learn how to alter the challenges.

Sneak attack is not in itself game breaking, and really in higher levels, a fighter or wizard is still going to dish out more damage - sneak attack depends on having someone to flank with, or some other way to make someone flat footed - and even if you get into the invisible blade and get your improved feint (which takes alot of feats anyway!) to feint as a free action, the foe is still only flat footed for your first attack. If you don't go for invisible blade, the best you get is a move-action feint, which means a single attack with a bucket of damage - a fighter with a full attack and power attack is going to probably do as much or more damage on average. Then there's the wizard with fireball and lightningbolt - he can kill multiple poeple, whereas your rogue is usually only killing one person at a time..

now, if you give the rogue a ring of improved invisibility, well, it's your own fault..

/ali

 

[Terwox]

You have four players and each of them is playing gestalt? If a ranger/rogue is scaring you, you might want to try running normal D&D by the rules for awhile. No offense!

If the party is ranger/rogue and soulknife/(something good) and paladin/bard and monk/bard and bard/bard, then you'd have a problem. If you've got ranger/rogue and soulknife/X and paladin/sorcerer and VoP monk/psion or whatnot, then you don't have any problems. It's not if somebody is playing a good character (ranger/rogue is good, but it's not crazy by any means) it's only bad if other people are not. If other characters aren't even gestalt at all, for instance, then it would be bad, bad, bad.

But yes. So, your characters made two characters who work together tactically to defeat challenges with sneak attacks. That's a good thing. You can still challenge them, but you can also let their strengths play too.

If you've got four players, I'd just run non-gestalt anyways. But that's me.

 

[Lord Wyrm]

Here is the link to Pun-Pun. Any judgements on the cheesiness of said build you can make on your own.

http://boards1.wizards.com/showthread.php?t=491801&page=1&pp=30

Oh, dear Lord. That's a vicious build, but I can stop it with one short sentence:
"Hand of Death from DR 20 Head of Pantheon, twice." Gotta nix the psicrystal/familiar while we are at it.

 

[Olgar Shiverstone]

Yeah, multiple sneak attacks on TWF-iterative attacks can be intimidating for the DM, especially when the hasted, high-level rogue lays down seven attacks in a round, but it isn't game breaking. Many of the secondary attacks won't hit, particularly if you run up against an enemy with a reasonable AC. Throw in the occasional immune-to-crit creature so the rogue doesn't get complacent and things will be fine. Doesn't have to be undead or constructs -- could just be a fighter in moderate fortification armor.

Keep an eye on secondary items, though. The ranger/rogue IMC just found a spectral dagger (Magic of Faerun). It's basically a permanent chill touch spell - which doesn't do a lot of damage, but does attack as a touch attack. And since you can sneak attack with a touch attack spell ... well, let's just say that the rogue is landing a lot more of those iterative off-hand dagger attacks than he used to. I'm not convinced it's game breaking -- yet.

 

[Li Shenron]

snip


Therein lies my problem. The PC in question is a gestalt rogue/ranger, and is pursuing the two-weapon fighting track. The campaign is set in Eberon, and the PC is a shifter. The player has come up with some interesting background, and the character is sound. It's just the sneak attack stuff that has me worried.

If you weren't worried about allowing a gestalt game, why should you worry about sneak attack?

Anyway, with 3/4 characters sneak attacking (IIRC that soulknives also have SA), I'd be more worried about what the group cannot do. Can they fight undead/elementals/warforged decently? If you're going to feature lots of those as enemies, the character's SA could be wasted.

 

[just__al]

Some DMs would simply throw a lot of critical-immune enemies like undead, plants and oozes at the character, but I'm not one of them. I would rather deal with the problem than the symptoms, and not allow such a specialized character. If you just tailor your monsters to thwart the PC, nobody is having fun- you can't use another creature without fear of it being rent apart in half a round, and the player will always feel frustrated because their abilities are useless.

You don't ALWAYS throw crit immune creatures at the rogues just like you don't ALWAYS throw spell resistant creatures at spell casters or red dragons at the dwarf with the flaming burst war axe. You just do it on occasion so that occasionally they have to go with plan B or plan C.

Of course you also should occassionally throw a white dragon at the dwarf with the flaming burst war axe...

 

[Syntallah]

You have four players and each of them is playing gestalt? If a ranger/rogue is scaring you, you might want to try running normal D&D by the rules for awhile. No offense!

snip

None taken.

I am not worried about the gestalt nature of the characters; I have run a gestalt campaign in the past. My concern is the game balance of the sneak attack affecting EACH attack in the sequence. I am worried about a situation where two PCs continually flank opponents, and the rogue gets to add some 35 pts of dmg on each of his 7 attacks. That's a whole bunch of damage... But, it would appear that most think sneak attack is not that game-breaking.

Thanks for all the input folks!!

 

[Rel]

None taken.

I am not worried about the gestalt nature of the characters; I have run a gestalt campaign in the past. My concern is the game balance of the sneak attack affecting EACH attack in the sequence. I am worried about a situation where two PCs continually flank opponents, and the rogue gets to add some 35 pts of dmg on each of his 7 attacks. That's a whole bunch of damage... But, it would appear that most think sneak attack is not that game-breaking.

Thanks for all the input folks!!

It sounds as though your fears have been eased somewhat but I'll add that I don't think you need to be too worried about the SA damage situation. As mentioned by many already, it will be a rare thing for all or even most of those attacks to land. A bit of tactical movement will force the Rogue to move at least 10 feet and that'll knock him down to a single attack. Having to work to have a decent-high AC will also take up a considerable chunk of Feats/Magic Items for this character if he wants to survive. And of course there is the instance where he occasionally has to fight Undead, Constructs (of which there are multitudes in Eberron), Oozes or Plants and the ability becomes completely useless.

This advice comes from somebody who is just about to finish up an Eberron campaign featuring more than one Rogue. But I've never run Gestalt either so take it with a grain of salt.

 

[Felix]

35 pts of dmg on each of his 7 attacks.

So this game is at 16+ level? Dude, there's going to be powerful things running about for a normal DnD campaign at 16+ level, let alone a gestalt game. I think you're looking at this character in a vaccum and not thinking about how this ability will likely play out on the whole. At that level fights become much more mobile. That means the rogue will have a much tougher time beginning the round next to his enemy, which means he'll have a tougher time full attacking.

He's also have to contend with creatures much larger than he is, and you can't SA the vitals you can't reach. Things will be flying about, teleporting, blinkning, blurred, concealed, gargantuan, and immune. The day he does get off 7 sneak attacks he should be congratulated.