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Message: <blockquote data-quote="DEFCON 1" data-source="post: 6039551" data-attributes="member: 7006">How about this for an idea?  Might be overpowered, but not sure.  It involves changing Sneak Attack to Waylay:When a Rogue makes a melee attack with Advantage against an opponent that is not currently engaged in melee with any of the rogue's allies, he can attempt to Waylay the opponent by spending EDice.  Roll all the expertise dice you spend, but add only the highest die result to the attack roll.  On a successful hit, the enemy makes a CON saving throw or falls Unconscious.Each opponent may only have one Waylay attempt made against them during combat.*****This gives you several things.  First, rogues don't impinge upon the damage totals of the fighter-- they bypass hit point damage altogether.  They basically get to cast the equivalent of a Sleep spell every couple rounds against various individual opponents.  But what this accomplishes is that Rogues get to set up a three round "killing blow" pattern via Waylay and Coup de Grace:  First round they Waylay and knock someone unconscious.  Second round they Coup de Grace and knock that unconscious enemy's hit points to 0.  Third round they Coup de Grace the 0 HP enemy and instantly kill him.Now ordinarily this would be very overpowered, but there are several different rules in the ability that help alleviate that.First, the enemy cannot be currently engaged in melee with the Rogue's allies.  It infers that enemies who are currently fighting in melee are "prepared" for all manner of physical attack and thus cannot be snuck up on and "knocked out" via a Waylay.  What this rule accomplishes is that it avoids the insta-kill scenario where a Rogue and two allies surround an enemy in melee-- the Rogue gets Advantage somehow, and then knocks an enemy out, while the two allies next to him do the two Coup de Graces-- all in a single round.  That's way too overpowered.  Thus, we force the Rogue to have to do this to currently unengaged enemies who are watching the battle from afar (your casters, your archers, your lurkers etc.) and who aren't expecting an attack.  Second, the Rogue has to accomplish the Waylay via a melee attack.  He can't stay back in the shadows hidden and knock out the enemy using a bow and arrow or darts or something silly like that.  It's required that he come out of stealth and Waylay the enemy in hand-to-hand-- thereby putting himself at risk should the Waylay attack fail.  Now granted, that attack will be made with Advantage, plus he is adding the highest EDie to his attack roll so odds-are he won't fail the attack-- but the potential is still there, along with the potential of the enemy also succeeding his CON save and not getting knocked out.  Clocking someone in the back of the head requires hand-to-hand and the risk of being out in the open should it fail.Third, each opponent can only be Waylaid once per battle because after it is attempted once, the enemy now expects it.  Which means you can't have a Rogue come out from hiding, miss his Waylay attack on the enemy caster, then go rushing back into hiding only to come back out the next round and try it again-- over and over throughout the fight until he succeeds.  You only get one shot against any individual enemy to try and take him out.>>Now there is definitely still some overpowered risk here, in that the potential does exist that a Rogue could Waylay someone outside of battle, and then two other allies within the melee could disengage from their current enemies and rush over to perform the two Coup de Graces.  That's where you'd need to playtest to see if that potential was great or kind of rare, or if something could be done to ameliorate that potential abuse.  But the thing I like about the idea is that it gives a Sneak Attack / Waylay a large potential result... while at the same time not impinging on the Fighter's ability to whittle down hit points via Deadly Strikes.  It also helps emphasize the Rogue's potential for sneakiness and backstabbing by incentivizing him to go into hiding, sneak around the battle, and try and take the folks out who are on the outside looking in.  Plus, the other gain of this Waylay attack is that it can be used by Rogues on their own to sneak up and take out guards and such-- outside of combat situations altogether .  Go into hiding, sneak up on a guard, Waylay him to knock him unconscious, then two Coup de Graces to take him out (if rogue so chooses).  It gives Rogues the ability to accomplish that trope of stealthy combat as well.Now admittedly this doesn't do a whole lot for the Rogue who actually wishes to be a melee combatant, so perhaps a couple melee-focused Rogue Schemes give them Deadly Strike like the fighter gets (or a less powerful version of Deadly Strike where maybe you only add the highest EDie roll to damage rather than all the EDice.)  But to emphasize sneaky combat... Waylay might accomplish it.</blockquote>

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