Skirmish.. what the?

[Unkabear]

If skirmish was not half the damage of sneak attack, I'd be concerned. Considering the scout suffers severe Feat hunger, IMS makes me worry FAR less than a rogue with the same feat and a reliable source of invisability. ANd what book was IMS in?

It is in EPH and the SRD under the Psionic feats. It is a general feat listed there along with one of my other favorite rogue feats

DEADLY PRECISION [GENERAL]

You empty your mind of all distracting emotion, becoming an instrument of deadly precision.

Prerequisite: Dex 15, base attack bonus +5.

Benefit: You have deadly accuracy with your sneak attacks. You can reroll any result of 1 on your sneak attack’s extra damage dice. You must keep the result of the reroll, even if it is another 1.

 

[shilsen]

But thanks for replying. I disagree with some of your further assumptions, but that's cool. Disagreement is no big deal.

Cheers.

That, I absolutely agree with.

And thanks for taking it in the right spirit. I'm really not trying to do anything besides throw a particular perspective out there. And I'm always highly amused when people on the forums get upset because of somebody else's opinion. That tends to happen more often on the Rules forum, I think. Why one should care about the opinion of some random nut (no, really - I'm certifiable!) on the internet I don't know, but it seems to be the case for many people.

Luckily that's not the case here, I see

 

[Li Shenron]

Basically, it doesn't make sense. The cool part is, you have the scout moving around, weaving in and out, and otherwise making the game mat more interesting. The downside is that the ability really breaks down in certain contexts. The scout in our group was fun at first, but after a while, it got annoying figuring out which 10' he would move this time around. Then there's the fact that a scout doesn't get their extra damage in a surprise round, unless they charge, making them really pathetic ambushers.

Ditto. Skirmish is a 3.5 abomination, designed to fit with the rules and with the balance but not with the world the characters live in. It's like it was designed for the tactical side of the game but not for the game as a whole.

 

[Aus_Snow]

Skirmish is a 3.5 abomination, designed to fit with the rules and with the balance but not with the world the characters live in. It's like it was designed for the tactical side of the game but not for the game as a whole.

Gah! Must you say that? It's what I'm trying very hard to disbelieve!

It's kind of where I started from, eariler today (and prior to that. . . every since seeing teh Scout, actually). However, I've been soliciting advice on how the heck to make sense of it. And not just for me - honest! If (read: when) a player comes to me after checking out the Scout as a class option for their PC, and asks the very same questions I've asked here, what am I supposed to tell the poor sod, eh?

"Uh, it just. . . works. . . y'know?"

Not a good look. And one must keep up appearances as the big bad omniscient RBDM, so I couldn't allow the class and leave my understanding of it where it lay.

 

[MarkB]

I find that the Scout's skirmish ability works well if you consider it over the course of a combat, the character constantly on the move so that nobody quite knows where the next attack is coming from - but it's a lot less easy to imagine how it's working when you look at it over the course of just one round.

So basically, just accept that you need to think of it in those terms - over the course of an entire combat, the scout is getting a few more hits past the enemy's defenses, and dodging a few more himself, when he's on the move, because that's the style of combat he specialises in.

It's no more unreasonable than D&D's approach to armour - it may be unrealistic to think of a set of chainmail as completely deflecting the impact of a single strike, but when you consider that its long-term effect is simply to cause you to take less damage than you otherwise would, the model works well enough that you can look past the specifics.

 

[kenobi65]

My wife plays an archer Scout in our Age of Worms campaign. We call skirmish the "damage dance", esp. when, after a few rounds, it turns out that she's just shuffling back and forth over the same 10': 10' left, shoot....10' right, shoot...

 

[Notmousse]

I think these might be balanced...though maybe too easy for a Cleric rogue to get a hold of.

Combat Chirurgery
Prerequisite: Heal 5 ranks

Due to knowledge of how living creatures work, when using a suitable weapon, you can strike a vital location for more damage if your foe is unable to defend himself effectively.

Benefit: When using a light piercing or slashing weapon, you gain a sneak attack damage of 1d6. If you already had sneak attack from another source, you instead are treated as if one level higher, in one of those sources, to determine the amount of sneak attack granted.

A fighter can select Combat Chirurgery as one of his fighter bonus feats.


Greater Combat Chirurgery
Prerequisite: Heal 10 ranks

Benefit: Combat Chirurgery’s sneak attack damage increases to 2d6 or you treated as two levels higher in one clas that provides sneak attack if you already had sneak attack as a class feature.

A fighter can select Greater Combat Chirurgery as one of his fighter bonus feats.

Maybe it's just me, but trading 2 feats for the *chance* at 1d6 extra SA when you already have SA (remember come classes/PrCs don't get SA every other level) doesn't make sense to me.

Personally I go with 1d6 Sneak Attack as a [non-Epic] feat. Tastes great, *and* less filling.

 

[Nonlethal Force]

If (read: when) a player comes to me after checking out the Scout as a class option for their PC, and asks the very same questions I've asked here, what am I supposed to tell the poor sod, eh?

"Uh, it just. . . works. . . y'know?"

Not a good look. And one must keep up appearances as the big bad omniscient RBDM, so I couldn't allow the class and leave my understanding of it where it lay.

So, I'm assuming you didn't care for my suggestion earlier, then.

 

[Enkhidu]

This probably isn;t the best place for this suggestion (it might go better in house-rules), but would skirmish make more sense if it worked like this?

- Move 10', your target is flatfooted against your attack
- Sneak attack +1d6
- Move 10', your target is flatfooted against your attack, trumps Uncanny Dodge if the scout has 4 or more scout levels than the target has rogue (or whatever) levels.
- Sneak Attack +2d6
- Sneak Attack +3d6

Obviously you'd probably want to tweak it, and this would make multiclassing with rogue very tempting, but I think it might work.

 

[Klaus]

It's all body memory.

If I think about my signature as I'm writing it, it comes out weird. If I sign it in a single, unthinking motion, it comes out perfectly.

The scout's Skirmish is this. He has conditioned his body to "act". He doesn't think about pulling out an arrow, pulling the string and letting the shaft fly. For him, it's a continuous motion. It's a rythm (hmmm... bard/scout? hmmm.... ).