Sneak Attack--Help me stop my DM from banishing it!

[Prestidigitalis]

I don't particularly care, in a DPR discussion, how situationally challenging Combat Advantage may be to get. Unless you can put a hard number to it, you either grant it or deny it to all combatants.

It has been observed by some critics of the field of economics that it exaggerates the relevance of things that are easy to measure, and pretends that things that are difficult to measure have a static universal value, typically zero. This is not meant as a compliment.

 

[KarinsDad]

Sure am. Here -- I'll give Quarry to the Rogue, too. He can spend a minor action and point at the nearest enemy.

I don't particularly care, in a DPR discussion, how situationally challenging Combat Advantage may be to get. Unless you can put a hard number to it, you either grant it or deny it to all combatants. Given that we're discussing Rogues, here, everyone gets it.

Uh huh.

The fact remains that the low level Rogue, regardless of frequency that you assign CA, kicks butt on the low level Ranger damage-wise in a real game on average.

In your fantasy low likelihood "let's give CA to everyone" scenario, the Rogue still kicks butt. Your claim that he does so to a lesser extent means little.

Your original spike theory illustrated that the Ranger was the real threat. As can be seen by the math, he's not as much of a threat damage-wise as the Rogue. So, your original argument was invalid.

 

[Nemesis Destiny]

Can we inject some calm here into this thread before it turns into a flamewar please?

 

[sigfile]

Your original spike theory illustrated that the Ranger was the real threat. As can be seen by the math, he's not as much of a threat damage-wise as the Rogue. So, your original argument was invalid.

Noooooo, the original theory was that the Ranger was capable of dishing out more damage in a round than the Rogue. The point was to demonstrate that the Rogue isn't capable of inflicting damage at a level so above and beyond other strikers that sneak attack requires further restriction to stop it from being unbalancing. And, hey, success! The Ranger is capable of inflicting more damage in a round, and the Slayer is reasonably close, too.

On a round-by-round basis, yes, a Rogue with constant combat advantage will do more damage than an archery Ranger with combat advantage, and significantly more on average than a Ranger without combat advantage. Why the Ranger would not take steps to improve his hit chance is totally beyond me, but... hey, whatever floats your boat. I'm not sure what you're trying to demonstrate.

 

[Saeviomagy]

It's pretty unreasonable to assume that the ranger ever misses out on quarry damage unless you also assume that the rogue misses out on doing damage at all for the same period of time (after all, the ranger just needs to manipulate things such that his chosen target is the closest target he can see, while the rogue needs to get adjacent to his chosen target).

Lets assume that the ranger never ever gets CA (which basically means he's being lazy), and at the same time we'll assume that the rogue misses CA for one round per combat (ie - 1 round in 5).

that means our DPR over 5 rounds is 15.875 for the ranger and 17.89 for the rogue. Given that the ranger can pull this off from 20 squares away, and the rogue needs to be in melee, I think that an 11% damage penalty in exchange for the need to do nothing more than say "I twin strike a target within 20 squares" every round is pretty fair.

 

[Destil]

If you're giving the ranger constant CA you should most likely spend the feat on Distant Advantage. Then they get it from the same source as the rouge: flanking and teamwork. Without that it's a pretty big stretch for a ranged PC to have constant CA.

Or, better yet, just use a melee ranger with two bastard swords.

 

[thewok]

Now in 2e, it was "backstab" (which also didn't make sense because stabbing them in the back is no more deadly then stabbing them in the front, less so in many cases).

I think the idea is that, first of all, the target wouldn't see the attack coming, and second, that armor in the rear is probably weaker than in front. It may not always make sense in a simulation sense, but I think that's the mentality behind "Backstab."