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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Jondor_Battlehammer" data-source="post: 287448" data-attributes="member: 5335">When you are attacking someone, you are hitting what you can, when you can. A hit could be a stubbed toe to a slashed arm. A lucky blow is a crit, the poor man's sneak attack, hitting something vital, or just extra hard. A sneak attack puts it in the right place every time. Think of it as the middle ground between an attack and a Coup De Grace. Anyone can hit someone, anyone can kill a helpless person who canot react in ANY defensive manner. If you cannot react to a rouge (flat footed), he can hit you where he pleases, if he can get past your armor. With a ranged touch attack, that cannot be deflected by armor, the rouge can put that attack where he likes."I'm not sure that any of you are understanding the reasoning behind my question here. A touch attack is something that requires no real skill or subtlety to it, whereas the sneak attack is totally the opposite, a blow to the nerves, jugular, kidneys or whatever."There is a difference between getting hit with a tazer in the leg, and a tazer in the base of the skull."It's an accuracy thing. The main reason a touch attack is easy because it only has to touch any part of the anatomy. The reason a sneak attack is hard is because it has to hit specific parts of the target that are covered by armour."Since a ray bypasses armor, all you need to worry about is putting it in the right place, not putting it in the right place AND some how slipping it past the steel plates."OK, you might chill the armour. And I would happily let you pass on your 1D3 chill damage from your Ray of Frost. But why on earth would the Ray of Frost suddenly be doing the massive damage that sneak attacks can involve without a degree of finesse and skill?"It takes the skill of a rouge to put it in the right place."Great. So now a stat. draining spell potentially does damage, a rogue/mage has a better control over his magic than a straight (and higher caster-level) mage, and I should stop DM'ing."First, and most important, you should not stop DM'ing. Your asking the question, and putting up with some abrasive comments. That shows interest, which is all you really need.Secondly, I would consider an Enhancment PENALTY and a level DRAIN to be in the same ball park. Ray of enfeeblement is the one spell I can think of that could have this distiction made about it, so I would be more inclined to let it crit than not, since you can with any other. Finally, OF COURSE a rouge/wizard is going to have better control of his damage spells, the same way a rouge has better control of a dagger. It's the same princaple. The point about one spell per round as opposed to multiple arrows is a good one as well. What if your rouge got a hold of some brilliant energy arrows? These would grant him all but a ranged touch attack.</blockquote>

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