To Sneak Attack, or not to Sneak Attack that is the question...

[Darkness]

Looks like House Rules to me. Moved.

By the way, one option UA suggests is exchanging the Rogue's Sneak Attack with the Fighter Bonus Feat progression. So it's worth quite a bit.
I'd use this rule but with a different list of bonus feats - social skill enhancers and the like.

 

[DarkMaster]

Sorry but a rogue1/fighter 7 can have 11 ranks in the skill

1st level rogue 4 ranks
then the fighter 2 skills points are dumped in the skill

 

[Corlon]

Giving sneak attack to other classes is really overpowered and crippling ot the rogue's special ability IMO.

I'd say just exchange it for bonus feats or some such, or maybe if he's a swashbuckler come up with something akin to piercing strike for the duelist.

Then again, just because he's lawful good and prefers to talk his way out of a situation rather than fight it out, couldn't he still know how to knife someone in vital areas?

 

[jmucchiello]

But for the sake of this one game, it is 3.5 core classes only.

Not looking to alter class permentantly. Have character who wants to be lawful good rogue... who doesn't see Sneak Attack as fitting the character and is looking for a good exchange.

Aren't these two statements at odds? There is no way to stick with the core and have a lot of roguish skills and not have either bardic music or sneak attack. I would also say turning sneak attack into a skill is drifting from core only....

 

[Darkness]

Sorry but a rogue1/fighter 7 can have 11 ranks in the skill

1st level rogue 4 ranks
then the fighter 2 skills points are dumped in the skill

A Rog1/Ftr7 can put 11 skill points into a skill. Cross-class counts only for half ranks, though. So if it's CC for the Ftr, he has: 4 + 7/2 = 7.5 ranks.

 

[JoeGKushner]

A Rog1/Ftr7 can put 11 skill points into a skill. Cross-class counts only for half ranks, though. So if it's CC for the Ftr, he has: 4 + 7/2 = 7.5 ranks.

A Ftr7/Rog1 could have eleven ranks. One of the stupidist things in my opinion about skills is that you can max our your skills based on character level, not your class level. Ugh.

 

[jmucchiello]

A Ftr7/Rog1 could have eleven ranks. One of the stupidist things in my opinion about skills is that you can max our your skills based on character level, not your class level. Ugh.

It's a little late in the game to fix that one. I'm still amazed at how many people are still confused by buying skills (as evidenced in this thread).

 

[Goobermunch]

Instead of making it a skill, perhaps replace the rogue's SA with short lists of bonus feats like the 3.5 monk gets, and a rogue only bonus feat (which must be taken with one of these bonus feats) that increases SA+1d6. Alternate abilities might include skill focus feats, a 32 lb. block of cheese, feats like diplomatic or cosmopolitan, whatever you think is relavant, thus allowing the option of lowered or nonexistant sneak attack for other, more versatile abilities.

A 32 lb. block of cheese??!?

--G

 

[JustKim]

Also, important to note... that if you are a multiclass character, you still are required to adhere to cross class skill ratios... example: if you are a Level 1 Rogue/7 Fighter... when placing those Fighter skill points into a Rogue class they only count as 0.5 each. There is no way that a 1/7 would be as good as Rogue 8... that is unless you are cheating of course. Then by all means... sure.

As it's been said, there's no need to cheat to get full ranks. There are two equally valid ways to do it.

The first is to take 7 (Or more) levels in your favorite class, until your max class skill rank is good and high. Then you take one level in Rogue, making sneak attack a class skill. Invest every skill point you get from Rogue in sneak attack, while it's a class skill, to take it from 0 to max in a single level. Tada!

The second is to start your character with a single level in Rogue, and then continue with levels in whatever other class you want. Since sneak attack was at one time a class skill, its max ranks are your level +3 even when it's a cross-class skill. At every level you can invest 2 skill points in sneak attack to continue maxing it out. Tada, again!

Neither of these are cheating, they have long been perfectly acceptable in the game. The only thing that makes them unbalanced is taking sneak attack as a skill, so I would submit that it is the sneak attack skill, not class/cross-class skill ranks that are broken.

 

[Kae'Yoss]

Hasn't come up here yet, so I say it: Nobody forces you to do sneak attacks. Just like noone forces a fighter to use heavy armor and a tower shield. We don't stereotype fighters as users of longsword/fullplate/tower shield, so we shouldn't stereotype rogues as sneak attackers. If they don't want to use it, they just don't. It's still a great class, what with all those skill points and the defensive capability.

Someone mentioned the "we're not the thieves anymore". Actually, sneak attack (or backstab) isn't something I imagine when I think of a thief. It's something for an assassin. The 3e rogue is not stereotyped anymore mainly because the name. With "thief" people assumed that he'd have loose fingers and would steal from everyone just for kicks - including other party members, powerful guys and dragons. "Rogue" might not be that trustworthy, but it's better than "thief". But I digress..

Making it a skill would be bad. It would not only break the whole skill system, it also is more fitting as feat. So we could make it a feat and give rogues bonus feats at every odd level. Bonus feat list: Skill Focus, Sneak Attack, all +2/2Skill feats that involve any of the rogue class skills, Weapon Finesse (and yes, I think that BAB +1 should be taken from the requirements), maybe the Dodge and/or Combat Expertise chains.

Feat:
Sneak Attack [General, Rogue]
You can hit foes where it hurts, doing +1d6 damage
Prerequisites: See text
Benefit: Insert the write-up about Sneak attack here
Special: For taking it for the first time, you must have either rogue Level 1 or character level 4. You can take it more than more than once, and its effects stack. For every instance, the prerequisite rogue level increases by 1 and the character level by 4.

So A rogue can take it at 1st,3rd,5th and so on, or he could skip some (or all) uses for other feats.


Rokugan, besides having another Core Class with Sneak Attack (the ninja, which gets full BAB and full sneak attack - but a variant fighter from UA could get that, too, and d10 to boot) it has Feats (for Scorpions - the clan, not the vermin, though some call the Scorpion vermin...) to grant an individual +1d6 sneak attack. It can be taken several times, I think 3 or 5.