What kind of spells, if any, may be used in sneak attacks?

[maddman75]

Re: How about Fire giants instead of Red Dragons?

Fire giants have no SR and have the Fire subtype.

And they've got a min AC of 21 -- better if they're a leader, have magical armor, or what have you.

A Rogue9/Wiz1 will need a big fat '2' to hit with his attack.

Meaning if he can get his real-wizard buddy to make him Improved Inivisible and hasted, he can fly around and do, automatically, without fail, 20d6+4d3 pts of damage to the nasty fire giants each round. Even if these fire giants have better dex than usual, better armor than usual, have shields instead of huge greatswords, have magical armor. Doesn't matter.

That's an average of 78pts of damage each round. At least the big bruiser barbarian trying to do that much damage each round against the giants has to CLOSE with them, and risk getting hurt. At least the archers firing away from a distance have to get through the natural and real armor. And even with rapid shot and multiple attacks a round, and being hasted, they aren't going to do -- on average -- 78pts of damage!

This brings up another point -- if you do a magical ranged attack from 5' away, and you are technically flanking, do you get sneak-attack dice?

Yes - though you provoke an attack of opportunity. I seem to recall the Sage commenting that you don't need to attack to flank, only to threaten. That was in response to 'is a creature flanked if I do total defense'. As long as you hold a dagger or something in your off hand, he is flanked.

What this guy really needs is a wizard buddy to cast improved invisibility on him

Its the cantrip smackdown!

 

[jontherev]

In fact, this might be a good, safe way to dispose of any pesky Tarrasques in your neighborhood. Get several mid-level rogues with either rings of blinking or (easier) a couple wands of blinking and a high use magic device skill. And a wand of fly. And a buttload of flasks of acid -- you may need to add a Heward's Handy Haversack, or a flying carpet, or something similar to the mix to carry all the acid you'll need.

Anyway, fly above the Tarrasque's head and chuck those flasks of acid into its eye, trying to hit the poor beast's Touch AC of 5. Assuming you can scrape together four Rog9s who have the quickdraw feat, you'll be doing 126 points of damage a round to the poor critter (two flasks thrown each, each flask doing 1d6 + 5d6 acid damage, for 12d6 per round per rogue, or 48d6 total per round, -20% for the flasks that miss due to blink, -5% for flasks that miss on a natural 1). Subtract the creature's fast healing of 40, for 86 points of damage per round -- it still shouldn't take more than ten rounds before the creature is lying unconscious on the ground, waiting for the rogue with the highest UMD skill to pull out the scroll of Wish and earn beaucoup experience points for everyone. And what does it cost you? 80 flasks of acid, 8 charges from a blink wand, 4 charges from a fly wand, and a scroll of wish. Not a bad investment for a group of 4 ninth-level characters to kill a CR20 creature.

(You know I'm only suggesting this because it's fun to make Forrester squirm)
Daniel

[edited to add in miss chances for natural 1's and for blinking, and to account for fast healing]

Good luck. The dc for UMD for wish is dc 34. A 9th level rogue could have 12 ranks+2CHA+2synergy (Decipher Script)=16. Roll an 18 or else hope that flying spell lasts long enough for you to 'get out of dodge'.

 

[Pielorinho]

Re: Re: Re: Re: How about Fire giants instead of Red Dragons?

I said nothing about grappling the giant, just tripping him.

I don't wanna get in a shouting match with you, Jontherev, but I will say that I loathe the bola rules in S&F. WHile the concept is cool, the weapon is (I think) horribly overpowered. It automatically makes a trip attempt with a ranged touch attack, right? That's ridiculously good, and when a player in my game asked me to look at the rules for the bola, I immediately banned it.

I might rule that a bola crits on an 18-20, and functions as a trip attack on a successful crit. That way, an expert bola user could make those attacks pretty often, but it'd be costly.

Daniel

 

[Forrester]

Re: Re: Re: Re: How about Fire giants instead of Red Dragons?

The bola is a ranged touch attack that trips whatever it hits . . . Being nearly immune to crits and sneak attacks should definitely be talked about under the description if it was a defense they had.

I think any combat strategy that relies on Expert Tactition and a Ring of Blinking opens one up to Twink-Boy accusations .

And gee, a bola trips anything, automatically, huh? If you hit a Tarrasque with a bola, does it trip? And people call you a twink. How rude!

Finally, it says under Sneak-attack that if you can't reach vitals, you can't do sneak-attack damage. You're supposed to do the math for yourself.

Other finally: So, I gather your combat strategy is to be hasted, tumble in during your partial action, then do a full attack with two weapons -- er, but that's only three attacks. Where's the fourth one?

And you didn't work your 20% miss chance into your average damage.

And if you EVER end the round standing next to the giant, having just done 50hp of damage (or whatever), he's going to turn around and swing the Big-Ass Doom Sword at you. I know, he's probably got a 50% miss chance, but he gets three attacks at great bonuses. If two hit . . . owie!

No offense, but as a DM I take the charge of protecting my monsters seriously. And it sounds like your DM lets you get away with murder.

Bolas . . . . <seriously> . . .

 

[Forrester]

The original poster wanted to know the rules for sneak attacking with spells. We provided it. You them slammed anyone who allows these rules in their campaigns . . . You have a different opinion because your experiences have been different. That's fine. Just stop implying we are bad DMs for using a rule you don't like.

IceBear

My original post was made before ANYONE advocated playing the "official" way, and/or claimed that there weren't problems with it. So my original post's original point was not to be insulting -- merely to say, in a creative way, that a lot of broken-ness lies in that direction.

And there's a lot more to being a bad DM than saying touch-attacks should allow sneak-attack damage. Really, I'm not saying that any of you who play by-the-book with regard to this rule are bad DMs. I don't think you should play it this way, but as I said, there's a lot more to being a DM than how you handle this bit of minutia.

On the other hand, I think we've seen ample evidence of how twinkie characters can abuse this little hole in the system . P's excellent Death To The Tarrasque analysis was one, and we also now see what happens to White Dragons (re Alchemist's fire) and Fire Giants (re Ray of Frost) when touch-attacks are allowed to have sneak-attack damage added on.

Icky.


EDIT -- I'm sure that B.A.D.D. has to be disturbed about the Death-to-Dragons smackdown presented here, whether it's the Ray of Frost smackdown or the Alchemist's Fire smackdown.

By the way, maddman, did you get my application?

 

[Pielorinho]

Good luck. The dc for UMD for wish is dc 34. A 9th level rogue could have 12 ranks+2CHA+2synergy (Decipher Script)=16. Roll an 18 or else hope that flying spell lasts long enough for you to 'get out of dodge'.

Well, that's kind of a good point, though your numbers are off, I think. First, it's not unreasonable for one of the rogues in this group to have a CHA of 22 (start with a CHA of 16, +2 ability points, +4 from a magic item). Add in +2 circumstance bonus from spellcraft and a guidance spell (use another scroll), and you're talking about a skill bonus of +23 (12 ranks, +6 ability, +2 decipher script synergy, +2 spellcraft synergy). If you're reading things right, then the rogue has to roll 11 or better.

But the way I read it,

Emulate Spell Ability: This use of the skill allows the character to use a magic item as if the character had a particular spell on the character's class spell list. To cast a spell from a scroll or use a wand, the character has to have a particular spell on the character's class spell list. By using the skill this way, the character can use such an item as if the character did have the spell on the character's class spell list. The character's effective caster level is the character's result minus 20. (It's okay to have a caster level of 0.) For wands, it doesn't matter what caster level the character is, but it does matter for scrolls. If the character's effective level is lower than the caster level, the character must roll to see if you use the scroll successfuly.

the rogue would need to roll a 14 or better to emulate a caster level of 17 and be able to use the item successfully. If he doesn't roll that well, then he'll also need to make a caster check to use the scroll. At worst, he'll roll a 1 on his UMD check, meaning he has an effective caster level of 4 (23+1-20), and will need to roll a 13 or better on his caster check.

He can add a few other bonuses into this mix, I believe. A scroll of prayer will provide a luck bonus; if someone brought along their bard3 cohort, he can get another +2 competence bonus. At this point, he needs an 11 or better on the original check to succeed outright; at any rate, he needs a combined 11 on 2d20, giving him a slightly better than 50% chance of pulling this trick off.

This does make it more complicated, and probably the group's best bet is to beg borrow or steal a wish or miracle from another source. Imagine this:

"O Highest Priest of Pelor, the countryside is being spoiled by the Tarrasque. Thousands are dying. Surely Pelor does'nt approve. If you will consent to sit on our flying carpet while we kill the beast, and pray for a miracle to finish it off, we will repay the church with a full third of the spoils of the battle, as well as all the credit for ridding the land of such a monster."

Shouldn't be TOO hard a sell, as these things go.

Daniel

 

[IceBear]

Originally posted by Forrester My original post was made before ANYONE advocated playing the "official" way, and/or claimed that there weren't problems with it. So my original post's original point was not to be insulting -- merely to say, in a creative way, that a lot of broken-ness lies in that direction.

And there's a lot more to being a bad DM than saying touch-attacks should allow sneak-attack damage. Really, I'm not saying that any of you who play by-the-book with regard to this rule are bad DMs. I don't think you should play it this way, but as I said, there's a lot more to being a DM than how you handle this bit of minutia.

On the other hand, I think we've seen ample evidence of how twinkie characters can abuse this little hole in the system . P's excellent Death To The Tarrasque analysis was one, and we also now see what happens to White Dragons (re Alchemist's fire) and Fire Giants (re Ray of Frost) when touch-attacks are allowed to have sneak-attack damage added on.

Icky

Honestly, this might be your pet-peeve "broken" rule, but if you look at any of the smackdown threads you will see many, many, many different ways to abuse "loopholes" in the rules.

This is probably why I stretch the XP given so that most of my campaigns end at 10th level and I try to keep things relatively sane with magic items so no one can abuse these loopholes too easily.

IceBear

PS You first post came after two or three other people gave the offical rule for playing sneak attacks with spells so you can't use that cop out. You were just rude with your first post as several posters pointed out, as long as it's due to your bad day at work I don't have any issues with that but I wouldn't want to see it become a habit of yours.

Look at how Daniel stated to jon how he didn't like the bola rules. He didn't run him down because he used them, he simply stated why he didn't like the rules and gave a possible "fix". Very friendly and professional manner.

 

[ruleslawyer]

Forrester: How is this rogue getting "a couple of cantrips per round"? Cantrips are spells, and they take a standard action to cast just like any other spell with a 1-action casting time.

The rogue's SA damage with ray of frost is 1d3+5d6. If he's lucky enough to encounter a fire creature, that jumps to 2d3+10d6. Compare with a wizard of equal level, who can do 10d8 points of damage to a fire creature with lesser cold orbs even if the creature is not denied its bonus to Dexterity. Or a 10th-level rogue, who can sneak attack for 2d4+10d6 with two daggers against ANY creature not immune to critical hits who is denied its Dexterity bonus and/or who the rogue flanks. I'd say this is pretty balanced.

Also don't forget that your Rog9/Wiz1 gives up 6 skill points, BAB, hp, and worst of all, one of the super-cool high-level rogue abilities that kicks in at 10th level (opportunist, improved evasion, slippery mind, etc.). A fair sacrifice for the ability to SA with touch spells.

Your fire giant example is a poor one because it serves to demonstrate why a fire giant's CR isn't as high as its insane physical stats would suggest. The designers took into account the fact that a 6th-level wizard (or worse, a sorcerer) with fireball and the energy substitution (cold) feat can do 12d6 damage to multiple fire giants at long range.

Honestly, if you have this much of a problem with the ability of a particular class combination to shine in a particular situation, rule-0 it. The arguments you're making simply don't register with me as gospel truth. But that's just my opinion.

 

[Forrester]

Forrester: How is this rogue getting "a couple of cantrips per round"? Cantrips are spells, and they take a standard action to cast just like any other spell with a 1-action casting time.

The rogue's SA damage with ray of frost is 1d3+5d6. If he's lucky enough to encounter a fire creature, that jumps to 2d3+10d6. Compare with a wizard of equal level, who can do 10d8 points of damage to a fire creature with lesser cold orbs even if the creature is not denied its bonus to Dexterity. Or a 10th-level rogue, who can sneak attack for 2d4+10d6 with two daggers against ANY creature not immune to critical hits who is denied its Dexterity bonus and/or who the rogue flanks. I'd say this is pretty balanced.

Also don't forget that your Rog9/Wiz1 gives up 6 skill points, BAB, hp, and worst of all, one of the super-cool high-level rogue abilities that kicks in at 10th level (opportunist, improved evasion, slippery mind, etc.). A fair sacrifice for the ability to SA with touch spells.

Perhaps you've heard of this spell called "Haste" . . . it's quite nifty. And it's how the rogue is getting two Ray of Frosts per round.

And is the giant getting a saving throw against those "Cold Orbs" you speak of? I'm guessing he is, if it's a 1st level spell being thrown.

And we've already gone through the problems with the rogue sneak-attacking physically. Namely, he has to get UP to the beasty, risk getting attacked, pierce the armor, and he has to make sure he can attack a vital area. And not all DMs are nice enough to say that a monster's ankles count as "vitals".

Finally, at the rate he's killing monsters, I think that the Rogue/Wiz is going to be able to reach 10th level in rogue pretty damn soon. I can't even believe you are making this argument. Yeah, he's got 6 skill points less, one BAB less (sometimes), and has to wait one more level for Opportunist or Slippery Mind. And he gets to do the Ray of Frost trick X times a day AND read from arcane scrolls and use any arcane magical items without having to worry about blowing a Use Magical Device roll.

Other Finally -- yes, if you allow a bunch of splatbook stuff, like Energy Substitution and this Cold Orb thing, then the wizards are even more powerful than before.

But then again, wizards are by far the most powerful class in the game -- especially with their Haste/Improved Invisibility tricks. Or did you miss that thread?

 

[kreynolds]

Damn. I can't believe you guys think I'm harsh.