D&D 5E What's the problem with certain types of creatures being immune to Sneak Attack?

[Farscape]

I don't get why some people have such a problem with certain types of creatures being immune to Sneak Attack. I don't want the all purpose "powers affect everything" mentality of 4th edition where we just press that imaginary button and things happen.

Back in 3rd edition, my rogues always carried extra bits to deal with undead, oozes, and golems. I didn't put all my eggs in one basket by depending 100% on Sneak Attack for everything. I had my rogues carry scrolls, wands, alchemists fire, nets, trip wires, and a host of other things. I liked having to actually use my brain when I needed to think outside the box. Also, doing some damage is better than doing no damage so swinging that sword, even though you may not get SA, is better than standing there crying like a baby because your SA didn't work. I want my characters to have to go up against creatures that put me at a disadvantage.

If you knew you were going to be in an undead campaign, why did you choose rogue anyway?

 

[Summer-Knight925]

Because I wanted to take care of traps and play a game where logic comes into play.

I'm fighting a zombie, a moving and physical undead, as a creature that applies by physics, if I damage the legs and slow it down or strike the spine to harm its ability to move, then why is it suddenly immune to these effects because it is undead?

Furthermore, if I am fighting a flesh-golem as a rogue, I want my character to run and slide low and strike the creature's leg to harm it, aiming for some exposed stitches to undo the leg.

Why is it suddenly impossible to harm it as such?

While I agree the 'all powers hurt all things' is a bit illogical, there are some creatures that should still be able to be harmed with sneak attack and with critical hits.

 

[(Psi)SeveredHead]

I don't get why some people have such a problem with certain types of creatures being immune to Sneak Attack. I don't want the all purpose "powers affect everything" mentality of 4th edition where we just press that imaginary button and things happen.

Back in 3rd edition, my rogues always carried extra bits to deal with undead, oozes, and golems. I didn't put all my eggs in one basket by depending 100% on Sneak Attack for everything. I had my rogues carry scrolls, wands, alchemists fire, nets, trip wires, and a host of other things. I liked having to actually use my brain when I needed to think outside the box. Also, doing some damage is better than doing no damage so swinging that sword, even though you may not get SA, is better than standing there crying like a baby because your SA didn't work. I want my characters to have to go up against creatures that put me at a disadvantage.

If you knew you were going to be in an undead campaign, why did you choose rogue anyway?

That's a pretty hostile attitude to have.

I liked having to actually use my brain when I needed to think outside the box.

Not only is this relevant to all PCs, not just rogues, but it sounds like you're calling a lot of gamers idiots and crybabies.

 

[Jester David]

The problem is the sheer number of monsters that ended up immune to the rogue's signature class ability. So many monsters where the rogue was only as useful as their gear and could be just as effective by being an Expert.

It's easy to dismiss it as a character choice (don't play a rogue in an undead heavy game) but you don't always know the planned campaign. And organized play makes that hard.

You shouldn't always be 100% effective but there's a middle ground where a minority of monsters are immune to sneak attack, and that immunity makes them special and scary. In the same way that monsters that are outright immune to magic are scary.

 

[Sage Genesis]

People can have a dislike for something or have a different preference without "crying like a baby" about it. At the end of the day we're still talking about an elf pretend-game; letting all undead be immune to sneak attacks is not evidence of rugged manliness.

I'd also like to point out that 4e did have some immunities, despite overall preferring to use resistances. And while people always like to bring up how oozes can be tripped in 4e, in 3e it was no different. Everybody seems to keep forgetting that.

Now that we have the nitpicking bits out of the way, I do understand the idea that 4e went a little too overboard with removing immunities. I understand that people would like to see some more immunities to all sorts of things, including sneak attacks. But there's an excluded middle. Why make all undead immune to sneak attacks when vampires famously are vulnerable to heart-stabbings and beheadings? Zombies are often shown as susceptible to headshots. Mummies seem to need eyes to see and spines to support their weight. Now, ghost, that's a different matter. They're really without any anatomical substance at all.

 

[payn]

I agree with Mr. Canuck the issue with rogues sneak attack was allowing entire categories of monsters to be immune. I think that was a bit too far. I do enjoy the occasional monster immunity that forces out of the box combat as war style thinking. However, going beyond that, some players prefer their abilities to always be applicable to the situation. In 3E you spent your character building resources into specializing into a single, maybe a few different, abilities or proficiencies. When monster immunity comes up some players feel like Auqaman in the desert. Also, some folks envision their concpet as a great axe wielding dwarf. Having to carry multiple weapons (the golf bag issue) hurts immersion for them.

Personally, I prefer fire elementals to be immune to fire, ozzes cant be blinded, and snakes cant be knocked prone. Although its reasonable to come up with explanations for it happening, fire spells are so intense they burn fire elementals, even oozes have senses that can be denied, and snakes can be knocked into awkward positions which they must right themselves. What is difficult is to decide where the best place on this sliding scale is to make the default.

 

[Mistwell]

I am fine with an individual creature having immunity or resistance to sneak attack, just like I am fine with a fire elemental having immunity to fire attacks.

My issue is when an entire classification of creature has immunity, like all undead. Or even worse, when many entire classifications of creatures have immunity, like constructs, and slimes/oozes, etc.. These are not individual creatures, they are massive subsets of the game.

And it just doesn't make sense to me that the rogue cannot figure out how to sneak attack such creatures, eventually. Their whole philosophy is sneaking in and finding a way to exploit weaknesses in creatures - not just their anatomy, but in their strategy and tactics and equipment and movement modes and preferences and everything else.

Reducing the rogue down to "anatomy expert" just doesn't ring true to me. They don't need a high intelligence (though some have it), they don't have a background in studying tomes of monsters, the whole idea that they sneak attack based on just knowing where in the creature's anatomy it is most vulnerable (and therefore cannot do it if the anatomy doesn't line up right, like for undead or constructs or oozes etc..) makes little sense to me. It just doesn't match the descriptive text of a rogue very well.

 

[Texicles]

First, some facts: Some players like combat as much or more than the other pillars. Some of those players like playing rogues. Some of those players like their rogues to stab things and be sneaky, without much else. Some adventures are heavily populated with undead. Some adventures are heavily populated with some other class of monster that. None of these things should, at any point, be classified as badwrongfun for everyone, regardless of how an individual may feel about any or all of these facts.

If rogue combat in 5e utilized sneak attack as one of many (or even just several) tools, I might say fine, make X, Y and Z creature types immune. Fighting them might not be optimal as a rogue, but still doable enough not to make the player feel like their PC is pretty worthless doing rogue things (or required to "carry scrolls, wands, alchemists fire, nets, trip wires, and a host of other things").

Alas, that's not the case. Since Sneak Attack is where you earn your keep (in the combat pillar), making sweeping immunity classifications can be a bummer for the rogue who likes to fight by being sneaky and stabbing. Since you never know what writers and DMs will populate adventures with, no group of monsters is really acceptable to grant wholesale immunity to Sneak Attack.

In a more specific sense as has been said, the "anatomic expert" schtick is kinda weak. The rogue is a sneaky, opportunistic kinda guy, whether or not he flunked out of pre-med.

TL;DR Different people like to play different ways. None are unacceptable. 5e rogues rely too heavily on Sneak Attack to gimp them against huge swaths of the Bestiary. It's called Sneak Attack, not Very-Precise-Targeting-of-Vital-Organs-of-Living-Humanoid-Creatures Attack.

 

[n00bdragon]

Because unlike the mighty wizard who can choose a different spell when one doesn't work the rogue has literally just one thing to do in combat that any other class can't do: sneak attack (which is one more thing than the fighter has but that's another bag of rats). When you take away his ability to sneak attack you are left with "Boring man with a tiny weapon who is bad at hitting things and does negligible damage even when he does." This is okay when it's one monster every now and then but 3e took this way too far and made everything under the sun immune to one of the weakest class's only combat feature and ended up less "realistic" for all its trouble (explain to me again how critical hits and sneak attacks do not work on zombies, etc?).

It's a combination of mundane characters having few if any options in combat and huge percentage of monsters being straight out immune to the few options they have.

 

[The Human Target]

Its not fun, creative, or balanced.

But then we aren't all as cool and tough as you are at the table.