On Backstabbing

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Hello -

Backstabbing is all about minimum damage. As an assassin, your backstab is your major card to play. You want to sure to cripple or kill your victim with that opening shot, and that means getting the minimum damage as high as possible so that even the lowliest damage roll (1) still yields major results.

A point in two handed weapon style yields an extra +1 minimum damage when using two handed weapons. For a thief, a two-handed backstabbing weapon can only be one thing: a quarterstaff. So, I assumed staves and two handed weapon style for an assassin simply to give the assassin that extra +1 minimum damage (that will eventually get magnified x7).

As for more damaging weapons...you can literally walk out of Irenicus's dungeon, head over to Ribald's shop, and buy a +4 quarterstaff, once you have the coin. That's another +4 minimum damage, +5 total from just the weapon and the style bonus. What weapon did you have in mind that could be more damaging than that?

 

Not to mention, from a RP standpoint, a staff can easily be disguised as a walking stick, which is awesome for the assassin who wants to go unnoticed (and who doesn't?).

8)

 

In reality, the most powerful backstabbing class(though not the most practical) is an assassin/mage dual class. Backstabbing while shapechanged to an iron golem or with the black blade of disaster far surpasses any damage a kensai can do.

 

Ideally, it is. Reality-checked, it isn't.
A simple case of pathetic THAC0, plus the dual-classing implications.
The fact that THAC0 and attacks per round can be improved helps, but not that much. (In the Assassin/Mage's case, at least)
I was very disappointed with this class, but then again it's also overpowered.

 

Hello -

Well, for starters, Shapechange and Black Blade of Disaster are lvl 9 mage spells. They can't be cast within the XP cap of non-ToB BGII unless you are using scrolls, which is obviously a limited-shot deal. Secondly, it suffers from one of the big downfalls of the pure assassin vs the kensai/thief: a very long delay before your abilities are fully realized. As a K9/T10, I was doing serious damage after doing just two quests upon emerging from Irenicus's dunegon. Counting on lvl 9 mage spells to help will take forever, and if you develop the assassin to the point of obtaining a 6x or 7x backstab first, it's that much longer. I'm more interested in obtaining most of my power in the beginning of chapter 2, which the K/T does.

Back to the subject of staves, I stumbled on something last night: staves of striking. The acolyte in the Temple of Lathander sells one. It only has 5 charges, but it does 1D6 + *9* damage! Talk about a major opening hit! I am going to try it out on the golems in Reyic Gethras's house, and I'll report back with my damage figures. If I can, I'll wait until I get my 5x modifier first (only about 180K XP to go).

 

What two quests did you do to gain 10 levels of the Thief class (not to mention it's tough to get to level 9 as a Fighter while still in Irenicus' dungeon)??

 

Hello -

I did Irenicus's dungeon with just myself and Imoen (freed Minsc and Jaheira just before exiting), and emerged with ~225K. As for the rest, I'll quote myself from a previous post:

More updates:

* On the subject of doing too much damage: now that I've done a lot more fighting, I have been seeing a lot of backstabs that are consistent with my expectations. I'm thinking that perhaps the unusually large ones are due to situational bonuses that are getting added to my base damage, such as target's weakness vs. blunt weapons. At the very least, I know that I've seen instances where some creatures seem more susceptible to physical damage than others (example: the goblin archers in Irenicus's dungeon seem to take more damage from physical attacks than the goblin warriors do).

* On the staff of striking: it can be purchased from the Temple of Lathander with 5 charges. You are then able to sell it to any merchant and buy it back fully recharged to 25 charges, if you wish (it isn't even that expensive to do so). The added damage does in fact count as base damage and is multiplied by the backstab modifier. When I attacked Reyic's golems with it, I did 162 (crit) to one and 93 damage to the other, killing both in one shot. That translates to 19 and 22 base damage, respectively, which is only possible with the added base damage from the staff of striking. Killing both of Reyic's dangerous golems in one shot was sort of a "proof of concept" for this character, demonstrating the power and safety inherent in a massive first strike.

The staff of striking is certainly a handy weapon for a quarterstaff backstabber to have available, great for situations in which you *really* need to hit hard. When I get my 5x modifier at the fast approaching level 13, I'll be guaranteed a minimum damage of 90 when using the staff (including my +5 damage from STR bonus). Throw in Kai, and you have a guaranteed 115 non-critical damage. Not too shabby at all.