The Best Sneak Attack

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In 3e, a Rogue can sneak attack as many times in combat as he flanks. They're far from useless in actual gaming (not arguing IWD2 here).

At high levels, they sneak attack, and then disappear. They get Hide in Plain Sight also, IIRC, so they don't even need items to disappear.

IMHO, 3e Rogues are one of the most powerful classes at high levels.

 

Whilst obviously a personal thing, I found myself using rogues more in IWD2 than in the earlier games precisely because traps were so much less frequent/powerful. I always found having to heal/resurrect members constantly from traps was a pain so had my thief permanently searching for traps whilst skulking at the back of the party. Ok for thieves/mages but not for those more melee orientated. In IWD2 you don't have to constantly worry about getting zapped/fried/whatever every ten steps so can happily send your rogue out hidden to scout and backstab without worrying about not being able to look for traps. Obviously copious castings of invisibility would get around this but it's a waste of precious spells to do this constantly. I'd say that backstabbing is more powerful, but I found that sneak attacking was easier to use. And could be done more than once a battle!

I'd certainly agree that the 3e multiclassing has lessened the usefulness of rogues. I didn't care about them enough to ever enjoy a pure class but both fighter/thieves and thieves/mages combinations were very useful. A 3e fighter/thief combo is a much less capable fighter than his companions. And a 3e thief/mage takes a massive hit on the spell levels available to him. A rogue1/wizardX does do a good job but doesn't really make much sense to me from the character's point of view. Why start as a rogue, then immediately switch to wizard levels but continue to take all the rogue skills?

 

I disagree. You only loose 1 BAB, 2 feats and 16 HP when replacing 4 fighter levels with 4 thief levels.
Evasion should even out the 16 HP, the extra sneak attack damage which doesn't even require sneaking should even out the BAB and feats aren't that useful any more once you've taken the important ones.

 

depends how many levels are invested in each. the BAB difference gets huge later on - you miss out on whole attacks.

in sheer fighting ability, there is no way a thief 20 could compete with a warrior 15/ thief 5 (where warrior is any warrior class such as figher or barbarian). more hitpoints, attacks, feats, better BAB, more damage each hit from WS., possibly damage reduction from barbarian levels...

even with sneak attack counted, the warrior would win because he would have 60 extra hitpoints (more if he was a barb or used the toughness feats). sneak attacks wont do more than that in damage (extremely unlikely, possible yes, but its like rolling a 5 or better in each one of the die rolls). if hide in plain sight was in this game, things might be different.

 

Barbarians get the uncanny dodge feats as well. Wich makes them imune to sneak attacks.

Also, as one bloke pointed out further up the screen, the hide in plain sight doesn`t work all that well vs mages, as there are plenty spells one could use to remove that advantage. Cast dicern location for example, and use the thief`s boots as target and so on. Infavision also works.

 

Hmmm, I'm beginning to reflect that my IWD2 fighter/rogue was a very poorly designed character anyway. Was quite useless after the first few chapters so that may explain my antipathy towards them. Probably wouldn't have been as useful as a rogue1/wizardX but could still have been a lot better than he was.

 

would anyone be interested in the dice sneak attack system being replaced with multipliers again?

I've worked out how to do it (and added it to my copy of my dll, but havent yet put it anywhere, it has to modify the feat reqs for Hamstring also as the levels you get multipliers are different than new dice.) You would end up giving up 1x multiplier for Arterial strike, and 2x for Hamstring instead of 1d6 and 2d6.

and btw:
All weapon prof adds and stuff can be done right in WSPECIAL.2da no dll edit required.

[ April 13, 2007, 07:20: Message edited by: MindChild ]

 

I guess hide in plain site would help a little, but it doesn't really help them much more. Rogues got jipped in the new edition

 

ooh multiplier based sneak attack in IWD2! Please, sounds great!

 

Ohh!!! I never noticed that file or its significance went right over my head.

It wound be entirely possible to replace the current file:

Code:

2DA V1.0
0
	HIT	DAMAGE
0       -4      0
1       0       0
2       1       0
3       1       2 

with something like this:

Code:

2DA V1.0
0
	HIT	DAMAGE
0       -4      0
1       0       0
2       1       2
3       2       4   

or

Code:

2DA V1.0
0
	HIT	DAMAGE
0       -4      0
1       0       0
2       1       0
3       2       4   

If we wanted to emulate a 5 point proficiency system, compressing it into only 3 points.

Thanks, Mindchild!!!

[ April 15, 2007, 02:39: Message edited by: crucis ]

 

pity you cant make it add extra attacks, increase your critical hit chance or have more than 3 ranks.

 

perhaps in the future it will be possible, but as of now, its not, but the multiplier is now an option (check the "bug fixing" thread of mine that features my dll)

 

Rawgrim said:

Uncanny Dodge only works against rogues less than 4 levels above you. If you're multiclassing your Rogue or Barbarian, it really isn't that useful.

And about Hide in Plain Sight: Sure, Mages can dispel it, but who would dispel anything without a reason? In other words, if the Rogue is done right, the Mage is dead before he knows the Rogue is there. Oh yeah... and there's no infravision in 3e, and you can hide in Darkvision.

 

Lets say Mr rogue hits Mr Mage with his sneak attack and does 50 damage, round about. Next round Mr Rogue wins the initiative, Mr Mage is no longer flat-footed but Mr rogue still hits him with a regular attack. Then its Mr Mage`s turn and Mr Rogue is toast. Loads of spells not involving reflex saves would see to that. Its the hitpoints system that really ruins it for the rogue in 3ed. the main reason anyway.


Small tip here. Rogue\Mage with the maximize spell feat. Sneak attack with maximized vampiric touch = ouch. Especially if you also get a critical hit with it.
Just thought I`d mention that bit if someone wants to tear an enemy apart hehe.

 

Thats true actually - 60 damage points in 2e is potentially lethal even for a high level mage, but a good mage in 3e can have... 160 hitpoints? 4 per level + 4 per level from constitution * 20?

 

Proteus_za, that is true in IWD2 but not in any normal P&P 3E game:
- You won't roll a 4 every time; average is 2.5. Some DMs use the "average plus .5" rule for HP, though the official standard is "average minus .5"
- You won't start with 18 CON as a mage unless your DM is giving out a million point-buy points, or you somehow "roll" *nudge* *bump* two 18s. 16 CON is do-able.

5.5 * 20 = 110 HP at level 20.

BUT. In the P&P game there are items that give CON bonuses. You'd have to be crazy not to have bought a +4 one by level 20, and most likely you'd have a +6. So that brings us to 150 or 170 HP.

I guess that is a good reason not to feel guilty about using the "maxc HP at level up" option in IWD2 -- it is just making up for the CON booster items the game forgot to provide.

 

Okay I didnt know that, and I forgot that NWN uses a different (and probably more accurate) point buy system.

Regardless, in IWD2, Rogue sneak attack is made even worse by the fact its very easy for mages to obtain hit points that would have been godly even for a fighter in 2e, while the sneak attack damage is generally lower compared to a backstab, even though they can sneak attack much more often.

 

Proteus, I think that part of the HP "problem" is that in 2e, somewhere around level 10-12, all classes only gain 1-2 hp per level. OTOH, in 3e, you get your class's 1dX at every level, not just levels 1-~10. In 2e, characters don't get a lot tougher, in terms of HP, after they stop getting addition HP die rolls at each level. 1 or 2 additional HP per level just isn't the same as 1d6, 1d8, or d10 + CON bonus/level.

 

I'm well aware of that - classes stop gaining the bulk of their hitpoints at level 10.

So characters have more health and backstab does less damage, great news for rogues.

 

Actually, I think it goes like this: Rogue Sneak Attacks Mage for as many Attacks per Round he has, doing a ton of damage each time. If the Mage is still alive, he can attempt to toast Rogue, but the Rogue has a pretty good chance at Evading the attack. If the Rogue wins initiative in the second round, he Hides, and can sneak attack again (assuming the Mage doesn't have any spells to find a hidden Rogue). If the Mage does have a way to reveal the Rogue, then the Rogue just hides again, until the Mage runs out of ways to reveal a hidden Rogue.