At low levels? Not really. At higher levels there are the massive damage rules and a couple abilities that are fort save or die. Though, at lower levels you could get lucky with a sneak attack damage roll and bring them below 0 anyway.
Stealth + sleep
You could try to tweak the rules for the coup de grace (scroll down to find it). That would involve some houseruling 'though, since a target normally needs to be helpless to receive a coup de grace.
Otherwise any kind of magical paralys and sleep works quite well.
If I catch someone unaware, even with a dagger, I should have a chance to hit them somewhere vital.
I might have to make a custom houserule for this.
That is precisely what Sneak Attack is meant to cover. Characters who aren't rogues have to get more creative, as they lack that ability.
What makes sense matters little to nothing in a game. It is like it is for a reason. Otherwise ninjas and anyone with any sort of invis (vanish is a lvl 1 spells.) would stomp all over the game like it was nothing.
I can see the point on balance but...it just seems wrong that ONLY Rogues/Ninjas can Sneak Attack. Why can a Wizard not pull out his dagger and try to creep up behind someone and jam it through the back of their neck?
As I said, I take the point on balance but there's got to be a better way without erecting such arbitrary barriers.
Honestly, you're arguing fundamental principles of game design elements here. These are the limitations of a class-and-level-based RPG. You pick a class, and gain the abilities of that class. Most classes have exclusive abilities that are simply not available to other classes. That's pretty much baked in to the system. "It's not a bug-- it's a feature."
The D&D family of games and its deritives (including PFRPG) are all class-and-level-based systems.
If you prefer a game style where anyone can learn any skills, you might want to play a skill-based game system, such as GURPS or HERO System. In skill-based systems, there are no character classes. Anyone can learn any skills, but you are limited by skill points. Consequently, in order to be effective, a PC generally conentrates on a particular set of skills to be really good at.
Good luck!
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You could try to tweak the rules for the coup de grace (scroll down to find it). That would involve some houseruling 'though, since a target normally needs to be helpless to receive a coup de grace.
This would be my answer, honestly. Houserules the coup de grace rules to allow for it to work during a surprise round.
Invisibles get a surprise round and a bonus to hit. Not nothing.
That makes little to no sense at all. If I catch someone unaware, even with a dagger, I should have a chance to hit them somewhere vital.
I might have to make a custom houserule for this.
The rules deviate from "realism" for a variety of playability reasons, such as keeping things simple enough to not take hours to resolve an attack. In this case, the rules make the penalties for things like surprised or attacked by an invisible foe far less deadly than they would be in real life. In real life, if a guy can't see you and can't hear you coming, he really is effectively helpless and you could coup de grace w/ a juggular slash or something. But letting that happen in the game would make things far too brutal, and there are monsters and caster who could easily use such tactics all the time to insta-death things.
So instead, the foe is just without dex to AC and you get +2 to hit and an extra standard action.
Now, a creature is flatfooted in combat until it gets its first turn, so if you struck on the surprise round and won initiative, killing him off on round 1 before he could even react, IMO that would be sufficient to "kill unnoticed". By the victim, at least. If there's others around, your best bet would be if you still had a move action on round 1 to duck back behind cover and hide (at -20, sniping rules).
Basically, you want everyone to have the Death Attack ability.
Yeah, I can see some problems with that.
When this comes up in my games, I houserule depending on the situation. If the PCs have worked hard to set something up and/or it makes sense in context, I might allow a character some bonus damage or just GM fiat 'kill' or 'knock out' an NPC (maybe with a save, maybe not).
However I try to stick to the rules as much as possible for the balance reasons mentioned above. Otherwise the rogues feel a bit useless.
I also tend to run low magic games for what it's worth.
There's the Underhanded Rogue Talent that let's you maximize your sneak attack in the Surprise Round.
You'll have to see if the GM considers your weapon to be concealed as long as you have stealth/invisibility, otherwise you probably have to take the Bandit archetype and Quickdraw to use it.
There's the Underhanded Rogue Talent that let's you maximize your sneak attack in the Surprise Round.
You'll have to see if the GM considers your weapon to be concealed as long as you have stealth/invisibility, otherwise you probably have to take the Bandit archetype and Quickdraw to use it.
Or combine Underhanded with Deft Palm.
Deft Palm (Ex): A rogue with this talent can make a Sleight of Hand check to conceal a weapon while holding it in plain sight, even while she is being observed.
Since there are no actual rules for this other than sneak attack, I'll post an example houserule that could work:
Strike from Stealth
This is an option anyone with at least base attack bonus +1 may use. You make take a standard action to perform a single attack against a target that is unaware of you and that hasn't acted yet in the combat and that is denied it's dexterity bonus to AC. If the attack hits, it automatically threatens a critical hit (you must still roll to confirm the critical). If you have the Sneak Attack class feature, you also deal one extra damage for each sneak attack dice you have.
Level 10 ninja: Assassinate.