A long long time ago I played a goblin thief who's favourite attack was strangling his opponents from behind. I was curious how sneak attack worked with grappling in regards to extra damage.
Any ideas
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It doesn't. A sneak attack is a quick weaponed attack (including an unarmed strike or a garotte attack which is usually an assasin move.) on an opponnent unaware or otherwise caught flatfooted. Once the combat goes into a grapple you're no longer in that situation.A long long time ago I played a goblin thief who's favourite attack was strangling his opponents from behind. I was curious how sneak attack worked with grappling in regards to extra damage.
Any ideas
I'm not sure I understand that response. From the alpha:
"The rogue’s attack deals extra damage any time her target
would be denied a Dexterity bonus to AC (whether the target
actually has a Dexterity bonus or not), or when the rogue
flanks her target."
And the condition of Grappled is outlined as follows:
"A grappled creature is being restrained by another creature,
trap, or effect. Grappled creatures cannot move and take
a –4 penalty to their Dexterity. A grappled creature takes
a –2 penalty on all attack rolls and combat maneuver
checks, except those made to grapple or escape a grapple.
In addition, grappled creatures can take no action that
requires two hands to perform. A grappled character that
attempts to cast a spell must make a Spellcraft check (DC
15 + the spell’s level) or lose the spell. Grappled creatures
cannot make attacks of opportunity."
I believe the answer is still no (in the general case), but only because a grappled character does not lose their Dex bonus to AC and is not flanked when grappled. If some other condition did cause the victim of a grapple to lose such a bonus, or to become flanked, then yes, sneak attack damage would apply.
This is just my interpretation of the rules ... I could be missing something somewhere.
not having the rules handy, what about if an opponent is pinned?
Logic says you can, but of course only if someone else is doing the pinning for you. ^^
I was just reading the grapple rules. It seems like you are no longer being penalised for being smaller than your opponent. Am I missing something?
size modifiers are still worked in to CMB, so yes, you are still penalized for being smaller than your opponent, albeit not as much as you were before. Under 3.5 rules, grapplers were denied dex to AC, allowing a short sword or dagger weilding rogue to grapple and stab for sneak attack damage. As mentioned though, this is no longer the case. If you wanted to make a grapple rogue, you could still do it... youd'd just need some other way to deny the target dex to AC. If I was DMing I'd say you could do it if the target was pinned. You could also try another method of sneak attack, like using Feint or simply going invisible. But there's no real *need* to grapple in either one of those, so what you descibe may be a thing of the past, I'm afraid.
Under 3.5 rules, grapplers were denied dex to AC, allowing a short sword or dagger weilding rogue to grapple and stab for sneak attack damage.
a bit incorrect. while grappling, the grapplers lose their Dex bonus to AC ONLY to those NOT in the grapple. so a rogue (or any other classs, for that matter) would not gain the bonus for their target being grappled.
but if he grapples someone and his 6 rogue buddies all surround the two, they all gain sneak attack damage against the person being grappled (or against the rogue doing the grappling- if they want to).
good call. Hrm, I guess I'm a bit confused in what the OP was asking. There are easier ways for a rogue to sneak attack than to have a buddy grapple him. For example... like flanking...