Alternate Rogue Sneak Attack vs Undead


Homebrew and House Rules


The ability for rogues to sneak attack undead, constructs, and other formerly sneak-attack immune critters bugs me on some level. And their inability to sneak attack elementals, oozes, etc confounds me.

So I thought of this modification:

Starting at level 3, and every 4 levels after (7th, 11th, 15th, and 19th) rogues train in how to apply their destructive attacks to creatures that cannot normally be sneak attacked. The rogue chooses one creature type (undead, plant, construct, ooze, elemental, incorporeal, etc) and the rogue now knows how to strike those foes to devastating effect. The rogue must prepare her weapon as a move action with a special kit (minor cost, like 50 gold) to sneak attack a creature type.

As an added benefit, the rogue may pass such a prepared weapon to an ally and that ally gains one third of the rogue's sneak attack dice as a bonus to their damage (minimum +1d6). This bonus does not stack with existing precision damage from class abilities such as Cavalier's challenge or another rogue's sneak attack.

This preparation lasts for 1min/level.

So what do you guys think? It gives them the versatility of being able to sneak attack 3.5 crit-immune monsters without totally stealing the flavor of those monsters (and let's be honest, undead don't have a lot going for them without a con score for the HP). I've thought about adding a special requirement to sneak attack incorporeal creatures, but that would add an extra exception to the rule that would complicate things further.


I wouldn't pass along the capability to an ally; it could get too overpowered. But to be able to sneak attack a certain type of enemy could go hand in hand in mechanics akin to the Ranger's favored enemy. However, in order to do so, the sneak attack damage for these types may need to be scaled down --or-- instead of the cost you mentioned, allow them to reach this particular talent using those advancements (i.e. rogue talents), but they would first have some sort of magical knack of sorts as a prereq before being allowed to achieve this.

This may actually qualify more for an Advanced Talent than to be able to pull the task off at lower levels.

Just thinking out loud...


Allowing the rogue to grant, at most, +3d6 to an ally by spending an entire round (preparing and tossing) a weapon, isn't that big of a deal and it gives the rogue a bit more utility in combat than being bait while it's flanking and sneak attacking.

Though, now that I think about it, how does one flank something with tremorsense like oozes? I guess adding them to the list of crit-ables would be... Weird.


Mylon wrote:

Allowing the rogue to grant, at most, +3d6 to an ally by spending an entire round (preparing and tossing) a weapon, isn't that big of a deal and it gives the rogue a bit more utility in combat than being bait while it's flanking and sneak attacking.

Though, now that I think about it, how does one flank something with tremorsense like oozes? I guess adding them to the list of crit-ables would be... Weird.

Maybe if it was a round per level. A minute per level... if the party can prep, everyone has a weapon that has a fireball on the end of it. Imagine if you ever have an overstocked party (a 6 person party with 4 of them being melee combatants for instance). The rogue has 4 rounds to prep (not often in my games but it happens with good play by the party), at level 5 that means everyone in the party has a +3d6 weapon for the whole encounter, and possibly (this wont happen often in my game but clearly it does in alot of people tables) more then one encounter.

Give it a round per level and make it rogue only and i'd think about it, but being able to give it out for that long is just too good. You would have to rethink the cr's of those no-crit monsters.

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