I am not aware how the sneak attack works in 3.5 but in Pathfinder at ranged wpns it's not that great at all but with a prestige class from 3.5 which my DM allows to convert, the Master Thrower from Complete warrior book, would give the ability to choose, sneaky shot = you use a movie action to use sleight of hand against the opponets spot if you succeed then the enemy is denied dex bonus thus you gain a sneak attack with thrown weapons.
Now with Starknife as my weapon of choice unless anyone has a better dex based throwing weapon in their mind? 1d4 3x crit, with an ability choice at third lvl of Master Thrower it changes from 3x to 4x, if I make the weapons returning if it's possible in Pathfinder, might this work as a good semi ranged dps? High mobility and ranged dmg with 20 feet is my idea what I'd like to try with this.
Any ideas or anyone knows if it would ever even work?
Sneak attacks with ranged weapons are tricky, as you can't flank with a ranged weapon. That means your target has to be flat footed, or lose its dex bonus in some other way.
One method to make targets effectively flat footed is through the Shatter Defenses feat, but even that is pretty tricky: it requires a bunch of feats, you have to demoralize your opponents first, and you need a +6 BAB, which a pure rogue doesn't get until level 9. I just wrote a post about this idea in this thread.
There are other ways to be a ranged combat rogue, but that is the most focused build off the top of my head. Other builds tend to require fewer feats, but involve ranged combat only during the first round of combat, targeting flat-footed opponents; after that, you switch to melee like a normal rogue. Effective, but not as much fun.
There are problems with thrown weapons, though: firstly, unless you're using shuriken, you probably need Quick Draw, on top of an already feat-intensive build; secondly, you need to enchant a bunch of returning weapons, or in the case of shuriken, which are treated as ammunition, you need to keep making/finding magical shuriken, as you'll be throwing them away at record speeds.
It's unfortunate that Pathfinder is stacked against thrown weapons. You'd have a much easier time with a bow, but thematically I find thrown weapons more interesting for a rogue.
Also, keep in mind that all thrown weapons in 3.5e and Pathfinder are dex-based. You use your dex bonus to hit, and add your strength bonus to damage.
The Master Thrower class grants quick draw as a free feat, my rogue will be starting most likely at 8-9th lvl so it will be maybe a good lvl already so I can get returning enchanted on them.
They as I said get the sleight of hand trick to get enemies flat footed, so that should solve that problem.
So Dex based but with str of 16-18 hopefully would work? It could be quite good, but what would be the ''best throwing weapon'' then in your opinion?
here's what i reccomend
find a way for a female "Rogue" to manipulate time and space without detracting from her awesome knife throwing skills
have her load up on returning daggers
make her wear a french maid uniform
name your character Izayoi Sakuya
We should really have a dedicated thread about fixing thrown weapon builds.
well one thing that might work is the super genius shadow assassin
it gives you the option of being a shuriken specialist (making them a reasonable weapon) and also has a different mechanic then sneak attack but is still an excellent sneaky skilled class. I am playing a thrower 'rogue' with this class in a current game and it's working rather well. With their dagger master ability, the shuriken shadow focus and the deadly focus ability, it works very well.
All you need to make a broken scary throwing machine is Master Thrower. At completion you can make all your attacks touch attacks and throw 2 weapons per attack at the cost of no str bonus to damage, but Deadly Aim damage will still be there. Rogue is probably the weakest way to make a thrower though, you want the twf chain and the ranged chain, so fighter or ranger are better ways to go, ranger if you still want the utility features of a rogue combined with the new nasty APG ranger spells would be pretty terrifying. Broken-ness like Master Thrower (although it's much more sane with Deadly Aim instead of madness of Power Throw from 3.5), is why we play PF hardcover only.
Master Throwers are great, but they shouldn't be the only way to build a strong thrower build. Rogues should more easily be able to get in on the action, and there ought to be ways around having to buy/make/find a half dozen returning daggers just to keep up with the archery builds. Magical shuriken are a complete mess.
Master Thrower doesn't make strong knife throwers, it makes broken ones. Without it, then you're left with a 2wf build that doesn't get flanking (or sneak attack without grtr invis) bonuses but gets all the benefits of some range. Deadly Aim still makes building a thrower better in PF than in 3.5 not counting the MT.
Alright people tend to have a strong opinion that the class is broken which it just might be, but the thing is our campaign doesn't have that much fights and I pick rogue because of the skill points, if I wanted a killing machine out of it I'd choose Fighter who has all these fancy feats he can choose d10 hit points and full AB.
I don't know any other throwing classes in 3.5, don't have all that many books to look at from, I just heard of Master Thrower being a good throwing choice.
Point being I want to try out a throwing weapon rogue and would like to have help how I should build this character? Most likely human or half-elf will be my choice, ideas for that?
It'd really depend on what you want the character to do.
Having a super high crit multiplier is a bit crap as a rogue unless you plow everything into a flat damage bonus (Deadly aim, High str, wep spec etc) and then can consistantly get critical hits. Even with 5 attacks all of which hitting, even with improved crit doubling your threat range, you still only have under 50% to score a crit. That seems a bit wasted for me. The question to me seems, "If you want a crit heavy build, why go rogue?" Rogues' sneak damage isn't multiplied on crits, making the threat range and crit multiplier useless for the majority of your damage. Also: dumping BAB points into deadly aim means that you're losing hit which you can't really afford to gain damage which isn't huge.
Thematically, I'd probably go for standard daggers. Same damage, but twice as likely to crit - making them the best weapon for a crit reliant spec if that's how you want to build him. Plus, Daggers are a much more common weapon than a starknife, making finding upgrades that much easier.
Also Daggers could be used in the following combo: Palm shot + Sneaky shot + Critical shot. Of course, this would double your number of attacks but mean that you'd lose all Str bonuses (thanks to Palm shot), meaning that I'd just plow everything into Dex and ignore Str altogether.
I'd really run this past your DM first tbh. The class was (I assume) built around the idea that you'd only be throwing one weapon per round. With Pathfinders "Multi-throw per round" system this class would seem more than a little unballanced allowing (at max level) 7 shots which would give 14 damage rolls, all of which would have 7D6 sneak damage on them, in addition to their base damage. That seems a little high to me...
Ah alright, I never really thought of it like that :) I thought the increased crit is quite good, of course the best that build gives is the sleight of hand for sneak attacks.
Guess I didn't think of the opinions that far then, I don't intend to put the faith on crits, just thought the 4x would be good addition but well rogues do tend to rely on sneak attacks and not crits.Also care to explain the pathfinders multi throw per round system?
With Pathfinders "Multi-throw per round" systemI'm making the 3.5 to PF transition. What is the "multi-throw per round" system that you are referring to?I think this is something which I had assumed having never really played 3.5 as much as I have done with Pathfinder. My assumption was that in 3.5 people could only throw once per round and that pathfinder changed this, allowing one thrown attack to be made for each attack a player has - including those gained from two weapon fighting / FoB.
If I've misread the rules or misunderstood, please forgive me! If anyone has a clarification to link on this subject, it'd be most apreciated.
Oh bubby, did you flub it. Yeah this has been around since D&D 2nd at least (I've played such a character in D&D 2nd, and it was even worse (for the DM) with player's options).
3.5 Had the same throwing rules that pathfinder has and in addition had a lot more feats and prestige classes to really up the damage one could do with it.
In all honesty the current pathfinder thrown weapon user is pretty tame in comparision.
One method no one has mentioned yet is the Greater Feint feat which lasts much longer than Improved Feint and works for ranged weapons.
With that route one could go with the "one shot one kill" sort of build hoping that vital strike/improved vital strike combined with deadly aim and whatever else you can get will deal enough damage in one hit to make up for the lack of secondary attacks -- but I doubt it would.
In all honesty I'd take a serious look at going halfling, taking the sniping racial and then running with the various APG feats that support sniping:
"Sniping: If you've already successfully used Stealth at least 10 feet from your target, you can make one ranged attack and then immediately use Stealth again. You take a –20 penalty on your Stealth check to maintain your obscured location."
EG:
"Swift as Shadows: ... reduce the Stealth check penalty for sniping by 10."
So for your stealth check, add in your high dex.(+3 or +4), small size (+4?) skill focus stelath (+3) and you're looking at pretty much sniping with almost no mods on your hiding role.
There's also a feat that lets you go unseen for the surprise round if you're small, though the name escapes me.
Then from there go into the ones that increase the number of items you throw each round like two wpn fighting, point blank, rapid shot, etc. and then deadly aim.
A halfling sniper/slinger would also be a neat path to try. It'd also be worth your while to take a look at the sniper and poisoner rogue alternates in the APG.
Ok so take Throw Anything, Improvized weapon master, and a level dip into pathfinder chronicler. Keep a belt full of rocks and forget about returning, just pull more out of your bum using Deep Pockets.