Some background: Soon to start up yet another grim and gritty, medium-to-low magic game, in a kind of dark world. Much roleplaying, but still a fair amount of combat. The thing is, I want to keep the amount of monsters low and not make the average bandit a 3rd level fighter, yet I still want all fights to be at least somewhat dangerous. I thought about swarming tactics, and in 3.5 they worked well via the old grapples which didn't include BAB on the defending side; now, it's much harder to gang up effectively.
I had an idea. What about all characters get "Sneak Attack +Weapon Dice"? So the fighter with a longsword gets SA +1d8 and the 3rd level rogue with a rapier gets SA +3d6. This would make ambushes and group tactics far more dangerous, and increase the value of tactical movement in combat. It would also reduce the "critical mods are king"-factor I've seen in weapon choice (1d6/18+x2 almost always being chosen over 1d8/19+x2 for example).
Your thoughts?
My thought is simply confusion. You want to give everyone sneak attack, but what does that have to do with their weapon choice?
For my d20 Firefly campaign, I was going to make a rule that all attacks against flat-footed opponents are considered critical threats (that still need to be confirmed as normal).
That made Mexican standoffs deadly even at higher levels, especially if Massive Damage is equal to you Constitution score.