Dastardly Finish - how to get a cowering or stunned opponent?


Advice


Dastardly Finish sounds like a good Feat but how can a rogue get a cowering or stunned opponent? I don't want to stand around waiting for the Monk to get a succesful Stunning Fist!

Dark Archive

The Inquisitor's Castigate spell will do it but most Inquisitor's won't have the DC's to make that work for very long.

Dreadful Carnage after a good Dazzling Display will get them Frightened. I guess you'd need someone else to Intimidate or Dazzling Display along with you. Then, as long as they can't flee, they cower.

Basically, it's probably a feat that's not worth your time.


Most opportunities would come from the help of your party. If you have some magic users in the group that do spells that grant those effects it could be a nice feat to have. Or a monk who can do a good stunning fist.

Would be a bit hard to pull off just as a rogue.

Dark Archive

Father Dale wrote:

Most opportunities would come from the help of your party. If you have some magic users in the group that do spells that grant those effects it could be a nice feat to have. Or a monk who can do a good stunning fist.

Would be a bit hard to pull off just as a rogue.

Are there many spell effects that cause Panic or Cowering? Fear, Eyebite, and Castigate are the only ones that spring to mind.


Cowering is kind of hard to pull off, as most creatures will be panicked rather than cowering. I think cowering only comes into play if a panicked creature cannot flee? I'm not certain to be honest. According to Dastardly Finish though, panicked wouldn't suffice to trigger the feat; only cowering would.

Stunning is where you would get most of your benefit from this feat. Theres lots of ways for a creature to be stunned. Clerics have a 2nd lvl spell that can do it (Sound Burst). I can't think of other spells that do this off the top of my head, but I know there are some out there; its often a secondary effect of some spells.

Also a high level fighter could have Stunning Assault or Stunning Critical, which could open the feat up for you.

I think it really depends on your party and how they operate as to if the feat will be good for you or not. Have you seen the party members do much stunning? If the answer is yes then it might be a good choice.


If you took minor and then major magic as the rogue talents and selected color spray as the major magic spell you can cause a character to become at least stunned, if not also blinded and possibly unconscious depending on how many hit dice they have. Probably easier to have a wizard or sorcerer in the party actually cast the spell and then you just step in to finish them off quickly afterwards though.

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