does sneak attack and whirlwind stack?
while performing a whirlwind and you are flanking a foe, does he receive your sneak attack dice?
trying to settle an argument between myself and a cheese-weasel i play with.
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Step-by-step.
1) Is it an attack with an attack roll? Survey says yes.
2) Are they flanking the opponent that they are attacking? Sounds like a yes.
3) Is that opponent immune to flanking or sneak attacks for some reason? Sounds like a no.
Yup. Seems to check out. They get sneak attack.
This sounds like a corner-case to me. What's so bad about the character getting a sneak attack for that *one* guy? They'll only be getting the one hit, after all. (I assume, of course, that you're referring to the feat Whirlwind Attack.)
hes thinking of going one step further and being invisible and sneaking up on a group of mobs and sneak attacking all 8 around him. at level 8. a human rogue swashbuckler can do it.
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hes thinking of going one step further and being invisible and sneaking up on a group of mobs and sneak attacking all 8 around him.
And if those mobs don't die from the hits, the rogue is paste. If those mobs have tremorsense, blindsense, blindsight, lifesense or just a good perception check, they're paste. If the enemies have concealment or resistance of any form, they're paste. There are probably at least a dozen other counters I won't bother to list.
Every strategy has its drawback.
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hes thinking of going one step further and being invisible and sneaking up on a group of mobs and sneak attacking all 8 around him. at level 8. a human rogue swashbuckler can do it.
unless it is improved invisibility, that first attack will pop him from invisibility. Thus he would get a sneak attack on the first one, but not the other 7.
as i said he is a cheese weasel. he will have a 20 strength, a magic greatsword and be doing 6d6+15 > most mobs that 8th level party would fight if there are more than 3 of them. and yes he would buy a wand of greater invis.
If he can sneak up on them, invisible or not, he'll get a surprise round, that's only a standard action.
However, if he beats them in initiative, he can do it on the first round of combat since they will all be flat footed.
Note: The first attack he performs will break invisibility. If they're flat footed that isn't a big deal, but if they're not, then he won't get sneak attack on them.
if you sneak up on them and dont do anything until your turn, they will be FF
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as i said he is a cheese weasel. he will have a 20 strength, a magic greatsword and be doing 6d6+15 > most mobs that 8th level party would fight if there are more than 3 of them.
You have a character that is great against large groups that haven't detected him yet. Just make sure that every adventuring day includes at least one encounter where his strategy doesn't work (assuming 5-encounter days). A barbarian that is at least level 2? No sneak attack. A rogue of level 4 or greater? No sneak attack. Level 2 shadowdancer? No sneak attack. Fortification effects? Maybe no sneak attack. Aberrant sorcerer? Maybe no sneak attack. Incorporeal, ooze or elemental? Definitely no sneak attack. Anything with blindsight? No sneak attack. Only one or two big bad guys? Possibly sneak attack, but mostly irrelevant.
The list goes on and on. It is hardly a "cheese" strategy. They've invested heavily into it. If you feel it makes things too easy, then don't make your "big bad evil guy" a group of 7 humans standing in a perfect circle formation with the opening facing the rogue for easy access.
as i said he is a cheese weasel. he will have a 20 strength, a magic greatsword and be doing 6d6+15 > most mobs that 8th level party would fight if there are more than 3 of them. and yes he would buy a wand of greater invis.
how did he gain proficiency with the greatsword?
multiclassing?
swashbuckler archtype?
burning a feat?
some form of weapon proficiency swap?
pre errata heirloom weapon trait?
Half Elf alternate racial?
to get Exactly +15 with a 20 Strength he would need
the 20 Strength providing +7, +6 from power attack, and at least a +2 greatsword.
i had a 9th level fighter doing 2d6+29 with the help of 2 3.5 edition feats from PHB2. he also hit on a 2 or better most of the time (even when power attacking). unlike that rogue. and the average of 4d6 is 14. i'd say Sven greatly outdamaged the rogue here. and could kill most level appropriate opposition with either a full attack or a crit. and none of his damage was precision based. but he was a 25 point character.
as i said he is a cheese weasel. he will have a 20 strength, a magic greatsword and be doing 6d6+15 > most mobs that 8th level party would fight if there are more than 3 of them. and yes he would buy a wand of greater invis.
there are a lot of ways to counter this if you feel the need to as a DM. Glyph of Warding with a hold person on it (Rest of the party: "Sorry rogue we don't know where your at with imp. invis and your paralyzed so we can't break you out until after combat") will make him think twice if the guy is just planning on winning every encounter with this setup, additionally having a group not clustered (archers) will limit his target selection and while he may be able to dump his damage on one foe, it leaves something for the rest of the party to do.
as i said he is a cheese weasel. he will have a 20 strength, a magic greatsword and be doing 6d6+15 > most mobs that 8th level party would fight if there are more than 3 of them. and yes he would buy a wand of greater invis.how did he gain proficiency with the greatsword?
swashbuckler archtype?
to get Exactly +15 with a 20 Strength he would need
the 20 Strength providing +7, +6 from power attack, and at least a +2 greatsword.
yes, the swashbuckler AT also gets the combat trick twice.
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as i said he is a cheese weasel. he will have a 20 strength, a magic greatsword and be doing 6d6+15 > most mobs that 8th level party would fight if there are more than 3 of them. and yes he would buy a wand of greater invis.
Its still a hefty investment that will pay off in the short term but what is his plan later when many opponents will have see invisibility or one of the sense's that let him easily be detected? Is it powerful? Sure, but is it breaking? Probably not. Let him have his fun then when he gets bored that's when you break him.
At my table everyone also understands that if a specific tactic works that well, you had best be prepared to have it played back at you. Sooner or later someone else in the big bad world is going to figure out the trick to.
as i said he is a cheese weasel. he will have a 20 strength, a magic greatsword and be doing 6d6+15 > most mobs that 8th level party would fight if there are more than 3 of them.You have a character that is great against large groups that haven't detected him yet. Just make sure that every adventuring day includes at least one encounter where his strategy doesn't work (assuming 5-encounter days). A barbarian that is at least level 2? No sneak attack. A rogue of level 4 or greater? No sneak attack. Level 2 shadowdancer? No sneak attack. Fortification effects? Maybe no sneak attack. Aberrant sorcerer? Maybe no sneak attack. Incorporeal, ooze or elemental? Definitely no sneak attack. Anything with blindsight? No sneak attack. Only one or two big bad guys? Possibly sneak attack, but mostly irrelevant.
The list goes on and on. It is hardly a "cheese" strategy. They've invested heavily into it. If you feel it makes things too easy, then don't make your "big bad evil guy" a group of 7 humans standing in a perfect circle formation with the opening facing the rogue for easy access.
i always misread uncanny dodge and thought the 4 level from imp uncanny dodge was on both of them.
It works.
That being said, by the time you can put all the pieces of this together, my experience is that you almost never see multiple enemies that will stand close enough together and can be sneak attacked and don't have a way to detect you, etc. etc. etc.
Obviously it's campaign dependent but it's a lot of resources for a tactic that in the games I play in I could *maybe* get mileage out of one out of every 20 fights.
21,000gp is a lot to spend out of his 33,000gp estimated level 8 WBL.
DC 20 UMD to use the wand, natural 1 makes it useless for the day. Assuming full points, +11, has a good chance to use it. Might have to roll several times to make it work sometimes, upping the chance of a nat 1.
He'll have 5 rounds per casting, so, assuming he's using a two-handed weapon, he'll spend the first round moving and stowing his wand. 4 rounds.
Then he gets like a standard action during the surprise round so I guess he like clocks a dude.
Then he has to win initiative with his prime stat being strength and a heavy feat chain investment into using a greatsword and having whirlwind attack, so he might have a +2. If he succeeds, he might like, be right next to maybe two of them. I don't spend a lot of my time hanging out with the people I work with standing within 2 feet of them, so I don't think the monsters would either.
And then on top of that, the monsters get a DC 20 Perception check to sense an invisible creature nearby if he gets within 30 feet of them. Each one of them. So, if he wants to like, sneak into a pack of 6 guys, that's 6 perception checks-- and any above 20, they're probably rolling initiative on him.
Lots of checks and balances.
Why is this even distantly cheesy?
It totally isn't. Its not even particularly ok, let alone good.
Its also completely legal. So yeah.