PRD wrote:
Powerful Sneak** (Ex): Whenever a rogue with this talent takes a full attack action, she can elect to take a –2 penalty on all attack rolls until the start of her next turn. If an attack during this time is a sneak attack, she treats all 1s on the sneak attack damage dice as 2s.
Deadly Sneak** (Ex): Whenever a rogue with this talent uses the powerful sneak rogue talent, she treats all 1s and 2s on the sneak attack damage dice as 3s. A rogue must have the powerful sneak rogue talent before choosing this talent.
The math on the effect of these talents has been done to death in other threads, and it is consistently proven to be a suboptimal choice, significantly *reducing* damage output in all but corner cases (where any roll but a 1 results in a hit after the -2 penalty).
Please, for the sake of this thread, accept as a given that powerful/deadly sneak is underpowered. If you disagree, please suspend that disagreement for the duration of this thread. Thank you.
I would like to implement a houserule to improve these talents since rogues in campaigns I run are consistently sub-par in DPR.
I am formally requesting the assistance of those on the forums who are better at the optimization maths than I am to help me determine the most balanced and effective way to improve these talents without over-improving them.
Options I have considered:
PENALTY REDUCTIONS:
A.) Remove the -2 penalty (Possibly add other considerations listed below)
B.) Change the penalty to -1 and implement one of the other considerations below.
C.) Reduce the Powerful Sneak penalty to -1. Deadly Sneak eliminates the penalty entirely.
(alternatively, use any of the damage improvements listed below).
DAMAGE IMPROVEMENTS:
1) Instead of treating 1s (or 1s and 2s) as 2 (or 3), reroll sneak attack dice until they no longer show 1s (or 2s).
2) Increase sneak attack die to d8s (deadly sneak would allow rerolls of 1s (as Damage Improvement 1) or treat 1s as 2s (like the current Powerful Sneak))
3) Powerful/Deadly function as RAW, but also allow sneak attack damage to be DOUBLED on a crit (Deadly would allow use of the weapon's own critical multiplier).
(I am pretty sure #3 is a bit much, but am hoping someone better at the maths can help me figure out the DPR and other relevant numbers
What adjustment(or combination of adjustments) would best transform Powerful/Deadly sneak into a balanced, desirable damage increasing Rogue Talent. I don't want to make it so powerful that taking it is a no-brainer, but I also don't like the fact that, in its current form, it is completely non-usable.
