I noticed in going over the beastiary that undead no longer had the trait that they were immune to crits.
Has this 3.5 mechanic been removed?
Yes, it has. The Pathfinder take is that although undead do not require functioning organs, they still have vulnerable areas. Imagine it like scoring a hit on a zombie that severely damages muscle tissue or cracking a skeleton's bone.
And you might want to take a look at the Fortification properties in Armor, under Magic Items. Heavy doesn't give you 100% protection from criticals/sneak attack anymore; it is 75%. Medium has been dropped to 50%.
Master Arminas
You kill movie zombies by shooting them in the head, and you stake vampires in the heart. Both sound like critical hits to me.
Golems joints wouldn't be as thick as the rest of them (making them easier to destroy), and destroying a robots brain would destroy the robot. Both also sound like critical hits. Or maybe the golem has some magic symbol or something where the magic animating them is focused. Destroy that, no more golem.
The idea was that what a creature type gives should be something that every single creature of that specific type should have. But since there are undead and constructs that do have vulnerable areas you can crit, the undead type shouldn't grant immunity to that.
I'm not arguing against its removal, I was just making sure that it has indeed been removed and I wasn't missing something somewhere.
It has indeed been removed.
Also, undead and constructs are now vulnerable to sneak attacks, for the same reasons they are now vulnerable to critical hits. This makes sense to me, though I personally would rather they got rid of sneak attack all together.
Welcome to Pathfinder!
The sidebar here helps out a lot of people about this issue.
The idea of immunity to critical hits has not been removed from the game. The number of creatures who are immune to critical hits, however, has been significantly reduced.
Things immune to crits:
creatures of the ooze type
creatures of the elemental subtype
creatures of the incorporeal subtype
creatures of the swarm subtype
So while most undead are now subject to sneak attacks, the incorporeal ones like ghosts, specters, and shadows are not.
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Things immune to crits:
...
creatures of the incorporeal subtype
...
So while most undead are now subject to sneak attacks, the incorporeal ones like ghosts, specters, and shadows are not.
Is this still the case if you have a weapon/attack that deals full damage to incorporeals (such as a ghost touch weapon)?
Appreciate the responses thanks guys.
I think that Elementals and Oozes are not the only creature types that have immunity to criticals, though there may be a few specific creatures of other types which may also have this quality (incorporeals and swarms, mainly).
All-in-all, though, sneak attack is much more useful.
And for all those who disparage that mechanic, I am a personal fan. It's like knowing which lung to puncture to make things worse for your opponent. (It's the right. More effective air volume loss as the other lung is smaller due to displacement by the heart.)
Is this still the case if you have a weapon/attack that deals full damage to incorporeals (such as a ghost touch weapon)?Things immune to crits:
...
creatures of the incorporeal subtype
...
So while most undead are now subject to sneak attacks, the incorporeal ones like ghosts, specters, and shadows are not.
Ghost touch overrides the Incorporeal immunity to criticals. See Cheapy's link above.
My beef with sneak attack it that it's too situational and hard to set up to be a class's primary ability.
My beef with sneak attack it that it's too situational and hard to set up to be a class's primary ability.Then build your rogue in such a way that it's not their primary ability. ;)
I'll just switch over to Cheapy's alternative class ability.
My beef with sneak attack it that it's too situational and hard to set up to be a class's primary ability.
Hard to set up? it takes a bit of planning, but it's not hard.
Ex: max out intimidate, take the Weapon Training RT ("free" Weapon Focus), take Dazzling Display, take Shatter Defenses.
As soon as you have a BAB of +6 (Shatter Defenses prerequisite) you are a sneak-attack monster. Add in Enforcer and/or Dreadful Carnage for play style and you will almost always be able to get the Intimidate check as a free action.
You might still be a glass cannon as far as HP go, but your cannon just grew 3x larger.
Watch closely as the thread gets derailed :)
A rogue sneak attacked mah sister once.
Rogue sneak attaks kan be pretti nasti.