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After the first session of a new group i noticed that the Ninja was not doing particularly well, when the party was attacked from three sides and had to split, it made me realize how hard it can be for a rogue to get in sneak attacks when you have to rely on other people the whole time. So I looked around for ways to get him to do more sneak attacks on his own. And after some research, mostly through the large Paizo official books (Core, Advanced Guides and Ultimate series)I thought i'd share a few ideas.
So let's start with the commonly known ways (but let's count them up for new players):
Go first: Good stealth and a high initiative can get you as much as two attack actions before enemies can react to you. The Improved Initiative feat helps with that.
Do more attacks: When you get to make a full attack action, it's always best to attack as many times as you possibly can. The easiest ways to that are the Two-weapon Fighting feat (including Improved and Greater) and a weapon with the speed enchantment. Unfortunately speed only works with one weapon at a time, so you don't need to bother enchanting your off-hand weapon with it.
Feints: A feint allows you to deny an enemy his Dexterity bonus to AC until your next turn. Unfortunately it is useless without the Improved Feint feat, because you would spend a standard action to feint and then have no action to attack left until your next turn. Even with Improved Feint you would still not get to make a full attack, so it doesn't work with two-weapon fighting, until you get the feat Two-weapon Feint.
So what else could one do?
Be invisible: With the ninja trick Vanishing Trick you can become invisible for a number of rounds, and being invisible denies the opponent their Dex bonus to AC, thus allows you to sneak attack. Rogues have unlimited access to basic ninja tricks to take in place of rogue talents, however to use vanishing trick they also need the Ki-Pool rogue talent. Another boon of invisibility is that you are harder to hit yourself, aso if you use your swift action to go invisible at the end of your turn, you can use it both to protect yourself and then sneak attack the next round. Ninjas also can have the master trick invisible blade that allows them to stay invisible after attacking, making the Ki costs a lot cheaper.
Get a Shanking-Buddy: Flanking is good for sneak attacking, that much is obvious, but how to flank a guy without the help of another player? Simply get a cohort, or an animal companion. A cohort is easier to obtain, spend one feat on leadership and there you go. Make your cohort a grappling maneuver master monk or fighter. A grappling cohort is even better than a regular flanking buddy, because when the cohort grapples an opponent, the opponent also becomes susceptible to sneak attacks and you don't even need to actually flank them in that situation and become more flexible in your positioning.
If you prefer a little more style, get a tiger animal companion instead! This costs a little more though, you would need Skill Focus (knowledge [nature]), Eldritch Heritage (Wildblooded Sylvan Bloodline) and possibly Boon Companion, to offset the -5 to your Effective druid Level with this companion.
If you have the Magic rogue talents, you could also get a familiar with another talent and make it a small creature with the Improved Familiar feat. However, you should not hope to get that familiar to grapple an opponent.
Altogether the mechanically best choice here is Leadership, it gets you the most powerful helper for the smallest tax.
These ways give you pretty reliable sneak attacks. If anyone else has more suggestions, let's hear them.
While only tengu can effectively pull it off, they can get 3 natural attacks. You trade in their racial proficiency with all swords though.
At higher levels, you can get multiattack to act like a TWF by using one manufactured weapon, a claw, and a bite. The weapon would get no penalties, and the natural attacks would only incur a -2 (similar to regular TWF) This would end up with 5 attacks at level 20, 3 of with are near full BAB, and using only 1 feat. Seems a good deal.
Tieflings can get a feat called blinding sneak attack. Using the tiefling's darkness SLA, you can get the target magical darkness. Assuming that doesn't work (either it did not lower the lights enough or the target has darkvision), you can then use a sneak attack to blind the target for 1 round. This effectively makes you invisible to them for our purposes. Other methods of blinding could work.
There is a feat for monks called feinting flurry, that lets them turn a flurry of blows attack into a feint. It should let you get sneak attack on all the successive attacks. Does require you to give up armor though.
Dip into master summoner. This would let you spout out about 5 summon monsters SLA's a day as a standard action each. Your eidolon also could be used as an expendable flank buddy. Even if it is stunted entirely by the archetype and multiclass, you can dump evolution points into Skilled to give it +8 to a skill. That is enough to get them to be fairly competent with perception and survival at least. Throw in scent and you can have it as a tracking dog.
This Thread has quite a few insights, read to the end though as there's quite a bit of arguing until consensus is reached :)
Ring of Withdraw?
Decoy Ring: 12K gp
You withdraw one round and can sneak attack for 3 rounds. Better than Ring of Invisiblity technically since both take an action to activate.
Scout with spring attack seems to me to be a fairly reasonable and safe route. Yes, you won't be doing that heavy damage since it's just one attack, but add in the bleed thief talent, and it will be pretty mean eventually.
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One trick was to take one level in Oracle of the Waves and get the Water Sight mystery and use Obscuring Mist. That means you have total concealment vs. anyone beyond 5ft, meaning they don't get Dex to AC against you, meaning ranged sneak attacks.
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One trick was to take one level in Oracle of the Waves and get the Water Sight mystery and use Obscuring Mist. That means you have total concealment vs. anyone beyond 5ft, meaning they don't get Dex to AC against you, meaning ranged sneak attacks.
A Goz mask does the same thing without multiclassing.
Increase your movement rate.
As long as there's at least one other martial character that will make it easier to get into position.
(I'm not sure how useful Gang-Up is - if two of your allies are already flanking, that gives you 2 squares (vs. a medium target) to get into position - that shouldnt be too difficult...)
Your allies don't have to be flanking.
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Somewhat of an obscure one, but be a ratfolk with a ratfolk cohort.
Swarming: Ratfolk are used to living and fighting communally, and are adept at swarming foes for their own gain and their foes' detriment. Up to two ratfolk can share the same square at the same time. If two ratfolk in the same square attack the same foe, they are considered to be flanking that foe as if they were in two opposite squares.
Halfling rogue or ninja with swift as shadows racial trait, skill focus stealth and hellcat stealth. You can now snipe in broad daylight and line of sight.
Shadowdancer for the flank buddy could be worth dipping.
For feinting, the moonlight stalker line is essential for the swift action feint. Combine with greater feint and you're good for full attacks.
doesnt the ninja have invisibility tricks, smoke pellets, mirror image stuff? all would help with SA
Two-Weapon Feinting and Improved Two Weapon Feinting, though the feat cost is high.
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For ninjas, I know of two tricks.
1.Smoke Bomb+Shadow Strike. Pinky's Brain mentioned this one, but it bears repeating, especially as it only requires one feat and one ninja trick, so you can do it reliably as early as 2nd level. My only concern is that your opponent may spend his turn wandering out of the smoke.
2.Flurry of Stars+Tiny Hut. The Tiny Hut spell grants you full concealment from those outside, but you can see people outside of it perfectly. That means you're clear to sneak attack at range. Flurry of Stars is a fairly easy way to add two attacks to your full attack routine, but only with shuriken. But if all your attacks are sneak, shuriken are good enough.
Shadow Strike and a smokestick is one feat and 20 gp per use.
Playing a ifrit ninja with smoke sight racial feat and smoke bomb is a way too.
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Playing a ifrit ninja with smoke sight racial feat and smoke bomb is a way too.
Firesight looks great; I didn't know about that feat.
Ifrit get +2 DEX, +2 CHA, -2 WIS, darkvision, and can swap out racial traits to get +4 initiative and the ability to cast Reduce Person or Enlarge Person once/day. I think my next Rogue/Ninja build is going to be an ifrit!
Summoner dip for flank buddy/standard action long duration summon spells?
The Ninja player in my group did this in combination with my earlier suggestion of using leadership. He used leadership for a summoner cohort. That only costs a feat and gives him a lot better spell allotment and eidolon while keeping his ninja progression full.
Not to mention the vastly superior action economy.
The Surprise Follow Through feat robs dex bonus from an adjacent target on successful Cleave. Works great with the Rogue Scout archetype. You charge, full attack SA, cleave to next, steal Dex with SFT and do a single SA (preferably with a CON poison). Imp Init is a good-un for this to get the ranged sneak attack potential created by going first.