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Accurate ruleswise, as to 'obliteration' not so much. Many creatures do indeed have extraordinary detection or vision by the time players are level 10, in addition, they're 10th level... they're supposed to be able to do some pretty decent damage and attacks, it's nothing that's worse than what a 10th level Wizard or rage cycling Barbarian can do imo.
Not to mention all the stuff that screws over invisibility. Rain. Dust storms. Mud.
He has to use Ki to do this. He has to spend one turn just moving up. That thing has to not move away or just own him on its turn. Then he gets to full round attack.
Oh yeah, there are places he could spike some hardcore damage. But, to be honest I've always felt any rogue/ninja that relied on full round attacking was a lot like a really slow turret. Sure, it has boom but most of the time it's trying to line up shots.
Meanwhile, the party Barbarian pounces, and gets the same amount of damage or more with much fewer hits required, while having more HP, DR, etc.
Not to mention all the stuff that screws over invisibility. Rain. Dust storms. Mud.
He has to use Ki to do this. He has to spend one turn just moving up. That thing has to not move away or just own him on its turn. Then he gets to full round attack.
Oh yeah, there are places he could spike some hardcore damage. But, to be honest I've always felt any rogue/ninja that relied on full round attacking was a lot like a really slow turret. Sure, it has boom but most of the time it's trying to line up shots.
I experienced exactly that earlier in the week.
Had a player reroll a ninja and just wanted to makes sure I'm not missing something here.
Essentially with vanishing trick, a ninja in melee on his turn can do the following:
Swift-Vanish
Full Round- First Attack Sneak, Vanish Removed, Remaining normal attacksAnd when the ninja gets invisible blades:
Swift- Vanish
Full Round- All sneak attacks, remains invisible.From a GM perspective it seems once he hits level 10 everything gets obliterated unless they happen to have detect invisibility up. Accurate or inaccurate?
I've had actual experience playing a Ninja over level 10, and this is exactly what happens.
When I fought against anything that could not see through invisibility, they could do nothing against me and I cut them to pieces. But when they could see through it, I fell back to the effectiveness of a Rogue, which is to say, fairly useless.
You pretty much only exist in those two extremes and like what most other posters have said, the higher level you go, the more enemies you run into that can bypass your invisibility.
Meanwhile, the party Barbarian pounces, and gets the same amount of damage or more with much fewer hits required, while having more HP, DR, etc.Yeah, but the barbarian is an outlier and exception, not the rule.
Meanwhile the party Paladin Smites, and gets the same amount of damage or more with fewer hits requires while having more HP, AC, self healing, etc.
Meanwhile the Party Ranger lets loose with a flurry of arrows at his Favored Target, dealing the same amount of damage or more while having more HP, an Animal Companion, spells, attacks at long range, etc.
Meanwhile the party Fighter attacks a target and deals the same amount of damage or more with fewer hits required (alternatively "lets loose with a flurry of arrows for ludicrous damage") while having more HP, higher AC, etc.
The only difference between them and the Barbarian in that scenario is that he can do it in one round instead of two like the everyone else.
Hell, we are doing a power limited campaign in which we don't allow full caster and other extremely powerful options, and barbarian is one of the non-full-caster banned classes.
Relevance to the subject at hand?
Why not just, you know, flank? It's not like rogues/ninjas are THAT fragile or vulnerable in visible melee combat with the right feat/talent/trick choices. Offensive Defense is a good one.
The problem being that that requires the Rogue to actually hit something, which is far from guaranteed.
IMO, the real advantage of invisibility fades the more you level-up, because special senses become the norm... And even at low-level, some are pretty common, as scent.
For example:
Scent: Automatic pinpoint at melee, so better not stay too close.
Blindsight/blindsense: Invisibility useless
Constant see invisibility: Too baaaad!
Constant see X alignment: Better be neutral for a ninja.
All of them won't prevent you from Sneak attacking, but anyway, you won't last long if it's your only tactic. I really encourage you to flank.
Intelligent foes, when not too stupid or when they know you are an invisible killer, can easily use the cheap trick "Flour on the floor!" or "flour in your head!".
I was really relieved when Paizo made the ninja able to sneak attack in a flank situation (not the case in 3.5, you could only SA flat-footed enemies), because you're less a one-bad-trick pony.
Don't get me wrong, I do really like the ninja, but I still find him a step behind from other martial class when comparing fighting efficiency. And you drop Trapfinding and some precious skills.
Paladin smite adds a lot of damage yeah, but how much does sneak attack add? At level 11 a paladin can add 11 damage (or 15 with bracers of the avenging knight), while 6d6 sneak is an average of 21 damage, which can be pushed up by deadly sneak making the minimum roll on sneak dice 3.
11 damage a hit, while the Paladin is likely using a 2H weapon with higher Str. It evens out in damage, especially if you're dumb enough to use Deadly Sneak and drop your already average at best to-hit by another 2.
And don't forget that at level 11 your Pally has 3 attacks to your Ninja's 2, unless he's using TWFing and incrementally negating any advantage being invisible gives him.
The paladin gets cha to attack rolls but the ninja often is attacking flat footed which can sometimes be as good or better, and sometimes worse.
Which is why I didn't mention accuracy when talking about the Ninja. Though at high levels, it's probably only a +2 to-hit, since being denied Dex when your Dex is low or even a negative doesn't matter, and many creatures at high level are exactly that way.
Offensive Defense, if you can land the hit equals out the AC bonus from smite too, and often rogues can have similar AC to paladins wearing full plate because of their often prodigious amounts of dexterity.
In most cases, Dex to AC will not outpace armor. Full plate vs Chain Shirt, you already need 20 Dex to even MATCH the AC of the paladin who has 10 Dex (which confirms you're going Dex Rogue, which makes the comparison all the easier for the Pally to win).
Mithral Full Plate can support a 16 Dex just fine, which you can easily have as a Paladin with the ubiquitous Belt of Physical Prowess/Perfection. The Rogue will also have it, to be fair.
So let's say you have a Rogue with a Str/Dex +4 belt and a Paladin with a Str/Dex +4 belt (since he doesn't need Con a whole lot with LoH going).
Paladin, starting Dex 12, is now at 16. Rogue, starting Dex 18 (16 +2 Racial, because I'm assuming he's not dumping all other stats and neither is Pally man), with +2 from leveling at 11th and the +4 belt is at 24 Dex, a +7.
Chain Shirt +4, Dex +7, you've got 21 AC.
Full Plate +9, Dex +3, you've got 22 AC.
Toss in a shield if the Paladin wants to meet rather than exceed the Rogue's damage output, and that flies into the stratosphere (26 with a heavy shield even unenhanced. I can compare enhancements here since the Rogue has no equivalent). The Rogue loses the AC game pretty much every time.
At 11th level, Offensive Defense is giving him +6 AC...still likely one behind the +2 Heavy Shield the Pally could be using, and ONLY if he hits somebody that round.
The ninja has no answer to the increased hit die or the self-healing because the paladin IS the better class, but the gap isn't as large and the advantage to offense is certainly not heavily skewed in the paladin's favor, slightly yes.
Mmhmm. The Ninja at best matches the Paladin's damage output on average. Which is nice. I have no issues with the Ninja since he actually has abilities that let him take advantage of Sneak Attack (unlike the Rogue).
I was just pointing out from the start that the statement "once he hits level 10 everything gets obliterated" is untrue, or at least no more true than for any martial class.
The problem being that that requires the Rogue to actually hit something, which is far from guaranteed.
Why not just, you know, flank? It's not like rogues/ninjas are THAT fragile or vulnerable in visible melee combat with the right feat/talent/trick choices. Offensive Defense is a good one.
This is correct. Without an additional source of attack bonuses (Weapon Training, Smite, Favored Enemy, Rage, etc) while also having lower BAB, it was hard for me to hit enemies without being able to hit flat-footed AC by being invisible. I could also flank, but being visible meant I was diving into enemy back lines, where other enemies could pile on me. Offensive Defense was a nice source of AC, but it also only affects the enemy you hit with Sneak Attack, not any other enemies that may happen to attack you because you are out of position.
You could not piranha srike/power attack on the first round to make sure your offensive defense goes up. It's not like that's a huge source of ninja/rogue damage. It might even be best to not do it at all, which would completely counter the lack of bab though lower your damage output somewhat.
Regardless, Power Attack is still a source of damage. If I have to give it up because I can't hit with it, then that's losing damage that another martial otherwise would not need to give up. Additionally, having lower BAB makes you have less attacks than full BAB martials. That was another thing I discovered when I was playing a Ninja.
There are options to shore up your weaknesses of being in melee as well, you can get things like cloak of displacement and ring of blinking.
I don't think a Cloak of Displacement is a good idea. Rogues have among the worst saves in the game, and taking this would prevent you from wearing a Cloak of Resistance.
The Ring of Blinking is a good idea, however. I never noticed it before. Good catch.
Or you could just make a ranged sneak ninja and use sniper goggles to do gross amounts of damage. You'll suffer early until you get find a way to snipe pre-10 but then once you get invisible blades you can full attack with a ranged weapon sneaking with impunity.
I agree this is not too bad of a build. But needing to wait until level 10 before you can reliably Sneak Attack is unacceptable. You are essentially not playing your character concept until halfway through the game.
You still also run into the problem of high level enemies simply being able to see through invisibility. Without it, making ranged Sneak Attacks is very difficult.
Edit: If you can get enough to hit or an enemy has a low flat footed AC you can push your minimum sneak roll to 5 and max to 7. Average 36 sneak attack damage, which is pretty significant. Even my Paladin which is level 10 right now and heavily optimized does 34 damage per swing with strength, power attack and smite all factored. This is just sneak attack, if they have really low flat footed AC you could push the damage almost 40 with deadly aim*.
*Correction, agile is melee only, no dex to damage for ranged ninja/rogues.
Yes, Sneak Attack deals nice damage, but it is unreliable. It gets worse when it is tacked onto a 3/4 BAB class that has no sources of attack bonus increases or other damage bonuses. This unfortunately causes the Rogue to be very poor in combat if they cannot Sneak Attack, while being only acceptable - not exceptional - when Sneak Attacking under good circumstances. This is exactly my problem with the Rogue class. It needs Sneak Attack in order to compete with other martials in combat, but since it is unreliable, it cannot rely on having Sneak Attack all the time, or even a lot of the time.
Sneak Attack should always be a bonus source of damage, not a main source of damage that is required all the time. That's why something like the Vivisectionist Alchemist is a good Sneak Attacker, because it has acceptable damage on its own, and Sneak Attack rewards it for good positioning and teamwork. But this is not the case with the Rogue.