Do sneak attacking monsters follow the same rules as PCs?

[Ravingdork]

I've seen a number of monsters with an inherent Sneak Attack ability that usually says something to the effect of "The [creature] deals an additional 1d6 precision damage to flat-footed creatures." Note that there is no provisision for agile or finesse weapons in there. Does this mean that monsters with Sneak Attack can get their precision damage with ANY of their weapons?

Take the babau for example. Can it get it's sneak attack precision damage with its longspear? (Something normally impossible for most PCs.)

[Squiggit]

I don't see any provision in the stat block saying it needs to use an agile weapon so... yes.

[YawarFiesta]

Just asume that monsters and NPCs have whatever passive class feature or monster ability required to uses abilities. Kinda like how they don't list the creatures' weapon specialization bonus even when most of them clearly have a greater flat damage bonus than their STR bonus.

Humbly,
Yawar

[andreww]

Sneak attack is defined in the monster ability section of Bestiary 1 at page 344.

Quote:

Sneak Attack When the monster Strikes a creature that has the flat-footed condition with an agile or finesse melee weapon, an agile or finesse unarmed attack, or a ranged weapon attack, it also deals the listed precision damage. For a ranged attack with a thrown weapon, that weapon must also be an agile or finesse weapon.

Oddly it has been left out of Bestiary 2 and 3.

[HumbleGamer]

andreww wrote:

Sneak attack is defined in the monster ability section of Bestiary 1 at page 344.

Quote:

Sneak Attack When the monster Strikes a creature that has the flat-footed condition with an agile or finesse melee weapon, an agile or finesse unarmed attack, or a ranged weapon attack, it also deals the listed precision damage. For a ranged attack with a thrown weapon, that weapon must also be an agile or finesse weapon.

Oddly it has been left out of Bestiary 2 and 3.

For a creature like the Babau Ravingdork mentioned, this is really bad news ( I can't imagine a Babau removing the grip to make a claw attack which deals less damage just to benefit from the precision damage, and then using a manipulate action to take the grip back, exposing him to AoO ).

[Claxon]

To be honest, I think you should ignore that.

It's very likely that the creature as written should be able to get sneak attack with whatever their primary weapon is.

[Aw3som3-117]

Claxon wrote:

To be honest, I think you should ignore that.

It's very likely that the creature as written should be able to get sneak attack with whatever their primary weapon is.

Agreed. Specific beats general. The base sneak attack feature requires agile or finesse weapons, but if that's what the creature had, then it would just have the key word sneak attack, like how some creatures have an attack that at the end of it just says "Plus Grab". It doesn't do this, though, instead it specifically explains how that creature's version of sneak attack works.

That's how I see it, anyway. It also seems to line up with the concept that a creature with sneak attack would have to be pretty dumb to be carrying a weapon they can't proc their sneak attack with.

[HumbleGamer]

Yeah probably I am overthinking about it.

Though it's strange they had to specify for the monster sneak attack ( and in a complicated way, since there's a possibility it wasn't intended that way ) when it would have been easier to say nothing at all.

[thenobledrake]

I go with an "if it's in the statblock, it's meant to work" approach, so any Sneak Attack the creature has works with whatever seems to be the creature's go-to Strike option.

Because otherwise I feel like we're asking for statblocks to be artificially bloated with extra traits or complicated by varying names for similar abilities so that, to use the already mentioned example of a babau, is specified as having the Ruffian racket version of Sneak Attack.

[Kelseus]

Babau's stat block says explicitly "The babau's Strikes deal an extra 2d6 precision damage to flat-footed creatures." 100% straight forward. All strikes get extra 2d6 for flat-footed creatures. There is no need to reference the general Sneak Attack rule because all the info you need is right there.

Could it have been clearer if they didn't call it Sneak Attack and instead called it Deadly Attack? Yeah, but its all there.

[Captain Morgan]

On the other hand, if you're gonna have a monster pick a new weapon its stat block wasn't balanced around, you probably either shouldn't allow sneak attack to apply or should tweak the level of the creature to be more appropriate.