Spells, Sneak Attack, and Full-Round Actions

[Incanur]

The Rules Compendium says you only get one sneak attack out of any spell cast through an action other than a full-round action. This implies you can sneak attack with any number of attacks if using a full-round action. If so, that makes spontaneous casters and Ocular Spell rather awesome for the murderous mage. Two melf's unicorn arrows in your eyes get you ten sneak attacks. Is this correct?

[dextercorvia]

The Rules Compendium says you only get one sneak attack out of any spell cast through an action other than a full-round action. This implies you can sneak attack with any number of attacks if using a full-round action. If so, that makes spontaneous casters and Ocular Spell rather awesome for the murderous mage. Two melf's unicorn arrows in your eyes get you ten sneak attacks. Is this correct?

The rule in Complete Arcane still stands. A spell with multiple attacks (in a round) only give SA on the first.

[tyckspoon]

No, unfortunately; in addition to the general precision damage rule on 'volley' attacks there is also a specific restriction on weaponlike spells. It's on page 136, 'Multiple Hits'. Personally I think it's a bull rule and should be cheerfully ignored- the wording on it is crazy broad so it prevents all bonus damage on everything but the first attack of a multi-hit spell (so for example, if you had a Fiery Scorching Ray, you'd only get the +1/die effect on the first ray, which unnecessarily nerfs this kind of effect.) But it's there nonetheless and if you're playing RAW by way of Rules Compendium, pretty much no matter what you do you'll only get 1 Sneak Attack hit per cast.

[Incanur]

Interesting. That makes sense. Why does the passage even mention action types at all, then?

[Darrin]

Why does the passage even mention action types at all, then?

The whole "volley attack" mess started back in 3.0 when the designers were worried that rogues were going to obliterate everything with clouds of shuriken. In 3.0, you could throw up to three shuriken with a single attack roll... at 1 damage each, hardly worth annoying a housecat. But if a rogue got 1d6 on each shuriken, all of a sudden 3+3d6 damage starts to look impressive. So they tried to nerf precision damage so on "volley attacks" (which were never adequately defined in the core rules) so you only got bonus damage on the first hit. Actual information on volley/precision issues in the rulebooks are quite scarce, most of the rulings appear in Sage Advice or FAQs, which aren't entirely consistent. But the general sense in 3.0 is "one attack roll = apply sneak attack once" and "multiple attack rolls = sneak attack on each attack".

In 3.5, shurikens got nerfed a different way (no more "throw three at once"), and both Manyshot and scorching ray were now part of Core. The PHB doesn't ever mention volley attacks directly, but it does seem to be aware of the "one attack roll, one sneak attack" concept as far as the Manyshot feat goes, since that's the only place in Core that mentions "precision-based damage", which isn't mentioned or defined anywhere else.

It looks like the designers then got freaked out about scorching ray. It's a good spell, possibly a little strong for 2nd level. Throw sneak attack damage on top of 4d6 fire damage, and that's a pretty good chunk of whoopass out of a 2nd level spell. Only the designers screwed up... scorching ray isn't a volley attack like Manyshot where you make one attack roll for all of your rays. So some Ask Sage or Custserv question came in about scorching ray + sneak attack, and the ruling came down that you should only get sneak attack damage on one of those rays... but that doesn't fit the whole "one attack roll = apply sneak attack once" idea... and Sage/Custserv starts to get confused on how precision-based damage (which they still haven't defined anywhere in the books) works on multiple attacks.

The section on "Multiple Hits" in Complete Arcane is a patch job, but it's a bad one because it nerfs all spells with multiple attacks, regardless of how many attack rolls are made. And the designers are still confused because they're not sure what they're actually trying to fix, haven't defined "volley attacks" where anyone can find them, and haven't clarified what "precision-based damage" is or how it works.

Then the Rules Compendium comes along, and we finally get a definition for Precision Damage, but then they bungled it again, because the rules on page 42 don't agree with the Weapon Like Spells/Multiple Hits rules on page 136. I'm not entirely sure what problem the designers were trying to fix on page 42... it looks like they started with the idea that some feats grant extra attacks (very few, though... Whirlwind Attack, and I think Bounding Assault?), and these should conform with how Manyshot works... but they wanted to restrict precision damage by the action type, rather than by the number of attack rolls. Then someone must have mentioned scorching ray, and what happens if you quicken or metamagic it, and... I don't know, it looks like the designer suddenly charged out into left field and started snorting dandelions. Whoever wrote the rules on page 42 didn't notice the conflicting rules on page 136, which are pretty much cut&pasted out of Complete Arcane.

It all boils down to this: the volley/precision damage rules are horrendously complicated for a type of attack comes up so rarely that it's really, really not worth arguing about. Parsing by action type or by attack roll... all it does is add needless complexity to the game, and it has negligible effect on game balance. Just give the stinkin' rogue/arcane trickster/whatever his sneak attack damage on multiple attacks, and keep the game moving.

[Incanur]

Wow, that's a mess. :smalleek: This issues does come up in games - we had an unseen seer in one of the campaigns I ran. I don't recall how I dealt with it then, I just remember that lots of monsters and NPCs died horribly to spell plus sneak attack damage.

[Starbuck_II]

Pathfinder has no Volley rules that deny sneak attack, so in PF you could get 5 sneak attacks by casting a melf's unicorn arrows.
But in 3.5, you are limited by volley rules.

[candycorn]

Pathfinder has no Volley rules that deny sneak attack, so in PF you could get 5 sneak attacks by casting a melf's unicorn arrows.
But in 3.5, you are limited by volley rules.

Even then, volley rules only apply to multiple attacks with an action other than a full round. Were it not for weaponlike spells ruling, you could, as a sorceror, empower a scorching ray (boosting it to a full round action), and get 3 sneak attacks at once.

Volley rules aren't that bad. It's the spell interactions that kinda blow.

That said, sneak attack is a weak mechanic, all things considered... and if you're wasting caster levels on sneak attack (in a non-gestalt build), you're probably going to be less powerful than an equivalent level caster in your field.

[Incanur]

That said, sneak attack is a weak mechanic, all things considered... and if you're wasting caster levels on sneak attack (in a non-gestalt build), you're probably going to be less powerful than an equivalent level caster in your field.

Your typical unseen seer build only loses one level of spellcasting and gains sneak attack in addition to piles of skill points. It makes for a solid character.

[Gotterdammerung]

The whole "volley attack" mess started back in 3.0 when the designers were worried that rogues were going to obliterate everything with clouds of shuriken. In 3.0, you could throw up to three shuriken with a single attack roll... at 1 damage each, hardly worth annoying a housecat. But if a rogue got 1d6 on each shuriken, all of a sudden 3+3d6 damage starts to look impressive. So they tried to nerf precision damage so on "volley attacks" (which were never adequately defined in the core rules) so you only got bonus damage on the first hit. Actual information on volley/precision issues in the rulebooks are quite scarce, most of the rulings appear in Sage Advice or FAQs, which aren't entirely consistent. But the general sense in 3.0 is "one attack roll = apply sneak attack once" and "multiple attack rolls = sneak attack on each attack".

In 3.5, shurikens got nerfed a different way (no more "throw three at once"), and both Manyshot and scorching ray were now part of Core. The PHB doesn't ever mention volley attacks directly, but it does seem to be aware of the "one attack roll, one sneak attack" concept as far as the Manyshot feat goes, since that's the only place in Core that mentions "precision-based damage", which isn't mentioned or defined anywhere else.

It looks like the designers then got freaked out about scorching ray. It's a good spell, possibly a little strong for 2nd level. Throw sneak attack damage on top of 4d6 fire damage, and that's a pretty good chunk of whoopass out of a 2nd level spell. Only the designers screwed up... scorching ray isn't a volley attack like Manyshot where you make one attack roll for all of your rays. So some Ask Sage or Custserv question came in about scorching ray + sneak attack, and the ruling came down that you should only get sneak attack damage on one of those rays... but that doesn't fit the whole "one attack roll = apply sneak attack once" idea... and Sage/Custserv starts to get confused on how precision-based damage (which they still haven't defined anywhere in the books) works on multiple attacks.

The section on "Multiple Hits" in Complete Arcane is a patch job, but it's a bad one because it nerfs all spells with multiple attacks, regardless of how many attack rolls are made. And the designers are still confused because they're not sure what they're actually trying to fix, haven't defined "volley attacks" where anyone can find them, and haven't clarified what "precision-based damage" is or how it works.

Then the Rules Compendium comes along, and we finally get a definition for Precision Damage, but then they bungled it again, because the rules on page 42 don't agree with the Weapon Like Spells/Multiple Hits rules on page 136. I'm not entirely sure what problem the designers were trying to fix on page 42... it looks like they started with the idea that some feats grant extra attacks (very few, though... Whirlwind Attack, and I think Bounding Assault?), and these should conform with how Manyshot works... but they wanted to restrict precision damage by the action type, rather than by the number of attack rolls. Then someone must have mentioned scorching ray, and what happens if you quicken or metamagic it, and... I don't know, it looks like the designer suddenly charged out into left field and started snorting dandelions. Whoever wrote the rules on page 42 didn't notice the conflicting rules on page 136, which are pretty much cut&pasted out of Complete Arcane.

It all boils down to this: the volley/precision damage rules are horrendously complicated for a type of attack comes up so rarely that it's really, really not worth arguing about. Parsing by action type or by attack roll... all it does is add needless complexity to the game, and it has negligible effect on game balance. Just give the stinkin' rogue/arcane trickster/whatever his sneak attack damage on multiple attacks, and keep the game moving.


My group fixes this easily with a house rule. You get sneak attack 1 time per d20 roll. This house rule still denies volley shots like manyshot, that are several attacks with one d20 roll, from gaining multiple SA's but it still allows multi attack situations like scorching ray to gain SA.

The game designers can get a little ditsy sometimes. But luckily it was set up as a adaptable game. Technically, every rule in D and D is only a suggestion to the game master. There is plenty of tools available to fix bad calls like this one.