Sneak Attack Damage and Traps

[Zzachary37]

I've been toying around with a character concept involving creating traps and luring monsters into them. I won't go into the details of the build since I'm still working out those right now, but I was wondering about the interaction of sneak attack damage and traps.

For example, say I made a rogue/wizard who was scouting through a dungeon and noticed an enemy scouting a particular route, and set up an explosive rune to go of on a tripwire on the guard's route. Would sneak attack damage apply to this? I'm guessing not, and if not would there be any way to set up a scenario where I could get sneak attack on something like that?

[LanSlyde]

I've been toying around with a character concept involving creating traps and luring monsters into them. I won't go into the details of the build since I'm still working out those right now, but I was wondering about the interaction of sneak attack damage and traps.

For example, say I made a rogue/wizard who was scouting through a dungeon and noticed an enemy scouting a particular route, and set up an explosive rune to go of on a tripwire on the guard's route. Would sneak attack damage apply to this? I'm guessing not, and if not would there be any way to set up a scenario where I could get sneak attack on something like that?

As far as I am aware the only way to get precision damage applied to spells is that they must be 'weaponlike' in that they must require an attack roll vs the targets AC.

[Florian]

I've been toying around with a character concept involving creating traps and luring monsters into them. I won't go into the details of the build since I'm still working out those right now, but I was wondering about the interaction of sneak attack damage and traps.

For example, say I made a rogue/wizard who was scouting through a dungeon and noticed an enemy scouting a particular route, and set up an explosive rune to go of on a tripwire on the guard's route. Would sneak attack damage apply to this? I'm guessing not, and if not would there be any way to set up a scenario where I could get sneak attack on something like that?

Sneak Attack is based in "Precision Damage" and has you involved in doing/controlling the actual precision.
That doesn´t happen with mundane or magical traps, as those are simply triggered, no way to aim them to attain that precision.

[NapazTrix]

Sneak attack is when someone "can strike a vital spot", hence why it doesn't work on Constructs or undead which lack vital points. (Magic can bypass this)
Traps normally can't target people's specific points due to height, weight, race etc, though they can do vast amounts of damage due to the force behind them.

The only way I could see a Trap doing sneak attack is if you controlled it somewhat after activation. Closest thing would be something to alert you like Alarm, or something to make the enemies susceptible to you attacking with a sneak attack.

Otherwise you could set up sneak attack traps all over the place and out damage most things, considering how much sneak attack damage you can deal on top of the actual trap.

[nedz]

There are a couple of PrCs you ought to look at


Trapsmith (Dungeonscape p53)
Combat Trapsmith (Complete Scoundrel p34)


Neither of them allow you to add sneak damage to your traps though - well unless you actually poke somebody with one.