Balance question: Sneak Attack creatures immune to Precision for Non-Lethal

[Pleh]

I think the Title says it all. I suspect people have had this idea before, but I couldn't find it.

I just had the idea pop into my head, "what would be the balance shift to 3.5 if I were to houserule that: creatures that are immune to Precision Damage take all Sneak Attack damage (and let's throw in it's cousins: Sudden Strike and Skirmish) as Nonlethal Damage, rather than ignoring it."

For the Pedants: the creatures immune to precision damage, if also immune to nonlethal damage, are not also immune to nonlethal damage dealt in this way.

The idea here being that the Rogue, by targeting critical weak points, can disrupt a Golem or a Zombie and disable their activity, even if they don't inherently possess the power to destroy the target through targeting critical points.

Following this, all the standard character options for enabling Sneak Attack to be dealt to groups of creatures normally immune will upgrade the Nonlethal damage straight to Lethal.

What are your thoughts? Are there better ways to phrase it? Is it too powerful somehow? Not powerful enough to make a difference? Does it sound like it might help make the Rogues (and similar classes) more fun to play?

[sleepyphoenixx]

The whole reason you can't sneak attack them is that they have no weak points for you to target.
If you want to houserule something for some reason (it's not exactly necessary, there are already plenty of ways around it) just make immunity to crits not give immunity to sneak attack and call it a day.

[Darrin]

Off the top of my head, it sounds to me this would be the equivalent to "immunity to sneak attack is no longer a thing".

A creature is functionally unable to continue combat when the total amount of damage and non-lethal damage exceeds its HP total. From a mechanical standpoint, a creature with non-lethal damage will fall unconscious when the amount of real damage drops them below their current amount of non-lethal damage. In most combats, this means that creature is functionally dead, as the PCs can effortlessly kill it once all active enemies are dead or incapacitated.

As far as game balance goes... sneak attackers would be more effective against a wider range of enemies, but are probably still going to be outclassed by Uberchargers and Tier 1 spellcasters. Rogues would be stronger, but sneak attack will still be situationally useful.

[Necroticplague]

The idea here being that the Rogue, by targeting critical weak points, can disrupt a Golem or a Zombie and disable their activity, even if they don't inherently possess the power to destroy the target through targeting critical points. If it's immune to sneak attacks and criticals, that's because it has no weak points to target. A zombie and a golem move more due their animating energies than their actual physical bodies, so no one part of the body is really more important than the rest.

This also doesn't make sense for another simple reason: what is this nonlethal damage representing for CON-less creatures? Nonlethal damage is the body tiring out without being severely damaged (thus, why creatures with Regeneration downgrade damage to nonlethal: nothing except their Banes is more than tiring). Zombies, Golems, and other CON-less creatures don't get tired, only damaging the body even remotely impedes them.


What are your thoughts? Are there better ways to phrase it? Is it too powerful somehow? Not powerful enough to make a difference? Does it sound like it might help make the Rogues (and similar classes) more fun to play?
Too powerful. Sneak Attacking with a lot of attacks is already the second best way to deal damage, with it's main weakness being that it isn't good against certain creature types (you'll note the groups that are immune to SA also generally have other features that counter this style, like DR and exotic senses like Darkvision). Sure, knowing you can one-round everything* instead of almost everything will be fun the first few time, but slamming that I-win button will get dull after a while.

*as an enemy that's unconcious can be taken out at your leisure, and isn't harming you, and is thus no different from an enemy that is dead, for all practical purposes.

[Inevitability]

Too powerful. Sneak Attacking with a lot of attacks is already the second best way to deal damage, with it's main weakness being that it isn't good against certain creature types (you'll note the groups that are immune to SA also generally have other features that counter this style, like DR and exotic senses like Darkvision). Sure, knowing you can one-round everything* instead of almost everything will be fun the first few time, but slamming that I-win button will get dull after a while.

*as an enemy that's unconcious can be taken out at your leisure, and isn't harming you, and is thus no different from an enemy that is dead, for all practical purposes.

Penetrating Strike is sooooooo overpowered!

[BassoonHero]

A simpler fix would be to halve sneak attack damage versus crit-immune opponents.

Sneak attack immunity is an awful mechanic. It's so punishing to rogues that any high-level sneak attacker needs a reliable way around it -- which makes the immunity nothing but a tax.

[sleepyphoenixx]

Too powerful. Sneak Attacking with a lot of attacks is already the second best way to deal damage, with it's main weakness being that it isn't good against certain creature types (you'll note the groups that are immune to SA also generally have other features that counter this style, like DR and exotic senses like Darkvision). Sure, knowing you can one-round everything* instead of almost everything will be fun the first few time, but slamming that I-win button will get dull after a while.

You can already one-round everything anyway with Penetrating Strike if you take stuff like Craven and Shadow Blade to get some decent bonus damage going.
Even just normal 5d6 SA is already ~20 damage per hit with short swords, before buffs. That's enough with TWF (+potentially Haste/other buffs) to kill most things.

DR isn't really a hindrance for anyone unless it's one of the exotic types. Getting around it is trivial if you prepare accordingly. And exotic senses don't actually stop flanking.
Archers are at a disadvantage, but with Darkstalker it's not actually landing SA's.

And SA immune is, as others have said already, not a balancing measure but a tax.
Between Penetrating Strike, stuff like Swift Hunter, spells like Vine/Grave/Golem Strike, items like Deathstrike Bracers and Truedeath/Fiendslayer crystals there is no such thing as "immune to Sneak Attack", just as there is no druid who can't cast in wildshape.

All removing SA immunity or giving everyone Penetrating Strike by default will do is let rogues free up a feat or save a few gold.
And seeing how they're already at a disadvantage compared to THFers (who don't have to take 4 feats just to use their weapon, +Darkstalker, +Craven... rogues have a lot of feat taxes) i don't really see the problem.
But since all those options already exist i also don't really see a need to houserule it. Houserules should be kept simple and to necessary stuff. This isn't something that needs one.

[Pleh]

The whole reason you can't sneak attack them is that they have no weak points for you to target.
If you want to houserule something for some reason (it's not exactly necessary, there are already plenty of ways around it) just make immunity to crits not give immunity to sneak attack and call it a day.

I will say that this idea is nothing but fluff and doesn't have a lot of justification from making the game more balanced.

In my mind, Golems and Zombies might be magically animated so they can move even when damaged, but mentally I still think slicing a major muscle group at the point where it meets the bone ought to be slightly more effective at disabling a zombie than merely crushing the flesh in arbitrary locations. The body is animated, but it could easily still rely on the functionality of the body's structure (cutting off the head doesn't stop the zombie, but the zombie now basically auto-fails spot and listen checks, reduced to flailing its arms blindly).

If the only reason NOT to use the houserule is fluff, then all I need is a functional replacement for the fluff.

My main thought behind this is that most of the real Rogues I've seen (none of the PO that borders on TO that floats around in forums) aren't building to one-shot monsters with SA and TWF. Most of the time, they just want to see their SA trigger and contribute meaningfully in a consistent manner (to combat).