Looking for suggestions for "anatomical sneak attacks"

[Kinkan]

Greetings all

My friends and I recently got a strong urge to start up some good ol' roleplaying, and we began on fixing what needs to be fixed. We're planning to run a variant of the E6 playstyle.

Anyhow, one of my friends have told me he wanted to run a doctor type of character, using herbalism, drugs, poisons and, of course, sneak attack. So we're basically looking at a rogue here. I started looking up feats and other things on the internet when I came across a feat called "Arterial Strike", basically a feat that let's you sacrifice 1d6 of your sneak attack damage in the attack to apply a bleed that drains the victim of 1 hp each round until someone patches him up. From this we got the idea to make a feat or class feature which, like the Bard's Bardic Music, scales in options and abilities as his skill grows, only this one based on the amount of sneak attack dice he is able to subtract from his damage.

Another good example is a feat named "Lacerate", sacrifice 3d6 of your sneak attack damage to deny the foe use of his hands for 1 minute unless he passes a fortitude save.

Also "Impeding Attack", Sacrifice 3d6 of your sneak attack damage to impose a -2 penalty on the foes strength and dexterity-based ability checks and skill checks for 10 rounds. Just so you can see what kind of effects we're going for, they don't necessarily have to be powerful but at least situational and fun to use.

Now, the thing is none of us have a really good grasp on the different status effects and debuffs that exists in D&D, and trying to make up a bunch of interesting and worthwhile variations of attacks for this feat/class feature would be very hard for us and also probably end in failure on our part as we're not all that experienced outside of core.

Also, if anyone have suggestions on how to make the Heal skill more relevant to gameplay without making it a mundane healing "spell" we would greatly appreciate it. We have discussed things such as using heal to remove arrowheads and treat wounds before they become infected etc. Hope to hear from you, seeing all the great stuff you put out on these boards there are bound to be some great ideas for something like this.

[Set]

Check out the various Conditions in the back of the DMG.

Using your blade to open up a bleeding wound over the eyes could impose the Dazzled condition, or, on a greater success, a round of the Blinded condition.

A morningstar to the junk could impose Sickened or Nauseated.

The 'lamed' condition described under the Caltrop writeup could represent an arrow to the lower leg or brutal foot-stomp.

Some conditions, like Deafened, don't have a 'lesser' version, the way Dazzled/Blind or Sickened/Nauseated or Fatigued/Exhausted do, so you might want to come up with lesser conditions for 'Lamed' or Deafened.

Note that the Barbarian's Rage ability already provides precedent for temporary Fatigued conditions, so you can easily create an attack that 'knocks the wind out of someone' so that they suffer the penalties of being Fatigued (or Exhausted) for X number of rounds, instead of the all or nothing 'must rest for eight hours' Fatigued condition (which might be too potent as something you could inflict with a melee attack, depending on your thoughts on balance).

New conditions, such as Mute/Hoarse (can't speak, difficulty speaking, must make Concentration checks to complete spells with Verbal components) or combining conditions that don't necessarily go together to create a 'Stunning Strike' that imposes a Stunned condition if it works ideally, or a Dazed condition if it doesn't, could flesh out the list.

For most of these Condition-applying attacks, I'd require the sacrifice of +1d6 sneak attack damage / round of intended duration, and some sort of Fortitude save to allow the target to take only the lesser condition (dazzled, instead of blinded). I'd also allow Fighters to make use of these sorts of attacks, making some similar sacrifice (perhaps penalties to the attack roll?), but I've always been a fan of allowing Fighters to apply various non-supernatural Conditions via special attacks, instead of allowing the spellcasters to have all the debuffing fun.


For buffing up the Heal skill, particularly in a lower-magic game, or one where the presence of a Cleric isn't guaranteed, I'd allow a Healing kit to be used normally without expending uses, or a 'Treat Wound' option that requires a use of the kit and converts a number of hit points of lethal damage into nonlethal damage equal to the users Ranks in the Heal skill or the recipients Constitution modifier (whichever is lower, almost guaranteed to be the Con mod...), but only once per day per subject. The nonlethal damage would then recover at it's normal accelerated rate.

[Popertop]

wow, this a great, interesting idea.
I've always loved different uses for sneak attack.

There are a few feats in the Complete Scoundrel that allow you to do this
but the prereqs for a few of them are a little harsh.

so you could just permit access to the higher level ones as you gain levels for this class feature.

There should be a list of "debuffs" somewhere...

[Morph Bark]

Also "Impeding Attack", Sacrifice 3d6 of your sneak attack damage to impose a -2 penalty on the foes strength and dexterity-based ability checks and skill checks for 10 rounds. Just so you can see what kind of effects we're going for, they don't necessarily have to be powerful but at least situational and fun to use.

That one sounds rather weak, especially if it is only checks. If you actually would lower their Str and Dex by 2 for 10 rounds, that'd be somethin' else. Or have it be -2 to Str/Dex based (skill) checks for every lost SA dice, of course non-stackable with its own effect.

Lacerate sounds dandy, but I'd just make it that it'd do that for the use of a single limb.

By the by, may he sacrifice SA dice even if that would leave him without SA? A Spellthief has similar abilities that allow him to trade SA dice for those things, but he must still have SA dice left after lowering the amount (or else it would no longer count as SA and prettymuch fail).

[Kinkan]

Set: Will look into those as soon as I have the chance, thanks for the input. And, like you, I'm a fan of trying to open up more options for non magical characters without having to spend a bunch of feats to be able to use them, though perhaps still keep feats which makes them more appealing. As long as one option isn't the no-brainer in terms of mechanical ability I'm happy. Would love some suggestions for fighters as well, and you seem to have some floating around.

Popertop: Yeah, opening up more uses as your skill progresses is exactly what I'm going for. While the bard may say "bard level 6, perform rank 9" to use a certain ability, this might say "sneak attack 2d6, heal rank 12". The heal skill could even increase DCs or open up secondary effects for the sneak attack variations as it increases, since it's a low magic E6 game the theoretical max rank in heal is 17 (9 from skill ranks, 3 from skill focus and 5 from attribute. No skill or attribute boosting magical items will be present). Perhaps have some of them make you roll Heal checks for secondary effects?

M-Bark: That one sure is rather weak, it's certainly not strong enough to spend an entire feat on (as someone apparently thought). Making it scale with the amount of sacrificed sneak attack dice is a great idea and might be something to consider for the rest of the variations, whether it be for increases duration, effect or save DC for the attack. And I kind of agree with you on the lacerate part, I'm having a hard time seeing how one would disable the use of both arms in one sneak attack, and it might help to not make that one too attractive as the opponent can still fight back with his off-hand if you disable his main one, albeit at a penalty unless he has two-weapon fighting etc.

I would suppose he should be able to trade away all his sneak attack dice for this ability, seeing how his sneak attack probably won't go above 3d6 when they cap out at level 6 (we've been reigning in the hit points a bit as well, borrowing from 4E with higher hit points at level 1 but less each level, so I'd be vary to let him get too much bonus damage from his sneak attack). But the argument that it's not a sneak attack if it doesn't deal sneak attack damage is a sound one, and something that will have to be taken into consideration.

[Siosilvar]

since it's a low magic E6 game the theoretical max rank in heal is 17 (9 from skill ranks, 3 from skill focus and 5 from attribute. No skill or attribute boosting magical items will be present).

No, your maximum rank is 9. Your maximum bonus may be +17, but you cannot have more ranks than level + 3 (possibly level +5 with the feat that was a suggested E6 addition).

[Kinkan]

Absolutely true! I've never even thought to make the distinction since the only case where this comes up as far as I know is the Bardic Music class feature (probably very wrong here, seem to remember some feats somewhere which requires skill ranks), and even then the levels where new uses comes up is keyed to the max rank of that level, and why wouldn't you keep perform maxed out?

Which brings the question, should the Heal skill requirements for new uses be keyed to the base ranks of the skill or the total bonus? I wouldn't really be opposed to give a little incentive to pick up the skill focus feat to gain the last couple of variations of sneak attack, or just get them a bit earlier.

Gonna spend some time tomorrow trying to come up with a basic draft for the feat.

[Morph Bark]

No, your maximum rank is 9. Your maximum bonus may be +17, but you cannot have more ranks than level + 3 (possibly level +5 with the feat that was a suggested E6 addition).

Actually in E6 that would be 11 ranks, since the guy who made it up included a feat that upped the rank limit by 2 to HD+5.

[Siosilvar]

Actually in E6 that would be 11 ranks, since the guy who made it up included a feat that upped the rank limit by 2 to HD+5.

Which I mentioned, in parenthesis, after my statement...

EDIT:

Which brings the question, should the Heal skill requirements for new uses be keyed to the base ranks of the skill or the total bonus? I wouldn't really be opposed to give a little incentive to pick up the skill focus feat to gain the last couple of variations of sneak attack, or just get them a bit earlier.

While using the total bonus could be interesting, all requirements and prerequisites are base ranks for a reason. Various synergy bonuses, +2 skills feats, skill focus, ability scores... there's too much variance.

You could, however, use a requirements line like "Heal 9 ranks or Heal 6 ranks and Skill Focus (Heal)".

[Airman]

Unless I'm wrong, Complete Scoundrel has a series of feats for this with effects along the line of "You may sacrifice Xd6 damage from sneak attack damage to impose Y effect for Z rounds." Throat punch for silence and such.

[Siosilvar]

Unless I'm wrong, Complete Scoundrel has a series of feats for this with effects along the line of "You may sacrifice Xd6 damage from sneak attack damage to impose Y effect for Z rounds." Throat punch for silence and such.

The idea was to make more, possibly as a function of the Heal skill.

[ericgrau]

Like called shots, there is usually a single option that tends to be better than all the others, making all the other options pointless. The exception would be abilities that only work on certain monsters, such as on wings, legs and hands. Personally I'd assume that the character is always trying to hit the best opening he can find, like everyone else, and I'd roll on a random table to see what he actually hits, along with corresponding special effect.

[Kinkan]

Like called shots, there is usually a single option that tends to be better than all the others, making all the other options pointless. The exception would be abilities that only work on certain monsters, such as on wings, legs and hands. Personally I'd assume that the character is always trying to hit the best opening he can find, like everyone else, and I'd roll on a random table to see what he actually hits, along with corresponding special effect.

That is something that needs to be adressed, in one way or the other. While every single situation will likely have a best option, as long as no option is always the best option I'm quite satisfied. The throat punch option would probably be a no brainer against a spellcaster, but could also be used to avoid an opponent from calling out for help, some kind of hamstring attack to reduce movement speed to avoid runners, some sort of "desorientation" attack (as I've heard punches against the ears can accomplish) to deny dexterity bonus to armor class for a round or so, hitting arteries to stack up bleed effects, knocking the wind out of the opponent with a stomach punch, the aforementioned "Lacerate" to deny use of one of the opponent's arms for a while so he either have to fight with his off-hand or not at all. Of the one's I've mentioned I'm having a hard time seeing one of them towering over the other ones in usefulness all the time, but I might be missing something and it's always worth to look out for.

I've been pondering whether to allow the sneak attack reduction to take the attack down to no sneak attack damage, and come to the conclusion that it will probably be okay since it's so low level and we don't have that many dice to work with for this feat (otherwise he wouldn't get to use it at all until level 3, and that doesn't seem very fun to me)

And yeah, going "Base ranks 9 or 6 + Skill Focus" seems like a good idea to me, then there can be some move available at 12 as the pinnacle for this feature in E6. Also, I'm curious as to this feat which increases base ranks, what's the reasoning behind it? What purpose does it serve in the context of an E6 game?

[Popertop]

well, the one that allows trade of sneak attack for con damage is probably the strongest, but it trades five dice for 1d4 con, so it's not totally op.

another option is one that ignores armor bonus, so it would circumvent full forification.

there's already Spot the Weak Point that does that, so you could have similar requirements.

or you could have treatment of these special attacks needing various ranks in Heal in order to know how to treat them properly, corresponding to the number required to use the attack. so if you need 9 ranks, or 6+skill focus, then they have to match that with their heal ranks. since you are probably taking skill focus for this, and most people won't take skill focus(heal), you can outstrip the people trying to treat your specialized anatomical attack.

another option is having the debuff persist through magical healing, so you can't get rid of it with a cure minor wounds, or it has a specific spell to treat it (restoration, remove paralysis, neutralize poison, remove curse) no matter if a certain spell already cures that condition.

I would allow use of special poisons specifically for this character, nothing too powerful, but something like an ability buff that they can use, but in poison form. requires ranks in heal as well as craft(poisonmaking).

[Kinkan]

Alrighty then, I've got a basic draft to three feats now. Basically it's the feats I found on crystalkeep that touches on this with a few alterations, compiled into individual feats based on how much sneak attack you need to use them.

Anatomical Strikes
Prerequisites: Sneak Attack 1d6 Heal rank 4
If you hit with a Sneak Attack, you may choose to forgo +1d6 or more of your Sneak Attack damage for one of the following effects:
Arterial Strike – When making an attack with a lethal weapon, you may forgo any number of Sneak Attack dice. You deliver a wound that won’t stop bleeding. Each wound so inflicted does an additional one point of damage per round. Wounds from multiple arterial strikes result in cumulative blood loss. The wound stops bleeding when the victim receives a successful Heal check or any heal spell.
Ring the Ear – With an Unarmed Strike you may forgo any number of Sneak Attack dice. You opponent has to make a Fortitude save versus DC = 10 + 1/2 your Character level + Strength modifier or be Deafened for three rounds. For each die you choose to forgo after the first one the DC is increased by +2 and the duration by one round.
Merciful Strike – Your attack (including Sneak Attack damage) with a lethal weapon deals nonlethal damage without a -4 penalty to attack.

Improved Anatomical Strikes
Prerequisites: Sneak Attack 2d6, Heal rank 6
If you hit with a Sneak Attack, you may choose to forgo +2d6 or more of your Sneak Attack damage for one of the following effects:
Hamstring – Reduce your opponent’s land speed by half. Other forms of movement (fly, burrow, and so forth) aren’t affected. The speed reduction ends when the target receives healing (a successful Heal check, any cure spell, or other magical healing) or after 24 hours. You need a slashing or piercing weapon to perform a hamstring attack. It takes two successful hamstring attacks to affect a quadruped.
Throat Punch – With an unarmed strike, you may impede your foe’s ability to speak for three rounds. The foe receives a -5 penalty on skill checks related to speech and has a 50% failure chance when casting a spell with a Verbal component.
Painful Strike – You cause your opponent intense pain for one minute, resulting in a -2 penalty on attacks, skill checks & ability checks.
Dazzling Strike – For every Sneak Attack die you remove from your damage your target is Dazzled for one round.
Disorienting Attack – You deliver an attack which leaves your opponent staggering and disoriented. Your opponent must make a Fortitude save against 10 + 1/2 your Character level + your Strength bonus or be flat-footed until your next turn.

Greater Anatomical Strikes
Prerequisites: Sneak Attack 3d6, Heal rank 8
If you hit with a Sneak Attack, you may choose to forgo +3d6 of your Sneak Attack damage for one of the following effects:
Lacerate – You cause your opponent to lose use of one of his hands for one minute (Fort negates, DC = 10 + 1/2 Character level + damage dealt). Any object in the disabled hand is dropped, the foe cannot wield two-handed weapons (though he can use one handed weapons in his off-hand, at a penalty unless he has the Two-Weapon Fighting feat)
Impeding Attack – You may reduce your Sneak Attack damage by any number of dice. On a successful attack, for each die you remove from your damage your target receive a -2 penalty on Strength and Dexterity-based ability checks and skill checks for ten minutes.
Concussion Attack - You may reduce your Sneak Attack damage by any number of dice. On a successful attack, for each die you remove from your damage your target receive a -2 penalty on Intelligence and Wisdom-based ability checks and skill checks for ten minutes.
Stomach Punch - Haven't got a clue here

I'm actually not sure about what to do with the feats though. On one hand I really like the idea of a feat which scales by itself with your sneak attack and heal, giving a sense of more slowly growing power. On the other hand, something along these lines feels like a much cleaner design (all 1d6 Sneak Attack minimum effects rolled up in one feat, all 2d6 in another and 3d6 in a third). Anyway, gonna try to up the amount of variants for each feat to five or six. Would also kind of need to find replacements for Concussion Attack and Impending attack as, honestly, they're really boring.

Oh yeah, I have absolutely no idea what being Dazzled means, but there was a feat on crystalkeep that caused that effect if you traded away Sneak Attack, and it sounded nifty. Also changed Arterial Strike to let you trade in extra Sneak Attack dice for extra bleed damage, and did some minor changes to other options. Need more, suggestions?

Also, spending a feat to get a couple of kind of weak utility uses for Sneak Attack might seem like much, but we're remaking the base classes so everyone have more feats to spend, thus why I don't see much of a problem in leaving it as three feats.

Also, what does Spot the Weak Points do? I've tried finding the actual feat but I guess I just suck too much.

Regarding opposing Heal skill checks, it's an interesting idea in itself, but I don't see much use for it in an actual game and would probably just complicate things. If you mutilate an opponent who gets away he will or won't get better depending on what the DM wants, and the same is basically true the other way around.

The magical healing thing would probably not be too cool for us to use since we're removing divine magic and giving sorcerors (the only magic users) some watered down healing as the only magical healing in the world.

And about the poisons, care to expand on your ideas? They're kind of vague right now, and I would really appreciate any ideas at all to alchemy and poisons. Even though items like Alchemist's Fire doesn't get as weak as they do in normal D&D, it would be nice to expand the list a bit, with nice things like smokesticks and such. Someone has probably done this already though.

Oh yeah, suggestions for the names? Not too crazy about what I have here, but can't really come up with something better at the moment.

[Popertop]

For some of these you have the ability to trade more sneak attack dice and get more of an effect.

For arterial strike it seems normal, but for the others, are the dice you give up in order to use the abilities included in the effect? I know this is for the ones you don't really care about, (impending attack, concussion attack, dazzling strike) but I would like to know as it seems a little ambiguous. It's a good idea to trade more dice for extra effect, but you don't want to take it too far in either direction (too strong, or pointless)

Dazzled- you can't see well because of overstimulation of the eyes, -1 attack rolls, search and spot checks. seems very weak and pointless, I would rather Daze somebody (can take no actions, but receives no penalty to AC)

For Stomach Punch, you could make them nauseated(can't attack, cast spells, concentrate on spells, do anything requiring attention, can only take a single move action each turn; pretty good effect) for three rounds +2 for each additional die you give up. Maybe have the damage be non-lethal, since you are supposedly punching them in the stomach.

My ideas for the opposed heal checks and having some of these immune to magical healing(except for specific healing spells depending on the attack) is to get around parties that rely on magic items for healing (healing belt, wands, other various things) and to give the attacks a little more oomph(I like having them on par with ability damage, makes the conditions seem a little more serious). But that would only be for the higher tiered abilities, or if you sacrificed a certain number of dice. In your campaign since you don't have magical healing everywhere, I wouldn't use it in that way, but if clerics and druids are abundant, it should be fine. As for it's elegance, yeah it's not very elegant at all, but it could be a good starting point for having that sort of mechanic, if someone really wanted to use it we could streamline it.

Spot the Weak Point is actually a skill trick, not a feat, so you could make it one of the special attacks without much hassle at all. I don't think it's strong enough as is, so I would make it a little better.

It's in Complete Scoundrel, and you can find it here near the bottom of the page. http://www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/fc/20070216a
It doesn't say there, but it has Spot 12 as prereq.

You make a spot check (standard action) versus your targets AC to treat your next attack (no later than next turn) as a touch attack (ignores armor bonus)

I think a standard action to ignore armor bonus is a little weak, i would go for move action so you can still attack, or keep it standard and have iterative attacks treated as touch attacks. That makes it a little to easy to get around fortification (+5 bonus) but you can make it weaker if you want (or just put it in one of the final tiers, you are giving up sneak attack to use those anyways, so it's not the end of the world).

For the special poisons, you could create some that improve the function of the abilities, like they add extra bleeding damage, or make the wounds you inflict blister and close improperly. I don't have that many thoughts on it, there's probably already a wealth of information for people that want to use poisons, so I would read up on that and go from there.

[Kinkan]

Fair enough. Dazzled apparently wasn't as nice as it sounded, best idea is probably just to go ahead and cut it and Impeding/Conussion Attack right away as they don't serve much of a purpose anyway.

Your proposed Stomach Punch is interesting and seem to fit, but it seems like something that might be a bit strong, what with the rogue being able to effectively remove several opponents from combat at the same time. Maybe put in a save to reduce the the duration or make it a full-attack action or something? And again, I'm thinking purely from the perspective of a low level party mostly facing humanoid opponents, so my though on balance might be a bit off here. That's also my thinking with the trading dice, Sneak Attack would cap at 3d6, maybe 4d6 in our game, but I can also recognize a need to be able to make use of these abilities at higher levels, especially the ones that offers saves.

Anyway, if we we're to roll it up into one feat, which does seem proper, we could try to sort them according to power with the Heal skill and Sneak Attack, like such:

(1d6, Heal 4) Ring the Ear
(1d6, Heal 5) Arterial Strike
(1d6, Heal 6) Merciful Strike
(2d6, Heal 6) Throat Punch
(2d6, Heal 7) Hamstring
(2d6, Heal 8) Painful Strike
(2d6, Heal 8) Disorienting Attack
(3d6, Heal 9) Stomach Punch
(3d6, Heal 10) Lacerate
(3d6, Heal 11)
(4d6, Heal 12) Disemboweling Strike

Assuming you use the "Heal 8 or Heal 5 and Skill Focus (Heal)" requirement, it would let you either gain new uses every level or, with the skill focus feat, gain most or all of the uses for that rank of Sneak Attack on the level you get it.

Also, looking back on the thread, Set's idea about "Using your blade to open up a bleeding wound over the eyes could impose the Dazzled condition, or, on a greater success, a round of the Blinded condition." is really appealing to me. It could cause the Dazzled condition (yeah, right after I've been dissin' on it) and work it's way over to Blinded with more sacrificed Sneak Attack dice. Or go with the "lesser effect if the save is passed". Also, his idea to use the barbarian's fatigued/exhausted for a move is something to consider here when we want to invent some new ones.

[Toxin605]

You could try something like a cripple where you sacrifice 4d6 of your sneak attack to take 10 feet of their speed. Prerequisites are 4d6 sneak attack.

[Kinkan]

Though that's pretty much the same as Hamstring, unless you make it work on other forms of movement than running/walking. Could perhaps even disable flying for winged creatures?