Items that add Sneak Attack

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YYA
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Re: Items that add Sneak Attack

Unread post by YYA »

The problem with sneak attacks from items is quite literally the implementation of sneak attacks themselves in this game, Your 1d6 Sneak Attack is a feat that gets replaced by a 2d6 Sneak Attack, etc. Thus if you have a feat from some item that grants you 2d6 Sneak Attack, and your character sheet already grants 3d6 Sneak Attack feat, the game just makes use of the highest Sneak Attack feat available. In order to fix it, you would have to either recreate sneak attacks entirely by creating sometyhing that calculates the appropriate amount of sneak attack, while taking into consideration potential modifiers from equipment -- or through some 'upon item equipment/removal' script that runs through your character sheet to check Rogue Sneak Attack Dice, any Improved Sneak Attack Feats, then checks for potential flags to grant temporary increase in either Rogue Sneak Attack Dice or just extra Improved Sneak Attack feats, which in turn might cause some unintended consequences when leveling up... Or just when your character first logs in and all your items are removed and put back on to avoid some stacking glitches, and stuff like that.
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EasternCheesE
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Re: Items that add Sneak Attack

Unread post by EasternCheesE »

cosmic ray wrote: Wed Jul 28, 2021 6:13 pm
EasternCheesE wrote: Wed Jul 28, 2021 5:18 pm
cosmic ray wrote: Wed Jul 28, 2021 4:32 pm The manyshot bug wasn't fixed, though, was it? Its impact was simply reduced by nerfing a class feature instead of fixing the bug itself. There's a huge difference. The bug is still there, only applying to 1d6 DA instead of 5d6.

Now assassins have absolutely no use for the epic version of that pins dagger with 2d6 SA. Since rogues already had no use for it in the first place, that item, along with the rest of the epic stuff adding +1 or +2 SA, has become rubbish.
Manyshot is a hardcoded feat and it literally can't be fixed without having totally custom implementation of it.
Yes, I know it can't be fixed for that reason. It was never fixed between 2006 and now, and it will never be and it isn't any fault of anyone around here. What has been achieved, however, is a very unfortunate assassin nerf to circumvent the inability of anyone aside from Bugsidian to fix this bug. At any rate, that is hardly the point of this thread.

This thread is but a suggestion to fix (yes, fix), if it's even possible, the inability for sneak attack items to stack with sneak attack feats. Whoever used the toughness feat as an example is definitely not thinking about this issue properly, as that feat does not work in stackable "levels" as such; either you have the ability or you don't. Sneak attack is designed to stack with itself so that whenever you receive a SA die, even if you already have a million dice of it, you get that on top. This is objectively demonstrable and impossible to argue against. Therefore, this behaviour in NwN2 is very strange (what isn't strange in this game, right?) because SA not stacking between items and feats makes those items useless precisely for the type of characters who would want them: those with the feats.

Anyway, it's a suggestion and not a command. I'm certainly not going to engage anyone in a pointless argument for a dozen pages or more, who happens to believe that a rogue getting a couple of extra SA from items is going to break the fabric of reality. If the suggestion isn't appreciated or understood, well, tough luck for all the rogues and friends out there, I guess. We'll just stare at and caress our SA items and call them "Precious" whilst everybody else sleeps. The sun will keep rising, I'm sure.

Also, YYJ, you got it completely wrong. My earlier complaints about nerfs and my recent suggestions go hand in hand: it's precisely because I care about BGtSCC and the work the devs do that I both voice my negative opinion of what I think doesn't work and suggest improvements to certain things that I think could work. These are opinions and suggestions, not assault and battery. Disagreeing with someone and saying an idea is bad are not acts of violence. People never complain when praise for changes is offered though, do they? When praise is offered, you're never told it's none of your business anyway because the devs do what they want and they are not your employees for you to feel you have a right to praise them. Well, it's still only my opinion whether I'm criticising or praising, so is it valuable or not? Which is it?

Remember: suggestions are not commands and negative opinions are not aggressions.

Edit: and praise is DEFINETELY not caressing. Don't feel like I'm touching any of you when I say something like the recent cleric improvements are great. :geek:
During our test of epic attributes, epic DR, epic toughness, the thing is. The way those feats are coded is that Epic Int +6 actually replaces any previous feats and this feat gives +6 int. It's not just +1, every time stacking feat is taken, it just offers a feat that has previous version +1 while removing previous feat from PC.

Thus, if rogue has 1d6 SA and they grab a 2d6 SA dagger, they will have "2d6 sneak attack" feat.
But, when rogue has 3d6 sneak attack feat and they use 2d6 sneak attack dagger, you actually get that 2d6 from dagger, but you already have better version of it, so only higher applies. It's quite similar to EB, only highest applies.
Thus, we can't simply make it so item gives you 9-10th feat of epic sneak attack (cause it's super unlikely one can ever achieve it naturally), cause they give +9d6 and +10d6 SA respectively. Also, if trying to give some 2d6 SA from other PrC, people with that PrC will be in bad situation cause they won't get the bonus.

And, honestly, speaking balance wise, my pc with just ~13d6 sneak attack deals about 50 dmg per hit and has 7 attacks (8 hasted), 3-5 of which land quite often. When using tenser's, all 7 are very likely to land, which means having lowish SA dice, i already land 50 * 3 (first flurry), then 50 * 3 (second flurry) then 50 * 2 (third flurry). 400 dmg per round. If i solo things, i surely only get first flurry of SA, which means, it's 50 * 3 (first flurry) + (1d6 + 5 + 6) * 3 (second flurry) and same as second flurry for third one, but 2 attacks. 150 + 14,5*3 + 14,5*2 = 222,5 damage per round.
Some canonic rogue 19/assassin 9/bodyguard 3 can have ptwf, epic dodge, 20d6 sneak dice and all the matter of those blinding strikes etc. ~80-90 dmg per hit with 4 attacks in first flurry.

So, even if that was technically easy to allow item SA stack with PC SA, i'd surely doubt it would be a good balance to allow people to have at least 5d6 sneak attack damage from items (2d6 * 2 from weapons and 1d6 from reili's belt). Especially since non-sneakerscan't easily increase their overall damage by 7 with just equipping 1 item (when we speak of having +4 weapon with elemental stuff already). Yeh, they can equip same stuff to get 5d6 SA, but why? They don't use such tactics in fight so it will have very limited usefulness.
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