Bleeding Wound and DR

[Valefort]

Nope, to turn it off you have to remove the feats entirely xD

Don't you think it's the monsters who should have less tiny DR anyway ? Make a list of a few monsters who have DR when they shouldn't and that should solve this issue without having to reinvent a complicated octogonal wheel.

[Steve]

Innate DR could be reduced, but plenty of mobs cast Stoneskin. And some Classes on mobs, like Barbarian...how to reduce that DR? It's "baked in" to the Class, right?

[Valefort]

For such cases yes.

[electric mayhem]

It's gonna be a long list Vale.

For one. Those lizards in Cloudpeaks. Regular warrior mobs were resisting 18DR (might be in line with steves comment of pure barb epic mobs?) on some of my attacks there yesterday.

Ogres in Uldoon feel about right with 3dr.

Without having spreadsheet proof, it feels like all the epic content has 15DR. But that could be an over exaggeration. That basically cuts Epic character attacking in half (guessing average epic char does approx 30dmg per strike). Doubling their time to kill mobs. Then on top of that are the increased HP the mobs have. Further extending it. (and then someone will say something about reduced xp for these very same mobs, which makes it even worse).

So unless there are extra DR feats given to mobs, in reality, for 'fairness' sake. The natural DR that comes with the classes that mobs are built with, may be fair.
If we don't want caster mobs polluting the server in every map, I spose we have to deal with fighters, barbs on every map with DR.
Can't remember a time (probably wasn't paying attention) where casters/ranged mobs had DR.... anyone else?

[Valefort]

Please make a proper list after thoroughly checking because I won't do it for you

[Steve]

Okay, is this serious? Mobs are going to get a DR reduction? Wouldn't that mean that high dmg builds just get more successful with such a change?

Just yesterday, I saw that Hill Giants have 5 DR, Yeti have 6 DR and Lizardfolk in cave at Cloudpeaks have 7 DR.

I think it's going to be a looooong list!

[Blackman D]

lizard folk do not have DR they have damage immunity to slashing, its not the same thing

it goes up with your damage output, it only hinders high damage dealers... that have slashing weapons

and ive honestly never cared about stone skin, we are talking 100 pt or 150 pt dmg soak against, if you have 4 sneaks from stealth, 4 bleeds for 3 ticks for 6 dmg which is 6*3*4 = 72 dmg in bleeds with just one attack, 144 with two... you can literally just hit them and hide and watch the stone skin fall off...

[Steve]

I have the impression it works differently with Stoneskin or Gr. Stoneskin.

Stoneskin is DR 10/adamantine, absorbing 100 hp at max Level. In order to get past the 10 DR, you need to make 11+ dmg. Bleeding Wound never makes more than 6 dmg "per tick." So even if you land 6 sneak attacks in the first round, the first "tick" would be 6 x 6 individual wounds, all less than the 10 DR.

Granted, if a SA build has 10d6 in SA dmg to begin with, and you land 6 attacks in the first round, you may do an average of 30 per hit minus 10 DR thus 120 dmg and completely erasing the Stoneskin so that indeed, the second round WHERE the Bleeding Wound would apply, will immediately start destroying the mob (or PC).

But not every sneaker is such a minimum X Sneak Attacks in order to effectively negate Stoneskin, not to forget to mention Greater Stoneskin, nor is going to reach Level 30 where the max applicable mechanics can be applied.

My bad on not realizing Lizardfolk have Damage Immunity. But that makes me ask then: does Bleeding Would get Typed out to the Weapon type?

[Blackman D]

you are missing the point

yes its 10/addy but only to a total of 100 or 150, so 4 sneaks doing 72 bleed damage takes out 72 of the 100 in 3 rounds from one sneak attack which is a lot

so you can literally hit and run stone skin till it drops and then just attack afterwards, or just keep doin hit and run to make it drop faster - two sets of sneaks will bring it down in 3 rounds since the bleed damage stacks, stone skin is a minor inconvenience in the grand scheme of bleeding wound

its not -/ like barbarian DR that no matter how much you attack them it gets completely negated, with stone skin bleed wound drains its soak pool pretty damn quick

and the DI applies to the weapon, so if you are using piercing weapons or the dagger rather, since IBs are really dagger or kukri, then it does not - however ive never used kukri on IB and i only have the one but lizard folk have no DI vs my hin aside from stone skin

[electric mayhem]

The note about immunity slashing, that explains what I encountered there perfectly. The DR absorbed notes in combat log were variable.

[Steve]

*bump...and with the OP suggestion in mind*

For consideration: maybe it would be possible for Invisible Blades to choose between normal Sneak Attack dice, OR Bleeding Wound, at Level Up?

[Zkenic]

*bump...and with the OP suggestion in mind*

For consideration: maybe it would be possible for Invisible Blades to choose between normal Sneak Attack dice, OR Bleeding Wound, at Level Up?

I dont see that happening, as then you would have a High BaB, +int to AC, 3d6 sneak attack class. Would tilt the scale in favor of Invisible Blade a bit too much. Would make it a must have for rogue builds, especially because this server is pretty stingy with high BaB sneak attack prestige classes. Only Blackguard, if I remember correctly.

[Steve]

Well, the PrC is ACTUALLY supposed to get SA dice by default, and then manually CHOOSE to forego the SA dice for Bleeding Wound instead:

Bleeding Wound (Ex): An invisible blade of 2nd level or higher who makes a successful dagger sneak attack can choose to deal a bleeding wound, sacrificing 1d6 points of the extra damage from the dagger sneak attack.

So it would be inline with PnP Invisible Blade.

[chad878262]

thinking it through for balance of the existing server you have:

Bodyguard: Full Sneak progression and high BAB for 3 levels (no additional progression for 5 levels)
Blackguard: 3/10 progression (where 5/10 would be full progression) and high BAB with sneak dice coming at 4, 7 and 10
Ghost Faced Killer: 3/8 progression (2, 5, and 8 so technically you'd only have 4 sneak dice for 7 levels of full progression) with high bab
Wilderness Stalker: 3/10 progression (2, 6, 10) with high BAB.

There are also medium BAB classes that still don't get full progression such as Whirling Dervish (3/9 at 3, 6 and 9).

Invisible Blade gets High BAB, 4+INT modifier in skills, INT to AC and Feint Mastery (which is very good for applying sneak dice). For this you have to 'pay' with taking Weapon Focus (dagger or kukri), two weapon fighting and Feint (which requires Combat Expertise). Compare to Bodyguard (no feats required), Blackguard (Power Attack, Cleave), GFK (Improved Initiative, Power Attack) and WS (Track) and I think I would say giving Invisible Blade full sneak progression is not a balance concern. Wilderness Stalker grants +2 flat AC bonus (no INT required), Swift Tracker and Camouflage (perhaps the best QoL ability any sneak could ask for), GFK grants Ghost Step, Frightful Attack and Ghost Sight. Blackguard gives a summon, CHA to saves, a very useful saving throw malus Turn Undead and Smite.

Now Bodyguard is probably the most useful comparison since both are 5 levels. If we consider Bodyguard 3 grants 2d6 sneak dice and 10% movement speed buff while IB for 5 levels would grant 3d6 sneak dice alongside INT to AC and Feint Mastery I would say IB with full sneak progression would be a bit overtuned for that comparison. In addition, you have to also look at the ability to go something like R16/IB5/NWN3/WS6 (or GFK6) which would give BAB26 and 15d6 sneak dice (which is the same that a R30 would get).

So from my perspective if granting IB sneak dice I would probably just give them 1d6 or 2d6 progression (like at 3 and 5 or something). This is just my personal opinion though, there has been no staff discussion around changing invisible blade.

[SpookySkeleton]

Bleeding Wound (Ex): An invisible blade of 2nd level or higher who makes a successful dagger sneak attack can choose to deal a bleeding wound, sacrificing 1d6 points of the extra damage from the dagger sneak attack.

Good to note here, the bleeding wound in the PnP case is not simply 2, 4 or 6 damage over three rounds. The invisible blade gets regular sneak attack progression and can choose to forego using 1d6 of sneak damage and instead apply 1 damage over time (stackable) that only goes away when healed. This gives it a cool feeling of slowly bleeding your opponent out rather than killing them outright.

Not saying that is balanced -- but if we are speaking of giving regular sneak dice to invisible blade I feel like bleeding wound should somehow still get in there to make the class still have that flavor. Perhaps it could be something like low CON damage with a fort save? Or maybe acid damage, not sure if that would get around some of the DR on the server. I believe we could come up with a more fun answer to this than just replacing with regular sneak dice -- should the black box allow it.