Many shot death attack

[Face]

Change Assassin's death attack progression to 1d6 death attack and the rest sneak attack. That way the damage boost is minimized to 1d6. Concern might be that it will enable easier access improved sneak attack (or whatever the +1d6 SA epic feat is called), but that's a fair tradeoff IMO. Death Attack qualifies as SA as a pre-requisite for a lot of things already anyway, don't see why it shouldn't for that particular feat.

Yes this is how they fixed it on a other server i played on (Tales of amn years ago) and it worked great.

[Blackman D]

so the main concern is only with the damage?

[Face]

so the main concern is only with the damage?

I dont think its strange to want to have a over powerd bug like that fixed :s

[Blackman D]

well thats not what im sayin, death attack does two things and both work with many shot

but seems people are only worried about the damage?

[Calodan]

So it is not that the Death attack triggers two paralyze but instead that it qualifies a sneak for Epic sneak attack? So basically the problem is that it makes a pure melee for the most part sneak PC that has issues here on BG with dmg and hitting? Am I understanding that correctly? So how would we counter buff this melee class once we remove one of the few things that make it a viable build here? I mean I thought we wanted melee pcs buffed? Why would we remove one of their things? Does that not create more work to get it to where we are wanting the melee classes to come to?

[Blackman D]

DA does not qual for ISA, they are saying the suggested change would make it qual for ISA which would be good

and its not only 2 saves, its basically 4 or 6 if you have 26+ BAB and ever since assassin was allowed to qual for AA that has been a thing

6 DA saves, you only need to fail one and people are only worried about the damage part... thats the part im trying to understand

the suggested change fixes the damage yes but does nothing to the saves

[Face]

Lets be honest...The dps many shot death attack gives is just silly and a bug its funy to see though that this is getting defended so hard we must have many archers that use it and so did i on all my bow builds so i know how broken it is.

With the expose weakness bug post i though i would trow this bug in there aswel and lets be honest its just as wonky as EW.
Any no it doesnt fix the DA stun but its a start.

Fixing bugs is a good thing in my opinion.

[Valefort]

Unless I'm missing something the problem is the following :

Using manyshot you fire two projectiles instead of one, when your base attack bonus reaches +16, the first three attacks you make in the round fire two arrows, and the attack roll penalty is at -8.

All sneak attack sources and their respective side effects are applied to the first arrow and that is fine.

The problem comes with the second arrow, on this second arrow the only sneak attack source that is applied is death attack, the paralyze effect is also applied. Which makes death attack very interesting for any ranged character.

---

If you pick the solution of 1d6 death attack then "normal" sneak attack progression for assassin then you get rid of the death attack damage being applied to the second arrow (save for 1d6), but not the paralyze DC being applied twice.

Another solution would be to give a normal sneak attack progression and apply the paralyze effect only once.

[Blackman D]

no one has defended against not changing it so far

just wondering if anyone was gonna address the x6 DA saves also, if you fail a single save then what does the damage after matter? you will still die

[Blackman D]

Using manyshot you fire two projectiles instead of one, when your base attack bonus reaches +16, the first three attacks you make in the round fire two arrows, and the attack roll penalty is at -8.

right, except you need higher BAB to get them in on the first flurry coming out of stealth, at 26 BAB you get all 3 many shot attacks in the first flurry, which means x6 death attack saves

[Calodan]

I just can not understand this. I am sorry. This just seems counter to making melee better currently. The fact that getting a DC for Death Attack that consistently works is hard in the first place and a 1 roll only really effects the people who do not have steadfast or epic resilience makes me wonder. That and DA only triggers when not already in combat. So in PvP that is highly unlikely as you have to give full warning and they could go hostile in combat stance rather easy thusly eliminating the DA paralyze. As far as damage goes they are one in a handful of DPS builds that are viable here. Remove that and you severely gimp an already gimped class here. What is next? Warlocks do insane amounts of damage when built right. They do as much damage as a FB/WM DPS and do not even crit hit to get that damage. FB/WMs are insanely powerful too in DPS. I really feel like we are just starting a landslide of fixes that are really not needed. Every build we are complaining about needing fixing are DPS builds and well thanks to the monster system here are needed. If we start fixing this then we need to rebalance the monster tables too. I do not think the staff wants to open that can of worms at all. Our best answer is to not fix old bugs but to rebuff other classes to meet the standards set by our monster tables and system here IMHO. However I understand where some things are just not going to fly with people who want this fixed and that is okay. In the end the staff will decide what they will do and I hope we as a community can respect that and move forward.

For the record I am on the side of keeping this a supreme DPS build. I think it gives importance to taking feats like Steadfast and Epic Res. Please don't fix anymore stuff and keep bringing the new content that has been promised. Once we get that stuff then maybe it would be time to look at that but this is just not the right time. Perhaps a good idea. Not my good idea but not for me to judge. Just bad timing.

[Blackman D]

well i think you are slightly confused, many shot is a ranged ability and its mostly assassin/arcane archer combos that really make it noticeable; however AA/anything does not even need the sneak attack damage to hurt because it gets +5 EB arrows that stack with everything - im wondering if people are understanding that part?

it is a bug and a valid suggestion to fix it tho, and fixing it will overall not even hurt the power of the AA/assassin combo, it can get fixed if possible and its not gonna do much - thats why no one is defending it

in terms of melee, the only equivalent example would be assassins with PTWF and 26+ BAB as they would get 10 attacks out of stealth, however DA still only applies once

so this suggestion does nothing to melee assassin power

[Valefort]

Manyshot death attack is for ranged characters using HipS, hardly a meleer Calodan

Other than that those builds don't go for high INT and the paralyze DC is rarely very high (ofc you can build for it but it's usually not the focus, ranged characters want more DEX) so the paralyzed targets are the ones who roll a one ... which is very likely when they have to make 6 checks in one round !

Not even considering NWN2 loaded dices the probability of not rolling a 1 six times in a row is (19/20)^6 = 73.5%, so the probability of paralyzing your target is at least 26.5%, much more if the target has a low fort save.

If the paralyze effect was applied only to one arrow and not both then the probability of paralyzing becomes 14.3%.

The issue of many shot death attack for ranged attackers is comparable to expose weakness for melee fighters : it's so good it's hard to pass.

[Calodan]

For me does not matter if you are firing a ranged weapon or not if you are within 10 feet that is melee and SA does not trigger from afar! However fair enough on the technical aspect. I just see it as a non-magical class. So to me it makes little sense to mess around with it.

[Blackman D]

well if it makes you feel better, SA triggers out to 30ft, thats not that melee

point blank shot ftw tho

but i do understand what you mean, assassins are already in a bad way with the DA DC because of the increased saves from the caster nerfs to mobs, many shot DA is really the only way to get a mob to fail it now it seems, tho its still a bug