New Combat Mode for Rogues

[Brumm]

Little update:

The combat mode I planned is not possible. Well, that's not the whole story. It's totally doable and works like a charm but is very easy to exploit. You can enable the combat mode, log of and back in and you get the benefits but not the drawbacks. I played around with some ways to make sure that the stuff is not exploitable but I can only make it annoying to use, inefficient or exploitable. Not really promising in my opinion.

Though, what we can do with such a combat mode in theory is to make sneak attacks more viable by adding extra damage for each sneak dice. The most control we would get is by adding a custom on hit effect to the weapon but that is not really a solution I am happy with because OnHit effects are very taxing on the CPU. The other solution would be, that we add a bonus damage effect to the player character which would be based on the sneak dices. Not an ideal solution as well because that kind of damage would ignore damage immunity and sneak immunity entirely.

Another solution would be to bury the combat mode idea and to create custom feats instead. I might be able to re-use some code I wrote. For example a single hit with a multi for your sneak dices and an instant death effect if the target is hit from a specific angle. Such a feat could profit from Crippling Strike, Epic Precision and Opportunist. For example:
Crippling Strike: Reduced AB, AC and irresistible slow/knockdown
Epic Precision: 1% Instant Death for each Sneak Dice with a CR cap.
Opportunist: +X AB for the attack.

Brumm

[Alariann]

Another solution would be to bury the combat mode idea and to create custom feats instead. I might be able to re-use some code I wrote. For example a single hit with a multi for your sneak dices and an instant death effect if the target is hit from a specific angle. Such a feat could profit from Crippling Strike, Epic Precision and Opportunist. For example:
Crippling Strike: Reduced AB, AC and irresistible slow/knockdown
Epic Precision: 1% Instant Death for each Sneak Dice with a CR cap.
Opportunist: +X AB for the attack.

I like this! If this is the best solution you can implement I think this is a good start then.
The effect of Crippling Strike is nice I think. A slow/knock down effect may be depending on the difference between the result roll and the aimed roll.

If adding new custom feats is an easy and more efficient way to proceed, would it be possible to add new feats depending on skills score?
What I mean is: if at the current level the Rogue has (BASE_SKILL + TRUE_ROGUE_LEVEL_BONUS) >= some thresholds like 10/20/30/40/50 then he gains a specific feat. Maybe just using basic rogue level instead if it's not possible with true rogue levels.
This is not specifically related to the combat mode, but I think would be a good addition to the Rogue because he is focused on skills, and having some high scores on some of them could allow for some nice bonuses related to combat directly or the other means for a Rogue to fight: stealth, traps or other magical devices (by the way I found in game a device to throw a cloud of acid at the enemy, and that is pretty interesting I think!).
Too bad we cannot make the Rogue move faster while in stealth mode...

But basically I like the changes you propose and can't wait to test them!
Thank you.

[Oberu]

Awesome work yet again! I love the crippling strike idea! Maybe you could increase the percentage change based on rogue levels later if you wanted. Good ideas all around!

[Alariann]

Thanks to Brumm!
So we tested his last two new additions and it was great
We tested the new feat for rogues, where basically there is a bonus of damage on the two first hits on flat footed enemies.
This bonus is equal to Xd6 where X is your number of sneak dices. If you have the Epic Precision feat, you can achieve a Deadly hit that triples those damages when attacking from behind only.
Crippling Strike gives you the power to knockdown your enemy if he hasn't a CR too high.

So, well done Brumm. Even more when you can see the new attack for mages!

Let's see how it goes.

[Cataca]

Alrighty i was able to test the two new spells you made brumm.

First of all: The quarterstaff spell looks beautiful. Props to you, really. I might carry one of those around just to.. ocasionally see the animation

But, the resistance debuff spell as it is currently wont be used. It shaves off 30-40% resistance of a single mob, but then you can just.. throw out two nukes. Imho, it really needs to be an AoE thing, rather than a single target thing, then it might, potentially see merit in anything but super hard bossfights (read: witches)

I mean, i do understand that it can make meteor shower a totally deadly spell again (because you could potentially use it even in areas where literally every single mob is resistant against fire, like abyss) but clerics have hammer of the gods there, and spirit shamans have their ice based meteor swarm thing and mass drowns, and SoV.

Just my two cents. (And i cant stress enough how nice phantom warrior is, looks and feels. Please push to live fast!)


edit: ****sake, wrong *****ing thread. ****.

[Brumm]

All three spells are on production already.
The values are not final of course. Maybe I'll add a small AoE effect for the Instill Vulnerability spell.

[Cataca]

Oh, i didnt know that. And here i was feeling all proud that i managed to download the betapatch and applied it, and on top all the spells showed up at their respective levels.

[Tormento]

Hi, I hope i dont come late

I have not been around a lot, but i love playing rogue and thats what ive done.

First a Rogue, use every item cool (not into traps), but cant hit anything.

After i made a Thug, oh man i enjoy it. I took the new feat you implemented its very good; i low blow, position myself, activate your feat and expose weakness. This works very good as long as you can hit things and Thugs BAB helps a lot..... dont know how much in the end game, started having issues with last quests that led me to a Dragon (drops a very good bow with persistent feat for Zen clerics) this Dragon was always out of the reach of low blow (could you please check this) note that lowblow work on sneak imunes.

My conclussions:

-The new feat is very good, Thugs low blow enhances it much more because you stun an enemy several rounds and can position (sometimes very difficult) with time to use the feat, but unlike the low blow the paralize from the feat dont allow you for more continue sneak attacking.

-Rogues get less benefit from it because much lower end AB and no tools to help with the positioning.

Possible quality of life changes?:

-Not an active but an passive feat: The first 2 attacks gains the bonus damage always, maybe this way (In theory what i liked most of this feat) you can actually hit with expose weakness and get the bonus damage on a sure hit even if you cant reach the mobs AC, so far i never managed to combine them so i guess its not possible right now.

Right now i never managed to do this and guess its impossible to combine both?

-Make the mobs affected by the feat be flat footed so you can position and then attack from behind for the extra damage.

Improving the rogue (different styles):

-I dont know how available oportunist is but if it is Rogue exclusive make it give the feat always hit with your 2 first attacks (the feat attacks), a solution for a very poor AB Class.

-One shot multiplies your sneak attack damage ( A feeling of a true one shot sniper)

- Ascetic Outlaw: feat, your monk and rogue levels stack for the purpose of speed, unarmed damage and sneak attack; maybe AC too.

-A feat or a combat mode allowing the high level rogue to do melee touch attacks ( Spot check vs AC, less attacks, penalty on damage )

-Rogue 21+ have acces to HIPS as feat.

Excuse me for the long and somehow disorganized post, but i think this could open new builds and ways to play a rogue-ish character.

[Countyboar]

I agree with Tormento's HiPs comment!

Regarding finishing blow, I've noticed sometimes you can get more "bonus-ed" attacks than you should be able to, I'd guess it's related to having a sufficiently large number of attacks so that the attacks get scrunched together too quickly for the script to correctly count how many attacks have had the bonus applied to them. My only evidence though is that I started getting the bonus on four attacks per round after I took PTWF