I think that replacing backstab with sneak attack in 3,3.5 and Pathfinder made the game more about miniature combat and made the Thief/Rogue class less interesting by becoming a sort of flanking fighter. Thief skills where less used and killing NPCs became more prevalent.
How can the Sneak Attack be replaced? Opinions in general?
Have you tried not playing DnD/Pathfinder?
Now that the obvious answer is out of the way, it may be looking at how 5e does things. Rogues get their sneak attack ddamage any time they have "advantage" on an attack, which includes alot more the simply flanking (although many of those situations are vague and up to DM interpretation). There's also the Swashbuckler class which is sort of a specialized duelist who always gets their sneak attack damage while they're in 1v1 combat, so rather than focusing on having a flank-buddy, they function best when allies are drawing enemies away from them (as they lose their sneak-attack bonus if they're outnumbered in melee combat).
As far as making their "thief skills" more useful, play with an alternative magic system like Spheres of Power where wizards and bards can't just replace every skill in the game with a spell that does it better than a character who specializes in that thing. That or only play with "low-tier" characters on the magic scale.
Really though, your best answer is just to not play DnD/Pathfinder, sorry. Not even meme'ing, simpler systems are just better at avoid alot of the min-maxy bloat thats crept into DnD and it's clones.
I use non-D20 systems for sci-fi etc.. The main problem is that; due to Thief skills where less used and killing NPCs became more prevalent. I don't want the thief to be a killer/DPS character. I want the class to contribute to alternate solutions, and those are not killing NPCs.
DnD is literally a game about killing things though. Thats what 90% of the rules deal with. Non-combat problems can usually be solved with a single spell if you have a caster in the party, non-combat stuff just isn't important to the game design of DnD and it's clone.
I hate to repeat it because it triggers drones and fanboys, but it really sounds like you'd be better off playing something that's not DnD or a DnD-clone.
Just simplify it to an automatic critical that can only be done with on-handed weapons.
Tons of D&Ds problems could be solved with automatic crits, and different weapons applying different effects on crit. It'd be great for Smite, for one.
>Thief/Rogue class less interesting by becoming a sort of flanking fighter. Thief skills where less used and killing NPCs became more prevalent.
The intention was more or less 'Not make anyone useless in combat'. Unfortunately they didn't combine that with the design idea of 'Not make anyone useless outside of combat' so you got stuff like the Fighter.
Reminder that DnD started as a war game forced to fill the roll of a dungeon crawler and by the time it tried to move beyond that, there was too much nostalgia and sacred cow shit for it to ever truly become what it needed to be now.
There's a REASON the only people who aren't useless outside of combat are wizards, and that reason is because non-combat obstacles were never part of the original game design. They're meant to be a minor annoyance that the group magic's their way past before heading into another dungeon to kill stuff.
I agree about the war game stuff, but i did have lots of fun with editions older than the "3rds" even when i was playing a simple fighter or thief.
So did you plan to make it DnD hate thread all along? You could say it was a sneak attack.
It's not even a DnD hate-train so much as "Huh, maybe you should play a game that's more focused around non-combat stuff like 2 other anons already suggested instead of trying to force a war-game system to give you a good experience with any part of the game that's not combat-simulation".
Like, let's be serious, I'm not going to play Halo Mythic and then complain it's not giving me the same kind of weeaboo slice of life hijinks as MAID RPG, and I'm not going to play MAID RPG when I wana have giant mech battles in space.
Honestly I swear half the reason people shit on DnD so much is because people keep insisting on using the system as some be-all end-all for things it was never intended to do.
D&D has been my no. 1 choice for medieval fantasy campaigns, despite its shortcomings, for over 20 years.
>I think that replacing backstab with sneak attack
Okay, I'll bite.
To summarize AD&D backstab succinctly:
>If you are behind your target and your target is unaware of you, you have a +4 bonus to your attack, ignore the target's shield and Dexterity bonuses to AC, and deal twice as much damage. The damage multiplier increases to x3 at 5th level, x4 at 9th level, and x5 at 13th levels and higher. This multiplier is applied before modifiers for Strength or weapon bonuses are added.
>If your target notices you or is warned about you before you can attack, then you do not get bonus damage, but you still have the bonuses to attacked listed above if you attack from behind.
>The damage multiplier only applies to the first attack a thief makes against a target.
>The target of the backstab must be basically humanoid in shape, including having a definable back. This means that most slimes, jellies, oozes, and the like are immune to backstab.
>The thief must be able to reach the back of the target. If he can't, then he can't backstab.
This doesn't really sound different from 3e's Sneak Attack. In fact it just sounds like a more limited version of Sneak Attack. The 3e Rogue gained options when Sneak Attacking as compared to the 2e Thief. How does this make the combat about miniatures? It's not like the 2e thief didn't care about facing or flanking.
Yes, but in PF and 5e you get Sneek Attack just for flanking.
But Sneak Attack (which works from any angle against a foe facing any direction) actually cares *less* about positioning and facing than Backstab (which only works from behind and if your foe is facing away from you) does. So how does it encourage miniature use?
I'm not arguing that 3e as a whole doesn't encourage miniature use; it does. I'm just objecting to the idea that specifically Sneak Attack does as compared to 2e's Backstab, despite the fact that 3e's Sneak Attack cares less about facing and positioning.
I didn't even bring up how 2e's Backstab only works with melee weapons, whereas in 3e's Sneak Attack it works with ranged weapons too.
Neither of those games have rules for which way a unit is facing so you're just replacing sneak attack with a more vague variant
PF defines flanking as any time you and a friendly combatant are on opposite sides of an enemy. I BELIVE 5e is the same way, though Im not sure.
PF (and I think 5e) specifically does because of how it defines flanking.
There is no flanking in 5e, however you have Advantage (and thus get sneak attack damage) against any enemy that has more of your allies within 5 feet of it than it's own allies.
Do you have a citation on that? Current GM has been saying there's no longer such thing as flanking.
...
SNEAK ATTACK
Beginning at 1st level, you know how to strike subtly and exploit a foe's distraction. Once per turn, you can deal an extra 1d6 damage to one creature you hit with an attack if you have advantage on the attack roll. The attack must use a finesse or a ranged weapon. You don't need advantage on the attack roll if another enemy of the target is within 5 feet of it, that enemy isn't incapacitated, and you don't have disadvantage on the attack roll. The amount of the extra damage increases as you gain levels in this class, as shown in the Sneak Attack column of the Rogue table.
>You don't need advantage on the attack roll if another enemy of the target is within 5 feet of it.
So basically as long as you have an ally within 5 feet of the target, you have advantage, regardless of which way you're facing and regardless if you and your and your ally are on opposite sides.
No matches appear for "within 5 feet of it" in relevant sections. Got any search term that's viable?
READING COMPREHENSION, nigger.
Sneak attack being turned on != having advantage.
Well, it's a widely used system that has a sense of familiarity with nearly everyone in the hobby, sol I suppose there are worse choices.
Interesting, but ass none the less.
Sneak attack if:
>you have advantage
or
>ally within 5 feet and you don't have disadvantage
What abilities and skills do non-D&D systems offer to the Rogue/Thief role?
The ability to freely steal things, or re-rolls on sneaking. Depends on the system. Barbs for example gives stealth characters a ton of breadth, mostly because of the way the system is structured in general. Generally there seems to be less of a focus on combat.
Well I personally like Fantasy AGE's Pinpoint Attack.
Once per round you can add 1d6 to damage on a successful attack so long as your Dex score is greater than your opponent.
Makes it more friendly to both ranged rogues and stabby rogues with less dependency on other players being in position or not.