Sneak Attack
Ah, the glass cannon (TV Tropes warning). How have we not talked about this yet? I mean there she is, big as life and twice as purple, a main character and everything. Our girl Thief sports a pair of daggers, an underwhelming d8 hit die, and some of the worst luck in all of Handbook-World. There is no surer recipe for winding up dead.
Rogues and bards and magi can make some crazy cool characters, but you’ve got to remember: if you’re built like a skirmisher, you need to skirmish. When you’re walking around with leather armor and mediocre hit points, avoiding The Death is all about playstyle. It ought to go without saying, but running in guns blazing with your one big attack will leave you standing next to the big mean thing when it unloads the pain next turn. That is not a good place to stand.
Speaking for myself, the math is the real struggle here. I’ll add up the average damage, realize that I can dish out more stabs than Armor McFighterface, and go through this do I or don’t I internal struggle. The good little azata on my shoulder reminds me to bide my time. To spend a turn getting into position. And that sounds perfectly reasonable until the bad little daemon on my other shoulder reminds me that I could go for big damage right now. I could outperform the barbarian, crit for infinity damage, and feel like the biggest badass at the table. I’m pretty sure that daemon just wants to watch me die.
I even have this struggle watching my buddies play. I remember GMing a campaign where a magus pal of mine spent his early levels casting vanish, using stealth, and even resorting to a shortbow (the indignity!) when he didn’t have a safe angle of approach. I’d be sitting there like, “It’s just an ogre! Attack the friggin’ ogre!” But that wasn’t this dude’s style. And you know what? His character survived those vulnerable early levels, and went on to contribute some extremely respectable damage in later stages of the campaign. So my advice is this: when you’re squishy, you maybe want to let the big dumb guy run into the room first. It just takes a little discipline to let it happen.
What do you guys think? Have you ever seen a glass cannon PC try to play like a front line fighter? How’d it work out? Tell us your tales of immolated rogues in the comments!
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I completely understand. I died as a monk in 5e and as a magical child in pathfinder for the same reasons. I was cocky and had to deal more damage.
Also, I love the Azata and Daemon thing instead of angel and demon. Azatas are my favourite good outsiders.
Cheers! If I had to choose though, I’d say that the kids from “Stranger Things” are my favorite good outsiders.
This isn’t at all how I thought the discussion was going to go based on the comic preview. I was expecting something about how rolling a bucket of dice slows down the game. 😛
Glass cannons are fun! Live fast, die young, have a spare character sheet ready. 🙂
I believe I told the story of my first character, the Rogue who immediately died? Used the Charge attack (+2 damage, -2 AC until next turn IIRC) against a Dire Rat as a level 1 Rogue. Missed. Threw my rapier. Missed, and broke it. Dire Rat chomped me and died. That day I learned a valuable lesson about using melee weapons as a low-level Rogue.
*and I died.
lol. Yup. I find that the rogue is the bard of Pathfinder.
“Trust me, man. Rogues suck. Just play this other thing that looks like a rogue but isn’t actually a rogue. You’ll thank me.”
And that’s weird, because it also seems like the rogue is the magus of 5e.
“I crit for approximately…oh. Could you guys hand me some more d6s?”
Rogues crit big, but their DPR is merely decent by martial standards. The real power of the Rogue comes from figuring out how to get a second Sneak Attack in the same round by doing it on someone else’s turn. When they are able to do so reliably, such as via Haste, their DPR roughly equals that of a Warlock/Sorcerer using Quickened Eldritch Blast, considered one of the most powerful single target damage builds.
You mean that all you’ve got to do is stack magical lineage (shocking grasp) with the intensified spell metamagic on a keen scimitar for 20d6 electric crits at 10th level? And all for the low-low cost of a first level spell? Brilliant!
That sounds more like a 5e Paladin, fishing for crits with multiple attacks and then adding damage with a spell slot. Rogues can Sneak Attack once per turn, and they usually only have one attack to use it with anyway. Thus they aren’t crit fishers so much as they are occasionally lucky. If you had a second attack (dual wielding, crossbow expert, multiclassing) you could theoretically crit fish, but ultimately the 5% chance of critting wouldn’t be worth the much larger chance that you miss and don’t Sneak Attack at all.
I hope they never make a better Rogue class than Rogue for 5e, because that to me is the absolute worst kind of power creep.
Update: With the help of /r/dndnext, we’ve crunched the numbers and determined that Rogues *can* actually crit fish against low-AC enemies with modest results. You have to pump up your accuracy, crit chance, and number of attacks/attack rolls to make it truly worthwhile, though, which makes it more viable for many Rogue/Martial MCs.
The rogue’s sneak attack dice are not multiplied on the crit in Pathfinder, sadly.
True that. Which is why you go crit fishing with a magus instead: http://www.d20pfsrd.com/classes/base-classes/magus/#TOC-Spellstrike-Su-
I had a squishy high level wizard who avoided nearly all damage by using Fly and Greater Invisibility in every fight.
But then the GM gave us an Evil Artifact Sword MacGuffin. I claimed it for the purpose of researching how it could be destroyed. It kept offering me power if I would just use it in a fight. But why? I had my Maximized Chain Lightning, I didn’t need no sword!
Then we entered a prison demiplane that suppressed all magical abilities, but the sword was still functional. In the middle of a critical fight, I was unable to fly, go invisible, or shoot lightning, and the sword saw its opportunity. It offered me a +10 to strength while wielding it. (Still not that good due to my weak wizard arms, but my eyes as a player went really wide.) I snatched it and started swinging like a buffoon in the middle of the fight.
I survived but yeah, I totally gave in to temptation. I rebuilt my characters itemization to use Bracers of Armor, Enchanted Mithril, Necklace of Natural Armor, etc. And I took one level in Fighter. Now *I* was the tank with the Big Friggin Sword.
Yeah. So I totally wrecked my build just because the GM tempted me.
Pictured here, your GM: http://forgottenrealms.wikia.com/wiki/Glabrezu
I’m going to go ahead and assume you were corrupted by this Sword of Totally Not Stormbringer.
Yeah I never actually destroyed it. I justified that I needed it for “research” because it was the only connection/lead we had on the Big Bad.
“Ok team, I’ve found a way to destroy this evil artifact. But do we REALLY want to do that? I mean, what if I invented a way we could use it to track the Big Bad? I’ll just put it here in my scabbard so it’ll stay nice and safe.”
I’ve got a character with an evil intelligent artifact at the moment. Everyone seems to have forgotten about it, but I’ll use your strats if they ever think to say, “Oh yeah, what ever happened to that one weird item?”
I recently played a Beguiler/Swiftblade which is about as glass-cannon as you can get in 3.5 while still being a martial warrior. But I was more of a Shale-Cannon, since my high Dexterity score (+3 bonus) and my high Constitution Score (+6 bonus) allowed my mobile character to take hits and avoid hits while still doing significant damage.
The primary reason I was able to do this was rolling three 16s and a 17 for stats. With a Planar race called the Wildren, I was able to shore up my defenses. Wildren have a +4 Con, -2 Dex, -2 Cha stat spread, which allowed me to start with a 16 Str, 15 Dex (increased to 16 at level 4), and a 20 Con.
Anyway, my character was forced to be the frontliner because noone else played a martial character, and even then I was a gish, not a full martial.
But Swiftblade (http://archive.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/prc/20070327) with its Haste focus and full BAB, it is able to close that gap significantly, especially with its very mobile playstyle which utilizes the Tumble checks and Mobility +4 AC bonus very well. And with its Blur and Blink affects that come with the class, getting a 5 in 1 spell is just fantastic. I probably could have played any other race and still have been as hard to hit.
With three 16s and a 17, let’s go ahead and call you an adamantine cannon. Sounds like a fun combo!
Question though: How did you manage your frontliner responsibilities with a mobile playstyle? Was the strategy to beguile the baddies to chase you and leave the squishies alone?
With enough casters, it becomes pretty easy to just kite early and mid-level enemies. My primary role was to draw attention to myself, so yes, beguiling baddies was how it worked. Enchantment spells really do the trick well.
I think the main reason rogues and arcane tricksters aren’t primary frontliners usually is because they still have middling odds of getting hit. By making it literally a coin toss, it becomes significantly easier for a “mobile” character to do the tanking too.
For what it’s worth, I wasn’t quite a durable cannon, if only due to a small hit die and only light armor proficiency. If I had rolled average on the hit die, I would have had only about 83 hp at level 10, which is pitifully low for a front-liner. Thankfully, I rolled well so with 10d6 I had 103 hp.
I’m going to tell a story of my paladin and our fireball-happy cleric. At least twice my paladin has been caught in the blast, and curiously enough, every fireball the cleric has accidentally flung too close has dealt nearly the maximum damage. My horse was incinerated, and my (dwarf) paladin had to cut his beard short to keep it from being burnt off.
So I gather that, in this scenario, the horse was the glass cannon?
Also of note, it sounds as though that cleric was not your friend: https://www.handbookofheroes.com/archives/comic/artillery
I was running a game where the party Wizard was standing right next to a roc. The roc had already eaten his summoned creature, and every other party member had run away. The wizard backed up five feet and shot a single scorching ray at the giant bird that ate devils for breakfast. Needless to say, the group invented a parody of YMCA called B-I-R-D in order to mock his choices.
On an unrelated note: Would you look at how much gold is in that dragon’s hoard? Seriously, mountains and mountains of it! Only about 666,666 coins fit into a cubic yard!
Why do you know how many coins fit in a cubic yard?
While you’ll question why, I’ll just up the ante.
What kinds of coins are you assuming for that number? Because I see at least three different colors of coins.
=P
It was posted on reddit, and given my past experience with dirt(About 2 cubic yards fit in the back of a large pickup truck) it seems about right. I searched for it because I was interested in how many coins it would require to get the standard bed of coins for a dragon. I think that it’s assuming gold, silver, and copper coins are all the same size.
While that is entirely plausible, I still suspect you of being a dragon.
For me it really all depends on the character. And the build I guess. I mean yeah, if you have a practical character who can’t practically handle a stand up fight… well then they should play dirty/wait until they’re at least 3rd level.
But if your tank is a low down dirty coward or your wizard was raised by wolves, then you have to play the character.
Practically speaking of course, what really matters when going first and doing that giant pile of damage is more complicated than a simple “is this really a good idea?” usually. There’s all kinds of ways it might be (maybe your foe sure has a lot of HP, but also has a damage output or other effects that mean the longer the fight goes with them the more chance everyone dies) or might not be (maybe the foe is actually just the illusion of an orc and is really a pinata filled with explosives). The thing to keep in mind the most is the rest of the party, how they behave and what their strengths and weaknesses are.
So let’s have a practical example then. Suppose you’re a lavender tiefling with a healthy sneak attack and the standard Wizard / Cleric / Fighter on the team. You win the initiative and have a surprise round against the dragon. Do you:
A) Shout “Sneak Attack!!!” and go for it?
B) Stealthily reposition to a more advantageous spot?
C) Delay until your Fighter can get into melee?
D) Go to the Winchester, have a nice cold pint, and wait for all this to blow over?
E) Shout “Sneak Attack!!!” and trip Fighter so he falls headfirst (or better, swordfirst) into the dragon. In the ensuing chaos I loot the place. Then I head back to the Winchester and buy a round for the survivors, fully prepared to drink all the ale myself if it comes to having to shoulder that heavy burden.
Also I “assume” Fighter died and drink his ale before mine.
😉
Fun fact: betraying Fighter does not count as an evil act. The more you know!
Colin, this isn’t particularly related to the comic or question this time around, but I thought it was important to let you know that I got my hat this week. It’s a heavy, wide brimmed piece with the holy symbol of Erastil (can’t get away from him it seems) seared into the leather and an arrowhead jutting out of the hat band. It’s also made of steel underneath the leather veneer, and is a Helm of Comprehend Languages and Read Magic.
Osvaldt has graciously promised to stab his party members with only an arrow should they attempt to touch it without his permission.
That is indeed a sweet hat. Problem though: How can Osvaldt watch this precious item and protect it from thieves if it’s out of line of sight on top of his head?
The brim is always in his peripheral vision, of course. That and max ranks in Perception because that’s just what you do, coupled with Inquisitor Sense that lets you know when there are shenanigans that require quashing.
Not good enough! What if someone touches the back part of the brim? Better get an alarm spell.
(I am amused by the image of an inquisitor gone paranoid over the sanctity of his hat. I may need to introduce an NPC in one of my games.)
I’ll add that to my spell list, because you make a very good point. Thanks for the advice! My preparations are insufficient.
This is the most serious of businesses.
Also, my DM commented that I’m not the first inquisitor that he’s seen treat his hat basically like a familiar.
And in this moment, I had the wonderful idea of making an inquisitor character that is basically just a Drill Sergeant, for their hats are truly the holy grail of DO NOT TOUCH for all of their non-drill based brethren and trainees.
I once played a guy named Victor. You see, he was a man from the mountains, human yet with signs of giant blood in him. A dark color to his skin, a head taller than most and a physique that would make a body builder jealous. Victor was introduced to the part during the starting quest as another sign-up ona job we all took to get us started. He was big, buff, and shirtless with loose pants that came in tight at the ankles, and barefoot. He had a thick sash, and several pouchea tucked under it. On his hands he wore gloves, and he spoke with a deep, rumbling voice.
Victor went with the party as a man of few words, but he assured them he could hold his own in combat, if not diplomacy. When confronted with some fire lizards, the roll for initiative was cast, and Victor went second. The fighter was done, doing a wonderful spring-attack at the first lizard. Victor calmly walked up, his muscles rippling under his skin as his shoulders rolled back, and he screamed. Not in pain, but a wild, feral roar as he lunged suddenly, tackling the lizard to the ground, rolling it over, straddling it and beating it, pummeling fist after fist into the lizards soft underbelly. After a few rolls to hit and damage later, he had taken the second lizard down by over half hp. Not too shabby, all things considered.
The lizard, when it went, fought ferociously back, biting clawing and lashing out at Victor’s unprotected body. He let it, blood pouring openly as Victor gritted his teeth, seethingng in ragr and only fueling himself with the pain. The rest of the party, assuming their barbarian had this, went after the other lizard, taking it down. Victor’s turn came again, and he savagely beat the beast into a bloody smear, still growling and pummeling the ground even after the bones he was hitting had been fractured and crushed. No one dared approach him to tell him it was over.
Later, I requested healing. The party wasn’t suprised, as I said, I had taken a beating. While healing me, the paladin asked my current hp. I said “Victor is bloody and scratched all over, teeth and claw marks decorating his chest, but he seems well enough to walk.”
This got our ranger curious. He then did the thing I hate most in a ttrpg. He looked at my sheet. I was at 1 hp, out of a paultry 42. He then checked my class, and said “…wait, I thought you were a barbarian?”
After a long discussion about not looking at my character sheet (I would rather someone not ask me to pick a lock just because I’m a rogue, if they never met my character before and have no reason to think I could, etc) they learned I was a sorcerer. With bloodline shenanigans, feats and devious stat placement, I had managed a sorcerer with a 16 cha, 19 str, 18 dex and 15 con. Thia gave me an overall AC of 15, a health of measly 42 (feats and con, barely kept up with the ranger) and a to hit and damage with fists that actually dealt more damage than anyone else’s, as well as using true strike and rage and other spells like shocking grasp, I managed to be a witch-barbarian that pulled his own the whole campaign. All-in-all, most effective barbarian I ever played as a sorcerer.
I always wanted to try a melee sorcerer, but that lousy BAB… Did you ever go dragon disciple or anything? Or was it straight sorc all the way down?
Sorc up to 15, then campaign ended. Through featwork and bloodlines, I kept my to hit only one or two behind the fighter, though I got 2 attacks while he got 4, but his last 2 never hit any mob that mattered so…
Rolling high is also a good strategy. And hey, if you’re using true strike, then tripping fools is always on the table.
Did you ever say what your bloodline was? Straight melee sorc seems like a good build challenge, and I might just give it a go.
You may want to consider just going straight dragon with dragon disciple. I handicapped myself by not going disciple, really, but to be honest I am the only power gamer in my group so I purposefully limit myself by doing shenanigans like “full melee sorc”. That way I don’t outshine anyone, but I still am useful and I enjoy the challenge. I can’t remember off the top of my head my bloodline choice, I think abyssal or something that gave strength boosts and claws for melee.
There’s a rather glassy build I’ve been wanting to try for a long time now. Gaarl the Godslayer is the result of dozens of hours spent trying to get every last possible bit of damage condensed into one round.
Assassin 3, Devotion Pal 3, EK11, Ranger 2, Cleric 1. The short version is that he hides until he can get the drop on an enemy, then drops 7 auto-crit smite, hunter’s mark, GWM attacks.
The downsides to Gaarl are that to fullfill the multiclass ability requirements, his Con is only 10. To be able to hide, he wears scale armor, giving him a 15 AC. He has essentially no defensive class features. Also, he wants to go 1v1 with an ancient dragon.
If ever a character needed to make a Stealth check, lol. Can you imagine going through all that, getting the drop on your dragon, and then biffing the roll to sneak? Shenanigans and table flips!
Yep, even with expertise, he is in a pretty much straight contest to not be noticed. If there’s anything Gaarl wants in his career, it’s a proper greataxe and some good elven boots.
So, my first D&D character ever (in Pathfinder) was a Magus. Not yet understanding how balancing worked, she was STR-focused while in light armor. “Yeah, AC 15 at Level 3 seems fine.” Also, she had Thief’s luck with regard to attack rolls – in our third combat, I rolled, over the course of four turns, a 1, a 4, a 1 and a 6, failing four times to strike an AC 13 enemy. At the end of our fourth combat encounter, she was brought down to 2 HP while grappled by a giant crab. (Had she not succeeded in breaking that grapple as we retreated, she would have died.) Fortunately, the 16 CON was a good investment. Take that, d8s!
Now, did I send this clearly suboptimal character off and respec or reroll? No. As I learned from my mistakes, she learned from hers. I got better at positioning. I figured out how to effectively use Spell Combat. I started using Mirror Image. I kept using the hawk familiar to deliver spells because it had much better aim than me. (“LIGHTNING EAGLE STRIKE!!”) Then I took a level of Bloodrager and used the free Improved Unarmed Strike from the Blood Conduit archetype to learn Snake Style. Was my Sense Motive that great with my 12 WIS? No, so I used the Extra Traits feat to turn it into a Class Skill with a trait bonus and bought Wondrous Items to boost it. The end result was a much more durable slugger far more interesting to play than a Magical-Lineage-Shocking-Grasp-Dervish-Dance-Empowered-Spell nova-er copy-pasted from the Internet. And I’d gotten to roleplay her evolution too.
God damn. That is exactly the kind of character that I love most. When my experience as the player syncs up with the character’s experience in the game world, my little gamer heart does the salsa.
This is the kind of thing I’m talking about in the next comic over:
https://www.handbookofheroes.com/archives/comic/betrayal
You got a functional and interesting character without going pure min/max. That’s freaking awesome.
Personally, I think I have the potential to be a powergamer (I do a LOT of research and know the ins and outs of most of Pathfinder’s feats and archetypes, always looking for new and crazy combos), but I avoid it because of my inability to do simple things (a feature of my writing as well) and my compulsive multiclassing. Oh, well, and my focus on making a character first and then finding mechanics to back that up (or at least keep them combat-relevant).
That’s how I end up with such characters as the mildly-psychic DEX-based Cavalier with a construct familiar/floating robot buddy, the Unarmed Swashbuckler, the Unarmored, Shirtless DEX-10 Clumsy Sword Guy With Precognitive Reflexes (thank you CHA to AC!) And Mild Telekinesis, the Claws-and-Full-Plate Fighter, the OTHER Greatsword Magus, the Gun Monk, The Bloodrager Who Can Run 120 Miles An Hour If He Really Feels Like It, the Warlock Paladin (my first 5e character) and who could forget that utter abomination the Druid-Monk-Oracle With Cripplingly Low BAB And A -4 Penalty On All Weapon Attacks Besides That But Who Stealths, Intimidates Everything And Hunts Abominations Only Slightly Less Perverse Than Herself, Such As Great Old Ones.
…I may have a problem.
Those all sound like awesome characters, but I think they only work at certain tables. In my mind, there’s a “baseline optimization” that varies by group. If everyone else is kitted out to take on Orcus while you’re puttering around at NPC levels of damage output, you’re going to have a bad time.
For my taste, I like the “gentleman’s agreement” kind of optimization. Something along the lines of, “Let’s not overdo it, right chaps? Jolly good.” You make a functional character, but you’re willing to sacrifice a bit to get the quirky powers (e.g. construct familiar and 120 mph sprint instead of furious focus and leadership). You’ve just got to scope it out by table, you know?
There was a time when I would run into battle to use my best attack and deal lots of damage, but that time has just very recently passed.
Nowadays, playing as a Land Druid in 5e, I hang back, drop some buffs on the party, and plink with Thorn whip rather than go for the big guns of my Shillelagh-buffed quarterstaff.
It’s worthwhile because I get to let the newer players have their fun in the spotlight, and I don’t drop like a sack of bricks when the baddies inevitably decide to target the squishy spellcaster conveniently inside their attack range.
The 5e class that is the easiest to suicide is the monk in my experience. You can deal loads of melee damage, stun enemies with your kicks, and just be a general badass in melee combat, until you miss that stunning strike and your d8 hit die come into play.
I’ve been meaning to give the 5e monk another look. I haven’t seen one in play yet, but all those bells and whistles do look like fun. (Of course, being dead is less fun.)
The long death monk from SCAG becomes one of the hardest to kill creatures in the game once he hits level 14. Whenever he would drop to 0, he can spend 1 ki point (no action required) to stay up at 1hp.
Are… Are there cockroach folk in 5e? *Googles furiously*
That. I’ve lost count of times I’ve got my monk drop to 0 before reaching level 4. I was even thinking about playing Angus McFife’s farewell from The Fires of Ancient Cosmic Destiny in the chat every time it happened again for lulz and annoyance. Then I realized I could just use that ki for dodging instead of hitting more. And that sometimes the risk of an opportunity attack is worth it.
In my defence, I wasn’t the last in the party to get this piece of enlightenment. Also, our only brawl-type member is a druid.
Glass cannons, man. That d8 hit die can take some getting used to.
*chuckle*
The other players at my table like to give me good-natured grief over my CG (Cranky Good) Wizard having delusions of tankhood. As far as I can recall, the main instigating incident happened not too long after we’d ported over to 5e. We were wandering through a lizardfolk temple to some kind of Outsider, and ran across a dungeon cell with a number of stunningly beautiful maidens in it. Illusory stunningly beautiful maidens who were actually… Sea Hags, I think it was?
Courtesy of sky-high Wis and Int, my wizard saw through the illusion the second he opened the door, and, rather than bothering to inform anyone else, proceeded to fill the entire cell with fire.
Naturally (given that no-one else had made the Wis save to see through the illusion), this caused a certain amount of consternation amongst the rest of the party. And of course, that was when the sea hags unleashed their fear effect. Cue everyone in the party except my wizard and the swordsage failing their save and freaking out all over the place.
So, with a sigh and a roll of his eyes, the party wizard parked himself in the doorway and just kind of took the various claw attacks and whatnot while roasting the sea hags while the rest of the party basically ran around screaming about nothing much.
Surprisingly, my character survived that nonsense, but it was a bit of a near thing, since I wasn’t exactly getting a tonne of healing for obvious reasons >.>
Also, oddly enough, I’ve been looking at rolling up a 5e monk in the near future. Should be fun, probably going to make him an Aarrakocra, given that the race seems to basically be tailor-made for monkhood. He’s going to be my predatory karate parrot 😛
One of my groups tells the story of a battlemage from the halcyon days of 3.0. His battle cry was, “Get out of my line of fire, meat tank!” They carried a dustpan around for the express purpose of scooping up his remains for resurrection.
Well, I’m the rogue in my party, but I just happened to always roll high for my hit points, so while I should be squishy, I’m not. Add a high armor class due to DEX, and I can only recall one time I went down, which was when we were stupid enough to provoke a dragon and then, while the marjority of the party started running away, I was actually foolish enough to fight. Turns out the dragon needed someone to send a message and thus didn’t eat me. Fun times were had.
This is the most dangerous situations for a glass cannon. You get some nice defensive capabilities. You survive a few close fights. You begin to think that you are somebody.
And then a fucking dragon makes you his delivery boy.
That’s kinda how Lini the Gnome Bard died. I was still new to the game there was one scene where we were at a house and got attacked. Most everyone else was outside fighting the enemy but I was inside. Shooting a crossbow that I had no proficiency in because I had been given it about a week before and it was my only ranged weapon. I kept missing and was starting to get a little frustrated. So on my next turn I… tried to climb through the window to melee attack. The GM had me roll an Acrobatics check to avoid an AoO. Let’s just say that I didn’t make the roll.
But at least I learned from my mistakes. If I have to climb through a window to get to melee, I’m not getting in melee. And I rebuilt Lini to be better able to survive in melee. Although I haven’t gotten a chance to check out how good I did.
If it makes you any better, I recently had an elf ranger fail to climb, fail to leap across a gap, and take himself out of action all in the same turn. It was not a good turn.
Ouch. That sounds painful. May I ask what he was trying to climb?
Snipers need a perch. When he couldn’t get his footing atop the first column, he went for the second rather than fall. It was a bad call.
I see. That must have been a painful fall.
Barely survived. :/
This is painfully accurate for my magus. If I have/take the time to buff him up with Haste, Mirror Image (or Displacement or Greater Invisibility) and Shield, he can hold his own just as well as any barbarian or bloodrager. But if I rush in to get in an Intensified Shocking Grasp and don’t manage to kill my opponent… I’m in deep shit. ESPECIALLY if I fail to penetrate any Spell Resistance that said enemy may have.