Insomniac wrote:How are you supposed to assassinate somebody in the system at comparable level? Let's say, a 5th level rogue sneaks up and stabs another 5th level Rogue. Vintage one shot backstab death potential, right? Well, a rogue who put its favored class bonus into HP starts at 5d8+5. A guy getting walloped over the head with a 2d6 greatsword and 3d6 sneak attack plus 4 from strength and maybe enchantment is taking 5d6+4 damage. He could take a sneak attack great sword to the throat and still be what, 7 to 10 hp up? It gets worse if the Rogue in question has 12 to 14 constitution, not at all unreasonable.
Yeah. There are some assumptions that D&D (and, I think, other level-based games) don't really handle well. It was, I think, my second or third D&D game that the party stumbled upon a... cultist, probably, I don't recall, and needed to take him out before he could alert his friends.
...Which, I rapidly determined, was literally impossible. If we ignored his ability to shout outside his turn (i.e. as soon as an attack hit him or he otherwise noticed us), it was merely
practically impossible.
(It doesn't help that it was 4e and none of us knew how to optimize damage so the whole game was major padded sumo).
Point is, creeping up in the dark and cutting a sentry's throat without alerting anyone else is really cool sounding, but unless you have a bunch of levels on them (unlikely, because then why are you bothering with stealth) or you have magic keep-quiet-ness (which drastically changes the imagery to... something that is admittedly also cool), it's just not happening.
