Kart, the thief, creeps towards the temple guard from the shadows behind. He raises his knife with one hand, and with the other he gets ready to muffle the guards scream. In one swift movement, he grabs the guard in surprise over the mouth and pulling his head swiftly back exposing his Adam's apple, ripe for the picking, and slices it clean open. With blood spurting from the gaping wound, he quickly drags his victim away back into the shadows.
Players Handbook extract (p27)
Back stabbing is the striking of a blow from behind, be it with club, dagger, or sword. The damage done per hit is twice normal for the weapon used per four experience levels of the thief, i.e. double damage at levels 1-4, triple at 5-8, quadruple at levels 9-12, and quintuple at levels 13-16. Note that striking by surprise from behind also increases the hit probability by 20% (+4 on the thief's "to hit" die roll).
House Rule
If a player advises that they wish to make a "sneak attack for kill" (and they must state that this is their intention before the manoeuvre is attempted), it must meet the following criteria:
- No other combat activity can be in progress.
- It is possible for a distraction to be in place, which would give additional bonus to a sneak roll.
- Player is only able to move 50% of normal distance in the round to place themselves next to character being targetted.
- Player must be of similar height to the victim.
- Player must be coming from a hidden/obscured direction and approaching from behind the victim
- Player must roll for sneaking. Normal chance, unless victim is being distracted, in which case +4 bonus.
- Player must use a club, dagger, small hand held blade or garroting wire. Long sword or rapier style of sword is too long.
- Player must roll d20 for the attack on the victim (the bit about srtiking by surprise is replaced by the following)
- 1 - Victim catches attack and shoves player off before any damage is done
- 2-5 - Weapon does not make clean impact, but does succeed. Damage is normal. Normal combat begins next round.
- 6-10 - Weapon makes clean impact, but not critical. Damage is multipled as per guidelines from PH (2x for levels 1-4, 3x for levels 5-8, etc.), but victim will take 1x damage for every turn thereafter from blood loss, even without any attacking.
- 11-20 - Weapon makes clean cut, and hit is critical, and no disturbing noise is made. Victim can be left where they are or dragged off silently for 50% character movement.
- If a club or bludgeoning weapon is used
- Then there will be a noise regardless of critical (death success) hit. When critical hit, then only 25% chance of being heard by anyone reasonably close by.
- If a garroting wire used
- Then if not a critical hit, the victim will still be held, and will have to free himself from the grapple using standard strength challenge.
- If the hit is not critical, then the victim will be assumed to have made a noise, enough to attract anyone reasonably close.
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