Pathfinder Sneak Attack – Kill the GM
I love my GM, we’ve known each other for over almost 30 years. He doesn’t game master much, it’s usually myself and another one that vies for the coveted position.
Anyways, he’s been running Paizo’s Pathfinder RPG – Second Darkness campaign arc. It’s been going well, but we have the occasional rules question come up. Having two GM’s as players doesn’t help when you’re sitting behind the screen for the first time in this rules set.
There’s a guy we have in the party that loves to play characters that do heavy damage. Typically a dwarf, or shifter, with a great axe or great sword, it’s not unusual (cue tom jones) during a gaming session to have him rolling 1d12+ points of damage per hit. Well, in this campaign he is playing a rogue and wants to utilize the sneak attack to it’s fullest. He’s using a warhammer as his weapon of choice. My game master, my brother, seems to be a bit miffed at someone trying to sneak attack with a warhammer. Here are the details.
His, GM’s, argument was that the warhammer was too big to sneak attack. One could argue it’s not since it can be logically determined that a warhammer weighs 5 pounds and is similar to a modern day 5 pound maul. If the warhammer was the size of a large cement block, well, that’s a different story. So the GM’s stance is considering logic and realism. Never mind we’re playing a game with pixies, elves and magic. He was even going as far as to say that you couldn’t sneak attack with the weapon, which would really dampen the player’s wanting to play the class. It’s equal to saying you can be a wizard class but you can’t cast any energy-related spells. Be very wary of taking a class ability away from a character, or wary of nerfing it, it just isn’t right…at all, IMO. If you want to lay down this law, errr, rule, then you have to state it waaaaay ahead of time so the player can make the necessary changes or adjustments.
My argument, it’s not the size of the weapon but the tactics used to wield it during combat. Sneak attack takes advantage of an opponent and their lack of dexterity or flanking. It’s simply a way to pin point a vital strike against your opponent. It’s the “I hit him in the jugular” type of an attack. However, this thinking is not semantically correct since the type of attack should be rephrased to something like ‘tactical attack’ or something similar rather than sneak attack. Sneak being the misleading word in this whole argument.
My GM agreed with many facets of my argument. It was all good in the end. I think it was his first edition AD&D mind coming to the table.
