Out of curiosity, would you allow the houserules that Hans, GWG, and I built back during the planning for the kobold campaign re: poison, alchemical items, and the way they interact with sneak attack/crit? The goal was to make them viable, as opposed to the convoluted, underpowered, and oft-contradictory RAW.
e: Reposting this lower down because I probably spent too long editing it. I'm interested to hear Han's thoughts on it, because it seems like a better way to houserule crits and sneak attacks for splash weapons, both in terms of meshing with the character and making sense.
If I were DM, I would figure out some way for crits and sneak attacks on the stuff with saving throws to increase the DC. I can see that (a good throw gets more of the stuff in the body), but massively increasing duration on a sneak attack makes...less sense.
The only questions are what bonus for a crit (+10?) and what for sneak attacks (+2/d6?)
2. I would actually love to see crits and sneak attacks increase DCs rather than add to effects. That would be brilliant, and would let those items stay effective into much higher levels than normal. Hm, a flat rate might not be the best for crits, considering that it would be far too much for lower-level items and too little for high-tier items. Multiply the DC by x1.3 on a crit, rounding up to the nearest whole number, perhaps? So a DC12 item that critted would have a DC of 18 for that attack, a DC25 item would have a DC of 37 for that attack, and so forth? That would come close to replicating the effect of a damage multiplier in terms of the effectiveness of the attack, keeping in mind that they'll only crit on natural 20s (unless I spend a feat just to expand my threat range with them to 19-20, which seems... wasteful).
For sneak attacks the dice roll for added DC seems good, assuming it scales with level. Maybe make it half the dice of my current sneak attack, rounding up. So for now I'd get 2d6 to DC, which would remain the same at 7th level, go up to 3d6 at 9th level, and so forth? At 20th level that'd give 5d6 additional DC on a successful sneak attack, which could range from near-pointless to a near-doubling of DC, depending on the roll and item. Just a thought.
This seems reasonable enough. /me bangs a gavel. Houseruled!
For sneak attacks the dice roll for added DC seems good, assuming it scales with level. Maybe make it half the dice of my current sneak attack, rounding up. So for now I'd get 2d6 to DC, which would remain the same at 7th level, go up to 3d6 at 9th level, and so forth? At 20th level that'd give 5d6 additional DC on a successful sneak attack, which could range from near-pointless to a near-doubling of DC, depending on the roll and item. Just a thought.
The multiplicative crit thing seems to be fine.
I actually meant a flat +2 DC for every d6 you would have otherwise. [RE: Sneak attacks with poisons/alchemical items]
Hm. That could work. It'd certainly be simpler to implement, and would require fewer rolls. I'm fine with changing it to this if Hans would prefer it. Either way works, I'm just happy to have these things be useful.
Oh, I almost forgot:
I expect that alchemical weapons that do damage without a DC (and ones with a damage component without a DC separate from a conditional component with a DC) just add typed sneak attack/crit damage normally? So a sneak attack hit with a firestone would be 1d6 + 3d6 fire damage, for example.
There was also something about 4 ranks in Craft (Poison) granting
immunity to one's own poisons preventing you from poisoning yourself.
Obviously Dust of Sneezing and Choking would be flat-out banned because fuck that stuff. I'd probably suggest the same for Aboleth Mucus, considering that this is a explicitly non-powergamey campaign and it's a save-or-die (base) DC19 fort save for 20gp.
Heh, I always wanted to play that Kobold Batman character. Rogue/Swashbuckler just sounds like so damned much fun.
The only magical items which I absolutely, positively would need to be available at some point would be:
1. Belt of Many Pockets (CArc 148): 11k gp, 64x pouches with 10lbs/1cu ft. of capacity each, which act as mini-Haversacks; they respond to the wearer's desire, and extracting an object is a move action which doesn't provoke AOOs.
2. Glove of the Master Strategist (Ghost): 3.6k gp, acts as Glove of Storing and grants Truestrike 1/day.
3. Rod of Ropes (CS I don't remember, I can look it up when our WBL becomes relevant,
have this link.
So what would DM and co-DM say to a skillmonkey rogue/swashbuckler specializing in rapiers and thrown/splash/ranged touch/whatever the fuck the splatbook you're currently reading calls them weapons.