GameBanshee Forums

Hey, I was wondering if sneak attacks in IWD2 is limited to weapons? ie. If I take a few levels of rogue and then switch to fighter and use, say, a greatsword, will i get the sneak attack?

Yes, you'll get it. 2-handed weapons are actually far better for sneak attacks than 1-handed.

Why is that? I'd rather say that dualwielding is the best for Sneak Attacks, since you get to apply it more often.

For a successful sneak attack not coming out of the shadows you need someone else to be closer to the enemy than your rogue, else the victim will turn around to face him.
I didn't use sneak attack much in IWD2, but I don't think that you can get more than one sneak attack per round at the same victim (correct me if I'm wrong).

actually, if you can manage to immobilize your target (hold, paralysis, stun, unconscious, etc.), you can sneak attack them till they are just a mushy puddle on the floor.

dual wielding rogues get really brutal when you have spellcasters along. (the sneak attack is for the first attack for each weapon, just to clarify).

my favorite high level strategy is to first cast malison, then tremor, and while everyone is unconscious on the ground, just sneak them into oblivion.

if you have a strong fighter/thief of level 15 or higher, you will find your damage commonly going into the 50's, for example: level 7 rogue/8 fighter with decent boosted strength (say 26) using a +5 greatsword will commonly go over 50 damage on a crit (4d6 sneak + 2 x (2d6 weapon +12st +2 specialization) ). If you are using a really powerful GS (like if you are using the 2-handed version of the Holy Avenger) you can get numbers in the triple digits.

ideally, if you plan on using your rogue as a tank, you want to keep an eye out for the better light armors, so you can keep your ability to evade on reflex save. The chain of Drakkas is good, but you don't get that till way late in the game. put some points into hide and move silently (don't have your rogue tank divide points into things like lockpick and search - have a real rogue do that!). Stealth is pretty easy to maintain, even with fairly low scores, for a lot of the game, and there is a lot of equipment to help out on that front too.

nothing like hiding your fighter rogue right behind that pesky mage while one of your other characters is having a gab with him, and then chop his head off with a good sneak attack as soon as the conversation is over.

oh, and if you can, put some points into alchemy (8) so you can use envenom weapon. it doesn't sound like much, but again, with those mages and archer types (that already have average or lower CON), a hit from a poisoned weapon immediately lowers their total hps quite a bit; the higher the level the better.

I find most mages fail their fort save when hit with the poison, and in that round and the following often lose at least 40% of their hps just from the con loss.

that means a level 20 mage with 10 con (should have 180 hps) will lose an average of 6 con (2d6) which means his new hp total at the end of the first round (6 sec) without doing anything else will be 80 hps! often the first round of con loss (just the first 1d6) is sufficient that the actual damage from the sneak attack and weapon damage will take them out on the first couple of hits, and they don't even make it to the end of the round. spellcasting? forgetaboutit. of course, on top of all that, if they do manage to survive the first round, their fort saves will suck even worse, which leaves them open to all sorts of low level spells that can stun them (icelance comes to mind).

speaking of poisons... if you get the HOF version of the wyvern stinger, that thing is brutal (48 points of poison damage unless fort save at -14!). only problem is it's not magical, so things that can only be hit by magical weapons won't be affected.