Improved Sneak Attack for Assassin Characters without Rogues/Blackguard levels

Kenji

According to http://nwn.wikia.com/wiki/Improved_sneak_attack

"As of patch 1.66, a bug prevents this feat from working for an assassin who does not have sneak attack or sneak attack, blackguard. The improved sneak attack feats are still selectable for the assassin, but they will add nothing. If the assassin has even one die of sneak attack damage from rogue, blackguard levels, or item property then improved sneak attack works as expected."

Has this been fixed, somehow? Just curious is all. I have tried to search for relevant information to no avail.

Shaiden

* Assassins with Death Attack can now use Improved Sneak Attack without having Sneak Attack 1.
* Assassin's Death Attack balanced to only fire once per round (first attack).
* Assassin's Death Attack paralysis length is based only on assassin level, not total character level.
* Fix to Uncanny Dodge 2 feat (higher-level rogues are now allowed to attack lesser rogues with Sneak/Death attacks).
* Sneak/Death attacks now properly respect the Pale Master's Deathless Mastery feat.

From the patch notes
I suspect the one you're looking for would be the first entry, let me know if this is not the case?

Hunter548

"* Fix to Uncanny Dodge 2 feat (higher-level rogues are now allowed to attack lesser rogues with Sneak/Death attacks).
* Sneak/Death attacks now properly respect the Pale Master's Deathless Mastery feat."

Can you expand on these two? The former would imply that sneak attacks now behave like they do in PnP (Uncanny Dodge making you immune to sneaks from creatures with insufficient rogue/assassin/bg levels, while I'm not sure what the latter actually.. means.

Shaiden

In regards to the first, IIRC the change was specifically that if the rogue who is attacking is at least 4 levels higher than the character, then flanking / sneak attacking is possible.

The steps are effectively:
1) If the target can't see you, it's a sneak/death attack
2) If the target is flat-footed, it's a sneak/death attack
3) Then we get into the evaluation of Uncanny dodge 2 vs rogue levels to see if we should bother doing a flank-check

There may be a more recent entry on that, I'll have to go searching for it

In regards to the latter, The pale master's "Deathless Mastery" feat was not taking quite a number of abilities into account when checking the character's immunity. This came about from checking against "Quivering palm" for example.

I *believe* that this extends the immunity to the extra damage / effects from sneak/death attacks as per other undead creatures, though I'd feel more comfortable having someone with immediate access to the code to confirm before committing to it.