sepulchre wrote:Philotomy, I'm not in disagreement with this reading, but I have always found a measure of ambiguity or obscurity in how to read a thief's additional attack when surprising from behind. Do you know of a BTB reference for that reading. To be honest I prefer your reading, but I know players who would interpret each additional attack/surprise segment as a backstab...
No, I don't know of a BTB reference that locks this down. It seems to be a gray area that's open to interpretation. I did find the Sage Advice question/answer, in Dragon 139:
Dragon 139 Sage Advice wrote:If a thief using two weapons makes a back attack, does he get his to hit and damage modifiers for both weapons?
The + 4 to hit and the damage multiplier only apply to the first blow; the second weapon gets the +2 to hit modifier for a rear attack but no damage modifier. The same holds true if the thief gets multiple attacks due to surprise.
That's probably as close to official as we'll get (even though it's an answer under Skip Williams' byline).
Thanks Philotomy (Skip Williams and all)! I was familiar with this Sage Advice entry, but had missed that concluding sentence.
I think over again my small adventures. My fears, those small ones that seemed so big, for all the vital things I had to get and to reach, and yet, there is only one great thing, the only thing, to live to see the great day that dawns, and the light that fills the world. - Old Inuit Song
“Superstitions are religious forms surviving the loss of ideas. Some truth no longer known or a truth which has changed its aspect is the origin and explanation of all. The name from the Latin, superstes, signfies that which survives, they are the dead remnants of old knowledge or opinion” - Eliphas Levi (138 The History of Magic).
“Let no one wake a man brusquely for it is a matter difficult of cure if the soul find not its way back to him”, the Upanishads of ancient India ( 58 Our Oriental Heritage, Durant).
"Life is intrinsically, well, boring and dangerous at the same time. At any given moment the floor may open up. Of course, it almost never does; that's what makes it so boring" – Edward Gorey.
"The bright day is done and we are for the dark" - Shakespeare
"No lamp burns till morning" - Persian proverb.
“The living close the eyes of the dead, but it is the dead that open the eyes of the living”— Old Slavic saying.
'The best place to hide a light is in the sun' – old Arab proverb.
'To thee, thou wedding-guest!
He prayeth well who loveth well
Both man and bird and beast.
He prayeth best who loveth best,
All things both great and small:
For the dear God, who loveth us,
He made and loveth all' - Samuel Taylor Coleridge (VII Rhyme of the Ancient Mariner).
