CA Ninjas and Sudden Strike

[Optimator]

The general consensus is that the Ninja Class is gimped.   Would switching over a Ninja's Sudden Strike to full-fledged Sneak Attack work well?  Is it not enough?  Is it too much?  Does anyone have experience with this particular modification or does anyone have some expert insight?  It doesn't seem unbalancing-ly good, but is it enough to make the Ninja non-laughable?  What else does the Ninja need?

I eagerly await your opinions.

[Straw_Man]

Evasion or ability to wear light armour while retaining AC bonus, possibly Improved Unarmed Strike for flavour. Throw that in I'll be happy with Sudden Strike, as it is Ninja is a bad mesh of Monk and Rogue while doing nothing that both could do better I think.

[Optimator]

Holy shit, they don't get evasion.  I never even noticed that.

[ninjarabbit]

UMD as a class skill and the ability to cast a limited amount of spells, ninja magic is not represented in D&D

[ksbsnowowl]

I always preferred the Rokugan Ninja, which had full BAB and got sneak attack.  But maybe, just maybe, I have a baby powergamer growing inside of me.

In all seriousness, a well-timed dip into Swordsage would be good for a ninja.

Hell, Swordsage is a better ninja than the ninja.

[Optimator]

Hell, Swordsage is a better ninja than the ninja.

Yeah...

[RobbyPants]

Hell, Swordsage is a better ninja than the ninja.

Swordsage is a better monk than a monk too.

If not allowed to use ToB, I think you could do better with either a straight rogue, or a monk 1/rogue x if you had a good enough Wis mod.

I always liked the idea of a ninja class, but the CA version is definitly lacking.

[AfterCrescent]

So I see a variety of suggestions.

Evasion (Imp Evasion too?)
Sneak Attack instead of Sudden Strike
Full BAB
Wis to AC while in light armor (ala SS)
UMD as a class skill

If those changes were made, therein making a ninja more of a monk/rogue base class with some improvements... Would that be over-powered? What do you all think? Those are a decent number of changes...

[RobbyPants]

All that stuff in addition to what the ninja normally gets?  I'd say it'd be too much.

Getting a full BAB and sneak attack is already pushing it, if you have other class abilities.  The only time I've seen this in 3.5 is the sneak attack fighter variant in Unearthed Arcana.

Adding UMD as a class skill would be good.  Evasion at some point would certainly help too.  Those two fixes alone would be enough to help the class a lot.  Converting sudden strike to sneak attack is starting to border on too much.  Perhaps if evasion were pushed off until a later level...

[Straw_Man]

I'd take out UMD and full BAB, as it stands - thats what fighters wish their class was.

[Turalisj]

 There are several good ninjas on the *gasp* WotC boards. The best one has to be made by Heretic888. Here's a link: http://forums.gleemax.com/showthread.php?t=814550

[ninjarabbit]

My 'ninja' is a rogue19/monk1 with the ascetic rogue feat.

[woodenbandman]

Hey, there's nothing wrong with 12 touch attacks while invisible all of them dealing sneak attack.

Master Thrower5/Ninja15 is fairly simple, and with those 3 tricks (palm throw, weak spot, and one other I can't remember) you basically deal 42d6 of sneak attack damage. Did I mention you're freakin' invisible for a whole round.

Don't see why it wouldn't work, since a rogue can full attack with sneak attacks. And suppose it doesn't work. Then you just buy a ring of invisiblity with all your money, and then do this trick. Hit AC 10 for 7d6 of damage 6 times.

[AfterCrescent]

Except for everything at that level being able to see invisibility or be immune to crits or have blindsight or any combination of the above...

[RabidPirateMan]

Hey, there's nothing wrong with 12 touch attacks while invisible all of them dealing sneak attack.

Master Thrower5/Ninja15 is fairly simple, and with those 3 tricks (palm throw, weak spot, and one other I can't remember) you basically deal 42d6 of sneak attack damage. Did I mention you're freakin' invisible for a whole round.

Don't see why it wouldn't work, since a rogue can full attack with sneak attacks. And suppose it doesn't work. Then you just buy a ring of invisiblity with all your money, and then do this trick. Hit AC 10 for 7d6 of damage 6 times.

Master Thrower was errata'd to the grave.  Palm throw doesn't work with Precision damage.

I have some things written down somewhere... I'll post it later...

[JaronK]

Hardly to the grave.  Weakspot and the Riccochet one work just fine, and that's all that's important.

JaronK

[RabidPirateMan]

So Sudden Strike-

One fix is for it to do d6 against flatfooted opponents, and d4 against flanked.  However, this is still worse off than sneak, and the class features the ninja gets doesn't even compare to what a rogue gets (and rogues aren't that powerful).  I say, d8 flatfoot, d4 flank.  Is that too powerful?

Another idea I had for them was to give them a riposte- sort of like the alt feature for scouts in Cityscape.  If a foe attacks the ninjer and misses, he's flatfoot till the end of the ninja's turn.  At some higher level, he can take a single attack on a foe that misses him.  I think this might be really powerful... maybe if they miss AoOs...

Also, the damn well need more ki powers.  Something that gives them versatility.

[GawainBS]

Hey, there's nothing wrong with 12 touch attacks while invisible all of them dealing sneak attack.

Master Thrower5/Ninja15 is fairly simple, and with those 3 tricks (palm throw, weak spot, and one other I can't remember) you basically deal 42d6 of sneak attack damage. Did I mention you're freakin' invisible for a whole round.

Don't see why it wouldn't work, since a rogue can full attack with sneak attacks. And suppose it doesn't work. Then you just buy a ring of invisiblity with all your money, and then do this trick. Hit AC 10 for 7d6 of damage 6 times.

Sorry for being off topic, but were is this FAQ?

Master Thrower was errata'd to the grave.  Palm throw doesn't work with Precision damage.

I have some things written down somewhere... I'll post it later...