Optional Rules: Backstabbing Sonsabitches (Revisited)

 

Optional Rules: Backstabbing Sonsabitches (Revisited)

Backstabbing. Just the word itself makes most players cringe. It sounds greasy, dishonorable, and downright dirty—the hallmark of cutpurses, scoundrels, and assassins who prefer the dark to an honest fight. But when you are staring down an alert castle sentry or slipping through an enemy encampment in the dead of night, slipping cold iron into an oblivious kidney is often the difference between a clean infiltration and a full-blown bloodbath.

For decades, tabletop rules have treated this dirty art as the exclusive birthright of the Thief. That has always struck me as artificial nonsense. While thieves and assassins are certainly the undisputed masters of the trade, the instinct to exploit an open blind spot belongs to every seasoned fighter who has ever survived a brawl. If a veteran warrior crawls through fifty feet of mud and puts a dagger to the base of an unsuspecting sentry's neck, they do not square their shoulders and wait for a fair initiative roll. They strike to end the fight.

These optional rules replace standard backstab mechanics with a universal Sneak Attack, opening the tactic to any character while still giving dedicated cutthroats the bloody edge they have earned.

The Ground Rules

A Sneak Attack requires genuine surprise. The target must be completely unaware of the attacker's presence. If a guard is on high alert, scanning the shadows, or reasonably suspicious that trouble is brewing, the moment is gone. You cannot "sneak attack" someone who is actively keeping an eye on you.

Precision and speed are everything. The attacker must use a small or medium weapon that lends itself to close, quiet work—daggers, shortswords, clubs, or maces. Large, cumbersome weapons requiring wide swings are right out, though sensible exceptions like a clean spear thrust from concealment are fair game. Ranged weapons may also be used for a sniper strike, provided the attacker is completely concealed and firing from short range.

Staging a clean kill requires total commitment. The attacker spends their entire focus on the stroke, allowing only one single attack for the entire round, regardless of any standard multiple-attack abilities.

The target must have a sensible anatomy that can actually be damaged by the weapon at hand. Sneaking up on an iron golem with a bodkin dagger is an exercise in futility, and trying to get the drop on a Black Pudding is just plain silly. However, reasonable common sense applies: crushing a skeleton's skull with a heavy mace from behind or hammering an oak stake into a resting vampire's ribcage are both perfectly valid.

Landing the Blow

Catching an enemy completely flat-footed grants a +4 bonus to the attack roll.

If the attack connects, determine damage based on who is holding the weapon:

• Non-Thieves: The attack deals full normal weapon damage (including Strength or magical bonuses) plus 1 additional point of damage per character level. A 4th-level fighter swinging a shortsword deals normal damage plus 4.

• Thieves and Assassins: The true artists of betrayal deal full normal weapon damage (including bonuses) plus 2 additional points of damage per character level. That same 4th-level thief lands their strike for normal damage plus 8.

The Trauma Check: Scaling the Shock

In real combat, massive trauma delivered in a single split second is catastrophic. If a Sneak Attack inflicts damage equal to 50 percent or more of the target's maximum hit points, the victim suffers severe physical shock and must immediately make a saving throw versus Death (or a Constitution save in newer editions).

The target number to resist is 10, or half the total damage dealt by the strike, whichever is higher.

The consequences depend entirely on what kind of meat you are cutting into:

1. Mortal and Mundane Targets

(Rank-and-file guards, ordinary humanoids, and natural beasts)

• Failed Save: The victim drops immediately to 0 hit points. They collapse silently and begin bleeding to death at the rate of 1 hit point per round, or die outright if the attacker made a clean, deliberate killing stroke like slitting the throat.

• Successful Save: Sheer luck or armor deflection keeps them alive, but the impact knocks the wind clean out of them. The target is incapacitated and unable to move until the end of their next turn.

2. Monsters and Legendary Terrors

(Dragons, giants, powerful undead, and supernatural horrors)

• Failed Save: A creature of massive bulk or supernatural vitality will not drop dead from a single knife prick, but the trauma violently shatters its composure. The creature is stunned until the end of its next turn, its movement drops to zero, and it loses all reactions.

• Successful Save: The beast absorbs the agony without collapsing, but reels from the impact. It suffers a penalty (or Disadvantage) on its next attack or ability check made before the end of its next turn.

An added note for the wilderness travelers: this rule applies equally well to hunting game. A quiet hunter stalking a deer from the brush gets the exact same benefit as a rogue stalking a sentry along the ramparts.