Smoldering Wizard's Old-School Gaming Forums

Is anything above two damage dice for backstab considered too much for White Box? I know the earliest thief by Gygax had:

Levels 1-4: two damage dice
Levels 5-8: four damage dice
Levels 9+: six damage dice

This seems excessive when most giants only do 2d6 or 3d6 damage. What do you think Doug?

I don't think so, since the backstab has to be done with surprise and/or stealth, and those are not necessarily automatic. Also, at higher levels, the thief's enemies will have more hit dice, so the attack should scale for the thief to stay relevant. By 9th level you've got MUs tossing nine-dice fireballs, so I say let thieves have their six-dice backstab.

Oh that's right. I completely forgot about that. Thanks Doug!

That reminds me then about my Assassin class I made for White Box FMAG. I have it starting with a x3 backstab. If I give the thief the 'Gygax' progression then I wonder what I should do with the Assassin. You mentioned in that thread about simply giving the Assassin an instant kill type of ability where the Assassin has a chance of instantly killing targets up to 1+ the Assassins level. I might go with that and remove backstab from the Assassin all together.

I'm using (melee only) 1-4: 2d6 5-8: 3d6 9-12: 4d6. But I also gives Fighters 2 attacks at 5-8 and 3 attacks at 9-12. I extended the level tables to 12 for all classes so that 1-4 is low level, 5-8 mid level and 9-12 high level.