Spineless Bastard

So Blacktooth, my little 2’10″/32lb 10th level Murder Goblin™ in my main D&D (ok, ok, fine, Pathfinder. Whatever.) game isn’t super combat-oriented. He’s the thief, so his base Stealth is a 32 and his base Disable Device is a 25 (extra mod?). Yeah.

But, he does have a pretty good initiative bonus (+12) and a bunch of daggers. With Sneak Attack, those paltry 1d3 + 2 daggers do an additional +5d6 and +5 bleed, and if it’s the surprise round / before the target has acted, I do an extra +10 in damage. With that, I may actually be able to contribute to a fight, besides hiding behind something/someone, or getting smashed into a fine jam (Blacktooth’s last recently changed to Shatteredshanks after a run-in with a stone giant).

So, I came up with a custom feat to help my little guy (image/card here):

Spineless Bastard (Combat)

You’re not so much a backstabber as you are a backslasher, jumping to the enemy’s shoulders and sliding down along their spine on daggers.
Prerequisites: Trained in Acrobatics, target must be at least 1 size larger than you.
Benefit: Make an acrobatics check to (DC10 + 5/size diff) make a free jump to the top of the creature’s back, a failure ends your round. You’re allowed to make a full-round attack of two attack rolls (one for each dagger), but can hit at most once. Digging into its back, you slide down along the enemy’s spine.
Critical Hit: Creature is paralyzed.

I didn’t want to make it unfairly overpowered (getting a move and a full-round attack), so as an offering up to the Rules Gods™ (Paul and Chris, the DMs), I sacrificed one of my attacks. I still get two chances to hit, but only one can hit. Paul came up with the Critical Hit mechanic, which is pretty neat. Also, the feat itself seems pretty vicious, in keeping with Goblin nature.

I first tried it two sessions ago, and failed. *sad trombone* But, I managed to successfully do it twice last night, and it felt pretty good. Actually, I may change the acrobatics DC to DC20 + 5/size diff, as Blacktooth’s Acrobatics base (when jumping) is a 24. I guess that should vary on the level. We’ll see.

My extended plan is that when we make it to a bigger town, get two special daggers made. Have successfully attacked two hill giants with this attack, and as a group killed them, I plan on removing their partially exposed spines. After cleaning them, I plan on keeping a section of each, and having them magically fused and shrunk to be made into the hilts of my new daggers. These daggers will start out as +1, as that’s the cost to make a keen blade. It’ll cost 2,000 gold for each dagger, but it’ll expand my crit range on them from 19-20 to 17-20 – a 20% chance of critting, multiplying the damage by 2. And since a crit with Spineless Bastard results in paralysis, it’s worth the cost. Plus, they’ll be metal as fuck, my sweet new sleepytime daggers.

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