Author Topic: Is someone who isn't aware of your presence considered helpless?  (Read 2522 times)

Offline Masakan

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Is someone who isn't aware of your presence considered helpless?
« on: November 11, 2016, 01:03:05 PM »
Simply put, I've been looking for ways to stealth kill without sneak attack. and the only other way i can think of is coup de gracing them while helpless.
If i can't what methods can i render someone helpless without being detected?

Offline Necrosnoop110

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Re: Is someone who isn't aware of your presence considered helpless?
« Reply #1 on: November 11, 2016, 01:09:15 PM »
Here's a start at least...

LINK: [3.5] Making stuff Helpless
LINK: [3.5] SRD, Helpless
« Last Edit: November 11, 2016, 01:22:06 PM by Necrosnoop110 »

Offline Garryl

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Re: Is someone who isn't aware of your presence considered helpless?
« Reply #2 on: November 11, 2016, 01:16:04 PM »
Someone who is unaware of your presence is just flat-footed, not helpless.

For someone to be helpless, they have to be unconscious (including sleeping) or paralyzed. There are a few other causes of helplessness that come up, but they're not very common. If you want to coup de grace someone, you're probably going to need to inflict one of those conditions on your target first. Some examples:
- Sleep and Deep Slumber spells make one or more targets fall asleep (although they have terrible HD limits).
- The Hold Person and Hold Monster spells cause paralysis.
- There's a Shadow Hand maneuver (don't remember the name unfortunately, and I think it's somewhere between 5th and 8th level) that lets you paralyze a flat-footed target for a few rounds.
- If you drop your target's ability scores to 0, they are paralyzed (Strength, Dexterity), unconscious (Intelligence, Wisdom, Charisma), or just die (Constitution).

Separately, I seem to remember discussion about some rules in Book of Vile Darkness about using Profession (Executioner) to coup de grace someone pinned in a grapple. You might want to look into that.

Offline Chemus

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Re: Is someone who isn't aware of your presence considered helpless?
« Reply #3 on: November 11, 2016, 01:53:48 PM »
This sounds like you're looking for 'silent takedowns' or similar. That's tough; Garryl's maneuver is called Hand of death (ToB 77) a level 4 Shadow Hand (swordsage) maneuver. It works like he said.

Otherwise spells do it, but outside of assassins (and the 1 or 4 classes that gain a death attack), I don't know of 1st round, silent, takedowns. Ubercharging might work, but being silent probably won't happen.
Apathy is ...ah screw it.
My Homebrew

Offline Dr_emperor

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Re: Is someone who isn't aware of your presence considered helpless?
« Reply #4 on: November 12, 2016, 09:47:48 AM »
Beguiler just use cloaked casting and hold person?  Or maybe find a way to get slay living with cloaked casting?  It shouldn't be super difficult.  Or you could build a silent charger maybe using craven.

Offline nijineko

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Re: Is someone who isn't aware of your presence considered helpless?
« Reply #5 on: November 14, 2016, 01:42:07 PM »
that one kobold's pit trap version of the portable hole might assist. assuming you can get them to fall in, and then close it up, you can either have something in there with the target, or just let them suffocate eventually and hope they don't have another means to get out.

or use the transdimensional feat to nail them while they are in the pit if you are the impatient sort.

Offline KellKheraptis

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Re: Is someone who isn't aware of your presence considered helpless?
« Reply #6 on: November 14, 2016, 08:40:05 PM »
Um...scry and die from a different continent?  No one said you gotta be close to him, and odds are the only ones able to see or hear it are just as paranoid as you are by the point you can reliably scry and die someone :P