3.5 Feat Idea

[Zhofe]

Alright, so, I have an idea for a feat to introduce into my tabletop D&D game using 3.5 rules, but I would like some feedback on it from anyone who had a pretty good knowledge of 3.5, or anyone who has suggestions on how to tweak it. I already reasoned a lot of this feat out with a buddy, so it shouldn't be too sloppy.

Feat: Concealed Strike
Prerequisites 8 (or 11?) ranks in Sleight of Hand
Benefit: By taking a -4 penalty on your sleight of hand check, you may conceal a weapon in such a way that you may use a standard action to attack with it. Using a full round attack negates any benefit after the first attack. Anyone who fails to notice the concealed weapon (via opposed spot check) is also unable to see you make your attack with this weapon. Any target attacked with a weapon so concealed loses his Dexterity modifier to AC, but gains a circumstance bonus to spot your weapon on his next combat round. This bonus is +5 for ranged weapons, and +10 for melee weapons, this bonus is cumulative for each round an attack is made against this target within 1 minute of the last attack. A succesful spot check by the target prevents that weapon from denying him his dexterity bonus to AC until it is concealed again. If you make another attack with your concealed weapon within 1 minute of the last, every  creature with a line of site gets a cumulative +2 circumstance bonus to their spot check.

Okay, so, the idea behind this feat is to allow for a stealthy character (particularly Assassins) to be able to harrass some people in public without arousing too much suspicion, to be able to strike, and blend seamlessly back into the crowd, and to give rogues another way to utilize their sneak attack.

Using the rules as-is, the only way to do something similar is to attack, then take the -20 penalty to Sleight of Hand in order to conceal a weapon as a free action, and to hope you have a kind DM.

[miltonyorkcastle]

Since what you're describing is possible without an additional feat (just take the -20 to SoH), all you need is a feat to nullify or lessen the penalty. That is, the feat should simply erase or reduce the SoH penalty to conceal the weapon as a free action.

The question you seem to address with your feat as described above is whether or not the assassin has placed themselves into a position where they can hide immediately after stabbing the victim. I don't think a feat can do that for them. That's something the player has to do for their character--figure out the terrain and use it to their advantage. They either need a thick crowd, darkness, or some other form of concealment.

To explain it a different way, if a PC stabs the guy, and also manages to hide the weapon before said guy can see it, but the PC is the only other person near the guy they stabbed, what the PC did becomes obvious, even if the victim can't see the weapon the PC used to do it. Plainly, there's no one else around who could have done the deed, weapon in hand or not. (unless the PC is really awesome at bluffing and convinces the poor sod that a ghost did the stabbing or something, heh. Still, that's pushing it.)

[Stephen_Zuckerman]

Yeah, this uses the Sniping rule, only with concealing a weapon rather than yourself.

A better way to go about this would be to roll normally for sniping, but to have a SoH roll to conceal the weapon, a Hide to hide in the crowd (if applicable) and a Bluff/Diplomacy to act as if you didn't just not do it, but didn't notice what happened. Then you'd wait until you were out of this fellow's line of sight again to nail 'im with another hit.

[Talan Va'lash]

HOLY ZHOFE!


*Hugs!*

Wait... are you back or just asking nerds nerdy questions? Hmmm?

I just got back so, I'd be psyched if you were back as well.