You've seen the many mad monk threads...you've seen the weekly paladin rants...here it is...for your enjoyment...The Rogue Love Thread. Only, contrary to tradition, it isn't for me to rant about my love of Rogues. This thread contains an actual, viable question. Who knew, right?
My question is this : How would you design a campaign which actually favors Rogues? And Bards, what the heck, cause who doesn't love Bards? (That was rhetorical, please don't all tangent on Bard love/hate.)
I don't mean a campaign which Rogues and Bards can get along in...I mean one where the Barbarian and the Wizard are standing off to the side feeling foolish.
This is my challenge. Show me settings, traps, and encounters which cannot be bypassed by bashing or blasting, which you would also enjoy playing through, as a PC, not as the manipulative DM finally making that Wizard feel useless. Not that I even want the Wizards to be useless - I simply want a campaign where the Wizard can get by. You know, about as well as the Rogue does in every other campaign.
Thoughts? Criticisms?
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If you want the campaign to be "where the wizard is as useful as the rogue is in other campaigns", then the question really is how to make the wizard feel mostly useless.
And the answer is "mostly anti-magic fields with sporadic areas of wild-magic where he can cast."
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City-based intrigue campaign, where overt magic use is extremely frowned upon.
Enforce the spellcasting (and other small/fiddly) rules completely, and/or put the party on a timeline.
Finally, use 15 pt buy, and track things like encumbrance, food, sleep times, etc. Sure, the casters can still get those 18s & 20s to start in their casting stat, but at what price?
Maybe some kind of urban campaign with many NPC, intrigue that make skills really important (stealth and social basically), and many encounters a day.
Walking in the streets with obvious weapons or caster things are illegal, favouring small weapons.
Just some ideas.
I am currently playing a rogue in SS and my DM throws me a few bones now and then with some nasty traps to find. I have the highest AC in the group and often I just block hallways and fight defensively when I don't have a flanking partner. Most of my group is allergic to melee and the barbarian has spotty attendance so I tend to find combat a frustrating affair of misses or very low damage.
A good rogue campaign would be based on skills. Lots of sneaking, exploring, or thieving. There either wouldn't be much combat or the monsters would be toned down from the ones my optimized group tends to face. It would be low level since rogues are best before the other melee classes start stacking huge bonuses to hit and the rogue can't keep up - so under 7 I would say.
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Agreed on the skill focused aspect. Well placed (and potentially deadly) traps will also quickly have the Rogue shine.
An urban environment would benefit the class as well (though it limits druids and rangers potentially). Focusing on intrigue and infiltration aspects for part of the campaign would also give rogues an opportunity to show their stuff.
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While I like the idea of big anti-magic fields as a defense for a home, especially if the resident is unaffected by them, they would be extremely expensive to use. A detect magic device however, would cost a lot less. In an urban campaign they could be set up all over town, and sound an alarm alerting nearby guards, or trigger a shorter duration anti-magic field, when someone tries to cast a spell in public.
If your feeling really perverse you could have certain parts of the slums/poor area's in the city lack properly functioning magic sensors, causing allowing for a black-market casting trade.
This is really a way of de-powering a caster rather than powering up a rogue, but combined with some of the above suggestions it could be helpful.
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Banning all PC classes except rogue and monk would be the easiest way to make rogues seem good.
If that's too much, I suggest banning the primary casting classes and...well, all the 6-level ones as well. And then require everything that needs to be resolved in-game to require like 3-6 different skill rolls. Including combat. Rogues are inferior to more specialized classes in most singular skills, so the only way to make them shine is to require a lot of different skill rolls to do stuff. Maybe convincing the guard to let you into the castle requires moderate DC bluff, diplomacy, sense motive, and linguistics checks to be succeeded on. Or to hit in combat, you need to beat a moderate DC Acrobatics, Escape Artist, Climb, Perception, and Bluff check. All of them. You get the idea. Make it so that in order to accomplish stuff, a character must be mediocre in a whole crapton of different skills.
Congratulations, the rogue now looks good!
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In my campaign, I try to design encounters that involve climbing/acrobatics to negotiate. I also use traps where appropriate - sometimes few, sometimes many. Our rogue is always busy. Always. The only thing is, the main melee guy is a reach weapon type, thus making it that much farther to travel to get into a flank. The other melee types like range - the rogue is the only true melee in the group.
Admittedly I'm relatively new to PF, being a somewhat refugee from 3.5E, and while I'm liking the PF rules more and more as I learn them, I can't say I'm pro at them yet.
I say that because perhaps I'm missing some nuance of PF that nerfed Rogues hard, but in 3.xE Rogues were master strikers. Other builds I'm looking at even here go to the usual bizzare lengths to eek out and gradually stack a few extra points of damage here and there.
Rogues get an automatic +1d6 extra damage every other level; they just need to work out ways to make sure they get it. Admittedly not always possible since it doesn't work against some creatures. So depending on how common these creatures are, this might be fairly often - undead-heavy campaigns, for example. But, then, often there are Feats for that, too (are these options absent from PF? Again, the last thing I can claim to be is familiar with the entirety of the PF Feat list).
Add to that the various Rogue Tricks, several of which give access to Combat Feats, and Rogues still look like they rank up there as strikers. (Their two-hit lags behind, but if they're in stealth, not horribly so).
I probably shouldn't go on and on because there are probably reasons I dk about that means Rogues are overshadowed as even stealthy strikers by, say, the best "Hey, I'm a pale imitation of Drizzt!" TWF Ranger Builds and the like, but from what my inexpert eye can see they're still potentially steady DPS pros, as long as one is willing to invest what is needed to insuring they Sneak Attack as often as possible (here is where allies come in - including the Summonses of your friendly caster, setting up flanking).
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A wizard walks up, says “open,” and the lock opens.
Ah, the 15min adventuring day, where you can use spells to solve every problem. Here's another take on that.
"What?" says Mr. Wizard. "You can open locks, so I can save my spells for other things? How nice!"
YES, Mr. Wizard can open locks, or summon beasties to trip traps, or levitate up a wall, or go invisible and sneak around, or any number of things. Wizards are awesome that way. But they run out. Those guys with skills, though, they don't run out. They save Mr. Wizard from wasting his magic on all that stuff.
I get your point, but also people DO get magic (items) in the game. A Rogue can have a Chime of Opening for when time is of the essence. He can have Wings of Flying when the walls are too slick. He can have UMD to use wands and scrolls do do Wizard like things.
Separately: I don't know about others, but I for one can never get enough Skill Points, and often took a few Roguish levels in no small part for the skill points (and, in PF, trained skills).
Depending on the composition of the party, the rogue might be the skill mavin not just for traps.
One thing I did notice is the PF rules fixed or at least improved upon the problem of many "base" classes barely having enough skill points for their essential skills (Concentration, for example, is no longer a Skill, so this helps out all Casters). But many of them still seem skill-poor, at least to me.
Now if all you're doing is basic dungeon/wilderness/sewer crawls with lots and lots of combat encounters, skills don't matter quite as much (beyond the usual Perception and the like). But then of course everyone should just do DPS.
Now while Bards (and a couple other classes) are looking more attractive to me in PF than in earlier editions, Rogues still are excellent at it. IMO each party should have at least 1 "Skill Monkey" with a variety of useful skills, and if none of the other characters are that, playing a Rogue remains a good choice.
You've seen the many mad monk threads...you've seen the weekly paladin rants...here it is...for your enjoyment...The Rogue Love Thread. Only, contrary to tradition, it isn't for me to rant about my love of Rogues. This thread contains an actual, viable question. Who knew, right?
My question is this : How would you design a campaign which actually favors Rogues? And Bards, what the heck, cause who doesn't love Bards? (That was rhetorical, please don't all tangent on Bard love/hate.)
I don't mean a campaign which Rogues and Bards can get along in...I mean one where the Barbarian and the Wizard are standing off to the side feeling foolish.This is my challenge. Show me settings, traps, and encounters which cannot be bypassed by bashing or blasting, which you would also enjoy playing through, as a PC, not as the manipulative DM finally making that Wizard feel useless. Not that I even want the Wizards to be useless - I simply want a campaign where the Wizard can get by. You know, about as well as the Rogue does in every other campaign.
Thoughts? Criticisms?
You are joking right?
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Some things I like about rogues:
1. Can almost keep up with the fighter when buckling swashes, or sniping. Can almost keep up with a monk when unarmed if can sneak attack.
2. Skill monkey. Someone has watch over those Bard/archeologists who think they're so smart.
3. Good touch AC.
4. Lots of concepts: acrobat/cat burgler, dungeon explorer, scout, sniper, thief, locksmith, face/diplomancer, spy/disguise expert, scholar.
5. Minor magic talent. Major magic talent (currently i'm partial to true strike, ). Dispelling attack advanced talent.
6. Sneak attack!
7. Trapfinding, which can disable explosive runes.
8. Good synergy with many other classes to dip into rogue, or to be dipped into.
9. A ninja talent. (And trapfinding.)
10. Not MAD.
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I know many people think they are "third tier", but I think even a straight-up general purpose core rogue is pretty useful in a 4-6 man party. Yes, you can make a more efficient anything than a rogue if you build it specifically, but a rogue is (almost) never useless.
I know many people think they are "third tier", but I think even a straight-up general purpose core rogue is pretty useful in a 4-6 man party. Yes, you can make a more efficient anything than a rogue if you build it specifically, but a rogue is (almost) never useless.
Personally I like versatility, too.
A lot of builds are built around doing one thing very well. And that is the route to go to excel. . .at doing one thing very well. But if you are put in situations where that won't work, it pays to be versatile.
As I read in another thread yesterday, PF/3.x punishes people who over-specialize. Unless they have a forgiving DM (or one who is in a rut that presents them only with a certain range of challenges, so they can and do tailor their builds to overcoming the select range of challenges they know are that DM's bread & butter). (For example, Archer Builds are great. . .but look how constrained the spaces are in lots of published maps/adventures. Especially for us old-school types for whom anouncing "you come upon a 100' by 100' room" was ho-hum commonplace; now, yes, there are ways for Archer builds to work around such - just as there are ways for good Rogue builds to work around their more obvious limitations).
This is also one reason I've always, as a caster, preferred Wizards over classes like Sorcerer. I know from theorycraft that it's *possible* to build a versatile Sorcerer. . .I just don't trust being left with a limited spell selection and not being able to look up (or research) a spell when I need it.
For non-casters, Rogues are a bit like that: Batman-y. If running a Rogue, think "Ima be Crazy Prepared."
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I pity the Wizard who memorizes Knock spells trying to show up a Rogue with maximized Disable Device skill.
Knock's chance for success is a Caster Level Check + 10 = the door's DC. The Wizard must cast one spell per try. The Rogue has unlimited checks.
The Wizard can only open specified objects (a door, chest, box, shackles, welds, or chain holding something shut) and totaling an area of 10 square feet/level or less in size. The Rogue can open any lock affixed to anything of any size.
What happens to the mighty Knocked-laden Wizard who faces a 15'x 15' locked door? A bag with a lock? A cryptex ala Da Vinci Code? A lock linking two wagons together? Likely he'll needs to ask the Rogue for assistance.
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My question is this : How would you design a campaign which actually favors Rogues? And Bards, what the heck, cause who doesn't love Bards? (That was rhetorical, please don't all tangent on Bard love/hate.)
I don't mean a campaign which Rogues and Bards can get along in...I mean one where the Barbarian and the Wizard are standing off to the side feeling foolish.
One based on a Rogue's guild or family of some sort.
Options;
1) Wandering caravan of minstrels and tricksters, all Varisian-like, moving from area to area, plying their trade. All the world gypsy stereotypes, if done poorly, some scary 'persecuted Roma, always one step ahead of a lynch mob, moving from town to town, one step ahead of the rope' potential if seeking the grim and gritty, more whimsical and circus-like, otherwise, perhaps with some fey overtones.
A mixture of urban and rural and wilderness adventures (as they set up shop in communities, and then move on to the next community).
2) Rogues guild hidden below the capital city of a very lawful (and not overtly good) kingdom, picking up the pieces after the iron fist of the law shattered their guild (explaining why the low level PCs are kinda/sorta on their own, and not beholden to a bunch of higher ranking guilders).
Again, a mixture of urban / political adventures (setting up the new guild, finding ways around the same sort of crackdown that killed the first guild) and dungeon-crawling (exploring the deeper catacombs, to avoid patrols and set up a new 'safe-house,' only to discover that the old catacombs have their own dangers...).
3) Driven into the wilderness, the rogues live in the king's wood / haunted gulch / caves of chaos / ruins of the former capitol / whatever, and serve as bandits and agents provocateur against mad King Whathisnut, who burned their businesses, pillaged their farms, oppressed their families, etc. Having their leader(s) be members of a disenfranchised noble family might be a little bit on the nose.
Some survival / kingdom-building stuff out there in the wilderness, and wilderness adventures or dungeon-crawls, depending on the place they end up hiding out, and what sort of residents it already has.
4) Spy network working undercover in a rival kingdom, either a bunch of good people spying in an evil nation, a bunch of evil fok spying in a good kingdom, or a bunch of neutral folk (who think their side is right) spying on a bunch of other neutral folk (who *also* think their side is right!), depending on where you want to go with it.
Lots of political intrigue / sabotage / social engineering stuff. Urban adventures, primarily.
5) Underground network of races (or simply ethnicity, or a specific forbidden faith or cult or philosophy, such as religious folk in Rahadoum) that are oppressed or otherwise not welcome in the area, at least some of which (like half-elves or tieflings) should be able to disguise themselves convincingly as the local race (humans, presumably), so that the party doesn't have to spend all of their time in hiding.
Mostly urban adventures, although there might be some other expeditions (to find potential allies, discredit or eliminate racist/etc. foes, etc.).
This is my challenge. Show me settings, traps, and encounters which cannot be bypassed by bashing or blasting, which you would also enjoy playing through, as a PC, not as the manipulative DM finally making that Wizard feel useless. Not that I even want the Wizards to be useless - I simply want a campaign where the Wizard can get by. You know, about as well as the Rogue does in every other campaign.
My first priority would be to design a rogue archetype that modifies the Heal skill the same way that Trapfinding improves the use of Disable Device / Perception, allowing a rogue with this specialty to serve as a chirurgeon / medic, and serve as a backup healer (although an alchemist could serve as a backup healer, and with their association with poisons, fit a little better than most spellcasters as a magical member of a rogue's association).
Once you've covered the healing needs, through improved access to the Heal skill, easy access to healing magic items, and / or mundane alchemical healing elixers that are cheaper and less effective than healing potions (1d4+1 healing?, not quite as good as the old Arms & Equipment Guide healing salves!). Even a version that only grants temporary hit points, allowing a rogue to get a fallen companion up and out of danger, and then let them collapse back into unconsciousness later in a safer place, could work (and make things much more tense and / or dramatic than cheap access to actual healing would be!).
A sample trap/puzzle centric encounter area for a group of rogue-ish types, that could be important to one of the above groups (perhaps part of the overgrown ruins they hide out in, designed for a 1st level group, for the most part);
http://www.molon.de/galleries/Cambodia/Angkor/TaProhm/img.php?pic=8
http://www.molon.de/galleries/Cambodia/Angkor/TaProhm/img.php?pic=9
http://www.molon.de/galleries/Cambodia/Angkor/TaProhm/img.php?pic=10
http://www.molon.de/galleries/Cambodia/Angkor/PreahKhan/img.php?pic=6
Old temples may be shifted around by roots growing between the stones, so that brushing aside some of the dangling roots from the ceiling may loosen stones and cause them to fall down upon the heads of those beneath.
Floors could give way to lower chambers (1d6 falling damage for a 10 ft. drop, plus some extra damage for falling rubble, perhaps another d6).
Metal fixtures could be corroded to the point of functioning as a weak venom, with jagged edges on what was once ornate decorative work, cutting the hands of someone attempting to pull a lever or work a catch, infecting them with something like tetanus.
Actual traps might be partially collapsed, and become obstacles, such as a section of flooring that gave way over a pit, revealing the rubble-strewn spear-festooned pit that must be crossed over, but sparing the PCs from discovering the pit the hard way and falling 20 ft. down onto a bunch of rusty spears!
A fallen stone, designed ages ago to slam down on people who attempt to open a door to a false treasury, might block the corridor, and require the characters to squeeze through the narrow opening left at the top of the stone, but with the risk of additional ceiling rubble pressing down on the squirming character and pinning them in place, to suffocate as they can no longer draw breath due to the pressure, if their allies can't push the rubble up or yank the character free. This gives the PCs Con x2 rounds to yank the person free before they die, instead of possibly instantly killing a couple of PCs the way the 10 ft. x 10 ft. x 10 ft. block of stone would have if it fell upon them as intended all those centuries ago. (Perhaps some fragments of bone or corroded armor might protrude from under the stone, indicating that it didn't just collapse due to age, but actually fulfilled its intended purpose and mashed some long-ago would-be tomb robbers to paste!)
Local water tables may have changed, with stagnant water pooling against one side of the ruined temple, so that some sections are wholly or partially underwater, requiring moving through stagnant disease-bearing water to get to important areas, and running the risk of running into poisonous snakes in the water. Both the diseases and the possibility of being bitten by a swimming viper would be the 'traps' here, as well as having to make Swim checks from one area to another, underwater in the dark, as a short corridor is entirely underwater!
Spear traps could have miraculously survived decay in the sealed inner area (cut off from the wetter areas), with any venom originally on the spears, darts, bolts, etc. having long since degraded into grimy decayed paste that confers only Filth Fever, at worst. They would still do damage as spears, darts, etc. but any deadly venoms would be long expired.
These sorts of traps could exist in the front of the dungeon as well, but the weapons in the decayed water-logged area have the broken condition, and do reduced damage, if you don't want to risk too many big hits for a lower-level party, until the very last chamber, which was sealed almost hermetically, and managed to avoid the decayed conditions of the rest of the temple.
That last chamber might have a puzzle room leading to it, where each 5 ft. square tile has a specific character on it, and the PCs have to make balance checks or Dex checks to move from specific tile to specific tile. Wrong tiles break if weight is put upon them and drop into a 1 ft. deep 'pit' with a foot-piercing bear-trap like thing in it (effect as caltrops, but 1d4 damage and the metal device must be broken before the character can free his foot from that square) or result in darts shooting down from the ceiling at the tile (and the surrounding tiles, making the wrong stepper a danger to those around him, even if they stepped on the right tiles!). Stepping on the right tiles results in an ominous click sound, and if enough of them are triggered, the stone door that leads to the main temple shudders, but does not open (too old, needs some Str checks to get it to open fully, which might be penalized by characters only being able to stand on specific tiles near the door...).
Weaker versions of magical traps are also an option. Perhaps the last room was designed with the help of a low-level Rune Domain Cleric, and he created special runes on some of the 'wrong' tiles that inflict 1d6 fire, frost, acid or electricity damage to the person who steps on them, and, unlike the foot-piercing-pit trap or the spears / darts traps, these are permanent and affect anyone who steps in those squares! (Note that a rune-inscribed 5 ft. by 5 ft. by 1 ft. block of stone will likely prove difficult to remove, if the PCs think of trying to take these items from the temple. Weight should be around 168 lbs per cubic feet, and this 'tile' would be 25 cubic feet! If they can fit them into a portable hole and take them to decorate their own castle, someday, good on them!)
For the tile room I mentioned upthread, I'd make it a 25 ft. by 25 ft. room, about eight to ten feet high, which would create five 'rows' of five tiles each, each 5 ft. by 5 ft. in size.
Each row would have;
a tile that has two wavy grooves carved into the stone filled with crushed lapis lazuli chips glued into place (or perhaps a fish shaped symbol, filled with dark green jade chips?),
a tile that is plain brownish grey stone (which may or may not have an amber / copal / resin filled groove that resembles a couple of stalks of grain),
a tile of grey stone with a grooved outline of a humanish face, stylized to have solar-like spikes around it, with the grooves filled with golden metal,
a solid black marble tile,
a tile with two stylized human figures, holding hands, one taller and holding a spear, and one shorter and holding what appears to be a baby.
On the wall to the right, a bas-relief of a woman, with a fancy headdress, but otherwise dressed only in a skirt made from flecks of green jade, stands on a boat in the waters. The scene fades to darkness away from her immediate presence, and in her upraised hand, she's holding a globe of golden metal. Ash has been rubbed all over the water farthest away from her and the sky farther away from her, so that the only area lit appears to center on the globe of golden metal floating just above her palm.
On the wall to the left, a bas-relief would show a humanish figure with a fancy headdress and a kilt of shiny brass raising his arms, standing under the sun on a similar boat. To either side of him, coming up from the water, are pyramids of stone (representing mountains) with pillars of fire rising from their crowns (volcanoes, not mountains!).
Not immediately noticeable when entering the room, two more panels on either side of the entrance show the two figures leaning down next to a river and doing something with their hands to a pair of half-assembled humanish shapes (Int check or Knowledge (religion) to recognize that they are fashioning people out of river clay) and on the other side showing a pair of humans, identical to those on the tile (male with spear, female with child, neither with fancy headdresses or kilts of brass / jade, just plain old folk).
The correct sequence of tiles is based on the creation story of these people;
First there was darkness (black tile), over the waters (lapis wavy lines and / or jade fish), then the god(s) created light (the golden sun-face), then the earth (the plain stone tile), and finally mankind (the human family).
The only tile that is detectable by a non-trapfinder as being different is the golden sun-face, as the priests cheaped out on the four trapped tiles (which send a 1d6+1 fire jet up into the 5 ft. square above the face, pouring from the mouth of the figure) and used shiny brass instead of gold. The 'safe' sun-god-face is made with real gold (50 gp worth, if pried up).
Not every 'safe' tile will be adjacent to another safe tile (although none will require more than a 5 ft. jump, and there shouldn't be more than one such jump required), and when the fifth stone is stepped on, the door on the opposite wall shudders and begins to open, but gets stuck, and there is only room for two people to stand in the two 5 ft. squares on the far side of the 'chessboard' to force it open, while their companions either stand on other 'safe' squares, on trapped squares that discharged their traps and are no longer dangerous (only the sun-god-face squares are magically trapped and reset, and even they only discharge when someone steps on them, so that once they've blasted someone, that same person can stand there for the rest of the day, so long as they don't leave and come back...), or way back in the entry hallway.
4s...5M...1d...2w...3e
5m...4S...2w...3e...1d
1d...2w...3E...4s...5m
3e...1d...4s...5m...2W
2w...3e...5m...1D...4s
1 = darkness
2 = water
3 = earth
4 = sun
5 = man
Note that some traps affect not only the person on the triggering tile, but might send darts, arrows or javelins launching from the walls to affect everyone in that row, even if they happen to be standing on the 'safe' tile! Thankfully, whatever toxins once coated these missiles is about 150 years past it's freshness date...
Another 'might affect someone else' trap could be a heavy square stone block that falls from the mirror-like mica ceiling, doing damage to anyone in the triggering square, and then falling to an adjacent square (possibly triggering whatever trap it holds, or requiring a Reflex save to avoid damage from anyone standing in that square!).
Int check to notice that the torches / lanterns are flaring up, and if the party waits 10 minutes, the natural gas build up behind the door will leak out and burn off.
If the door is prised open before then, there is a rush of fire and wind, as natural gas that has built up behind the door reacts with their lanterns / torches (ignore this, merely an awful stench from the oil below if they are using continual flame or light spells or darkvision), which Bull Rushes those nearest the door and does 1d6 fire damage. Those Bull Rushed might well fall back onto trapped squares, for even more whacky fun!
Once this occurs, looking beyond the doors shows a wall 5 ft. behind the door, and only a 10 ft. wide shaft leading up and down. Down once led to a bunch of traps, involving oil and fire and much burning, but that area flooded, and the 5 ft. below the floor of this room, oil floats atop water, appearing as a pit of oil (even if it's only a few inches deep, being water for another 10 ft. below that). Even if someone goes down there, it's collapsed, and it was just a trapped place with an underworld motif anyway, but hey, the water doesn't confer the risk of disease like the stagnant muck outside, because nothing living could survive the skin of oil atop the water! (If a torch falls into the oil, anyone in the shaft is going to be barbecued if they don't get clear tout suite! It takes 1d3 minutes to burn off, which could be a problem if someone decided to 'get clear' by ducking underwater and holding their breath, waiting for it to burn off...
Carved in the stone walls are divots into which someone can put their hands and feet to climb up (or down). Above the puzzle room is the true treasury / tomb / sacred reliquary and whatever the heck the PCs have come to this place to find, guarded by the seven handmaidens of the deceased ruler (now skeletons, frozen in positions of servitude around him, sitting in an ornate stone throne, all mummified. They attack with ceremonial weapons (that seem to work just fine, thank you very much) and are clad in well-preserved lacquered armor.
The ruler himself isn't animated, or a mummy, or any of that, 'cause that would be all disrespectful and stuff...
Let me preface this by saying that I love Rogues.
I like the wide array of archetypes that can be portrayed via their mechanical effects. (scout, commando, thief, tricky mercenary, bounty hunter, etc.)
I like that in the proper circumstances, they can almost match the combat effectiveness of a fighter.
I like their wide array of skills.
HOWEVER.
their damage is far too circumstantial.
skills are easily replicated and replaced by spells.
Sadly, I feel rogues are MAD. (see what i did there?)
A good rogue needs either DEX or STR, but can rarely dump either.
They need a decent CON for melee, where they get the most out of Sneak Attack.
They can get away with an average INT, but more is better to lock down their niche as skillmonkey. (lest the bard or ranger tries to move in on them.)
They need a decent WIS to shore up their low Will saves (the most important in the game.)
CHA is very helpful for the social skills, but more importantly for UMD, the most powerful skill in the game, which is a class skill for rogues. CHA isn't necessary, but it is very helpful. That, or a dip into a spellcaster class. Then they can use wands and scrolls without a roll or chance of failure.
IN any case, I do like rogues, they are just mechanically inferior to nearly every other class, regardless of what niche you are trying to fill.
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I know many people think they are "third tier", but I think even a straight-up general purpose core rogue is pretty useful in a 4-6 man party. Yes, you can make a more efficient anything than a rogue if you build it specifically, but a rogue is (almost) never useless.Personally I like versatility, too.
A lot of builds are built around doing one thing very well. And that is the route to go to excel. . .at doing one thing very well. But if you are put in situations where that won't work, it pays to be versatile.
As I read in another thread yesterday, PF/3.x punishes people who over-specialize.
Exactly this.
What I like about Rogues is that they have the ability to be really good at one thing, while still having enough resources left to be solid in another three or four areas.
My goal in creating a character is to be the second or third best in the party at *everything*. That way there is no point in the adventure where I can't contribute. So I always seem to gravitate towards Rogues, even when I don't intend to.
Alkenstar would seem the obvious place for an adventure where skill based characters would be able to shine.
Some of you are thinking small when it comes to a Rogue. You can cast knock (waste of a 2nd level spell) and still not disarm a trapped chest or door. Also, how many trapeed chests and doors are there in a dungeon, yes more than one. They are skill monkeys and also great for role playing.
Rogues are best if you take a dip in fighter i.e. more feats, weapons, and armor choices. They are great in battle as second tier fighters and sneak artists. Sneak attack damage works great especially when the Rogue is invisible. Also, they make great archers who don't want to get thier hands dirty in melee.
Every character has a role and it depends on your style of play. Playing a fighter is a lot of fun and so on. You should try to maximize a Rogue before hating on him/her...
a very lengthy workday with lots of hiding, running, backstabbing, breaking out of jail.
So basicly chase the party around in a city as much as possible. Don't let them sleep for 40 hours.
Start by having them steal a specific goldpurse in a crows, let them run away from guards, let them get caught, the hangman is 3 hour away, they have to get out of the cell.
They flee into the sewer, but hey the guards notice and send dogs after them, let them run away into town. The guards are actively looking for them.
The thing they stole was an assassination plot on the princess for that very night.
Oh you have to foil it, noone believes you.
"Aquire" noble clothes and jewelry to get into the kings palace.
Warn the princess.
Kill the assassins.
Flee the castle as again the guards catch you and won't let you finish your sentence.
Steal some heal potions from a shop as you're badly wounded.
Fight off some thugs in the street as it's night and they want their cut form the thievery.
Find a place to sleep, get woken up by a mob after 6 hours.
Convince the mob that they shouldn't lynch the person they think planned the assassination.
Find proof and bring the real mastermind to justice before the mob storms the castle.
Enjoy your sleep. You saved the day(s).
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Exactly this.
What I like about Rogues is that they have the ability to be really good at one thing, while still having enough resources left to be solid in another three or four areas.
My goal in creating a character is to be the second or third best in the party at *everything*. That way there is no point in the adventure where I can't contribute. So I always seem to gravitate towards Rogues, even when I don't intend to.
Agreed
I may not be the best in melee, but I can be anywhere I need to be.I can shoot into combat without penalty.
We face smart enemies. They make it difficult to sleep - no "15 minute workdays" for us.
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Personally, I have never sat around feeling foolish as a Rogue. However, Cause Fear made my two rogue friends run like little school children. I thanked the dieties that I bought that +2 cloak of protection. Poke, Poke, Poke, mage dead. Easiest way to make mages look foolish is to use things like fireball and area attacks that save for half on the party. If they don't have Evasion they die. And death looks pretty foolish on most people.
Using non-magical AOEs works even better. Wood Explosions (HA! Thought I was going to burn you stupid mage with 20 fire resistance!) and rock explosions... these are the things that kill mages easily. Chaffe guns and Hay Bale Cannons!!! (ok, that is from Paranoia... but anyway...)
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I do love Rogues. I have two that I am playing with at the moment, each one very different than the other.
My first is a tenth level Rogue who is a Knife Mistress who wields two magical daggers. A high initiative helps me go first to get that wonderful precision damage (when the creatures we face off against can be hit with the extra damage). I get a lot of attacks in and can whittle down the enemy allowing for the fighter, paladin, whomever to deal an ending blow that much quicker. Well, when I do not steal the last blow. Yes, my damage in uneven but I can quickly move, tumble, and stealth my way around the battlefield.
When not engaged in heavy fighting she is constantly looking for traps and usually disarming them. True, a few have escaped her notice here and there. But what is the occasional alarm?
The Serpents Skull group I am in has a really good GM who has set up encounters to help everyone shine. Puzzles, traps, monsters, oh my. I think it is a good GM, not just an established story that makes the difference.
Society play I started down the path of a short sword wielding, antisocial, but really there when the chips are down, skill monkey rogue. Along the way to 12th level she has found that UMD works wonders and has a small collection of wands that she carries around. She assists the barbarian from being manipulated by the evil demoness, blesses blades, heals wounds, and launches unconventional attacks as she pleases. Well, when the roll is a seven or above anyway. ;) No need for all of that? Then I am the +2 flanking bonus for the same barbarian. The opportunist who strikes quickly, slowly bleeding the target to death. Or maybe jumping in with a spring attack against a foe with way too much AoO power.
~FV~
You've seen the many mad monk threads...you've seen the weekly paladin rants...here it is...for your enjoyment...The Rogue Love Thread. Only, contrary to tradition, it isn't for me to rant about my love of Rogues. This thread contains an actual, viable question. Who knew, right?
YAY, I love rogues too! Wait, there's a question and we have to THINK? Sheesh...
My question is this : How would you design a campaign which actually favors Rogues? And Bards, what the heck, cause who doesn't love Bards? (That was rhetorical, please don't all tangent on Bard love/hate.)
I don't mean a campaign which Rogues and Bards can get along in...I mean one where the Barbarian and the Wizard are standing off to the side feeling foolish.
Welp, part of why I see this as hard as I see the rogue and bard as classes in which their appeal to me personally is that they are good team members. They help other people do well when they themselves are not shining (which they can also do), and they help round out a team. So if anyone's standing off to the side feeling foolish, in a way, it's a bad campaign for a rogue or bard because it means they're not doing their part.
BUT, as to a campaign that plays to the rogue's or bard's strengths?
Obviously, as others have mentioned, a well-designed urban/intrigue campaign comes to mind first. Often magic becomes too obvious or depending on the kind, too destructive; brute force fighting can't always be much help. And as others noted, heavily populated areas often have restrictions on weapon use (peacebonds required, etc.) and/or magic use.
That special combo of party face skills plus sneaking around, being observant, and getting into places in less obvious ways is where the rogue can really shine because he's got that all in one package, plus a quick way of dropping someone quickly (a well placed sneak attack) rather than starting a big loud fight. Plus also Knowledge (Local) can come extremely in handy and few classes have that besides the Bard and Rogue (for core rulebook classes, I think only the Wizard also does, and it's less likely for a Wizard to take). Rogues have a similar skill set.
Generally speaking any campaign where being well-rounded has its merits will also do well. The way I and my GMs run games, we tend to require a LOT of skill checks and/or use of abilities that have nothing to do with overt combat. A rogue in one of my campaigns, regardless of the specifics, will almost always have something to do -- in combat they are flanking and sneak attacking, out of combat they are scouting or talking or learning something or disarming a trap or jumping up onto something no one else can get to, etc. etc. A fighter might really shine in combat but if it's built as a stereotypical big dumb fighter, they're going to be twiddling their thumbs in lengthy non-combat sequences, which are common in our campaigns. A wizard might have more versatility depending on utility spells available, but has far more limited resources compared to a rogue or bard (he might memorize knock once, but the rogue can use Disable Device all day AND with a bonus to it no core class gets and only a handful of archetypes get).
But then my thought has been that the people who generally don't get rogues (or bards) are the people who prefer specialization in one area to someone who's decent at a little bit of everything. The appeal of classes like rogues or bards to me isn't that they win at any one area like DPS but that they ALWAYS have something to do. And any well designed campaign can thus be well suited to them, as long as it's more than just constant combat (which is a campaign I'd never want to play in anyway).
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See I fundamentally disagree on the game punishing overspecialization because really it doesn't. The DM can choose to punish specialization but generally speaking that's considered a bit of a dick move. For example you play an archer and suddenly every group of enemies is running around in deep fog somehow or magic darkness just to screw you over.
This is a misinterpretation of what I said and I added emphasis to highlight the incorrect part.
The problem for the hyper-specialized archery troop won't be "every encounter is created as a screw-job against us" - though that seems to be the attitude/take-away/memory players have if any encounters at all happen to not suit the niche they chose to specialize in.
"The enemy wizard cast Pyrotechics in that encounter, that means the DM is out to screw us, bawwww!" is too common a reaction.
This could be the case even if the characters machinegunned down a lot of encounters, then they reach the one where an intelligent enemy uses their resources intelligently (you know, like a smart party facing a similar situation might), and they howl "the DM is trying to win D&D! Unfair!"
I know I'm being a bit over-the-top critical, and using your post as a foil, but it does seem to be a growingly common attitude. I love CharOp (I go to CharOp boards and threads to learn all I can), but it does tend to lead to this twinning mentality: "I'll create a character who can mow everything he meets down in 1-2 rounds, so long as the encounter plays to the niche/style I'm selecting for him. . .and if it doesn't, then the DM is just out to fsck me and playing unfair."
No, this is not a good rationale to say "versatility isn't really important and if you think it is it's just because you're DM, or you as a DM, are out to screw your players by not constantly feeding them encounters they can ginsu with their optimized builds."
I hope you won't take this reply personally; I'm sure you didn't mean all that. But I've seen a lot of people who seem to think that way, and this is why they dismiss classes like Rogues - which can be good (if not "top teer champions in the CharOp Sweepstakes in any one category of the CharOp Olympics" - but very good in at least one such category, built correctly, and good at a variety of other situations as well.
A similar sort of reaction is that of casters (and as I briefly mentioned above, I love Wizards at least as much as I love Rogues) is the "I'm so uber, look at all the kewl stuff I can do. . .only my party keeps mucking it up by not doing the setup right. Plus they often don't want to rush right back after we've scouted the encounter so I can rest and rememorize spells, because I've got just the perfect one in my book but they want to press on and insist I make do. If I didn't need them for meatshields, I'd leave these l0zors and go it alone."
"But those Rogues, they're hard to work with - they need people to help them flank and stuff to get the most out of their abilities, so they're so circumstantial, quite unlike me and my spell selection that would be so awesomesauce if only the cretins in my party would cooperate in insuring I get the most out of them."
(Next people will chime in to say "my party does work with me to effectively set up the enemy so I can do my stuff, what are you talking about" - but people do not seem to want to work well with rogues to accomplish that. Thus the "Rogue Love Thread" is full of people pooh-poohing them, while simoultaneously asserting the uberness of, say, wizards. . .well I hate to break it to you, but I've played wizards, too - pure wizards especially need a lot of cooperation from their fellow party-members. Point being: Rogues do, too, but so what?)
Rogue/Ninja only campaign where everyone must use a different archetype. I would play the hell out of it.
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Personally I like versatility, too.
A lot of builds are built around doing one thing very well. And that is the route to go to excel. . .at doing one thing very well. But if you are put in situations where that won't work, it pays to be versatile.
As I read in another thread yesterday, PF/3.x punishes people who over-specialize.
Exactly this.
What I like about Rogues is that they have the ability to be really good at one thing, while still having enough resources left to be solid in another three or four areas.
My goal in creating a character is to be the second or third best in the party at *everything*. That way there is no point in the adventure where I can't contribute. So I always seem to gravitate towards Rogues, even when I don't intend to.
See I fundamentally disagree on the game punishing overspecialization because really it doesn't. The DM can choose to punish specialization but generally speaking that's considered a bit of a dick move. For example you play an archer and suddenly every group of enemies is running around in deep fog somehow or magic darkness just to screw you over.
But having 4 people who are all mediocre at x,y, and z means you are only ever mediocre at those things sure you have a higher chance of rolling average at any given task but most skills and other actions rely primarily on your modifiers rather than your roll particularly as you level (excluding combat which is cumulative and actually benefits from lots of mediocre due to action economy)
On the other hand if you have 4 people each of which excel at x, y, or z and all of whom are mediocre in combat you have a significantly higher applicable skill to use in each of those individual cases which are not cumulative.
Now that's not to say that you can't make a Rogue work or you can't make a functional jack of all trades party but it's a very different beast and it is not optimal it's just more consistent(which is good in it's own way).
Having the entire party be a jack-of-all trades would be just as bad as having them all be completely specialized. That's not what I'm saying at all.
In a company...err, party...you need a mix of specialists and generalists. Specialists are wonderful at dealing with the knotty problems that you can plan for ahead of time. Generalists excel when you have to be flexible, because you don't know what kinds of problems you are going to be facing. You need both, and the mix you need between the two depends on the predictability of the challenges ahead.
Now, in most RPGs, what I find is that in setting up an adventure, a GM will account for all the specialists in the party, and will make sure that they are all challenged appropriately. So in a very real way, success does not depend on your best characters, because the encounter was already scaled to match them. More often than you might expect, ultimate success depends on how well your 3rd best combatant, or 3rd best caster, or 2nd best face perform. It is because of this reality that a Rogue (or Ninja or Bard) makes an excellent addition to a party.
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You could also just play with a Wizard player like me. I am not a very good power gamer, and I am picky. I hate having to pick spell A and then spell B because they are powerful in conjunction. I just pick spells I like, and usually I never have time or money to have a zillion spells, and I dont usually ask people to let me go rest a day so that I can skip a situation. I like evocation magic but I dont build for it. I dont carry meta magic rods or tricky stuff around. Also, in our games, you cant just go to S-mart and buy spells or magic items. Population and random rolls determine scrolls and items, otherwise commission or make them yourself.
I always play wizards, and everyone else plays fighters and rogues and barbarians, and I never outshine anyone. I always see these batgod threads and wonder why I suck so bad. But that just isnt how I build. Usually, I cast and fail SR or the foe makes his save and my turn is done.
So maybe just encourage the normal/not-good-at-optimization guy in your group to be the wizard. I have had fun for decades playing Wizards, despite always being the weakest/least effective party member.
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You've seen the many mad monk threads...you've seen the weekly paladin rants...here it is...for your enjoyment...The Rogue Love Thread. Only, contrary to tradition, it isn't for me to rant about my love of Rogues. This thread contains an actual, viable question. Who knew, right?
My question is this : How would you design a campaign which actually favors Rogues? And Bards, what the heck, cause who doesn't love Bards? (That was rhetorical, please don't all tangent on Bard love/hate.)
I don't mean a campaign which Rogues and Bards can get along in...I mean one where the Barbarian and the Wizard are standing off to the side feeling foolish.This is my challenge. Show me settings, traps, and encounters which cannot be bypassed by bashing or blasting, which you would also enjoy playing through, as a PC, not as the manipulative DM finally making that Wizard feel useless. Not that I even want the Wizards to be useless - I simply want a campaign where the Wizard can get by. You know, about as well as the Rogue does in every other campaign.
Thoughts? Criticisms?
Make the setting low magic. Dungeons with plenty of traps. Con-men and skilled npc pickpockets. Throw in an occasional quest which prioritises stealth and fair number of nishrus. I remember one game where the end boss actually dominated one of his captives into pretending to be him. Slipped into his own cage. Pretended to be the prisoner. Party didn't pass their sense motive vs bluff check. They end up killing the "boss". Let the "prisoner" out of his cage. The boss ends up weak and feeble staggers to a nearby desk, tricking a pc into stepping over a trap door. Uses telekinesis at will ability to flip a small lever. PC fails reflex save and drops into a pit with fiendish creatures. Feigns concern. Proceeds to bull rush another PC down the hole when their backs are turned. Initiative begins. The party wins but wow, such a fierce battle. Go ninjas!
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I know I'm being a bit over-the-top critical
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I agree with you on this. I don't think the game is much fun if the antagonists aren't smart enough to adapt their tactics to increase their odds of defeating the party.
*EDIT*
I mean, I agree with the other things you said! I do not think you are "over-the-top critical"!
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This thread reminds me of that one game where the the Rogue specialized in Pick Pocketing spell components from opposing Wizards...
Yes, you know that you are having to fight the BBEG, but with a bit of fun 'scouting', he is short some bat guano/sand/whatever he needs...
Not to mention the fun that said Rogue had applying Sovereign glue to the outside of spell component pouches, staffs, wands etc... Makes for an awkward fight when the BBEG Wizard has his hands stuck to his gear.
I agree with you on this. I don't think the game is much fun if the antagonists aren't smart enough to adapt their tactics to increase their odds of defeating the party.*EDIT*
I mean, I agree with the other things you said! I do not think you are "over-the-top critical"!The key here is the word adapt. If the enemies adapt then great it's just them being smart enough to think things through in a situation, but if your random encounters unrelated enemies and monsters are all built in such a way to limit the effectiveness of certain party members it just stops being fun or interesting. It's essentially counterpicking but with infinite foresight and resources.
But I do agree most of the time the DM blunts the effectiveness of specialists and lets the generalists have a free pass but that does rather fly in the face of logic.
gnomersy, I agree completely. Try playing a Stealth of Shadows Halfling Ninja, who goes into sniping. You come to the realization that there are quite a few wind spells the enemies keep coming up with...
Well, to be fair, in a world where there are archers, it's a dumb wizard that doesn't pack Wind Wall or Protection from Arrows. There are no dumb wizards, by the way. Only foolish ones.
So what do you do? Don't shoot the wizard, obviously. You're wasting your time as a ranged character, when you could be pincushioning that enemy warrior engaging your buddy. Complaining that Wizards use anti-arrow spells is like complaining that Fighters wear plate and carry shields.
:)
Grapple, shiv with sneak attack.
Rogue love; rogues do it from behind.
Rogue love; you'll never see them coming.
Rogue love; is that like alternative sex?
I'm so bored...
*snippity snip snipping some stuff* In a company...err, party...you need a mix of specialists and generalists. Specialists are wonderful at dealing with the knotty problems that you can plan for ahead of time. Generalists excel when you have to be flexible, because you don't know what kinds of problems you are going to be facing. You need both, and the mix you need between the two depends on the predictability of the challenges ahead.Oh I agree with you here but that's the point - in any party, there is a place for a well-rounded, versatile rogue. Just like there's a space for the specialists. I wasn't saying "the entire party needs to be generalists" - I was responding to people who seemed to be saying there was no role anywhere in a party for a versatile character. And as Jiggy wrote in another thread:
One-trick ponies die in PFS. Or if they don't die, they at least spend portions of the scenario twiddling their thumbs.
Of course "specialist" doesn't mean "only good at one thing - very good at it, but sucks at everything else." That's an overspecialist. A specialist can excel in one area and still be competent in others, and I do understand the distinction.
But that's what I meant about Rogues, mind; while it might be harder to make a Rogue build that is "the top CharOp build for X," it's easier to make one that is very good at that thing, but also good in a variety of other areas. Of course they have their drawbacks - this is why the game is based around being in a party, rather than one hero going it alone. As others mentioned, a good, well-built rogue can always contribute.