Evan- I wonder if some of the difficulty was how *complete* Okonkwo's character arc was within his narrative and how cerebral his conflicts and development were? Umslopogaas from the Allen Quatermain series (an old pulp fiction adventure series; the titular character was played by Sean Connery in The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen) has a similar background but is a little (a lot) less complex and leaves more room for you to layer on some of your own touches. That kind of freedom might make him more playable.
Scott- I know what a push is. I wanted to back up a tiny bit out-of-game to ask a quick question. Regarding what you perceive as insufficient participation: Whatever, man.
I'm rockin' a Sorcerer (seeker) (sage) in PFS right now, and just hit level 7. I had to use my traits to get access to the skills I wanted, but I like the character a whole lot. He's versatile and capable of fulfilling the roles he was designed to fill.
I'm part diplomat thanks to Orator, part rogue thanks to a good perception and disable device, and provide good support casting to melee fighters while occasionally sniping from the back. I think dropping racial weapon proficiency for a bonus on caster level checks is pretty sweet (do it at l2 rebuild?).
The bonus spells are relevant, and the seeker's replacement benefits work well with the class (bonus to {all} checks made involving identify and dispel? Ok!)
The most frustrating thing about this character is trying to articulate your capabilities to a party. You're so generally versatile they often get you confused with a rogue (and expect you to be acrobatic, armored, and capable of making reflex saves). Mostly this doesn't matter because you can be sneaky and make friends using nice cheap skill checks while saving your spells for buffing up the party and blasting high-priority targets, but keep an eye out for your party inadvertently putting you in dangerous spots.
You've also got a bit of a dilemma in that you want to augment your skills with utility spells, but have a restricted list of spells known. You can lean on those skills points, or be super-awesome at everything non-combat, or carry a scroll rack around with you.
Generally this last option is what I go with; a couple of scrolls of faerie fire, and a couple of monkey/fish put you in pretty good stead without limiting your ready access to the sorts of spells you are expected to spam.
...But yes, you almost have to have darkvision and invisibility (or vanish) to use stealth all that often by RAW.
This is the claim that I want to dissect more. "to use stealth" is too general; too vague. I think often when people say this, they mean "Use stealth tactically" or "Use stealth to bypass an encounter."
(Not that I don't think you need to generate your own concealment and have darkvision. That's not not the point. We're unlikely to make improvements in this area if we don't hone our terminology a bit.)
For instance, I'm pretty sure the rules allow you to make stealth checks in a fog to sneak around. I bet they even allow you to do this while moving past enemies who very much suspect you are doing this. Whether or not that is useful is another question dependent upon the end goal. What are we "using stealth" for?
BNW, what's your beef, man? Like, you're attacking different aspects of this thing, but what's your thesis? A lot of your arguments are good, but some of them are predicated on practices and interpretations that are inconsistent with how many DMs run encounters involving bad guys who are sneaky or invisible, and/or just seem post-hoc. This makes me think you've got some underlying criticism more fundamental than any of your disparate points (and that underlying criticism is probably valid and worth knowing, if your history is any indication).
Would you prefer it if they re-wrote the stealth and perception skills to make scouting and ambush work the way so many players seem to want it to work?
D&D is co-operative story telling. This shouldn't trivialize any of the other _players_, so it seems fine to me. I'd have opted for CLW at will, but the difference is negligible.
Sorry for AWOL - my wife got laid off so we had a difficult couple of days. Back on track now.
Likewise, no problem. Just a game and all, real life takes priority. Incidentally, been there, and though I don't envy you the stress, it seems folks mostly wind up in a better spot than they started. I wish the two of you good luck moving forward!
Philonous Phaenogamous
Elf Rogue 1
N Medium humanoid
Init +4; Senses Perception +6
DEFENSE
AC 16, touch 14, flat-footed 12 (+2 armor, +4 Dex)
hp 10 (1d8+1)
Fort +1, Ref +6, Will +0
OFFENSE
Speed 30 ft.
Melee Rapier +4 (1d6, 18-20/x2)
Ranged Longbow +4 (1d8, x3)
Special Attacks sneak attack +1d6
STATISTICS
Str 10, Dex 18, Con 12, Int 16, Wis 10, Cha 10
Base Atk +0; CMB +0; CMD 14
Feats Weapon Finesse
Skills Acrobatics +8, Appraise +7, Climb +4, Disable Device +8, Escape Artist +8, Knowledge Religion +8, Linguistics +7, Perception +6, Profession (Funeral Director) +4, Sleight of Hand +8, Stealth +8, Swim +4
Languages Common, Celestial, Draconic, Elven, Sylvan, Ancient Osiriani
Traits Child of the Temple, Gifted Adept (Chill Touch)
SQ low-light vision, elven immunities, elven magic, keen senses, weapon familiarity, trapfinding +1
Combat Gear 2 sunrods, 3 flasks of lamp oil; Other Gear leather armor, shortbow, arrows (20), rapier, backpack, 50 ft hemp rope, thieves' tools, holy symbol, journal, pens and ink, 10 tindertwigs in a stoppered vial
Background
Philonous worked with his family as an assistant undertaker for years, and studied religion and metaphysics extensively in preparation for a career as a mortician. The untimely passing of his closest childhood friend has forced him to confront personal death for the first time, and he has begun to think that despite his longevity and depth of experience, he may have led a somewhat sheltered life. He realized that he never felt quite at peace in his work, and had begun to doubt the meaning of the rituals and beliefs he has studies at such length.
Inspired by a black-sheep uncle who occasionally wandered through the grove with stories of the amazing things he saw while adventuring as a pathfinder, Philonous has decided to see the world on an adventure of his own. His parents were generally supportive of his plans to make an informed decision about his future, although they are dubious about his methodology and have encouraged him not to take too many risks and to come home as soon as he felt ready.
I've thought about this a fair bit, and I've come to the conclusion that the class needs restructuring to be consistent with the current game as published by Paizo (or, my preferred solution, we need an archetype that would mesh better with PFS-style play).
A rogue's job traditionally has been out-of-combat problem solving. Its main class feature isn't sneak attack, it's skill points. A generic rogue is traditionally considerably weaker than any other class in damage-dealing, and makes up for it by getting the party to the fight and possibly taking out a high-priority target around the middle of the fight.
Happily the game has evolved. We know that sidelining large portions of the party for a third of the game is bad, so we've given lots of classes useful skills and spells that help them overcome obstacles. Pass-or-lose checks, once the bread-and-butter of the rogue class, have been replaced with Pass-or-Fight checks (and fighting is fun!). Most of the PFS modules are written according to this schema.
So this means whatever you do with this class, you'll be forcing it into a role it is simply _not_ designed for because the role it _was_ designed for has become obsolete.
The Quick and Dirty Guide to the PFS Rogue:
You can play a rogue as a if it were a variant fighter up through fourth level no problem. Otherwise, consider the following:
Dip Swashbuckler (Inspired Blade) at level 1 and move into rogue, dumping strength and rocking a good dex and intelligence. You'll be the envy of most players until mid levels. Truly, that's a powerful and versatile character for the early game with lots of skill points, a good to-hit and damage, and passable defense between deeds and dexterity.As an elf you can swing 10/18/12/16/10/10 on 20 point buy and get native bonuses to perception and saves vs.enchantments plus immunity to the major threat to low-level adventurers, so it's like having a 14 wisdom for a lot of what you need wisdom for. Your best rogue talents are probably pressure points and offensive defense.
Alternatively, a ranged rogue is better than people think. With a good perception and initiative, you can often just straight-up kill one of the primary baddies in the fight by acting in the surprise round and winning initiative in the regular combat round. More importantly, you reduce your ability dependency to one stat and you significantly mitigate the amount of damage you take while still contributing to combat through mid-level PFS play. Rogue talents will likely go to combat feats. I think humans make the best archers. Trade away the bonus skill somehow (heart of the wilderness is reasonable, Silver Tongue is only useful if you are already winning). The trait "Blood of Dragons" from ultimate campaign gives you low light vision.
A note on tactics:
Sneak attack isn't _that_ important. Don't two-weapon fight; it encourages stupid decisions and reduces your to-hit and AC. Sometimes you should fight defensively. If you melee, you should strongly consider using a darkwood shield.
I wanted to submit information but when I saw you only wanted to know about characters played in the last four weeks I was unable to put down anything. Conventions just don't happen that often over here in the Uk :p. Now if I were to stretch it back to January when I had the joy of a 5 day convention I could give you plenty of information on which characters I played (I ran a lot of games too) but since you only want to know about the last month I should probably abstain.
Isn't four weeks a rather narrow range band? If you're wanting to see the bigger picture you might want to broaden those limits a bit.
If I want to find my house on a map, I don't use a picture of the milky way.
This is why self-reporting doesn't result in the most meaningful data.
"I know you asked what day of the week it is, but I told you February because it's my favorite month!"
Gee, thanks?
:p
Oh, I know. It's an unfortunate habit of thought. As a corporate accountant my job is often to give management the information they want -- not the information they ask for (and to explain the difference in the footnotes).
Your psychic powers let you down this time, I'm afraid.
So after a little poking and prodding (and eliminating any response by a player who claims to play more than fifty hours a week :p), the results seem to suggest a character is about four times as likely to be a human as any other core race, and humans are far-and-away the most popular race. Gnomes are the least popular, followed closely by halflings and half elves.
Further of note, removing the players who obviously reported more characters than they could reasonably be expected to play didn't significantly change the results (there was some slight shift in the magnitude of disparity between play frequency of some races, but the gist of the data is unaltered).
Baseless Speculation: I suspect the high number of boon races exist because if you've got one you play one (unless you're me), and if you're active on the boards you probably have at lest one. I speculate this is not representative of the wider population, and so we should expect to see a larger percentage of characters in the wild to be of core races than is suggested by the graph, especially humans.
Likely Problems: It seems possible that board-goers are more likely to play humans because as a group, when the leather hits the trail we're probably more likely to make the "right" choice when it comes to character creation, and given the low level of PFS play, humans frequently represent the best choice. It might be they are slightly over-represented in this survey (although my experience has indeed been that they are very popular).
Also, there is some disparity in reporting method. Also-also, I suspect that players are more likely to have inactive (or infrequently active) human characters because they are more likely to build them initially and/or to quickly try out a play style or gimmick that may not have the durability of a more... fleshed out character.
I believe that counting the # of PCs played above 3xp (eliminating Credit Babies from the list) would better represent a statistical analysis than PCs played in the last month.
It depends on what you're trying to find out!
Personally I'm interested to know what characters are more likely to be played at any given event. That a character is registered has little bearing on anyone's play experience unless that character is adventuring.
I haven't done your survey, but I have 14 registered characters. I carry them all with me when I go to a game so I can pick any one of them to play. Some of them I may not have played recently, but I consider them all to be active characters, even the one level 12 that is waiting for an eyes of the ten group. They're all sitting on the bench ready to go as it were. There's probably a lot of players who feel the same. Also there's probably plenty of people who don't read instructions. Also I just got back from Dreamation where I GMd 5 games and played 2. For convention goers playing 8 PCs in one month isn't improbable.
if you scroll back through the previous race count thread, I did a hand count of the results at one point. ** spoiler omitted **
I'm curious to see how it will compare to this poll
I'm glad to see that our results are more alike than different, especially regarding the bits that I thought were a little anomalous.
It might be that sampling bias I was ranting about earlier, but I was surprised at the relatively high number of boon races.
Interesting! Would you mind setting up a similar poll for character gender?
Certainly, I can. I'll put together a similar thread at some future point. It's worth noting, however, that self-report is notoriously useless.
Thanks. :) No worries, I understand that.
A Medium-Sized Animated Object wrote:
This isn't an important caveat for this survey, and indeed given the subject matter it may be less true. What's more there is little damage to be done by erroneous data analysis of what fictional race players prefer, but I am less enthusiastic about the possibility of misrepresenting _actual_ demographics (or even just suggesting by way of data collected the bias inherent among what we suspect the primary demographic to be).
I am unsure what you mean by the bolded part. Would you care to elaborate?
Sure! Statistics have a funny way of getting twisted around, and I'm not eager to be party to that; sort of like I don't talk to newspapers because they get the last edit. Even though what I say to a reporter might be factual and rational in context, and even though I'm not especially interested in what people other than my close friends think of me, I don't really want to see my ideas taken out of context and used to say anything other than exactly what I mean.
So even though I speculate (and not without basis) that the results of such a survey would show we're relatively diverse and open-minded for a gaming culture, I don't want to endure the discussions that would follow.
tl;dr Someone else can set that one up, I'm too stuck up. :p
Late note: if you don't make a selection for a race on the long, long list of bubbles, it'll register as null and won't be tally'd. I don't believe you need to complete every item for the form to accept the result.
Interesting! Would you mind setting up a similar poll for character gender?
Certainly, I can. I'll put together a similar thread at some future point. It's worth noting, however, that self-report is notoriously useless. This isn't an important caveat for this survey, and indeed given the subject matter it may be less true. What's more there is little damage to be done by erroneous data analysis of what fictional race players prefer, but I am less enthusiastic about the possibility of misrepresenting _actual_ demographics (or even just suggesting by way of data collected the bias inherent among what we suspect the primary demographic to be).
Incidentally, I think we'll see the current trend reinforced with additional responses. It looks like Gnomes are relatively scarce for a core race, and Humans are relatively prolific.
Might I suggest adding categories for other options? Perhaps all the other open access races? Others could be grouped into categories (Aasimar/Tiefling, Sylph/Undine/Oread/Ifrit/Suli, Other) to keep it from getting too long.
I hadn't considered _grouping_ them! That's a very elegant solution.
The mega-thread regarding character race seems to be lacking a poll. Since this is a thread that is worthless without pics, I thought I might remedy that!
Please only indicate characters that have at least one experience and that you have played in the last month (for the sake of consistency and relevance). DM babies don't count, nor do characters on indefinite vacation from adventuring. Also, please avoiding answering multiple times.
Highly doubtful, given advantages that Take 10 allows - *Auto - success*.
...just can't see it happening as long as the option is given.
Oh, wait.. maybe in cases of being hit by a truck, there should be an initiative roll and then a perception check to see if he notices the truck and gets out of the way in time.
That would be a bit more realistic.
Hmm....
If you are going to be hit by a truck, doesn't that constitute combat?
I think if you have everyone roll all the time for maneuvering in traffic, the rate of collisions would be much, much higher (you've crossed the street well more than 20 times and not been hit, right?). Conversely, you could adjudicate this by making the base DC preposterously low. It'd have to be so low, however, that you would pass even on a 1, and that'd preclude _any_ failure.
I don't think the d20 engine is meant to model reality so much as it is to meant to resolve issues which would otherwise be under dispute. Role play is the primary mechanism of storytelling, and roll play is used to adjudicate to avoid getting bogged down arguing.
As a player, it's just a bit frustrating to get 5 feet from the top and fail that last check, plummet to the bottom, burn three charges off a wand of cure light wounds, just so you can start the whole ordeal all over again. You can spend an entire session doing nothing but climb checks. (Been there. Done that. Never played with that GM again.)
"A bit frustrating"? That seems to me to be the least viable justification for allowing a take 10. But then again, maybe I'm old school. I like a challenge.
What I'm taking about is that your character is travelling counter to the force of gravity (not natural) in a movement mode for which he/she does not have naturally, the failure of which is immediate application of damage to your person or a whole lot of "rescue" checks to mitigate said damage.
If there is any one skill (other than UMD) that shouldn't be allowed to have a take 10, climb is it.
I see climb as no different than an acrobatics check to tumble through an opponent's threatened square (just easier, given gravity and the wall you are climbing are inanimate)...if you fail, bad things happen. Yet, the only ones that can take 10 on acrobatics checks for tumbling through an opponent's threatened square are rogue-types of level 10 or higher (if memory serves) and even then, they have to choose said ability to do so.
Failure resulting in bad things happening isn't, by the RAW, criteria for allowing or not allowing a player to take ten.
Your argument boils down to your belief that climbing is not risky because players are allowed to take ten.
By the RAW, you can take ten on climb checks (this is unequivocally true of climb checks to climb to a height of up to half your speed). Climbing is, then, not very risky in a lot of circumstances (although starting the climb high up like Neo in the Matrix or climbing while conditions are variable, conditions a rigger on a man-o-war would understand, may make it dangerous). That's just how it is.
If you want to house rule it, more power to you, but you should clarify that you are running it differently for this reason or another, rather than arguing your version as if it were default.
If your position is good and your reasoning is sound, people will adopt your system. If you present your position as if it were the default, they will get bogged down trying to parse out what's currently true, and won't get to evaluate your idea on its own merit.
Note that one can not ready an action out of combat! That's what Initiative is for.
That and the fact that there are other things you can't do out of combat is totally stupid.
Monk: As the fighter is about to open the door I enter my fighting stance (activate my combat style) so I am ready when the fighting starts.
RAW: You can't activate a style out of combat.
Cop: I aim my gun at him and yell: "Freeze". (I take a ready action to shoot if he makes a threatening move)
RAW: You can't ready actions out of combat.
In the former case, I agree that's frustrating.
The latter case is an example of a stand-off that is best resolved with an initiative check (if the enemy is very, very fast, it might not matter that you are covering them, and it isn't as if getting shot is that big a deal in this system, anyway).
I speculate that sometime between 3rd edition and the Pathfinder CRB, someone tried using a sling.
mikkelibob, I agree it's too bad there isn't an intuitive [halfling with rocks] build,b e it sling or skipping stone or whatever. Even if that did exist, I'd not like having to roll a d3 so frequently, though.
My group likes the one where we remove the +3 bonus for class skills and rolls twice instead, taking the highest score. All other bonuses are added normally.
Doesn't that make taking 10 less desirable though?
It does! The average roll on [2d20 take the best] is something like a fifteen...
[Pedantry] The average is actually 13.825. [/Pedantry]
That's not pedantry! My guestimate was off by 300 bucks. :)
My group likes the one where we remove the +3 bonus for class skills and rolls twice instead, taking the highest score. All other bonuses are added normally.
Doesn't that make taking 10 less desirable though?
It does! The average roll on [2d20 take the best] is something like a fifteen, I think. On the other hand, taking 10 is kinda' boring, and this mitigates the risk of rolling because the distribution on 2dx take the best is an extremely block-y bell curve (average results are _much_ more likely).
Think of two coins: odds of at least one heads is 3/4, odds of no heads is 1/4, and odds of 1 head 1 tail is 2/4. If you only need one heads to pass (a 10 or better), there's only a 25% chance of failure. In D&D, there would have been a 50% chance of failure.
The two major mechanical implications for this house rule are a) you are decreasing the maximum possible role by 3 and b) unless they roll very high, you are sort of giving them a +5 bonus instead of a +3 bonus.
If the Rogue's role is supposed to be "good at skills," then I want skills to be actually good and worth having for the whole game, instead of being essentially replaced by spells halfway through for the purpose of solving non-combat obstacles.
That's valid. I got no criticism or objection. If that's happening in your game, that sucks and is a problem and might be intrinsic to the system.
Actually, the Rogue is a martial character on the basis that the game does not have a third category for things that are not casters.
Are we sure about that? Is this referenced in source material somewhere? Is this widely held to be the meaning of the word in common vernacular? It might well be I should not use martial like I did, though.
It doesn't seem to me that the entire game can be summed up in this dichotomy, or that the party roles are adequately described in this way.
Support =/= Healing =/= Blasting =/= Tanking =/= DPS
... but I'm to believe those are the only two kinds of characters? 5 doesn't equal 2, and that's only looking at combat!
Evasion as far as traps goes can be replaced by a 750 gp wand of CLW.
Sometimes I wish I were dumb so I could say things like, "I'm not going to validate that argument with a response."
BigNorseWolf wrote:
I can because it IS a vacuum. A vast, deep, empty well of nothingness where the rogues alleged depth and ability should be.
:p
I should probably have said that the results of an analysis made in a vacuum are likely to overlook a number of important factors that will manifest when you leave the vacuum (you know, for the food, warmth and companionship that you can't find in that dark and lonely place you live).
If you're fine with my explanation for "good at skills" and familiar with the concept of diminishing returns, then it's probable the only point of contention remaining is that you want the rogue to hit harder and die less. Is that accurate?
As I noted in a previous post, I agree with some of the direction you're going with the SA revision. Unfortunately I cannot get on board with it completely because it doesn't do enough. It still has most of the drawbacks that a rogue normally does but it still doesn't meet the power of a real martial. Martials in Pathfinder have a lot more than just their BAB when it comes to hitting stuff. The best you're doing here is giving them an unmodified attack routine without the benefit of extra attacks and then only when they're using Sneak Attack, whereas a rival such as a Ranger is wrecking everything 100% of the time, hitting more often as well (because every core martial has in-house methods of going above and beyond a 1:1 BAB).
Most of the talents you posted are either useless, aren't worth expending a class level-based resource (talents), or actively work against the rogue's only advantage (reducing the value of its skill points) and in some cases don't work, such as with Pointed Defense (doesn't work, you don't threaten). The magic talents are bad and should feel bad (only being worthwhile insofar as being able to qualify for item creation feats).
Blind-side was cool though. Props. Unfortunately the wording needs to be cleaned up because "flanked" is not a condition, and the rogue is not "flanking" (or does the rogue actually get no modifier since they take a -2 for using blind side but a +2 from flanking?). I like the idea though. Unfortunately it still doesn't actually help the rogue be a rogue so much as it makes them a better phalanx fighter (it's pretty harsh for archery rogues since its a -2 on top of the -4 for firing into melee and +4 to the AC for the soft cover, which means you need to have Improved Precise Shot for it to be anywhere in the realm of reliable hitting).
Thanks for the notes, I'll make those changes in the future. Aside from quibbles over wording:
A rogue isn't a martial character. He shouldn't be as good at fighting as a character that gets proficiency with all martial weapons. That's not a problem with the class.
I take it you aren't in the "bards are better because versatile performance" camp?
(Magical talents are _mostly_ bad! vanish is basically the same as major magic, and getting a ranged touch attack against a flat-footed opponent can be pretty funny, but I agree, mostly bad. I'm just confused as to why they stop at level 1 spells when the template is so easy and so many players like the ability.)
Archery rogues have precise shot, and the penalty is negated by the bonus, and roguish sneak attack lets them fire away at full BAB. It might be that the penalty is too high. I'm not sure what the appropriate trade-off would be without some play-testing. In my experienced, archery-rogues with good initiative are pretty scary on rounds 0-1, so I'm reluctant to lump on the perks here, too much.
That's a difficult thing to quantify, and I don't think you've supported that claim sufficiently to make it as a side note.
It is not difficult to quantify, at all. What does the rogue have to make it good at skills? Lots of ranks. A +3 from class skills. Thats it. The bard effectively has more class skills, and the investigator has +3 from class skills and their floating d6.
Quote:
It's not especially important, though. While I don't agree with your assertion, I can comfortably concede to it for the sake of argument. If there are two classes in the game that are better than this one, that doesn't mean this one is under-powered.
The rogue is barely better than other classes at skills. It doesn't have any class abilities that actually let it be good at skills. It's very easy for a druid, barbarian, or hell, even lore warden fighter to match most of the skills that a rogue is going to use.
... and you don't think there is any value to having a wide range of skills? What about abilities that, while not directly increasing your success rate with skills make you more effective at overcoming challenges pertaining to those skills (I'm looking specifically at evasion and trapsense, here, and I'm assuming we're ignoring trapfinding because trap DCs are so low that I usually take 10, and not because ignoring it is convenient for your argument).
You can't look at skill modifiers in a vacuum. You've gotta' consider the criteria for success an the synergy between skills and abilities. You don't need a +4 bonus from your class if you already make the DC when you roll a 1. At that point, you need more skill points so you can get more trained skills with that +3 class bonus.
But before we get too much further into this, what do you mean by "good at skills?"
I'll uncharacteristically offer my own opinion on what "good at skills" ought to mean. I think it means you have the skills to frequently succeed at overcoming obstacles while minimizing expended resources by means of making skill checks.
If a rogue can catch an opponent when he is unable to defend himself effectively from her attack, she strikes more surely, and may target a vital spot for extra damage.
The rogue's attack gains a bonus to hit and deals extra damage anytime her target would be denied a Dexterity bonus to AC (whether the target actually has a Dexterity bonus or not), or when the rogue flanks her target. This extra damage is 1d6 at 1st level, and increases by 1d6 every two rogue levels thereafter. The bonus to hit is equal to one half the number of sneak attack die she would roll, minimum 1. This bonus applies to combat maneuvers, but combat maneuvers don't deal sneak attack damage unless they deal hit point damage. Should the rogue score a critical hit with a sneak attack, this extra damage is not multiplied. Ranged attacks can count as sneak attacks only if the target is within 30 feet.
With a weapon that deals nonlethal damage (like a sap, whip, or an unarmed strike), a rogue can make a sneak attack that deals nonlethal damage instead of lethal damage. She cannot use a weapon that deals lethal damage to deal nonlethal damage in a sneak attack, not even with the usual –4 penalty.
The rogue must be able to see the target well enough to pick out a vital spot and must be able to reach such a spot. A rogue cannot sneak attack while striking a creature with concealment.
Roguish Sneak Attack is modified by feats or abilities that modify Sneak Attack and counts as Sneak Attack for meeting any requirements or prerequisites.
Rogue Talents::
Athletic- A rogue with this talent may use Acrobatics in place of Climb and Swim for skill checks.
Blind Side- If a rogue with this talent would make a ranged attack or an attack with a reach weapon against a target who threatens an ally that grants the target partial cover, that rogue may choose to take a -2 penalty on all attacks for the round to treat that target as flanked.
Canny- A rogue with this talent may use Perception in place of Heal and Survival for skill checks.
Greater Magic- A rogue with this talent gains the ability to cast a 2nd-level spell from the sorcerer/wizard spell list once per day as a spell-like ability. The caster level for this ability is equal to the rogue's level. The save DC for this spell is 12 + the rogue's Intelligence modifier. A rogue must have Minor Magic, Major Magic, and an intelligence of as least 12 to take this talent.
*You may gain additional uses of this ability with the Elf alternate favored class bonus, but you can't gain more additional uses for Greater Magic than you have for Major Magic. You may use the Bookish Rogue feat to replace your spell known as with Minor Magic.
Pointed Defense- A rogue with this talent may, when taking the full defense action, make a single attack with a light melee weapon at a -4 penalty, applying only half his strength modifier to damage.
Savvy- A rogue with this talent may use Bluff in place of Disguise and Intimidate for skill checks (she must still use a disguise kit or take penalties for improvising equipment, as normal).
Tricky- A rogue with this talent may use Stealth in place of Escape Artist and Sleight of Hand for skill checks.
Worldly- A rogue with this talent may use Knowledge (local) in place of Knowledge (geography) and Knowledge (nobility and royalty) for skill checks, and may make those checks as if she were trained.
I'm really more interested to know if you think this adequately shores up the weaknesses you guys perceive in the class.
I agreed, and pointed out that this disparity in what the player wants and what the player needs is a big part of why the rogue doesn't work the way players want it to.
That and that players want one thing, need another thing, and the rogue delivers neither.
... and so is perhaps not the right class for them. Agree! They should probably play a duelist.
Do you mean the bad prestige class?
lol
I mean a character that approximates the archetypal duelist. Do you want to argue semantics, now?
I agreed, and pointed out that this disparity in what the player wants and what the player needs is a big part of why the rogue doesn't work the way players want it to.
That and that players want one thing, need another thing, and the rogue delivers neither.
... and so is perhaps not the right class for them. Agree! They should probably play a duelist.
