Eldmar's page

Play a game with the base book only, no trapper rangers, or bard archaeologists or alchemists. Play with an old school group with an old school GM that always ratchets up the traps to the point where in the first few levels a trap can 1 shot you. Then stop whining about how sub-par rogues are. They are only sub-par because paizo trivialises traps and the value of trap finding so that any tom dick or harry can get it with a trait. You can't get animal companions or rage or spells with a trait, shouldn't be able to get trap finding either.

You could also try something radical like banning books. There are a gazillion posts about how anyone can be a better rogue than the rogue class, because they use options from all over the place. Limit your game to the basic book and suddenly the rogue becomes far more interesting, without an archaeologist bard, or trapper ranger or alchemist blah blah.

Personally, I'd dump 1 point into it to unlock it and on later levels get it to where I can take 10 on a DC 20 check.

As far as I understand the rules, you can never take 10 on the UMD skill.

Me too, I think that they are thoroughly underestimated, and if played correctly can be a great deal of fun. I don't go with the common opinion you will find here that unless something is optimized to within an inch of it's life then it is useless. I like to play for fun. In our game several sessions ago, we were in Taldor helping a minor noble and staying in their mansion. Like the good little follower of Calistria, my rogue spent a considerable amount of time wrapped up in a 'puppy pile' of virile male guards and servants. Of course the fact that the assassins would have to get through my locked chamber door without alerting any of the men in my characters bed and have to fight through all of them to get to me had nothing to do with it. The cleric in our group was not amused, and our other party member a barbar thought it quite funny.

Indeed, we should stop trying to shore up the rogue's weaknesses and focus on the rogue's positive qualities, which are as follows:

> Almost as many skill points as bards and wizards

> Doesn't have a d6 hit die?

> I'm drawing a blank here

Rogue 8, Bard 6: 8>6 = win for rogue.

Even with an 18 int the Wiz gets 2+4+1(favoured class) = 7. A Rogue would need an 8 intel to get the same.

The problems with the rogue class stem purely from all the splat books. If you use purely the core players guide then nothing comes close to doing what the rogue can do. Rogue is the only one of the core classes that gets disable as a start. It has the highest number of skill points, with the Bard only taking over at higher levels due to versatile performance - which is pretty fruity, but has got a massive overlap with the skills that the performances cover. Personally I find a well built, well played rogue can be a massive boon to any party. Generally it is only when you make one thinking that you are going to be the uber killing machine that you get dissapointed.

Rogues are support characters, they can easily cover ranged, traps, scouting, melee, be the socialite and via umd be a useful wand / scroll user for buffs and healing. Hell in the last game session we played my level 2/1 (rogue/bard) used a magic missile wand to kill a mob that had a fairly hefty DR/magic and we had no magic weapons, so things were looking pretty touch and go. In a previous session our cleric was on negative hit points and I was able to umd a wand of cure light to get him back up (pre bard level).