Kaftorim's page

I think the rogue becomes less underpowered the further you can get Pathfinder away from being a 'pen and paper computer game'. It is the GM's job to try and engage every character in turn, wherever possible. If you have a rogue at your table that doesn't feel useful, chances are you can fix it with a single adventure. The examples aren't hard to imagine, and many good ones have already been listed in this thread.

That being said, the rest of the argument starts getting pretty thin. It basically boils down to 'my character can be out munchkined' or 'my friends are playing a competitive (rather than cooperative) game'. I'd suggest that ANY character choice is susceptible to these types of issues.

This is right on the money, and it kills me that so many of the posts on these boards are so focused on the idea that Pathfinder is a Pen and Paper computer game and it is your job to design your character for PvP against the other player characters. The things that I like about roleplaying games are the things that make them different from MMOs. If I wanted to use randomly generate numbers to kill a series of similar creatures for four hours to prove how big my numbers were, I'd go play a computer game. I want some real story and intrigue and skill use and things mixed into the combat. I can go sessions without combat and be happy. The rogue isn't the only class suited for that, but it's well suited for that, and when the plot is what matters, he's usually got a good story.

Of course we'll never use the ninja class no matter how good it is. We're playing in a European setting. We don't use the monk either, or any other Asian-themed super class. The basic problem with the Eastern classes is always the same: they make their western equivalents look bad because balance goes out the window to create an anime flare. That doesn't mean that the rogue is broken. To me it suggests that the ninja is, but that is what I would expect from an RPG.

I don't buy any of it, just like I don't buy that the monk is under-powered. It's very tempting to pit the fighter, whose main job is fighting, against the rogue and see that the rogue comes up lacking, but the rogue is not just a combatant. He has other abilities, some of them close to unique.

It's tempting to pit magic against rogue abilities and see that the magic is equal or better every time, but spells have a finite number of uses per day and skills do not. If his skills allowed him to do things that were the equivalent of using a level 1 spell at will, people would think that was broken.

Rogues have a mixture of things; they well rounded, not pointy like fighters or wizards. They don't need a full BAB because this is not an MMO and rogues are not designed to just be DPR. There are ways of tweaking them within the rules to do that, as people have pointed out, but it seems some people just want the rogue to simply be better at combat without sacrificing other things. The reason the fighter is better at combat is that that's all he gets. Take a fighter out of combat and his 2 skills and no class abilities or feats that aren't related to combat don't allow for very much.

If you don't roleplay and you have hardly any traps, then the rogue is going to seem less powerful than he should. That's because you've eliminated the things that make a rogue good, not because it's not a balanced class, and I've had some players--even first time players-- figure out quickly how to make their rogues shine as an important party member.

So I don't see the point in changing to rules to beef them up, as long as the GM is writing quests with the rogue's abilities in mind, but a good GM should be taking into account everyone's abilities. And as for simplifying stealth, what's so hard about an opposed roll? I actually like the suggestion for circumventing the things that overcome stealth (scent, tremorsense, etc.), and I think that would make a great rogue talent, but I don't see why you would need to change the rules. Rogue rolls a d20 and adds his bonus. That becomes the DC to see him. How hard is that?