Marelt Ekiran's page

I admit that I'm not sure what exactly you were expecting the class to do. If you just want a nimble warrior who is good at taking down a single target, then perhaps check out the Duelist archetype.

Bringing up the whole three actions thing is somewhat irrelevant, since I'm of the firm opinion that placing the mark should never be done in combat to begin with. Also, there's no need for the target to have any significance. As long as you can briefly observe them, you can pick any random mook as your target. There's no limit or expiry on the ability.

I don't expect a rogue to map out the whole dungeon by themselves. But if there's a rogue in the party, I would expect them to sneak up to the next room, glance inside and then gesture for the party to proceed or halt if there are enemies ahead. All the assassin has to do is peek for 6 seconds more. Yes, if the whole dungeon is completely cordoned off by crackless doors that cannot be opened an inch without anyone noticing, then scouting is indeed of limited use, but that's not my personal experience.

As for groups, there's no reason why the abilities are less useful. When you're fighting a group of, say, four goblins, the fight is the hardest in the first two or three rounds. Once one goblin goes down, the fight becomes easier, as the enemy damage goes down by 25% and there are fewer opportunities for flanking or one running off to harass your casters. Once two goblins are down, assuming your own guys are still standing, the fight becomes trivial and you're just mopping up the leftovers.

So if our hypothetical assassin got a pick at the four goblins, she can just pick one at random and focus on taking that one down as quick and hard as possible. Sure, you're not going to renew it after that, but it already did its job at that point. Assassinate just helps in this regard by making the takedown faster.

Is the assassin the best possible archetype? No, it isn't, but I honestly do not believe that it is useless or terrible. Taking the dedication at level 4, when the pickings are slim, and then squeezing in Assassinate at level 12 or 14 is a perfectly good build when comparing it to your other rogue options.

I would argue you're being a little too harsh on the poor assassin here. Yes, if you're only fighting a series of battles arena-style, then the assassin is not very good. However, most games, even the ones that are not the most intrigue-heavy, still have plenty of opportunity.

Let's unpack Mark of Death first. The benefits from it are definitely solid. Extra damage to flat-footed targets, extra damage on crits, a bonus on feints (useful to any rogue, but especially scoundrels) and a bonus if your mark tries to slip away.

The trouble is getting it to trigger. Yes, if you're already in combat exchanging blows, then you're not going to spend three actions to carefully observe someone. But the observation should not be done in combat. The duration of the benefit is practically infinite and it not difficult to trigger. Three actions represents six seconds of time and the only requirement is that you can see and hear the target. The rules don't specify what distance counts as being able to hear someone, but given your amazing perception checks, I would argue that you should at least get 60 ft. or so, if not more. You don't need to be able to understand every whisper they say. You just need to see and hear them.

In any game with a social or urban elements, getting the mark on your target should not be hard for you. Seriously, if you're playing a rogue and you can't figure out a way to get within earshot of your mark for 6 seconds, then I'm not sure what you're doing with your life. Even if your target is the king, you should be able to dress up as a merchant and try to petition him to lower some random tax. Dress up as a gardener and infiltrate the gardens while he's taking a stroll. You don't need to get close or be armed for this.

If you're in a dungeon crawling session or out in the wilderness, then as the rogue, you should still be the one scouting ahead. This playstyle becomes much better with Sneak Savant, but you still should be able to mark an enemy to focus on during your next fight.

As for the rest of the archetype, Assassinate stands out. Nowhere does it say that the strike you make needs to be a melee strike. As long as you managed to get the mark on your target, you can stay in hiding until the right time and then plant a crossbow bolt into their spine. For regular enemies, you're unlikely to kill them outright, but opening combat with bolt damage + sneak attack damage + 6d6 extra will still help move things along tremendously. This rewards a switch hitter setup where you get one good shot in and then move to your usual melee weapons. Additionally, assassinate is good for taking out low level sentries and bystanders who are no real threat, but would cause problems if you can't take them out quietly in one hit and they raise the alarm.

The other feats are unfortunately less useful. Expert Backstabber is basically +1 damage to your sneak attack, which becomes +2 at the end of your career. Not to turn up my nose at extra damage, but the overall difference to your damage output is practically negligible. Surprise Attack is useless to a rogue (they already have it) and Angel of Death is purely roleplaying flavor. That feat was more meant to be put on NPCs so that the players can't just break out a discount Raise Dead to deal with the king being assassinated.

The borrowed feats are fairly weak as well, so if you want the two extra feats to get out of Assassin and get to another archetype, you're probably out of luck. Then again, rogues have so many good class feats that they shouldn't spend them all scrounging up archetype feats anyway. If you really insist, then just play a half-elf.

Xethik wrote:

One thing to note, probably in the Monk multiclass archetype, is that the Thief racket does not gain Dex to damage with unarmed attacks, by the rules as written (and possibly intended). I believe that probably reduces the value of the Monk multiclass archetype for Thief, but it may still be the best option for a Rogue/Monk multiclass based on the later Rogue feats that key off your Racket.

Monastic Weapons is the workaround here. The Nunchaku, Sai, and Fighting Fan are all Finesse, Monk weapons. So Thieves can get Dex to damage with them, deliver Sneak Attack damage with them, and use them with Monk abilities like Ki Strike and Flurry.

Ascalaphus wrote:

I feel like the rogue is kinda pushed away from multiclassing because he only gets weapon specialization and critical specialization with the weapons the core rogue class gives you.

There's a mismatch between the thief racket (works with any finesse weapon) and the class (gain expert+ with simple and enumerated weapons only).

You can't get Weapon Specialization with Monastic Weapons, but at least you can get Critical Specialization by taking Brawling Focus.

Yes, you can. Monastic Weapons specifically states that their proficiency goes up whenever your unarmed proficiency goes up. The rogue naturally increases unarmed proficiency along with all their weapons. And weapon specialization states that you get the extra damage for any weapon or unarmed attack in which you have expert or master proficiency. There is nothing to suggest that monastic weapons would be excludes from this chain of logic at any point.

When I have some time over the next few days, I will update the guide with some of the comments that have been made so far in this thread. Thanks to everyone for their suggestions.

After using guides for many years, I thought I should contribute one of my own. Since there was no rogue guide listed in the Guide to Guides, it seemed like a good place to start.

Please use this thread for any comments or suggestions:

Marelt Ekiran's Guide to the Rogue

Mine might be a bit controversial:

Likes:

1) Skill Feats.
This is a golden opportunity to actually make skills relevant, as opposed to 1E, where being a skill monkey was a complete trap option for a character build (there were only so many skills that needed to be covered and each class would at least cover some. Magic made most others obsolete).
I just hope that the developers will actually dare to make the skills go into supernatural territory, so that they can compete with magic. In 1E, it didn't matter how good your climb skill got. A level 3 wizard with Spider Climb was still going to be better at it. And if people complain that this makes things too "Anime-like", then I say "good". At least in Anime, you can have scenes with wizards blowing up whole armies, but the fighters still being equally badass next to them. There's no shame in learning from other cultures that have solved problems that you struggle with.

2) Resonance.
I loved resonance when I first saw it and have had no reason to change my mind so far. Yes, it's still an imperfect system that needs tweaking, but I like the core idea. It makes Charisma actually relevant to everyone, rather than the universal dump stat. It allows for a middle ground between "party must have a cleric or is doomed" and "party will never be below full health ever, unless their golf bag of wands runs out" and it allows for a balancing of cool items. Now, like I just said, there are fixes to be made still. Here are some that I would propose:
- Make single-use consumables like potions and scrolls not use Resonance. You're basically paying a premium to have the item pre-charged.
- Make wands and staves have infinite charges, which cancels out some bookkeeping that the Resonance system causes. They are now balanced by requiring resonance to activate.
- Give the Alchemist an expanded pool of resonance as a class feature. Now they will have a clear niche as the item expert.
- Get rid of restrictions on the use of magic items. They can be balanced by requiring higher amounts of resonance.

3) Magic Items (except for the damage formula on magic weapons... seriously, who thought that was a good idea?)
Separating the basic bonus of a magic item from auxiliary effects was a great idea. Now it actually makes sense to get items with cool effects, rather than just generic +X items, because those were more efficient. I also like that AC now scales with level and that magic armor also boosts saves, so that you're not obliged to use a significant chunk of your wealth on basic AC boosting. Same with generic stat boosting. In 1E, 99% of the wealth table was immediate sell fodder, because the game assumed that you would use all your wealth on generic stat boosting in order to keep up. Now there will be much more freedom of customization of items and keeping items with cool magic effects found in treasure may be worth considering, rather than getting half price back.
Like I said before, though. They should use the resonance system to balance things out, rather than putting arbitrary restrictions on things. I'm also not a fan of the level-based table.

Dislikes:

1) Level forcing increases to things that have no business leveling up (the Ostog the Untenured problem).
I can understand that certain things level as you proceed. Weapons that you actually use. Armor that you actually wear. Skills that you actually practice in, etc. However, a Barbarian who has never seen a violin before should not be allowed to beat a lower level bard who has trained her whole life at a violin contest. Some people argue that proficiency level should bar this from happening, but I personally think it's an even worse idea for a GM to constantly have to tell the player that, yes, you have a +20 in this skill, but you're not allowed to use it for anything. Just leave these things at zero.
Likewise, a rogue who has trained to be quick on his feet to get out of danger his whole life should trip over himself if you suddenly stick him in heavy plate armor that he has never worn before. Professional ballet dancers and figure skaters can attest that a slight shift in center of mass of your body can easily throw off years of training. And finally, the best chef in the world should not be able to kill the entire imperial guard with his potato peeler, but nor should he suddenly lose a cooking match to a fighter who has done nothing but kill more orcs than him (and no, just arbitrarily giving low level characters boosts that the PCs can't get is a terrible idea. Everyone should follow the same rules).

2) The +/- 10 Critical system.
It sounds nice on paper, but the more I thought about it, the more problematic is seems to me. First of all, it no longer distinguishes weapons by different critical ranges, which used to be an important differential. More problematic, however, is that it very much forces a narrow band of attack ranges that no one can stray from. Suddenly, every boost to attack or penalty to the enemy's AC now doubles as making your weapon keen, which either will unbalance really easily or otherwise erases a lot of design potential. You can't have a build that is really good at hitting but does little damage, because they'd crit every second hit. Likewise, something like the old power attack or weapon expertise is now crippling if it also erases your crit potential.
I mind it less on skills or saves, although it does make the game more swingy, which makes it more likely to have the party meet disaster from a few bad rolls.

3) Excessive Class-Restricting of abilities.
There's not much else to be said about this. I understand that they want to make classes like the fighter more special, but arbitrarily taking away simple abilities that everyone should have is not the way to do it. It causes a lot of wasted space when you have to repeat basic abilities for multiple classes and it locks specific build ideas away. And on the flip side, it shoehorns specific classes into specific builds.
Now, to be fair, this problem may yet be alleviated when more archetypes and class options for each class get created in the future and when we see the full suit of multi-class options. Even so, I can't say that the way they've done this is very elegant.

I also agree on the point of the magic weapons and the example you gave with the Gnoll Captain. There should not be a different set of rules for the PCs and NPCs. Like you said, players will notice when the rules are stacked against them to create an artificial gameplay balance.

One of the better ideas was the advancement of AC by level. Now you don't have to give NPC enemies a billion gold worth of defensive items if you want them to have an AC that doesn't let the players get guaranteed hits. In the PF1 monster manuals, it was also blatantly obvious that the designers were just plugging Natural Armor as an arbitrary number to get the AC they wanted (which you can't do with humanoid NPCs).

Magic weapons should follow the same principle. Just giving the old +1 to attack and damage should be good enough, since attack bonuses are now very difficult to come by and the price no longer exponentially increases for putting on both plusses and other abilities. Linking the bonus damage to proficiency is probably a much better solution, since there already seems to be a common complaint that proficiency as it is now matters too little.

Matthew Downie wrote:

Marelt Ekiran wrote:

Personally, I think there should totally be level 20 commoners. There should be people who have never seen a day in combat and yet have a skill beyond the reach of any but the most epic of PCs, because its what they are talented in and what they spend their entire life honing, as opposed to dredging old ruins. And if the best painter in the world came face-to-face with a level 20 demon, she should totally be killed in seconds, because that's not what she spent her life preparing for.

I'd argue that this would be better represented by having the world's best painter be a level 1 NPC with a special +30 bonus to Painting skill. Level 20 has always meant huge increases to HP and combat accuracy and saving throws.

Me too, nothing wrong with an NPC with 3 hit points being way better in X skill than a 20th-level PC. The inflation of HD/BAB/Saves, etc, in order to achieve good skills checks for an NPC is one of the things I detest about 3rd Ed/PF1.

Well, yes, I agree. And that's why we should take this opportunity to fix it. Hence my earlier suggestion that the untrained proficiency bonus should just be zero. Now you can create a level 20 commoner with an amazing skill in painting and no combat abilities (as they would have no proficiencies in weapons, armor or saves). I admit that HP remain the odd one out, but a very low HP progression for the commoner class should mostly brush over that issue.

If you just start arbitrarily giving bonuses or feats to people to let them do amazing things, then the PCs will, not unjustified, start asking why they can't have such abilities. Having everyone follow the same rules is, in my opinion, essential in keeping a game world coherent.

Matthew Downie wrote:

Unicore wrote:

I don't think that there should be any level 20 characters that are at serious threat of being critically hit on a 2+, multiple times in a round, which is what would happen if you were untrained in your armor facing other level 20 opposition, that have +35s to their attack rolls.

Why are you wearing armor you're not proficient in to fight a level 20 enemy?

I was responding to a post about having level 20 commoners that would have no +level bonus to attacks or defense, saying that they don't need to be 20 points or more behind the things attacking them, because that basically just means massive critical fails and successes.

It would make a lot more sense just not to have level 20 commoners because commoners don't need to be level 20 to accomplish their role as weak NPCs that desperately need the party's protection.

I guess this boils down to basic design and worldbuilding philosophy. Personally, I think there should totally be level 20 commoners. There should be people who have never seen a day in combat and yet have a skill beyond the reach of any but the most epic of PCs, because its what they are talented in and what they spend their entire life honing, as opposed to dredging old ruins. And if the best painter in the world came face-to-face with a level 20 demon, she should totally be killed in seconds, because that's not what she spent her life preparing for.

Designing your settings with the idea that things just exist for PCs to interact with creates lifeless, stilted, MMORPG-like worlds. Basically telling your players "this thing doesn't need to make sense, since it only exists for you to throw dicerolls at" is one of the fastest way to break suspension of disbelief.

That John from accounting is actually high level because he's been an accountant and therefore is physically tougher than large predators and capable of killing them with his penknife if necessary is weirder to me than any strangeness with his skills and that's been baked into the system for decades.

Unless you assume that the vast majority of people just don't get more than a few levels, in which case most of the other world building issues go away anyways.

You're still going to have issues with PCs and skills, (or theoretically high-level important NPCs), but that's not quite the same.

I honestly believe that PF2 can fix this whole issue very elegantly by simply having the untrained proficiency bonus be zero. After that, it becomes a simple matter of creating a commoner class that has no proficiency with any weapon or armor (if you want them to have militia training, that's what feats are for). Now you can have a level 20 commoner who can make spreadsheets that would make angels weep with joy but can't at the same time use his letter opener to obliterate the king's guard.

It also instantly solves the whole commonly brought up issue of level 15 barbarians winning violin competitions against level 5 bards.