I kinda fell behind on this thread. Plus I'm just killing time at work, wich sometimes leads to me looking at threads that are YEARS old. I try to to reply to those, tho.
Ahh, I see. I'm always horrified to log in and see (150+ new post) next to a thread. But yeah! I totally answered your question with a third option.
When I run a game, if someone stops having fun its a problem. If you run out of spells and your expected to spend the next few hours slogging it not doing what you picked your class to do, life can suck.How fun is it for the people playing classes that don't have expendable resources to watch the casters blow their load with the first encounter, and then be told that they don't get to do anything else for the rest of the day because the wizurd is sleepy?
a 10th level Wizard can cast 26 spells. It's going to be a VEEEEERY long fight that first encounter to expend all their resources.
"casters run out of resources" is a myth derived from players that play levels 1-6 rinse and repeat. Beyond level 7, it's no longer truth. The "expendable resources" classes have way TOO MUCH resources to expend. A wizard has more spells than a barbarian has rounds of rage. That speaks volumes about it.
"casters run out of resources" is a myth derived from players that play levels 1-6 rinse and repeat. Beyond level 7, it's no longer truth. The "expendable resources" classes have way TOO MUCH resources to expend. A wizard has more spells than a barbarian has rounds of rage. That speaks volumes about it.
Depends on your game. I will say as time goes on it gets harder and harder for the wizard to honestly expend all of his resources. By fifth level you've already got plenty of spells to last a reasonable amount of time before it feels like your 'slogging it', especially if you use spells with longevity or that immediately end the encounter. It really depends on your playstyle. Btw, wasn't this thread about rogues?
That said, I liked my response to the question.
How fun is it for the people playing classes that don't have expendable resources to watch the casters blow their load with the first encounter, and then be told that they don't get to do anything else for the rest of the day because the wizurd is sleepy?Not very fun either. I don't like being the guy waiting or the guy without spells. If I can I try to play an alternative system, like maneuvers or psionics or Gish. the x/day design is probably one of my biggest gripes about the system.
When I run a game, if someone stops having fun its a problem. If you run out of spells and your expected to spend the next few hours slogging it not doing what you picked your class to do, life can suck.How fun is it for the people playing classes that don't have expendable resources to watch the casters blow their load with the first encounter, and then be told that they don't get to do anything else for the rest of the day because the wizurd is sleepy?
When I am playing, I refuse to stop for wizards. My ranger trying to rid of the land of evil is not stopping for the day after a few minutes. I'll leave them behind, and a solo wizard out of their best spells is monster chow.
Right with you man, I hate wizards slowing the party down because they want their best spells back, and they just burned them all foolishly. :D
When I run a game, if someone stops having fun its a problem. If you run out of spells and your expected to spend the next few hours slogging it not doing what you picked your class to do, life can suck.How fun is it for the people playing classes that don't have expendable resources to watch the casters blow their load with the first encounter, and then be told that they don't get to do anything else for the rest of the day because the wizurd is sleepy?a 10th level Wizard can cast 26 spells. It's going to be a VEEEEERY long fight that first encounter to expend all their resources.
"casters run out of resources" is a myth derived from players that play levels 1-6 rinse and repeat. Beyond level 7, it's no longer truth. The "expendable resources" classes have way TOO MUCH resources to expend. A wizard has more spells than a barbarian has rounds of rage. That speaks volumes about it.
Typically a barbarian hasn't spent rounds of rage earlier in the day on mage armour, endure elements, resist fire, unseen servant, mount, etc etc etc. Further, I would hope (especially since this is thread seems to have devolved into "Spells are better than skills") that some of said spell slots are allocated to 'utility' spells like fly, knock, detect traps etc etc. Even past that, your 10th level wizard only has 2 - 3 5th level spells, 3 - 4 4ths. Being forced to choose between (say) burning charges from a wand of MM or nuking your whole party with a fireball... Schrodinger's wizard strikes again?
My current caster char is a sorc. Even with that I frequently don't have the right spell slots to use the spell I want to and am forced to 'make do' with something less effective... merely an empowered boom of some kind instead of an empowered boom followed by a quickened boom usually. When I was playing a wizard (9th and 10th), fully half of my slots a day were going to bed uncast.... typically the lower half because some dumb fighter had waded into melee and he didn't want to be char broiled or some utility spell like dispel, break ench, stone shape, dimension door or dismissal that I wanted to have in case we needed it... but we didn't.
As to whether to leave them behind or not... as long as your group is happy, does it matter? Our group frequently IS on a clock that is vaguely measured in terms of 'rests' where the more times we rest, the worse the outcome is going to be. Occasionally we'll also just be in places where rest is just impossible for one reason or another (say on a different plane, in the middle of some giant weird insect hive.... Yeah.... it happened). There's usually a consensus though on whether we rest or not, and to be honest... if Mr Wizard is out of his top tier and wants to have a lie down, and the rest of us don't.... Mr Wizard gets a diatribe from the big dumb fighter about conservation of ammunition. Nothing warms my heart more than watching a fighter tell a wizard "I thought your types were supposed to be smart, but you haven't heard of the concept of conserving ammunition." and then watching it devolve into various bad puns about 'you have to try to last all day... You don't want to be known as a guy who only lasts a minute or so before curls up and goes to sleep.'
Watching from a safe distance of course. Say.... about triple the spread of the wizard's favourite AoE spell?
Even past that, your 10th level wizard only has 2 - 3 5th level spells, 3 - 4 4ths.
A first level spell is more than enough to do a fair contribution to a fight in a given round. Enlarge Person or Grease are good examples. At level 2 you have glitter dust, at level 3 you have haste.
That gives you things to do in every single round of combat for 26 rounds a day. Which mean 5 combats of 5 rounds, plus mage armor. The 10th level barbarian for example would have roughly the same number of rounds of rage.
Fun Fact:
MrSin asking if this thread is about rogues is the only time the word 'rogue' appears on this page so far, apart from in the thread title.
Fun Fact:
MrSin asking if this thread is about rogues is the only time the word 'rogue' appears on this page so far, apart from in the thread title.
Yay I'm helpful!
Well, as with any rogue thread, it could just possibly be because everyone's ignorantly misspelling it as "rouge" so searches for rogue thus turn up short. :p
When I am playing, I refuse to stop for wizards. My ranger trying to rid of the land of evil is not stopping for the day after a few minutes. I'll leave them behind, and a solo wizard out of their best spells is monster chow.When I run a game, if someone stops having fun its a problem. If you run out of spells and your expected to spend the next few hours slogging it not doing what you picked your class to do, life can suck.How fun is it for the people playing classes that don't have expendable resources to watch the casters blow their load with the first encounter, and then be told that they don't get to do anything else for the rest of the day because the wizurd is sleepy?And typically by the time the wizard is out of spells the cleric is also below his safe threshold and the bard's kind of dry and the barbarian's low on rage and knows his saving throws go to pot when he runs out and the ranger is trying to scavenge spent arrows.
If fighter and rogue want to go on alone it's their funeral.
the Paladin doesn't have lay-on-hands or smite evils, the inquisitor lacks judgements, the summoner is short in summoning SLA, the alchemist has no bombs, the monk has no stunning fists or ki, and the magus has spent his arcana.
Rogue and fighter haven't depleted their "extra oomph" resources, because they have none. Kinda like being poor means you can't be robbed.
Well, poor people can still be harvested for organs.
Or, as PF calls it, "the hp pool." :D
That's their resource, for lack of anything else. Hit points. CLW wands can largely make it not a resource, though I've been on many a quest that turned into a multi-day affair where even though we had two full wands of CLW, we ran out.
I think depleted spells is a much better way to blow resources than hp, though. Unlike hp, spells come 100% back each morning, and running out of spells doesn't outright kill you.
lol, so I think it has been concluded that the skill monkey rogue is effective, useless and the rogue in general is pretty damn close himself.
Regardless of this whole thread, I still plan to play a rogue in my next campaign.
Elf Rogue || 10 18 12 16 10 10 || Acrobatics, Disable Device, Escape Artist, Sleight of Hand, Stealth ||5|| Use Magic Device, Perception||2|| Secondary Skills(4); Bluff, Climb, Diplomacy, Disguise, Knowledge(dungeoneering,local), Linguistics, Sense Motive, Swim
1 |
Weapon Finesse
2 |
Fast Stealth
3 |
Two Weapon Fighting
4 |
Bleeding Attack
5 |
Combat Reflexes
6 |
Surprise Attack
7 |
Quick Draw
8 |
Stand Up
9 |
Improved Two Weapon Fighting
10|
Skill Mastery
11|
Dodge
12|
Crippling Strike
13|
Mobility
14|
Opportunist
15|
Greater Two Weapon Fighting
16|
Improved Evasion
17|
Spring Attack
18|
Slippery Mind
19|
Run
20|
Defensive Roll
UPDATE:
Playing RotRL
7th level. I am a rogue 6/alchemist 1, MT 1 champion and am retraining as an alchemist.
My problem with the rogue: No viable ranged attack.
Out-of-combat the rogue was great!
Pre-mythics, I needed to flank if I wanted to feel useful. That was fine. I expected that going in. It's the price you pay for all the skill points.
In mythics, I needed to be in melee to feel useful. This turned out to be a larger problem than I expected. Not having a valid range attack option doesn't seem that bad, but in actual play this is devastating. This was the only char I've played without a viable ranged option so this was the first time I've noticed the problem.
I found this to be a fatal weakness for the Rogue. Everything else was forgivable and balanced with other advantages.
Rogues need a non-stealth way to sneak attack with a bow/crossbow. For example, "if target is in melee combat with another creature, you can sneak attack it". I feel like that applied to both melee and range (with the range limited removed) and perhaps some class features for snipping would be all I needed to continue playing the class.
1 |
Combat Expertise, Skill Focus(Bluff)
2 |
Finesse Rogue
3 |
Deceitful
4 |
Combat Trick(Improved Feint)
5 |
Skill Focus(UMD)
6 |
Minor Magic(Prestidigitation)
7 |
Arcane Strike
8 |
Major Magic(Silent Image)
9 |
Greater Feint
10|
Skill Mastery(Bluff, UMD, Stealth, Disable Device, Acrobatics)
11|
Extra Rogue Talent(Familiar)
12|
Dispelling Attack
13|
Improved Familiar(Small Air Elemental)
14|
Crippling Strike
15|
Extra Rogue Talent(Opportunist)
16|
Feat(Combat Reflexes)
17|
Extra Rogue Talent(Stealthy Sniper)
18|
Hard to Fool
19|
Unwitting Ally
20|
Skill Mastery
Who wants to tell me why this build sucks?
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Minor Magic(Prestidigitation)
7 |
Arcane Strike
I can tell you why it is a illegal build.
Arcane Strike (Combat)
You draw upon your arcane power to enhance your weapons with magical energy.
Prerequisite: Ability to cast arcane spells.
Benefit: As a swift action, you can imbue your weapons with a fraction of your power. For 1 round, your weapons deal +1 damage and are treated as magic for the purpose of overcoming damage reduction. For every five caster levels you possess, this bonus increases by +1, to a maximum of +5 at 20th level.
Minor Magic (Sp): A rogue with this talent gains the ability to cast a 0-level spell from the sorcerer/wizard spell list. This spell can be cast three times a 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 10 + the rogue's Intelligence modifier. The rogue must have an Intelligence of at least 10 to select this talent.
Edit: And ill correct my self. I still will not allow this in a home game. I feel it was a bad call in the first place. This just goes to prove how bad of a idea it is. Along with all the Mystic Thurges.
Spell-Like Abilities, Casting, and Prerequisites: Does a creature with a spell-like ability count as being able to cast that spell for the purpose of prerequisites or requirements?
Yes.
For example, the Dimensional Agility feat (Ultimate Combat) has "ability to use the abundant step class feature or cast dimension door" as a prerequisite; a barghest has dimension door as a spell-like ability, so the barghest meets the "able to cast dimension door prerequisite for that feat.Edit 7/12/13: The design team is aware that the above answer means that certain races can gain access to some spellcaster prestige classes earlier than the default minimum (character level 6). Given that prestige classes are usually a sub-optimal character choice (especially for spellcasters), the design team is allowing this FAQ ruling for prestige classes. If there is in-play evidence that this ruling is creating characters that are too powerful, the design team may revisit whether or not to allow spell-like abilities to count for prestige class requirements.
SLAs actually allow you to qualify for arcane strike.
I believe there was some sort of FAQ about it. Regardless it is a common trick in qinggong monk builds.
EDIT: Noted.
Ranged rogue?
I've come to terms with the rogues most valid range option being UMD.
I'm under the illusion that this rogue build is functional.
I want to know why I'm completely wrong.
What's weird is I think he'll do more damage than my TWF rogue ever did in addition to being a better skill monkey.
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Who wants to tell me why this build sucks?
The feat and talent selection aren't particularly optimal. Lack of Improved Initiative hurts (since surprise rounds are an easy source of sneak-attack damage). Not being small means you're much worse (-4) at Stealth and also a relative -1 to both attacks and AC.
I like your DEX-emphasis stat distribution, but would like to see the 15,14,14,14,12,07 pre-racial 20pt array for best point-buy efficiency. (In a rogue, dumping strength concentrates the 14s in your important stats, with the 15>17+1 for DEX becoming a 20 with a belt at 5th.)