With all the rouge hate thats going around i was just wondering why people think that rouges got shat on so badly by other classes
Because no one wants to make-up for the inadequecies of the rouge.
(More seriously, I think the rogue class is fine, and have never seen the big deal, so I'm going to bow out of the rest of this thread.)
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I think the rouge makes Canadian Football a lot more interesting and I'd like to see the rule implemented in the U.S.
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Why, Why, Why
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Darynu I won't even join in this thread to debate, but if you do a search you will see why your idea does not work for other people. <---My last comment on the topic in this thread.
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Ah a classic. Pass the salt please!
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The rogue works well for most games as most games don't get to the high levels. The rogue has sweet spot where they are awesome from level 4-8. It's at the high levels where skills aren't as much of issue as the party covers a lot of skills now and skill check become trivial. Then there is combat high level. You have the best armor you can get and monsters are still hitting you on 2 our better. Your hit points are little lower but this isn't as big of deal now that you can train your hit points up. Your attack tend to miss unless you have party buffs like inspire courage to help you along.
I've just GMed a lot games and several APs at the rogue sometime there are no problems and other time it ends in frustration. What seems to make the difference is the party. If you have a party capable of buffs the rogue does fairly well. If you have party each with their individual bonuses the rogue suffers. For example a ranger with animal companion vs giving the party a bonus to hit and damage. The rogue does really well when a high level ranger is giving the rogue +3 to hit. Add in a Bard with inspire courage and the rogue is deadly. Swap that to fighter who can't help the rogue out with blasting sorcerer and a battle oriented Oracle and the rogue suffers.
I've used this against my players. Had a group of low level rogues along with ranger and bard. Made the encounter quite deadly. Made up an encounter with TH ranger with combat patrol and a pole arm. I was able to provide flanking over huge area while the bard inspired everyone. It was a mess of sneak attacks. So it's not like the rogue is useless but relies on the party to make them better.
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The single biggest problem with the rogue is the lack of decent rogue talents. While there are some good ones most of them are horrible. Too many of them are one a day talents. Since most of them are supposed to be non-magical abilities this makes no sense. Why am I only hard to fool once a day? Why can I only create camouflage once every 24 hours? Skill focus stealth gives me a +3 to all stealth rolls and it increases to +6 when I have 10 ranks. A feat that even a commoner can take is actually better than the rogue talent.
It's a combination of factors. You can't have a classes abilities be too fantastic early on, otherwise that would promote rampant dipping. That was one of the things Pathfinder aimed to de-incentivize. Also, monsters, they can have class levels. For much the same reason as above, class features can't be too fantastic right out of the gate.
Primarily, though, it's because the rogue is a 3.X relic that never got quite the tune-up it needed. Paizo couldn't change the base product too much because backwards compatibility, ergo they added new things. Things which didn't get the job done. Rogue Talents were and continue to be typically substandard (massively and hilariously so in some cases), Master Strike suffers from the same drawbacks as Sneak Attack (plus it's a capstone so it matters for all of 2-3 sessions, most likely), and Trapfinding is a lame mechanic that serves little benefit at low levels while being surperfluous at high levels and burdens parties who don't have a rogue with them. At the same time, the existing problems of concealment shutting down sneak attack, an absence of attack boosting abilities, and poor saves against the really sucky spells persisted without change. To add insult to injury, the rogue's title of 'skill king' was usurped by a new system which de-prioritized class skills and gave the bard four new abilities to master that area of the game without breaking a sweat. In a game based around combat, their only saving grace is sneak attack (the potential damage of which, under optimal conditions, is also always used as a justification for saying "They're FINE in combat" as well).
In a game based around combat, their only saving grace is sneak attack (the potential damage of which, under optimal conditions, is also always used as a justification for saying "They're FINE in combat" as well).
Yeah, sneak attack always seems to fall into the trap of being seen as a very powerful combat ability because it can do tons of damage when all the stars align properly. The problem is that, in my experience, the rogue tends to need several turns of maneuvering to maybe actually get everything lined up so he might be able to manage that mythical duel-wielding full attack sneak attack, by which point the battle is usually close to over anyway.
When a campaign trait in mummy's mask takes the last ecological niche of the rogue-- he is an endangered species.
I played this rogue and had fun, but ninjas/bards are better. Hanse Shadowspan, Fafyrd, Tas Burfoot, and the Grey Mouser are not paizo fans.
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In a game based around combat, their only saving grace is sneak attack (the potential damage of which, under optimal conditions, is also always used as a justification for saying "They're FINE in combat" as well).Yeah, sneak attack always seems to fall into the trap of being seen as a very powerful combat ability because it can do tons of damage when all the stars align properly. The problem is that, in my experience, the rogue tends to need several turns of maneuvering to maybe actually get everything lined up so he might be able to manage that mythical duel-wielding full attack sneak attack, by which point the battle is usually close to over anyway.
Indeed. The class seems decent on paper but fails to really measure up to much unless it has a substantial amount of help.
Thinking back, I can't actually recall a rogue in our games who used sneak attack to meaningfully contribute to combat without also relying substantially on other mechanics. It's either been mythic tiers granting things like Fleet Charge, martial maneuvers from Book of Nine Swords, spell support to remain unseen (one ranged rogue we had used Tiny Huts from the spellcasters as sniper blinds), dual-wielding advanced firearms in the first round of combat, being projected into combat via TK Charge or Dimension Door, or by taking very expensive magic items (Greater Sniper Googles / Headband of Ninjutsu). This is all with one or two house-rules making it easier to get off flanking, too.
Rogue items:
Sniper Goggles, Greater - Addresses nonsense range limitation and allows for single-sneak attack range rounds to do decent damage
Headband of the Ninjitsu - Allows rogues to be dangerous in dim lighting and other very rogue-like things, also helps address the to-hit issue (I rule that attacking from out of sight grants the +2 to-hit bonus from being invisible in addition to what this item provides)
[Another ruling I make is to allow the bluff distraction to hide to be done as part of the move action to hide, but all hiding directly after attacking has to be done with snipping rules.]
As a GM I would just give these items to a low-mid level rogue and not count it against WBL(since they are 65,000 gold for what should be class features). Now the issue of saves and AC is harder to address. You could turn your rogue into a lich (thus giving a reason to pump cha).
Why, Why, Why
Shouldn't you be in your 3rd Lichdom by now?
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These threads make me sad.
Rogue Talents should be worth 1.5 feats, Advanced Rogue Talents 2 feats.
Currently, you scrounge to try and see how you can turn them into feats.
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What Rogue Talents should be like:
- Pick a skill. That skill has now another use beyond its intended one.
Sleight of Hand to Disarm is one of the most exciting Rogue Talents.
- What about 1/2 Bluff to replace Will saves?
- What about Sense Motive to replace AC, 1 attack per round (2 attacks at Rogue level 8, 3 at 15)?
- What about success on a Knowledge check on a monster granting +1 to attack and damage, increasing by +1/+1 at five level intervals?
Rogue Talents like these would make Rogues exciting again.
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What they really need are some talents that significantly increase selected skills.
Improved Skill: Add +1/2 level (minimum +1) to selected class skill.
Quicken Skill: The selected skill takes less time to perform than normal. If the skill takes a 1 min. to perform it can be done as in a full turn. If it takes a full turn it can be done as a move action. If it takes a move action it can be done as a swift action. If it takes longer than 1 min it takes ½ the normal time to perform.
Above post is truth.
What they really need are some talents that significantly increase selected skills.
Improved Skill: Add +1/2 level (minimum +1) to selected class skill.
Quicken Skill: The selected skill takes less time to perform than normal. If the skill takes a 1 min. to perform it can be done as in a full turn. If it takes a full turn it can be done as a move action. If it takes a move action it can be done as a swift action. If it takes longer than 1 min it takes ½ the normal time to perform.
Those exist, they are not that great since they only pidgeonhole you into something other classes can do equally well while providing other utility. As a martial, you need skills helping you out in combat as well because it's a large part of the game.
My house rule buff to rogues was give them 10 skill points + int per level and each rogue level increases your max skill level by two. That way they at least are better at skills than bards. A level 5 rogue can then have ten ranks in perception stealth and disable.
Even with this change, no one has rushed to play one.
These threads make me sad, but I do believe that a rogue is better than most NPC classes!! There is that. But there are those who will tell you rogues are fine and need no change to be productive. This is probably an attempt to disprove the converse of the Stormwind Fallacy.
My latest idea, two Siamese twin ratfolk rogues.
They always flank with swarming.
Hopefully a little dimension door action to help them along.
Swarming: Ratfolk are used to living and fighting communally, and are adept at swarming foes for their own gain and their foes' detriment. Up to two ratfolk can share the same square at the same time. If two ratfolk in the same square attack the same foe, they are considered to be flanking that foe as if they were in two opposite squares.
whoops replied to the wrong person on that one, meant to reply to voska66
You won't always be in the traditional party with a buffer though, and it is not so much that rogues suck, but that any concept you want to do with a rogue can normally( I am sure there is some corner case exception) be done better by another class. You really should search for those other threads. They will answer a lot of questions. Just find the last two long ones that were created. Anything else is just the same information over and over again.
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With the introduction of the Slayer and the Investigator (not to mention Bards, Alchemists, Ninjas, etc), do Rogues even have a niche anymore?
At this point, we might as well ignore that the Rogues exists without missing anything (except missing perhaps as that is what the Rogue excels at).
The single biggest problem with the rogue is the lack of decent rogue talents.
Yes. That.
Rogue Talents should be worth 1.5 feats, Advanced Rogue Talents 2 feats.
Currently, you scrounge to try and see how you can turn them into feats.
Word.
There are two main problems with the Rogue in Pathfinder. One is the full attack, and the first part of the solution is simply to remove this monstrosity and allow characters to make all of their iterative attacks at the end of a move (replace Pounce with Rend for the Beast Totem Barbarian if you're going to do this).
Second, Rogue Talents mostly suck, and they don't have to. Verisimilitude is nice and all, but there are plenty of powerful, mundane things a character can do without breaking immersion. The problem is that the Talents, such as they are, don't allow the Rogue enough mundane badassery. Combining crappy Talents is one way to address the problem, and unlocking good abilities that are uselessly hidden in archetypes is the other (you can also invent new mundane abilities out of whole cloth, but this is perilous).
A few of my own "abridged" Rogue Talents (there's a little bit of both of the aforementioned categories here):
- Bleeding Wound: only works with slashing/piercing weapons [bleeding effects stack] -- stacking makes this quite useful with iterative attacks, and is also more realistic
- Distraction: a Rogue who loses an opposed Stealth check may make an opposed Bluff check to remain unnoticed -- stolen from Burglar archetype
- Eagle Eye: add 5' to the max range of ranged sneak attack damage for each skill rank in Perception, up to max weapon range -- modified version of Sniper archetype ability
- Get the Drop: may take swift, move and standard (or full round) actions, as normal, during surprise rounds -- stolen from Bandit archetype
- Light-Footed: Fast Stealth/Ledge Walker combined; grants Expert Leaper at 10th level -- combination
- Poisoner: never accidentally poison self; +1/2 levels save bonus versus poison; grants Swift Poison at 10th level -- combination
- Tumbler: Rogue Crawl/Stand Up combined; grants Fast Tumble at 10th level - Stand Up does not provoke AoOs -- combination, plus return to old 3.x Kip Up rules
- Trap Master: Trap Spotter/Quick Disable combined; at 10th level, traps can be bypassed without beating DC by 10 -- combination
...and make Darkstalker an advanced talent. Seriously...simply bringing back this ability as a Rogue advanced talent suddenly makes the Rogue again the king of stealth, rather than making the skill obsolete at high level as it pretty much currently is.
So, because the one thing the rogues have all their own, rogue talents--suck so much they are best used as feats, is a big problem.
Also, make the rogue a full BaB class. The ranger is and he gets nicer things already.
Because the Ranger/Bard/Inquisitor/Alchemist/Investigator/Slayer do its job better than it...
I'm a little disappointed by this thread. The question (which I think I misread) was more interesting than list the various inadequacies of the rogues and proposed solution like the many other threads on this forum and others.
The more useful question to attack is the question of why? Why is the rogue given so little? Why does it lag behind other classes, not from a mechanical point-of-view but from a design philosophy point-of-view?
The first two answers began to address this (must have misread as I did.) They said it is because the rogue is shackled by the idea of "realism" in the game.
This raises further questions. Why are we attempting realism with some classes and not with others? Why aren't less realistic classes given more things to balance them? Why is realism bad? Why can't we give rogues and fighters, most mundane classes, more magical or, at least, more supernatural abilities?
Do the designers of the game dislike rogues? Do they see them as a class they're obligated to keep because of tradition? The existence of Slayer, Investigator, and, to a lesser extent, Swashbuckler lend credibility to that idea as the fill classic rogue roles better than the rogue does.
So, because the one thing the rogues have all their own, rogue talents--suck so much they are best used as feats, is a big problem.
Also, make the rogue a full BaB class. The ranger is and he gets nicer things already.
Rogues don't have it all their own. Ninjas, Slayers and others can take Rogue talents. Use Magic Device used to be an exclusive skill, now pretty much everyone takes it.
That is part of the problem too, there is nothing left that the rogue has all their own.
With the Slayer now out, the only reason I can think of to take Rogue is as a dip in order to quickly pick up trap abilities. Trapfinding at 1st and Trap Spotting at 2nd. You can use Extra Rogue Talent if there is some normal Rogue Talent you wanted past that. You can take a full four levels if your not multi classing with a spell casting class, gives you Trap Sense, Uncanny Dodge and another talent.
I like the rogue and don't see any reason to take it past 2nd level for most builds, 4th at max. The Advanced Talents aren't worth it compared to what other classes would have given you. Instead multi class with a class that likes Int and continue to build your rogue skills as you partake of that other classes abilities.
I'm a little disappointed by this thread. The question (which I think I misread) was more interesting than list the various inadequacies of the rogues and proposed solution like the many other threads on this forum and others.
The more useful question to attack is the question of why? Why is the rogue given so little? Why does it lag behind other classes, not from a mechanical point-of-view but from a design philosophy point-of-view?
The first two answers began to address this (must have misread as I did.) They said it is because the rogue is shackled by the idea of "realism" in the game.
This raises further questions. Why are we attempting realism with some classes and not with others? Why aren't less realistic classes given more things to balance them? Why is realism bad? Why can't we give rogues and fighters, most mundane classes, more magical or, at least, more supernatural abilities?
Do the designers of the game dislike rogues? Do they see them as a class they're obligated to keep because of tradition? The existence of Slayer, Investigator, and, to a lesser extent, Swashbuckler lend credibility to that idea as the fill classic rogue roles better than the rogue does.
I believe I covered this up-thread, but here it is abridged:
- Tradition / 3.5 backwards compatibility.
- Not a magic class, their abilities are either constant but weak or 1/day any merely decent because 'balance'.
- Terror over somehow getting off lots of sneak attack dice.
Really, I think number three is the biggest one. It certainly the one I hear my fellow players mention all the time, so I can easily see the design team doing the same.
So, because the one thing the rogues have all their own, rogue talents--suck so much they are best used as feats, is a big problem.
Also, make the rogue a full BaB class. The ranger is and he gets nicer things already.
I'm not sure making rogues full BAB is necessary. Something IS necessary, clearly, but conceptually a full BAB rogue doesn't make a lot of sense when the class's role description reads and I quote, "tend to avoid head-to-head combat". Something like an inquisitors judgement, a kind of versatile, encounter-based ability to aid them in combat, would be a great idea. Personally, though, I favor most just taking ninja and rogue and mashing them together, with the ki pool reflavored as an extraordinary guile pool or some such thing.
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The first two answers began to address this (must have misread as I did.) They said it is because the rogue is shackled by the idea of "realism" in the game.
This is clearly not the case. There are plenty of credibly mundane abilities which already exist in the game that could considerably increase the Rogue's power and flexibility. Why these abilities are spread so thin across the Rogue's traits, hidden behind archetypes, etc...the answer is backwards compatibility. Paizo didn't want to change too much from 3.5 when they made the original Core rules and the Rogue was the red-headed stepson of 3.5. All of the "Rogue replacement" classes that Pathfinder now has have been attempts to address that basic, structural problem.
Now, onto the more interesting question: why was the Rogue so awful in D&D 3rd edition? A few things to point out:
- Sneak Attack is hugely less useful than the old Backstab. Yes, you could use it for iterative attacks (through the awful and unwieldy full attack mechanic), and yes there were more clearly codified rules for flanking, but AD&D Thieves got multiplicative bonuses to their Backstab damage, which vastly outstrips the d6/2 levels (with no crit multiplication) the Rogue got in 3rd ed. The AD&D Thief was maybe a touch worse off in a toe-to-toe fight, but he was much more lethal from the shadows.
- Detect Noise was a Rogue-only class skill in AD&D. The Thief was the scout in the AD&D ecosystem, with very little competition for the role. The Ranger had Hide/Move Silently, but not Detect Noise, and so lacked the defensive value of the Thief in a scouting role. Bards got Detect Noise, but not Hide/Move Silently. So you technically could cover the bases without a Thief, but it took two very specific and unusual classes to do it.
- Use Scrolls was also a Rogue-only ability. Outside of the full caster classes, the Thief and Bard were the only guys able to pull this off, starting at 10th level, which worked well in the party because the Wizard started being able to scribe scrolls at 9th level. It was a highly useful ability that made the Rogue special, especially in high level combat where he wasn't good for much after the first Backstab.
But the above only tell us what made the 3rd ed. Rogue such a loser in comparison to his predecessor, not why. Attributions are tough to make, but I'd say the 3rd ed. Rogue fell victim to two things that the WoTC devs tried to fix about the old system.
1) Thief Backstab damage in AD&D could get really ridiculous, and they wanted to cut down on the cheese in 3rd ed while making the ability a little more widely useful in combat (thus the expanded flanking rules). This was maybe a good idea, but it turned the Thief from a truly terrifying shadow warrior to, for the most part, just another schmuck trying to get his licks in on the front line. Sneak attack damage was badly gimped compared to Backstab, and then you combine that with the terrific mistake that was the Full Attack, and you had a Rogue class that simply couldn't produce scary damage any more and had to put himself into harm's way at an alarming rate in order to be useful.
2) Iterative liberalization of the skills system (which Paizo contributed to in the 3.5 - Pathfinder evolution) eroded the Rogue's role as party scout. Now nobody needs him for Stealth and Perception because everybody can do these things. The "why" here is most likely just the WoTC developers' failure to perceive that the Rogue would need something in return for suddenly having a big part of his class abilities spread around to everyone.
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I'm a little disappointed by this thread. The question (which I think I misread) was more interesting than list the various inadequacies of the rogues and proposed solution like the many other threads on this forum and others.
The more useful question to attack is the question of why? Why is the rogue given so little? Why does it lag behind other classes, not from a mechanical point-of-view but from a design philosophy point-of-view?
The first two answers began to address this (must have misread as I did.) They said it is because the rogue is shackled by the idea of "realism" in the game.
This raises further questions. Why are we attempting realism with some classes and not with others? Why aren't less realistic classes given more things to balance them? Why is realism bad? Why can't we give rogues and fighters, most mundane classes, more magical or, at least, more supernatural abilities?
Realism is attempted because a very vocal portion of the community do not like the idea of non magical abilities doing fantastic stuff. They want the rogue and fighter to stay normal so they can play a character that isnt full of magicish abilities. Most of them are openly ok with the rogue's inadequacies as a result, its just a choice. You cant balance a normal guy who is just sneaky and good with knives vs the druid that is loaded down with magical tools and abilities, a wizard who is a magical swiss army knife, or even a paladin that channels divine might through his holy self to lay a smack down. So long as you keep a connection between rules and the game world the concept of a 'normal' guy, isnt going to be spectacular.
I am ok with this, if only the other conversations could stop. The rogue isnt quite as good because we have intentionally left it so. Those people still have the option they like, if you want a more capable rogue, please see the ninja, swashbuckler, investigator and slayer.
As to why the other classes dont have things to 'balance' them, basically the only way to do that is to put harsh drawbacks on their abilities. Thats sort of lame in my opinion. Thats like saying, well one player is playing an nes, the other player is playing an xbox one. So every 20 minutes im going to punch the player playing the xbox in the face to even it out. You arent balancing anything. You are just being a jerk.
If we made the mundane classes more magical, the people that want the normal guy wouldnt have an option anymore. They the backlash over tome of battle for examples. That is exactly this. People didnt want their fighters and rogues to be so 'anime'. If your desire is to do this, go pick up dreamscared press' paths of war. Problem solved.
Do the designers of the game dislike rogues? Do they see them as a class they're obligated to keep because of tradition? The existence of Slayer, Investigator, and, to a lesser extent, Swashbuckler lend credibility to that idea as the fill classic rogue roles better than the rogue does.
They are trying to satisfy as many customers as possible. There are people, many on this board, that like the rogue as it is. It lacks the narrative and situational power of most other classes, but those people dont care. So, let them have it. The rest of us have the ninja, investigator, slayor and swashbuckler. And heck, the unchained book might even give us a class called 'rogue' that those of us that dont mind the rogue doing crazy things can use.
@Bronx - minor quibble here: technically, rogues don't have a 'base stat'. You can build a rogue that doesn't have Dex as it's highest ability score. Heck, when tossing it on monsters, that's advisable since Str works better for hitting AND doing damage in the first place. It just means a humanoid rogue without levels in anything else will have a crap AC initially.
I can attest to his point about poison DCs, they never work unless you invest material, character options, or both at higher levels. My ninja and my alchemist rarely saw poison go off, same with the special bullets I prepared on my black-powder inquisitor. The low chance of success with poisons seems weighed against the potential for the enemy to fail the save repeatedly and end up really drained.
I can also attest to his point about skills. Rogues don't get anything, by default, that makes them better at these avoiding AoOs. Remember, unless you go half your speed max, tumbling suffers a -10 penalty against all enemies you'd provoke from. Subverting this takes an advanced talent, so it's delayed until level 10 at the earliest. Also, you have to roll your tumbling check against all enemies individually, bonuses / rerolls you might get against one enemy don't necessarily apply against the others, even though it's part of the same movement. Since enemies get their BAB, Strength, and size bonuses to CMD, any rogue who hasn't kept Acrobatics maxed and/or is lacking some special bonus with the skill is going to be hard pressed to reliably tumble around the really dangerous enemies the skill is ideally meant to help against. As for hiding, look at them: they don't get anything special for it. Rangers get to hide in plain sight eventually, where's that option for the class that's supposed to epitomize stealth? Ditto with ninjas and their situational bonus on the check. These factors have come up in terms of success / failure on checks with characters / NPCs I've run.
Your second and third points are a little needlessly antagonistic, don't you think?
@Cerberus: the Burglar archetype ability Distraction is actually a very nice power-up to the Rogue's stealth ability. Getting to re-roll lost Stealth checks as opposed Bluff/SM checks is going to save the Rogue's bacon in a lot of situations, first simply because it gives him another shot at the roll, and second because there are many fewer monsters with high Sense Motive bonuses than there are with high Perception bonuses. Sad that this ability is locked up in an otherwise uninteresting archetype, though.
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This is clearly not the case. There are plenty of credibly mundane abilities which already exist in the game that could considerably increase the Rogue's power and flexibility. Why these abilities are spread so thin across the Rogue's traits, hidden behind archetypes, etc...the answer is backwards compatibility. Paizo didn't want to change too much from 3.5 when they made the original Core rules and the Rogue was the red-headed stepson of 3.5. All of the "Rogue replacement" classes that Pathfinder now has have been attempts to address that basic, structural problem.
Actually its a matter of diversity of concept. All the mundane classes (classes without significant supernatural abilities) share one direct problem. They dont have spells or spell like abilities. In this game, spells are an overwhelmingly flexible and potent tool. If you add in 3.5 spells, 3rd party spells, and all the spells paizo has released, theres probably nothing spells cant do. And particularly prepared casters, but even spontaneous, its not a massive investment of a resource to know and use a spell. And you can change it in the future if later you need something else or something better comes along.
Spells are the best 'bang for your buck' because of that flexibility. Want a fire wizard? Pick fire spells. Sure you can take abilities to enhance the concept. But acheiving the basics of the concept is literally no investment of character resources.
Mundane classes on the other hand, dont have that kind of resource. They have class abilities and feats. These are not only far more static and difficult to change, but they are also far more limited. Look at how many spells a wizard has vs how many feats and abilities a fighter gets. Its not comparable. So mundane characters have a much harder time covering a wide range of concepts and tasks.
Consequently, the most effective mundane classes are the most focused conceptually. Paladins, they are divine warriors that can heal a bit and lay a smack down on big bad evil guys. Most of their abilities lend themselves towards these tasks and this concept. Barbarians are big tough raging damage dealers that smash the enemy with brute force. Sure you can customize with rage powers. But you are raging, you are smashing/slicing/hacking. The focus of that concept means the barbarian can turn its limited abilities to making it good at that.
Now the rogue...what does a rogue do? Well he has skills, is sneaky, maybe a face, a con artist, disables traps, can stab a guy in the back...its a VERY divided concept. And it tries to do alot of things at once. Without magic. In the current paradigm where magic is flexible near limitless, and mundane is focused and limited this doesnt work.
By narrowing the concept, slayer, investigator, and swashbuckler, the classes are more effective at their prospective task. By adding sort of magic (ki) the ninja is more effective and flexible.
If you want broad concept mundane classes, you need to change the current paradigm of how non magical class resources function. The maneuver concept from tomb of battle and paths of war is an example. Its not the only one. I am still interested to see what they do in unchained with 'fatigue points'. Supposedly this will give mundane characters the ability to spend a resource to go above and beyond the normal. I guess we will see.
@Cerberus: the Burglar archetype ability Distraction is actually a very nice power-up to the Rogue's stealth ability. Getting to re-roll lost Stealth checks as opposed Bluff/SM checks is going to save the Rogue's bacon in a lot of situations, first simply because it gives him another shot at the roll, and second because there are many fewer monsters with high Sense Motive bonuses than there are with high Perception bonuses. Sad that this ability is locked up in an otherwise uninteresting archetype, though.
Eh, it's all right. The fact that it doesn't work if the Perception check they made against the rogue is a visual one really takes away a lot of its potential handiness, though.
I think the rogue may be the only non-caster PF class that doesn't have a +1/ level base attack bonus. Monk flurry I think is the equivalent of full attack bonus plus two-weapon fighting.
Non-casters: Barbarian, Brawler, Cavalier, Fighter, Gunslinger, Slayer, Swashbuckler, Monk (flurry), Rogue
Eh, it's all right. The fact that it doesn't work if the Perception check they made against the rogue is a visual one really takes away a lot of its potential handiness, though.@Cerberus: the Burglar archetype ability Distraction is actually a very nice power-up to the Rogue's stealth ability. Getting to re-roll lost Stealth checks as opposed Bluff/SM checks is going to save the Rogue's bacon in a lot of situations, first simply because it gives him another shot at the roll, and second because there are many fewer monsters with high Sense Motive bonuses than there are with high Perception bonuses. Sad that this ability is locked up in an otherwise uninteresting archetype, though.
Yeah, I guess it helps that I hand-wave that aspect of the ability away. In a system which no longer distinguishes between Hide and Move Silently, I don't see why the Rogue's use of this one ability should be specifically limited in that way.
Tradition / 3.5 backwards compatibility.Didn't stop them from giving the Barbarian and Sorcerer tons of shiny new toys. Or the Duskblade. Or Favored Soul.
Not a magic class, their abilities are either constant but weak or 1/day any merely decent because 'balance'.Probably likely. Unlimited resources are notoriously overvalued... but even their limited resources tend to be terrible, which is strange.
Terror over somehow getting off lots of sneak attack dice.
But... even if you can gets off lots of sneak attack dice you're still not going to be consistently outdamaging your competition. Is it just the number of d6s you get to roll that scares people? Because honestly if I could get sneak attack for free on every attack you're still not going to win DPR contests.
Now I'm not trying to pick apart your argument... I just notice that basically every argument as to why the Rogue is in the state it's in... doesn't apply to any other class.
Yeah, rogues are kinda unique like that. At least monks did away with all the once/day abilities (okay, MOST of them) and a lot of their stuff got amped in effectiveness or versatility. And for all the rage about calling them undervalued, a fighter is made a pretty decent combatant due to weapon and armor training. Rogues just kinda sit in this unique nexus defined by a confluence of restrictive or ill-conceived game design factors, like the center of a 3-part 'Do Not Want' Venn diagram.
@Bronx -
Your second and third points are a little needlessly...
Yeah I thought about it a bit after I hit "post" and deleted the original.
Your other points are well thought out though.