RE: Flanking problems, I'm reminded of the Shadow Hand Stance from the Book of 9 Swords that allowed you to pick your flanking square. I.e. it could be the man fighting right next to you.
Sure solved a lot of flanking problems for sneak attack.
Subzero, note that you can take 10 on Performance Checks. Once your bonus is at +10, you've got 100% success. Did they specifically rule out taking 10?
==Aelryinth
dont you need skill mastery to tkae 10 on a skill in combat (or when otherwise harried)?
My favorite is the ambush/fear build if you're going straight combat:
Sap Adept, Sap Master
Dazzling Display, Weapon Focus (sap), Shatter Defense
Two-Weapon Fighting, Improved Two-Weapon Fighting
Thug/Bandit Archetypes
Optional: Weapon finesse or Intimidating Prowess, depending on Str and Dex preference.
As many sneak-attack altering rogue talents as you want from then on.
Weapon: saps, with a rapier and dagger as a backup.
Preferred Tactics:
Susceptible to non-lethal, ambush:
Get them in the surprise round, making a full-attack with the Bandit archetype, using saps. You deal double sneak attack, which, if combined with the underhanded talent, are all maximized. If you hit with 4 attacks, you deal 560 non-lethal damage (counting the bonus from sap-adept) with just the sneak attack.
Susceptible to non-lethal, non-ambush:
get them shaken with dazzling display, then every hit after the first makes them flat-footed, which combined with sap master, means your saps will deal double sneak attack damage with each hit.
If they're immune to non-lethal: Switch to the rapier and try to score a critical hit (bandit ability).
If they're immune fear: Use a wand of grease. Even if they make their saves, they are considered flat-footed to you, thus susceptible to sap master.
If they're immune to non-lethal and fear You're kind of in trouble, but the grease and your two-weapon fighting still can give you some powerful options.
Alternately, I prefer teamwork builds: Make a knifemaster rogue with ranged feats as well as close feats, then get a teammate to drop grease spells, or a vital-strike fighter with greater feint. Either way, you can make sneak attacks in melee or at range with d8 sneak attacks against the target once they are feinted or greased.
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And another member of the circle jerk crying for censorship.If you don't like it, change the parameters of the thread to include as much or move the thread to home brews because this is no longer advice on the current game.Take a break dude
Everyone tells you they aren't here to talk about the ninja.
You are arguing that they do want to talk about the ninja. But instead of making points, you are focusing on word technicalities in OPs starting post. This would hold merit if OP didn't explicitly tell you that he doesn't want to talk about the ninja. Your making a RAW argument about what people want to talk about, even after they word-of-God tell you the RAI of this thread. You might as well have an argument with Jason about what he meant by one of his post. You'll say he meant X. He tells you he meant Y. You keep quoting the original post in question saying "no you really meant X". Then he gives you and odd look and slowly say "No I meant Y". Then in a fit of rage you foam at the mouth and shout "YOU MEANT X!!!! CENSORSHIP! CIRCLE JERK!"
No, it's not.Well that is never going to happen, because that home brewed class is ridiculously over powered and horribly thought out.I think the main problem with the Rogue class is that too many people have played too many MMOs or other RPG's where Rogues are on of the top damage classes.Actually, what I want from the rogue is to be able to consistently contribute to combat without acting like an idiot or pumping strength. Something like thisYes, it is.
1. According to the rules on the different sneak attack, you can not crit the attack. Why? You should be able to critical the weapon attack, just not the extra damage from the double damage part.
2. Also on the sneak attack, it does not even say you get the damage while flanking.
3. Also the sneak attack does not add a stat to the damage. it is just double weapon damage but no stat.
4. Opportunist: Possibly the second biggest problem with the class. It gives you an attack of opportunity any time your flanking partner hits. Yeah, that is not overpowered or anything. But wait, it also lets you threaten within the first range increment with ranged weapons, but wait, it also gives you combat reflexes... Yeah that is all balanced.
5. Poison use moved to normal talent is minor but still a flat increase.
6.A Precise attack: so it gives you Dervish dance effects but no negatives like having a free hand, or even a restriction on weapon beyond slashing or piercing, Also, it can turn the dex damage into into bleed damage of your level, bleed damage that ignores damage reduction. It also does not list whether this bleed damage stacks with itself or not. I would assume not or the next part is ever more over powered.
6.B Precise Strike:
Hampering Strike: trades damage for movement reduction at 1 damage for...
1. Original sneak attack damage doesn't crit anyways. I don't understand your complaint.
2. True. It's not something you are suppose to do often.
3. Also doubles the damage from precise strikes (although not the bleed damage)
4. It's situational.
5. Poison use should have never been an advance talent
6.A Bleed damage functions as per bleed rules and scales with level not dex mod. Dex mod limits the precision damage.
6.B
Hampering strike: It doesn't stack with itself, so it is quite difficult to make someone fall down. It's also easily removed.
Greater Precision: You still do crap damage compared to a fighter. Normally not an ideal thing to use
Targeted Poison: Grab this and you can actually use poisons after level 10!
Blinding Strike: On a failed save.
Deafening strike: On a failed save.
Sickening, Stunning, Nauseating, Staggering and Dazing: Not free. They spend class features to get these and trade bleed damage for it.
Improved or Greater Sneak Attack: After which they quaff one potions of CLW and get right back up.
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The OP said he didn't want to talk about the ninja because "it's not a rogue". However, the ninja is a rogue as stated by the developers. So the OP started with a faulty premise. If you're going to rule out the ninja, why not rule out the scout, the thug, and whatever the half-orc racial archetype is that I can never remember the name of?And another member of the circle jerk crying for censorship.If you don't like it, change the parameters of the thread to include as much or move the thread to home brews because this is no longer advice on the current game.Take a break dudeEveryone tells you they aren't here to talk about the ninja.
You are arguing that they do want to talk about the ninja. But instead of making points, you are focusing on word technicalities in OPs starting post. This would hold merit if OP didn't explicitly tell you that he doesn't want to talk about the ninja. Your making a RAW argument about what people want to talk about, even after they word-of-God tell you the RAI of this thread. You might as well have an argument with Jason about what he meant by one of his post. You'll say he meant X. He tells you he meant Y. You keep quoting the original post in question saying "no you really meant X". Then he gives you and odd look and slowly say "No I meant Y". Then in a fit of rage you foam at the mouth and shout "YOU MEANT X!!!! CENSORSHIP! CIRCLE JERK!"
A ninja isn't a rogue, it's a ninja. Also, note that the developer said the ninja is an expanded archetype, not an archtype. there's a difference.
Besides, who cares if the OP is technically incorrect, you know the intent, that should be enough. Seriously, this is old, and not in line with the purpose of this thread.
This thread isn't about home brew. OP made this abundantly clear in his first post. Please do not suggest home brew.
Says the guy who won't stop talking about the ninja.
Please find someone else to argue with because you're clueless and wasting everyone's time.
Back at you bro.
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Yet here's everyone in the circlejerk repeatedly bashing me for posting a quote to validate someone else's stance on the ninja. Where was I fighting for the ninja again? Why not look at the posts I've made and see what I've been arguing instead of joining the bandwagon.
If you don't like it, change the parameters of the thread to include as much or move the thread to home brews because this is no longer advice on the current game.
2. Average guard with fighter levels? Bodyguard maybe - most guards I've used in game were warriors. If you're going in the no npc class direction, then that's a different situation entirely.Warriors also have d10 hit dice. They have a weaker stat array so probably 12 con instead of 14. By the NPC wealth table a level 3 warrior should have 200 gold worth of defenses. As such they should have 17, 18, or 20 flat footed AC (splint mail or chain and a heavy shield or chain and a tower shield) With a bit of allotment shifting (since the only way to exactly fill the weapon budget is either to pad with spears or use a masterwork greatsword) they can get 19 or 21 AC (splint with a heavy or tower shield). It's fair to say getting relatively high flat footed AC is not going to be a problem even without PC class levels.
A 3rd level warrior with 12 con has 19 HP. His example rogue appears to be using a +1 rapier with 14 strength. Average non-crit damage is 6.5+3.5 per SA die. To reliably infiltrate you need to be able to kill or concuss the majority of the guards before any can sound the alarm. At level 7 with a +2 rapier you can probably get pretty close to a 50% silent kill rate against NPCs 4 levels below you, but Altair you ain't.
were not playing assassins creed though. If you're aim is to turn this into a video game that might be the crux of the psuedo problem.
If you were recruiting a company to reclaim the stolen lands or Kelmarane or loot some random Osirioni tomb or whatever and you had access to a wide variety of potential PCs why would you choose the rogue?
Case 1. There is a summoning focused wizard in the group who likes making wands, but doesn't like spending actions to use them. In such a group, the rogue would either be sneak attacking or casting spells via wand.
Case 2. Said rogue has a stylish hat, high charisma, and wields both a pistol and a whip.
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SO! rogue builds! let's get back to those, instead of going back and forth with this.
I'd hate to see a mod close this because we're getting too argumentative or off-topic.
so far off the top of my head i've seen in this thread:
a very large and wonderful list of ways to increase a rogues attack bonus, folks finding more ways to get around the (frankly kinda dumb) sneak attack limitations, such as flat-footed via fear/shatter defenses, feinting, using things like a wand of tiny hut, fog/blur/etc with twilight stalker feats, or even just plain old stealth (with the aid of HiPS).
people broght up ways to bypass concealment via the headband of ninjutsu, shadow strike feat, and more.
we've got a very productive thread here, and i'm sure it can continue to be so.
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Contributing!
One option to enable flanking without placing your own hide at risk is the use of minions. Whether that happens through scrolls of summon or a familiar. However, the animal archive introduced the feat chain to allow any character to aquifer an animal companion as a ranger (hd -3).
So the build
Human rogue 5
Eye for talent alternate race feature (+2 intelligence to companion from the get go)
Str 8
Dex 16+ 2 racial + 2 levels = 20
Con 14
Int 12
Wiz 13
Cha 11
Feats
Green adept (or some such
Finesse rogue- weapon finesse
Lvl 4- companion feat
Lvl 5- boon companion
Lvl 3- improved flanking teamwork feat (to be taken by animal as well)
Other feats as you like
Reliably set up flanking with animal companion to enable sneak attack, with additonal damage from animal companion. Add a wolf companion and take the combined tripping teamwork feat and combat reflexes to enable further attacks with sneak attack each round, triggering when the opponent is tripped by the wolf.
This is a (relatively) low cost way to enable sneak attack, get a solid combat companion to help your dpr, and potential aid in some skills (tracking for instance)
It should be said though that an animal domain inquisitor can do the same, but gets the teamwork feats for free, doesn't need to spend the feats on getting the companion in the first place. And gets spells. And bonuses to skills by default. And gets more bonuses to hit. And damage. Sigh, rogues need help.
were not playing assassins creed though. If you're aim is to turn this into a video game that might be the crux of the psuedo problem.First off, please pay more attention to your use of homonyms. Your grammar is distracting.
Second, every functional stealth game that has combat at all has a reliable one hit KO mechanic. This is because such a mechanic is necessary for stealth to be preserved while actively reducing the number of observers.
D&D rogues should be able to do it. It's a literary trope that predates the computer and it's what backstab was supposed to do in the original game. With the much lower HP totals and greater use of low HD monster of OD&D and AD&D it may have even worked. It demonstrably doesn't work now.
my phone has a funny idea of how your you're and yours works.
Backstabbing never worked in my experience without a lot of help from the dm. But that's just my experience.
Contributing!
One option to enable flanking without placing your own hide at risk is the use of minions. Whether that happens through scrolls of summon or a familiar. However, the animal archive introduced the feat chain to allow any character to aquifer an animal companion as a ranger (hd -3).
So the build
Human rogue 5
Eye for talent alternate race feature (+2 intelligence to companion from the get go)Str 8
Dex 16+ 2 racial + 2 levels = 20
Con 14
Int 12
Wiz 13
Cha 11Feats
Green adept (or some such
Finesse rogue- weapon finesse
Lvl 4- companion feat
Lvl 5- boon companion
Lvl 3- improved flanking teamwork feat (to be taken by animal as well)Other feats as you like
Reliably set up flanking with animal companion to enable sneak attack, with additonal damage from animal companion. Add a wolf companion and take the combined tripping teamwork feat and combat reflexes to enable further attacks with sneak attack each round, triggering when the opponent is tripped by the wolf.
This is a (relatively) low cost way to enable sneak attack, get a solid combat companion to help your dpr, and potential aid in some skills (tracking for instance)
It should be said though that an animal domain inquisitor can do the same, but gets the teamwork feats for free, doesn't need to spend the feats on getting the companion in the first place. And gets spells. And bonuses to skills by default. And gets more bonuses to hit. And damage. Sigh, rogues need help.
oh! you mean nature soul and animal ally (pair of feats form faiths and philosophies). strap on boon companion and you do have an always on-call flanking buddy (particularly with the outflank feat between the two of you), that you dont have to trouble your team tactics-wise to get.
i could see the draw of it. if you go with a wolk for tripping/greater trip you can join in on the fun, since the enemy is provoking AoOs from you (sneak attack or no, you're still getting hits off at your full attack bonus, which is nice). works well with the opportunist advanced talent too.
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1300 posts and no designed-by-committee criticsm-proof Rogue class that puts everything else to shame? Gentlemen and Ladies, I ar disappoint.
Now, now, no need to bag everyone's efforts here.
But yes it is sad.
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The Dashing Archer:
(forgive my bi-polarness on performance from earlier, I found a way to make it work, btw: thanks Aelryinth I hadn't thought about taking 10)
What does the rogue have that other classes miss out on.
- sneak attack (uncommon anyway)
- rogues talents grant 3 bonus combat feats (combat trick, ninja trick (combat trick), weapon focus) this is more then the ninja/alchemist/bard who could also use this build for sneak attack later
- that's about it for combat
What this build can does well:
- reliable iterative attacks that deal sneak attack at level 7+
- better to-hit then the typical rogue
- more reliable damage (+3 to attack and damage via weapon training)
- feels roguish (performance feats make for a dramatic acting rogue)
What this build needs help with/ weaknesses:
- creatures immune to sneak attack (like most rogues)
- creatures immune to demoralization (the primary means of getting sneak attack)
- pretty much requires that you have a circlet of persuasion (not a fan of having to have a particular item to make a build work
- 3 levels of fighter take away from the rogue a bit (but it is really worth it for the +3 attack/damage, fort save, bonus feats)
- until you have a +10 bonus on performance roll the bonuses are unreliable
thug rogue 10/weapon master fighter 3 (fighter taken for levels 1,2,7)
stat
str-14
dex-18 (after racial)
con- 12
wis- 12
int- 7
char- 14
feats:
1. point blank shot, precise shot, dazzling display
2. dramatic display
3. performing combatant
4. rapid shot
5. heroes display
6. performance mastery
7. shatter defenses
8.
9. weapon focus, improved precise shot
10.
11. snipers eye, many shot
12.
13. iron will, crippling strike
Tactics:
levels 1-3
your basically a bow wielder who during the surprise round will get sneak attack. I took dramatic display first since, the swift action demoralize isn't relevant until shatter defenses is online at level 7, and a sporadic +2 attack is always welcome.
level 4-6
things are starting to feel more roguish. The moment you grab the circlet of persuasion you auto get the performance feats off, and with performance mastery you get a swift action intimidate followed by a +2 attack (later you can grab the +1d6 damage to use when needed). Sneak attacks aren't super reliable, but with rapid shot you can still contribute in a meaningful way.
level 7
this is when the build comes online fully. First, you get weapon training, which when paired with gloves of dueling gives you a +3 attack/damage bonus. Second, shatter defenses works now.
This means in a surprise round you can make a performance check to demoralize a foe (swift action) followed by an attack that will deal sneak attack damage. Essentially this is the dashing archer part of the build, using your charisma to denounce how your foe is about to succumb to an untimely demise, followed by SNEAK ATTACK. Since the intimidate will last a minimum of 2 rounds you can use dramatic display the following round to negate the rapid shot penalty.
7+
Everything from here is gravy. Manyshot is still a good feat, and improved precise shot is important. Snipers eye will help ensure you always get sneak attack against concealment. Crippling shot combined with ranged attacks seem thematically appropriate as the rogue whittles away at an opponents strength.
Of course all of this is based on the premise that you can take 10 on the performance check. If not, the build is not nearly as reliable, and you'd need to lose a feat to grab performance weapon mastery, and dump strength to pull up charisma. All of this really hurts the build in a sad sad way.
Attack at level 9:
Attack: +3 (weapon training, assuming gloves of dueling)+ 8 (bab) + 6 (dex, assuming level 4,8 go to dex, +2 belt) + 1 (point blank) + 1 (weapon focus)+ 2 (dramatic display) -2 (rapid shot) + 1 (bracers of the falcon) + 3 (enchant bonus)= 23/23/18
damage: 1d8 (base) +2 (strength) + 1 (point blank shot) + 3 (weapon training) + 3 (enchant) + 3d6 (sneak attack)= 24 average per hit
Attack at level 12 (max pfs level, i think)
Attack: +3 (weapon training, assuming gloves of dueling)+ 9 (bab) + 7 (dex, assuming level 4,8 go to dex, and +4 belt) + 1 (point blank) + 1 (weapon focus)+ 2 (dramatic display) -2 (rapid shot) + 2 (bracers of archery) + 4 (enchant bonus)= 27/27/22
damage: 1d8 (base) +2 (strength) + 1 (point blank shot) + 3 (weapon training) + 3 (enchant) + 5d6 (sneak attack)= 31 average per hit
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1300 posts and no designed-by-committee criticism-proof Rogue class that puts everything else to shame? Gentlemen and Ladies, I ar disappoint.
If it makes you feel any better this thread was never about making a new version of the rogue class, but rather making selective use of options already out there. Many interesting builds have been posted so far.
If you are looking for a revised version of the rogue class, here it is:
link
I don't think it was a committee design, but I suspect it has been playtested.
Can we possibly see a build that works for combat, but doesn't involve making the rogue a meat-head? I like keeping my skill points, thank you very much.
Hahaha teamwork feats. Sorry, as great as my group is none of them are willing to spend feats to help my class be less gimped.
Only the inquisitor and NPCs ever take teamwork feats in my group.