People pointed out how silly it is to say "Rogues aren't underpowered, they're just as good as another under-powered class!"
So whatever happened to the fighter-rogue comparison thing anyway?
well that, and the fact that comparing a full BAB class that does its one thing well (they can beat the snot outta people), isn't really comparable to a 3/4 BAB class that can't even do its one thing well (unless you min/max to the extreme in which case there are some weird builds that do work ok, but no longer fit the original theme of the class).
The fighters underpowered, but still functions efficiently at his job, the issue they typicall suffer is that outside of combat there is very little they can do.
The rogue on the other hand is expected to excell outside of combat, and contribute meaningfully in combat. While this can sometimes be achieved, it's weaker then other classes that have the same role.
Let´s compare builds. Someone post a build and i will try post a rogue build with equivalent power.
Let´s compare builds. Someone post a build and i will try post a rogue build with equivalent power.
what level? class? with or without magic items? role of the character? point buy? etc.
Let´s compare builds. Someone post a build and i will try post a rogue build with equivalent power.what level? class? with or without magic items? role of the character? point buy? etc.
What you want, i will only follow your build with my rogue build.
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The problem with comparing builds is that it rapidly becomes an exercise in build optimization instead of focusing on the class features. That said, if you really want to go through with it, Scavion posted a vivisectionist alchemist here.
The problem with comparing builds is that it rapidly becomes an exercise in build optimization instead of focusing on the class features. That said, if you really want to go through with it, Scavion posted a vivisectionist alchemist here.
There are a few errors in my build, ill post an updated one later. Quick changes are:
112 Skill Points
Added Mindchemist(Why not eh?)
Doesn't have 4th level extracts yet, remove Greater Invisibility bonuses. Still acquires it next level however.
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Oh, and that recently jazzed up Trap Spotter talent, used in the Rogue's defense, is available in a spell.
No caster would have spotted a trap before hand can cast the spell so he can spot it though. It's metagaming...
No caster would have spotted a trap before hand can cast the spell so he can spot it though. It's metagaming...
Sort of. You can look down a hallway and say "There's probably a trap here..." while staring down the pulverized burnt bodies. That's part of the fun of traps is when you find hints, or at least I thought so. Similarly, you can cast it before hand. You can also use detect magic to find magical stuffs, and perception itself can still find traps. The biggest loss of not having trapfinding and dealing with traps is the loss of disabling the magical ones, but you can also find alternative means of doing so(which can be fun too. I love using an army of chickens to conquer a dungeon! Or you know, Aram Zay's focus.)
No caster would have spotted a trap before hand can cast the spell so he can spot it though. It's metagaming...
It's minute per level... how many dungeons actually take you more then 200 rounds to get through?
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No caster would have spotted a trap before hand can cast the spell so he can spot it though. It's metagaming...It's minute per level... how many dungeons actually take you more then 200 rounds to get through?
Some of us are civilized enough to pause for tea in the middle of a dungeon run.
Taking 20 on perception checks takes awhile.
Would rogues still pale in comparison if you gestated them with the fighter class?
Would rogues still pale in comparison if you gestated them with the fighter class?
Seems pretty crazy good to me. With an Intimidate Shatter Defenses build and full Sneak attack at full bab and weapon training he'd top DPR charts heh.
Also skills on the fighter make folks go squeeeeeeee.
Taking 20 on perception checks takes awhile.
Have you considered just taking 10?
Taking 20 only takes 2 minutes, and if the trap is far off just add in the penalty for distance. Move forward 100(or whatever you like) feet, and do it again.
That 10 point difference can miss a lot of things.
For example it can cause you to miss an eye, an arm, perhaps a vital organ or three.
I think just investing in skills is not enough to grant more abilities. Everyone invest in skills, particulary wizards, it woudl not be a fix to rogues if it increase the power of everyone. BEsides with just ranks there is no diference between a paladin with 8 ranks in acrobatics that have dex 10 and a stone full plate and the dex 20 rogue with skill focus (acrobatics) and elven boots.
Of course there is people that do not care about rogues and prefer to improve skills, to each their own.
What about creating new actions available for skills, all with high DC ? (as the 3.0 epic level handbook did in its time)
That would increase the value of high skill modifiers, and allow skill-based characters to stay useful from level 1 to 20.Reviewing the whole skill system would certainly be better though.
I know the difference between taking 10 and a 20 on my Stealth check was important for my rogue getting sneak attack last game.
Conversely the difference between taking 10 and a 1 on your Stealth check can also be quite important for a rogue getting a sneak attack.
The drawback of Taking 10 is that you're not doing the best that you could do. The benefit of Taking 10 is you're not doing the worst either.
A person specializing in a skill should be better off taking 10 for an opposed roll (assuming the rare case of the roll not counting as immediate danger)because they have a higher modifier, and beating the opponent by a lot is only as good as beating them by a hair's breadth.
If you have say, +5 more in a skill than the person making the opposed roll then rolling any higher than a 15 is superflous: you dropped the odds of them beating your roll to zero already.
I am not the biggest fan of Rogue...
That being said I have a build I wanna try.
Fighter4/Knife Master Rogue3/Assassin3/Master Spy10
It's for a serial killer PC idea I have. I think it would be decent enough in combat and able to avoid detection.
Not really on-topic but I felt I would share it in here.
People pointed out how silly it is to say "Rogues aren't underpowered, they're just as good as another underpowered class!"
So whatever happened to the fighter-rogue comparison thing anyway?
I don't think the rogue is as good a fighter. Rogue talents are equivalent to 1/2 a feat unless you pick the ones that are actually feats. They trade defense for skills by losing heavy armor and medium armor proficiency and lose evasion if they wear medium or heavy armor but the ranger can use evasion in medium armor. Trap Sense is equivalent to Bravery, you might disagree until the rogue is frozen by fear. Weapon Training and Figher feats are better than Sneak attack. Sneak attack is good but if you can't hit or set up situation to use it I'd rather +5 to hit and +8 damage that is multiplied on critical. Evasion and uncanny dodge are equivalent to armor training and mastery. Trap finding for 3/4 BAB seems getting the short end of the stick. Then add in less weapon proficiencies.
The fighter squeaks out ahead by a bit.
Now compare the Ranger to the Rogue and the ranger even has couple archetype giving trap finding.
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@Voska - I do a little bit of a different comparison and more analysis in the original post. Check it out and let me know what you think.
Also, given that all four basic rogue talents can be traded in for feats and at least 6 advanced rogue talents are as good or better than feats, I have a tough time placing them at 1/2 feat value.
You can gestalt rogue with fighter and they would still be underpowered compared to bards and alchemist.
I didn't read every post, so maybe it has already been said, but I think a lot of people are missing the point of the rogue a bit.
There are several ways to compare the relative power of classes. Someone pointed out, rightly, that rogues are mathematically lacking compared to fighters in terms of damage, to bards in terms of skills, and to alchemists/rangers/inquisitors in terms of blending the two. All that is true, however...
There is one narrow situation and one situation only where you really truly absolutely need a rogue. It is the situation they are built to deal with, and in theory it shouldn't be so uncommon, but the problem is it basically never arises because of the nature of the game and the way most GMs run it.
Rogues excel when you need to stealthily infiltrate a place that is prepared for magic use and that has a combination of traps, locks and mook guards. In other words, they need to do James Bond/Alias stuff. Go to the socialite party being held in the dictator's palace, slip away, quietly kill a few guards, get past the traps and locks, steal the McGuffin, smuggle it to your peeps waiting outside, return to the party like nothing happened. That sort of thing.
In theory, this should be lots and lots of places. But these situations never arise. Why? Because we are not playing Shadowrun. A game focused on this kind of meticulous infiltration would probably be much more "realistic" (given that you have suspended your disbelief to the point of accepting a world where only slightly trained people can do things like turn into other people, turn invisible and control your mind), but then the game would be all about that stuff. You'd be playing fantasy Shadowrun, and everyone would have to be on board.
This is an awesome idea in many ways, but for anyone deeply steeped in the conventions and traditions of d20 play, it makes their head explode. For one thing, the notion of balanced encounter levels more or less goes out the window in this kind of play. Like in Shadowrun, most encounters have to be explicitly too powerful for the party, thereby forcing them to do the Jack Ryan Shadow Recruit antics which are the bread and butter of the genre. Thus, the big DPRing but non-versatile fighter is useless. He may as well sit in the car (which is what those types of characters end up doing in Shadowrun).
This is the Rogue's dilemma. They are the deckers of Pathfinder. If you create situations for them to really do their thing, everyone else has to wait in the car while they do it. And if you don't create those situations (as most scenarios/DMs don't) they seem useless.
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I didn't read every post
Maybe you should, though. Your points have already been addressed.
And all those sneaky situations where you say Rogues supposedly excel? Yeah, Rangers, Bards, Inquisitors and often Alchemists do it better.
Rogues excel when you need to stealthily infiltrate a place that is prepared for magic use and that has a combination of traps, locks and mook guards.
So do bards... Yet they remain useful in other situations. They also don't need a flank buddy or to build themselves around sneak attack in order to get their one inherent combat bonus. Which is sort of what people are getting at. It would be more understandable if rogue excelled at jobs you don't need that much, but he even falls behind in a number of those.
Edit: Ninja'd...
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No no you see rogues are the only class that can use stealth nobody else is allowed to do that!
Ninja is just a better rogue. Rogues have 3 things that the ninja doesn't have or needs investment to get: trap sense, trap finding, and evasion.
Ninjas have unlimited access to both normal and advance rogue talent, while rogues can only get normal ninja tricks.
Just to expand a little bit on what I wrote above, in anticipation of complaints to come...
The reason the rogue is the only one that can handle the aforementioned type of situation is that the rogue is the only one that can do all of those things, at the same time, quietly.
A Wizard's spellcasting is explicitly loud, and anyway spells are hard to juggle in these kinds of evolving situations where you might need to say, find some traps, then go back to the party (or whatever) and then later find some traps again, etc. Same goes for Bard.
And even if you can make the casting work to substitute for all the Rogue's skills, you still have a hard time taking the mooks out quietly, consistently, before they can sound the alarm, which has to be seen ultimately as the true purpose of Sneak Attack.
Even the vivisectionist (which has, btw, been made illegal in Society play and is therefore a questionable archetype in the first place) will have problems replicating the breadth of the Rogue's skill set (that is to say, managing to juggle the infiltration and physical and social skill suites at the same time, all of which is essential to conventional James Bond/Alias play).
EDIT: Lol, ninja'd. The complaints came faster than I could write the post. And as for the actual ninja class, sure, I guess you can say it's a better Rogue. I pretty much view it as a Rogue archetype anyway (though there are a handful of nifty builds that actually require Rogue over Ninja, but that's beside the point).
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Same goes for Bard.
Ahh man, too bad without spells they can't access their skill list or anything.
Just to expand a little bit on what I wrote above, in anticipation of complaints to come...
The reason the rogue is the only one that can handle the aforementioned type of situation is that the rogue is the only one that can do all of those things, at the same time, quietly.
A Wizard's spellcasting is explicitly loud, and anyway spells are hard to juggle in these kinds of evolving situations where you might need to say, find some traps, then go back to the party (or whatever) and then later find some traps again, etc. Same goes for Bard.
And even if you can make the casting work to substitute for all the Rogue's skills, you still have a hard time taking the mooks out quietly, consistently, before they can sound the alarm, which has to be seen ultimately as the true purpose of Sneak Attack.
Even the vivisectionist (which has, btw, been made illegal in Society play and is therefore a questionable archetype in the first place) will have problems replicating the breadth of the Rogue's skill set (that is to say, managing to juggle the infiltration and physical and social skill suites at the same time, all of which is essential to conventional James Bond/Alias play).
Actually the bard does what you are wanting better than a rogue, all at the same time.
Also Ninja would be hands down better here.
I didn't read every postMaybe you should, though. Your points have already been addressed.
And all those sneaky situations where you say Rogues supposedly excel? Yeah, Rangers, Bards, Inquisitors and often Alchemists do it better.
Nope. Read my follow up post.
Same goes for Bard.Ahh man, too bad without spells they can't access their skill list or anything.
Read the rest of my post regarding mook dispatching/Sneak Attack.
which has, btw, been made illegal in Society play and is therefore a questionable archetype in the first place
PFS AM GOD! AM WORSHIP!
Fun fact, it was banned because people were using it as an excuse to actually perform vivisection. Or at least that's the reason we were given.
Nope. Read my follow up post.I didn't read every postMaybe you should, though. Your points have already been addressed.
And all those sneaky situations where you say Rogues supposedly excel? Yeah, Rangers, Bards, Inquisitors and often Alchemists do it better.
I'll give that most Alchemist builds will be poor on the social skills, but both bards and ninjas would still do everything you are asking for better than the rogue.
Actually the bard does what you are wanting better than a rogue, all at the same time.Also Ninja would be hands down better here.
1. The bard does not do it better because they have no reliable method of consistent, quiet mook dispatching.
2. Read my edit regarding the ninja issue. I am regarding ninja and Rogue as basically the same class. Ninja should have been an archetype in the first place.
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The reason the rogue is the only one that can handle the aforementioned type of situation is that the rogue is the only one that can do all of those things, at the same time, quietly.
No, he isn't. Bards, Alchemists, Rangers and Inquisitors can do it all too.
And even if you can make the casting work to substitute for all the Rogue's skills, you still have a hard time taking the mooks out quietly, consistently, before they can sound the alarm, which has to be seen ultimately as the true purpose of Sneak Attack.
If you have to deal damage, though... Sneak Attack is not the most effective way. Simply Power Attacking with a full BAB class can be just as good. If the enemy can be taken down with a single SA, ti's not much of a threat... If a full attack is necessary, then the other classes do it better most of the time.
BTW, Trap Finding as boring as it is, is now a trait away... So Rogues don't even have that going for them anymore.
Even the vivisectionist (which has, btw, been made illegal in Society play and is therefore a questionable archetype in the first place)
I strongly disagree with the notion that PFS-illegal material is "questionable". I don't see how PFS is any more valid than any other set of house rules.
which has, btw, been made illegal in Society play and is therefore a questionable archetype in the first placePFS AM GOD! AM WORSHIP!
Fun fact, it was banned because people were using it as an excuse to actually perform vivisection. Or at least that's the reason we were given.
Merely for the convenience of making balance issues just slightly easier, many people start with what's allowable in PFS and go from there, so you may mock this attitude, but you are probably going to run into it. You may as well take it into consideration.
And even if you disregard it, you still have the other issues I raised to deal with.
Actually the bard does what you are wanting better than a rogue, all at the same time.Also Ninja would be hands down better here.
1. The bard does not do it better because they have no reliable method of consistent, quiet mook dispatching.
2. Read my edit regarding the ninja issue. I am regarding ninja and Rogue as basically the same class. Ninja should have been an archetype in the first place.
1. Neither does the rogue... The bard can atleast cast greater invisibility and silence on himself. If all else fails the bard still hits harder than the rogue
2. They are not the same class. Ninja is to rogue what fighter is to warrior.
I strongly disagree with the notion that PFS-illegal material is "questionable". I don't see how PFS is any more valid than any other set of house rules.
Yarr, its far from the paragon of houserules too. There's quiet a bit of awkwardness and the reason why things are banned aren't always related to balance or even given. All things related to drinking blood are banned for instance, even blood transcription.