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Hello fellow gamers!
With the recent growth in "rogue's suck" threads, I thought it might be a good time to post some of my personal homebrewed rogue "fixes", to keep them mathematically on-par with their flavor in and out-of combat.
*For example, a rogue could select Disable Device, Acrobatics, and Stealth, and then decide to use her Disable Device roll any time she must make an Acrobatics or Stealth roll.
Master of Skills: At level 10, a rogue may take 10 on any skill even if the skill would normally disallow you to take 10 [such as Use Magic Device], or if the she is distracted or endangered. In addition, at 15th level, she may select a number of skills equal to 3+her dexterity modifier and take 20 on them a number of times per day equal 1/3 of her class level.
Finesse Trick: A rogue with this talent gains Weapon Finesse as a bonus feat. In addition, she may apply 1/2 her dexterity bonus to damage with melee attacks in place of strength. At level 5, this improves to adding her full dexterity bonus to damage. This bonus damage is still halved on off-hand attacks.
Strongman: A rogue with this talent may use her Strength in place of her Dexterity modifier when determining the number of skills she may take 20 on using the Master of Skills class feature. Alternatively, a rogue may decide to use her Dexterity score in place of her Strength score for the purpose of meeting the prerequisites to any feats that have a requirement of a Strength score of at least 13.
Shady Weapon: A rogue with this talent may make a slight of hand check each round to hide her weapon in a nearby shadow. If she succeeds, her opponent is considered flat-footed for her next attack. The DC for this check is equal to the DC to feint her opponent. Making this check is a free action that may be performed once per round, and the benefits apply only against one opponent. A rogue must have the Hide in Shadows rogue talent to select this rogue talent.
Seems like an OK start, IMO. Though I think it misses the three major issues rogues have in higher levels:
1 Skills don't matter enough. Regardless of how superior the rogue may be at them, the relative impact skills have on the game typically decreases in favor of magic the higher up the levels you get. Or to put it in other words: spells tend to bypass the need for skills. Hence why UMD is often the sole skill whose value increases rather than decreases (and still a sad crutch if it's supposed to make up for a lack of effective class features IMO).
2 Precision damage immunity. The rogue needs to remain as viable a damage dealer when facing CR 20 opponents as she was when facing CR 1 opponents.
3 Lack of flexibility and action economy allowing the rogue to get as much use out of their combat potential at level 20 as the rogue got at level 1. All non-caster classes have this problem (in comparison to half or full casters).
#1 can be a tough nut to crack without several major changes to the system as a whole, but #2 and 3 should be somewhat easier to address with a higher level ability that allows for at least partial bypassing of SA immunity and some action economy boosters such as pounce.
Personally, I also think a ranged rogue "sniper" or switch-hitter build should be a lot more viable than it currently is.
Tip: have a look at the Stalker class from Path of War (by Dreamscarred Press, think the beta version is still available for free). It's pretty much a T3 rogue (or monk or ninja), competitive with classes such as the magus, bard and inquisitor even in high levels.
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This is my take on it, if anyone is interested. I tried to make it effective without changing the class too much. Hopefully, it was enough... :)
I'm currently playtesting this homebrew and would love to hear more opinions on it.
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I should probably put that I don't really think rogues need an all-out fix and that instead having abilities similar to those that I have here via power creep [and have them in hardcover books, not splats, to make it easier], would really bring them up to scale.
@upho:I can't really address #1, as that would need a new edition of Pathfinder to make skills more useful or spells less versatile [preferably the former], but as to #2&3, I actually have a few rogue talents to add that I forgot to add [still a bit patchy on the wording of them].
Feigning Speed: A rogue with this talent may attempt to feint as a swift action. Feinting in this manner applies to all of her attacks except for the last. If she has the Improved Feint feat, a rogue may treat the enemy as feinted until the end of her turn.
Swifter Skill: A rogue with this talent may use any skill she has ranks in in 1/2 the time it would normally take (Minimum 1 swift action action).
Evasive Stamina: A rogue with this talent may, a number of times per day equal to 1/2 her rogue level+her Dexterity modifier, choose to use her Reflex saving throw in place of her Fortitude saving throw when making a save. Using this ability is a non-action, and must be done before the saving throw is rolled.
Dirty Fighter: A rogue with this talent gains the benefits of the Improved and Greater Dirty Trick feats, and counts as having said feats for the purpose of meeting prerequisites. In addition, she may use her Slight of Hand bonus in place of her normal CMB when making a Dirty Trick combat maneuver, but only if she is attempting to blind. Any affect that augments Dirty Trick will apply to Slight of Hand checks to Dirty Trick.
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This is my take on it, if anyone is interested. I tried to make it effective without changing the class too much. Hopefully, it was enough... :)
I'm currently playtesting this homebrew and would love to hear more opinions on it.
I like it. Of course, it makes the rogue both useful and interesting so we'll never see anything like it in official stuff.
I like it. Of course, it makes the rogue both useful and interesting so we'll never see anything like it in official stuff.This is my take on it, if anyone is interested. I tried to make it effective without changing the class too much. Hopefully, it was enough... :)
I'm currently playtesting this homebrew and would love to hear more opinions on it.
*cries a single manly tear*.... This is the nicest thing anyone ever said to me... >.<
*cries a single manly tear*.... This is the nicest thing anyone ever said to me... >.<I like it. Of course, it makes the rogue both useful and interesting so we'll never see anything like it in official stuff.This is my take on it, if anyone is interested. I tried to make it effective without changing the class too much. Hopefully, it was enough... :)
I'm currently playtesting this homebrew and would love to hear more opinions on it.
Its the fix I use personally.
Its the fix I use personally.*cries a single manly tear*.... This is the nicest thing anyone ever said to me... >.<I like it. Of course, it makes the rogue both useful and interesting so we'll never see anything like it in official stuff.This is my take on it, if anyone is interested. I tried to make it effective without changing the class too much. Hopefully, it was enough... :)
I'm currently playtesting this homebrew and would love to hear more opinions on it.
Oh, man... If only I hadn't already used my manly tear... (If you cry more than one, it stops being manly -.-')
Keep in mind that I constantly tweak it a little bit here and there based on feedback from friends and forum posters alike (I avoid sudden big changes, so players who enjoy a previous version don't suddenly find it to be completely different), so feel free to share any suggestions or criticism you have. (If you have an acc in giantitp, I can always use a bump ^^ )
But truth be told, the real challenge is coming up with an useful version of Rumormonger... ¬¬'
@upho:I can't really address #1, as that would need a new edition of Pathfinder to make skills more useful or spells less versatile [preferably the former], but as to #2&3, I actually have a few rogue talents to add that I forgot to add [still a bit patchy on the wording of them].** spoiler omitted **...
Yep, the value of skills is a tough one, though I guess some unique added benefits to the most rogue-ish ones could be one way of keeping them a bit more relevant. And I like the suggested advanced talents.
@Lemmy: Awesome. Can't believe I've missed it! I'll comment in your thread over at the Playground in order to not derail this one further though.
@Lemmy: Awesome. Can't believe I've missed it! I'll comment in your thread over at the Playground in order to not derail this one further though.
Thanks. I'm glad people seem to like my homebrew.
I apologize to the OP for derailing the thread, I thought it was a thread for people to share their house rules and homebrew for the Rogue class.
I'll comment on the OP's ideas later, but right now, I really gotta go to bed. I'm exhausted...
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Lemmy, I love this rogue fix, and request permission to use for my own games. This makes it actually viable to play a rogue over say, a ninja, or a vivisectionist alchemist.
As to the original thread, as stated before, the problem with rogues is that the skill system (while a vast improvement over 3.5), becomes obsolete beyond level 5 or so. Unfortunately, homebrew is required, or just accepting that skills are for mundane mooks.
One 3pp take I love are the 101 New Skill Uses by Rite Publishing. They do an amazing job at putting numbers behind things we've all wanted to do, but didn't quite have rules or DCs for.
Also, a task my GM and I have implemented, is to offset things like jump, glibness, moment of prescience, spider climb, bloodhound, and countless other spell buffs entirely over-riding and invalidating skill ranks, we created a swath of skill uses that only unlock to someone with x number of ranks.
This to a degree allows non-magical fantastic tasks for supernatural characters, such as running on walls or leaping from building to building, sensing a cursed item with appraise ranks, without the casting of magic. It matches up better with fantasy literature, and it makes the lower tier classes more viable at higher levels.
Fix the skills, save the rogue. Fix the feats, save the fighter.
Also, the rogue talents are pretty damn weaksauce. Lemmy did a great job over-hauling them. One further fix we implemented was giving the trap sense feature a general bonus to armor class and calling it danger sense. This way the barbarian and rogue don't lag behind as heavily in armor class despite being supposedly highly mobile combatants.
Lemmy, I love this rogue fix, and request permission to use for my own games. This makes it actually viable to play a rogue over say, a ninja, or a vivisectionist alchemist.
Glad you like it. Feel free to use it as you wish. That's the whole point of posting them online. :)
Don't forget to tell me how it goes, so I can have more feedback.
Combat Fix: This is a good idea, but I'd rather go with a smaller bonus that applied more often. Rogues need something to do when Sneak Attack is not possible. I prefer to raise their accuracy to be equivalent to full BAB (i.e.:about +1 every 4 levels) but allow it to be used on more situations (without hurting the character's action economy). Some GMs might have issues with a character with accuracy beyond full BAB adding lots of d6 to its damage. There are lots of more powerful stuff in the game, of course, but I can tell from experience that certain GMs will be annoyed by a medium BAB guy having better accuracy and damage than a full BAB class. The reason why Sneak Attack sucks is the Rogue's low accuracy, if their attacks hit more often than a Fighter, Sneak Attack will annoy the hell of a lot of players, especially considering one of your new talents allow Rogues to make characters flat-footed with a free action.
Skill Fix:
Versatile Skill: I'm not a big fan of this... While my own homebrew has talents that allow for skill substitution here and there, I don't like the idea of flat out giving Rogues Versatile Performance. The classes will feel too similar.
Master of Skills: Actually, Bards can only do this at 19th level. Not a bad class feature, although I myself chose to simply make Skill Mastery affect every skill with a certain number of ranks assigned to it. It's simpler that way.
New Talents:
Hide in Shadows: A good talent, although somewhat similar to the Hide in Plain Sight talent.
Finesse Trick: Personally, I think it should require more than one "feat" to be able to completely replace Str, but otherwise, not a bad talent.
Strongman: I'm not so sure about this one... First, I still think it'd be simpler to allow Skill Mastery to affect all skills, second, while this is not OP in anyway, I personally dislike the idea of completely replacing Str with so little investment. IMO, if a character wants Power Attack, he can get Str 13 or be content with Piranha Strike. While I prefer Dex-based Rogues, I think Str-based Rogues should still have a few advantages, damage (including access to Power Attack) being the greatest one.
Shady Weapon: Not a bad Rogue Talent. It's just... pretty much the same as Two-Weapon Feint. Which is why I didn't put a similar Rogue Talent in my homebrew.
This does make Rogues considerably more effective, but I think it focuses too much on the Rogues strong points (Sneak Attack and Skills) and not doing enough to help with its real problems: Low/mediocre AC, low accuracy (solved, even too well, by Improved Sneak Attack + Shady Weapon), awful saves, lack of in-combat options and almost complete irrelevance when Sneak Attack is not possible. It also doesn't do much to make Rogues feel unique, other than Hide in Shadows, they only get bigger numbers or the ability to add Dex to something different. Creating fun, interesting and unique Talents is a great way to make Rogues stand out.
Although Rogues do desperately need higher numbers (my own homebrew has many numerical bonuses), just inflating numbers is usually not the best way to fix class problems. It's too easy to go overboard (as I think you did with Improved Sneak Attack + Shady Weapon).
This is kind of a change in direction, but could we help the rogue by rejigging the "shot on the run" feat? As it stands right now it is pretty much impossible to start hidden, shoot something and then be hidden. There's sniping, but that is pretty hard to pull off and it would be nice if a rogue could move from one location with cover/concealment to another and get in an attack along the way. For flavor reasons this seems like a rogueish thing to do.
The issues with shot on the run are the requirements that don't make a ton of sense. It requires Dodge, Mobility and Point Blank Shot. I take it that Dodge and Mobility are there to make the feat analagous, cost wise, to spring attack. But neither of them, mobility especially, have anything to do with what the feat lets you do. I'm not moving through threatened squares to take a shot on the run, generally. And the feat costs one feat more than spring attack already. You can only take a standard action while using feat on the run, so it doesn't seem unreasonable to let rogues have this, as another way to make a sneak attack, for less than three feats.
If you want to include a means of reliable ranged sneak attack from stealth, I'd say the first thing you want to do is change Sneak Attack range from 30 feet to 30 feet or The First Range Increment of a weapon, whichever is longer (which incidentally gives rogues slight reason to consider a crossbow, since the higher range increment actually matters.)
Yeah, that's one of the first things I decided on when changing sneak attack.
That and allowing sneak attack in up to 20% concealment, as a default.In checking damage modals of +0 attack & 10d6 damage vs +5 attack & 5d6+5 damage, I found that in all but the lowest AC cases, the rogue is better off having the +5 attack and less sneak attack damage. It makes all his damage more reliable, too.
My suggested fix would be to have 1st level grant +1 attack/damage, increases every 4 additional levels (5th, 9th, 13th, and 17th). Note that this is when a 3/4 BAB class is losing BAB, so it basically makes him "full BAB" in attack bonus in his medium.
Then at 3rd level grant +!d6 damage, and every 4 additional levels (so 7th, 11th, 15th, and 19th).
Looks like this:
Lvl .. BAB .. SAB .. Sneak Attack
1st .. .+0 .. .+1 .. +1 attack, +1 damage
2nd .. .+1 .. .+2 .. -
3rd .. .+2 .. .+3 .. +1 attack, +1d6+1 damage
4th .. .+3 .. .+4 .. -
5th .. .+3 .. .+5 .. +2 attack, +1d6+2 damage
6th .. .+4 .. .+6 .. -
7th .. .+5 .. .+7 .. +2 attack, +2d6+2 damage
8th .. .+6 .. .+8 .. -
9th .. .+6 .. .+9 .. +3 attack, +2d6+3 damage
10th.. .+7 .. +10 .. -
11th.. .+8 .. +11 .. +3 attack, +3d6+3 damage
12th.. .+9 .. +12 .. -
13th.. .+9 .. +13 .. +4 attack, +3d6+4 damage
14th.. +10 .. +14 .. -
15th.. +11 .. +15 .. +4 attack, +4d6+4 damage
16th.. +12 .. +16 .. -
17th.. +12 .. +17 .. +5 attack, +4d6+5 damage
18th.. +13 .. +18 .. -
19th.. +14 .. +19 .. +5 attack, +5d6+5 damage
20th.. +15 .. +20 .. -