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This is not a thread to debate if the rogue is inferior or not. Please do not post DPR calculations and a point-by-point analysis on the viability of rogue vs. anything.
This is where you post your homebrew feats, magic items, traits that are meant to make rogues more powerful than they are. Forget balance. Just remember this basic assumption: no one wants to play a rogue (most of the time).
I'll start the ball rolling with Spider Sense, a homebrew feat I concocted in another thread.
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SPIDER SENSE:
Prerequisites: Trapfinding, Trapsense +1, Trap Spotter Rogue Talent.
Benefits: You gain a bonus to all initiative checks, attack rolls made as part of an attack of opportunity, a dodge bonus to AC, and all saving throws equal to your Trapsense bonus.
You gain +3 on all Perception and Disable Device checks. This bonus can stack with the bonus from Skill Focus, if applicable.
Finally, you come within 60 feet of a trap, hazard or secret door, you receive an immediate Perception skill check to notice it. The use of Disable Device is always a standard action for you, regardless of the task or difficulty, and if you beat the DC by 5, it becomes a move action, and you figure out how it works, how to bypass it without disarming it, and can rig a trap so your allies can bypass it as well. Finally you can disable a trap at a range of 60 feet if you can manipulate the trap in any way, whether via spell such as mage hand or telekinesis or via ranged attack against an AC equal to the DC of the trap (such as shooting an arrow, throwing a dagger or firing a ray spell); if you lack the way to precisely manipulate or disable the trap via ranged attack, you can set it off (which means traps that reset automatically are not disabled and will reset as per their individual description) via spells or effects that affect an area, such as splash weapons and many evocation spells by successfully making a ranged attack to target a specific grid intersection. Treat this as a ranged attack against AC 5.
Rogues have been on my mind lately, skill points system too.
Player in our group has a Rogue and his initial plan was for the guy to wield twin rapiers. There were a couple of things that played against that of course, like the Rogue's BAB (or lack thereof) and the player's unwillingness to go STR (to better absorb that nasty -4/-4 penalty).
Looking at this situation, how bad would it be for Rogues to have the ability to consider Rapiers as Light Martial weapons? Would that be a real game breaker? I don't know, I think it could be really nice thing.
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When you cannot apply sneak attack damage you instead add minimum SA damage.
I like that one.
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Shameless, you say.
* Full BAB, good Will save.
* +2 Dodge, +1 per even level, provided the rogue wears Light or less armor.
* At level 6, may Take 10 to find/remove traps. If a trap is triggered, may as immediate action try to retroactively Disable without Take 10.
* Can prepare poisons in 1 hour, but they lose potency after one day. Requires affordable components, scales in power with rogue level.
* Receive Hide in Plain Sight at level 5.
* Gain Shadow Strike at level 3 and Dampen Presence at level 7.
* At level 1, gain Low-Light Vision. At level 3, gain +30 Darkvision, again at level 6. At 9, gain Blindsense 60. At 12, gain See in Darkness. At 15, gain Blindsight 60. At 18, gain True Seeing. This is an Extraordinary ability.
* At level 1, choose 1 skill to gain +1/2 rogue level bonus. At level 4, 8, 12, 16 and 20 choose another skill to gain such a bonus.
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Rogues have been on my mind lately, skill points system too.
Player in our group has a Rogue and his initial plan was for the guy to wield twin rapiers. There were a couple of things that played against that of course, like the Rogue's BAB (or lack thereof) and the player's unwillingness to go STR (to better absorb that nasty -4/-4 penalty).
Looking at this situation, how bad would it be for Rogues to have the ability to consider Rapiers as Light Martial weapons? Would that be a real game breaker? I don't know, I think it could be really nice thing.
kukris have 18-20 crit range and they are light martial weapons (if flavor is important you could design a new weapon, the foil, let's say, that has the same stats/damage as kukris except they would do piercing damage like rapiers...)
For maximum efficiency I would choose twin short swords. Remember that at high levels, that would allow him to wield twin sun blades... :)
RPG Superstar 2012 Top 32
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Add this sentence to the "Weapon Training" rogue talent:
"Additionally, she counts her rogue levels as levels of fighter for the purposes of feats."
Then write some cool fighter-only feats.
Then give each of those feats a "Special" line that says:
"A monk may select [FEATNAME] as a bonus feat starting at Xth level."
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* At level 6, may Take 10 to find/remove traps. If a trap is triggered, may as immediate action try to retroactively Disable without Take 10.* Can prepare poisons in 1 hour, but they lose potency after one day. Requires affordable components, scales in power with rogue level.
* Receive Hide in Plain Sight at level 5.
* Gain Shadow Strike at level 3 and Dampen Presence at level 7.
* At level 1, gain Low-Light Vision. At level 3, gain +30 Darkvision, again at level 6. At 9, gain Blindsense 60. At 12, gain See in Darkness. At 15, gain Blindsight 60. At 18, gain True Seeing. This is an Extraordinary ability.
* At level 1, choose 1 skill to gain +1/2 rogue level bonus. At level 4, 8, 12, 16 and 20 choose another skill to gain such a bonus.
I really like the above-listed ones.
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i guess my follow up question is what considerations should we give to format? a feat-style entry could be easily added in an upcoming product, but a complete re-writing of the basic rogue class would be more difficult...
i really like the ideas shown above though, so do you think it would be possible to put those in feat or trait form? perhaps an alternate racial feature that replaces "human: skilled" or something?
if you look at what i did for Spider Sense, i did not shy away from putting a boat load of stuff under that same feat (there's 4 bonuses that scale directly with trap sense, for instance... scaling things like that rewards the single classed rogues......)
Rogues have been on my mind lately, skill points system too.
Player in our group has a Rogue and his initial plan was for the guy to wield twin rapiers. There were a couple of things that played against that of course, like the Rogue's BAB (or lack thereof) and the player's unwillingness to go STR (to better absorb that nasty -4/-4 penalty).
Looking at this situation, how bad would it be for Rogues to have the ability to consider Rapiers as Light Martial weapons? Would that be a real game breaker? I don't know, I think it could be really nice thing.
kukris have 18-20 crit range and they are light martial weapons (if flavor is important you could design a new weapon, the foil, let's say, that has the same stats/damage as kukris except they would do piercing damage like rapiers...)
For maximum efficiency I would choose twin short swords. Remember that at high levels, that would allow him to wield twin sun blades... :)
There certainly other avenues of attack, no doubt. Your suggestions are all quite valid and excellent choices... But... the player has a picture of his character, wielding twin rapiers and that's what he wants to pursue.
Really, I'm of two minds here; on the one hand, I say buck up and spend the required resources (very high STR or DEX+finesse and feats) and absorb the -4 penalty as God intended. On the other hand, I see where a player might find that untenable and therefore be dissatisfied with their character.
For me, giving Rogues the Rapier as a Light weapon, isn't that bad. I'd also want to raise every other classes skill points to INT+6 too (as an additional balancing effect).
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hmmm... maybe adding all the sneak attack suggestions/boosts under the "Greater Sneak Attack" invented by Bjørn and make it an advanced rogue talent could be a solution... (add Sneak Attack Mastery as an added benefit under Greater Sneak Attack, so that you don't have to waste a rogue talent on it too, plus added range / min 30ft, plus minimum Sneak Attack damage, plus any other that we find in the future as part of this thread)
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One thing I've been considering is redefining flat-footed from "when an enemy can't apply their dex bonus" to "when an enemy is not applying a dex bonus."
Basically, making sneak attack usable against whose flat-footed AC matches their normal AC. Flavorwise, if the target is so slow it doesn't matter if they're aware of the rogue's presence, it seems like the rogue should be able to take advantage of that.
It has the side effect of generally scaling well, with larger enemies appearing at higher level and often having abysmal dex. Having the rogue shine against giant, slow enemies hits a good flavor spot for me too.
Cheers!
Landon
Change sneak attack damage to a flat +2 damage per Rogue level, not precision damage, and applies to crits. A Rogue deals 1/2 this bonus damage when not qualifying for sneak attack.
I think at higher levels (ie. +20 damage at 10th level), that becomes too fabulous.
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I just add an idea. I could be an extremely bad idea or something genius like my pickleshot idea for the gunslinger.
How about this new Advanced Rogue Talent:
Selective Proprioception (Ex): By tricking her own sense of hand-eye coordination, a rogue with this ability can attack directly while invisible and not become visible.
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Rogues have Full BAB and as an advanced Rogue Talent they can get pounce. My group has thought about changing the flanking requirement to the target being threatened by another ally.
I like this extra flat damage idea instead of the +Xd6.
Pounce as an advanced talent is great... you could even make a regular rogue talent that lets you pounce against flat-footed enemies (and it could be a prereq to the full pounce advanced talent, i.e. act a bit as a talent tax as pounce is massively awesome)
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I think I'm going to add that Rogues receive combat expertise as a bonus feat at 1st (to qualify for Improved Feint) and don't have to have an Int of 13 for Improved Feint. Would make sneak attack easier and go with the "dastardly rogue" theme.
I love this. Dumb rogues should be able to be cowards too! :)
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This is where you post your homebrew feats, magic items, traits that are meant to make rogues more powerful than they are. Forget balance. Just remember this basic assumption: no one wants to play a rogue (most of the time).
"Forget balance"? Okay!
Shameless Boost (for Rogues) (1st level feat)
Prerequisite: you must be a rogue, and it must be your only (or demonstrably 90% of) your class. These bonuses don't apply unless you play a rogue, Suckah!
The Rogue is now Shamelessly Boosted.
The Rogue transforms into a succubus (or an incubus, if they really want, I dunno) without the extraplanar or alignment subtypes, gaining all the benefits of that creature. They retain their base racial traits except ability score bonuses. They can lower their spell resistance as a free action. They gain all the bonuses of a rogue of their level.
Their level values becomes as follows: d10, best BAB, best reflex and will saves, 8+skills
Otherwise they're a normal rogue, only, you know, better.
They probably have, like, the Assassin or Shadow Dancer prestige class special abilities too, or something, I dunno. Oh, and they automatically pants all ninja's and barbarians in a 1-mile radius. This makes the affected characters make a will save each round to avoid dying of embarrassment.
I can't believe I'm going to contribute to another one of these rogue threads, but my only change to the rogue atm is: A rogue may have 1 1/2 ranks (rounded down) in any rogue class skill.
This puts them a cut above other classes (or should) in skills.
I am intrigued but don't quite follow - could you elaborate please?
He's saying every even level a Rogue's maximum rank limit for Rogue Class Skills is increased by one more than usual. At second level his maximum is 3 ranks, at 4th level his maximum is 6 ranks, etc
Which would mean that people would be using Rogue to dip a few levels for early entry into Prestige classes as this would be the only way to get more ranks than levels in a skill - probably not optimal for making the Rogues better.
Will try to post my "Rogue Revisited" stuff for boosting Rogues that I've been having some of my PCs playtest either later tonight or tomorrow.
-TimD
I've posted it quite a few times before, but I honestly like this homebrew. IMHO, it makes Rogues viable without removing the "feel" of the class.
My favorite part are the revised Rogue Talent. They are <GASP!> actually useful!
EDIT: Just noticed Scavion already posted it here. Thanks, dude.
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Oh, right, the Master Spy. Maybe that should just be folded wholesale into the Rogue.
I don't consider 4+ levels a dip anymore. 3 is the borderline case. Taking 2 levels of monk to get Evasion, saves and a big load of other features is a dip. 4 levels is too much to be "on track" with your main track, or even anything resembling that.
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I've posted it quite a few times before, but I honestly like this homebrew. IMHO, it makes Rogues viable without removing the "feel" of the class.
My favorite part are the revised Rogue Talent. They are <GASP!> actually useful!
EDIT: Just noticed Scavion already posted it here. Thanks, dude.
That is a nice rogue. But my mind was just blown by the latest "Marvel: Agents of SHIELD" and can thus no longer think clearly... so do you mind summarizing your changes compared to the Core Rogue? (for ease of reference on this thread) thanks!
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That is a nice rogue. But my mind was just blown by the latest "Marvel: Agents of SHIELD" and can thus no longer think clearly... so do you mind summarizing your changes compared to the Core Rogue? (for ease of reference on this thread) thanks!I've posted it quite a few times before, but I honestly like this homebrew. IMHO, it makes Rogues viable without removing the "feel" of the class.
My favorite part are the revised Rogue Talent. They are <GASP!> actually useful!
EDIT: Just noticed Scavion already posted it here. Thanks, dude.
Well, the changes are actually pretty minor, for the most part.
Rogues get proficiency with bucklers and a few extra weapons, Poison Use, Shadow Strike, Trap Spotter and Improved Evasion for free. They also get to choose two of their class skills.
The real changes are the revised Rogue Talents.
Among other things, they allow Rogues to do stuff like...
- Apply Int instead of Str to damage rolls.
- Pull any potion/scroll they want from their backpack
- Roll a Reflex save instead of a Fort/Will save against some effects
- Get resistance (and, eventually, immunity) to disease and poison.
- Charm enemies by simply talking to them.
- Use your enemies to flank other enemies.
- Add Cha instead of Wis to all Will saves.
- Get a pretty big bonus to Acrobatics, and use Acrobatics instead of Escape Artist.
- Get free Combat Maneuver feats and use their Rogue level instead of BAB for the selected maneuver
- Get a big bonus on attack rolls against flanked opponents.
- Make a Bluff (or Sleight of Hand) check as a swift action in order to get a big bonus on attack rolls against any opponent they want (flanked or not).
- Automatically deal max SA damage against opponents who are surprised/helpless/unaware of your presence.
- Get a Climb (or Swim) speed.
- Make AoO against enemies that provoked AoO from one of their allies.
Rogues get proficiency with bucklersConsidering the way nonproficiency rules work, they pretty much already are, as soon as they can afford 150gp for masterwork.
True. But it doesn't hurt. And it helps them at 1st~2nd level.
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Add a bonus to the rogues initiative, say one every other level, or every third level; make it nearly impossible to get the drop on a high level rogue.
There's a (revised) Rogue Talent for that. ;)
- Strong Impression: Add a bonus equal to your Charisma modifier to Initiative checks. At 9th level, you can roll for Initiative twice and take the better result. At 18th level, you can roll for Initiative three times and take the best result (Prerequisite: Rogue level 6)