Rogue and Templates

[FuelDrop]

Okay, here's the situation: we have a 3 man party.
Player 1 (me): Wizard (enchanter)
Player 2: Cleric (Angling towards Holy Vindicator)
Player 3: Rogue (Knife master)

Now as the more perceptive of you have probably noticed, the rogue is going to start lagging behind the two full casters pretty quickly.

Due to the game's plot our Rogue has had the chance to make a fiendish pact. The GM and I (the most experienced player in the game) have discussed things and are thinking that it wouldn't be too unbalancing to have the rogue gain the fiendish template and possibly at a later level even gain the half-fiend template.

Does anyone have any experience with this kind of thing and its effects on balance?

[TriOmegaZero]

Is he going to have to give up levels for these things or just get them on top of his regular stuff? Because those flat bonuses will shore him up for awhile, but the lack of level progression (if you choose that way) will cripple him even worse.

[MrSin]

I think templates like that are best emulated by crafting your own for your particular game and playstyle or used as pure fluff.

That said, I've used lycanthrope and fiendish before and the DR tends to be a little overwhelming and SR in pathfinder tends to get in the way more than help, imo, though that varies with party composition and I don't think that's too bad. The resistance doesn't scale too well so it never becomes and issue but its nifty when it happens without being overpowering, and the smite can be a bit much but doesn't always work without a good assurance the foe is actually your opposite alignment(usually you fight evil creatures because so many are evil in the bestiaries) and the damage can be a bit much depending on the PC but the bonus to hit varies with charisma so sometimes it means something but other times not.

The LA can be murder though.

[LoneKnave]

It actually looks pretty good. Gives a little bit of versatility (non magical flight, dark vision so he can shank in the dark, some useful spell-likes, etc.). Doesn't seem too overpowering.

[FuelDrop]

The Rogue is a half-orc so already has darkvision. To the best of my knowledge no level adjustment will be involved (Rogues are already one of the weakest classes out there and both of the other PCs are full casters using advanced races (Drow and Aasimar, respectively) so I'm not thinking that this'll be a big issue.)

If you were gming what level would you switch up to half-fiend to keep the rogue relevant with the spellcasters for a few more levels? Personally I was thinking 9th level minimum, but I haven't tried this sort of thing before so that's pretty much just guessing.

[blackbloodtroll]

MrSin wrote:

The LA can be murder though.

There is no LA in Pathfinder.

[MrSin]

blackbloodtroll wrote:

MrSin wrote:

The LA can be murder though.

There is no LA in Pathfinder.

Should've added my experiences with the two are from 3.5. Was definitely there. No Buy out in any of my groups either.