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[derail]The issue is rogues are significantly worse at their "role" than several other classes. Bards are better at skills (thanks to versatile performance), especially face skills. Disable Device is now easy for any class to invest in, with the new class skills system, and traps are a bit less deadly than in 3.5. Parties do usually still need a face and a trapsmith, but the point of "rogues suck" is that there's a lot of better options out there - even just looking in the core rulebook.[/derail]
Actually though, rogue-type characters are quite common in my games. People still get a kick out of disabling traps, bluffing their way into important parties, and sneaking past monsters to get into position.
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I have two gaming groups right now and oddly neither has an arcane caster.
Wiz/Sorc are not first choice classes, but my players love it when I play one because I'm more tactical I guess than them.
Note that we don't use published APs so I can't look ahead to know what to prepare.
I can only speak for myself but at my table we do use APs and would consider it very bad form for a player to look ahead.
I'm just getting back into PnP RPG's after about a 15-year hiatus, and the rogue bashing seems weird to me. Seems like every other thread I read has someone claim "rogues suck" or some variation thereof, and everyone just kind of nods sagely as if simply staying the obvious. Do adventuring parties not need a "face" guy anymore? Are adventures so combat-focused now that there's no room for a technical guy? I don't see much in the way of published material, but is adventure design that different now?
Like you, I don't get the rogue hate. I'm not a number cruncher and never have been, but that seems to be where the dislike comes from. I play for fun and the cool factor. I just don't get it. As far as party faces go I think most go with a paladin, sorcerer, or bard for that these days. At least that's the impression I get.
"the i bash things" martials are not my first choice, and i tend to play in groups loaded with martial characters, regardless of system, so i generally build the exotic fighter that stands out in the crowd of heavily armored slaughter machines, usually by doubling as both a slaughter machine and a secondary or tertiary function in something else. such as healing wand user or driver, trapsmith, decker, etc.
That story of two rogues and a fighter didn't read to me as "rogues suck", but rather, "don't play a rogue if you aren't going to play LIKE a rogue."
Like the player that stats a wizard but just charges enemies with his longsword, because he thinks racial proficiency is enough to be a tank, and never casts a dang spell.
Gandalf - ruining newbies' concept of what a wizard can do since our grandparents' time.
My girlfriend is usually the smashiest person on the table. She really digs barbarians.
Same goes for my Fiancee.. Makes me worry slightly.
Note that we don't use published APs so I can't look ahead to know what to prepare.I can only speak for myself but at my table we do use APs and would consider it very bad form for a player to look ahead.
I wouldn't, I'm just assuming that's how prepared casters could be considered so superior to spontaneous casters as they are on the forums. Either that or going through APs/PFS scenarios repeated times.
That story of two rogues and a fighter didn't read to me as "rogues suck", but rather, "don't play a rogue if you aren't going to play LIKE a rogue."
Like the player that stats a wizard but just charges enemies with his longsword, because he thinks racial proficiency is enough to be a tank, and never casts a dang spell.
Gandalf - ruining newbies' concept of what a wizard can do since our grandparents' time.
sure, a level 10 wizard can use a longsword against 1st level mooks in a warfare scene to conserve spells, but that is what allowed gandalf to use his sword, he was fighting level 1 mooks as a 10th level wizard.
For me personally, I love playing martial characters and would never touch an arcane caster. I would play a divine caster if absolutely necessary, but would rather quit gaming forever than play a Bard.
My group tends to be balanced and we usually have someone to cover every role, but nobody in my group would consider playing a Bard. There's just something unmanly about a dude who plays the lute and has to sing to use his magic. Bard is even too feminine for the female player in our group, though to be fair she hates girly characters and has a love for characters who smash things and kill people.
For me personally, I love playing martial characters and would never touch an arcane caster. I would play a divine caster if absolutely necessary, but would rather quit gaming forever than play a Bard.
My group tends to be balanced and we usually have someone to cover every role, but nobody in my group would consider playing a Bard. There's just something unmanly about a dude who plays the lute and has to sing to use his magic. Bard is even too feminine for the female player in our group, though to be fair she hates girly characters and has a love for characters who smash things and kill people.
you want a more Masculine Bard? how about describing your bard as a Skald who recites War Chants to incite blood lust in his or her companions?
What?!? But Wizards are so ultra-godly powerful, and yet no one wants to play them...weird.
At the risk of Starting Something, wizards aren't that great at low levels. You only get a couple spells, Concentration is a b%#~$, and a single orc can kill you in two rounds.
At later levels wizards start to get nuts, but I could see a group shying away from them due to a rocky beginning.
sure, a level 10 wizard can use a longsword against 1st level mooks in a warfare scene to conserve spells, but that is what allowed gandalf to use his sword, he was fighting level 1 mooks as a 10th level wizard.That story of two rogues and a fighter didn't read to me as "rogues suck", but rather, "don't play a rogue if you aren't going to play LIKE a rogue."
Like the player that stats a wizard but just charges enemies with his longsword, because he thinks racial proficiency is enough to be a tank, and never casts a dang spell.
Gandalf - ruining newbies' concept of what a wizard can do since our grandparents' time.
A balor balrog is no first level mook.
you want a more Masculine Bard? how about describing your bard as a Skald who recites War Chants to incite blood lust in his or her companions?For me personally, I love playing martial characters and would never touch an arcane caster. I would play a divine caster if absolutely necessary, but would rather quit gaming forever than play a Bard.
My group tends to be balanced and we usually have someone to cover every role, but nobody in my group would consider playing a Bard. There's just something unmanly about a dude who plays the lute and has to sing to use his magic. Bard is even too feminine for the female player in our group, though to be fair she hates girly characters and has a love for characters who smash things and kill people.
Or just the actual Skald class. Which does the exact thing described above. And nothing mechanically forces the Bard class to follow the stereotype of "poncy musician in a warzone." I'd give at least one a try before writing off the classes, personally.
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Or just the actual Skald class. Which does the exact thing described above. And nothing mechanically forces the Bard class to follow the stereotype of "poncy musician in a warzone." I'd give at least one a try before writing off the classes, personally.
While I've never used a PC bard, I've used a few as NPCs, while GMing.
One was a religious serpent-folk leader, who used readings from his holy book to inspire his fanatical co-religionists. No music. No dancing. No instruments.
The second was an elven tactical leader / nobleman, who used tactical advice and inspiring rhetoric / speeches. Again, no musical numbers or Disney songs. The bard class is an excellent chassis for a 'noble class,' with a mix of martial skill equal to an aristocrat, combined with the inspiration ability taught to future leaders and some dabbling in the arcane that comes with a first-rate education availably only to the hoightiest of the toity.
I chose to ignore, for their spell-lists, any options that played into the song and dance routine, and picked spells that fit their more religious / tactical themes.
There is evidence gandalf is intact a cleric/druid. If you check the spells he uses, more of the are cleric with nature domain, or druid.
Also I was mostly upset that the rogues were unable to do any roguey things between the two of them. The entire dungeon was me bludgeoning stuff and them constantly failing. Up until I went unconscious. Then things got bad. Despite three potions of healing, I went unconscious before one of the rogues took any damage.
The bash a rogue threads are because some people like doing things one way and some people hate the fact that they would deliberately make a less powerful character. Then someone says can you just help me optimize this class, and someone goes no and it escalates.
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The bash a rogue threads are because some people like doing things one way and some people hate the fact that they would deliberately make a less powerful character. Then someone says can you just help me optimize this class, and someone goes no and it escalates.
I wouldn't say that.
I would say that there is usually a post of some description that mentions the rogue (maybe the OP, maybe not) - the post is sometimes negative towards the rogue, sometimes positive, sometimes a question on why or how they are so bad, sometimes how to make a good one.
Some people post then about:
-how rouges are barely competent at their job (skills) and next to useless in combat
-require extreme system mastery to not be a dead weight on the party, and will be painfully useless and unfun to play if said system mastery is not utilized
-attract disruptive players the most out of all classes
-that half a dozen classes are pretty much better at everything they do while being able to do other more useful thing. People who want a rogue should go use those instead.
Then there are usually a couple of posts about how:
- rogues are fine at skills
- the newer classes are overshadowing the rouge(sic) and are OP, yadda yadda power creep etc
- rogues are fine if the player is creative
- they aren't primary damage dealers, their damage is good enough and besides they have 3/4 bab like all the other skill monkeyish types.
-they don't need to fill a useful combat role in the party because they are skill monkeys and are the only ones who can deal with traps, or at least the only ones that *could* deal with traps, something something stupid paizo power creep grumble grumble.
- magic is broken and rogues are the only real mundane option
The first lot then generally respond:
- other classes get in-class boosts to skills, unlike the rogue
- even in core bard>rogue
- anyone can be creative with any class, rogues are the only ones that require it
- other classes get class features that boost their to-hit and damage, rogues don't
- every class needs to fill a combat role, otherwise that class is useless when competence is most urgently needed, and besides a core bard with 2 levels in rogue for trap-finding is an infinitely better rogue than a rogue.
- slayers and several archetypes also do a better job with no magic
The whole thing then degenerates into a 500 post shouting match, with nothing getting resolved, and nobody achieving anything other than feeding the angry nerd rage demon and giving the moderators a headache.
Kind of like what is probably about to happen to this thread.
The whole thing then degenerates into a 500 post shouting match, with nothing getting resolved, and nobody achieving anything other than feeding the angry nerd rage demon and giving the moderators a headache.
Well, I did make one of my favorite characters as a result of one of those conversations (a druid faking it as a rogue)
And we are getting an unchained rogue out of it. Hopefully it will fix the problems.
Today on "Rogue Talk: You're doing it wrong..."
Thats the most common slogan from the rogue supporters. Of course, no one ever explains what it is that they're doing right with their rogue so....
I'm just getting back into PnP RPG's after about a 15-year hiatus, and the rogue bashing seems weird to me. Seems like every other thread I read has someone claim "rogues suck" or some variation thereof, and everyone just kind of nods sagely as if simply staying the obvious. Do adventuring parties not need a "face" guy anymore?
They do. More than ever. The thing is that the rogue isn't that good at it. Back in your day of 3.5 not having a skill as a class skill was a real hindrance. With the pfs class skill system its a mere +3 to a class skill, which means that a sorcerer is a better face than most rogues even IF they don't take one of the dozen ways to up their diplomacy, such as with a trait (+4), familiar (+3), or skill focus, or...
What does a rogue have as a class feature to make them a good face?
For skills, there's no reason for the rogue to be the only one that has them. Its very easy for other party members to pick up a sneaky skill or two and be as good if not better at it than the rogue is.
The rogues only advantage is enough skill points to be the face and the technical guy and the sneak, but he doesn't have any class features to make himself better at any of them. A paladin face, a druid sneak, and a technically minded wizard in the party can easily edge the rogue out.
There's never really been any reason for the same person to have to sneak past the guards and pick the lock and talk to the princess. Contriving scenarios like that would not only be incredibly arbitrary, but would also leave the entire rest of the party twiddling their thumbs for half an hour doing nothing.
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Asure, a level 10 wizard can use a longsword against 1st level mooks in a warfare scene to conserve spells, but that is what allowed gandalf to use his sword, he was fighting level 1 mooks as a 10th level wizard.That story of two rogues and a fighter didn't read to me as "rogues suck", but rather, "don't play a rogue if you aren't going to play LIKE a rogue."
Like the player that stats a wizard but just charges enemies with his longsword, because he thinks racial proficiency is enough to be a tank, and never casts a dang spell.
Gandalf - ruining newbies' concept of what a wizard can do since our grandparents' time.
balorbalrog is no first level mook.
the reason Gandalf could do it against the Balor was because he was the dungeon master's player character or DMPC and because DMPCs usually are far more overpowered than the rest of the party.
Or just the actual Skald class. Which does the exact thing described above. And nothing mechanically forces the Bard class to follow the stereotype of "poncy musician in a warzone." I'd give at least one a try before writing off the classes, personally.you want a more Masculine Bard? how about describing your bard as a Skald who recites War Chants to incite blood lust in his or her companions?For me personally, I love playing martial characters and would never touch an arcane caster. I would play a divine caster if absolutely necessary, but would rather quit gaming forever than play a Bard.
My group tends to be balanced and we usually have someone to cover every role, but nobody in my group would consider playing a Bard. There's just something unmanly about a dude who plays the lute and has to sing to use his magic. Bard is even too feminine for the female player in our group, though to be fair she hates girly characters and has a love for characters who smash things and kill people.
you don't need the Skald Class to play a Skald. a Bard could do that just fine. in fact, before Skald was a class, people actually statted their "Skalds" as Bards. my favorite bards i played have been puppeteers, actors, skalds, dervishes, and the like
Put me in the "hate prepared casters" list, with special exceptions for Witch and Magus (and I'd love them both even more if they were spont).
Otherwise, I need something magical or at least magic-like or SOMETHING if I'm going to play a character. I could never do Fighter or Rogue. Paladin is good. Barbarian is good (especially with Masquerade Reveler!). Ranger is okay (I'm not good for the sneaky, much). Monk is good with the right archetypes (Qinggong Zen Archer!~), sucks otherwise. Semi-casters who can fight like Bard, Inquisitor, Magus, and Alchemist are awesome. Stuff like Book of Nine Swords or Path of War is also sufficiently magic-like to satisfy.
But a straight-up beatstick or stabber with no special abilities? No.
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Or my orator archer bard who rains down archery destruction from afar while barking out suggestion or orders.
If all you can see is a guy dancing around playing a lute and singing I'd have to say you aren't trying all that hard.
Seeing someone use a violin to shoot arrows.. am I close?
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What NONE of these classes can do is bring the entire rogue package in one character. Any class that brings one,...
For skills, there's no reason for the rogue to be the only one that has them. Its very easy for other party members to pick up a sneaky skill or two and be as good if not better at it than the rogue is.The rogues only advantage is enough skill points to be the face and the technical guy and the sneak, but he doesn't have any class features to make himself better at any of them. A paladin face, a druid sneak, and a technically minded wizard in the party can easily edge the rogue out.
There's never really been any reason for the same person to have to sneak past the guards and pick the lock and talk to the princess. Contriving scenarios like that would not only be incredibly arbitrary, but would also leave the entire rest of the party twiddling their thumbs for half an hour doing nothing.
Investigators can do it all in one package without much effort. Slayers can do it too with a little of it. Both classes have innate ways to increase their attack and damage rolls and a good save that isn't reflex. Slayer has full BAB and d10 HD while investigator gets alchemist extracts and can use a slightly weaker sneak attack without being sneaky or needing to flank.
I can't speak on the slayer side but I've had more fun and was more useful as a level 2 investigator than a level 3 rogue with a weapon I wasn't proficient with.
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{. . .}
I once (regrettably) had to play a one off dungeon with two rogues and a fighter (I was the fighter). The most shocking part was despite TWO rogues, the best method they had too look for traps was "let the fighter (me) walk in front, he's got twenty hit points". And the best method they had for opening locked doors was let the fighter bash them down.Today on "Rogue Talk: You're doing it wrong..."
{. . .}
Goddity didn't say that these were Good Rogues, just that they were Rogues. From some Evil points of view, they were doing their Rogueishness just fine . . . .
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What NONE of these classes can do is bring the entire rogue package in one character.
Could you list exactly what a rogue brings to the party. Instead of some nebulous statement about how the rogue has that special something, why don't you give us a list of what the rogue brings to the party. That way, we can actually have points of comparison with other classes.
It should be pretty straight forward. As far as I can tell the rogue pretty much just brings trapfinding+lots of skill points+sneak attack (if you disagree, please, by all means post what else they do - I am happy to look at that too). These things are pretty easily compared
- The rogues big bag of skill ranks can easily be compared to other classes and their slightly smaller bag of skill ranks + in-class bonuses. The same can be done with the rogue's class skill list and the class skills of other classes (which are typically about the same size - the bard's skill list is actually larger than the rogues: the difference is disable device and swim vs all the knowledges and spellcraft)
- Sneak attack is a straight damage boost, and as such is easily compared to other classes using the typical DPR formulas. Accounting for positioning etc is trickier, but the formulas are still useful for finding large gaps in DPR e.g. if a typical rogue is only expected to do 30 DPR (hypothetical example, I haven't actually run the numbers) at a certain level against a typical opponent in flank with SA, knowing other 3/4 bab classes can do 40DPR at any time to that same opponent is very informative.
- Several classes/archetypes have trapfinding or a better feature, so they have the rogue matched or beaten on this front.
We can also look at fun things like saves, MADness and non-skill-based utility.
So, what exactly is the rogue package. It would be nice if you could restrict this to things that the typical party actually cares about. Being the only completely mundane sneakey type doesn't win the rogue any points if all the magical people are better than him at pretty much everything and then some.
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Last role is usually the arcane caster, unless someone really wanted it for once. Same for the cleric.
No one ever picks Monk, Cavalier or Rogue (unless trapfinding is highly desired).
Re : the Rogue package, yes being potentially good at a great many things in a game which actually rewards overspecialization is usually not much fun :-(
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Investigators can do it all in one package without much effort. Slayers can do it too with a little of it. Both classes have innate ways to increase their attack and damage rolls and a good save that isn't reflex. Slayer has full BAB and d10 HD while investigator gets alchemist extracts and can use a slightly weaker sneak attack without being sneaky or needing to flank.I can't speak on the slayer side but I've had more fun and was more useful as a level 2 investigator than a level 3 rogue with a weapon I wasn't proficient with.
I just want to pop back in to say, I love investigators. I played a 5th-level, sub-optimized one in a party of level 7s (he was originally an NPC, but my cleric died and we were trying to clear out the dungeon before the monsters relocated), and it was a total blast. I only really "shone" in a few combats because of the low BAB, but I had Knowledge skills out the wazoo and was a secondary healer thanks to infusion. Highly recommend this for anyone who wants to go skill monkey.
Monk never gets love but I've got a game with the option for rolling (as opposed to PB), so I've got a chance to see some MAD classes like that. But only if one of the current PCs die first . . .
Investigators can do it all in one package without much effort. Slayers can do it too with a little of it. Both classes have innate ways to increase their attack and damage rolls and a good save that isn't reflex. Slayer has full BAB and d10 HD while investigator gets alchemist extracts and can use a slightly weaker sneak attack without being sneaky or needing to flank.I can't speak on the slayer side but I've had more fun and was more useful as a level 2 investigator than a level 3 rogue with a weapon I wasn't proficient with.
I just want to pop back in to say, I love investigators. I played a 5th-level, sub-optimized one in a party of level 7s (he was originally an NPC, but my cleric died and we were trying to clear out the dungeon before the monsters relocated), and it was a total blast. I only really "shone" in a few combats because of the low BAB, but I had Knowledge skills out the wazoo and was a secondary healer thanks to infusion. Highly recommend this for anyone who wants to go skill monkey.
Monk never gets love but I've got a game with the option for rolling (as opposed to PB), so I've got a chance to see some MAD classes like that. But only if one of the current PCs die first . . .
I'm loving them too. Mine was originally going to be an aid another monster but then the entire party got longspears to deal with Orcs and she took a shine to reach weapons, so she got a whip since it's a reach weapon you can finesse. Getting the actual proficiency and infusion next level.
The last role that tends to get filled in my games is Dedicated Ranged Combatant.
This is closely followed by Healer, but in games where I am a Player, I Always play Social + Healer (Leader often enough). I enjoy being able to allow my friends to get their turns, and buffing them. Keeps the group fun all around high
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I'd say at my local PFS, dedicated healers always tend to be light on the ground. For myself personally, I have a cleric that I really like, but the thing that I hate every time I go to build a cleric is the skill points. Or the lack thereof. Unless all I want to do as a cleric is cast spells, cleric becomes a fairly MAD class, so trying to do the classic 'helpful secondary front-liner' cleric quickly means there are no spare points for Int left, sigh. So that's why I don't play more clerics than the one dedicated one I have.
(Of course now there's warpriest to fill that niche.)
(And yeah I know there's niches like Cloistered Cleric and so forth, but just speaking of vanilla clerics.)
I've played in many, many PFS games where the only healing available was someone with a wand of CLW. And sometimes, that wand of CLW was only usable by a UMD check. The worst game I ever had, healing-wise, was when my lore warden fighter became party healer due to being the only person with UMD as a class skill, at a +3. Yeaaaaaaaaah.
As for nobody liking to play bards: that's a shame, because damn if I don't love bards. I've actually had to give myself a moratorium on making any more of them for a bit. I've created I think 5 different bards in Pathfinder play since picking up the system, that actually got played out to decent levels, etc, as opposed to just concepts or things that died early on.
Though I will say that the one drawback for me when playing bards is that my spell choices always start to feel repetitive. It's like, yes, I could take many other 2nd level spells other than glitterdust, but... why would I, when glitterdust is so darn good... so when playing bards, I often really have to force myself to diversify and not take the 'obvious' choices re: spells.
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For myself personally, I have a cleric that I really like, but the thing that I hate every time I go to build a cleric is the skill points. Or the lack thereof. Unless all I want to do as a cleric is cast spells, cleric becomes a fairly MAD class, so trying to do the classic 'helpful secondary front-liner' cleric quickly means there are no spare points for Int left, sigh. So that's why I don't play more clerics than the one dedicated one I have.
(Of course now there's warpriest to fill that niche.)
(And yeah I know there's niches like Cloistered Cleric and so forth, but just speaking of vanilla clerics.)
More skill points would be welcome. I'd prefer for all classes to have a minimum of 4+Int mod/level, with Bards/Rogues retaining their superior 6+int mod or 8+Int mod/level skill ranks.
It was especially joke worthy in 3.X, when the Trickery Domain added Bluff, Disguise and Hide to your class skill list, but no additional skill ranks, meaning that you'd probably never be able to use that 'special bonus.'
I kind of preferred Cloistered Cleric, because the reduced BAB (and armor) eliminated any temptation to go all 'CoDzilla' and waste rounds casting shield of faith and divine favor so that I can get my AC and 'to hit' rolls to about as good as the Fighter had on round 1 with no buffing.
'Cause if I'm spending two rounds to temporarily be roughly as good as the dullest class in the game (when I'm already playing one of the best), I'm doing something very, very wrong.
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I never considered Rogue useless as a class.
One of the main flaws is how sneak attack damage works. It's kind of hard to move in and sneak attack and then move away. I can tell you if Rogues somehow are able to keep doing sneak attack damage with impunity in game sessions. It's the DM going out of his way to help the player imo. When I'm a DM my npcs don't stand still allowing Rogues to constantly sneak attack. Rogues are prime targets. Having less hp and AC then combat classes Rogues tend to not have lasting power. It can be done with specific builds. Vanilla Rogue is easy to take out. Their is ranged sneak attack but it's a pain to implement as well.
The situation is not helped with some very weak and situational designed Rogue talents. Their are some useful ones yet if I played a Rogue I would need to be paid and very well to take some of them. Paizo did not help things either by making trapfinding a trait in one of their APs.
I like what they did with the Far Hand or w/e it's called monk. It reduces the sniping penalty by 10.
If you combine that with a Haflling's sneaking alternate racial trait, the penalty BECOMES 10. So the end result is 10 - 10 = 0. Snipe with no penalty at lvl 3.
I then take Rogue all the way, focusing on archery as much as possible, and becoming the hidden sniper.
I never considered Rogue useless as a class.
One of the main flaws is how sneak attack damage works. It's kind of hard to move in and sneak attack and then move away. I can tell you if Rogues somehow are able to keep doing sneak attack damage with impunity in game sessions. It's the DM going out of his way to help the player imo. When I'm a DM my npcs don't stand still allowing Rogues to constantly sneak attack. Rogues are prime targets. Having less hp and AC then combat classes Rogues tend to not have lasting power. It can be done with specific builds. Vanilla Rogue is easy to take out. Their is ranged sneak attack but it's a pain to implement as well.
The situation is not helped with some very weak and situational designed Rogue talents. Their are some useful ones yet if I played a Rogue I would need to be paid and very well to take some of them. Paizo did not help things either by making trapfinding a trait in one of their APs.
Most of this has been my experience also. I am playing a slayer now, and I have had 1, maybe 2 chances to sneak attack someone, and I am at level 4. As a GM players don't often have chances for flanks even when I am not trying to avoid it. Maybe my way of running combat makes it rare, but it just almost never happens. As for trapfinding, I would still not take a rogue for it. At best I would dip into it, and then continue into the class I actually wanted to play.
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if we really needed a "Trapfinder". i would play a slayer or Dip 2 levels as one. then play the class i really wanted to play. the only thing the rogue has going for it is a faster sneak attack progression for going arcane trickster.
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The bash a rogue threads are because some people like doing things one way and some people hate the fact that they would deliberately make a less powerful character. Then someone says can you just help me optimize this class, and someone goes no and it escalates.I wouldn't say that.
I would say that there is usually a post of some description that mentions the rogue (maybe the OP, maybe not) - the post is sometimes negative towards the rogue, sometimes positive, sometimes a question on why or how they are so bad, sometimes how to make a good one.
Some people post then about:
-how rouges are barely competent at their job (skills) and next to useless in combat
-require extreme system mastery to not be a dead weight on the party, and will be painfully useless and unfun to play if said system mastery is not utilized
-attract disruptive players the most out of all classes
-that half a dozen classes are pretty much better at everything they do while being able to do other more useful thing. People who want a rogue should go use those instead.Then there are usually a couple of posts about how:
- rogues are fine at skills
- the newer classes are overshadowing the rouge(sic) and are OP, yadda yadda power creep etc
- rogues are fine if the player is creative
- they aren't primary damage dealers, their damage is good enough and besides they have 3/4 bab like all the other skill monkeyish types.
-they don't need to fill a useful combat role in the party because they are skill monkeys and are the only ones who can deal with traps, or at least the only ones that *could* deal with traps, something something stupid paizo power creep grumble grumble.
- magic is broken and rogues are the only real mundane optionThe first lot then generally respond:
- other classes get in-class boosts to skills, unlike the rogue
- even in core bard>rogue
- anyone can be creative with any class, rogues are the only ones that require it
- other classes get class features that boost...
Somehow, I feel like you just completely elaborated on my comment without disagreeing with it.
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The thing is, if your point is, "Rogues suck, but some people like roleplaying", does it really work as a point? Nobody's argue you can't roleplay as a rogue. You could roleplay as a commoner, too. But Pathfinder has goals aside from "roleplay". Like, "kill that dragon and save the prince/princess". Or, "disable that trap and save the treasure".
Roleplay all you like, but the rogue just can't hold up in the majority of most games. His presence will signal to everyone else, "Okay, I guess I can't play any of the half-dozen-or-so classes that can do what the rogue is supposed to do better." Because if someone can do what the rogue does better, it kind of invalidates the rogue's entire presence on the team, doesn't it?
Which leads to some great roleplaying, but doesn't exactly stand to defend the rogue as a class. I could play an expert and get a very similar experience, plus be better at the skills I want to be better at (oh, so my scout/survivalist is worse at mending people than the inquisitor? Okay...).
"I can have fun with it" doesn't make it good design or a good choice. I can have fun with an archaeologist. And I can get a lot closer to what my character's supposed to be good at.
The thing is, if your point is, "Rogues suck, but some people like roleplaying", does it really work as a point? Nobody's argue you can't roleplay as a rogue. You could roleplay as a commoner, too. {. . .}
The class for Homer Simpson. Apparently, this actually has a market for it.