Vigilante Talents for Rogues and Slayers


Homebrew and House Rules


I'm seriously considering allowing my players to take Avenger talents for Slayers, and Stalker talents for Rogues with some tweaks so they correctly match the classes they're ported over to. Has anyone already done this, or thinks it would be a terrible idea? Most of the Stalker talents look like exactly what all Rogue talents should be, and the Avenger ones give the Slayer some nice options, though I wouldn't say any of them scream PLAY ME!!

Case the Joint, in particular, looks like it could be pretty great on a Rogue for Council of Theives.


Thoughts for your conversions:

Sneak Attack's scaling is too high for a few of the stalker options (noticeably Leave an Opening, and Up Close and Personal are overpowered options for an unchained rogue). It's also worth mentioning that the Underhanded Rogue Talent is inherently more exploitable for a rogue who can get their entire d6 or d8 SA on multiple flatfooted enemies during a surprise round as opposed to the Stalker who can only get their d8 HS damage against one before it goes down to d4s.

Personally would just make "strike the unseen" replace the entire blind-fight chain and make it a feat anyone can pick up.

Avenger Talents for Slayers seems o~k~ opens up slightly more damage optimization (which I don't think they need), but most of the abilities are basically feats in a can so it's not terrible. The armor movement stuff is kind of a wash, but it frees players up to get adamantine instead of mithral so I guess that's a good thing.

Personally I'm running the stalker as an alternative to the unchained rogue until the release; replace finesse training with up close and personal, Debilitating injury with the startling appearance line, Rogue's Edge with Social Grace, Sneak Attack with Hidden Strike. Ignore all the renown and dual aspect stuff, open up stalker vigilante talents and social talents as rogue talent options with a few work arounds to ignore renown/dual aspect.


Leave an Opening is really good, and with Debilitating Strike probably leads to a pretty rough death spiral for a flanked creature, but it does have a pretty fun mechanic. Up Close and Personal should only do SA on a successful Acrobatics, but I otherwise don't think it's too bad. Though, I think it's fine for Rogues to have nice things.

Scarab Sages

I just hit 4th with my Stalker, and I can say that Up Close and Personal + Leave an Opening is glorious. Between Boots of Elvenkind, Skill Focus, Traits, and Tribal Scars I have an obscenely high acrobatics check, and can always land the hit from UC&P and then leave an opening. If you add that to debilitating injury, it may be too strong. But I'd love to play a UC rogue with it.


I'm thinking the real question is whether it's more than what an Inquisitor, Bard, Alchemist, Investigator, or other 3/4 BAB skill class can do. All of those classes get some great abilities that pretty much always work; Alchemists have mutagens and extracts, and they can pass those around if they want. Investigators can get nutty with their Inspiration uses around level 8 and pretty much never fail a skill check, add d8s to their saves and attack rolls, and also pass around potions of haste and invisibility. Inquisitors can bane the everloving crap out of creatures, spontaneously cast some pretty decent spells, and they're great archers. Bards are also great archers, and between their performance and good hope they can make an entire party a lot more formidable.

I guess I see a Rogue getting an extra attack or two off as justified compared to what its competition is for ultimately the same role. With how many things are immune to SA or the fact that a Rogue usually needs to set up more than those other classes to get SA, it seems like in practice it won't do much more than a mutagen-infused greater invisibilityd feral Alchemist or even just a Bard or Inquisitor that took Rapid Shot and Manyshot.

And this is just me seeing the talents and thinking "Yeah, those are strong. Are they too strong?" and actually being excited that maybe they could make a Rogue, especially an Unchained Rogue, more of a player. The Avenger options are also just nice for Slayer character concepts, I think, though nothing too crazy there.


For what it's worth almost nothing is immune to sneak attack in Pathfinder, and if you're running the Unchained Rogue the class has enough love as-is (well, except they could use some better proficiencies and saves).

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