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Bob which of my methods of FF are not legal?How are you wrong? Let me count the ways!The dance -There tends to be more than one person in a party. After rnd 1, one rogue moves and readies for a flank. (Especially if the next rogue has a 5' to flank) Then next steps in and two go off.When making a melee attack, you get a +2 flanking bonus if your opponent is threatened by another enemy character or creature on its opposite border or opposite corner.
When in doubt about whether two characters flank an opponent in the middle, trace an imaginary line between the two attackers' centers. If the line passes through opposite borders of the opponent's space (including corners of those borders), then the opponent is flanked.
Exception: If a flanker takes up more than 1 square, it gets the flanking bonus if any square it occupies counts for flanking.
Only a creature or character that threatens the defender can help an attacker get a flanking bonus.
Creatures with a reach of 0 feet can't flank an opponent.
Sneak attack yes, flat-footed no. Strike 1.
It also matters on your method of flat footed. Eg my thug maneuver master true strike's and moves to 10'. Then round 2 - 5' dirty trick, then sneak attack with the remaining attacks using twf. He also carries a hooked lance to trip via aoo's.Dirty trick to what? Blind? Because your only options are "blinded, dazzled, deafened, entangled, shaken, or sickened." and only one of those allows sneak attack.The creature cannot see. It takes a –2 penalty to Armor Class, loses its Dexterity bonus to AC (if any), and takes a –4 penalty on most Strength- and Dexterity-based skill checks and on opposed Perception skill checks. All checks and activities that rely on vision (such as reading and Perception checks based on sight) automatically fail. All opponents are considered to have total concealment (50% miss chance) against the blinded character....
In most cases, so what? You can sneak attack just fine when denied dex. There are only a few abilities that care about your opponent actually being flat footed. Granted, one of those is sap master, which is a big damage increase, but it also limits you to nonlethal damage, which makes it less usable against a lot of foes.
Flat footed and denied dex not being the same thing was a Paizo "clarification" that required errata to several rules and abilities. PF started out with them being the same thing. IMO: it was a mistake to ever change that.
And catch off guard requires that they be unarmed (presumably by disarming them, and if they're wearing a gauntlet they're immune)
Catch Off-Guard has 99 problems but a gauntlet ain't one.
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And catch off guard requires that they be unarmed (presumably by disarming them, and if they're wearing a gauntlet they're immune)Catch Off-Guard has 99 problems but a gauntlet ain't one.
I went the route not for the mechanic, but rather the idea of a noble whacking the plebes with a cane. (Non lethal of course) If he duels, out comes the sword. I'd like to make the (sword cane housing) mithril or adamantine but I expect that's a bridge too far. Cane is wood to me and not a weapon.
I went the route not for the mechanic, but rather the idea of a noble whacking the plebes with a cane. (Non lethal of course) If he duels, out comes the sword. I'd like to make the (sword cane housing) mithril or adamantine but I expect that's a bridge too far. Cane is wood to me and not a weapon.And catch off guard requires that they be unarmed (presumably by disarming them, and if they're wearing a gauntlet they're immune)Catch Off-Guard has 99 problems but a gauntlet ain't one.
You are right you win the rogue is awesome.
Nothing can compete versus a rogue.After all you play one and you play it awesome and with style.
Have a good day.
Should I ever find a Rogue defender who can actually get the rules right, I might feel like they had a valid point. Until then it's all just False Balance.
Dazzling Display is just a prereq, no one actually uses it unless you are a cavalier and get as a faster action.
All you need is deal shaken, etc and you treat them as flatfoot for your attacks that round.
So first attack nonlethal sneak attacks, rest are lethal sneak attacks.
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I couldn't find a PM button or an email address to send this to you, so I'll put it here. I noticed my message asking for clarification of the meaning of a message was removed? Did I do anything wrong, or was it just filtered along with all the other messages and was no longer relevant?
If you reply to a message that is removed, your message will automatically be removed as well. That doesn't mean that you, personally, did anything wrong.
Leiho -I think we agree on far more than we disagree.
This conversation took my mind off a very tough couple of days. The only reason I game is too get away from the weight of responsibility constantly on my neck.
I wonder at the change in outlook when a game is your career.
On a daily basis I balance games for about 2 million of daily active users, one change in a decimal point can cause an outrage from our user base at the company I work at, trust me they have their pitchfork ready. I put bread and butter on the table of my family doing that, balance and game mechanics; that is my livelihood.
I agree the rogue can be super cool, but if you take a step back out of your personal experience and look at the numbers, the current class as it is require a big revamp, more than the one of pathfinder unchained. The class is great in certain situations. That is the problem, versatility trumps peculiar cases when you look at the game on a grand scale. Having permanent bonuses is almost always better than having situational abilities.
For example, a GM that will not use traps at all in his or her campaign by default devalues the trap-finding skill of the rogue.Or again a GM that use monster with abilities that do not target your reflex save make evasion kind of pointless.
It's sad because in the last 4 years, I have been playing pathfinder nonstop (2 to 3 times a week, usually with other designers from work and people that are very knowledgeable about games in general).We did graphs and charts for the fun of it, just comparing the rogue to other classes and usefulness it lags behind as soon you get pass level 3-4 most classes totally eclipse the rogue with the exception of the Samurai. That said that exercise was done before unchained and trust me we will redo it soon, we did it with the unchained monk and we had about 23% improvement on it's previous score, that is a pretty good leap!
As a game designer I have the duty of looking at the overall picture and average user experience with the rogue. It's like a mechanic checking the performances of a car or a chef looking at the quality of a meal. The rogue as a lot of neat trick but they fail providing consistency and that is something that is problematic in this system where combat is super important, The rogue need more and bigger and flat bonuses all around. Take a moment and if you can read the Creating New Classes provided by Paizo in the Advanced class guide book. Take notice of how many time they cite the Rogue for unique and peculiar classes mechanics, look at how many archetypes bypass these rules (Written by PAIZO themselves). Now I know there is a lot of people working on these book and products and I know that in their meeting room there must have some heated debates on the content of these books, but still it's weird that they say stuff like: Sneak attack mechanics should be exclusive to the rogue, and then have something like the vivisectionist archetype for the alchemist!
The sad part is that I love the rogue, I want it to be relevant and usefull, but I feel that past a certain point in the natural progression of the game they lack the "pazzaz" of other classes.
Like sure you can do a super nice rogue if you pick and chose feats and items and dip classes left and right. It's actually not too bad to get 2 level of unchained rogue to get evasion for a lore warden fighter for instance. It's a hard to play and hard to master class contrary to a lot of other classes that are easy to play and hard to master.
I hope you can kind of see where I am coming from when I pick at the rogue, because honestly that class has been integrated into so many archetypes that at this point it does not feel unique anymore at all and that having more skills points does not feel like a super exclusive thing to have for a character.
I was really disappointed with the unchained version, They really fixed some stuff but I feel it was not enough. I am really waiting for Paizo to come out with some sort of errata or fix but I know it might not happen, some classes get left behind and it's part of an ever evolving game, it's the price to pay for ever growing content.
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The oddity of my current Adv. Path (Shattered Star) the balance of the party wanted someone to specialize on monster lore, so I filled that role with a knife master rogue, and tapped a level of lore warden to grab more knowledge class skills. I could have gone lore oracle, I could have gone inquisitor, but I've not had a knife master prior so I gave it a run. I'm also in the run for evangelist at level 6 (synching with my rogue levels). The gm for this game says we'll go to 20 or higher...we'll see how that goes. I should be fine till around level 15-18.
Like I said we agree on several things. There were a number of these threads in the past. The Rogue lacks the super powers of an inquisitor, oracle, magus, alchemist, summoner, zen archer, etc. It's when the conversation goes beyond these items and into (Rogues can't contribute at all to a mission.) etc. etc. I'm not seeing that for people playing in their APL. APL+4 I've done that before and have been ok, but if you're standard character is a zen archer (at a minimum), wizard/sorc blaster, or a crowd summoner... its either a boring game or the gm has cranked up the scenario far beyond their typical threat level.