The non-combat Rogue


Pathfinder First Edition General Discussion

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Well, people thought your concept was completely non-combative.

Being a sneaky guy who doesn't overly focus on fighting can work, as long as you can contribute when a fight happens. This doesn't really work as a Rogue because they have to invest a large portion of their resources (feats, gold, etc.) in combat-related things to actually function in combat. This is why the overwhelming suggestion has been to choose another class.

Sorry if we've been less than nice regarding this topic, but it has come up a lot and people always seem to have trouble separating a sneaky skill-monkey character from a literal Rogue.


Vaellen wrote:
Don't be afraid to reflavor things. I played a Barbarian once and Rage didn't fit my concept at all. I renamed it "Focus", and played it mechanically the same way. Ignore the flavor bits for each class. Look at a class as a mechanical set of abilities and then just reflavor them as you wish to make them fit your idea.

re-flavoring sometimes bothers me a lot. To some, the game mechanics are strict and the aesthetics and flavor are fluff. To me, the aesthetics and flavor are very strict, they are part of the rules to be a limiting factor just as much as the mechanics themselves.

Sometimes when I re-flavor, it nags and eats away at me until I have to re-roll because I feel I have somehow cheated the rules (even though I know re-flavoring is quite common).

That and some magical abilities when re-flavored as mundane make no sense when suddenly an anti magic shell does away with them.

Edit:
When I've played (it's been some time) I'm often a DM or GM. I'm fairly easy going on the players, but I'm EXTREMELY hard on myself. Granted that just isn't in games, I do that with every aspect of my life.


Adrian Parker 563 wrote:


That and some magical abilities when re-flavored as mundane make no sense when suddenly an anti magic shell does away with them.

Flavor change for Extracts:

"I am so good at hiding that if I spend a moment <standard action> really focusing at hiding I actually become invisible."

Why does an anti-magic field short out your powers?

Maybe you are vulnerable to anti-magic fields? They give you a headache, disrupting the extreme levels of concentration required to perform your amazing feats. If you can't explain away how the results of an extract could be accomplished by a non-magical human, don't take it.


Adrian,

Pathfinder is an amazingly versatile system. For any character concept there are usually multiple ways to get there. This also means that almost any concept can be built. Often, as has been pointed out, building a character concept can mean using character classes other than the obvious choice. In your case, being a rogue without actually being the rogue class.
Can you make your character using the rogue class? Yes absolutely, though as has also been stated, the unchained rogue is superior to the core rulebook version. Can you do it with other classes or combinations of classes? Also yes and many other choices have been pointed out.
How effective your character will be depends how well you make your choices when you build her and (mostly) how well you play her.
So get the books (PDFs aren't too expensive)and read up on your options. There are some excellent guides available on these message boards to help you.
So make the character you want, how you want and have fun.

BTW: The rogue class gets a lot of grief around here but, particularly the unchained version, is one of my favorite classes to play. I'm currently working on making a knife master rogue.

Morag


Adrian Parker 563 wrote:
Ciaran Barnes wrote:
Assuming that combat is one of the major components of group's games, you still need to be able to contribute if you want to be part of the team. Since half of the rogue's class feature have to do with combat, you'll be limiting yourself quite a bit by choosing to put all of your resources elsewhere. The rogue you describe is great in a movie or TV show because the story can cater to her. I like rogues for the reasons as you, but choosing a "rogue-variant" class will give you a lot more flexibility in achieving the character you want to play. Whatever class it is, she can still look and act like a rogue. Choosing the right traits will help her get the missing class skills.

I took weapon finesse. Does taking only 1 combat-related feat instead of 2 (character is human) mean I've gimped myself?

What did I choose that you would not when playing a rogue?

You haven't gimped yourself at all.

You mentioned the D&D cartoon, which I watched as a kid and now own on DVD. As you know, Sheila didn't take an active role in combat and instead snuck around to distract an enemy or reach some objective. In a standard game, there will be many combats where the point is to cause damage until the enemies are defeated, and someone in a support role will have little to contribute. If you want to play a character like Shiela, your GM will have to build encounters that make this a possibility. For example, orcs keep on entering the courtyard and their numbers are too great for the party to fight. Perhaps you sneak out of sight, climb the wall and drop the portcullis to divide their forces. When the ogre enters, you reduce his speed by getting him tangled in a rope.

Pulling this off is completely possible, but it will require extra work for the GM. However, sometimes you will have to resort to getting into a flank and sneak attacking. As long as your are happy being able to pull off your concept maybe half the time, then go for it.


gnomersy wrote:
Adrian Parker 563 wrote:


It sounds like bad design that allows one class to do the common skills of another class better than that other class?

*shrug* Life isn't perfect and neither are the rules, deal with it.

But seriously the vanilla Rogue in Pathfinder was a hold over from 3rd ed with all the loopholes which made it situationally powerful removed from the game. It does very little well at all and almost none of that is better than some alternative choice.

For example: the Unchained Rogue(like the vanilla Rogue but actually has the ability to fight and gets dex to damage for free at level 3), the Slayer (see above minus the dex thing), Archeologist Bard(Rogue but with 6 levels of spell casting and a consistent self buff instead of the inconsistent sneak attack), Urban Ranger(Rogue-ish but with spell casting and city based bonuses), Trapper Ranger(Pretty much a Rogue but better in combat and with better saves and mostly better abilities but trades out spell casting for making traps which kinda suck and doesn't have sneak attack), Vivisectionist(weird murder alchemist I don't know about this one personally but I've heard people pick it instead of Rogue), Investigator(Smarter, spell having Rogue).

So on and so forth. There are way too many classes and archetypes that have a Rogue-ish element to them but are just functionally more useful to a party than having a Rogue in them for me to ever suggest that someone should play a vanilla Rogue.

Vivisectionists are int based with 4+int skills per level, so they have skills comparable to normal rogues when their good int modifier is accounted for, they also get sneak attacks, add in alchemical mutagens extracts etc and they also make better fighters and can do all the utility stuff like invisibility.

Scarab Sages

Adrian Parker 563 wrote:
Deadmanwalking wrote:
Adrian Parker 563 wrote:
... that is why I said it doesn't fit my concept. This bit about trusting in knowledge above all things. That's not who my character is at all.

The Class Descriptions mean almost nothing. They're a description of the most common way to play the Class, but far from the only one. Even in Paizo books specifically, statted up NPCs often don't follow those descriptions at all.

Play the character however you want, using the best set of mechanics to reflect the capabilities you want them to have.

Hrm, OK. But this is hard for me. It'll nag at me.

Don't think of classes as roles, think of them as a collection of game mechanics. It's what you do with those mechanics that allow you to define your role.

While the default role of the Bard is a performer, they are one of the most versatile classes in the came, and can be used to make an archer, a thief, a historian, an investigator, a fighter, a spell-caster, or almost any other role you can think of.


In general:

Maximum flexibility/support -> Full caster

Extreme specialization (mostly around combat) -> Spell-less class

To me, one of the best ways to actually play a true-blue rogue in Pathfinder would be to dip rogue and mostly be a wizard before entering Arcane Trickster. Arcane trickster got a big boost with Accomplished Sneak Attacker and Fractional Base Bonuses so that you can build something different and support oriented that can still do very useful things in combat.

For example: Wizard 5/Sleepless Detective 1/Arcane Trickster X

You get nearly full spellcasting progression as a wizard, meaning you get a full array of powerful spells and a good amount of skills (from high INT), and very very good class abilities like teleportation or foresight to aid your skullduggery. Then you take Sleepless Detective, which gets INT to extremely useful skill and an at will detect magic that is more powerful than the base spell and allows for better scouting and investigtion. Then at level 7 you take Accomplished Sneak Attacker and enter Arcane Trickster where your sneak attack progresses and gets some great rogue abilities like stealing at range or turning yourself invisible as a free action.

It gives you what you wanted your character to do even if it means you're not doing it the way you envisioned.


Adrian Parker 563 wrote:

AN OPEN LETTER:

I'd not meant to offend anyone earlier. I think you were trying to say that rogues are mechanically inferior to other classes, but to me it came across sounding like you were saying there were faults with my concept and that was the issue.

My apologies for any hard feelings.

Maybe next time start with the radical notion that people who answer your thread:

1) are trying to help, and
2) know what they're talking about.


You could use Path of War:
The Steelfist Warlord or Stalker gets the maneuver style called Broken Blade.
One maneuver gives +4 comp to trip, dirty trick, disarm, grapple. (Steelfist is better as their gamble system lets them add Cha as Luck bonus doing certain gambles like trip gamble: Fates Favored trait boosts that by 1)

Just have a multiclass rogue/Stalker (or Steelfist Warlord and your non-combat maneuver person will be fine.
You can just CMB people and do non-combat out of combat.

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