If you gave full BAB you'd probably have to get rid of (or tone down) debilitating injury.
Agreed. If you look at a fighter's special abilities (bravery, feats, training) and compare them to the rogue's (debilitatibg injury, evasion, uncanny dodge, talents, etc), the rogue clearly has way more going for it. Plus four times as many skill points. A slightly less useful save. So if you gave them a d10 and full BAB, I think the fighter would become the new ultimate sub-par choice.
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You could treat sneak attack as a special power attack variant. They'd end up with the same to-hit as they had previously, unless they were fighting something immune to sneak attack. It would give them earlier access to feats and bonus attacks, but wouldn't change much else.
That would make archetypes that trade away sneak attack much more appealing. I'm not sure how bad that would be.
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I love these boards.
"rogue is weak, just play a slayer. Fighter does anything the rogue can but much better"
okay, what if I give rogue X
"No rogue is actually quite strong if you look at the abilities they get, if you let them have full BaB you'd clearly overshadow the fighter"
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Sigh. No. Just no.
The rogue could absolutely use a boost, in my opinion.
And I'm fine with the fighter being a stronger overall combatant than the rogue. I mean. It's a fighter. It fights.
What I've aimed for in my games is to make the rogue strong enough that, within their field of expertise, they are superior to other classes. The fact that they are weaker in other situations is the trade-off.
If you gave the unchained rogue a d10 HD and full base attack, you'd essentially have a fighter with sneak attack, talents instead of bonus feats, and a pretty decent slew of other abilities in place of bravery and training.
I don't think it would make the fighter OMG LOL WORTHLESS!, but it would be, overall, a minor to moderate upgrade.
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my post was made with love. And only minorly coated in sarcasm. It also stands true in its statement with evidence from this very thread.
As for the fighter or rogue question...
I mean other than the fact that the fighter will still have a higher to hit bonus, high consistent damage, higher AC, better fort saves, more versatility in combat, advanced weapon training, access to fighter only feats... yeah.
The rogue is the only d8 3/4 bab class that doesn't have 6th level, or 4th lvl, spells as part of their class (I think). They are also, unless I am misremembering, the only class that as a d8 and 3/4 bab class has only one good save.
I think no one here would argue in saying that, on the whole classes like inquisitor, bard, investgiator etc are superior to the rogue. Likely the fighter as well. I see no issue in giving the rogue d10 and full bab bar foolish tradition.
The other idea I've toyed with is giving rogues refined education for free(from phantom thief), and good will saves. At least this way their moniker as the "skill monkey" would hold true, and they match other d8 classes in saves.
I'm more inclined to think making the rogue a d8 HD class, with psuedo full BaB (adding a line to finesse training that counts character level as BaB for their chosen weapon(s), this includes feat prerequisites) and giving them refined education instead of rogues edge. They still won't compare to most other d8 classes, but will at least be the skill version for fighters. In other words, they can do it all day.
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I love these boards.
"rogue is weak, just play a slayer. Fighter does anything the rogue can but much better"
okay, what if I give rogue X
"No rogue is actually quite strong if you look at the abilities they get, if you let them have full BaB you'd clearly overshadow the fighter"
I realize this is sarcasm, but it's also inaccurate.
When considering the balance of classes, we can't let proposed changes to a class usurp another classes position too much (disregarding that officially published material already does that a ton, but there's no reason for your homebrew to do the same).
The difference between say a fighter and an unchained rogue in terms of combat ability mostly comes down to attack bonus, IMO. The 3/4 BAB vs full BAB vs Weapon Training vs Debilitating Injury. You also have to account for the overall balance between the two classes in terms of non-combat and narrative abilities (and not just a comparison between the fighter and the rogue).
If you use the skill unlocks and give them to the rogue for free then you've made the rogue capable of doing things (with skills) that no one else is capable of. If as a GM you make very high skill bonuses (30+) largely irrelevant to the success or failure of the skill use, then other classes that use spells and class features to have insanely high skill modifiers matter less because the rogue can still achieve the same level of success in skills.
The reason that the comparison of the fighter and the rogue is apt (for a combat comparison) is because the fighter is sort of like the baseline of "how does this perform". And with the rogues (theoretical) position as a skillful character it shouldn't exceed (or probably even meet) what the fighter can do.
So a theoretical full BAB rogue with debilitating injury and sneak attack is probably on par (maybe slightly better) than a fighter with weapon training. Advanced Weapon training vs rogue talents will make a difference but then we're starting to get into a place where it's not as easy to make a simple comparison with making full character builds.
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I think the UnRogue is fine as is, increasing HD and BAB I think would overshadow the Ranger and Fighter pretty badly. If anything, I'd give them a X/day ability to treat any opponent as flat-footed and call it a day.
You mean something like:
Hunter's SurpriseAgainst the Wall
Vanishing Trick
Impromptu Sneak Attack
Having an high initiative so you go first in the surprise round
Etc?
IMO it's pretty easy for a rogue to get either Flanking or a Flat-footed target....
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I think the UnRogue is fine as is, increasing HD and BAB I think would overshadow the Ranger and Fighter pretty badly. If anything, I'd give them a X/day ability to treat any opponent as flat-footed and call it a day.You mean something like:
Hunter's Surprise
Against the Wall
Vanishing Trick
Impromptu Sneak Attack
Having an high initiative so you go first in the surprise round
Etc?IMO it's pretty easy for a rogue to get either Flanking or a Flat-footed target....
except those with uncanny dodge, it's improved version, see invisibility, other extra-sensory powers, etc...
I'm fine with UnRogue as is, I've seen them in action in numerous games and they do just fine. That said, if there was any weakness in the class its the inability with a pretty decent amount of foes to not be able to use their main class feature for combat. So a x/day ability to sneak attack anything would help there, kind of like the Surprise Strike mythic ability. Maybe the same per day usage as a Paladin's Smite Evil, cause as you've pointed out, there are a lot of ways to get it, but for those corner cases (or just another Rogue)