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So, I misread the rules on Thief Rogues and didn't see that their add dex-to-damage ability only works on WEAPONS. When I found this out, I was greatly saddned because I built an unarmed attack thief rogue that is now neigh-on useless now that I read that rule (this is for PFS by the way, so no houserules can fix this.)
I had resigned myself to just saving up a boatload of ACP to compleatly rebuild him (he's over level 4) but a friend of mine and my Venture Lieutenant for the area I live in suggested I double check on the boards to see if the game developers did an oversight before I spend a bunch of ACP needlessly.
To be clear, I KNOW I MESSED UP. I am willing to own up to my mistake. This is not an invitation for toxic board members to call me stupid and an idiot. I KNOW WHAT THE TEXT OF THIEF says. I was just encouraged to double check if that was the actual meaning of what paizo wanted to do, or if they made a small mistake when writing up that ability. I'm fine with either decision, I just want to double check before I spend a bunch of points to rebuild my rogue.
For those of you who don't know what I'm talking about:
[quote=Thief Racket, Core rulebook 180)
When a fight breaks out, you prefer swift, lightweight weapons, and you strike where it hurts. When you attack with a finesse melee weapon, you can add your Dexterity modifier to damage rolls instead of your Strength modifier.
The question is: was this intentionally limited to only weapons, or did the developers mean to let it work for unarmed strikes and just forgot to put it in? Again, okay with either ruling, my venture lieutenant just thought it looked like a typo and encouraged me to reach out on the forums.
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There has never been any indication that it was intended to work with unarmed strikes. An accident is possible, of course but we don't have a reason to suspect one (no errata to it, or statements that it should work unarmed that I've ever seen or anything like that).
Based on my best understanding of the rules, unarmed does not benefit from the thief racket ability of adding dexterity to damage. That said, it is interesting to note that unless I am mistaken there are no unarmed attacks that have either the finesse or agile traits greater than a d8 in base damage. The Aldori Dueling Sword is a finesse one-handed melee weapon with d8 damage. In both cases, a rogue with the thief racket would have to jump through hoops to be able to use either method; the feat cost and focus to concept being not insignificant.
I guess what I am trying to say is that it doesn’t seem broken to allow unarmed attacks to work in conjunction with the racket ability.
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Based on my best understanding of the rules, unarmed does not benefit from the thief racket ability of adding dexterity to damage. That said, it is interesting to note that unless I am mistaken there are no unarmed attacks that have either the finesse or agile traits greater than a d8 in base damage. The Aldori Dueling Sword is a finesse one-handed melee weapon with d8 damage. In both cases, a rogue with the thief racket would have to jump through hoops to be able to use either method; the feat cost and focus to concept being not insignificant.
I guess what I am trying to say is that it doesn’t seem broken to allow unarmed attacks to work in conjunction with the racket ability.
While I agree with your overall point, the hoops you'd have to jump through for an advanced weapon are much more arduous.
Edit: Also, you have better pay off on unarmed strikes because you can get flurry of blows from the monk archetype. The best argument against giving Dex to damage to unarmed strikes to the thief is that it is already the strongest racket. Letting the unarmed build shine more with other rackets might not be a bad thing. Still won't break anything to allow it, but I can't imagine you'll find support for it in PFS.
A rogue using tiger stance with flurry of blows could be quite potent, but that would be more due to precision damage than the dexterity modifier to damage. Frankly, one can swap tiger stance for monastic weaponry and get ancestral weaponry along the way, eg. Elven Curved Blade, and we are back to d8 damage flurry using dexterity for damage.
All of it is a bit taxing and takes at least until level 10 in the above examples to come online. As I mentioned, the rules seem rather clear unarmed attacks cannot use the thief racket ability, but I don’t see why.
Rereading the text, leaving out unarmed attacks seems intentional to me.
My first thought on reading your post was "Wait, it doesn't work with unarmed strikes?" I think I was conflating the rules for the racket with the rules for Sneak Attack. I wonder if you did the same thing.
I'm sorry that your build went awry. :(
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I had resigned myself to just saving up a boatload of ACP to compleatly rebuild him
Don't be resigned. Go Ruffian, grab Monk and then Alchemist Dedication and ultimately get access to d10 Agile Deadly d10 Flurry of Sneak Attacks!!!!!
Look to the bright side of things, there's always something more optimized out there!
(in PFS, it's unfortunately a bit hard to get it as it's a level 16 build... but it's always nice to dream)
So, I misread the rules on Thief Rogues and didn't see that their add dex-to-damage ability only works on WEAPONS. When I found this out, I was greatly saddned because I built an unarmed attack thief rogue that is now neigh-on useless now that I read that rule (this is for PFS by the way, so no houserules can fix this.)
I don't know the specifics of your character, so what did you dedicate to Unarmed Strikes, so that the image of a brawler can not be salvaged by using, well, Brawling weapons like a knuckle duster?
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So, I misread the rules on Thief Rogues and didn't see that their add dex-to-damage ability only works on WEAPONS. When I found this out, I was greatly saddned because I built an unarmed attack thief rogue that is now neigh-on useless now that I read that rule (this is for PFS by the way, so no houserules can fix this.)I don't know the specifics of your character, so what did you dedicate to Unarmed Strikes, so that the image of a brawler can not be salvaged by using, well, Brawling weapons like a knuckle duster?
While the Knuckle Duster qualifies for Sneak Attack, it isn't Finesse so you'd use Strength on your attack rolls...
You'd have to go with the Bladed Gauntlet on a Thief, but that's a Martial weapon...
While the Knuckle Duster qualifies for Sneak Attack, it isn't Finesse so you'd use Strength on your attack rolls...
You'd have to go with the Bladed Gauntlet on a Thief, but that's a Martial weapon...
Welp, depending on just how much difference there is between your character's STR and DEX scores, the only things I can come up with right now are the Weapon Proficiency General feat and Fighter dedication. At least Fighter dedication allows to get Expert proficiency at lv. 12. You would almost always be 2 points behind in proficiency, but if that is less then the stat divide, it would at least be a mitigation.
I suppose it depends on to which level you want to take this PC.
Or a regular gauntlet, or a spiked gauntlet. Or both for multiple damage types!
But gauntlets spiked or not are Agile not Finesse so they won’t help. Actually almost every weapon listed so far has either ancestry and/or martial proficiencies requirements. Unfortunately even the weapon proficiency feat while opening your weapon choices won’t allow you benefit to from the 5th & 7th level class weapon ability improvements; as I just realized with my rogue. (Uses a filcher’s fork primarily, yes I know retraining a feat…)
Unfortunately the OP is correct in needing to either rebuild their character to meet their desired concept, or accept that they need to use a finesse weapon to fully benefit from the racket’s ability.
I'm not familiar with PFS restrictions. Do they allow archetypes? After a little poking around it seems like Martial Artist would pretty much fix you up for missing out on your dex damage.
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There's no reason to suspect it's not intentional, because Paizo sprinkled terrible, unintuitive, and needlessly complicated unarmed attack rules all over the CRB.
They primarily exist to make sure players can't play characters Paizo doesn't want them to play, regardless of balance, so the thief rogue getting iced out of unarmed combat is completely consistent with other iterations of this rule.
While I agree with your overall point, the hoops you'd have to jump through for an advanced weapon are much more arduous.
How is taking unconventional weaponry at level 1 more arduous than the multiple monk feats you're suggesting?
Especially since monk archetype requires 14 strength which is further investment most Thieves would never do.
There's no reason to suspect it's not intentional, because Paizo sprinkled terrible, unintuitive, and needlessly complicated unarmed attack rules all over the CRB.
They primarily exist to make sure players can't play characters Paizo doesn't want them to play, regardless of balance, so the thief rogue getting iced out of unarmed combat is completely consistent with other iterations of this rule.
While I agree with your overall point, the hoops you'd have to jump through for an advanced weapon are much more arduous.How is taking unconventional weaponry at level 1 more arduous than the multiple monk feats you're suggesting?
Especially since monk archetype requires 14 strength which is further investment most Thieves would never do.
I suppose I should have said more arduous for non-humans. Getting scaling proficiency is difficult outside of Ancestry options. I suppose anyone could take Adopted at 3rd level and Unconventional Weapon at 5th, and I don't know how you'd value that in comparison to a 2nd level and 4th level class feat, especially when free archetype might be in play, but it is an awkward progression for the first few levels when you can't use your weapon of choice but need to get a magic weapon.
By comparison the martial artist dedication nets you an attack as strong as any finesse weapon that you can later build upon. And the end result is probably better as well. Stances are also still stronger than the Aldori Dueling sword. D8 finesse, agile, and back stabber beats d8 finesse.
On the other hand most ancestral unarmed attacks balance just fine against finesse weapons.
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Rogues aren't actually proficient in all martial weapons, which makes getting advanced weapons more difficult:There's no reason to suspect it's not intentional, because Paizo sprinkled terrible, unintuitive, and needlessly complicated unarmed attack rules all over the CRB.
They primarily exist to make sure players can't play characters Paizo doesn't want them to play, regardless of balance, so the thief rogue getting iced out of unarmed combat is completely consistent with other iterations of this rule.
While I agree with your overall point, the hoops you'd have to jump through for an advanced weapon are much more arduous.How is taking unconventional weaponry at level 1 more arduous than the multiple monk feats you're suggesting?
Especially since monk archetype requires 14 strength which is further investment most Thieves would never do.
Source Core Rulebook pg. 57 3.0Human
You've familiarized yourself with a particular weapon, potentially from another ancestry or culture. Choose an uncommon simple or martial weapon with a trait corresponding to an ancestry (such as dwarf, goblin, or orc) or that is common in another culture. You gain access to that weapon, and for the purpose of determining your proficiency, that weapon is a simple weapon.
If you are trained in all martial weapons, you can choose an uncommon advanced weapon with such a trait. You gain access to that weapon, and for the purpose of determining your proficiency, that weapon is a martial weapon.
Even if you do spend a general feat to get trained in all martial weapons, that proficiency won't improve naturally as a rogue.
Finally, the Aldori Dueling Sword doesn't have an appropriate ancestry trait, so technically it's not actually a valid option for this feat (regardless of whether or not it is 'common' somewhere, that particular clause isn't listed for Advanced weapons). I believe it will cost you Weapon Proficiency feat x2 (Proficient in all martial weapons, then Proficient with the Dueling Sword) plus the Aldori Duelist Archetype to get improving proficiency levels...
So yeah, there are a lot of hoops for rogues to get decent with an Advanced weapon
I right, I forgot about the other horrendously bad design choice Paizo made here.
Fair enough.