Hi everyone. We're playing Quest for the Frozen Flame , we're a 5 person party at level 5, and in our last session the player of the party Rogue expressed some dissatisfacton with his class. We're playing with the Ancestral Paragon and Free Archetype rules if that makes a difference.
TLDR: What can we do to boost the Rogue in our party to help the player feel like he's contributing more?
The party consists of a Sorcerer with the Cavalier archetype , a Flame Oracle , a melee Precision Ranger , a melee Fighter with the Druid archetype and a Thief-Rogue with the Horizon Walker archetype.
Now generally we've been playing pretty well and I think everyone's been having fun, including the Rogue, until very recently. The problem seems to be that A) The Rogue is feeling out-classed in damage, and B) They feel fragile as well.
Part of this is because we've only found 1 Striking Rune so far and we gave it to the Ranger. The Rogue has Sneak Attack and my Fighter can Wild-Shape for damage, so the Ranger seemed like they'd need it most and get more benefit out of it.
Part of it is the damage numbers seen. At level 5 the Precision Ranger is hitting for ~22 damage and critting for ~50 on that first swing, and is fairly self sufficient . My Fighter is doing comparable damage to the Rogue when I'm Wild-Shaped damage on a hit, but I crit all the time, and I've taken debuff feats so my 2nd/3rd attacks are even more likely to hit. The Rogue is also the only martial PC without an AoO reaction, meaning the other 2 front-line PCs are making more attacks at our full bonuses. The casters are also able to dish out huge damage, and when we're Hexploring they can pretty much just blast all their biggest spells every combat and get them back before the next one. Meanwhile the Rogue is dealing ok damage once per round and putting herself in harm's way doing it ...
Part of it is the survivability. The Ranger and Fighter seem a bit tankier, and the casters tend to stand in the back, while the Rogue has to get into the frey. I don't know the exact stats of the other PCs, but my Fighter is the only party member with heavy armour so my AC is +1, and I have 16 CON and the Toughness feat, so I imagine my ability to stand and fight is noticeably higher than the Rogue's, and the Ranger probably at least has higher HP. Also, we had a faulty in-game armour so the Ranger was accidentally cheating with +2 AC for a while , so he's probably been looking tankier than he should have until recently.
We've also had a couple of very difficult single-target encounters recently where the Rogue got smacked around a bit. There was one encounter with a high level optional challenge boss who happened to have multiple AoO Reactions per round to punish PCs for moving, which we found out when the Rogue moved in and triggered an AoO, then moved out and triggered another AoO on the same turn.
And part of it seems to be the player's tactics. I think the player feels that the PC is too squishy, so his go-to tactic is a sping-attack , meaning that A) He only gets 1 attack per turn, and B) that the "Agile" property on his weapon is completely wasted.
Speaking of weapons, we started the game using pre-Remaster rules, but have since switched to the Remaster. The player only expressed feeling underpowered at the end of last session so I've only just started looking at this, but one big change to the Rogue is weapon proficiency, and I'm 100% sure the GM would allow the player to upgrade to a bigger weapon if he wants to . I'm also fairly sure when we get another Striking Rune it won't feel as bad .
So long story short I'm asking what we can do to help the Rogue feel like they're contributing to combats more? This could be tactical advice for the Rogue, tactical advice for my Fighter , potentially useful feats, spells or items to look for on the Rogue, weapons ... whatever you think might help would be appreciated.
At 5th level the rogue should be feeling good about damage. Their sneak attack damage increased to 2d6 and their weapon proficiency increased to expert for more critical hits. And the thief racket adds Dexterity to melee damage. The lack of a Striking Rune and the comparison to another character with a Striking Rune does mean the rogue is dealing less damage than expected, but that is the setting's fault and the GM should correct it.
We've also had a couple of very difficult single-target encounters recently where the Rogue got smacked around a bit. There was one encounter with a high level optional challenge boss who happened to have multiple AoO Reactions per round to punish PCs for moving, which we found out when the Rogue moved in and triggered an AoO, then moved out and triggered another AoO on the same turn.
And part of it seems to be the player's tactics. I think the player feels that the PC is too squishy, so his go-to tactic is a sping-attack (move-attack-move), meaning that A) He only gets 1 attack per turn, and B) that the "Agile" property on his weapon is completely wasted.
The player simply had terribly rotten luck to encounter an unusual creature with the abilities to make a spring attack suicidal. Getting an Attack of Opportunity/Reactive Strike while approaching the creature means that the creature had both reach and Reactive Strike. Reach is easy to observe: either the creature is big, has ridiculously long arms, or hold a reach weapon, but Reactive Strike is harder to predict without a good Recall Knowledge check to identify the creature. And a second reaction to make a second Reactive Strike is downright rare. Only a handful of creatures have that.
But reach will become more common. A lot of higher-level creatures are big. The rogue should invest in the Mobility rogue feat 2 if the player wants to continue with spring attacks. Another option is a Bladed Scarf, Dancer's Spear, or Elven Branching Spear, which are a finesse weapons with reach. They each deal 1d6 damage but take 2 hands. The Scorpion Whip, Thorn Whip, and Whip also have reach, but they take only 1 hand and deal 1d4 damage.
The other non-agile non-combination finesse martial weapons are Bow Staff (2 hands, 1d6 B), Combat Grapnel (2 hands, 1d6 P), Combat Lure (2 hands, 1d6 B), Dueling Spear (2 hands, 1d8 P), Elven Curve Blade (2 hands, 1d8 S), Monkey's Fist (1 hand, 1d6 B nonlethal), Nunchaku (1 hand, 1d6 B), Probing Cane (1 hand, 1d6 B), Rapier (1 hand, 1d6 P), Rope Dart (2 hands, 1d4 P), Spiked Chain (2 hands, 1d8 S), and Umbrella Injector (1 hand, 1d4 P). Plus a lot of weapons with both agile and finesse, such as the Shortsword, deal a reasonable 1d6 damage. Without a Striking Rune, the difference between 1d6 and 1d8 averages only one damage.
The best defensive posture for the rogue would be to use a shield and a one-handed finesse reach weapon such as a Thorn Whip. Shield Block is available as a general feat. But the Raise a Shield action costs an action and, thus, would prevent the spring attack tactic.
A thief rogue become fantastic at 10th level with the Precise Debiliations feat. Everyone appreciates having their target off-guard.
At 5th level the rogue should be feeling good about damage.
I agree, but he's not feeling like he's keeping up. I actually do think he's dealing less damage, but I don't think he's dealing bad damage, I just think everyone else is dealing more.
The Ranger is using a GLAIVE, and with the Precision bonus damage and GRAVITY WEAPON that comes to 2d8+4+4+1d8 damage on the first hit, and it's Deadly d8 so that becomes [2d8+4+4+1d8]×2+1d8 damage on a crit. He's got a fair few hits over 50 damage with that Glaive. However the damage drops to 2d8+4 on the second or third attack for the round.
My Fighter Wild Shapes and gets 2d8+5 , which means I'm dealing similar damage to the Rogue, but between the +2 to hit I'm getting way more crits. Add to all that the fact that the Ranger and Fighter are getting bonus attacks with AoOs and I think we really Are dealing more damage.
Meanwhile the casters are just throwing out their highrst level spells because why not? The Sorcerer did over 150 damage in 2 rounds and almost solo'd an encounter last session by just slinging Fireballs, so even though his single-target damage isn't as high he's able to put out so much AoE damage that it doesn't matter.
That said, as you say I think the Rogue's damage is fine. Good even. The problem isn't even that we're dealing more damage on average, it's that we see the big numbers.
The Ranger is hitting over 50 at some point most combats, but he's really only doing 1 attack per turn. It's just that the Ranger looks like he's doing well when he does that.
My Fighter is regularly getting over 30 with crits, and while not the damage spikes of the Ranger I get them a lot more often. I actually don't always wild-shape, and when I don't I'm dealing 1d8+4 damage with my WARHAMMER, but I'm also regularly inflicting the FRIGHTENED and OFF GUARD conditions, so even when my damage output is low I'm still contributing.
The Rogue doesn't have the damage spikes that the Ranger is getting, nor the reliability of my Fighter. He also isn't adding conditions like I am, so damage is what we're really looking for. And I guess the final part is that the Rogue really needs 1 of us to flank to function. We can still do our thing when the battlefield forces us into unfavourable positions, but the Rogue really needs the set-up to function.
Again, I agree it's not as bad as the player thinks, but I understand why he thinks that.
But reach will become more common. A lot of higher-level creatures are big. The rogue should invest in the Mobility rogue feat 2 if the player wants to continue with spring attacks. Another option is a Bladed Scarf, Dancer's Spear, or Elven Branching Spear, which are a finesse weapons with reach. They each deal 1d6 damage but take 2 hands. The Scorpion Whip, Thorn Whip, and Whip also have reach, but they take only 1 hand and deal 1d4 damage.
Great. Yeah Mobility looks good, the Rogue actually has the fastest speed of anyone in the party so he should be able to make use of that.
I actually didn't think of the Rogue getting a reach weapon, excellent suggestion. That would negate a lot of these problems.
The lack of a Striking Rune and the comparison to another character with a Striking Rune does mean the rogue is dealing less damage than expected, but that is the setting's fault and the GM should correct it.
Quest for the Frozen Flame is a stone-age style adventure and we're leaning into that. So we find treasure when we find it. I think he is giving ut out reasonably well, we've just only found the 1 Striking Rune so far.
The player simply had terribly rotten luck to encounter an unusual creature with the abilities to make a spring attack suicidal.
Yup. The monster in question was THIS . The GM Heavily hinted that we weren't high enough level yet, but we wanted to try it out anyway. The Ranger and his animal companion both went down, and I think the Oracle did too. The Rogue stayed up but on like 1HP and my Fighter was 1 hit away from being KO'd. The poor Rogue just happened to find those multiple AoOs on turn 1 and didn't feel like they could contribute much, although to be honest finding that out was incredibly valuable for the rest of us.
This is the first time that I saw a rogue complaining about damage. That said a d4 weapon doesn't helps. Anyway the comparison with Gravity Weapon is not good once that it works only once per round while the rogue precision damage is valid for each Strike. But this is also something easily to deal once that you are using Free Archetype, the rogue can just take Gravity Weapon via Ranger Archetype too adding more damage to the first Strike.
Anyway the Rogue's damage effectiveness will improve a lot when it reach level 8 and 10. Once that Opportune Backstab means one extra Strike as reaction when an ally hit what's fantastically improves the DPR, also in level 10 Precise Debilitations will add 2d6 more to the Strikes so even if nothing is done now it will become way more stronger as level up.
Yet if your rogue friend still unhappy theres also the possibility to play as other class. There's no real need of a skill monkey in PF2. The party probably can deal with most skill challenges just distributing their skills between party members.
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Thief rogues can also really benefit from a thrown weapon build, giving them more opportunities to deal damage and stay out of reach. Get them a Thrower's Bandolier to ameliorate most of the trouble with throwing weapons.
I'm rocking a throwing thief rogue in a converted War for the Crown campaign and he is regularly the most deadly PC in the group.
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A thrown weapon build needs some way to make enemies off-guard at range.
The main thing causing the damage to fall behind is only attacking once. That’s a valid strategy for keeping the Rogue alive, and it doesn’t seem like the party needs the Rogue to be dealing more damage, but if the player wants to deal more damage, then figuring out a way to attack more than once will be important.
If the Rogue didn’t take Toughness at 3rd (or 1st if Human), consider retraining. Although it’s also possible they took Fleet, given the spring attack strategy. It sounds like the group can’t count on buying magic items. Otherwise Trick Magic Item and a 2nd rank wand of Tailwind can offset losing Fleet. A wand of False Vitality can help with hit points.
Basically, find a way to stay in melee to get two attacks a round. Reach weapon was a good suggestion. This is going to become more important as the Rogue levels. Gang Up is available at 6 and is a tremendous buff to the Rogue and the entire party now that it makes the enemy off-guard to melee attacking allies as well. But you have to stay within your reach of the enemy. Opportune Backstab at 8 that was pointed out also requires staying in melee.
Does the Oracle cast Heal at all? Or just blast? That can make a big difference, too, for when the Rogue does get targeted. But if the group doesn’t have a lot of in combat healing, everyone will eventually have encounters where they feel squishy thanks to boss crits and the general yo-yo aspect of PF2E damage/healing. Without the healing part of that, the yo-yo doesn’t work.
This is the first time that I saw a rogue complaining about damage.
Yeah we're not super experienced with PF2, this is our second set of characters to hit level 5, and this player has gone from Barbarian to Rogue. I think he is the lowest damage member of the party at the moment, but that's not because his damage is bad, it's because these are the best levels for a Precision Ranger, and the Hexcrawl aspect of the game means the casters can go ham. I don't expect this feeling to last, but I thought I'd ask for some tips anyway.
I do appreciate those feat suggestions for later levels though, I think he'll enjoy them.
Thief rogues can also really benefit from a thrown weapon build, giving them more opportunities to deal damage and stay out of reach. Get them a Thrower's Bandolier to ameliorate most of the trouble with throwing weapons.
Yeah actually just finding a Returning Rune for the fork might be enough. I have SNAGGING STRIKE ony Fighter so making enemies isn't too hard as long as I go before the Rogue either.
The main thing causing the damage to fall behind is only attacking once.
Yeah I agree. I haven't really had a chance to talk to him since our last session, but I think this is probably a big part of it. I think getting a throwing/reach weapon will help a lot, but even just convincing him to stand and fight a bit more could work.
Ih I just realised my character has some Javelins and Darts she barely ever uses, and the Rogue has Quick Draw. Maybe I'll give them to the Rogue so she can use them if she doesn't want to get into melee for a turn.
If the Rogue didn’t take Toughness at 3rd (or 1st if Human), consider retraining.
Honestly I don't know what general feats he's taken. I might ask him about Toughness, I took it and I already had 10HP/level and 16 CON.
Gang Up is available at 6 and is a tremendous buff to the Rogue and the entire party now that it makes the enemy off-guard to melee attacking allies as well.
Good feat, noted.
Does the Oracle cast Heal at all? Or just blast?
Yeah he heals. I also have a level 1 heal spell for emergencies in my 1 spell slot per day from the Druid archetype, and we have 3-4 PCs with Battle Medicine so we have enough situational healing to keep people up.
I honestly just think it's some bad luck, crossed with the particular setup for this party making everyone else look good. But I wanted to check to see if there was something we might be missing. I might try to do a bit more focusing on teamwork with the Rogue - focus on Snagging Strike over Intimidating Strike, do a little more positioning to be in the flank, maybe use my heals on the Rogue a bit more.
I'll probably point the player to this thread as well so they can see the options. And yeah, good feat suggestions, I'll talk to him about maybe changing weapons since we've switched to the remaster. All good suggestions, thanks people.
... I have SNAGGING STRIKE ony Fighter so making enemies isn't too hard as long as I go before the Rogue either...
And that's easy enough to set up when your Rogue has the higher initiative. He can Delay to go immediately after your fighter.
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Now generally we've been playing pretty well and I think everyone's been having fun, including the Rogue, until very recently. The problem seems to be that A) The Rogue is feeling out-classed in damage, and B) They feel fragile as well.
Part of this is because we've only found 1 Striking Rune so far and we gave it to the Ranger. The Rogue has Sneak Attack and my Fighter can Wild-Shape for damage, so the Ranger seemed like they'd need it most and get more benefit out of it.
So, about the fragility first. Yes, a rogue is more fragile than a fighter. You're generally a point of AC behind (heavy armor) and you get 2 fewer HP per level. It appears that in your specific case, your fighter also has more Con than the rogue.
But are rogues really more fragile? Let's look at saving throws and Perception instead. Since the remaster, rogues have among the best saving throws;
- At level 7, Master Reflex = success promoted to critical success. This is a big deal because reflex saves are often saves against damage, and a crit means you take none. Eventually, you get Legendary Reflex.
- At level 9, Expert Fortitude with success promoted to critical success. (Which is weird, and people wonder if it was an error. Might disappear after errata.) But okay, you don't go further than Expert, and Fortitude saves do happen a lot more to people on the front line (poison, disease).
- Will starts at Expert and stays there until level 17. Okay, decent but not amazing.
- Perception: starts at Expert, goes to Master at 7 and Legendary at 13. That gives you good odds against traps, ambushes, and initiative when you're not sneaking. And makes you harder to feint.
All of this together gives rogues a pretty solid defensive layer, but Con/Fortitude is the weakest part of it. Maybe a solution for the player feeling fragile is to rebuild the character a little to bump Con a bit?
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On to damage output. The striking rune is an issue, using a d4 weapon is also an issue, and attacking usually only once per round is also an issue.
About the Striking rune - this is something the GM needs to work on a bit. Quest for the Frozen Flame has a bit of a reputation for being problematic with treasure, since the party can't really go off on a side trek to go shopping. But if you don't have the kind of gear you're expected to have for your level, you're going to be weak for your level - simple logic.
It's more obvious because the rest of the party has workarounds - casters don't rely on Striking runes, your fighter wildshapes, and the ranger has the only rune. So the rogue really is behind here.
One option is for the GM to pay close attention to treasure and spice up the rewards for encounters a bit more with just-the-right-thing drops.
Another one is to use the Automatic Bonus Progression variant rule. That one guarantees everyone has the bonuses they should have based on their level, but has the downside that treasure is less exciting. It can be a good fit for a campaign like this though, where the treasure in the book is a bit problematic but the GM doesn't love the idea of fixing it all manually.
For attacking only once per round, I think there are a couple of options;
- Switch to a bigger weapon, like maybe an elven curve blade or aldori dueling sword. Together with the Mobility feat and a Striking rune or Automatic Bonus Progression, it'll make that one-hit damage better and the skirmishing less risky.
- Don't skirmish so much anymore. Maybe talk with the GM about shifting Con up a bit somehow so the rogue doesn't feel quite as fragile. But making an extra agile/finesse attack will be a big damage boost.
- Start fights at range, using your Surprise Attack class feature to get sneak attack with thrown weapons if you can. That way, you don't have to be the first to go into melee when there's no flank yet.
- When you go into melee, get the Gang Up feat at level 6 and Opportune Backstab at level 8. Then you no longer have to go into dangerous positions to flank, and you get to attack a lot more often. Can be combined with a reach-finesse weapon for good effect too. At level 10, grab Precise Debilitations for even more damage.
In my experience, rogues that pick this obvious path of feats are actually among the highest DPR classes in the game - at level 10 a single attack can deal:
2d6 weapon damage (for say, a shortsword)
+2d6 sneak attack
+2d6 precise debilitations
+1d6 from an elemental damage rune
+5 from dexterity
Due to Gang Up, flanking almost always happens. With Opportune Backstab, you're getting that free extra attack a lot too and that's at 0 MAP because it's an out of turn reaction. And during your turn you're usually attacking twice with an Agile weapon.
To compensate the "fragile" point of rogues also has the option to play as ruffian giving them medium armor proficiency that you can easily improve to heavy with Sentinel Dedication. To improve more your defensive power you can also take Shield Block as general feat.
This way a ruffian can have defensive power comparable to fighters while use one-hand d8 weapons with Sneak Attacks. Due this build usually requires a top investment in Str in place of Dex you dex skills will be a bit lower than the thieves but you can still progress you dex over time or can strongly invest into any other skill improving its related attribute as you wish once that you still are a skill monkey with double of legendary skills and many skill feats.
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Melee Rogues really want to hit multiple times in a round, since Sneak Attack applies every time. Precision Rangers only get one big hit, so if the Rogue only attacks once and is constantly moving in and out, it's going to make the Ranger look better.
Rogue also starts feeling better in a couple of levels, as Gang Up and Opportune Backstab really make a difference.
Lots of good advice in this thread. If the player also wants to not be in melee, they could just go ranged and avoid the problem. Mastermind is really good at that since you can make enemies off guard with recall knowledge and Analyze Weakness will give you extra bonus damage. Ranged in general doesn't outdamage melee in PF2, but being able to do respectable damage from farther away definitely lets you feel safer.
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Thanks everyone, I really appreciate your input.
I think I'll try to have my Fighter focus on helping the Rogue a bit more than the other PCs - I've been teaming up with the Ranger because we're the tanks, and protecring the Sorcerer for story reasons - but having someone to flank or give flat-footed to enemies will help the Rogue a lot, and probably do more for him than what I've been doing for the other players. I'll also hand over my Javelins since the Rogue can use them to get sneak attacks with Quick Draw. That'll be better if she's being a skermisher and going in-and-out of melee, rather than switching back and forth with a shortbow.
I'll talk to the other player and the GM about maybe re-speccing to use a different weapon. Some of the options available are new with the Remaster, which means they weren't options when we build our characters. I'll also check if the Eogue has Toughness, and if not I'll see if that's something they might want to respec as well.
Aside from that I think this is a problem that will solve itself in time. The Rogue's damage should be good, a striking rune and a few feats like Gang Up and Opportune Backstab should help with damage output a lot. I'll also see if I can talk to them about making more than 1 attack per round, because I think that's a big part of it. I plan on doing some more tripping and grappling so that might make them feel better about getting into melee range with some of the bigger creatures. I think we also just had a series of unlucky encounters with monsters specifically tailored to punish the Rogue's playstyle, so unless that continues I think the player will be ok.
Cheers everyone.