RefinedBean
First Post
And I can roleplay out Monopoly while playing it, but that still makes it a boardgame.
The vast majority of D&D rules cover combat, or combat-related things.
Whats the deal with rogues anyway?
And I can roleplay out Monopoly while playing it, but that still makes it a boardgame.
The vast majority of D&D rules cover combat, or combat-related things.
Mustrum_Ridcully
Hero
Why repeat a boring/old topic instead of dealing with the actual and a little more interesting/novel topic the OP started?
Why risk following a topic you yourself acknowlodge as potentially regretfull instead?
ExploderWizard
Hero
Yup. You certainly could do it that way.
I am going with 3 vs 2 because I want a bigger divide in magic between arcane and divine. All arcane sub-classes will fall under the magic user class and all divine sub-classes will belong to the cleric class.One reason for this type of organization is to limit multiclass sampling silliness. With only 3 actual classes in play, a given character can only have three classes: one type each of fighter, magic user, and cleric. It will still leave plenty of room for choice beccause each class will have a number of subclass options to choose from. From a rules/balance standpoint it saves a lot of headaches because the various abilities of all the subclasses will never be known by a single character.
For example, if a character starts out as a fighter and wants to multiclass then the options are either a type of magic user or cleric. Yet another style of fighter is not an option because that wouldn't be a different class.
This is why the number of actual separate classes needs to be low and I inquired about rogues in the first place.
Problem the first: calling them Rogues instead of Thieves (or Assassins); thus implying there was supposed to be more to them than sneak-scout-infiltrate-spy-steal-backstab.
Problem the second: trying to make them able to do something *every round* in combat. Thieves work best when they get their backstrike in round 1, then spend the next few rounds blending back into the scenery before taking their next devastating attack in about round 4. Failing that, they spend the first few rounds sneaking around the main combat to get at the enemy spellcaster and glue her up...
Problem the third (for those who disagree with problem the second): immunities to criticals and sneak attacks. OK, an undead has no functioning internal organs, but it can still have a specific point that holds it together e.g. a skeleton's spine; and that's what a critical (by luck) or a sneak attack (by skill) connects with.
Problem the fourth: giving them "sneak attack" when they're standing there in plain sight, just because someone else is there too (flanking). Does nasty things to my sense of realism...
Not sure how any of this is solveable. I like Thief in principle as a class, though I've had awful luck playing them; the obvious solution of "dismantle the class and make the skills available to others piecemeal" just doesn't fly with me.
What might make them more playable (in any edition) would be to ban some spells that intrude too far into their niche. Knock, I'm looking at you.
Also, keep in mind that in pre-3E days Thieves bumped way faster than other classes; this alone served to balance them surprisingly well as they'd often end up a level or two higher than the rest once things got going; with correspondingly a few more dice worth of h.p., better saves, better attack matrix, etc.
Lanefan
We have a lot of the same concerns
I do plan on making the non-combat thief skill set available to any character. It will not be "free" by any means. A character that wants to be a great thief has to use up thier primary skill slot at 1st level for it instead of another one such as ranger, or diplomat.It's the combat abilities that are tougher to work out. The insistance of round by round combat effectiveness ended up giving the rogue abilities that didn't make sense from a simulationist viewpoint. Abilities like hide in plain sight and gaining huge advantages from something like flanking are the main reasons I decided to drop the class for my project. Rogue style combat tactics can easily be worked in as a particular style of fighter without having to make large damage spikes the only implementation.
The ability to gain extra damage from a "backstab" type of attack will be available to any character that is able to attack an unaware target.
As far as banning certain magic goes I don't think it will be necessary. It was never a problem for us prior to 3E and the availability of dime store scrolls and wands. Magical shortcuts to thief skills will be rare and/or expensive.
I know these were completely separate classes in every way. My point was that they do not actually have to be that way. Turning these types of class abilities into paths for each of the three classes actually will reduce the number of classes which is one of my goals.
As Mouseferatu mentioned, mechanically they weren't the same class. They were simply put under one heading in the rulebook, so you could find all the melee heavy-hitters in one place.
A large part of the point of having a class it so have all things with mechanical similarity under one roof. While some flexibility and branching is reasonable or necessary to have interesting character development, too much of it dilutes the purpose of having a class.
In the 4e structure, classes are informed by the role and power source structure. If two characters have different power sources, or different combat roles, they probably should not be described by the same mechanical class.
ExploderWizard
Hero
Understood and agreed. For my own project, while every type of each class is useful in combat there won't be a pre-defined role associated with each type. I will not make it the system's job to tell players how to run thier characters in combat.
Remathilis
Legend
Yup. You certainly could do it that way.
One reason for this type of organization is to limit multiclass sampling silliness. With only 3 actual classes in play, a given character can only have three classes: one type each of fighter, magic user, and cleric. It will still leave plenty of room for choice beccause each class will have a number of subclass options to choose from. From a rules/balance standpoint it saves a lot of headaches because the various abilities of all the subclasses will never be known by a single character.
For example, if a character starts out as a fighter and wants to multiclass then the options are either a type of magic user or cleric. Yet another style of fighter is not an option because that wouldn't be a different class.
This is why the number of actual separate classes needs to be low and I inquired about rogues in the first place.
Meh. I'd rather have a warrior/expert/spellcaster paragrim for three classes than fighting-man/magic-user/cleric. The latter was appropriately abandoned in Supplement I: Greyhawk and never looked back to.
There are more "thieves" in fiction than "clerics" (Aladdin, Robin Hood, Antilicus, Remington Steele, Grey Mouser, Han Solo, and more vs. Rolland, Friar Tuck, and..?) In addition, arcane and divine magic is a true D&Dism since most magic in fiction can heal, destroy, buff, and protect.
There are two questions in your query.
1.) Is a "rogue" archetype viable enough to stand on its own as a separate class, and
2.) What is the best way to implement it if so.
The answer to one IMHO is yes. Fighter (and almost every variant term; warrior, etc) has implied someone who is focused on combat first, other things second. A "rogue" implies someone who uses combat as a last resort, but uses skill, guile, and luck first to avoid combat. When that fails, he enters combat with less skill than a man who lives (and dies) by the sword. The "rogue" archetype could encompass a wide-variety of skilled characters; woodsmen/archers, scouts, con-men, gamblers, smugglers, acrobats, swashbucklers, etc.
D&D's thief (and rogue) class has always committed the cardinal sin of giving rogues a role, and then allowing them to suck at it. Too often, the nature of the skill system (or % system) meant low level skill characters failed far more often then they succeeded (akin to a fighter who could only hit typical monsters on a 15+). To add insult to injury, magical means of duplicating these skills were automatically successful, making them highly valuable. And at low levels where a rogue could contribute to combat (addding in occasional strong blows) the backstab rules were so confining as to make them worthless, and SA was so good they had to cripple it by making it only work some of the time.
IMHO, a good rogue class (system independent) should do the following.
1.) Have the widest (and best) chance of succeeding at skill-use. A rogue should be able to climb a wall, sneak down a hall, and listen at a door with a reasonable chance of success at low levels, his abilities to sneak, con, and such should rival magic at high-levels. (Bluffs so good they border on charm magic, hiding so good he's practically invisible) While everyone else can climb a cliff, I want the rogue waiting at the top, eating a sandwich, yelling "come on you guys, hurry up."
2.) A rogue shouldn't need to rely on magic (be it magical items or some innate talent with it) to do his job. Magic should enhance his abilities, not replace it.
3.) If cornered, a rogue should have abilities to misdirect, confuse, and outwit his foes with dexterity, panache, and bravado. Avoiding hazards with an almost sixth-sense like ability. While a fighter can anticipate a battle and a wizard knows a magical aura when he see's it, a rogue can sense trouble long ago and has focused his abilities to avoid or confront it.
4.) When all else fails, he's good at skirmishing combat. Standing in one place trading blows is a fighter's job, he should excel a landing occasional strong blows to unsuspecting foes (occasional being key), ducking and weaving in combat to strike at foes, and mostly picking off stragglers, wizards, and other "squishies". Against an goblin or guard, he can hold his own a bit. Against an ogre or dragon, he better run behind the fighter!
All versions of D&D rogues promise this, most fail in one regard or another. Mostly, they insist on letting magic trump mundane skill and try to assemble glass-cannon combatants (I'd gladly train 1/2 my SA dice for a d8 HD and 3/4 Bab in 3.5 for example). The problem is exactly what you point out; rogues (in 3.5) ended up Trapfinding melee-fireball attacks, and in previous D&D they were walking lockpicks.
If your system makes a "fighter" that can do everything I just outlined above, I'll gladly accept your premise. Otherwise, I want my rogue class!
tomBitonti
Adventurer
Perhaps not anatomy, or to the same degree, but being able to sneak attack well seems to require good knowledge of vulnerable points. Knowing rib structure seems to be important for slipping a blade into someone's ribs. Perhaps an Ooze has a nucleonic ganglia that is attackable, if you had just spents those hours in the lab dissecting them ...
If there is no special knowledge required, why shouldn't a fighter who is invisible and stealthed, be able to sneak attack as well as a rogue? Both are well skilled in the use of their weapon, able to deliver a blow forcible and with great accuracy.
As a plus, use of a knowledge skill provides a reason for allowing critical hits and sneak attacks on constructs, aberrations, and undead. For a construct: Knowledge[Engineering] or Craft[Stoneworking] (specifically to stone golems). For undead: Knowledge[Religion]. For aberrations: Knowledge[Dungeoneering]. For dragons: Knowledge[Arcana]. There are lots of flavorful possibilities.
ExploderWizard
Hero
Thank you. The problem with the rogue being a main base class is that in order to stay true to the trappings of the archetype it would be sub-par in many combat situations OR given ad-hoc abilities to make the class combat effective which doesn't mesh with the archetype. I would rather scrap the base class than have to tack on abilities that make it more fighter-like just to get it up to "acceptable" levels for contributing to combat.
With regard to being all about combat first and everything else second I would say this design strategy has been applied to all classes equally starting somewhat in 3E and as a specified design goal in 4E. While this does not automatically equal badwrongfun it does force certain archetypes to mutate or perish.
The system I am building features one overall class (fighter) for those that do not have magical abilities (BMX bandits unite!) Combat techniques of the rogue will be the focus for one type of fighter. That fighter may also select thief as primary skill set thus creating a "classic" type of rogue but has the option to still be able to fight like one but focus on another set of non-combat skills.
Magic. The bane of all thief skills. I am designing magic with eye toward keeping thief skills useful from the beginning. There will be no cheap/easy magic item production/creation. I don't recall magic being such a replacement for thieves prior to the 3E era of dime store magic.
The power scale of magic will be shifted somewhat not by morphing the spells into near uselessness but by scaling them somewhat to allow for higher level play. For example levitate will be a 3rd level spell, fly will be 5th, teleport 7th, ect. There will also be no "I can do everything" wizard class. Spell lists will be built for caster types with an eye toward balance and flavor so that no single caster can "do it all".
I enjoy playing rogue type characters and would never consider removing those types of abilities from my game even if they don't get thier own class.
Fanaelialae
Legend
As I see it, it's the same reason that I don't use a dicing blade to chop up a chicken or a meat cleaver to dice veggies. With enough effort you might be able to, but each knife is better suited to it's own task.
This admittedly does break down mechanically, because although the default assumptions of D&D are that a fighter hacks away with a heavy meat cleaver while the rogue carefully dissects his opponent with a sharp dagger, the system does little to prevent you from doing the opposite. A fighter who uses a dagger would suffer slightly for it, but a rogue who gains proficiency with a greataxe actually increases his damage (at least pre-4e).
In the end, I can't imagine that there are any systems out there that perfectly model reality. There comes a point for us all where we accept that the game is "good enough" and suspend our disbelief.
YMMV.
Edit: To clarify, I think the issue here has more to do with the mechanics for attacking from invisibility/stealth than the fighter/rogue divide. To simulate such mechanics you'd probably want to allow all classes the ability to coup de grace any target that is unaware of them. Of course, that might prove unbalancing in game terms (invisible commando strike teams that perform coordinated assassinations).
The rogue's bonus damage allegedly comes from exploiting weaknesses in an enemy's defense rather than exploiting complete lack of awareness (hence why sneak attack functions when flanking).
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