Specialist Rogue

[Ahnehnois]

I definitely agree re: undead being much more common than traps.

However, my issue with the trap thing is somewhat different. Regardless of how often it does or does not come up, my issue is does it fit the concept? Would I reasonably expect that every rogue character would have this expertise? No. Even just the "average" rogue? No. Being able to channel divine power is pretty much inherent to being a cleric, but being an expert in traps is not at all inherent to being a rogue.

 

[Starfox]

For trap sense, I just made the rogue special ability progression start at level 1, and gave Trapfinding as one option.

[...]

For many of the classes I hew close to the PF versions, or start there and rewrite them slightly to reflect other rules concepts I use from TB or UA, but the rogue is one that I really substantially rewrote, for a variety of reasons. I can see your impetus to remove traps as obligatory for some class features; I think the archetypes aren't the most parsimonious way of accomplishing that.

This is all very interesting, but a bit much to swallow in the time I have now. I'll look at them tomorrow. Mind if I grab some to develop my idea further?

I personally prefer to group abilities by theme. Just making a smorgasbord where you select what you want is nice too, but we already have 2 sets of such abilities for the rogue; feats AND rogue talents.

Posting this on the Pazio boards I got the advice to make specialized rogue talent options for these alternate specializations. I think I'll try to do that. My idea is to turn some of the current "specialist focus" abilities into rogue talents, and then make advanced talents with a prerequisite of either the specialization or the talent. So you take the fence focus either as a talent or as your specialization, and that is then the prerequisite for an advanced talent on the face theme. One problem is that I feel that "specialist focus" abilities are better than a single rogue talent.

 

[Ahnehnois]

This is all very interesting, but a bit much to swallow in the time I have now. I'll look at them tomorrow. Mind if I grab some to develop my idea further?

Knock yourself out.

I personally prefer to group abilities by theme. Just making a smorgasbord where you select what you want is nice too, but we already have 2 sets of such abilities for the rogue; feats AND rogue talents.

True; it does run the risk of simply being too complex. I don't so much like the idea of tying a rogue to a theme though. To me, the rogue class is about versatility.

 

[Celebrim]

Its a matter of expectation management, But yes, surely, in any DnD-ish game I've been in in the last decade or two, these were all common. Ubiquitous in the case of evil opponents, merely common in the case of undead and diplomacy. Maybe 1 per 2 sessions. Certainly much more common than traps. If I made a paladin and the GM did not warn me about it, I'd certainly expect a clear majority of all fights to be against evil opponents. If they're not, then my paladin is clearly in the wrong place and should request transfer.

My game has been going nearly 4 years now with probably 100 sessions. There has been no shortage of evil foes to smite, and the party's Champion (Paladin to you) is arguably the parties most powerful and important character.

However, in the near future the party is likely to spend a huge number of sessions on an ocean journey and then trekking across The Isle of Dread (my version). During that time, most of the foes will be neutrally aligned animals, vermin, beasts and humanoids of various sorts. I wouldn't be too surprised if we hit a dozen session span where we don't have any outright evil foes.

So what? I'm sure he'll find plenty of things to do anyway.

Traps aren't necessarily really common in my game. You could go a dozen sessions without one. But when they do show up, it's important to have resources for dealing with them. And often, they'll show up in clusters - not every day do they go into a trap filled tomb but it does happen.

I agree overspecialization is bad. But rouges ARE already specialists - at traps.

Err... no. Or rather, maybe Pathfinder has made them so by overshadowing them with other classes, but looking at the rogue that doesn't seem to be true. They are getting essentially a bonus feat every other level that they can use to go into a wide variety of skills - combat, minor spell use, mobility, various combat triggered debuffs - and they still get the largest variety of skills and the most skill points. Plus, sneak attack. Traps is just something they do on the side.

 

[Celebrim]

However, my issue with the trap thing is somewhat different. Regardless of how often it does or does not come up, my issue is does it fit the concept? Would I reasonably expect that every rogue character would have this expertise? No. Even just the "average" rogue? No. Being able to channel divine power is pretty much inherent to being a cleric, but being an expert in traps is not at all inherent to being a rogue.

If a rogue doesn't max out his Search skill, he's not inherently an expert in traps.

 

[Ahnehnois]

If a rogue doesn't max out his Search skill, he's not inherently an expert in traps.

That's like saying if a bard doesn't max his Perform skill, he isn't a musician.

 

[Celebrim]

That's like saying if a bard doesn't max his Perform skill, he isn't a musician.

This isn't a purely theoretical case.

The current rogue in the PC party is a 6th level Misanthrope Sidhe rogue. His skills and feats are heavily skewed toward mobility. So he's really really good at tumble, balance, jump, climb, and escape artist. He bounces all over the place like prequel Yoga - most of the time he doesn't even need to check. He's got lots of ranks in use rope and empathy (humans). He can open locks. He's got lots of spot and listen, and he's good at move silently and really good at hide. I think he's got a few ranks in alchemy, swim, use magical device, and sleight of hand. And judging by the fact he had to redo the character sheet to fit in all of his skills, there is probably a bunch of stuff I'm forgetting or don't know about where he put 1 or 2 ranks in it just to be able to roll.

He's not terribly good at Search. He's been training it up lately, but its definitely not one of his strong points and its not maxed out. This resulted in a bit of comedy, and a promise to the party he'll focus on it more last time they encountered a batch of traps. His tumble, touch AC, and reflex save is so high, that combined with evasion, most traps he's encountered he's overcome by springing them and dealing with the effects - this doesn't work as well when the rest of the party is caught in the chain lighting or falls into the spiked pit.

However, now that I've actually looked at the Pathfinder implementation of the Rogue, your decision to make Trapfinding a rogue talent that is optional at level 1 makes a lot more sense. Several of the Rogue talent options in Pathfinder are a lot more competitive with Trapfinding as a first choice than the alternatives in your short list - combat trick, major magic, and weapon training all look like they might compete for space.

 

[Celebrim]

So I went and looked at the PRD, and Pathfinder already has specialist rogues of various sorts.

http://paizo.com/pathfinderRPG/prd/advanced/coreClasses/rogue.html

I like theirs better. They have better balance overall, and they don't restrict the rogue's skill list in ways I'm uncomfortable with.

 

[Ahnehnois]

This isn't a purely theoretical case.

To me, there are two appropriate ways to handle these things. The bard's music and the rogue's trapfinding both do it wrong. One way would be to make an optional set of abilities, so you can choose to delve in to performance/traps/etc. if you want to. The other would be to have the ability built in. What PF does is to have part of it built in and part of it optional, but the built in part (music/trapfinding) doesn't work without the optional part (skills), making it obligatory for the character to invest skill points or waste his class ability.

My solution for the bard was to give him an automatic rank in Perform every level in addition to his normal skill point per level. It simply makes no sense to advance a bard without taking Perform, so why pretend that it's optional? Conversely, as you can see, my rogue solution is to make Trapfinding optional, thus rendering the choice of whether or not to take Search a more fair one.

However, now that I've actually looked at the Pathfinder implementation of the Rogue, your decision to make Trapfinding a rogue talent that is optional at level 1 makes a lot more sense. Several of the Rogue talent options in Pathfinder are a lot more competitive with Trapfinding as a first choice than the alternatives in your short list - combat trick, major magic, and weapon training all look like they might compete for space.

Clearly you have a much higher opinion of Trapfinding than I do. I think Fast Stealth, for example, is clearly a much better option. Again, though, my philosophy is that the class is built for balance, then you customize it. Any other ability a player wants to take, they're welcome to propose. My rogue's talent is meant to be a skill-based, noncombatant ability that either removes penalties or enables new check uses. There are plenty of possibilities other than finding traps.

Traps, IME, are very difficult to use in any meaningful way, and can almost always be beaten or circumvented without any special expertise. I don't look at Trapfinding as being a very powerful ability at all.

 

[Celebrim]

Traps, IME, are very difficult to use in any meaningful way, and can almost always be beaten or circumvented without any special expertise. I don't look at Trapfinding as being a very powerful ability at all.

Well, it certainly is down graded in Pathfinder, which seems to be setting your expectations. I guess I'm just pretty old school, with my formative years as a player/DM being in the early 80's, I just expect the world to be as filled with traps as Gygaxian D&D. While circumventing traps is a powerful tool, I have always found that it works best when you can also apply some sort of perception skill as a backup plan.

Astute: +1 to Sense Motive checks and saves against illusions.

- Good but a shade below Guarded Mind. Add Linguistics?

Daring: +1 to Balance checks and saves against fear.

- I agree with adding Tumble. Tumble is such a powerful skill that anything that adds to it is worth considering.

Dauntless: +1 to saves against death effects and transmutation effects (including polymorph and disintegrate).

- Good.

Deft: +1 bonus to Sleight of Hand checks and Disable Device checks.

- Meh. Have it add to the roll to confirm a critical hit or something of that sort.

Guarded Mind: +1 to will saves against mind-affecting effects.

- Very strong.

No Trace: +1 to Hide checks after not moving for at least 1 round, +1 to Disguise checks, and +1 to the DC to track the character using Survival.

Drop the 'after not moving' clause. Though, you seem to find Stealth a lot more generally useful than I've fond it. Care to explain why?

Resourceful: +1 to Survival checks and to saves and checks made to resist the effects of heat, cold, hunger, thirst, and suffocation.

- Very weak. I'm not sure what to add here. I'd say add 'Swim' as it seems in theme, but it would still probably be fairly weak except in a few wilderness heavy games. One possibility I've thought about is it adds a 'Jack of All Trades' bonus - you get to add the bonus to any skill check in any skill you aren't trained in. But I'm not sure how the math works out there. 'Craft' is also a possibility.

Sixth Sense: +1 bonus on initiative and a +1 insight bonus to AC during surprise rounds.

- Good

Slippery: +1 to saves against effects that impede movement, such as slow or web, and +1 to CMD against grapple checks and Escape Artist checks made to escape grapples.

- Good. Roughly as strong as Astute. Not sure what to do to bump it up, as its already complex.

Spell Sense: +1 dodge bonus to AC against attacks made by spells and spell-like abilities.

- Good, but not good enough. Possibly add spellcraft to recognize a spell? If not merge with Trap sense and call it 'Danger Sense'.

Trap Sense: +1 to reflex saves against traps and +1 dodge bonus to AC against attacks made by traps.

- Really weak by itself compared to broadly useful abilities like Sixth Sense, Guarded Mind, or Dauntless. Not sure what to do about it, but maybe merge with the above as per the suggestion in 'Spell Sense' or have it also add to Search to detect a trap. In general though, this is the sort of power creep that makes me leary of the otherwise interesting idea and makes me want to throw out Gaurded Mind and Dauntless as too potent and rebalance to nothing better than the original Daring.

Vigorous: +1 to fortitude saves against poison and disease.

- Good, but both of these effects are easy to acquire immunity to or deal via minor spell use. Perhaps add Climb.