Rebalancing the Rogue

[Gomer212]

I run an admittedly pretty high combat, mostly core, 3.5 game and am looking for ways to allow the rogue to keep pace. Without being able to take advantage of their sneak attack ability, they are obviously a less than optimal class.

The problem, however, is that at higher levels, the group is going to be facing more and more creatures that are immune to this attack. Elementals, Constructs, Powerful Undead, even Huge plants (I use them all), and none of which would be phased by a typical rogue. Many even have DR which would completely negate the rogue's attack.

I remember hearing about either a feat or class variant (not sure the source material) that allows the rogue to still gain half sneak damage against things that are normally immune to criticals. I was considering allowing this as a class option for my rogues for free.

Would this seem overpowered? Still underpowered? Any tips or suggestions as to how you would handle this in your campaigns would be great.

Thanks.

 

[Dethklok]

There is a simple reason why rogues have never been very effective throughout any edition of D&D that I have played. That reason is this:

The rogue's primary combat advantage is the ability to attack by stealth and surprise. Being attached to an adventuring party makes this as bit difficult, since a group of noisy adventurers shining the lights around will attract attention. But when going alone, the rogue's odds don't get better. They get worse.

Now, people tend to assume this comes from the rogue's low HP or restricted armor options. And it is true that the rogue could be made more powerful simply by giving him more HP. But I'd like to suggest that the real problem isn't that the rogue's HP is too low, but rather that everyone's HP is too high.

In a fight where the first one or two blows decides the outcome, getting that first blow in is critical. This is why, in real life, the spear was virtually ubiquitous throughout the ancient world, and why polearms were so heavily relied upon even into the age of gunpowder. But I'll go even further: Being able to sneak up on an enemy in real life and attack him by surprise, even once, is usually enough to incapacitate him with nothing more than a dagger and little to no combat expertise. So if everything in the game had between 1 and 20 hit points, whether a creature happened to be immune to criticals wouldn't make any difference at all - a rogue could sneak up, attack by sheer surprise, take initiative the next round, and end the battle without even being attacked!

Now, in a heroic fantasy game, we generally dislike having our adventurers so ruthlessly slain. So we play with large hit point totals, and the monsters take them, too. And it's even more fun to take on gigantic enemies who take more than twenty hits to kill. But when we need that many hits to slay an adversary, whoever it was who had the first hit doesn't matter anymore, and the rogue loses his advantage.

What I'm leading up to with all of this is that you are throwing out monsters that are intrinsically rogue-resistant. Yes, you can give rogues half sneak attack damage even against monsters that are immune to criticals, and I don't mean to discourage that. But it is the very nature of the rogue to be weak against large, horrific monsters, and compromising this too far is not likely to be a good thing.

What I suggest, instead, is you as DM should work out weak points in any given scenario where David can beat Goliath.

Think about the way Luke Skywalker drew the Rancor halfway into its cell and then threw a rock at the button that closes the gate. Think about how a well timed avalanche, a good trip into a pit, or a taunt that draws an enemy out of position has made a difference in books you're read or movies you've watched. I haven't played your games, so I don't know how they run, but your mentioning a huge plant made me wonder whether that huge plant might not have a weakness, say, salt, which its creator wrote about in his diary along with a mention for where a large pile of salt was kept, in case he needed to kill the monster himself. If a rogue can find the diary, and then get past the locks and guards to the big bags of salt, well then he's given the entire party the fast track to killing that plant monster.

This is just an idea, but that's the point - you should come up with these kinds of ideas to allow a cleverly played rogue to defeat monsters without walking up and killing them. Because, really, that's what fighters are for.

 

[Ahnehnois]

I believe you were thinking of the Dungeonscape ACF called Penetrating Strike. I don't think it's likely to wildly unbalance things, but it's a patch. There's a couple of issues here.

First, sneak attack is a really poorly written ability. Bonus damage dice are confusing and don't make a lot of sense with the way most of 3e works. Me, I rewrote the rogue and split SA into several different abilities.

Second, the way constructs and undead work is weird. Fictional depictions of these types of creatures often emphasize their vulnerability to targeted attacks (or invulnerability to any attacks, i.e. DR or regeneration). The conventions of no Con, no bonus hp by level, and crit immunity never made much sense. For amorphous creatures like oozes, crit immunity makes sense, otherwise not.

So there are deeper system issues that you could work on (this being the houserules forum), or you could just use the ACF, grin, and bear it.

 

[Gomer212]

Excellent Post, Dethklok (Awesome User Name too). I try to include certain hooks to allow a skills based rogue to contribute to a fight that would be otherwise to powerful for the group to defeat conventionally, but sometimes the Barb and Fighter simply want to beat something down and the rogue likes to contribute by flanking and rolling handfuls of dice.

Very good points Ahnehnois, and yes, Penetrating Strike is what I was thinking of. Looking over some 4th ed and 5th ed stuff, I see that in later editions it appears nothing is immune to critical hits. I may try adapting this to my 3.5 game for a few sessions and see how it flows.

Is there anything in 4th which is immune to flanking, do you guys know? Since a group of 7 PCs including three fully armored melee chars and a blaster caster aren't too good at sneaking up on things, our rogue's biggest use of sneak attack comes when he is flanking. Though, by RAW, this wouldn't work against things such as Elementals, Beholders, and Barbarians above 5th level. I was considering revising this as well.

 

[Meatboy]

Eh I wouldn't worry about the rogue too much. They are quite versitile just give them use magic device, a belt full of wands and a sack of scrolls and they can cover magic. Or give them a bow, rapid shot, and bunch of magic arrows and they can go to town, especially arrows of disruption for pesky undead. Plus if their adventure takes them to civilization they will really shine.

 

[Dethklok]

Internet ate my last post, so I'll just say not much I'm aware of is immune to flanking.

 

[Zipster]

I have to agree with Dethklok. I am by no means an "experienced" gamer, but one of the things I've always noticed in the games I've played are that things sure can take a beating. One of the GM's I play under is a power-gamer obsessed with the fighter-type, and he loves seeing his numbers go higher and higher (making things difficult for my Bard when every encounter is best done the Barbarian's way).

In my own games, I've often tried to rework things to try to add importance to every single hit that is done as I feel this more accurately reflects true combat, and to make Critical hits actually be... well, Critical. How an enemy can survive 5 Critical hits is beyond me, as I would have to assume that they weren't all that critical in the first place. So, maybe if you found a way to liven up your critical hits - you may have to make a special rule just for the Rogue; maybe Crits make the enemy more vulnerable, take a turn or action away, or deal significantly more damage. Taking the ability to Crit away from a rogue has always seemed devilish to me.

I was running an adventure the other day when a trash-mob Crit one of my players in the first round of combat, and effectively took him out of combat for the rest of the fight; while that player was out of the action, the severity of that one crit - and any crit that could happen - made the entire experience quite engaging for my players, even the one who was on the verge of bleeding out.

 

[Michael Silverbane]

Mostly it is elementals, oozes, creatures with lots of eyes (beholders) or hiveminds (formians) that are immune to flanking... So, it is not a negligible selection of critters, but neither is it a majority.

 

[elapse]

Remove the immunity to sneak attacks. There are conditions that must be met for it to work as is.

IMO DR/SR/most immunities/and HD at every level do more to impede the flow of the game than add anything useful.

 

[Gomer212]

Remove the immunity to sneak attacks.

Already did and it's so far been a resounding success, and not just for the rogue.

I ruled that nothing is immune to crits, nothing is immune to flanking, and sneak attack works on anything. The rogue's been keeping up with the DPS guys (well, almost anyways), and they've been enjoying their crits against elementals and undead. I would definitely recommend folks give this rule change a shot.