Whats the deal with rogues anyway?

[ExploderWizard]

Forked from: What do you do without balance?

I like how Pathfinder has made sneak attack available to hit all creatures, with very few immune and think this simple fix makes Rogues much more viable.

I didn't want to derail the general balance thread and it seemed to taking a roguish turn so I forked it here.

I don't care much for the whole rogue archetype in its recent
incarnations at all.
I like the concept of a stealthy scout type of character who is good
at "thief" type technical skills. I think that such characters can be
valuable to a party.

What I don't like is the concept of a melee combatant
that thats constantly fighting "concealed" without the aid
of magic or that appears to be trained to inflict greater
damage with weaponry than the martially specialized fighter.

Why does the fighter have to be the clumsy thug
while the rogue gets to be the shrewd combatant that
actually knows how to employ weapons to thier best effect?
There are of course game balance issues but are any
of them useful for anything other than justifying the
existence of this archetype?

I understand the concept of a suprise backstab being a special
skill, but the constant round to round benefits from weapon use
due to advantageous position seem like something any
experienced, intelligent warrior should know.

Thoughts, opinions?

 

[Jeff Wilder]

I agree with you. I'd make sneak attack more devastating, but significantly harder to use. Amping the rogue to 11 is one of the few Pathfinder changes that is a solid dislike for me.

 

[Vyvyan Basterd]

I understand the concept of a suprise backstab being a special skill, but the constant round to round benefits from weapon use due to advantageous position seem like something any
experienced, intelligent warrior should know.

Thoughts, opinions?

Some fighters use heavy armor and brute force to lock down foes and defend their less-heavily-armored friends. They are labeled Fighter.

Some fighters use lighter armor to stay mobile and strike at their foes to great effect when they let their defenses slip (for any number of reasons) and give up combat advantage. They are labeled Rogues.

Some people specialize is skills that allow them to be a stealthy scout. This is outside their cmbat abilities. The particular training that Rogues use in combat lends itself into non-combat situatons (thus why the class is automatically trained in those skills).

The archetype you describe is a non-combat archetype that was hard to balance against combat archetypes. It is assumed that as a member of the fantasy world's most dangerous profession that you would want to be trained in combat skills. That is why there is no choice for non-combat only characters.

That's my view on it all FWIW.

 

[ExploderWizard]

Some fighters use heavy armor and brute force to lock down foes and defend their less-heavily-armored friends. They are labeled Fighter.

Some fighters use lighter armor to stay mobile and strike at their foes to great effect when they let their defenses slip (for any number of reasons) and give up combat advantage. They are labeled Rogues.

So a fighter in lighter armor with fast weapons can do the same thing, right?

Some people specialize is skills that allow them to be a stealthy scout. This is outside their cmbat abilities. The particular training that Rogues use in combat lends itself into non-combat situatons (thus why the class is automatically trained in those skills).

The archetype you describe is a non-combat archetype that was hard to balance against combat archetypes. It is assumed that as a member of the fantasy world's most dangerous profession that you would want to be trained in combat skills. That is why there is no choice for non-combat only characters.

That's my view on it all FWIW.[/quote]

All very fine points but also existing simply to justify the class. What if any class could learn the non-combat skills if they dedicated the resources and fighters had the combat abilities if they properly equipped themselves?

 

[Charwoman Gene]

So a fighter in lighter armor with fast weapons can do the same thing, right?

As long as their class is Rogue, yes.

 

[Starbuck_II]

As long as their class is Rogue, yes.

The Fighter could be a Scout as well.

Some Warriors are somewhat skilled, but lose heavy armor (Barbarians).

 

[Pbartender]

So a fighter in lighter armor with fast weapons can do the same thing, right?

Or... A Rogue is just another name for a fighter in lighter armor with fast weapons.

It all depends on your point of view.

In 4E, at least, I've had a tendency to look at the classes through the lenses of AD&D 1E subclasses... That is, the power sources -- Martial, Divine and Arcane -- delineate the three primary "classes", and the actual classes are more like specialties within.

So, Fighter, Ranger and Rogue all look like fighters to me, but with different specialties... Soldier/Brute, Artillery/Skirmisher and Skirmisher/Lurker respectively, to use 4E MM terminology.

So, for example, I know I can't technically make a very good swashbuckling fighter using the Fighter class in 4E, but I can use Ranger or Rogue to make an excellent swashbuckling "fighter" if I just re-flavor the classes and their abilities a little bit.

 

[ExploderWizard]

As long as their class is Rogue, yes.

How can you argue with that!

The reason I'm bringing this up is because my homebrewed edition is still being designed and I wanted to see what actual reasons there are to have a separate rogue class other than:

1) Just to have one because its been around a long time.

2) A class that makes primary use of Dex just because.

3) Its expected.

When thinking about these considerations it got me thinking about the basic fighter and how many "classes" can be replaced by specializations and areas of focus.

 

[Umbran]

Why does the fighter have to be the clumsy thug
while the rogue gets to be the shrewd combatant that
actually knows how to employ weapons to thier best effect?

Correct me if I am wrong, but I think you are getting hung up on names.

You can play a character who is a shrewd, lightly armored melee combatant, and knows how to use weapons to great effect. Who cares what the class name is? So what if that is covered by "rogue" and not by "fighter"? In the end, mechanically, the character does what you want.

 

[ExploderWizard]

Correct me if I am wrong, but I think you are getting hung up on names.

You can play a character who is a shrewd, lightly armored melee combatant, and knows how to use weapons to great effect. Who cares what the class name is? So what if that is covered by "rogue" and not by "fighter"? In the end, mechanically, the character does what you want.

If it were just the name thats one thing, but there are actual mechanical differences that separate the classes at the roots.( I'm not being edition specific per se.)

Hit point differences: In addition to wearing lighter armor the rogue has fewer hit points and less general competence (BAB) with weapons.

Artificial weapon restrictions: limited in which weapons can be used against a disadvantaged enemy purely to limit damage output vs. the fighter.