D&D 4E 4E Rogue for non-4E enthusiast

[AllisterH]

Looking at the rogue I see the emphasis on encounters. All of the rogue abilities are handy in combat.
But I see nothing that supports the skill type rogue.
Compared to 3rd it seems that the customization of skills for 4th edition is different and it seems narrower.
If I want to create a cat-burglar who climbs every wall, goes unseen in every house, opens the locks and disarms findish traps without resorting to violence I could create this in 3rd edition in maxing out the used skills.
In 4th edition I get training in skill groups.
I hope there are rules to emphazise some skills like open locks or even pick pocket.
If every rogue is trained in thievery, that rogues will only have different skill bonuses due to their Abilities or magic items.

The funny thing is, this exact scenario is why I've always preferred the SWSE skill method.

I personally dislike the mini-game that the current skill system encourages where if you don't have the skill, forget about taking part in the encounter.

For example, sans magic, with non-rogues you pretty much were SOL and had to twiddle your thumbs outside in the above scenario while the rogue did his stuff which as a DM, I hated doing since the other players would get bored depending on how long this took.

Thus, as a DM, I wouldn't actually use such scenarios until SWSE where thanks to the 1/2 level, I feel much more confident in using a skill system where everyone has at least a decent chance of making a skill check yet doesnt make it an auto-success for one class.

 

[Amphimir Míriel]

I was disappointed to see so much focus on "spaces." I'm fine that 4E is largely minis-centric, but if it REQUIRES minis for combat resolution, then it might not be the game for me. To each his own.

Well, in my part of the world, we used to have to convert feet to meters all the time... but I resorted to an easy solution... we have converted all references to feet in the player's character sheets to "squares", including movement, spell/weapon ranges and areas.
Squares are a quick visual reference when you have a figure on the battlemat and they are easier to convert to meters (1.5m per square) in our heads than feet.

So, when Saga came out and all distances were measured in squares, we were really happy

Of course, your kilometrage may vary... (pun intended)

There is one advantage that a UK player pointed out: With generic "squares", then players the world over will have a somewhat easier time with game units. We think in feet, so many other people think in meters, and this might make one disconnect for a lot of players go away if we're all using the same units.

"Oh, the distance to that column? About 10 squares, so... 50 feet."
"Oh, the distance to that column? About 10 squares, so... 15 meters."

Yup, the King made my same point, only clearer... English as a second language will do that to you...

 

[Marshall]

I wonder if all the people complaining that the 4e rogue cant do the "Face" or the "Cunning Rogue" have considered that those roles arent strikers, but leaders. Therefore the class they are looking for is Warlord(or Bard), not Rogue....which brings up the idea that the "skill-monkey" classes in 4e may include Cleric....

 

[Pale]

I really have to see all of the current classes in a similar spoiler before I critique the 4E rogue overmuch.

At least one good thing, however, is it isn't that hard to create classes in 4E (from what we've been told, at least).

 

[Celebrim]

First of all, I'm not a 4e fan. But this this thread isn't for 4e fans.

I read the 4e rogue, thinking it might turn out to be really neat and perhaps change my mind a bit. And I was underwhelmed.

If I described it as underwhelmed, it would be an understatement. I really thought I understood what they were doing. I didn't necessarily like it, but i thought I understood it. Then they previewed the rogue, and it was so... well, the opposite of whatever mature, powerful, sophisticated, and subtle design is.

"So I thought I'd start a discussion of what's wrong with the 4e rogue as spoiled."

I hardly know where to begin, so I'll start with the beginning.

"Role:..."

Right off the bat, I don't like the design, because instead of trying to provide me with a tool and saying, "Here. Be creative.", its trying to tell me how to play. I think of rules sets like tool kits. Clearly the designers think of rules in a very different way.

The real irony here is Mearls has previously criticized 2e design for trying to hard to tell the players how to play the game rather than providing them with tools and letting the players decide how to play.

"...You dart in to attack, do massive damage, and then retreat to safety. You do best when teamed with a defender to flank enemies...Rogues are cunning and elusive adversaries. Rogues slip into and out of shadows on a whim, pass anywhere across the field of battle without fear of reprisal, and appear suddenly only to drive home a lethal blade."

Note that when I think of 'role' in the terms of a 'role playing game' this is about as far as you can get from what I'm thinking of. This is 'role' defined in a way that I might use it to describe a real time strategy game, or a tactical skirmish game.

And this is kid's stuff. It's probably more primitive than the description (and design) of 'rogue' type characters in many cRPGs, much less modern PnP games. It's not nearly as interesting as any other edition has approached the archetype. It probably as limiting as the class has been defined since 1st edition, if not more so.

Power Source: Martial. Your talents depend on extensive training and constant practice, innate skill, and natural coordination.

This is kinda wierd. The only reason you possibly need to define this is if there are feats or talents which can only be taken by a martial class (or if you are regularly going to have suppressive magic fields, which would be not fun). Otherwise, I don't like that you are telling me with the rogues +25 bonus to stealth and ability to jump 50' is purely natural or skill so refined as to be arcane in and of itself ('ki', for example). That sort of flavor we ought to leave up to the DM/campaign.

Key Abilities: Dexterity, Strength, Charisma

Things started out bad, but here they get alot worse. One of the great things about 3E was it tended to avoid having alot of dump stats. You could viably make characters of a particular class that were strong in any of the six attributes, and because you were almost always giving up something by dumping in one stat you could likewise viably make a broadly skilled character with no obvious weaknesses or strengths.

To the extent that you couldn't, for example, fighters got little from a high charisma and only a little from a high intelligence, I consider this to be a fundamental flaw of 3E design. Alot of my house rules were implicitly designed to fix this flaw, rewarding you rather than strictly punishing you for high charisma fighters (or barbarians or whatever) and high intelligence clerics.

Armor Training: Leather

This moves us back toward 1st edition. It seems like if for balance purposes you decided that other light armors were too powerful for the rogue class, that you could divide them into light and ultra-light as needed. Even if that is what they did, calling the ultralight class 'leather' is a serious potential misnomer. And if this isn't for balance purposes, whats the point in pigeonholing us further?

Weapon Proficiencies: Dagger, hand crossbow, shuriken, sling, short sword

There are so many problems within these few short words. The weapon proficiency system is a holdover from 1st edition, and has a number of significant limitations. This happens to highlight all of them.

To begin with, 'hand crossbow' and 'shuriken' are exotic cultural weapons which probably don't fit the flavor of many fantasy cultures in established campaigns. There vast tracks of my game world that don't have crossbow technology (or in which it would be exotic), and shuriken would be exotic almost everywhere (the 'eastern' flavored culture of my homebrew has been extinct for some 6000 years). Why should I foist these weapons on cultures that don't have them? What I've long wanted from a weapon proficiency system was a way to create somewhat balanced cultural groupings, so that instead of being forced to take a particular group of weapons the character could simply choose weapons appropriate to his culture. Then something like the 'exotic weapon proficiency' feat, could be reflect knowing how to use weapons other than those common to your culture.

Secondly, another problem with the weapon proficiency system is that it subdivides weapons down problimaticly. This is again highlighted by 'hand crossbow'. There is no particular reason why anyone would be proficient with a hand crossbow, and not other similar weapons in the crossbow family. Things like 'club' and 'crossbow' reflect a family of quite similar weapons. I shouldn't really be familiar with one of those weapons (much less the most exotic member) and not the rest of them. Both areas I expected to be addressed and fixed by any hypothetical 4E before the real one came along and disappointed me. (To some extent, this problem does seem to have been addressed, but I'm still fearing that the 'fix' is more Diablo-like than not - reaching 'paragon' level 'unlocks' more powerful weapons of the same class.)

Thirdly, this list really limits the options on a rogue unnecessarily. It turns the class 'rogue' into a very limited 'role' in which discourages individuality. This is rather the opposite of where I hoped the game would go.

Bonus to Defense: +2 Reflex

This is the one area of the design that really works like I expected it too - with one exception. I fully expected this to be something like '1st-10th: +2 Reflex, 11th-20th: +4 Reflex, 21st-30th: +6 Reflex'. A +2 static modifier is so small (~10% better chance), that it barely reinforces the concept and seems like there is a risk that it will get completely overwhelmed by other available modifiers at high levels. It's something like the 'Skill Focus' feat of 3.X. Nice at low levels, but increasingly irrelevant at higher levels. I think the theory behind the static modifier is the class itself is designed such that you are encouraged to dump all your attribute growth into Dexterity.

Hit Points at 1st Level: 12 + Constitution score
Hit Points per Level Gained: 5
Healing Surges: 6 + Constitution modifier

I really expected 18 + Constitution, but this is pretty much fine. However, the notion that 'healing surges' are such a common mechanic that they need to be defined in the class stat block worries me. I foresee alot of powers with the sideffect, "Healing Surge, all allies with 30'"

Trained Skills: Stealth and Thievery plus four others. From the class skills list below, choose four more trained skills at 1st level.
Class Skills: Acrobatics (Dexterity), Athletics (Str), Bluff (Cha), Dungeoneering (Wis), Insight (Wis), Intimidate (Cha), Perception (Wis), Stealth (Dexterity), Streetwise (Cha), Thievery (Dexterity)

Alot of people have already remarked on how silly it is to force the player to pick 'stealth' and 'thievery'. I'm sure alot will anyway (thievery seems to cover so much as to be essential), but why force it? Alot of people have also remarked on how much has gone missing from this list compared to 3E. And quite a few people have remarked that even with skill consolidation, the character seems less of a skill monkey than before. I agree with all of these concerns. Given the fact that everyone's base skill checks are going up big time, and the fact that rogue gets few effective skill selections, I got to wonder why you simply wouldn't take a class with more raw combat potential, better armor, and so forth. The 'skillfulness gap' doesn't seem likely to be as relevant as any 'combat effectiveness gap'.

Build Options: Brawny rogue, trickster rogue

This is so not what I expected. I expected build options along the lines of 'Talent Trees' to allow, 'Brawny Rogue', 'Nimble Rogue', 'Tough Rogue', 'Smart Rogue', 'Cunning Rogue', and 'Charming Rogue'. I expected 'Talent Trees' to incorporate the ideas of 'alternate classes' such that you didn't need a separate class for say 'ranger' and 'urban ranger'. I expected something that sub-class the class, say 'Thug', 'Artful Dodger', 'Adventurer', 'Criminal Mastermind', 'Trickster', and 'Con Artist', each with a different set of per encounter/daily powers that customized the rogues base options. I did not expect a couple of highly limiting builds and the need for 15412 new core classes later down the line, which is what we seem to be getting. A proliferation of 'talent trees' and feats would be fine. But the class as presented doesn't seem to 'expect' this to happen in the way that I thought it would.

Class Features: First Strike, Rogue Tactics, Rogue Weapon Talent, Sneak Attack

These are so excessively lame, I almost hate to waste time on them. I'll try to be brief.

'First Strike' seems to imply a solution to the minor problem in 3E of 'flat footed' ambiguity which we ought to expect by now - remove the mechanic rather than fix it. This is lame design.

Rogue tactics is incredibly limited - just two possible builds where I expected something like 6-8 out of a mechanic like this (one for each attribute, plus possibly an arcane and a divine dabbler). I guess that's what endless splatbooks are for. It makes me want to scream, except that I'm past caring that much about anything WotC is going to put out.

And there is nothing like keeping track of all those little modifiers as implied by 'Rogue Weapon Tactic'. To say nothing of the fact that you are now pretty much forced to say, 'Being a Rogue is about wielding daggers and shurikans'. Swell. Actually, to be fair, its only about daggers at low levels before that +1 bonus gets swamped by other factors.

I don't really mind the reduced sneak attack damage. It's part of the general movement towards doing away with 'glass cannons' that 4E seems to be doing and I approve. But I would like to note here that I really dislike how disjointedly combat damage increases. In 3E, expected combat damage has a fairly smooth progression as you level up. Notice the huge proportional increases between the heroic, paragon, and epic levels. That's going to create wierdness I expect.

The rest of the powers are just plain boring. They also imply that there is no 'rogue' paragon path, which kinda makes me wonder whether certain archetypes won't even be playable until 11th level. It further makes me fear that we'll be seeing 15 zillion variant paragon and epic career paths in latter splat books. They also have the aforementioned problem of discontinuity (at 21st level, I'm suddenly doing nearly twice the damage I was doing at 20th). They also further highlight that fairly adjudicating 4E combat without a map and minatures is going to be harder than any previous edition.

But I have some subtle concerns. Like, what is the interaction between 'crimson edge' and a poisoned blade? Why can't I 'torturous strike' more than once per encounter? What is it about resting 10 minutes that lets me remember how to do this again? Ditto for 'positioning strike'. It looks like all my worries about the gamist nature of the 'per encounter' mechanic are true. Mearls has once again balanced spell casters with non-spell casters by making everyone a spell caster.

 

[kennew142]

The text as it stands now does look a little too definitive. "The trickster rogue and the brawny rogue are the two rogue builds, one relying on bluffs and feints, the other on brute strength."

IMO, that sentence could be improved by changing it to "The trickster rogue and the brawny rogue are two possible rogue builds..."

I will agree with that the language could be better. But the article makes it clear that these builds are purely optional.

You’re going to see something called “builds” in the information that follows. Builds present themes that you can use to guide you as you select powers and other abilities. You can follow the advice of a build, or you can ignore it. It’s not a constraint, but instead provides information to help you make informed choices as you create your character. Using a class build isn’t required; builds exist to help guide your decisions through the process of character creation and each time you level up.

It is hard to see these builds as limiting in any way (given this disclaimer) - unless you are trying to construct a straw man argument to attack.

 

[Reaper Steve]

You're thinkin' too SMALL, Steve! Pure acting is small potatoes. If just RPing was good enough, I'd still be playin' 1e where every Fighter with the same Strength had the same abilities!

I want the GAME to be able to reflect my character choice!

I dunno, but I infer from the writeup that the Rogue is more clever and sneaky than any other class, save maybe the ranger. They're probably 'different equals.'

But I see your point: how do I make my rogue more clever and sneaky than the next one?
My answer: we have not even seen the tip of the iceberg of powers and feats. There are probably so many of that your clever and sneaky bases are covered. Not to mention paragon paths and epic destinies.

Confidence is high that clever and sneaky rogues will be represented.

 

[ZombieRoboNinja]

What bugs me is absence of any IC explanation or rationalisation of why Positioning Strike, Tortuous Strike, Tumble and Chrisom Edge are limited on one per encounter use (or one per day in the case of the last). It looks awfully metagamey, they appear to be such only for balance sake with no story explanation.

I know you guys aren't fond of hearing, "This is probably in the rulebook but not the preview," but I think in this case it's kind of obvious. Of course the combat section (or whatever) is going to explain what per-encounter powers are and how and why they "recharge," and of course they're not going to reiterate that explanation for every single class.

The broader pattern in complaints here is kind of interesting. It seems like a lot of people are upset that the new rogue is too limited (in equipment, skills, etc). Celebrim is a good example here. Personally, I kind of see this as a logical step for 4e. In 3e you had some classes (like monk and paladin) with super-restricted flavor and abilities, and others (rogue and fighter) that verged on "classless" in their flexibility. If you were playing a 3e "face" character who never snuck around or did anything remotely dishonorable, but who liked 8+Int skill points per level... do you really consider that a "rogue"?

A guy sneaking around in a chain shirt with a club isn't exactly a "typical" rogue, either. This doesn't mean it shouldn't be possible, but it doesn't bother me overly that you'll need to take an extra feat or two to make it happen. Start with the iconic, and use feats to branch out from there - sounds like a decent structure-versus-freedom compromise to me. (This is assuming, of course, that WotC is smart enough to include feats that let you use more weapons with weapon-restricted class abilities like Sneak Attack.)

I predict that people here will be similarly disappointed by fighters and wizards, which are being "honed" to more restricted archetypes, and they'll be happy about the new flexibility of rangers, paladins and warlocks.

 

[Celebrim]

But I see your point: how do I make my rogue more clever and sneaky than the next one? My answer: we have not even seen the tip of the iceberg of powers and feats. There are probably so many of that your clever and sneaky bases are covered. Not to mention paragon paths and epic destinies.

If you mean by 'not seen the tip of the iceberg of powers and feats', 'what do you think that new Player's Handbook every year, plus assorted class specific splatbooks are for?', then I absolutely agree. But if you mean by it, 'This is only an excerpt of the thief write up in the upcoming Player's Handbook', then I think you are going to be really disappointed.

The reason I think that is because this would be an absolutely stupid way to do the preview. (Granted, they have been doing alot of stupid things in the previews.)

Supposing that they didn't want to preview all the class powers and builds, then at least you'd expect the write up to still list the available builds and options in the 'Builds' section, even if the details of the powers of that build wasn't listed. And notice also that each of the builds gets its mechanical effect by modifying in some manner the listed class powers. This makes the idea of builds present but not listed or detailed somewhat problimatic, since we'd expect them to show up at some level modifying the class powers in some way.

Confidence is high that clever and sneaky rogues will be represented.

I know that confidence is high. Some people have been fully confident that 4E was going to solve every problem they've ever had while role-playing and wash the dishes too since before the first preview. But at some point the tired old argument that we can't make a judgement until we've seen everything gets a little ridiculous.

Let's keep this in context. Everything about the design thus far suggests that there will be no attempt to balance classes between combat and non-combat powers. The idea of a 'face man' who sacrifices combat ability for some non-combat ability seems antithetical to the design approach we've seen.

 

[Aus_Snow]

Let's keep this in context. Everything about the design thus far suggests that there will be no attempt to balance classes between combat and non-combat powers. The idea of a 'face man' who sacrifices combat ability for some non-combat ability seems antithetical to the design approach we've seen.

Would you say that this applies equally, or at all for that matter, to the classes found in the 3e PHB?