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

[ZombieRoboNinja]

You are making the very same mistake here as the 4E designers. You are defining the concept of a class principally by the superficial trappings of the class. You are neglecting the core idea of the class, which in the case of a 'rogue', is something like a skillful individual that survives by his wits. I can very much see a guy sneaking around in a chain shirt with a club as a skillful individual that survives by his wits, whether that means his quick reflexes or his quick thinking or his fast talking - or possibly some combination of all of that.

Hmm, I'd say that you are making a mistake by defining "class" in such a loose way. "A skillful individual who survives by his wits"? That sounds like an "adventurer" to me.

Personally, I don't mind a little restriction in the base class, provided that there are clear ways to extend those core archetypes (like by spending feats on new armor and weapon proficiencies or multiclassing). The issue is that many D&D characters tend towards whatever is most combat-effective.

A specific example: an awful lot of 3e rogues start out with a chain shirt and a shortsword, simply because those have slightly better combat stats for a level 1 rogue than leather and a dagger. WotC has limited options here: they either do nothing, so that people who want to play an "iconic" rogue in leather with a dagger have to take a minor hit to combat effectiveness, or they can specifically design the class to highlight its "iconic" instantiation. The latter is clearly what they're doing in 4e by limiting weapon and armor proficiencies and giving rogues a minor bonus to daggers. Now, in 4e, the onus is on people who want to play non-iconic rogues to expend some feats to do so.

I get that you don't like this highly-focused form of class design. What you have to bear in mind is that a lot of people actually take roleplaying inspiration from their class, rather than deciding their class and "build" based on an exhaustively compiled character history. Heck, I'm guessing half the paladins I've played with didn't even know their deity's holy symbol. For these people, it's easier to start with a well-defined archetype and expand it strategically, rather than starting with a broad sketch and narrowing it strategically.

 

[Reaper Steve]

I think it is a huge leap in game design as well, unfortunately to me its a huge leap backwards.

Care to elaborate?

There may be games where this type of 'balance' is right, but D&D is not that game.
It never really has been. Well, it has been (attempted to be) balanced that way, and that level of balance also caused various levels of fun.
D&D focuses on the combat. Every player should be able to contribute and have fun during combat. IMO, penalizing combat to balance a character's social skills is not the right answer.

 

[Lizard]

I don't see why those 'extra feats' should need to be spent restoring options that could have been included in the class with no loss of game balance. Is Diplomacy so much more powerful than Bluff that it couldn't have been an option in the class skill list? The problem is that games tend to punish you for taking 'breadth' options. If I spend a limited resource like a feat to get trained in 'Diplomacy', that's a feat I didn't spend improving my 'Bluff'. If I spend a limited resouce like a feat to be able to use a light crossbow, then that's a feat I didn't spend getting better at the handcrossbow or dagger.

But this is true of the 3x rogue -- he can't use a 2-handed sword without a feat, for example, and while he has a great skill list, he's missing some. Want to play a dashing highwayman? Ride isn't a class skill, and neither is Survival -- I guess Robin Hood wasn't a rogue.

We are, of course, still missing a lot of pieces. We do not know, for example, if you get X free skills at first level -- so maybe you can pick up Diplomacy w/out spending a resource (except the choice to not get, I dunno, Athletics or something). I don't want to sound like I'm turning into a 4e fanboy here, but I'd like to keep criticism sensible.

Of course, there's some oddities. If there's a divorce between social skills and combat skills, then, why are the non-combat skills even in the class-based skill list? (Perhaps Bluff has combat uses, like feinting, which the rogue relies on? Perhaps there's a "Feint" talent which requires "Trained in Bluff"?)

 

[Lizard]

Heck, I'm guessing half the paladins I've played with didn't even know their deity's holy symbol.

Hey, Ulf is a half-ogre with an Int of 8! He had to put TWO of his precious skill points into Knowledge (Religion) just to get a +1 modifier! He worships...(rolls up sleeve, checks tattoo) Tyr!

(Guess who is playing a half-ogre paladin of Tyr...)

 

[FireLance]

Of course, there's some oddities. If there's a divorce between social skills and combat skills, then, why are the non-combat skills even in the class-based skill list? (Perhaps Bluff has combat uses, like feinting, which the rogue relies on? Perhaps there's a "Feint" talent which requires "Trained in Bluff"?)

The rogue preview mentions "Charisma-based skills you sometimes use in place of attacks", and Sly Flourish, which is a suggested at-will power for a trickster rogue. I wouldn't be surprised if that was a Bluff vs Will ability that grants you combat advantage against an opponent until the end of your next turn.

 

[Ahglock]

Care to elaborate?

There may be games where this type of 'balance' is right, but D&D is not that game.
It never really has been. Well, it has been (attempted to be) balanced that way, and that level of balance also caused various levels of fun.
D&D focuses on the combat. Every player should be able to contribute and have fun during combat. IMO, penalizing combat to balance a character's social skills is not the right answer.

I'll try to elaborate, but its basically comes down to personal preference and game style.

your first point "There may be games where this type of 'balance' is right, but D&D is not that game. It never really has been. Well, it has been (attempted to be) balanced that way, and that level of balance also caused various levels of fun."

To me D&D has always been about this, maybe the rules implemented it worse than I would of liked in earlier editions but even in Basic D&D it was there. Weaker combat classes got more non-combat benefits, the fighter got an army and land, the rogue got a guild, the wizard got a tower with a few apprentices. Not a great job of balancing but it was there to some extent. 3e did a better job, but the social skills at high levels got wierd to me.

"D&D focuses on the combat"
Well my games don't, only at the lowest levels has combat been a large part of the game. As the parties ability resources increased they used those abilities to solve there problems with as little fighting as possible since they would prefer not to die.

"Every player should be able to contribute and have fun during combat. IMO, penalizing combat to balance a character's social skills is not the right answer."

I agree every player should contribute and have fun in combat, I just don't think equal contribution is necessary. I wouldn't phrase it as social skills, I'd expand it to all non-combat skills. If your non-combat abilites are large you should lose out on combat abilities, if your combat abilities are large you should lose out on non-combat abilities. Both are important to having fun in my games, but if the non-combat experts were as good as the combat experts at fighting the combat experts would have problems.

And while it can sound good to try and balance both separately so everyone contributes as equally as possible in and out of combat I don't think it fits the character concepts that most if not all of my players want to play. They don't want to play the guy who is as good as everyone else in combat and just as good out of combat, they want to play the negotiations expert, or the master swordsman, or the sneak.

If the sneak hacks people to pieces just as good as the master swordsman, the master swordsman says whiskey tango foxtrot. I have yet to see one of my players even think it is a problem when his sneak hacks a bit worse than the master swordsman, since that was not his focus. He'd be irritated if the master swordsman was basically as good of a sneak as he was.

I'm not saying this wrecks 4e or anything, but I do believe out of combat is just as important if not more than combat. Certain character concepts focus more on out of combat abilites and people should be able to excel at those things if they want to, but if they want to excel at that it should come at a cost, and that usually will be there combat ability. Similarly there are character concepts that excel in combat, so there should be a cost for that as well.

 

[Celebrim]

Hmm, I'd say that you are making a mistake by defining "class" in such a loose way. "A skillful individual who survives by his wits"? That sounds like an "adventurer" to me.

Except, we can quite easily come up with heroes that don't meet that definition, especially when we understand 'skillful' in the D&D context where spell casting and combat ability are not part of a skill system. For example, a cleric doesn't survive 'by thier wits' and skills, but rather by thier service to a diety and the power they thereby are able to manifest. A warrior doesn't survive 'by thier wits' and skills, but by thier prowess at arms. And so forth. We can separate the classes by asking the question, "What are you most supposed to be good at?"

Now, obviously, we could answer this question with things like, "Throwing daggers." or "Moving quickly and silently" or "Great Cook", and if we aren't careful we'll need a separate 'Throws Daggers class' and a separate 'Moves quickly and silently class' and a separate "Great Cook" class, and so forth. But for a variaty of reasons, our system is more elegant if it finds some set of classes that spans all possible answers to the question while not forcing any one class to do so much and be so flexible that its becomes overly mechanically complicated. Core 3.X did a fairly good (though far from perfect) job of this, and 4E is I think obviously taking a huge step backward.

It's not like we haven't wandered this design space before. Must we repeat the mistakes of the past?

A specific example: an awful lot of 3e rogues start out with a chain shirt and a shortsword, simply because those have slightly better combat stats for a level 1 rogue than leather and a dagger. WotC has limited options here: they either do nothing, so that people who want to play an "iconic" rogue in leather with a dagger have to take a minor hit to combat effectiveness, or they can specifically design the class to highlight its "iconic" instantiation. The latter is clearly what they're doing in 4e by limiting weapon and armor proficiencies and giving rogues a minor bonus to daggers. Now, in 4e, the onus is on people who want to play non-iconic rogues to expend some feats to do so.

I think it would be instructional to consider how and why did the leather wearing rogue become iconic in the first place.

I get that you don't like this highly-focused form of class design.

To say the least.

What you have to bear in mind is that a lot of people actually take roleplaying inspiration from their class, rather than deciding their class and "build" based on an exhaustively compiled character history. Heck, I'm guessing half the paladins I've played with didn't even know their deity's holy symbol. For these people, it's easier to start with a well-defined archetype and expand it strategically, rather than starting with a broad sketch and narrowing it strategically.

I think it is safe to say that I'm not one of 'these people'. As I've said before, its ok if this is what you want from a game. But its clear that 4E is not being designed with my needs in mind. Frankly, as you describe it, its being designed with the needs of noobs in mind. I moved past what you describe maybe 20 years ago.

 

[kennew142]

A 3rd edition rogue wasn't necessarily balanced with fighter as a combat class. You had the option of going that route with the build if it was appropriate to your campaign needs (high combat, low social interaction, low problem solving) and it would be against most foes capable of fighter like feats of martial prowess, but the same class could be used to build classes that strongly favored non-combat approaches to problems if that suited your character concept and the needs of the campaign. You weren't being told how to play the game by the design of the class.

This is a major step forward in game design. Balancing non-combat effectiveness with combat weakness is a major flaw of the 3e rogue. Combat consumes so much more of the game than the non-combat elements that this is not a fair trade off.

Social interaction takes a lot of time as well (at least IMC), but I never allow that to be resolved with simple die rolls. I value role-playing too much. All characters should be able to interact with the NPCs, just as all characters can participate in combat.

As for not being told how to play the game by the design of the class in 3e, please! Have you read the class mechanics in 3e?

What if you want to play a witty fighter with good social skills? What about a scholarly cleric of Pelor with a lot of knowledge skills? What about a highwayman rogue with great ride skills?

The mechanics of every single class dictates how you play it. If the answer is to multiclass, then I would add that you can do that with the rogue in 4e as well.

This is another straw man argument. No class in 3e is as open as you seem to want the 4e rogue to be.

 

[Celebrim]

This is a major step forward in game design. Balancing non-combat effectiveness with combat weakness is a major flaw of the 3e rogue. Combat consumes so much more of the game than the non-combat elements that this is not a fair trade off.

In your game...

I don't want a game system that tells me how to play. I want a game system that gives me the tools to play the game how I want to play.

As for not being told how to play the game by the design of the class in 3e, please! Have you read the class mechanics in 3e?

What if you want to play a witty fighter with good social skills? What about a scholarly cleric of Pelor with a lot of knowledge skills? What about a highwayman rogue with great ride skills?

This argument doesn't prove what you think it proves. I'm quite willing to accept that 3E is also flawed in this manner to one extent or the other. In fact, I already acknowledged that it was when I explicitly critiqued 3E. The fact that 3E also had this flaw doesn't make me want to accept 4E, especially when it appears to me that far from trying to fix this flaw, it is in fact increasing it.

This is another straw man argument. No class in 3e is as open as you seem to want the 4e rogue to be.

Again, this argument doesn't imply what you seem to think it implies. Nor for that matter do I understand why you are claiming that it is a straw man argument. As long as we are on the subject of logical fallacies, try parsing this reasoning:

Me: "Fourth edition is flawed in this manner."
You: "No it isn't, because third edition is too."

 

[frankthedm]

My biggest issue about the article was that sneak attack is limited to a small set of weapons only. Not only does this limit the rogue's options in general (and for reason I fail to see the logic of), but it seems to me that it strongly limits multi-classing (or training), since sure a 4E rogue could learn to use other weapons from multi-classing or feats, etc, but couldn't sneak attack with any of them.

Nerfing damage output was a goal of 4E. AC, HP and Damage output are codified and accounted for in 4E. A "x" level PC is expected to have "v" AC, Plus "G" to hit and deal "z" damage. Anything that goes outside this is nerfed to hell until it conforms. Part of that is making sure a rogue can't combine striker based damage powers with a larger weapon's damage die.

Also, the stipulation preventing sneak attack damage more than one per round was done to ensure the rogue who does get multiple attacks does not exceed his damage per round parameters.