4th ed, the Good & the Bad?

[Brother MacLaren]

In 4E other classes can find and disarm traps, but better than the rogue? NO, if the party has a rogue, they will still do all the same stuff. People keep saying balance in and out of combat, but how do you balance all of the out of combat stuff?

It sounds like the model is "Everybody will do everything."
Everybody will have stuff to do when a trap comes up. Everybody will have stuff to do in diplomatic encounters. Everybody will have stuff to do in every round of every fight. That's because letting your friends have a chance to shine is, apparently, "unfun."

I am looking forward to seeing how this works in practice. Will it slow the game down? Will some PCs' actions still be the real relevant ones, and the rest just picking their actions and rolling their dice to feel useful? Or will it really engage players?

 

[Reynard]

This build may scream rogue to you, but not to me. To me, a rogue is a finesse fighter, not a power-attacking greatsword wielder. But everyone is welcome to their own tastes.

To some, the rogue isn't a front line combatant at all. I think Brother MacLaren was offering a viable alternative build for those that think the rogue should be one.

 

[Incenjucar]

In 4E other classes can find and disarm traps, but better than the rogue? NO, if the party has a rogue, they will still do all the same stuff. People keep saying balance in and out of combat, but how do you balance all of the out of combat stuff?

I am personally of the opinion that every class should come with non-combat abilities of merit, with a substantial challenge type that is made easier through it.

If nothing else, I'm hoping that traps will be designed such that fighters can do the "Let's do this MY way!" *SMASH* route without just getting mauled.

I would be quite happy if, say, a trap had big heavy massive gears best dealt with via war mallet.

 

[kennew142]

Just for giggles, I counted up encounters in Forge of Fury. Of the 27 combat encounters in the adventure, 6 were with uncritible enemies. There are also 6 traps or locked doors in the adventure (I left out the yellow mold "trap" and any doors that couldn't be opened with Open Locks).

Obviously, the rogue is useless in the typical 3E adventure.

A single anecdote obviously proves the point. I had forgotten that every adventure had the same encounter break down as Forge of Fury.

This argument has become ridiculous. We are never going to agree on this point. I've never claimed that rogues were useless in the typical 3e adventure (talk about a strawman argument). I do believe that it's not fun to be reduced to d6+1 points of damage in every encounter with undead, constructs, oozes, plants, elementals, etc.... If you think it's fun, more power to you. I'm seriously glad you're having fun. It's not for me, and thief was my favorite class in 1e.

 

[Brother MacLaren]

This build may scream rogue to you, but not to me. To me, a rogue is a finesse fighter, not a power-attacking greatsword wielder. But everyone is welcome to their own tastes.

The various classes are sets of abilities, not archetypes, at least as I see them. By combining them and selecting appropriate feats, you can reflect an archetype that you like. I was certainly not envisioning Power Attacking with a greatsword as this rogue's normal modus operandi -- but it would be a fall-back tactic for when their usual methods aren't as effective. It seems entirely in character for a rogue to develop fallback plans rather than relying on the same trick every single time. Because for all the different archetypes that the rogue class can be used for, one thing they have in common is resourcefulness.

One of 2E's best features was the concept of kits (if not the implementation). Each class was shown to represent many archetypes with only very minor variations in most cases. Not one archetype; a dozen or more. This was an especially outstanding idea for the bard class, showing that it was far more than Sir Robin's Minstrel.

 

[Gort]

Everybody will have stuff to do in every round of every fight. That's because letting your friends have a chance to shine is, apparently, "unfun."

It is, when the bit that your friend (say, combat) gets to shine in takes a ton of time and is massively detailed in the rules with lots of different approaches, while your bit (say, trapfinding and disarming) is two dice rolls.

Did you ever play the earlier editions of Shadowrun? Those had massive amounts of "everyone sits around while the decker has his own adventure lasting two hours" and "oh, you're in a car? Well, the rigger gets to play his game now".

I was desperate for some combat in that game, cause at least everyone got to participate.

 

[Cadfan]

Just for giggles, I counted up encounters in Forge of Fury. Of the 27 combat encounters in the adventure, 6 were with uncritible enemies. There are also 6 traps or locked doors in the adventure (I left out the yellow mold "trap" and any doors that couldn't be opened with Open Locks).

Obviously, the rogue is useless in the typical 3E adventure.

Umm. I'd bet money that one of the prime concerns in 3e adventure design is making sure to pussyfoot around the rogue's incompetences. The fact that official published adventures don't screw the rogue isn't very useful information once you realize that the designers probably stopped and thought, "Hmm, how can we make sure we don't screw the rogue? Oh yeah, battling the lich king's horders of undead is right out. I'll write an adventure about something else."

 

[Doug McCrae]

I do believe that it's not fun to be reduced to d6+1 points of damage in every encounter with undead, constructs, oozes, plants, elementals, etc.... If you think it's fun, more power to you.

Yeah, this is what it comes down to. For some people 1d6+1, or aid another are an acceptable minimum. For me, they're not. It's just a matter of taste.

 

[kennew142]

Useless Rogues - Again

I was really going to leave this subject alone, but while discussing my characters from previous editions in another thread it hit me like a bolt out of the blue.

Why did I love playing thieves (and bards) in earlier editions of D&D, but I find them weak and unsatisfying in 3e? In all editions bards were pretty much limited to d6 damage (plus a few points for magic and/or strength). Rogues were similarly limited when denied their backstab. The disconnect has to do with the difference in damage between rogues/bards and fighters in the different editions.

In 1e and 2e fighters did more damage than rogues, but it was only by a few points. An average rogue with a +2 shortsword did d6+2 points of damage. The average fighter with even an 18/00 STR with a +2 longsword did only d8+8 damage (with weapon specialization). The difference in damage was only 7 points on the average. In 3e, fighters do so much more damage than other martial characters that they overshadow them in combat, especially against creatures with DR.

In 1e and 2e, we thieves and bards didn't hit as often in combat, but we could do the same crappy damage when we did. We didn't feel overshadowed by the fighters, paladins and rangers because we were all in the same boat - being overshadowed by the wizards!

I don't know why it hasn't occurred to me until just now. I'm not usually this slow on the uptake.

When 3e came out, martial types with good BAB got a significant boost in power. They still couldn't compete with wizards, but they did more than rogues and bards. Rogues looked promising, with this new sneak attack and more ways to use it than backstab. Then the rules disallowed its use against some of the most common monsters in the game.

DR exacerbated the problem. In earlier editions, if a monster required a +2 weapon to hit it, you either had it or you didn't. In 3e (especially 3.5), DR could mean hitting a creature over and over again without ever doing any damage. It became very frustrating.

To make matters worse, combat (even at mid-levels) in 3e can take forever. I don't know about anyone else, but our group never took so long in 1e and 2e to finish a fight that we did in 3e. The net effect of this was to increase the amount of time at the gaming table dedicated to fighting, almost of necessity reducing the amount available for exploring, social interaction and other things the rogue and bard were so good at.

I could go on, but I think I now understand my personal issues with 3e rogues and bards. I've seen fighters (although not usually fighters with power attack and a two-handed weapons) look on in envy at the amount of damage a 3e rogue can do when they get their sneak attack. But there are so many different circumstances in 3e in which rogues lose their sneak attack (creature type, concealment, barbarians , creatures that can't be flanked, etc...) that it really feels excessive.

I am a player/GM who puts much more emphasis on role-playing than on combat as story elements, but 3e combat mechanics really eat up the time. It isn't being less than optimal in some fights that is the problem, it's being well-nigh useless for such a long period of time when the right circumstances roll around.

 

[Greg K]

One of 2E's best features was the concept of kits (if not the implementation). Each class was shown to represent many archetypes with only very minor variations in most cases. Not one archetype; a dozen or more. This was an especially outstanding idea for the bard class, showing that it was far more than Sir Robin's Minstrel.

I agree with you on kits.

Now, the PHB (both 3.0 and 3.5) includes a small section on customizing characters which is basically creating kits. Unfortunately, with one or two exceptions (e.g. the urban ranger), WOTC pretty much wasted opportunities to do anything with the concept until Unearthed Arcana- and it still took until Complete Champion to receive official versions for spellless variants of paladins and rangers which have been floating around the net since early 3.0 despite requests from players.