4th ed, the Good & the Bad?

[Xanaqui]

Maybe, I'm at 7th level, and I think you need to be higher to pull out spells like that for miscellaneous activity (though for the final encounter its def an option). for some reason our party is overloaded with spider climb items so we can spend the final encounter huddling on the ceiling.....

My last significant campaign ended in the low 20s, so that's the reference point that sticks out most in my mind. At that point, a LV 23 spellcaster isn't worried about the low-level spells (which, of course, at LV 7 are all their spells, and then some).

"Ah, so we agree the principle and now we're just haggling over the price"
I've no problem with changing the range of creatures immune to sneak, personally i'd like to see a mechanic similar to rangers favoured enemy to change the range. it would allow an undead specialist to be happy traipsing around a crypt, but still be nervous of plants or a construct demolition expert to have a skeleton-phobia.

Sounds like what I'm thinking of introducing in my present game - I'm thinking knowledge checks to bypass sneak immunity. Maybe 15 + CR for 1/2 sneak dice; 30+ CR for full sneak dice. Or maybe 10 + 5/sneak die.

In my game i have a cleric / fighter with improved crit and lucky dice, so its becoming a regular feature of combat these days, but that may be a personal view..... especially since no-one can match the TWF Fighter / Rogue / Shadowdancer for damage output and she's now thinking of improved critical as well!

Crits are a regular feature of combat once the party hits with a significant frequency. Even at, say, a 19-20 crit range and 5 hits per average round, there should be a crit every other round. They still aren't a lot of overall damage, unless you stack a couple crit-improving prestige classes on top of a otherwise crit min/maxed PC.

I do think you can get issues if you don't mix and match challenges for any character class, try taking a druid, fighter specialising in mounted combat, illusionist and rogue down an undead filled crypt and see who feels more hard done by.... as a DM you have the ability to design PC killers or Gold mines with your decisions - SA immunity is just one of many factors you should be careful not to overuse.

It's been decades, but I played a 1st ed Illusionist in a crypt. On the other hand, 3E Illusionists have a lot of non-illusion spells to choose from. I'd say the Illusionist at very low levels; otherwise, the Rogue (unless it's very trap-heavy). I've never had problems feeling useful as a Druid (above LV 1). At low-mid levels, it's hard to make a non-viable fighter build.

Yep; perhaps it's just one of the two that gives me (personally) difficulty. I still think that there are too many high-CR creatures with sneak immunity.

In both the games I play in the Rogue spot has been taken by a Ranger + Artificier or Urban Ranger + Warlock- they're 5 PC games and when we rolled up / pointed up PC's it was just how it came out.

Where I DM there's 2 multi-class rogues and the only comment about SA came up when they were dealing with a bunch of half-golems in the sewers over several sessions. I always justified it as SA immunity was one of the reasons the half-golems were kicking butt of the other thieves guilds. Anyhow, the golems were beaten back and now they're more worried about the bad case of lycanthropy the docklands guild has come down with.....

I've played a number of games with no Rogue; if you allow other classes to gain Trapfinding (or something to replace it, like summons) one way or another, there's really little essential need for a Rogue.

 

[Brother MacLaren]

Can you list some archetypical rogues that aren't good combatants, aside from Bilbo Baggins?

In terms of archetypical rogues, I don't know that there is such a thing. The rogue class abilities can be used to create characters representing many archetypes. The 2E PHB mentioned Reynard the Fox, Ali Baba, and Robin Goodfellow (aka Puck) as inspirations for the class. I'm not familiar with Reynard the Fox, is he a super-acrobatic throat-slitting machine? My Mentzer Basic Set has a list of material that inspired the game at the back, next time I have access to it I will look through that list.

There LEGIONS of thieves in literature of all sorts, who would use the rogue class. Pickpockets, burglars, muggers, con artists, mobsters, tricksters, scoundrels, and so on. Ninjas are a possibility, yes, but not the only kind of rogue out there. Have you read the Complete Thief's Handbook? That contains many archetypes that are represented by the 2E thief class. Was the 3E rogue class intended to be a radical revision of the archetypes modeled by the class?

 

[Reynard]

Can you list some archetypical rogues that aren't good combatants, aside from Bilbo Baggins?

Mouse from "Hawkwoman"
Aladdin from "Aladdin"
Indiana Jones (seriously, he's a rogue, and he never got in a fight in which he didn't get his ass kicked unless he used a dirty trick or a gun)

 

[The Little Raven]

In terms of archetypical rogues, I don't know that there is such a thing. The rogue class abilities can be used to create characters representing many archetypes.

The rogue class is about sneaky attacks (backstab, sneak attack), larcenous dealings (thief skills in 1e/2e, big focus on thief skills in 3e), and traps above all (which is why they were only ones able to do trapfinding in 1e/2e/3e). I think it's completely false when people claim rogue as the everyman class.

The 2E PHB mentioned Reynard the Fox, Ali Baba, and Robin Goodfellow (aka Puck) as inspirations for the class.

The 2E book stuck to "historical" figures and ignored fantasy, which is why it didn't list Bilbo in there... and the class, at that time, was Thief, not Rogue, so it was actually a far tighter archetype than rogue (you steal things, otherwise you wouldn't be a thief).

Reynard the Fox is... actually a fox, apparently. Anthromorphic tales from medieval Europe. Not sure if he really fits the fantasy "rogue."

Ali Baba lived nearly 40 thieves who hid treasure in a magic cave. He learned the words to get into and out of the cave, become somewhat wealthy, lost his greedy brother to the thieves (his brother forgot the words to leave the cave), nearly got killed by one of thieves, but was saved by a slave-girl who he set free, and she married his son. Yeah, he's a thief, because he steals... but that doesn't make him the thief class.

Robin Goodfellow/Puck was a prankster and a trickster. Comic relief.

Was the 3E rogue class intended to be a radical revision of the archetypes modeled by the class?

Rogue was a broadening of the class, instead of just being thief. It opened up skills a lot more (since before, you only got your thief skills), but the class retained it's fundamental character from earlier editions.

 

[Brother MacLaren]

The rogue class is about sneaky attacks (backstab, sneak attack), larcenous dealings (thief skills in 1e/2e, big focus on thief skills in 3e), and traps above all (which is why they were only ones able to do trapfinding in 1e/2e/3e). I think it's completely false when people claim rogue as the everyman class.

I certainly wasn't saying that. If you look, I posted NUMEROUS archetypes that I think the rogue class can be used to represent -- which is why I don't think the class by itself is any single archetype. That's not the same as saying it's an everyman class.

"Pickpockets, burglars, muggers, con artists, mobsters, tricksters, scoundrels" -- to name a few.

 

[The Little Raven]

Mouse from "Hawkwoman"

Ladyhawke, you mean? He's an example, but probably of a low-level one. If you put the movie into D&D terms, he doesn't really do much that requires anything but a couple levels of rogue.

Aladdin from "Aladdin"

The Disney movie or the original tales? In the movie, he doesn't seem to be anything but competent with a sword in hand.

Indiana Jones (seriously, he's a rogue, and he never got in a fight in which he didn't get his ass kicked unless he used a dirty trick or a gun)

Perfect example (alongside Silk, Gray Mouser, Cugel, Jimmy the Hand)... he doesn't fight fair, and that makes him an effective combatant.

 

[Brother MacLaren]

Perfect example (alongside Silk, Gray Mouser, Cugel, Jimmy the Hand)... he doesn't fight fair, and that makes him an effective combatant.

Look at the original quote that got this started:

I like the archtype of backflipping over someone's head and stabbing them in the neck only to deftly dodge under the blow from the other enemy, kick them in the stomach then eviscerate them. That's a rogue's shtick.

That is not a merely good combatant who wins by trickery or luck. That is a highly-trained killing machine, like a Jet Li character. I think the archetype described is as much the fighter's as the rogue's; make it a Rog/Ftr and call it a swashbuckler. Zorro, after all, is exceptionally skilled with a rapier, NOT just relying on luck and dirty tricks, so I'd call him at least as much Fighter as Rogue.

 

[The Little Raven]

That is not a merely good combatant who wins by trickery or luck. That is a highly-trained killing machine, like a Jet Li character.

That's a high-level rogue to me. He isn't a toe-to-toe fighter, laying down devastating blows that stun, knockdown, or knockback a target. He uses acrobatics, trickery, the terrain, and his ability to take an opponent by surprise. When you get into the higher levels, that starts to make them more ninja-like, with the way the game scales.

 

[Reynard]

That's a high-level rogue to me.

I think it mostly has to do with the perception of what a "rogue" is. I think "thief" first (at least insofar as it was displayed in earlier editions) and you seem to think "ninja" first, which, admittedly, is much closer to the 3rd edition rogue -- particularly the 3.5, post-splat cuisinart rogue.

Part of the problem is that if the intent is to put combat first, and define character parity and effectivenes through combat, then describing the rogue as a sly, skilled burglar and con man doesn't seem to be equivalent to the tough, awesome fighter (never mind that the fighter has no skills outside of combat). D&D has never been, to me, all about combat, and how useful or cool a character is has little to do with their combat capabilities relative to other characters. If you sit down for a 4 hour session, "fun" isn't defined as how much damage you do, but by how much you contribute and engage the game throughout those 4 hours. Obviously, this means that if your sessions are largely combat, then combat effectiveness is going to have a heavier impact on your "fun". But as the poll I started in General shows, how much session time is devoted to combat varies wildly from group tp group. Mandating "fun" in 4E as it relates to encounters and combat and character effectiveness therein seems to be a poor design goal -- it assumes a certain definition of "fun" that is by no means universal.

 

[Brother MacLaren]

That's a high-level rogue to me. He isn't a toe-to-toe fighter, laying down devastating blows that stun, knockdown, or knockback a target. He uses acrobatics, trickery, the terrain, and his ability to take an opponent by surprise. When you get into the higher levels, that starts to make them more ninja-like, with the way the game scales.

The mighty warrior using power moves is ONE archetype for the fighter class, not the only one. The acrobatic combatant has long been another of the archetypes that the fighter class seeks to model. Look at the 2E fighter kits: both the gladiator and the swashbuckler had access to the Tumbling NWP. And with TWF rules as they were, I've seen a lot of high-Dex fighters in both 2E and 3E. I just don't buy the argument of "Anybody agile must be a Rogue, because all fighters are Str-based plodding tanks." Given the number of weapons, feats, and fighting styles possible, the fighter is too broad and versatile a class to be limited to one archetype.