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Message: <blockquote data-quote="IanArgent" data-source="post: 4285595" data-attributes="member: 21673">Here's the secret sauce recipe. You can have a perfectly effective party in 4e that consists of: a warlord, a fighter, a warlock, and a wizard... Look, ma, no cleric, no rogue. Right now there is only one class that is "indispensable", and that's only because we were given one controller (the wizard).The character with training in Thievery will ALWAYS be better than the character without (except in the corner case where the untrained character has a Dex 10 points or more higher than the trained character). However, I draw your attention to p42 of the DMG - Difficulty Class and Damage By Level; which can be summarized as "an easy skill check is 15+1/2 level, a moderate check is +5, and a difficult check is +10" for a level appropriate challenge (the DM is encouraged to vary from +2 to -2 as necessary for the needs of the plot). So if you have a rogue trained in Thievery, he handles the locks - a hyperfocused thief has a +14 skill check (20 dex, training, and skill focus) and can Take 10 on the level-appropriate hard locks. Even if he can't Take 10 for whatever reason, he still needs a 6+ on his skill check to open the lock.But if the characters are facing a level-appropriate challenge without a trained character, the untrained character will succeed a little less than half the time against an easy check, but can still attempt a difficult check with a roughly 10% chance of success (assuming a stat bonus of +2 - a not unreasonable assumption, someone in the party's gotta have a dex of 14 or better; if you brought a ranger as your striker he's likely to have a dex of 18 or even 20).That's a Good Thing right there - the trained thief makes it look easy, but the party doesn't fail without recourse if the trained thief isn't available (dead, fled, or couldn't hire a babysitter that night).I alluded to it earlier, but I'll come out and say it now - there is no required class. Even given that we only have one controller, there's a couple of classes that minor in battlefield control (warlock and cleric can both give it a go, and even fighter has a little bit of control in his knapsack). 3 Ed required someone with 1 level of rogue, and either a druid who prepped a LOT of Cure spells, or a cleric. There was NO other way to get trapfinding, and I'm reasonably sure you had to have 1 level of rogue to tackle locks with a DC higher than 20 as well. Splats gave you a couple of other classes to cover these two "required" bases - but it was still tied to classes. 4E ties healing to the role of Leader now, but spreads around quite a bit of self-healing - and anyone can pick up the thief skills with one feat (or none if they pick the right class).</blockquote>

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