Ampersand: Sneak Attack

[Mentat55]

My Rogue/Master Thrower/Thief Acrobat in a 3.5 campaign has 0 ranks in Open Lock, Move Silently, Hide, or Disable Device. Jump, Tumble, Balance, Use Rope, got the most attention. The character is a tough sailor whose main weapon is a Harpoon, and cutlass for boarding actions. The Thief Acrobat stuff is so he can run around up in the rigging, swing down onto the deck, etc. So I guess he cannot be a rogue in 4e-- since he doesn't have "thievery" or "stealth".

I dunno, seems like he could be a 4E rogue - you take Acrobatics and Athletics as 2 of your 4 trained skills, Thievery may or may not include Use Rope functionality, it is unknown. Yes, you have skills that you don't have in 3.5E automatically, but it doesn't mean you have to use them -- depending on how you view it, they are either (1) bonus choices, so they are gravy, since you already get to choose 4 skills, or (2) you have 6 skills, but 2 are forced on you. As Obi-Wan said, "from a certain point of view." Plenty of precedent for ignoring class features to fulfill a character design -- see high Dex, Weapon Finesse-based fighters that eschew medium/heavy armor and shields. You yourself chose to not take Disable Device, thus making your trapfinding ability useless. I think that is a perfectly reasonable choice, one I make all the time in characters.

You can take the rogue utility power Tumble and get your acrobatics on.

Re: the cutlass and harpoon, presumably you need to spend feat(s) to get them, but you had to do so in 3.5E as well for the rogue -- harpoon is exotic, and the cutlass is martial (going by Stormwrack). And the cutlass was a light slashing weapon in 3.5E, so it stands to reason that it or whatever weapon stands in for a cutlass in 4E is usable with any rogue power that calls for a light blade. The harpoon does not work with sneak attack or any of the listed rogue powers, so you'd be giving up something there.

EDIT: Mourn already covered most of my salient points, and much more succinctly, too.

 

[Falling Icicle]

I like the fixed hit points, special abilities and the new sneak attack. I don't like the very limited weapon choices. It would be nice to have the option to play something other than a ninja.

 

[hong]

One thing that seems to have slipped below the radar amidst the angst about skills, piercing strike and whatnot, is that Tumble is now a per-encounter ability. Hmm.

 

[hazel monday]

No more random hit points. Truly this a day that will live in infamy. D&D just became a little more sterile and a little less fun.


Oh well, at least I like the more limited weapon prof. and skill lists. The more limits that are placed on player's characters the more 4E seems like 1E to me. And that's a good thing from my perspective.

 

[Primal]

One thing that seems to have slipped below the radar amidst the angst about skills, piercing strike and whatnot, is that Tumble is now a per-encounter ability. Hmm.

My honest guess is that that is due to Acrobatics replacing Tumble as a skill. In 4E Tumble probably enables you to do what you could in 3E with Spring Attack.

 

[Primal]

Sounds a bit like, asia bad, occident good again. >>

Not really, if we don't see the rules.

But it can really screw things at random. And no, it don't removes excitement.

To some it does and to some it doesn't. It removes a lot of the excitement for me. I'd compare this to removing other "random" factors from the game -- I feel that by removing them you also remove some of the sense of threat and danger in the game. Traps that are no longer "unfair"? Hey, I don't have to worry about dashing through every corridor anymore. Undead no longer being able to use "Energy Drain"? Bring them on, 'coz they are just another funny pile of HPs (and XP) that you can slay as easily as any other monster.

And if it's just about "staying power" or that you feel a PC with low HPs (due to bad rolls) becomes "unplayable", why don't we just all houserule that all PC classes get +10 HP/level and the monsters only +5/level. That would probably adjust the "danger curve" so that the PCs have to rely less on healing, but it'd also remove a lot of the threat of dying. IMO this would translate to PCs becoming way more reckless in the game -- why care about stealth or being careful, ever, if you have twice the HPs (plus all those new Self-Healing and whatnot 'Leader' abilities) the monsters have?

 

[Primal]

Shoulda been gladius.

Nah, that smacks of Romans too much, and Rome is not cool! Anything Oriental and Spartan... now that's cool!

 

[Derren]

The rogue looks more or less ok, but there are some things I am not happy about.

1. Reduced weapons list. Rogues where never known for their many weapon profiencies but this is a very short list.

2. It requires a class ability to get an advantage when you surprise the enemy/act before them in combat? That doesn't seem right.

3. Where is the acrobatic rogue? Didn't he have enough combat application?

4. I think its not a good idea to allow a class to ignore armor at will.

5. Assuming that rogues are still the "skill monkeys" it seems that for some classes it can become quite hard in becoming trained in skills which are not on their class skill list (when they get less than the 4 free picks the rogue has). Isn't that the 3E fighter skill problem redux?

I dunno, seems like he could be a 4E rogue - you take Acrobatics and Athletics as 2 of your 4 trained skills, Thievery may or may not include Use Rope functionality, it is unknown. Yes, you have skills that you don't have in 3.5E automatically, but it doesn't mean you have to use them --

Yes, thats a problem with SAGA skills. You can't choose to be not good at something. You can of course simply not use the skills you don't want to have but this is a inelegant solution.

 

[Primal]

Yeah really when it comes to skills, those are only the class skills for all we know there could be 200 other skill (obvious exaggeration but the point holds).

I hope so. I mean, you only get to pick 6 out of ten choices? Sheesh. I feel It'd be boring if almost every Rogue has pretty much the same skill selection -- not to mention the same skill modifiers, to boot! So my 10th level Elven Rogue with Dex 18 and another 10th level Human Rogue with Dex 18 would be mechanically equal (+5 from the skill, +5 from your level, and +4 from Dex = +14) at every level, unless you burn a Talent/Feat to "specialize" for another +5. It may remove the "headache" of spending your Skill Ranks (and prevent you from burning them on "non-heroic" skills) but I hope I'm missing something here, because I don't want all Rogues becoming mechanically sort of like clones.

 

[Primal]

Well maybe not in the 4e core world. But that doesn't mean another setting can't, hell if that was the case then places like Calimport in Forgotten Realms would cease to exist.

Now that you mention it, I think I've read somewhere that the FR Designers intentionally "blew up" the FR countries that have direct cultural ties to RW, such as the Old Empires. Most likely they are going to get rid of Calimshan, too.