Menu
News
All News
Dungeons & Dragons
Level Up: Advanced 5th Edition
Pathfinder
Starfinder
Warhammer
2d20 System
Year Zero Engine
Industry News
Reviews
Dragon Reflections
White Dwarf Reflections
Columns
Weekly Digests
Weekly News Digest
Freebies, Sales & Bundles
RPG Print News
RPG Crowdfunding News
Game Content
ENterplanetary DimENsions
Mythological Figures
Opinion
Worlds of Design
Peregrine's Nest
RPG Evolution
Other Columns
From the Freelancing Frontline
Monster ENcyclopedia
WotC/TSR Alumni Look Back
4 Hours w/RSD (Ryan Dancey)
The Road to 3E (Jonathan Tweet)
Greenwood's Realms (Ed Greenwood)
Drawmij's TSR (Jim Ward)
Community
Forums & Topics
Forum List
Latest Posts
Forum list
*Dungeons & Dragons
Level Up: Advanced 5th Edition
D&D Older Editions, OSR, & D&D Variants
*TTRPGs General
*Pathfinder & Starfinder
EN Publishing
*Geek Talk & Media
Search forums
Chat/Discord
Resources
Wiki
Pages
Latest activity
Media
New media
New comments
Search media
Downloads
Latest reviews
Search resources
EN Publishing
Store
EN5ider
Adventures in ZEITGEIST
Awfully Cheerful Engine
What's OLD is NEW
Judge Dredd & The Worlds Of 2000AD
War of the Burning Sky
Level Up: Advanced 5E
Events & Releases
Upcoming Events
Private Events
Featured Events
Socials!
EN Publishing
Twitter
BlueSky
Facebook
Instagram
EN World
BlueSky
YouTube
Facebook
Twitter
Twitch
Podcast
Features
Top 5 RPGs Compiled Charts 2004-Present
Adventure Game Industry Market Research Summary (RPGs) V1.0
Ryan Dancey: Acquiring TSR
Q&A With Gary Gygax
D&D Rules FAQs
TSR, WotC, & Paizo: A Comparative History
D&D Pronunciation Guide
Million Dollar TTRPG Kickstarters
Tabletop RPG Podcast Hall of Fame
Eric Noah's Unofficial D&D 3rd Edition News
D&D in the Mainstream
D&D & RPG History
About Morrus
Log in
Register
What's new
Search
Search
Search titles only
By:
Forums & Topics
Forum List
Latest Posts
Forum list
*Dungeons & Dragons
Level Up: Advanced 5th Edition
D&D Older Editions, OSR, & D&D Variants
*TTRPGs General
*Pathfinder & Starfinder
EN Publishing
*Geek Talk & Media
Search forums
Chat/Discord
Menu
Log in
Register
Install the app
Install
NOW LIVE! Today's the day you meet your new best friend. You don’t have to leave Wolfy behind... In 'Pets & Sidekicks' your companions level up with you!
Community
General Tabletop Discussion
*TTRPGs General
Are rogues marginalized by magic?
JavaScript is disabled. For a better experience, please enable JavaScript in your browser before proceeding.
You are using an out of date browser. It may not display this or other websites correctly.
You should upgrade or use an
alternative browser
.
Reply to thread
Message
<blockquote data-quote="StreamOfTheSky" data-source="post: 4442319" data-attributes="member: 35909"><p>My wizard casts grease on your slippers of spider climbing. It may not get you the first round, but it will sooner or later. Looks like you're going to fall, too bad you chose not to take ranks in climb, you might have actually had a chance at the +20 DC climb check to catch yourself. Sure, spider climb gives you +8 and take 10, but without any ranks, that's not enough. And sure, maybe you have feather fall on the ready to not die. But now you're on the ground, in range of Meathead the Fighter's oversized greataxe.</p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p>I agree spells that auto-win a skill check stink, and listed it as a problem with 3E (in the 'what's wwrong with 3E?' thread). Most 3E players won't argue that. However, this is at least in part due to carryover from 2E, and is easy to fix (houserule).</p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p>It depends. MIC made short range teleportation items cheap enough for all to use. Flight, I've found, is sort of like having a tech advantage. At first, it's killer, later on everyone has it or can deal with it. At level 5, flight is a real game-changer. By level 10, most PCs that bother to can have flying abilities of their own from items or elsewhere, within reasonable expense. And even at level 5, a Wizard trading scorching rays with a full BAB character using a bow he has no feats for has only a slight to moderate advantage, with hp differences. And it's possible he'll run out of strong ammo before the fight's over if he has some unlucky misses.</p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p>I put slightly disagree, but I concur with your reasoning regardless.</p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p>You call it marginalizing. I call it supplementing. Rogues are crafty, they don't cry about the abundance and power of magic, they put it to their own use to help make their jobs easier.</p><p>UMDing a wand with a touch spell is just plain brilliant against foes with massive natural armor.</p><p>Using items to face undead is nice too, but why even go for damage dealing? That gets expensive. Get some nice battlefield control for those occasions -- scrolls of web, entangle, etc...</p><p>As for wizard buffing, why not? Two characters combining their abilities for a result greater than the sum of the parts put in? That's <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile :)" data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" /><img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile :)" data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" /><img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile :)" data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" /><img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile :)" data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" />ing beautiful, man. <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile :)" data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" /></p><p>Fire seeds is nice, but still fire damage. Why not get a wand of acid splash for 375 gp and not even need another character? Sure, you lose the 12-20d6 base, but for that low cost and your skill in sneaking, you now have 50 uses of d3 +xd6 acid damage that ignores SR. One man's crime against nature is another's ingenuity, I guess.</p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p>Rogues can use all those items, as well. I really consider UMd a class feature, more than a class skill. It gets the rogue through encounters against SA-immune foes, and greatly expands his options.</p><p></p><p>As for counter measures... pretty much the entire schools of abjuration and divination exist to foil the other schools. I really don't feel like listing every single instance, but take disguise, for example. There are spells to give large bonuses, yes. But there are also many spells to see through them, not to mention the possibility of a spellcraft check to know a disguise/alter spell was used (which will result in <strong>bad stuff</strong> even if the disguise itself isn't seen through). However, there is NO way to pierce mundane disguise methods, such as a kit or huge ranks, other than actually winning the spot check. As long as the rogue can keep his important skill mods high, there's not much most enemies can do to stop him, aside from also keeping their modifiers high.</p><p></p><p>So, I put sort of disagree because while I think Rogues have the skill list and guile to most put magic to use, I do agree the existence of some things (knock, etc...) do nothing but let some old guy from an ivory tower suddenly become the greatest lock picker on the street, for example. Even so, 3E offers a Rogue character the most fun and variety of any edition 2E-4E in my experience (and those are the only ones I've played). Which is the most important thing.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="StreamOfTheSky, post: 4442319, member: 35909"] My wizard casts grease on your slippers of spider climbing. It may not get you the first round, but it will sooner or later. Looks like you're going to fall, too bad you chose not to take ranks in climb, you might have actually had a chance at the +20 DC climb check to catch yourself. Sure, spider climb gives you +8 and take 10, but without any ranks, that's not enough. And sure, maybe you have feather fall on the ready to not die. But now you're on the ground, in range of Meathead the Fighter's oversized greataxe. I agree spells that auto-win a skill check stink, and listed it as a problem with 3E (in the 'what's wwrong with 3E?' thread). Most 3E players won't argue that. However, this is at least in part due to carryover from 2E, and is easy to fix (houserule). It depends. MIC made short range teleportation items cheap enough for all to use. Flight, I've found, is sort of like having a tech advantage. At first, it's killer, later on everyone has it or can deal with it. At level 5, flight is a real game-changer. By level 10, most PCs that bother to can have flying abilities of their own from items or elsewhere, within reasonable expense. And even at level 5, a Wizard trading scorching rays with a full BAB character using a bow he has no feats for has only a slight to moderate advantage, with hp differences. And it's possible he'll run out of strong ammo before the fight's over if he has some unlucky misses. I put slightly disagree, but I concur with your reasoning regardless. You call it marginalizing. I call it supplementing. Rogues are crafty, they don't cry about the abundance and power of magic, they put it to their own use to help make their jobs easier. UMDing a wand with a touch spell is just plain brilliant against foes with massive natural armor. Using items to face undead is nice too, but why even go for damage dealing? That gets expensive. Get some nice battlefield control for those occasions -- scrolls of web, entangle, etc... As for wizard buffing, why not? Two characters combining their abilities for a result greater than the sum of the parts put in? That's :):):):)ing beautiful, man. :) Fire seeds is nice, but still fire damage. Why not get a wand of acid splash for 375 gp and not even need another character? Sure, you lose the 12-20d6 base, but for that low cost and your skill in sneaking, you now have 50 uses of d3 +xd6 acid damage that ignores SR. One man's crime against nature is another's ingenuity, I guess. Rogues can use all those items, as well. I really consider UMd a class feature, more than a class skill. It gets the rogue through encounters against SA-immune foes, and greatly expands his options. As for counter measures... pretty much the entire schools of abjuration and divination exist to foil the other schools. I really don't feel like listing every single instance, but take disguise, for example. There are spells to give large bonuses, yes. But there are also many spells to see through them, not to mention the possibility of a spellcraft check to know a disguise/alter spell was used (which will result in [b]bad stuff[/b] even if the disguise itself isn't seen through). However, there is NO way to pierce mundane disguise methods, such as a kit or huge ranks, other than actually winning the spot check. As long as the rogue can keep his important skill mods high, there's not much most enemies can do to stop him, aside from also keeping their modifiers high. So, I put sort of disagree because while I think Rogues have the skill list and guile to most put magic to use, I do agree the existence of some things (knock, etc...) do nothing but let some old guy from an ivory tower suddenly become the greatest lock picker on the street, for example. Even so, 3E offers a Rogue character the most fun and variety of any edition 2E-4E in my experience (and those are the only ones I've played). Which is the most important thing. [/QUOTE]
Insert quotes…
Verification
Post reply
Community
General Tabletop Discussion
*TTRPGs General
Are rogues marginalized by magic?
Top