Argh!! Useless Rogues

[LordBOB]

Yes, I do think rogues are quite dependant on the GM to present them with necessary challenges. Rogues generally do better in RP oriented campaigns than strictly hack-and-slash campaigns. In my experience, 100% hack and slash campaigns do not use skills very much.

I think that Spot, Listen and Search are the rogue's money skills. Even if a campaign is skills lite, you can pretty much count on those. In a high level campaign when, as others have said, magic can frequently trump a rogue's skills, UMD can greatly broaden the rogue's versatility and, in an interesting turnabout, encroach on the cleric and wizard's territory.

Rogues must be more proactive than other classes. You have to actively look for opportunities to use your skills and those opportunities may not always be obvious. Whereas the fighter and wizard can be more passive in waiting for an opportunity to contribute, because the opportunity for melee or to drop a fireball is usually pretty obvious.

Ok ok ok.....i think i know where i went wrong... I think that in 3E it talked about paladins not supposed to use ranged weapons. I guess i was mistanken since changing to 3.5

 

[domino]

Nope. No mention of ranged weapon issues for the paladin in 3.0 either. I have NO idea where you're getting that from.

 

[Elder-Basilisk]

That's the wrong point to make about grapples. The number one effect of a rogue on grappling is defensive for your party. If it's possible to sneak attack you, the last thing in the world you want to be is in a grapple next to a rogue on the other side. If you're standing next to the party wizard with a pair of shortsword, the enemy monk will not grapple your wizard. And, if he does, you will kill him.

3rd: Grapples. You don't have to be great cause remember, the enemy mage is worse at them than you are, and really big strong guys you can escape the grapple if the tide turns with Escape Artist.

 

[Lord Wyrm]

I'm an "Art of War" kinda player in, nearly anything.

"He who maintains the offensive sets the pace and rules of combat" one of those things drilled into you if you play strategic games too much. I love Age of Empires and the Total War series and so on and so forth. I'm probably addicted to that sort of thing.

Also, why two short swords? One is sufficient and leaves a hand free to pull your next scroll or potion, and if your're that hard up why not a double weapon with a dagger as your backup. Course if the DM is real nice he'll let you run a spiked chain as a double weapon 5ft reach or a reach weapon standard attacks. (The chain is identical on either end after all)

 

[Nail]

Chances are the breath got everyone anyway. It just didn't do anything - because if you know you're fighting a black dragon, you get acid resistance...

Exactly.

Or, to be clear: Every single PC in my party had Energy Immunity(Acid).

Every.

Single.

One.

Surprise round: We teleported in and wacked at the dragon.
Round #1: Dragon breathed on all of us. We laughed, then full attacked and killed the dragon. The Rog 16/Ftr 2 did a Victory Dance as a free action after his amazing full-round sneak attack.
Round #2: We started skinning the dragon's corpse, whistling while we worked.......

It sounds like neither you nor your DM are that hot on the rules.

Well, ...there's no need to be harsh on him. Let's put it this way: It sounds as if your DM doesn't let logic stand in his way when he stacks the deck against you.

 

[Nail]

and now for a COMPLETELY off-topic post........sorry, OP!!

True, but for a prepped dragon, it buys him a round of melee immunity and the caster's first action.

The dragon doesn't get any "melee immunity". Okay, think this through:
One party member casts Greater Dispel Magic, and takes care of all (or nearly all) a dragon's buffs, as the dragon's caster level sucks.

Meanwhile, the rest of the party goes to town on the dragon.

The bottom line advantage is pretty straight forward: the party simply gets more actions than the dragon does. Anywhere from 4 to 7 times the number of actions. (Our party has 7 players => 7 PCs.)

Given that our party attacked with surprise, and half of us won initiative during the 1st round, that's a heck of a lot of more actions than the dragon gets.

And again: we didn't attack him when he was prepared. We attacked him when we were prepared. Big difference. As an aside: Do you, as a player, ever get to attack the bad guys on your own terms? I think that might be a campaign-specific problem. I'm not casting aspersions, here. Just curious.

What's Righteous Wrath? I had thought you meant Righteous Might and kinda glazed over it.

It's in the CD. Keep in mind, I've been able to convert practically all my fellow PCs to my Clr's religion. That helps alot.

AC 39...

Sorry, still a little stunned that a black Wyrm wouldn't have mage armor, any protective items, Contingency Teleport ... was he just sitting on 240,000 gp of random loot not using it for anything? Not even underwater?

Agreed. I'll readily admit the dragon was not as prepared as he could have been. And for the record, this was from a published adventure, so we can't blame my DM for not equiping the dragon properly.

Also for the record: ain't no way we found more than a couple thousand gp worth of treasure in the Black Dragon Wyrm's lair. Our rogue just about had an aneurism when we found out....

(Trying to bring thread back to rogue topic. )

 

[Nail]

Okay: back on-topic:

Here, let me adjust your list (IMHO, obviously)

Search
Spot
Listen
Hide
Move Silently
Disable Device
Open Lock
Use Magic Device
Bluff
Sense Motive
Craft[Poisonmaking]
Craft[Traps]
Escape Artist
Gather Information
Diplomacy
Knowledge[dungeoneering]
Sleight of Hand
Tumble

Now we're down to 12 skills. And at this stage, you need to decide what kind of rogue you want to be.....and (frankly) what kind of rogue will fit best into a DMs world. I know that for many DMs, putting points into skills like Gather Information and Bluff would be a waste of time. And if you've decided to skimp on Cha, then UMD is a bad idea. Etc. Suddenly, we're down to only 9 really key skills.......and that's well within the range of skill points for a Rogue.

Trouble is, if you know this, just take a level of rogue for the skill caps, then take the frequent skills cross-class....

And those other classes simply don't have the skill points to buy skills cross-class. Q.E.D.

 

[Kilroy]

Exactly.

Or, to be clear: Every single PC in my party had Energy Immunity(Acid).

Every.

Single.

One.

Surprise round: We teleported in and wacked at the dragon.
Round #1: Dragon breathed on all of us. We laughed, then full attacked and killed the dragon. The Rog 16/Ftr 2 did a Victory Dance as a free action after his amazing full-round sneak attack.
Round #2: We started skinning the dragon's corpse, whistling while we worked.......

The thing I don't understand is why the dragon didn't move when he realized you were all prepared for him, or scram when you teleported next to him. Duuuumb dragon, he shouldn't sit around and let you get full attacks, particularly when you have the advantage.

Well, ...there's no need to be harsh on him. Let's put it this way: It sounds as if your DM doesn't let logic stand in his way when he stacks the deck against you.

We do the same in return, so it's usually fair ;-)

 

[Kilroy]

The dragon doesn't get any "melee immunity". Okay, think this through:
One party member casts Greater Dispel Magic, and takes care of all (or nearly all) a dragon's buffs, as the dragon's caster level sucks.

By 'melee immunity' I mean that until the Greater Dispel caster goes, the dragon would have pretty much free reigh in melee, with an insane AC, a 50% miss chance and Mirror Image. In a situation where the dragon has surprise (certainly not the case here, but it's happened to us) this really sucks when the first thing they do is flyby snatch the Greater Dispel caster. So, pretty much the opposite of what happened to you. ;-)

Practiced Caster makes buffs much more survivable, and two NPCs in our current module have already had Rings of Counterspelling (Dispel Magic). I'm sure they'll up to Greater Dispel now that we have it.

The bottom line advantage is pretty straight forward: the party simply gets more actions than the dragon does. Anywhere from 4 to 7 times the number of actions. (Our party has 7 players => 7 PCs.)

I'd hope a smart dragon would know this and scram to fight another day. Although given the treasure, this sure doesn't sound like a smart dragon.

And again: we didn't attack him when he was prepared. We attacked him when we were prepared. Big difference. As an aside: Do you, as a player, ever get to attack the bad guys on your own terms? I think that might be a campaign-specific problem. I'm not casting aspersions, here. Just curious.

Once in a while, but not as a rule. It varies by campaign. Usually if we get jumped by somone really prepared, we just have to live long enough to escape, but the major bad guys do the same. Our current 12th level campaign is particularly bad at it because of a coward flawed ninja and an "I'm going to try talking to them" Favored Soul. My character has made a habit of saying in advance that he's going to say "I told you so" when the party won't, out of principle, jump in and kill everything in the room, and talking inevitably fails. In previous games, we've done some excellent large scale ambushes.

Our current DM runs the same campaign arcs for two different groups of players, so sometimes we hear about how the other group handled things after the fact. In the current campaign, they're definantly getting the upper hand in ambushes, but in the last one, we were.

 

[Kilroy]

Contingency teleport requires a caster level of 15th...

Practiced Caster was made for this.

Hell, why not go straight for MDJ?

Dragons like loot.

from hover: "Clear vision is limited to 10 feet". IOW - it doesn't do squat unless you're a ranged-combat rogue. Which suck anyway.

It sounds like neither you nor your DM are that hot on the rules.

Which is specifically what we're talking about. The ranged combat rogue that one rounded the dragon.

Read the thread before flaming please.