Argh!! Useless Rogues

[Jack Simth]

Lords of Madness, eh? (Strokes chin).

Tell me more of this "Madness" of which you speak.

Hey now! That's crazy talk!

Bad pun. Feel free to ignore this post.

 

[Kilroy]

Seems like you only play high-level games. What about when you're at lower levels and can't just throw spells around? Also, you're not taking role-playing into account. Rogues have a lot of social skills that would otherwise be hard to replace. Mind you, many things can also counter/counterspell magic, too. Or even detect it, which can be worse. And who cares if some creatures are immune to sneak attack?? Theres a lot that have high saves and Spell Resistance, too. Besides its not the number of creatures that are immune to sneak attack that matters, but the number of creatures YOU ENCOUNTER that matter. It's NOT like you're fighting golems EVERY game...
You can make rogues BAD ASS if you know how to play them right. I also think that the best rogues are multiclasses, too. So who knows? You can pick up a little magic while you're at it, and make things interesting...
That being said, only seldom few people can actually pull off rogues to their full effectiveness (or close to, anyways.) I've seen very, VERY few people play them devastating-ly (which is always fun to do! )

I've started in a game at over 1st level once in about 20 groups since 3.0 came out, under 6 different GMs with different groups of players. Rogues have consistently been frustrated more than other classes at their inability to do anything in many situations. (Specific characters, such as a mind bender in a construct/undead heavy story arc and a horse/bow warrior in a dungeon campaign, have been more useless, but they're fairly isolated exceptions.)

Rogues do two things, Skills and Sneak Attack.

Skills:

At lower levels, rogues can't make skill checks much more reliably than anyone else, certainly not enough to do things that are dangerous. Even against high level rogues, anything advanced enough to have a guard dog can make sneaking impossible. At high levels (as low as 5+) casters have the resources to do the dangerous things better than the rogue more than the rogue can do them better than the caster. Past about 7th there's no contest.

An adamantine greatsword is the world's best lockpick - Knock is only needed on those rare doors that need to stay intact. Silence trumps Move Silently. Invisibility trumps Hide. Charm Person and Detect Thoughts usually trump Search, Disable Device and most social skills. These aren't high level abilities, they're first or second level throw away spells that usually end up on scrolls. They're usually better than skills without even being the main focus of their respective classes. When you do need a skill check, Divine Insight makes a cleric better than a rogue at anything but trap finding. For that they need another second level spell, or a single level of rogue. The only thing that someone else isn't better at is finding traps, and rogues are only good at that if your players AND your characters have all the time in the world. If you're in a hurry, summoned or charmed monsters find traps really well, or a charmed person tells you where they all are anyway. Regardless, any given rogue is going to suck at at least some of their skills, while a caster can trivially have the magic that replaces all of them.

Social skills are better done by a class that has other uses for charisma, and in the games I've played in, come up infrequently or unimportantly enough that they aren't worth maxing as a skill. Charisma usually comes up after Dex, Int, Con and Str for a rogue.

I'm sure it's possible to construct a setup where a skill is required, or magic isn't the favored way of dealing with things, but that's not been the case in the vast majority of the campaigns I've ever been in, playing through custom worlds or published story arcs.

Sneak Attack:

Creatures immune to sneak attack are hella-common. Not just constructs, but undead, incorporial critters, other rogues, barbarians, high AC critters, casters with concealment spells, anyone with fortification, oozes, plants, regenerating creatures, druids with a level of warshaper, flying creatures and anything in the dark have all made it impossible to sneak attack in games I've been in. With all the things that make sneak attack unusable, it's massivly underpowered damage compared to a fighter who can just wade in and not worry nearly as much about creature type and positioning, or a caster who can end a fight in a round, often with no save.

If a creature has high spell resistance or saves, casters still have tons of ways to hit them, more with every new book. If nothing else, they can buff the fighters instead. If a creature's immune to sneak attacks, the rogue is best off just hiding until the fight is done.

It's possible for a rare and very well played rogue to be played devastating-ly, but an even half attentive caster is devastating all the important times, and a really well played caster is the evil boy scout son of MacGyver that every rogue dreams of being.

You're right that the best rogues are multiclassed. Why is that? The best casters aren't.

 

[The Souljourner]

I think rogues are important in almost every group - dungeon crawling without someone who can silently open 10 locked doors in a single day is a huge PITA, not to mention the fact that he's the only one who can even *tell* if they're trapped, and do anything about it if they are. I've adventured in a party without a rogue before... sure, we could bash down doors, but the enemy was always ready for us, we we often ambushed, and there were several times when we had to intentionally spring a trap because we had no way around it.

That's not to say that I don't think rogues have their problems. Undead are *really* common. In my experience, like 20% of encounters include undead. (The unfortunate part is that generally if you're fighting undead, you're fighting a lot of undead... so feeling useless may last an entire gaming session). If it were just constructs, elementals, etc, then it wouldn't be that bad, because you generally don't fight a lot of those again and again... but undead are so pervasive, and it's so common for many different types of undead to congregate, that it's fairly common to have fight after fight be just against undead.

One possibility for making a rogue more effective against undead is to take a level of ranger and get favored enemy: undead (which does work against undead). At level 6 you can take improved favored enemy to get an extra 3 damage against all your favored enemies... which would then make you +5 to damage against undead... which pretty much kicks ass. Plus, one level of ranger loses you almost nothing... only -2 skill points, you gain +2 to fort and reflex saves, +1 BAB, and 1d8 hitpoints. It's a pretty sweet single level dip (if you can manage it and bypass multiclass penalties).

The other option to simply change sneak attack so those currently immune to it actually take half damage.

-The Souljourner

 

[Synthetik Fish]

Kilroy-

It's pretty evident that you're really biased against rogues. I don't think you're giving them their fair share.

First of all, you talk about spellcasters casting all these spells as if they're free. Especially at lower levels, spellcasters don't exactly have a ton of spells at their disposal. If having a rogue means that I can have THAT many more Ray of Enfeeblements, Magic Missiles, Bull's Strength, Cat's Grace, Shatter, Flame Bolt, Fire Ball, Lighting Bolt, Fly, etc. etc., then yeah, a rogue is deffinately worth it. Also keep in mind that a wizard can only cast one spell a round-- assuming he doesn't get interrupted.

A spellcasters' primary objective is, well, casting spells. Rogues can have lots of objectives, and thus the versitility of multiclassing can make them awesome.

As far as not using sneak attack... well... I don't know what kind of campaigns YOU are playing, but I've played both in boxed-adventures and home-made ones, and I have never had a real problem with not being able to sneak attack. Sure, some things are immune, but that's just for balance. Like I said, plenty of things can resist spells, or aren't that susceptible to a sword, or can't be charmed, etc.

That being said, I don't think that rogues are the most important class by far. Like you said, a fighters' ability to wade into combat with devistating damage is un-paralleled in most instances (Most!) For a bare-bones party, all that you really NEED are fighters and a cleric. The next priority goes to wizards, then rogues... and everything beyond that is all icing on the cake.

And I still think you aren't taking the role-playing aspect into account. Sounds like you do mostly hack-and-slash. That's fun and all, but rogues, especially with ahving all their skills, can eb a BLAST to role-play.

I once made a halfling rogue that used throwing daggers. He eventually took 4 levels in fighter. MAN was he devastating. Absolutely ALL of my feats went towards his daggers. It got to the point where he would easily be hitting with 4 sneak attacks in a round... it wasn't that unsual for me to be doing well over the damage that a fighter was doing in a round. It all depends on how you build your character.

 

[Synthetik Fish]

I think rogues are important in almost every group - dungeon crawling without someone who can silently open 10 locked doors in a single day is a huge PITA, not to mention the fact that he's the only one who can even *tell* if they're trapped, and do anything about it if they are. I've adventured in a party without a rogue before... sure, we could bash down doors, but the enemy was always ready for us, we we often ambushed, and there were several times when we had to intentionally spring a trap because we had no way around it.

That's not to say that I don't think rogues have their problems. Undead are *really* common. In my experience, like 20% of encounters include undead. (The unfortunate part is that generally if you're fighting undead, you're fighting a lot of undead... so feeling useless may last an entire gaming session). If it were just constructs, elementals, etc, then it wouldn't be that bad, because you generally don't fight a lot of those again and again... but undead are so pervasive, and it's so common for many different types of undead to congregate, that it's fairly common to have fight after fight be just against undead.

One possibility for making a rogue more effective against undead is to take a level of ranger and get favored enemy: undead (which does work against undead). At level 6 you can take improved favored enemy to get an extra 3 damage against all your favored enemies... which would then make you +5 to damage against undead... which pretty much kicks ass. Plus, one level of ranger loses you almost nothing... only -2 skill points, you gain +2 to fort and reflex saves, +1 BAB, and 1d8 hitpoints. It's a pretty sweet single level dip (if you can manage it and bypass multiclass penalties).

The other option to simply change sneak attack so those currently immune to it actually take half damage.

-The Souljourner

Well in that case, might as well play a straight Ranger lol. IIRC, there IS a feat that allows you to do sneak attack damage to undead and/or constructs... not sure... it's been a while.

But again, taking all those levels in ranger is only effective if you're mainly going after undead... and then you're not really a rogue anymore as much as a ... bounty hunter? IDK what you'd call it...

 

[Evilhalfling]

For a rouge/wizard or rogue/cleric there are 1st lvl spells in CAdv that allow sneak attacks vs constructs and undead, although when I offered them to the party thief/mage he took Distract opponent instead. He has high int and 5 kn skills, so he rarely feels useless.
Now the monk on the other hand - If you don't build with high strength you are hosed.
yes, you always survive. but thats about it.

 

[Liquidsabre]

The other option to simply change sneak attack so those currently immune to it actually take half damage.

I'm considering allowing sneak attacks to trade off SA damage for combat penalties/effects on creatures instead, similar to the rogue feats (Hamstring, etc.). I've always thought the "lack of vitals" to be an odd argument, as any structural piece has it's relative weak points such as a house or a car has, so would a construct or an undead creature have structural weak points. A construct may have a solid functional beam powering each arm, if that joint or connector is severed it will hinder the abilities of the construct's attacks/movements, etc. Same goes for an undead creature, say a tendon or a vital bone fragment is destroyed that may hamper the creatures ability to fight well.

So perhaps instead of damage, a rogue is instead able to hinder and hamper such creatures. Nifty. Like synthetik said though, sounds like a feat there.

 

[J-Buzz]

My Rogue 16/Fighter 2 did 300 or so damage against a black dragon couple sessions ago. That was fun. He would not have did that with out some help from other party members. Cleric buffed so I could hit, Sorc added additional damage to weapons, fighter flanked.

Rogues can be very fun, but generally need to be team players, or be adventuring with team players to be truely awsome. He will be missed if you ever come across a trap heavy dungeon. Undead suck for rogues. If you are fighting undead, you go to plan B and protect magic users. Which can be boring...

 

[ARandomGod]

One possibility for making a rogue more effective against undead is to take a level of ranger and get favored enemy: undead (which does work against undead). At level 6 you can take improved favored enemy to get an extra 3 damage against all your favored enemies... which would then make you +5 to damage against undead... which pretty much kicks ass. Plus, one level of ranger loses you almost nothing... only -2 skill points, you gain +2 to fort and reflex saves, +1 BAB, and 1d8 hitpoints. It's a pretty sweet single level dip (if you can manage it and bypass multiclass penalties).

And it gives you the ability to use Cure X wands (and every other wand with a spell on the Ranger's spell list). A very useful addition.

For undead, you can dip into cleric. There's a first level swift casting clerical spell (Grave Strike I think) that allows you to sneak attack undead. Of course, there's still all the other unsneak-attackable things out there, but Grave Strike is a worthwhile thing to get for a rogue in an undead heavy campaign.

 

[Synthetik Fish]

I'm considering allowing sneak attacks to trade off SA damage for combat penalties/effects on creatures instead, similar to the rogue feats (Hamstring, etc.). I've always thought the "lack of vitals" to be an odd argument, as any structural piece has it's relative weak points such as a house or a car has, so would a construct or an undead creature have structural weak points. A construct may have a solid functional beam powering each arm, if that joint or connector is severed it will hinder the abilities of the construct's attacks/movements, etc. Same goes for an undead creature, say a tendon or a vital bone fragment is destroyed that may hamper the creatures ability to fight well.

So perhaps instead of damage, a rogue is instead able to hinder and hamper such creatures. Nifty. Like synthetik said though, sounds like a feat there.

Good idea. Only one slight discrepency though: I *think* the idea behind undead is that magic is what is powering them, so severing a tendon wouldn't necessarily do anyhting to them (at least, in the way of skeletons...) but I FULLY and COMPLETELY agree with you about structural weakness. Should be a feat (and indeed I think there is. I know there's one for plants... I think ) that lets you Sneak Attack them Something like this (my interpretation):


Espanded Sneak Attack
Prerequisites: Must be able to sneak attack for +3d6 damage.

"You can attack structural weaknesses of creatures that would otherwise be un-affected by your sneak attacks."

Benefit: By taking this feat, a player may use his full sneak attack on undead and constructs that he would not otherwise be able to effect. Note that this feat does NOT effect oozes and other such creatures lacking a "structure."


Not sure if I would allow it for shadows and shades, or similar monsters. Basicly, anything physical that is definatively constructed, ie. has arms, legs, any sorf of limb or correct "form," would be effected. One part of an ooze is exactly the same as any other part, and therefore it would not be effected.