Argh!! Useless Rogues

[Henry]

A quick comment on how easily spells "supplant" skills: Remember that, being spells, they are subject to detections, dispels, and anti-magic fields. Charmed people have charms wear off; diplomacy doesn't "wear off."

The silence spell is a global effect with a 20 foot radius; sneaking past a guard with a silence is tantamount to giving your presence away if they suddenly hear no sound at all by coming within the spell's area.

Also, spells have a limited duration, while skills may be used for up to 14,400 rounds per day.

Magical disguises are easily detected through spells, whereas a mundane disguise does not detect magically - it has its own different set of "tells."

Spells may be effective, but there are lots of situations where spells are not as effective as skill use. In the end, it's up to the DM to let the player shine, as in all cases.

 

[Synthetik Fish]

A quick comment on how easily spells "supplant" skills: Remember that, being spells, they are subject to detections, dispels, and anti-magic fields. Charmed people have charms wear off; diplomacy doesn't "wear off."

The silence spell is a global effect with a 20 foot radius; sneaking past a guard with a silence is tantamount to giving your presence away if they suddenly hear no sound at all by coming within the spell's area.

Also, spells have a limited duration, while skills may be used for up to 14,400 rounds per day.

Magical disguises are easily detected through spells, whereas a mundane disguise does not detect magically - it has its own different set of "tells."

Spells may be effective, but there are lots of situations where spells are not as effective as skill use. In the end, it's up to the DM to let the player shine, as in all cases.

I think this is an appropaite place for a

"IToldYaSo!!!

 

[JamesDJarvis]

Rogues are easily and frequently the worst class for groups. I've played them alot, up to epic levels, and I've seen other people in my group play them with the same problems.

- Entire broad classes of creatures negate the two most often used rogue abilities. When you're fighting things immune to sneak attack and sneaking, you may as well not even be there. No other class has such broad and common groups of creatures against which they're totally ineffective.

I've noticed search and hide get used a lot more then backstabbing. Not getting sneak attacks does not = ineffrective. Sure they are less effective then they are against some types but not ineffective.

- Skills are frequently outclassed by first or second level spells. When they're not, they're often useless because the entire party needs them and only the rogue has them. You may as well not have them.

DM: "You need to sneak past these arbitrary guards."
Rog: "I can take 10 for a 48 on Hide and Move Silently!"
Fighter: "I can get a 7 if I roll a 20."
Mystic Theurge: "Don't worry, I'll cast Invisibility Sphere and Silence."
Rog: ... why am I here?

Clearly the person playing the Mystic theurge just created that character and seldom plays spell casters.
Try that trick just once too often and oh look... the spell that would have saved the party had a verbal component or oops the party could have coordinated attacks before hand but they couldn't talk to each other because of the silence.

Gurads in a fantasy universe may notice the silence. They'd run for help. Of course someone would attack them to stop them running for help and then the invisibility sphere is off.

- When you can avoid all the critters with truesight, scent, blind sight, blind sense, tremorsense, life sense, detect thoughts or spot skills, and you can scout out a place, (like my group's ninja 2 weeks ago) the rest of the group may not get a chance to act for an entire game session. Seriously. It's as bad as a Shadowrun decker. The rest of the group should bring some cards.

And nothing else in the entire game universe is doing anything other then the ninja? The ninja doesn't see anything he has to act against? The rest of the party is hiding in some sort of detectionless pocket dimension while the ninja is scouting?

The ninja is another skills guys (just like the rogue), so how is he or she different from a rogue with some magical assistance from others in the party?


edit- dernit should read the last two posts

 

[Synthetik Fish]

edit- dernit should read the last two posts

I think Kilroy should too

 

[LordBOB]

dang these Paladin's. We dont get the BAB of a fighter, and we arent allowed to use bows and stuff like that. and if we dont face any Evil creatures than we might as well become a fighter and just get it over with. We also only work good in situations where our diplomacy or knowledge( nobility) is needed. Otherwise we arent all that good. Not only that but we ARENT allowed to campaign with any evil dudes of any sort. Only supposed to be LG. do you know how hard it is to hold back from ripping somones throat out b/c they are STUPID!?!?!?!?!?! I thought so!!!!!!!!!

See i can find something bad about EVERY class if i wanted to. Im picking on paladins cause i am one and i just wanted to bash myself. HAVE A NICE DAY!!!!

 

[Nim]

dang these Paladin's. We dont get the BAB of a fighter, and we arent allowed to use bows and stuff like that. and if we dont face any Evil creatures than we might as well become a fighter and just get it over with. We also only work good in situations where our diplomacy or knowledge( nobility) is needed. Otherwise we arent all that good. Not only that but we ARENT allowed to campaign with any evil dudes of any sort. Only supposed to be LG. do you know how hard it is to hold back from ripping somones throat out b/c they are STUPID!?!?!?!?!?! I thought so!!!!!!!!!

See i can find something bad about EVERY class if i wanted to. Im picking on paladins cause i am one and i just wanted to bash myself. HAVE A NICE DAY!!!!

Er. Is this some different paladin than the one I'm used to?

 

[Kilroy]

Not so much.

Continuous effects have a base price of Spell * Caster * 2,000gp, but they also have a modifier based on the duration of the spell. A spell that has a duration of "rounds per level" has a modifier of *4.

Grave Strike has a duration of 1 round - even shorter than "rounds per level." Accordingly, the effect would cost even more than 2,000gp * 4 = 8,000gp.

How about if it's not a continuous effect, and it's use-activated instead? The spell still has its normal casting time and and duration. (Effectivly, the user has to use their swift action every round to use it.) Cost = 2,000gp.

 

[Patryn of Elvenshae]

How about if it's not a continuous effect, and it's use-activated instead? The spell still has its normal casting time and and duration. (Effectivly, the user has to use their swift action every round to use it.) Cost = 2,000gp.

That's not use-activated, that's Command Activated.

Command Activated items take a standard action unless otherwise specified.

 

[Kilroy]

A quick comment on how easily spells "supplant" skills: Remember that, being spells, they are subject to detections, dispels, and anti-magic fields. Charmed people have charms wear off; diplomacy doesn't "wear off."

The counter to this is that skill checks fail opposed checks when you need them in situations where spells don't. It's not a matter of "better in all cases", it's "usually better when it really matters." The other important part is flexibility. When you're 10th level and Forgery gets rolled for the first time, the rogue is out of luck (unless they blew 13 ranks on an unusual skill they've never used) and the cleric still gets a +15 from Divine Insight for what's probably a critical role. A high level rogue isn't much better than Joe Commoner at the vast majority of the 45 PHB skills, but a high level caster with a clue probably has low level spells to fake nearly all of them. If a caster can fake or replace skills, why can't a rogue?

Diplomacy was probably a bad example though, it's better done by someone with more use for Charisma. (Remember, I'm coming at this from a power balance perspective, not a flavor one.) Even with 0 ranks, a Sorc is probably better on average at the 6 main Cha based social skills than a Rogue, unless the rogue has focused almost entirely on social skills and Charisma, in which case they can't do much else.

I really hate most social skills anyway. Last session, our ronin's player gave a long, well reasoned and eloquent speech on some in game schmoozing we were doing, then promptly rolled a 3 on his Diplomacy check. At least what the DM came up with for his character to say was funny, but I can't repeat it or grandma will blush. It's sad that dice said he couldn't say that, but that's the only time in 13 levels his character has rolled Diplomacy for something non-inane, so it would have been a totally wasted skill for him.

The silence spell is a global effect with a 20 foot radius; sneaking past a guard with a silence is tantamount to giving your presence away if they suddenly hear no sound at all by coming within the spell's area.

Don't do that! that would be as silly as rogue sneaking within 20 feet of a guard, with the same line of effect that silence has, because he doesn't have concealment and can't hide at all then. Much less bring the whole group.

Also, spells have a limited duration, while skills may be used for up to 14,400 rounds per day.

How often does that come up? Other than our ninja, who is insane and Hides overnight in monster lairs to 'keep an eye on them', I can't think of that ever being useful. Spells usually last "long enough."

Magical disguises are easily detected through spells, whereas a mundane disguise does not detect magically - it has its own different set of "tells."

If you're powerful enough to pierce a magical disguise with magic, you're easily powerful enough to pierce a nonmagical one. Detect Thoughts is pretty hard to fool with a skill (a DC 100 Epic Bluff check is required to beat this particular second level spell), particularly for Ow-my-low-single-digit-Will-Save! rogues, and again, only second level.

 

[Kilroy]

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.

What did you use to get that many ranged sneak attacks a round? I've always found that hard after things aren't flat footed without something like a Ring of Blinking or Doomtide. Itterative sneak attacks are the only thing that make sneak attack (and dual wield for that matter) powerful, but I've only rarely seen them work for a rogue. I could see playing a rogue again if this was at all reliable.