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Message: <blockquote data-quote="helium3" data-source="post: 2613311" data-attributes="member: 31301">Yes and NoLet me preface my response by first explaining that my main experience with 3.0/3.5 rogues was playing with and then DM'ing a player running a half-dragon/hafling rogue. This character originally entered the game with some weird matching short swords from a 3rd party splatbook. It was later determined (when I started DM'ing) that the matching short swords were in some sense broken, and they were nerfed down to the ancestral weapons from one of the WotC splatbooks. It should be noticed that the half dragon part of the character build gave it a very high strength and allowed the player to take and use the power attack feat. Also, the player was the type that was only really interested in being a damage monster but would never admit that if asked. Whenever the party was presented with a potential encounter that involved constructs or undead he would always argue that we should not engage because his character would be "worthless." What I noticed (with this kind of a character build being ran by this kind of a player) was that the character went through three distinct phases of ability.Phase one was from probably level three to level 8. During this phase, the character was pretty balanced against the other players. He could only sneak attack while flanking or when under the influence of the occasional invisibility spell. His general method in combat was to tumble into flanking positions against opponents that he thought were less likely to target him (because they viewed the paladin or cleric as greater threats) or were less likely to be able to penetrate his higher than average armor class. So, while he was a death monster in the right situations, it was usually only against either peripheral foes or while tag teaming the BBEG. So, even with the munchkin swords, it wasn't so bad.Phase two was from around level 9 through level 12. Several significant things happened during this period of time that converted the rogue from a balanced character to an unbalanced death monster that everyone sorta got sick of. Firstly, the character got enough levels under his belt to allow for the +6/+1 BAB. Then came improved two weapon fighting. Then came the realization that enough ranks in Use Magical Device allowed the rogue to cast spells from scrolls and wands. And then, finally, the player saved up all his treasure for a couple of game sessions and bought a wand of Improved Invisibility. This is what really made things out of control. Since we were at mid-levels, we weren't routinely going up against creatures that had innate abilities that negated the effects of improved invisibility. So, this character just cleaned house. Occasionally a spell caster would manage to cast invisibility purge, glitterdust or see invisibility but that was pretty rare. So, the rogue would typically wade into combat relatively undetected and whatever he targeted was usually dead by the next round. Phase three (from level 13 on) was pretty amusing for me, as I was quite annoyed with this character and also back to the role of player (I had taken over running the game for a few months while the DM wrote his dissertation.) Basically, what happened was that more and more of the monsters we went up against, since they were at this point often outsiders, were simply able to see right through his improved invisibility. And even if they couldn't, he had a much harder time actually hitting them and penetrating their DR. Worst of all though was that the half-dragon part of his build that had helped him by augmenting his strength and AC suddenly started to hurt him by virtue of having less hit dice than a normal rogue of the same level. So, he started to fear wading into combat, because if he DID get attacked, he'd very likely die. At that point, he was pretty much relegated to lurking around while invisible and occasionally taking pot shots with his bow and complaining about how much his character now sucked.So, while I sympathize with your concerns about uber rogue builds, from my experience it's just a sweet spot in the classes progression from 1 to 20 that can be exploited if the players knows how and wants to. If your character only thinks to make his rogue a death monster, he or she is going to hate being a rogue after about 12th level.</blockquote>

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