Do You Enjoy The Rogues New Role?
- Thread starter JoeGKushner
- Start date
This is just weird to me, but, admittedly, it's just my personal experience as DM. Our rogue isn't INSANELY optimized, but she's pretty damn optimized for combat. She has the best attack bonuses, 2d8 sneak attack, etc.
She LOVES solving the trap rooms and hazards. She LOVES clambering onto or under a mechanism to disarm it, while the REST of us fight something. She is the one we send in to scout out the monsters. She's the one who broke into the Duergar outpost to steal the evidence that they were slave traders (and the one who hid in the store-room, with a 30+ Stealth roll), while they attacked the REST of us for "trying" to break into their store (and then snuck out the back while we almost lost the fight).
She's an Artful Dodger, and she's got a phenomenal Stealth, Thievery, Acrobatics, and Athletics roll set. Her Bluff is INSANE, and she's pretty damn good at Streetwise and Diplomacy, anyhow. She's got all the skills to manipulate a lot of social and non-combat situations. She ALSO can throw a shuriken into your face, really hard.
Just because 4e gave thieves the ability to be stabbing machines doesn't mean that they took away their ability to do other stuff.
I suppose, however, that to a lot of players, if you have a hammer, everything looks like a nail. If you have a ninja stabbing machine, everything starts looking like it needs some stabbing. Even if the ninja stabbing machine has an MBA, and is certified in SCUBA and CPR.
A class is like a box.
Strictly speaking, you don't even need two boxes. You could just have one giant box and put everything you have in it, then come up with rules, or stylistic concerns, that drive what you take out of the box and play with at any given time. There are games designed under systems that work exactly like that.
But sometimes putting things in multiple boxes can be useful.
Jack7
First Post
In my setting, which is admittedly semi-historical/real world and therefore won't be for people who prefer more normal fantasy type settings, we've done away with "Classes" altogether and instead went with Professions, because let's face it, D&D classes are really at heart professions, not classes. (Although the game has over time changed the idea of what constitutes a class into something entirely game oriented in definition.) Professions are built around work skills and work function, not powers or special abilities, though people can have or obtain those things over time.
So, that being the case we've done away with the Rogue as a class as well. The Rogue is now a "general-type" of profession, as the "Combatant" is for Soldier, Paladin, Ranger, and so forth. For instance you have Religious types, and Combatant types, and Expert Types, and Rogue Types, and so forth.
Instead of the "class", professions such as (depending on how they are played) Agents, Scouts, and even Bards can be Rogues. How well they fight is up to them as to how well trained they want to become at fighting, versus the time they spend learning other abilities, like spying, stealth, languages. Anyone can élan thieving skills as well if they wish.
Then you have the Acers or Sharpers, people who have a wide range of trained professional abilities and can operate entirely alone if necessary (like a single agent Special Forces operative), though also in groups. And the Vadders, who are a special "sub-class" (really an avocational profession - anyone can become a Vadder no matter what your real profession) of operatives who can also operate alone, sort of like an Undercover Detective - to use a modern analogy. (The Acer and Vadder are like "overlays" when it comes to profession, or value-added capabilities for professional careers.) And finally the multi-classed which can often include Agents and Scouts in their professional training and career types.
Most Rogues can or do become good at spying and a lot become good at "old-fashioned" thieving skills, sneaking, climbing, opening locks, eavesdropping, stuff like that. Some become very good at ambush and sniping as well. It just depends on what they want to do and what their job usually demands out of them as to what they train for and become practiced and exercised at. (I was reading a really good book called Trigger Men, about modern snipers, and one sniper, a guy they called Spider-Man said that he thought climbing, sneaking, etc. were fundamental sniper skills. Because a sniper ought to be able to sneak right past a family in an urban apartment building while they are sleeping in order to get to the roof of a building and set up for their work positioning. I couldn't agree more with that assessment and I feel the same way about many Agents, Scouts, Bards, Rangers and Vigilantes, Sharpers, Vadders, and even some Barbarians. Whatever your job requires of you to get the job done that is what you should train for and practice often.)
And finally you have professions (as a loose definitional description) like Thieves (who usually operate alone or in loose and informal groups) and Bandits and Pirates (who usually operate in more or less fixed groups of criminals) often become good at ambush and killing, as well as stand-up man-to man fighting from time to time. But in our game thieves and bandits are usually NPCs and opposition to the characters.
In any case I like Rogues, but then again we don't play them as normally presented. They are much more versatile in my setting I think. And you can mix their abilities far more freely with the other professions in many cases. So that makes them fun and interesting.
I like that analogy.
Professions should be like that too. Yes, the profession of a Soldier, let's say, should come with certain components pre-packaged, but you should always be able to add more sub-components as the situation requires, and even be able to add-in components that are entirely personal and not strictly profession-related. Very person is a mixture of their professional and private/personal interests, and characters should be allowed to be that way as well. Else you don't really have a real character, you just have a character-type.
So, that being the case we've done away with the Rogue as a class as well. The Rogue is now a "general-type" of profession, as the "Combatant" is for Soldier, Paladin, Ranger, and so forth. For instance you have Religious types, and Combatant types, and Expert Types, and Rogue Types, and so forth.
Instead of the "class", professions such as (depending on how they are played) Agents, Scouts, and even Bards can be Rogues. How well they fight is up to them as to how well trained they want to become at fighting, versus the time they spend learning other abilities, like spying, stealth, languages. Anyone can élan thieving skills as well if they wish.
Then you have the Acers or Sharpers, people who have a wide range of trained professional abilities and can operate entirely alone if necessary (like a single agent Special Forces operative), though also in groups. And the Vadders, who are a special "sub-class" (really an avocational profession - anyone can become a Vadder no matter what your real profession) of operatives who can also operate alone, sort of like an Undercover Detective - to use a modern analogy. (The Acer and Vadder are like "overlays" when it comes to profession, or value-added capabilities for professional careers.) And finally the multi-classed which can often include Agents and Scouts in their professional training and career types.
Most Rogues can or do become good at spying and a lot become good at "old-fashioned" thieving skills, sneaking, climbing, opening locks, eavesdropping, stuff like that. Some become very good at ambush and sniping as well. It just depends on what they want to do and what their job usually demands out of them as to what they train for and become practiced and exercised at. (I was reading a really good book called Trigger Men, about modern snipers, and one sniper, a guy they called Spider-Man said that he thought climbing, sneaking, etc. were fundamental sniper skills. Because a sniper ought to be able to sneak right past a family in an urban apartment building while they are sleeping in order to get to the roof of a building and set up for their work positioning. I couldn't agree more with that assessment and I feel the same way about many Agents, Scouts, Bards, Rangers and Vigilantes, Sharpers, Vadders, and even some Barbarians. Whatever your job requires of you to get the job done that is what you should train for and practice often.)
And finally you have professions (as a loose definitional description) like Thieves (who usually operate alone or in loose and informal groups) and Bandits and Pirates (who usually operate in more or less fixed groups of criminals) often become good at ambush and killing, as well as stand-up man-to man fighting from time to time. But in our game thieves and bandits are usually NPCs and opposition to the characters.
In any case I like Rogues, but then again we don't play them as normally presented. They are much more versatile in my setting I think. And you can mix their abilities far more freely with the other professions in many cases. So that makes them fun and interesting.
I like that analogy.
Professions should be like that too. Yes, the profession of a Soldier, let's say, should come with certain components pre-packaged, but you should always be able to add more sub-components as the situation requires, and even be able to add-in components that are entirely personal and not strictly profession-related. Very person is a mixture of their professional and private/personal interests, and characters should be allowed to be that way as well. Else you don't really have a real character, you just have a character-type.
