Eight essential rogue skills?

[diaglo]

you need to spread the wealth.

take at least 1 rank in every skill that has a trained only requirement.

then whatever points you have left spread evenly in whatever setting you will most likely adventure.

city based: gather info, bluff, innuendo, open lock, search, disable device

dungeon based: tumble, hide, open lock, disable device

wilderness based: hide, search, move silently

sea based: use rope, swim, climb, profession sailor (Dread Pirate PrC)

air based: pray you die swiftly when you fall.

 

[Ogre Mage]

Rogue feats and skills

A number of people mentioned that a rogue should never take the feats which boost your skills. But what if you are running a rogue NOT focussed on combat? My (low-level) group includes a barbarian, a barbarian/fighter and a battle cleric who is obsessed with the number of kills she gets. When melee begins I just stay out of their way and shoot arrows. But you can't get flanking bonuses with ranged attacks.

This is why I wanted to focus on skills, to manage the problems that CAN'T be solved with combat. The skill bonus feats seem a good way of doing that. My rogue has a very high Dex(18-20) and Int (16) but mediocre Cha (10).

 

[Olive]

Which brings up the point - what makes a potent PC and a potent NPC are not the same thing. The NPC, in a sense, doesn't have to worry much about long-term effectiveness, and can be optimized for their encounter with the PCs.

Personally, I'd rather not give every NPC rogue this feat. NPC feats should be chosen like PC feats - with an eye to the character's history and purpose in life. To say that every single NPC rogue is interested enough in melee to spend the feat on it seems artifical to me. If you dont want your players being "munchkin", then as a DM, you must set an example, and not choose feats solely for their use against the party.

personally i think that II is a good feat, with regular advantages to PCs. Most of my PCs have had it as well. I'm not sure why people are so down on it here myself.

 

[Rashak Mani]

After my +1 initiative sorceror was the first or second in every encounter we had for 4 sessions and in another campaing my Dwarf Barbarians with +7 almost never goes first... I decided never again to get impr.initiative.

For Rogues its still useful... but for most fighters its worth waiting for that Boost spell before rushing into combat anyway.

Overall I dont like Impr.Initiative.

 

[bret]

What I find interesting is how no one is comparing rogues to 1st or 2nd edition.

First edition rogues had the equivilent of 9 skills: Pick Pockets, Find/Remove Traps (now Seach and Disable Device), Move Silently, Hide in Shadows (now just Hide), Hear Noise (now Listen), Climb Walls (now just Climb) and Read Languages (now Decipher Script). You could argue they also had Alertness Feat or spot skill as represented by their reduced chance of being surprised.

Second edition allowed you to adjust the percentages of these abilities, rather than having fixed percentages based on level. A gain in flexibility, but you couldn't get as good as the older generalist was.

Third edition split traps into two different skills, added a bunch more skills that would make a lot of sense for a rogue (forgery, gather info, spot, etc), allows flexibility in choice, but doesn't allow you to be as good a generalist as the old edition.


It is looking like in 3.5, many of the rogues should switch to Ranger or Bard.

 

[diaglo]

It is looking like in 3.5, many of the rogues should switch to Ranger or Bard.

way ahead of you. but that was the case from the inception of this edition. 1 lvl of ran 3 lvls of rog rinse repeat.

check out the link to characters in my sig.

 

[darkbard]

It is looking like in 3.5, many of the rogues should switch to Ranger or Bard.

interesting. on andy collins' boards, he chimes in with the fact that many of the changes made to the 3.5 ranger were implemented with changing it from a no-brainer that the ranger would multiclass as a rogue.

 

[Olive]

It is looking like in 3.5, many of the rogues should switch to Ranger or Bard.

So they can have fewer of the skills they want?

I disagree, I think it's harder to make a rogue now due to the range of choices, but at least those choices exist! You can still be a good dungeon style generalist, but you can be soemthing else at the expense of that too.