Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.
Rocket your D&D 5E and Level Up: Advanced 5E games into space! Alpha Star Magazine Is Launching... Right Now!

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="JayOmega" data-source="post: 889866" data-attributes="member: 8650">In order of usefulness:Move Silently.  Scout rogue?  Thief rogue?  Spy rogue?  Diplomat rogue?  Regardless, you'll find yourself sneaking around eventually.Hide.  See above.Tumble.  Lots of useful combat effects can be gained by having a good tumble skill.  It's almost like getting the mobility and expertise feats for free.  Also, 5 ranks bought gets you +4 in synergy bonuses.Bluff.  Spend 5 ranks, get a possible +8 in synergy bonuses to other skills.  A very efficient use of skill points.  Also useful in combat for the pure rogue with lots of sneak attack dice.Search.  Again, regardless of your roguish specialty, you will need this skill at some point in your career.  Not as often as hide and move silently, though, so it's down here further in the list.Use Magic Device.  It's an exclusive skill, so a pure rogue is one of the few who can get good use out of it.  Rogues spend a lot of time solo, so being able to use wands and scrolls readily is worth the large skill point investment to be "good" at it.  For proper munchkinity, buy other skills early in your career, and buy multiple levels of UMD at higher levels.  You want a +10 or +15 to your roll before you get serious about using it, so you don't suffer "mishaps" on the DC20 and DC25 tasks.Rogues of all types need these six skills.  Beyond these six, the skills you take depends on your specialty, and there's too many useful ones to keep everything maxed out.  Try to keep the previous 6 maxed, and spread your other points among these skills...  A thief or dungeoneer needs lots of ranks in Disable Device, and probably a few ranks in Open Locks, Climb, Spot, and Listen.  Spies and diplomats need Diplomacy, Gather Information, and Sense Motive, and probably a few ranks of Disguise and Forgery.  A scout needs Spot maxed out, and split ranks in Climb, Jump, Swim, and Listen.  If no one else fills the tracker role, he needs the Track feat and cross-class Wilderness Lore (3.5E: Survival) ranks to use it....if you do need a solid set of only 8 skills for a generalist rogue, numbers 7 and 8 should be Disable Device and, believe it or not, Swim.  Disable Device isn't easily done in any way but by using the skill.  Being stuck in water without the Swim skill can be deadly, since Strength is one of your dump stats, and it's not uncommon to find treasures kept underwater, or to find entire adventures set underwater.So what skills do you not need?Climb.  Use levitating/flying magic instead.  Your strength is a dump stat, so by the time you have enough class levels to buy the ranks to climb well, you can get permanent flying magic pretty cheaply.  Early on, a potion of levitate or a scroll of Alter Self (to gain wings) can fill the bill.Craft.  A flavor skill.  For rogues with high Int only.Decipher Script.  Use UMD and carry a couple scrolls of Comprehend Languages.Balance.  See climb.Disguise.  Rarely used, so use magic instead.  Read a scroll of Change Self or Alter Self to appear as someone else.  (Unless you're a spy/diplomat style rogue, where the ranks will let you impersonate a specific individual accurately, which is a useful ability.)Escape Artist.  Like disguise, this is used rarely enough that it isn't worth the skill points to be good at it.  Use Hide and Bluff and don't get caught in the first place.  For the combat effects of the skill (nets, webs), by the time you have the ranks to really depend on the skill, you can find or buy some permanent Freedom of Movement magic.Forgery.  Again, a rarely-used skill, whose points are better off spent elsewhere.  This is for high-Int rogues with skill points to burn.Gather Information.  Chances are you can role-play this and get by without the skill.Innuendo.  See Forgery.Intimidate.  See Forgery.Intuit Direction.  Going away in 3.5E.  And as useful as a solar-powered flashlight in the first place.Diplomacy.  See Gather Information.Appraise.  See Gather Information; you can have multiple buyers bid on something, and chances are you'll find at least one honest one.Open Lock.  Find the key if it's a delicate chest or if it is likely to have fragile contents, otherwise Disable the traps and let the party muscle bash it open.  If you absolutely need to get through a door quietly and without the key, use UMD to read a scroll of Silence and have the party muscle bash it open.Perform.  See Craft.Pick Pocket.  Real money is in vaults and safes, not pockets.  If you really need the parlor tricks, be a Gnome and use the racial Prestidigitation spell.  Or (have you heard this one yet?) get a scroll of Prestidigitation.  If you really need the contents of somebody's pockets, have the party muscle bash him open.Profession.  See Craft.Read Lips.  See Forgery.  Use clairaudience scrolls with UMD for the two times in your character's career that you'd need this skill.Sense Motive.  See Gather Information.  Use Detect Thoughts magic with UMD if absolutely necessary.Spot.  You get Uncanny Dodge and Evasion.  Who cares who sneaks up on you?  Anything much nastier than you in combat is either (1) not likely to be very sneaky, so you'll spot it without the ranks, or (2) is way out of your league, so you're a corpse whether you spot it or not.Listen.  See spot.  (See spot run.)Use Rope.  For climbing purposes, try flying.  For tying-up-prisoners purposes, try keeping them unconscious.  Better, try keeping them dead, or let the Paladin deal with the prisoners.So there's the theme for the rogue with only 8 skill points per level. Skills you use frequently (Hide, Move Silently, Tumble), skills you use without advance warning (Swim, Bluff), skills with combat applications (Tumble, Bluff), and skills that aren't easily duplicated with magic (Disable Device) you should spend points on.  For other skills, you should buy relatively-inexpensive scrolls (0th, 1st, and 2nd-level spells) and get by with Use Magic Device rolls.At first level, (b).  For a higher-level build, or for a third-level feat choice, (e) Skill Focus in Use Magic Device. (Assuming the +3 version of skill focus is in use, otherwise find a +2/+2 feat with UMD in it).</blockquote>

Verification