Epic Rogues

[mmu1]

Your look at Epic Rogues is rather one-dimensional:

1. They can pick up the feats Dextrous Will and Dextrous Fortitude, which can truly make their save bonuses outrageous.

2. The feat Epic Dodge is very potent as well.

3. Rogues, with their high number of skill points, should keep pumping them into Use Magic Device. By the time they hit level 21, they should be able to use nearly any magic item. Picking up something with True Seeing for example can negate many concelament modifiers making sneak attacks impossible.

That's all fine... I"m sure they make an Epic Rogue much harder to kill.

It still doesn't deal with the problem of a 30th level rogue not being able to sneak attack a 5th level barbarian.

And, as Nish points out, stealth and scrying are their own bag of worms. There's no way to do a rogue justice by keeping skills like hide, move silently (or tumble, for that matter) mundane abilities regardless of level, because they get trumped by magical abilities even before you get into epic levels. At some point, these things need to enter into the realm of the supernatural, without requiring people to pick up PrC's or any similar workarounds - like carrying a brace of wands and scrolls and relying on Use Magical Device.

 

[Thanee]

Well, a rogue can still flank the barbarian, if she's at least four levels higher!

Bye
Thanee

 

[Kale78]

You have to think too, that all characters have a focus. It is the fighter's primary job to fight, the cleric's job to heal, and the wizards job to cast spells. The thief's job is to get at things that others can't, get into places others can't, find ways to save the party from certain doom...... etc...... the rogue has many talents, and if he can't sneak attack some particular monster, and he's epic level, he should have enough tricks up his sleeve to level the field.

 

[Nish]

the rogue has many talents, and if he can't sneak attack some particular monster, and he's epic level, he should have enough tricks up his sleeve to level the field.

Right. Which is why I'm more concerned about the ability of magic to defeat, duplicate, and supercede the other abilities of the rogue.

 

[Kae'Yoss]

I would prefer just a little more flexability in the core classes

Then you better just do away with classes. This means, stop playing D&D and find a game that uses no classes, should be a couple around, even in the d20 sector.

I think the classes are flexible enough (also considering that they can be combined with almost no restrictions):

The Fighter can take 18 feats until he hits 20th level (19 if human) and already knows how to use any single or martial weapon and every sort of armor. With his, you can build any fighter type you want: the Tank in heavy armor and the big sword, the Swashbuckler who trips and disarms much, the über-archer who can hit an insect's eyes seperately from a distance of half a mile.

The Rogue can be an assassin, a spy, a scout, a con artist, a pick pocket, a burglar, a thug, an informer, a gambler, a treasure hunter, or several of those things.

A wizard can be arcane artillery, blasting the enemies with sheer elemental power, he can be the defender who covers himself and his allies in more magic than anyone can penetrate, he can buff up the party (or himself), he can be the type who knows (or can find out) everything, the can be the guy who raises the dead to do their bidding, he can summon other creatures from afar to fight for him, he can be the illusionist that fools the enemy until he's so annoyed he gives up and goes away, he can be the one noone's mind is save from.....

The priest can be the pieceful type that heals people, he can be the warmonger that buffs up the troops, he can be the relentless undead hunter, or have an army of the buggers himself, he can be a warrior himself, improving himself with his magic.....


The other classes are a little more specific, but offer enough versatility even so.


What you may not do is to say "I would prefer that every class can excel in every combat". If you want your rogue to be more the battle-hardy one, give him some levels of fighter, barbarian, paladin or ranger. The rogue's strengths lie not in dealing blows with the enemy in the hope he drops first, but outside the battlefield (and only partly on the battlefield, when he can take advantage of the surroundings and positions of the enemies)

 

[Nish]

Then you better just do away with classes. This means, stop playing D&D...

You couldn't make me do that at gun point.

I love DnD. I love the class system. That was an offhand remark that wasn't thought out too well, and you decided to read too much into it and hijack the thread. It would have been better had I said that some of the classes could use a little bit more flexability, so that maybe everybody and their dog wouldn't feel so compelled to take a prestige class (or several) as a means of customizing their characters. However, its not something I feel strongly about or have spent a great deal of time considering. And the last thing I'll say about it is that I agree with everything you said in your post, but that doesn't mean there aren't a few areas here and there that could be made even better. I mean if the core classes are perfect in their ability to define a character, why do so many people take prestige classes?

Getting back on topic , anyone remember the old 2e High Level Campaigns book? I barely remember anything from it since I never really had any 2e characters get that high in level, but I do remember that one of things thieves could get was the ability to travel quickly through areas of darkness and shadow. That ability had neat flavor, and is something along the lines of the type of thing that I would expect an Epic rogue to be able to do. Stuff that crosses the line from an amazing level of skill to a supernatural level of skill, without being something that feels too much like a spell and begins to tread on the toes of the spell casters.

And before anyone suggests that if I want to travel through shadows, to just take the Shadow Dancer prestige class. What if I don't want to join an organization? What if I don't want a bunch of undead following me around? And what if I like being a rogue? Besides, the Shadow Dancer just gets the ability to Dimension Door through the shadows, whereas the HLC ability from what I remember seemend to me to represent someone who was at home in the darkness, and could move through the night time city streets like the wind.

Anyone else remeber anything cool from HLC that they wish would have made it into ELH?

 

[Taloras]

Crusading Footpad PrC grants sneak attack against undead, and there is a feat (both of these are in the Quintessential Rogue) that allows sneak attacking constructs.

 

[Kae'Yoss]

You couldn't make me do that at gun point.

Wouldn't be to sure. I could pull the trigger after all.

I love DnD. I love the class system. That was an offhand remark that wasn't thought out too well, and you decided to read too much into it and hijack the thread. It would have been better had I said that some of the classes could use a little bit more flexability, so that maybe everybody and their dog wouldn't feel so compelled to take a prestige class (or several) as a means of customizing their characters. However, its not something I feel strongly about or have spent a great deal of time considering. And the last thing I'll say about it is that I agree with everything you said in your post, but that doesn't mean there aren't a few areas here and there that could be made even better. I mean if the core classes are perfect in their ability to define a character, why do so many people take prestige classes?

So we worked quite well together. And the "other" classes (other than fighter, rogue, cleric and wizard, which are the most generic warriors, rogues, priests and magic users, respectively IMO) could use a little more flexibility here and there, I grant that to you, but not to much and not OOC - so no optional fighting prowess for a rogue. That's the warrior caste's domain. If you want to combine several areas (the four basic monster food groups), you can always multiclass - including PrC's which often are a combination of two of those basic character concepts that is more than the sum of its parts, because PrC's tend to be stronger.

That's one of the reasons for PrC's: they are stronger than normal classes. Also, PrC's have powers that are (more or less) unique to them (a really good, probably home-made, PrC has something that is unique to it). That's nothing to do with flexibility, since PrC's tend to be specializing. You can make a fighter who is real good with the (insert weapon here), but a weapon master will give this specialist powers he could not get with just figher levels. You can make a rogue/spellcaster with rogue and wizard (or sorc) levels, but the arcane trickster will be more powerful than the pure rog/wiz (or rog/sor). He will not necessarily have more options (the base class model could bias his powers at 3/4:1/4 in favor of wizard or some such, but the prc is roughly 50:50, and if you want to change that, you have to take additional levels in rogue or wizard, losing PrC power.

 

[Victim]

Most of the High level Handbook stuff got included into the normal rules. All around attack = Whirlwind attack, rogues now get evasion at level 2 instead of really high levels. High balance skills or tumbling cover some of the other rogue skills.

 

[Bastoche]

Epic rogue IMO is about skills. And most skills can be used for very nice things at epic levels. Look bluff, sense motive, hide and climb just to name a few. That's where the rogue excels.

And there's some very nice feat only available to rogues too, dexterous saves are but one example.

I personnaly think they are the one with the nicest abilities. Fighter sucks. They still only got bonus feats and nothing else. That is all. It's quite nice, but talk about boring character progression.