Essentials Rogue is up!

[LuckyAdrastus]

I really hate this direction that they took. The class seems TOO simplified. Anyone wanting to learn DnD will catch on quick enought that having so little variety will make combats really boring. Just my opinion of course. Needless to say I will not be buying the Essentials for making player characters.

Hey, your money and your game, of course, but I'd think it might be a better idea to wait longer to see what the complete options look like before declaring you flat out won't buy it. What if you like the final version? What if your fellow players do?

 

[Aegeri]

I just noticed that the thief may be superior to the rogue, due to the fact that the thief can make use of its sneak attack per turn and not per round.

You can deal this extra damage only once per turn.

That means if you have a warlord, or hit with an opportunity attack or various other things you can deal sneak attack damage multiple times per round (as opposed to just once for a normal rogue). That makes the thief incredibly good for DPR if it gets its striker damage on more attacks. In fact you could get it twice on an AP: First attack is normal, then AP ready an action to attack again at the beginning of a creatures turn and hit to deal sneak attack damage twice in succession.

 

[ferratus]

I'm not only surprised that they didn't do anything to make the Essentials thief better at finding traps, I'm surprised that they didn't do something so that the 4e PHB1 Rogue could actually find traps with their pathetic wisdom.

It is so humiliating asking the cleric to search for traps so I can disable them.

Unless I'm doing something wrong.

 

[Aegeri]

I search for traps by throwing the barbarian at anything that looks suspicious.

 

[mkill]

There is a laundry list of class features that we only know the name of. Any of these could be about trapfinding. It's too early to say anything about that.

Sneak Attack 1/turn: 10 bucks says this will be in the first errata.

Edit: SHORTBOWS!!! Was it that hard?

 

[mearls]

The Power Attack bit is a copy & paste error, I'm 100% sure.

That is correct. The rogue's back stab fills that space. Looks like it's a simple copy and paste error. There have been some issues in keeping the format when transferring text from the PDFs to HTML, so I imagine that the power strike text was accidentally left in whatever template is used for the previews.

Someone mentioned that feinting trick doesn't look that great. Keep in mind that you can get that bonus damage and sneak attack if you have combat advantage from something other than a trick, like flanking.

 

[Scholar & Brutalman]

Someone mentioned that feinting trick doesn't look that great. Keep in mind that you can get that bonus damage and sneak attack if you have combat advantage from something other than a trick, like flanking.

You can? The power text is:

You gain a power bonus to the next damage roll you make this turn with a basic attack for which you do not have combat advantage.

It doesn't say anything about source of combat advantage at all. What am I missing?

 

[FireLance]

Someone mentioned that feinting trick doesn't look that great. Keep in mind that you can get that bonus damage and sneak attack if you have combat advantage from something other than a trick, like flanking.

That's not the way I read it - the text seems to imply that a thief only gets the bonus damage if he attacks while he doesn't have combat advantage from any source.

What is not quite clear at the moment is whether a thief could gain the benefit from a trick by spending a move action but moving 0 squares. It probably wouldn't be unbalanced if he could - the net effect is probably the same as a typical rogue's at-will attack, after all, but some DMs may rule that the thief has to move at least 1 square.

 

[Aegeri]

Someone mentioned that feinting trick doesn't look that great. Keep in mind that you can get that bonus damage and sneak attack if you have combat advantage from something other than a trick, like flanking.

Feinting Trick specifically states you don't get the bonus to damage if you have combat advantage.

You gain a power bonus to the next damage roll you make this turn with a basic attack for which you do not have combat advantage. The power bonus equals your Charisma modifier.

Tumbling Trick gives you the bonus damage from strength to an attack and will stack with sneak attack damage granted through CA, making it much better than the Charisma based Feinting Trick - which rules out the extra damage when you have combat advantage (and hence your sneak attack). Unless there has been a change to feinting trick in what what finalized and what was previewed, Feinting Trick is a pretty poor choice.

Edit: Wow that's a dogpile if ever I saw one. We should bear in mind though that what Mike may be working with in the final version might be different from what was previewed (already seen an example of that earlier in fact). Also, is the fact the sneak attack is per turn and not per round intentional or a mistake?

 

[mearls]

You can? The power text is:



It doesn't say anything about source of combat advantage at all. What am I missing?

Blarg. You're not missing anything. Normally a trick's effects and combat advantage would work together.

That's what I get for posting almost immediately after jogging a mile.