Sejs said:
Agreed. I'd give rogues Camoflage at 7th, and then add Hide in Plain Sight to the list of 10th Lvl+ special abilities.
I really don't understand where they thought giving rangers HiPS and Camo and then not giving the same abilities to the supposed 'king of sneaking' was a good idea.
Hide in Plain Sight should belong to the rogue if it belongs to the ranger, but camouflage isn't for rogues IMO. Camouflage is a wilderness thing, and I always thought of rogues as city dwellers, or dungeon delvers.
Sonofapreacherman said:
Before this gets even further out of hand, my biggest problem with the revised rogue is that the class fails to live up to its niche now.
I strongly disagree.
So what is his niche?
Sneaking around in all imaginable enviroments? Still got it
Having a vast selection of class skills and many many skill points? Check
Unleashing the hells with his sneak attack? You better bet the farm on it.
Finding and disarming trap? You know who you're gonna call!
In much the same way that the ranger previously failed to lived to the niche of wilderness warrior, now the rogue fails to live up to their niche as the sneakiest party member.
The ranger might outsneak him in the wilderness, but as soon as you're in the city or in the dungeon, the ranger's new powers won't work again. But the rogue's abilities work everywhere.
The ability to detect traps is now equally shared with barbarians.
Absolutely not. Barbarians can react to traps really good (they get the same bonuses as rogues, though rogues tend to have the higher dex and the better base ref bonus). The rogues are still the only ones that can find the nasty traps and disarm them withouth them going off.
Rogues are meant to be the most perceptive of the character classes, seeing the opportunities that other miss and exploiting them, whether that means breaking into a house or sliding a dagger between your ribs. Conversely, they also know how to protect themselves against such dangers (by logical reverse application of their skills).
Most sneaky? Yes. Most perceptive? Not necessarily. Monks aren't bad at it either, because they need high wisdom which represents perceptiveness.
And skills cannot also be reverse applicated. If that were so, the BAB would be applied to your armor class (if you know better how to attack, you know better how to defend). If skills represented action and anti-action, there wouldn't be seperate skills for the respective two things: Move Silently and Listen are two different skills, though with your reasoning you should know what to listen for. Still, you are able to have one of these things maxed out and not a single rank in the other.
While the rogue has by no means lost everything that makes them unique, they have lost a lot.
They haven't lost much. They still have their sneak attack, their huge list of class skills, their truckload of skillpoints, the exclusive contract on finding and disabling all but the easiest of traps, and a nice blend of special features.
The fact that several classes have approached the rogues doesn't change that. And the rogue is still the master of these things (still the only with sneak attack, still the most skill points, still the most class skills, still the only trapfinders and -disarmers, still the only one with both uncanny dodge AND evasion, still the only one all those special features.
I'll say this much. Making revisions to a game that has been revised this recently isn't going to make me popular, but I see no point in wasting time. The rogue got marginalized in this edition. I'd like to start correcting that.
It's not the revising it again that's making you unpopular. It's the trolling that makes us break out the flasks of acid.