Have you run and/or played in a 3e/3.5 game with no rogue?

[Leatherhead]

Like the other thread except about the rogue:

As the thread title asks. How did this go? Were there any siginificant problems. If you were the DM did you modify things significantly (rules and or scenarios)? If a player was it just fine, frustrating, something else?

Yes, several times, with Rogue-like classes (Ninjas, Scouts, etc.) and classes that just happened to have trapfinding (Artificers, Factotums, some class substitutions, etc.), and even times when the party didn't have anything with trapfinding.


Quite honestly, it worked just the same if not better than if the party had a Rogue to begin with. In the case where there was no trapfinder, traps weren't used quite as often, and had to be circumvented in inventive (and more fun imo) ways.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

And we just did again tonight- night 1 of the new campaign, and nobody is starting off as a Rogue!

We do have one player who is planning on multiclassing as one, but he's only going to be present on occasion. We also have a few players who couldn't make it tonight, so we still have no idea what they're playing.

But still...no Rogues!

Result- some treasure damaged, 1 poison needle trap triggered, another avoided.

 

[StreamOfTheSky]

I meant rogue specifically - I'm trying to gauge how "replaceable" (for lack of a better word) the rogue is vs. how replaceable the wizard is (which is another thread).

My heavy suspicion (which I would be glad to have shown false) is that the rogue is much more easily replaced than the wizard.

If you're going with the exact classes, it's not going to be a very good study, IMHO. A Wu Jen also gets a spell book, for example. Whether the Wizard is "needed" over a Wu Jen then depends on what splats are allowed in for more spell selection, and even then only because the designers were pretty awful with supporting non-core base classes.

 

[Abraxas]

For the first time in as long as I can remember I am playing in one campaign without a rogue and DMing another. So far it has been off and on tough going in both - taking a lot of damage on the chin because things can't be bypassed or spotted in time.

I will say I have played in more games with out a wizard than without a rogue.

 

[Fenes]

In one 3E campaign there was no rogue, just a bard (which also was the party healer).
In another 3E campaign, still going on, the barbarian/warblade has 3 rogue levels.
Finally, the second on-going 3E campaign has a rogue PC.

No wizards in any of them.

 

[hanasays]

Our Rogue dropped out of the last campaign I played in, leaving us with no Rogue for a while. I was a Wiz-Bard though, and filled in that gap a bit. There were times we definitely could have used a real Rogue, though - scouting dark tunnels, for example.

 

[Phlebas]

the other campaign i play in (cf the wizard thread) doesn't have a rogue. actually come to think of it neither does the eberron campaign group

in both of them a ranger or urban ranger takes on the scout roles

in eberron the artificier is the trapfinder, in cauldron it tends to be a mixture of magic, summoned creatures (bag of tricks is fine for this) or the rangers search skills

faceman / investigator is handled by the bard in eberron, or by the warlock or the wizard in cauldron (both high cha PC's)

there have been a few times we'd have liked a trapfinder, but not enough to make us want to change the party balance. occasionally when we set up the perfect flank we think 'if only' for some sneak attack damage. other than that it barely gets mentioned......

 

[Olgar Shiverstone]

Yes. Though handling traps becomes tougher (at least until spellcasters get to the point that you can bypass them), most classes can cover the other roles a rogue can fill with a little skill point investment.

Frankly, you can run the game just fine without any single character class, but the amount of flexibility required by the party (or compensation by the DM) will vary depending on which class/role isn't represented.

 

[Runestar]

It is also worth noting that 1 lv of rogue + able learner means that you can still afford to max out your core rogue skills like search, open locks and disable device. So in the very least, there does not seem to be much incentive to go straight rogue, not when combinations like rogue1/wizX or rogue4/swashbuckler3+ with daring outlaw exist...

So it seemed that with every 3e supplement released, the rogue became that much less indispensable...

 

[Mephistopheles]

My current 3E Forgotten Realms group doesn't have a skill monkey and it's not a problem. It reminds me a little of OD&D in that the traps I do put in the game are ones that the players figure out how to dismantle rather than simply leaving it to the rogue to roll the dice. I've grown to prefer it.