Is Rogue a problematic class?

[Visigani]

The Beguiler kicks ass.... a swashbuckler/beguiler gestalt would be a fascinating character to play... but, strangely enough... would have a pretty terrible reflex save... comparatively speaking.

 

[CL_meister]

I still remember my first rogue, also one of my favorite rogues... Had a monster search check no one else in the party could have matched on a 20...found a secret area under the floor warded with a super duper powerful/deadly magical trap. Entire rest of the party went to the other room and "cheered for me" as I debated if I wanted to chance the huge DC and risk gods knows what. I do, I make it, and those ingrates were so darn quick to come back in and expect an equal cut of the loot I singlehandedly risked my neck for! Yeah, I learned pretty fast how stupid it is to be the trap monkey...

The other problem with traps is you have to look for them. Any serious trap-placer would put them where you wouldn't expect them, so realistically, you should be searching for trap everywhere. But that takes forever in game-time and player timer. And it's no fun (especially if you're not the rogue. "Ok, Bilbo, you roll your dice, we're going to go get a pizza") Roll a d20 for every 10 feet you walk down this hallway...

 

[StreamOfTheSky]

Yeah, myself and 90% of all the DMs I've ever had has just treated it like a spidey sense. You say you're taking 10 to search and moving at half speed, party advances onward, DM tips you off to traps as they come up, and the game moves on.

Playing the search rules RAW is incredibly tedious.

 

[cjosephs1s]

It is hard to build a good rogue. It takes a lot of carefully chosen feats and magic items to make them really effective in combat and even then its almost better to multiclass into scout and do a ranged sneak attack.

As for traps and locked doors a fighter with a good climb check and a good STR score works well for this. He's got the HP to take the trap damage, a cood Fort save for poison damage, and if he falls in a pit he can climb his way out even after taking the falling damage + spike damage+ acid damage at the bottom of it.

And there's nothing wrong with taking 20 to search a room. Our party does it all the time to find stuff.

 

[StreamOfTheSky]

And there's nothing wrong with taking 20 to search a room. Our party does it all the time to find stuff.

Unless you're on a time limit or party members like getting a lot of use out of their 10 min/level buff spells.

[sblock]Fun story:
My level 15 gestalt character runs around with like a dozen buff spells (I fear Reciprocal Gyre dearly, heh heh). Two sessions ago, our pet dinosaur the Dragonfire Adept had charmed got paralyzed for several hours. Rather than wait the effect out, I used my spontaneous healing domain to blow a 6th level spell on Heal just to cure him 7 hp and the paralyzed status. Cause blowing a 6th level spell was pittance compared to letting all those buffs go to waste. [/sblock]

 

[Dandu]

If you had been DMM Persisting them, this would not have been an issue. So really, it's all your fault in the end.

 

[StreamOfTheSky]

My DM bans DMM Persist (specifically the latter part, because there's nothing inherently wrong with DMM itself if you don't allow nightsticks to stack) and I'm happy he does. In any case, my character's a Druid//Ranger, so it wouldn't matter in my case anyway.

 

[Visigani]

I think you're all high. The Rogue is arguably the most balanced class in the game after the monk. The rogue is designed for, strangely enough, players that want to stand out and get a lot of facetime with the DM so to speak and it does that job admirably.

The weak grasp of game design on these forums is pitiful sometimes. My numbers am the bigger than your numbers theory of game design falls flat the moment you include players that don't intend to turn the game into their personal powermongering fapfest.

Which is essentially what optimization is when you get down to it.


Regardless, virtually everything about the Rogue is based on the "big shine" moments. The traps, the sneak attacks, the skills, etc etc. That's not problematic... that's its design.

 

[emoplato]

Problem is many of these shine moments really only effectively work at lower levels. At higher ones you have abilities available to other characters that trump or do better than what base skills do making a skill monkey only useful in off battle settings. I don't think it is a horrible class, it is just that skills only go so far and get left in the dust in moderate to high power games.

 

[Dandu]

I think you're all high. The Rogue is arguably the most balanced class in the game after the monk.

Right here is where I realized that you, sir, are a master of satire.