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Message: <blockquote data-quote="drnuncheon" data-source="post: 380654" data-attributes="member: 96">8d6 - Rog5 gives you 3d6, and you get 5d6 from Arcane Trickster.  (The misprinted table assumes you go in as Rog4.)  With all of his spells, I also don't buy that the Trickster will have a harder time using his sneak attack, when there are so many that set him up to do so perfectly.Perhaps not as many as you might think - the one with wizard levels certainly has a greater incentive to have a high Int.That would indeed be pretty foolish, when he could knock. <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f600.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":D" title="Big grin    :D"  data-smilie="8"data-shortname=":D" />In terms of skills, the arcane trickster is likely to lag behind in a couple of skills, it's true.  He gets 4 less skill points per level, but on the other hand it's not unreasonable to assume that his Int will be higher and thus give him more bonus skills. (The optimum distribution of stats is different for a rog/wiz than it is for a rogue.  And hey, he can always make up for the slightly lower dex with a 15-hour cat's grace.)Right - that's part of the tradeoff.  But none of what you said has done anything to prove to me that a Trickster needs 15 levels of spellcasting to be comparable.  Let's look at a trickster with only 10 levels of spellcasting.He's going to lag behind his single-class counterpart in number of maxed-out skills - the regular rogue probably has 10 or so of his skills at 23 ranks, if that's how he chose to spend his points, while the trickster can probably max out 5 or so.  He'll have to be slightly more specialized as a rogue.On the other hand, if he doesn't try to max, he isn't lagging that much - 18 ranks as opposed to 23 is not nearly as big of a deal as 1 rank compared to 6.  So he could easily have 7 skills at quite respectable levels.  Not quite as good, sure - but we don't want him to be as good.  He's still likely to be able to do the traditional thiefly things just about as well as the 20th level rogue, and he's got spells to back him up if he needs them.He's got 2 less points of sneak attack, but if he uses his brain, he's going to be hitting a lot more with his sneak attack, even given the lower BAB - because he'll be using spells which require a touch attack, not a regular attack.He can cast (for example) passwall, telekinesis, improved invisibility (twice), polymorph self, haste, blink, fly, displacement, cat's grace, bull's strength, knock (twice), invisibility, chill touch, ray of enfeeblement, shield, spider climb, and expeditious retreat, any number of combinations of which will enable him to engage in melee combat and/or perform sneak attacks with great prowess, as well as enjoy a host of other benefits.  (Plus, he can change his spells to suit a situation, which the rogue cannot do with his skills.)Does he really need 3 more spell levels and 10 more spells per day to keep up with the 20th level rogue?  Does he really need the ability to cast horrid wilting and limited wish to be effective?  I don't believe so.Maybe the right balance is somewhere in between the two, I'm not sure.  But I'm not convinced that you need to be able to toss 8th level spells to be happy as an arcane trickster.J</blockquote>

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