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Message: <blockquote data-quote="LightPhoenix" data-source="post: 4227531" data-attributes="member: 115">Recently, my DM got a bunch of people for a 4E playtest, mostly combat-oriented.  I played the KotS rogue, and I thought I'd offer my thoughts on the Rogue specifically and combat in general.Before I get into my thoughts, I thought I'd give a little background on our group and my overall views of 4E.  I'm definitely excited for the new edition, but I do have some things that I don't like that I'm reserving judgment on.  I guess I'm not a hater, and I'm not a fanboy – just in the middle.  Our group is small – only three players, so that changes the scaling a bit... but hey, that's the DM's problem.  <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f61b.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":P" title="Stick out tongue    :P"  data-smilie="7"data-shortname=":P" />   We all know each other, and I've gamed with the DM before.  We have one new player, and two experienced ones.I'll start with an endorsement of the power cards thread in the Fan Creations forum.  They helped (me at least) to keep track of encounter powers nicely – a mistake I made in our first combat.  In higher levels I think this will be invaluable, as the number of daily and encounter abilities increases.The rogue.  My biggest lesson is that Rogues need to move!  I started off throwing daggers from a distance, and that hindered my efficacy a lot.  The KotS Rogue is definitely designed to be in melee, and trying to use range didn't work well at all.  I had a lot of luck with Sly Flourish for added damage (I believe this will be 1[W]+Dex+Cha damage) initially, but later on moved over to Deft Strike/Positioning Strike to set up sneak attacks and generally control movement.  A big thing I kept forgetting is that diagonals counted as one square.  That will take some getting used to.  Rogues can do a LOT of damage, but they really need to be moving around and moving others around.  While a sneaky Rogue could still be at range (after all, we haven't seen all of the powers) I'm thinking this won't be an optimal build in 4E.Another big issue I had was keeping track of what defense was being attacked.  Positioning Strike attacks Will, not AC.  This seems like something Clerics, Wizards, and Warlocks will have to pay particular attention to more than the melee classes.  Even so, being able to make an attack against Will was very handy.  On a related note, I often found myself wanting to know what I was being attacked against, as my defenses were different.For me, there was a natural tendency to hold back Action Points and daily powers.  That's another thing that I will have to get used to, especially in regard to AP.  On the other hand, I often found myself using my encounter abilities as soon as possible, to get an early advantage.In the end, I found that while having different at-will powers was more engaging, it ultimately still felt repetitive using them every round.  I think this is an effect of being low level, as there aren't as many encounter/daily/utility abilities to use.  Additionally, looking at the magic items in the pre-release document, I think there will be a lot of options coming from that as well.  I'm thinking that past the first couple of levels, repetitiveness in combat will lessen greatly.My dice were hot.  I was rolling 17+ consistently for attacks, but not for stealth and especially perception.  I got a critical at a perfect moment, with a sneak attack, utterly destroying the creature we were fighting (I forget what... a choker maybe?).Finally, why would a Rogue not take Backstabber?  I know on average it's only +2 damage with Sneak Attack... but I think the other feats will have to be pretty attractive to keep Rogues from taking it.</blockquote>

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