Need help building rogue

Barak Tiefling

First Post
Please help, I am new to this page, but found a lot of great help already.. I hope I am posting this in the right place..
I am trying to create a Teifling rogue, but have not played D&D for 10 years. I am presently trying desperately to remember 2, and familiarize myself with the 3.5 rules which I am now about to start. My character looks like this; str 10, dex 17, con 14, int 16, wis 10, cha 7.. I am pretty much lost in terms of which feats to get, as they are new to me. I will be starting a level one campaign with a (eventually) mystic therge (?), fighter (of some description), and a druid. I am leaning towards a ranged type of rogue (low str.) and am thinking about multi classing as a wizard or sorcerer... but really have no clue where to go.. please respond with anything that you may deem helpful.. Thanks.
 

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Well, you may want to consider 2 levels of fighter (2 - TWF feats), then the rest Rogue.... Weapon finesse, two-weapon fighting Rapier.

improved crit is in your future. ;)


Maybe consider a straight Ranger (archer), if you want some spellcasting abilities?


Mike
 

If you want a Rogue/Wizard type, look up the prestige class Arcane Trickster in the DMG and build towards that.

If you want to follow mikebr99's advice and take 2 levels of fighter, I would recommend Rogue, Fighter, Fighter. That way you won't lose out on the Rogue's high skills at first level.
 

edventure said:
If you want a Rogue/Wizard type, look up the prestige class Arcane Trickster in the DMG and build towards that.

If you want to follow mikebr99's advice and take 2 levels of fighter, I would recommend Rogue, Fighter, Fighter. That way you won't lose out on the Rogue's high skills at first level.
I'll second that... does that mean I'm agreeing with myself???


And welcome to the boards Barak Tiefling


Mike
 

If at all possible, get rid of that bad charisma! The rogue is the skillmonger, including all the social skills like diplomacy, bluff, intimidate, gather information. You already have someone to whack at the enemies, someone to fry them, and someone to patch the party up. But the party needs a spokesperson, something neither a druid nor a fighter can do, and a wizard probably won't.

Don't bother with the fighting too much, the others will be good enogh at it - rogue can be quite effective too, but that depends more on the players sense of tactics (and a little on the DM) than on his feats. You might just consider weapon finesse to get dex instead of str for melee attacks (light weapons only, but that should be no problem).

Instead of going wizard (not that sorcerer won't work because of that abysmal charisma score - you'd be to shy to even cast a cantrip), take ranks of use magic device (again, you need cha for that one) or ask the wizard to buff you now and then.

Instead of getting more combat feats with fighter levels, get more skill points with rogue levels (again, it isn't that important to have many combat feats, and you'll get them soon enough). You might want to get the dodge/mobility/spring attack feat chain, and for spring attack, you'll need BAB +4, anyway
 

The stats would work pretty well for a Rogue/Wizard/Arcane Trickster, if that is, what you like to play.

Rogue
Wizard
Wizard
Wizard
Rogue
Wizard
Wizard
Rogue
Arcane Trickster
...

You could have nice skills, focussing on Disable Device, Gather Information, Hide, Listen, Move Silently, Open Lock, Search, Sense Motive, Sleight of Hand, Spellcraft, Spot, and Tumble mostly, with some Knowledge skills and, of course, the requirements for the Arcane Trickster (Decipher Script, Escape Artist, Knowledge (arcana)).

Feats could be (ranged fighter): Point Blank Shot, Precise Shot, Rapid Shot, and then something to up the magical side, like Practiced Spellcaster (from Complete Divine, if you have that available).

That can be a very fun character to play, altho, if I were you, I'd make it an elf, not a tiefling. :)

Bye
Thanee
 

Ok, a few point of interest for a novice rogue. First I'll review the Sneak Attack rules very quickly since you say you are new to 3.5 and they are very important to a rogue.

You can SA with a melee weapon
You can SA with ranged weapon only if the target is within 30 ft
You can SA an opponent who is denied his Dex bonus to AC with either a melee or ranged weapon. Some common conditions which cause an opponent to lose Dex are
-- Suprise, you attack durring the suprise round
-- Flat-footed, you win Initative in the 1st round of combat and attack an opponent before he takes his first action
-- Feint, you use the Bluff skill to feint an opponent (takes a standard action normally, a move action if you have the Improved Feint feat)
You can also SA an opponent who you are flanking but only with a melee weapon (because you cannot flank at all with a ranged weapon, because you cannot threaten a space with a ranged weapon)
You cannot SA anything immune to critical hits (undead, constructs, oozes)

Long story short; you will usually only SA at the begining of combat (combination suprise round/win initative) or if you are brave enough to move into melee for flanking. A "fighting rogue" can be absouetly devistating but it is also one of the riskiest and most tatictally demanding of character builds, I wouldn't recomend it your first time out. Your decision to go for an archer-rogue is a good one. That means you will mostly see SA at the start of combat and then not contribute much damage therafter, when in combat look around and think of other ways to contribute if you can. I'll come back to this some more later.

Now as for actual character builds. With a fighter and a druid in the party you should already have melee combat prety well covered, plus you have decided to go for archer-rogue, so I would not recomend taking levels of fighter. Take a look at the Arcan Trickster PrC and see if that appeals to you, if so then Thanee's suggestions for building a Wiz/Rog look prety good to me. If that PrC doesn't look too good then instead of making a Wiz/Rog multiclass I would suggest you look at the Use Magic Device skill and start thinking of all the fun you can have after you have stolen a couple of wands from some wizards. You will not be able to get much use out of the skill for a while because the DC's are kinda high but if you put max ranks into it then you should start being able to use wands reliably sometime about level 7 or so. If you decide against the Wiz/Rog then I suggest you just go straight Rogue all the way.

For your abilities you have a tough choice to make. That cha penalty will hurt a lot for some important skills including Bluff and UMD. But Dex, Int, and Con are the three most important abilities for a Rogue, in that order. You could swap Cha and Wis and play an implusive scoundrel, but that hit to your Will save could cost you dearly. Or you could swap Str and Cha, you won't be needing your Str much anyway, but it really sucks to be so weak you can barely carry your own equipment when you are the guy expected to scout ahead. Also, and this is important, a Str penalty is applied as a penalty to damage with bows, and your non-SA damage will be low enough as is. You will need to decide what you want your character to be and what is most important to you.

Feats for an archer-rogue are prety straightfoward. Point Blank Shot gives you +1 to hit and +1 to damage against all opponents within 30 ft (same as your SA) with any ranged weapon (also includes thrown daggers and the like). Precise Shot has a prereq of PBS and negates the -4 penalty for firing into a melee, trust me when I say that the fighter is going to get very tired very fast of you shooting him in the back. Rapid Shot lets you make an extra ranged attack as part of a full round attack action and imposes a -2 penalty on all your attacks that round, because you apply SA to every attack you make in a round that qualifies, an extra attack in the first round when you have won innitative can mean a lot of damage. There is also Improved Feint, it has a preq of Combat Expertise (a good feat as well, Expertise lets you take a penalty to your attack roll and gain a bonus to your AC) and it lets you atempt a Feint as a move action. That means that every round you can use your move action to feint and then make a single attack that counts as a SA, and you can do it with a ranged weapon. You will not contribute as much damage as the fighter but it can still be worth it. Of course that means that the Bluff skill will be very important to you so you may, once again, want to reconsider that Cha stat.

However, for your first feat I suggest you get Improved Initative which gives you a +4 bonus to you initative rolls. Combined with your high Dex you will win initative more often than not and that means you get that all important SA in the first round. A good SA in the first round can severly injure or even kill many opponents, and that alone can often be enough to tip the odds of the battle in your party's favor. Winning initative over the enemy wizard and then dropping him with a single arrow to the forehead before he can cast a single spell is a great feeling. After that your choices become tougher; I suggest PBS at 3rd, Precise Shot at 6th and Rapid shot at 9th.

Skills will be your main forte. You should have 11 skill points per level, I suggest you pick 11 skills and maximum advance them instead of spreading your points around. Important Rogue skills include: Hide, Move Silent, Spot, Listen, Search, Disable Device, Open Lock, Bluff, Sense Motive, Tumble, Climb, Jump, and UMD. You notice that that is more than 11 and that doesn't even include all the usefull skills available to you. You should focus on getting your first picks up as fast as possible and then go back and raise other skills you may have neglected.

Anyway, hope that helps and good luck.
 

Here, here. (or is it "Hear, hear"? I've always wondered.)
Well said Argo.

I have a Rogue/Shadowdancer that specializes in Rapiers. She's very rewarding to play.
 

If you want a rogue with some voodoo, you may want to look at the Psychic Rogue core class. That's if your DM allows psionics, and you're interested in playing with those rules. http://wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/psm/20040723a

If you plan on multi-classing as a wizard, you will not be able to play a full skill monkey. It seems like that's the niche that the party is missing. But magic can make up for that. Remember that your sneak attack can be used with ray spells.
 


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