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Message: <blockquote data-quote="argo" data-source="post: 1677536" data-attributes="member: 5752">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 weaponYou can SA with ranged weapon only if the target is within 30 ftYou 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.</blockquote>

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