Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="airwalkrr" data-source="post: 2795566" data-attributes="member: 12460">Well, Syntallah, if you're going to allow gestalt characters, you should be expecting to see some power-builds. Quite frankly, if you are setting them up for a challenging campaign that requires them to be gestalt characters, then they are going to need all the help they can get.Honestly, the sneak attack is not a problem. Think about what the Rogue would be without it. Would anyone even consider the class if didn't have sneak attack? Chances are highly unlikely. At the very least the number of people playing Rogues would drop substantially. Characters capable of picking up one level of Rogue so they can find traps would probably be the most common Rogue characters.Players who play Rogues in 3rd edition already feel limited for the most part. I've found that many players consider it one of the weakest classes, despite being the only class (in the core rules) that can effectively find and disable traps. The class is not weak however. I would rank it as one of the top 4 most powerful classes. The problem is, the class is very difficult to play properly. You can't hog glory in a melee like a Fighter can because you can't take hits like he can. You can't be as good of an archer as the Ranger because he gets bonus feats which help him develop his archery and a better base attack bonus. For these reasons, players who focus on the combat side of the game will often discard the Rogue as a viable option. Most players of 3rd edition like to focus on the tactical side of D&D. There's nothing wrong with it of course. It's just a cause for the perception.Rogues are designed to have a multiplicity of talents. They are supposed to have a trick for every puzzle, good reflexes in dangerous situations (high Reflex and trap sense), and versatility in a variety of terrain types (Balance, Climb, Jump, Swim, Tumble skills in class to name a few and the skill points to invest in them). They do all of this well, but unless the player is really into role-playing, sneaking around, and scouting and spying, the Rogue class would never be any fun. Besides all that, sneaky characters like the Rogue ought to have some mechanic that allows them to strike at opportune moments, when the opponent's back is turned or he's caught flat-footed. So the ability not only gives the class a bit of much-needed power in a fight, but also makes perfect sense for the archetype.Sneak attack is not a problem for game balance. As many people have already pointed out, Fighters and Barbarians will consistently deal more damage than the Rogue. A two-handed weapon-wielding Fighter or Barbarian can routinely hit bad guys with massive damage (50+ hp in a single hit) starting at around 10th-level whenever they critically hit. Rogues are hard-pressed to come up with that kind of damage.</blockquote>

Verification