Rogues: essential class or sacred cow?

[kaomera]

Traps suck. They are basically a piointless time waster in the majority of implementation. Either you bog the game down as the rogue does his thing at every friggin door, chest, 10 foot section of floor, or you get screwed. Try and probe with poles? You set off a pressure plate to target 10' away. Probe with an 11 foot pole? You guessed it, 11 feet away.

I don't completely understand this mindset. Now, as a qualification, I don't know what "encounter traps" are, and it's possible that's more of what I'm used to. However; D&D tends to boil down to "who's turn is it?", at the very least when it comes time to roll the dice. Now, 3.x has done a lot to ensure that every character gets a chance to shine in combat. (This, unfortunately, can kind of suck for the Fighter, as he's pretty much the only character who really doesn't have many other times when it's "his turn".) But regardless of if it's in combat or out, usually one character is doing stuff, and everyone else is watching (hopefully ~ some players nowadays seem a bit "spoiled", at least to my perception, and can't be bothered to pay any attention unless they are actively rolling the dice. But maybe I'm just being a bit of an old grump...). So what you end up with, in trying to avoid instances where one character or another isn't likely to shine, is avoiding everything but combat. Not only is that, to my mind, an extremely boring way to run a game, but you still have each player waiting until it's their turn...

Now I'm not saying that every room has to have a trap... In fact, if you changed Trapfinding so that the Rogue gets an automatic check to detect a trap whenever any party member in LoS is about to walk into it, I think that would solve any problems very nicely. But if you're gonna take traps out of D&D because they only involve one of the characters, why not remove all of the dusty tomes and lore of old. And anything that might require a Bluff or Diplomacy check. And Undead. And every other combat encounter while you're at it...

One of the problems I do have with Trapfinding is that it's non-optional. Not every Rogue-type character really needs it. But, by taking the class you are more or less asking for the DM to throw traps at the party. Although I suppose that never actually taking any ranks in Search would give a pretty strong impression that you just don't care about / for that stuff...

 

[ThirdWizard]

I agree with all of this and would happily add everything you mentioned to the brief list of "sacred cows" that I gave as defining D&D as a genre. That doesn't detach D&D from its sources.

I'm perhaps confused by what you mean by sacred cows. It seemed before that you were saying that sacred cows have no merit of their own. But, if everything in D&D that is not emulation of fantasy as a genre is a sacred cow, then I'm confused because that's what makes D&D be D&D. Could you clarify this a little bit?

 

[Imp]

The rogue's role is essential as a non-spellcasting skill monkey. If you were to replace it, you'd need to then create a lightly armored skill based character. I suppose some fighter substitution levels could do the job (lose heavy armor for +6 skill points or something), but really I don't see the point in getting rid of the rogue only to replace it with something similar anyway.

I have been thinking about this a bit and have come to the same conclusion. It seems like rogue and fighter are not really separate archetypes (or whatever term we're using) but rather two ends of the generic "fantasy hero" continuum. (The rogue isn't nearly as fragile or ineffectual as the AD&D thief.) I want a guy that does nothing but dedicate himself to weapons! I choose fighter! I want a guy who adapts well to a variety of challenges and knows a lot of clever tricks! I choose rogue! I want to simulate the Grey Mouser/ Fafhrd/ Conan/ Bilbo/ Odysseus! Looks like I gotta use both. But you'll always have people who want to be the monomaniacal weapon master or the hyper-capable jack-of-all-trades. So do you allow for this by having two classes representing either end of the scale, or one class that allows a bunch of customizations? Is there really a difference?

...on traps. Trapfinding is kind of boring, but trap-disabling, or trap-bypassing (which should be by far the more common scenario) ought to involve more teamwork. The trap skill should involve sussing out the mechanics of a trap. Disabling it, or taking part in disabling it, should be something other players can help with.

Bridge, chasm, door on other side, walls on either side 30' away. Rogue-type checks it out, finds a trap. The bridge is made of pressure plates. The pressure plates cannot be removed without dismantling the bridge. But there are suspicious little holes in the walls on either side and the rogue thinks they're arrow traps. The party can try prematurely triggering the plates (by tossing enough weight on them, which the strongman can do; or the rogue can trigger them and jump back, getting a bonus on the reflex save) or the rogue can point out the holes to the archer, who can plug 'em with arrows, or to the druid, who stone-shapes over them, or etc. and so on.

 

[Tonguez]

anyway just so we're clear - what is an encounter trap?

 

[ThirdWizard]

anyway just so we're clear - what is an encounter trap?

I can't say I know, but the impression I got was one that was nested inside another encounter. Like a pit trap in the middle of a room full of hobgoblins or something like that.

And, if I'm wrong, hopefully someone will correct me so that you get your answer.

 

[Zaruthustran]

I'd be happy to see the rogue, as a class, vanish.

Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser and Conan and Zorro and the Dread Pirate Roberts were all "rogues", in that they were clever and stealthy and stole stuff, but they were also very capable fighters. In fact, even though they're iconic rogues they're more defined by their combat ability. They regularly defeated NPC warrior types, whereas a Warrior--the NPC class--could go toe to toe with a Rogue.

Bilbo stands alone as a sneak who is worthless in combat.

Rogues, then, are more defined by attitude and activity, rather than specific powers and abilities.

I say, remove the rogue as a class. Give fighters (and everyone else) more skill points. Get rid of "trapfinding" as an ability--it doesn't make sense for the 20th level Ranger with a +30 Search check to be somehow unable to see the poison pin (search check DC 21) on the trapped chest. Keep evasion and sneak attack and uncanny dodge as talent tree abilities, but then again those abilities already aren't exclusive to the rogue class in 3.5.

Now you can have a character who can both swing a sword and tell a tale. Or shoot a bow and pick a lock. A change like this--that enables even fighters to engage in roleplaying beyond "durr... don't ask me, I'm just a Fighter with a +0 Diplomacy", and gives "combat" classes the ability to take part in noncombat encounters--is a Good Thing.

-z

 

[ruleslawyer]

anyway just so we're clear - what is an encounter trap?

They're found in Dungeonscape. An encounter trap is basically a trap that bolsters or generally adds to the strength of an encountered monster or monsters (or another hazard with its own EL), and that creates an entire "encounter" that must be bypassed.

 

[FireLance]

They're found in Dungeonscape. An encounter trap is basically a trap that bolsters or generally adds to the strength of an encountered monster or monsters (or another hazard with its own EL), and that creates an entire "encounter" that must be bypassed.

Actually, I think an encounter trap is more accurately described as a trap that has been turned into a monster. A standard trap relies on being undetected for its effectiveness, and the challenge is to bypass it by finding it and disarming it before it is triggered, or, if it remains undetected and is triggered, to survive the damage it deals.

On the other hand, an encounter trap relies on being difficult to disarm for its effectiveness, with the added provisio that most, if not all, members of a typical adventuring party could contribute to "disarming" the trap. For example, an encounter trap could consist of spikes emerging from the floor to attack the party. The rogue could disable a 5' square area with a Disable Device check, or the fighter or barbarian could disable the trap by reading an action to sunder a spike that attacked him. Similarly, for a magical trap, the wizard or cleric could dispel the trap.

To put it another way, standard traps tend to be passive, and to put the lion's share of defeating the trap on the shoulders of the rogue. Encounter traps tend to be active, and to allow other characters to take action to negate or mitigate the effects of the trap.

 

[Tonguez]

Now you can have a character who can both swing a sword and tell a tale. Or shoot a bow and pick a lock. A change like this--that enables even fighters to engage in roleplaying beyond "durr... don't ask me, I'm just a Fighter with a +0 Diplomacy", and gives "combat" classes the ability to take part in noncombat encounters--is a Good Thing.

But this is an arguement for a single generic class which can be customised to do anything. It ignores the fact that DnD is a classbased game and that each class has a role. Personally I graduated from OD&D to GURPS and GurpsD20 would give me a dream come true but that is not an argument for taking the rogue out of DnD

 

[Imp]

Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser and Conan and Zorro and the Dread Pirate Roberts were all "rogues", in that they were clever and stealthy and stole stuff, but they were also very capable fighters. In fact, even though they're iconic rogues they're more defined by their combat ability. They regularly defeated NPC warrior types, whereas a Warrior--the NPC class--could go toe to toe with a Rogue.

Psh, if they were fighting "level-appropriate" enemies. Which I doubt any of them did very much. (I am not familiar enough with Conan or Zorro; Westley was clearly higher level in game terms than Inigo or Fezzik; and the closest fight in the Fafhrd & Gray Mouser stories, besides the various times the two heroes crossed swords, was Mouser versus a mage. How's that for iconic swordplay?)

But in any case, if you have a class that covers both fighter and rogue, what do you do with the people who say screw the skills, I want to eschew those to become the very best swordsman possible? It'll happen, and then you're back to the fighter/rogue split all over again.