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Message: <blockquote data-quote="kaomera" data-source="post: 3590321" data-attributes="member: 38357">Personally, I'd have to say that D&D is a bit too combat-focused. It's true that a lot of players really come to the table for a good fight (and that's fine), but there are also players who really don't get much out of the D&D combat system, and the system has a definite bias twords combat that ends up slanting things too far in that direction, IMHO. I think one of the things that has been missing from a lot of my more recent games is a sense of excitement about the game as a whole. If there is a fight, I'm interested even if I'm not the one "up to bat", because this is my character's party out there, and I want them to survive and win. I like to cheer on the Barbarian when he hits a big critical, while there are often other players who can't even be bothered to pay attention if it's not their action. Likewise, I don't expect to hog the spotlight all night, but I'd like it if the rest of the group could at least feign interest for as long as it takes for me to make a few die rolls. [I'm thinking, specifically, of two instances: One where I carefully went over how to safely get through a trapped portal, and half the party wasn't paying attention and ended up teleported into a prison, and a second where the one player who's PC knew the solution to a puzzle never heard me ask the group for help, and we missed out on a shortcut that would have probably saved two PCs lives...)I disagree. Personally I find that "rogue" is a very generic term. It's not completely neutral, true, but then neither is "barbarian", "monk", or "sorcerer". But I can kind of agree that Trapfinding and Sneak Attack are loaded abilities, and very much a holdover from the oD&D / AD&D Thief class. I think that the Thief may have had a bit more going for it as an archetype. Certainly, Thieves' Guilds and Thieves' Cant come from actual sources. I'm not sure there are many main characters that fit into that archetype, but then fiction doesn't usually have to deal with the "party structure". I think that the Rogue, while losing a bit of the out-of-gaming cred that the Thief had, kind of moved into the role (in D&D) that the Thief had fill, and expanded it a bit. In the process it has, indeed, become much more of a catch-all. I'd be perfectly happy playing in a game where the other characters got more skill points and filled in the role of the Rogue. I'm not as interested in constantly playing a warrior or a spell-slinger (well, maybe a Diviner) as I am in playing a scoundrel and all-around clever / sneaky weasel of a character, but I could surely make do. Actually, I already do so without any changes to the rules, as I usually will try and play other classes a bit Rogue-like. But if you remove the archetype completely, that is: if there are no more traps to find, no more bargains to be wheedled out, no more strange writings to decipher, no more secret doors to find and prize open... Well, then, it's not really D&D anymore, to me.</blockquote>

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