Rogues rule! (warning, kinda long and kinda ranting)

[L0rd_Dark0n]

He heh. I haven't seen Reapersaurus around much recently... I'm sure he would be happy to argue the other side.

His argument is that Rogues are overpowered because they are so good both outside of combat (scouting, traps, locks, diplomacy, etc.) and in combat as well with sneak attacks.

Has he played a Rogue before? There are a lot of things out there that are immune to crits. My Rogues haven't been big on combat. The Wizards and Fighters and what not are dealing quite a bit more damage out than I am.

 

[HellHound]

I've been having a blast in our current campaign in Arcanis...

Three rogues.

Well, they are about to start diversifying... One is a rogue 1 / ranger 1, the other two are rogue 2. One is going to continue on the straight and narrow until he can make it to thief-acrobat (probably, they might all get sidetracked by "Guild Thief" since they recently joined the local thieve's guild), and the last is about to multiclass wizard.

Against a single foe they are devastating, moving around in a series of 5-foot steps and the occasional 10 foot tumble to keep the flanking up.

Against a group of foes, their weaknesses begin to show... low hit points, lousy armor, and not enough strength to REALLY lay down the beats.

 

[Angcuru]

I've played the Thief PC games, and I basically play most of my rogues as Garret clones.

What I like to do is get a high-level rogue with a sap, sneak attack = unconcious. It makes the game a lot more interesting when a rogue knocks someone out instead of inserting pointy things into their backside. Imagine knocking out the BBG/villain in the middle of his big "I'm gonna take you down muahaha." speech, looting his lair/fortress/whatever, breaking his legs and arms, and carving the phrase "Prissy the Jilted" into his forehead. Then you dress him up like a ballerina and dump him in the middle of downtown (insert city). . There's just SO much potential for mischief.

 

[pogre]

When I read the title of this post I misread it as Pogues Rule.

That's certainly something I can agree with .

D.K. Pogue

 

[reapersaurus]

Has he played a Rogue before? There are a lot of things out there that are immune to crits. My Rogues haven't been big on combat. The Wizards and Fighters and what not are dealing quite a bit more damage out than I am.

Funny you mentioned me, of all people, Corlo - you have a good memory.

I happened to wander in and see this thread, and especially the request as to where this anti-rogue bias comes from, and corlo is correct in his paraphrasing of me.

Lord Darkon - The point is not that there are things that are immune to sneak attack : the point is that there shouldn't NEED to be things that are immune to sneak attack.

DM's should not have to rely on using creatures that are immune just to let the fighters do significantly more damage than a power-gamed rogue can do.
Just because you haven't used the rogues powers in combat much does not mean that others haven't... or that you couldn't.

The main problem is that they are dominant out of combat (due to the insanely more skill points they get than the vast majority of other classes, AND the incredible range of class skills), while they still can compete quite well in a normal combat with the fighter.

ALL a fighter-type can do is fight. They are pretty worthless out of combat (where most gaming nowadays takes place; I know that's somewhat new, but I firmly believe that to be the case).
A rogue is far from worthless in combat.

Basically, it's this simple : if a rogue was proportionally as bad IN combat as a fighter is OUT of combat, he'd do 15% as much damage as the fighter does.

 

[L0rd_Dark0n]

Are you a DM Reapersaurus? If so, do you limit Rogue abilities, or let them go as they are? If you do limit the Rogues, are there other classes that you change as well? I'd be interested in knowing these things. Thanks