AbdulAlhazred
Legend
That's kind of you. I'm glad that our musings here are of some use to other DMs, and I'm having a great time planning the transition into the next tier of play. We'll probably start a new thread when we hit 11th level 5 games from now; this thread is getting long.
We're not playing this week due to Thanksgiving, so I'll muse about something else. One of the players is unhappy with their character's mechanics. Logan's player Alomir originally wanted a smart rogue, an int/dex build. That wasn't originally available so he went with the dex/str build, and mechanically his character turned out almost identical to Sagiro's.
After six or seven levels (and after a few splat books came out!) we agreed to try something else, and Logan was rebuilt as a cunning sneak. My worry at the time (which I probably kept to myself) was that it just didn't seem like a very fun build to play. Sneaks live or die based on complicated stealth rules, and they're ranged. That means either you're standing back from the melee and sniping in while effectively invisible, or the enemy sees you and HOLY CRAP AUGGH YOU'RE SCREWED because you rely so heavily on stealth. I personally think getting targetted by monsters is fun and exciting, so a PC designed to never get seen or hit wouldn't be as enjoyable for me.
It's taken another few levels before Alomir reached a similar conclusion. We love Logan's personality and backstory, though. So the question is: if a player isn't happy with their character's mechanics, how far do you go to tweak the character mid-game?
There was a time when I'd have said "You broke it, you bought it," and allowed no changes. I no longer feel that way. Storminator's MnM game has taught me that allowing flexibility in character creation and upkeep results in excited players with high buy-in. Retraining rules help a little, of course, but we are looking at something more substantial here.
And I think we have a fun solution, one that (a) makes Alomir happy, (b) makes me happy, (c) keeps Logan in the game, (d) is justifiable by the plot (you'll see in the next write-up), and (e) pushes the storyline forward in an interesting way. I'm really intrigued to see how it turns out. We'll report here.
Well, I'd put it this way, you can make a rogue with whatever attribute distribution you want, and using a variety of fighting styles. BS rogues (and RR if anyone really ever used them) are pretty well going to be DEX/STR mechanically, but a 3rd stat in INT is sure feasible. You could wrangle that to be as high as 16 starting with an ideal race, but more likely 13-14 with a minor hit on primary and secondary. Not a GENIUS rogue, but still highly intelligent.
An AD build likewise is going to likely be DEX/CHA, but you CAN skimp on the CHA and again you can swing a 13-14 INT without killing the character's combat viability.
I'd say the same thing is true with the CS rogue. I'd also say that while the CS rogue certainly is ideally mechanically conceived of as a sniper that doesn't preclude other options. Just don't choose Sharpshooter Talent to replace Rogue Weapon Talent. The character will work pretty well and has no dependency on any stat except DEX. You get a very sneaky blade wielding melee combatant who can chuck up his INT pretty much as high as he wants and not pay TOO much for it. His NADs will be less than super impressive but that's really about it. Toss your tertiary stat into CHA probably so you don't tank all the typical rogue skill choices and maybe have an option to use a power or two with riders on them but really it isn't going to be a big deal.
I mean I don't the guy's character concept fully, but it seems pretty viable. Beyond that you'd have to look to other classes, TBF ranger in particular can be easily skinned as a dual-wielding roguish type pretty easily, though you're no more likely to want to pump up his INT (well, at least it doesn't overlap with DEX for defenses and you really don't need much of that if you're pure melee). A sneaky warlord might even be interesting.