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Message: <blockquote data-quote="KidSnide" data-source="post: 4291299" data-attributes="member: 54710">Regarding encounters, I was contesting Ozzie's assertion that there is good cover in short range 99% of the time and there are never that many soldiers.  A 2 brute, 2 artillery, 4 minion encounter is very well suited to the hide-and-snipe strategy, provided that your defenders are holding down the brutes and not closing with the artillery.  A 4 soldiers/brutes, 1 artillery/controller encounter is going to make it very hard for your defender(s) to prevent soldiers or brutes from closing with your party's rear.  Regarding magic items distribution, Ozzier asserted that it was easy to always have a ranged weapon that is as good as your melee weapon.  That's true if you're a dagger rogue (in which case that range 5 can make life hard sometimes), but if you want to use a rapier, you're going to need a second ranged weapon.  Unless you have a very generous DM, having two good level-appropriate weapons is going to come at the cost of the armor or neck slot.Well, the dagger vs. hand crossbow isn't nearly so clear cut, since a dagger gives +3 proficiency (instead of +2 for the hand crossbox) and the rogue gets an extra +1 on top of that.  So, you are giving up +2 to hit so you can bump the 1d4 to a 1d6.  Of course, if you're using a dagger, you only have a range of 5/10.  In my KotS combats, the relevant melee was often more than 5 squares away from the best cover.  And, of course, you can't throw a rapier.Also, IME, the defenders tend to go down pretty fast if they are taking all of the monster's attacks.  You can have a sniper rogue that was never meant to be in melee, but it's not like those attacks that otherwise would go against the melee-rogue just evaporate into nothingness.   Also, I'm not convinced that a sniper rogue is unbalanced in comparison to an archer-ranger, particularly because a sniper build requires you to exclusive choose from the limited set of melee/ranged powers.  Ozzie notes that those powers do as much damage as the melee-only powers, but many of the best rider effects are in melee-only powers.That all having been said, it is certainly strange that Sly Flourish works when the target is unaware of you and that Brutal Scoundrel works with a dex-based missile weapon.  And, obviously, rolling 24 d20s per round to resolves stealth is unacceptable.  However, the rules do not lead me to conclude that any sane rogue would spend all of his time sniping from the bushes.  Maybe the strategy is too good?  But it is hardly without its tradeoffs.</blockquote>

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