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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Kobold Stew" data-source="post: 6044745" data-attributes="member: 23484">The latest playtest has hobbled the rogue in a number of significant ways. Sure, I get that they want to test maneuvers, but after a noodle and a sample combat tonight, a few things emerged that make this incarnation of the rogue significantly inferior to that in previous testpacks. 1. Abilities lost. Thieves Cant and Knack are gone, with no replacement. Ugh.2. Class features lost. In the last incarnation, the scheme that you chose gave you a number of class features – unique feat-like abilities that were distinct abilities for the rogue. Maneuvers are not a balance for this. In exchange for skill mastery and sneak attack, you get expertise dice that allow you to replicate skill mastery. And maneuvers, so close to the fighter’s choices, do not allow the distinctiveness of the rouge to shine through, or to match the fighter or to have that moment of shining that backstabbing gave back in the early editions. Ugh. (This problem has been noted in other threads.)3. Scheme choice weakened. The latest pack offers more schemes, but for me they do not have the same richness as the first two. Part of it was the simple choice of favouring dex (thief) vs favouring strength (thug). I understood that choice. Now there are schemes that favour dex (acrobat, thief) or dex and charisma (enforcer, rake, trickster). Gone is the strength-rogue, and absent is the straight Charisma rogue, or the possibility of an intelligence or even a constitution rogue. There are three extra schemes but less diversity based on stats -- the difference is only in the specific skills in which one is trained (which with custom schemes are variavle anyways). You may now make up your own (with DM’s permission, sure), but as written there is more choice, but less diversity. Ugh.4. Thieves’ tools meaningless. Rogues are proficient with a piece of equipment that is necessary to use the skill disable device, but only one of the five schemes gives disable device. Am I missing something here? This means that if you want to use this benefit for 4 of the 5 rogue options, you need to take the guild thief background (or invent your own, assuming your DM lets you). The richness and skill choice offered by the backgrounds is therefore LIMITED for the character that is supposed to be most adaptable and skill savvy. And, what's more, if you take the guild thief background and are not a rogue, you are unable to use one of the skills in which you are trained in most of the circumstances in which you would want to use it. Triple Ugh.All these found were before we even got to combat. We made fifth-level characters, and once the fights started, the rogue survived (as did the other PC, a cleric) but it offered less variation over the few rounds than we felt we possessed in previous playtests. Combat actually revealed less about the system than we saw building characters. Sure, I imagine a higher hit die makes more sense, but that too has already been noted on these boards.The previous playtest offered great imaginative possibilities to the rogue -- many different ways it could be built that would lead to exciting, dynamic characters, even if they weren't all geared for exciting combat possibilities. That choice now feels like it is gone. Even though there are more schemes available, there is less of a sense of variation, and there is the sense that you are deliberately spiting yourself if you don’t make your rogue a thief in background or scheme. Sure custom builds remain possible, but I expect they can be easily broken. More choice actually leads to less variation: all rogues are now primarily dex-builds. The whole thing seems like such a wasted opportunity.(EDIT: One more thing. Making the skill list bigger decreases the overall power of the Rogue's main schtick.)</blockquote>

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