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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Ahnehnois" data-source="post: 5776647" data-attributes="member: 17106">I see the difficulty in defining the rogue. Indeed other classes should be able to be stealthy, diplomatic, or clever. I do think there is a need for the rogue though, and not just because it's a classic.Unlike the other basic classes, which are defined by what they can do, rogues I think are really defined by what they can't do. Rogues are not tough. They're not strong. They don't have arcane training. The gods haven't blessed them. Thus, they have to get by in life by coming up with something else. This makes it really difficult to define a rogue class, but the underlying psychological reason for playing it is really distinct and really a classic archetype. The guy who isn't a paragon of anything but just knows how to get stuff done.I like the idea of tying rogues to explosives, alchemy, and poison more strongly, as they are the best suited for it, and those thing are underrepresented un every iteration of the D&D rules I've seen.Contacts and bodyguards and pets I'm split on. These are things that have been done poorly in the past in various ways. They can be metagame-y and unbalanced. I also tend to thing of rogues as working alone, but I do like contacts. Having a little subsystem for contacts that emphasized charisma and gave the rogue an advantage would be nice.I agree that sneak attack/backstab is iconic and I also have trouble imagining a rogue without it. But I also think that an "alternative class feature" for sneak attack would really open up a world of scouts, spies, charlatans. Just the list of PF rogue archetypes is one of the most evocative lists of "class names" I've ever seen. imagine if we could have all of these well-respresented by the rogue mechanics:That, folks, is D&D.</blockquote>

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