When are rogues "really" necessary anymore? if at all...

[ha-gieden]

Maybe it's just us, but we tend not to hand out potions as if they were soda pops, and you can't just head downtown to "Ye olde magic shoppe" when you need a wand or vorpal sword. Magical items are a bit hard to find in our games, so Rogues would have a harder time going it alone.

But does it matter?

We usually build our characters around concepts that we like, with utter disregard for what anyone else is going to play. We end up with parties that have no healer, or consist of all mages, or lack offensive capability...and it doesn't matter. We have fun. The challenges add to that.

On the other hand...

You can use a fighter template to build yourself a character who's really quite a coward. Your Druid may function similarly to a Rogue because, personality wise, they are quite deviant. Characters are far more than templates. I think the real question here was "Is the Rogue *template* necessary?" I agree that no template is absolutely necessary, but I also understand that the rogue's abilities don't seem balanced against those of the other classes.

I guess it all comes down to a question of whether the rogue template's flexibility makes up for its lack of strength in a given area. That's a player's call, not a DM's.

So we keep the Rogue.

That would be my opinion, anyway

 

[Ace]

Rogues are plain fun to play but they aren't "needed" if you use the builder books

If you want a trap springer there are tons of options out there. Ninja, Scout, Spell Thief, Variant Ranger

If you want a skill monkey -- plenty of those

Sneak attack machine? Overrated at high level.

Just for fun IMO the ultimate scout/trap monkey is

a tweaked Ranger using UA and Dungeonscape . Go Barbarian 2/ Ranger X

a Half Orc with decent stats using the drop styles for move and Wildshape option, the familiar option (from Dungeonscape) and the drop tracking/fast tracking for Trapsense and disable device. You need a good INT (12 is fine) to pull it off but what you get is a guy who can move 50 feet, turn into animals, has a familiar (I like Raven as it can warn the rest of the party) -- Track (for the cost of a feat) find traps fight with martial weapons and see in the dark.

feats are

Track
PB Shot
Precise Shot
whatever else you think you want

 

[painandgreed]

Not in my experience. Yours?

That was our campaign last year. Evertbody made up characters and at the end, there were no spell casters and besides a bit off fear, they weren't really ever missed. It did cost a bit of money, but money is there to spend. Most of the resources didn't really go that quickly and we never even ran out of charges on any of the wands we got from enemies. Most utility spells such as 'neutralize *something*' were taken care of by the potions I had bought for my character alone, for 'just in case' situations. Although for full disclosure, it was a Savage Species campaign and there were several at least two characters with spell like abilities (although no offensive or healing).

Really, you can do away with about any character class in a party I think. Although I suspect that with proper 'rules mastery' a fighter can do their job better than other classes, none of the people I play with really have shown it and fighters can and have been replaced by clerics for better effect. With two clerics one plays tank while the other plays divine caster and when the tank runs out of hit points or the caster runs out of spells, they switch. With careful attention to feats and skills, you can probably do without two class roles in any party. Going with a single class role party would be a little hard but still doable with the occational inpass.