Why do players like rogues/thieves?

[Yora]

You also have rangers on 4th place in the poll, which are also highly versatile.

 

[SensoryThought]

I think the roleplaying side of the scoundrel appeals to a lot of gamers, myself included.

The rogue has evolved in both CRPGs and tabletop to encompass a light armor wearing fighter who uses speed, deftness, cunning, and acrobatics to win out. In contrast the classical fighter is associated with strength, big weapons, and heavy armor. In essence both are actually different styles of fighter or martial warrior.

This is quite different from the Tolkien-esk Bilbo 'thief' with stealth and little combat ability that was the basis of the OD&D thief.

 

[Yora]

Fighter and Rogue can be whatever you want them to be. And fighter happens to be the third most popular class in the poll.

In another poll about the least favorite classes, rougue, ranger, and fighter come out best as well.

 

[Minigiant]

Since I am a "All PCs are adventurers and All Adventurers are good at killing stuff or surviving battles" guy, I am pro sneak attack.

I think people play rogues (and other rogue like classes like bards, assassins, monks, and later versions or ranger) because the the many varying backgrounds you can easily place on them.

 

[delericho]

I think that roleplaying is an important component of choice too.
If you must choose between Luke Skywalker and Han Solo...

You also have rangers on 4th place in the poll, which are also highly versatile.

Yep. Rogues are Han Solo, and Rangers are Batman.

 

[grimslade]

I play rogues because they are versatile. Need a scout? Send the rogue. Need that sequence of locked doors open? Rogue. A face for the local syndicate? Rogue. Mook slayer? Rogue. Combat going bad and you need to retreat? The rogue will come back for your corpse to raise or at least get your loot.
There is also the role play range of a rogue. Kleptomaniacal kender, soulless slayer, tenacious thief taker, or lawful locksmith are all within the rogues forte. They are a utility class with a combat punch. What's not to love?

 

[Kaodi]

In 3.X/Pathfinder games, I think the fact that the number of skill points you get is tied to intelligence might be a factor in preferring intelligence based casters, and exerts additional upward pressure to maximize that ability.

 

[KesselZero]

This kinda relates to a point that came up in the thread about "What is a Rogue?" I loved rogues and always played them in 2e, but stopped dead with 3e and 4e. This isn't nearly as true for 3e, but I found that it started a trend of focusing more on the rogue's combat abilities (probably as codified in changing Backstab to Sneak Attack, thus making it usable in combat and making it a much more key part of the rogue's power set). It felt (to me at least) like it took away from the rogue's do-everything feel and replaced it with a focus on combat abilities; this was really codified in 4e by making the rogue a striker, with the assumption that his main job was to do Sneak Attack damage every round (like a ranger's Hunter's Quarry) and the support of giving him eight hundred ways to get combat advantage. And making the rogue into a guy whose job was to do more damage than a fighter, in a slightly different way, just didn't really appeal to me any more.

 

[Grazzt]

1e thief was one of my favorite classes. They could do a lot of things fighters couldn't (or could do things better than other classes could: move silently, find traps, pick locks, etc.). It was just a lot of fun being the guy that quietly sneaked up on the opponent and backstabbed him before he even knew what happened, attempting to remove the poison needle trap from the treasure chest after the fighters and spellcasters mopped the floor with the monsters, going on adventures that required stealth and trickery like trying to steal the massive gemstone from the merchant's quarters or whatever.

 

[Crazy Jerome]

Other views? And what (if anything) does this suggest about class design for D&Dnext?

It suggests to me that there should be no skill monkeys. Alternately, if there are skill monkeys, they should not be some extreme compared to everyone else and/or get their skill monkey capability from something besides raw skill picks.

I suspect in the 3E framework, if we had been looking at something like a range of 4 to 6 skill points per class (fighters get 4, rangers get 5, rogues get 6), that we would have still seen a preference, but not nearly so severe. Or better yet, a range of 6 to 8. The problem with the 2 skill points is not only that it is a quarter of 8, but that 2 is too small a number to start with. The bigger the base number, the less it matters if a skill monkey gets a bit more.