Legend & Lore: Rogue Design Goals

I guess according to Twitter it was supposed to be the wizard’s turn to show off her design goals, but the rogue *ahem* stole the spotlight.

Ultimately the design goals can be condensed into two key points: rogues do not fight fair, and they are skilled. So, very, very skilled.

The first part I have no problem with, and has basically always been there from the start. In older editions I guess thieves had to work a bit more in order to get their backstab off, but it was probably relatively cooler given that ability scores did not do much to affect melee attack and damage output.

In other words, landing one big attack without much of a risk of getting caught was better than trying to go toe-to-claw with a big monster.

This was made easier to pull of in 3rd and 4th Edition, as all you really needed was to flank a monster. 3rd Edition made it a bit riskier, partly because there were plenty of monster types that were immune to critical hits (and therefore sneak attacks), but mostly because there was no way for a fighter to actually defend you from a monster should it decide to turn its attention to you.

4th Edition reduced the damage quite a bit, but opened up the floodgate on what was fair game, and with fighter-types being actually able to keep monsters off of you, it was easier to get into the fray without much fear of retribution…not that rogues did not have tricks of their own to get away when that happened.

From the sounds of things it looks like rogues are somewhat receding back to 3rd Edition, with a more rapidly scaling sneak attack an emphasis on waiting for an opportune moment. I would like to see 4th Edition’s flexibility maintained, so that players can make a thief-type, swashbuckler-type, or even a street thug-type depending on their tastes.

As for skills, they will apparently be able to reach a higher degree of mastery than other classes in a given skill. Since the statement lacks a qualifier for either skills or classes, I take this to mean that if they want to be better at Arcana than a wizard, or know more about Religion than a cleric, they can.

This mastery extends to them performing feats that while not technically magical, certainly seem so. The only magical-ish think mentioned was slipping through shadows, the idea that a rogue could spin a lie so complex that even magic would be hard-pressed to unravel is pretty appealing. To top it off, the article states that they will be able to do so without “much exertion”, and that “luck and chance play no role in determining success”.

On one hand I can kind of see where they are coming from, as back when rogues were called thieves they were one of two classes that had more than a handful of skills. As editions progressed they became one of the classes that got the most skill points or trained skill choices. In order words there is a reason why they are commonly labeled the “skill-monkey”.

On the other hand–if the article is to be believed–I do not particularly like the idea of a rogue being able to transcend any class in any skill they choose. Lots of stuff I do not have a problem with, but I think that wizards should be head of the class at wizard-type skills like Arcana, extraplanar knowledge, alchemy, etc, and that rangers and druids should be the best at nature and what-have-you.

Ultimately I am curious to see how both goals play out, though I am a bit wary of the latter. But, hey, that is what a playtest is for.

The Vampire "Class"

So, there’s going to be a vampire class in Heroes of Shadow. This isn’t the first time WotC tried to make a class-based progression to simulate the full potential of a monstrous creature. Like Level Adjustment before it, most of the book was a let down as most of the monstrous classes sucked if you didn’t take the “right” class (ie, stuff without level-based progressions), and many more sucked no matter what you did because by the rules you were supposed to take all the monster levels before multiclassing out.

For example, let’s say you wanted to play a mind flayer psion, because it makes sense. The mind flayer class was 15 levels, meaning that by the time you got into psion, everyone else was level 16. Imagine a barbarian picking up a level of sorcerer at level 16 and trying to zap devils with magic missiles. Now imagine that barbarian without a greataxe, rage, or damage resistance, instead flailing ineffectually with tentacles doling out 1d4 damage (plus Strength modifier…woo fucking woo).

Yeah, the class gets other abilities like mind blast, but the shitty thing is that it was based off your Hit Dice, which presented another problem with monstrous classes: you didn’t always get a Hit Die when you leveled. A level 15 mind flayer only had eight. This meant that your hit points, attack bonus, skill points, and saves were abysmally stunted in comparison to your companions, making you even more of a liability than low-level wizards. It’s a good thing you get plane shift at level 12, assuming you live that long.

As for vampires, there’s a lot of speculation going on in the forums (you just have to pick through vampire jokes and idiots who don’t understand how the executioner class works). Some people think that it should have been a race, others a bloodline tree, and still others a theme. Revenants are cool, but even with feat support lack the sort of supernatural powers that I expect out of a vampire, and dhampyr bloodline feats further illustrate that they’re just not enough, especially when you’re trying to juggle an actual class at the same time. A theme is more of what I’m expecting, but not all DM’s own Dark Sun material (or even allow themes if they do), so I’m not expecting WotC to start allowing one player to pick up a vampire theme while other players have to deal.

Me? I’m banking on an Essentials model because it allows them to dole out racial features at set levels, while giving you a bit to customize. This way they could deliver a core “vampire” structure, but still allow you to specialize in shapeshifting, charms, calling animals, or whatever, in a similar vein to Vampire: The Masquerade (except that you can actually use your vampiric powers). Despite their past experimentations, I’m very optimistic about their second attempt because if anything, WotC has done a remarkable job of taking races and classes that I hate, and reinventing them into something entertaining: clerics, bards, druids, and psions are all classes that I hated in earlier editions, but actually enjoy now.

Assassin Class and Assassin Feats

Awhile back, we got an assortment of assassin stuff in a Dragon article. It provided some thematic backgrounds, a shitload of feats, a few paragon paths, and a handful of tools like the garotte wire, blowgun, and crowbar.

Most of the feats were Multiclass feats that made you really badass with the new weapons, or let you swap out powers for some more assassin-type ones. Others were more generic feats that made you better with poison, or other thematic things (like teleport after killing something, for eladrin). Basically, the entire article was about giving expressly non-assassins some assassin love. It wasnt a complete class, but more along the lines of in-depth multiclassing features like we see in Martial Power, where you can take lots of feats to gain class features from existing classes.

Since the new article is about an entire class, I expect to see…well…an entire fucking class. Not an assortment of feats that lets you dip into the concept, but a class that embraces it in its entirety. More than just being alright with a garotte wire, or being resistant to poisons. This whole setup doesnt bug me at all. I like being able to add a bit of assassin flavor to any class I feel like, but if I want to go the distance I can just play the real deal. Its a degree of flexiblity that can help out a character concept.