Rogue / Assassin megatopic

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Sfoxwood
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Re: Rogue / Assassin megatopic

Post by Sfoxwood » Wed Oct 04, 2017 12:25 am

Maybe sonething using spell like abilities to mimic the feat from 3.5. I think it was lesser and greater arcane or something. I only ever made one rogue and he didnt have it.

CoastalSurf
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Re: Rogue / Assassin megatopic

Post by CoastalSurf » Wed Oct 04, 2017 2:47 am

I honestly don't think the way to "fix" rogues and assassins is to create a new path. All classes and builds IMO should have their benefits and detriments depending on investment. Sure, a spell-thief would be cool but "The Team" seems (again IMO) to be working towards a larger scale idea of benefits vs counters with classes. Yes , archers, rogues, and assassins are likely currently bottom of the barrel interest wise but I would absolutely hate to see a spell thief before I saw a tweak to the "rogue/assassin" archetype

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Re: Rogue / Assassin megatopic

Post by Astral » Wed Oct 04, 2017 5:17 am

CoastalSurf wrote:I honestly don't think the way to "fix" rogues and assassins is to create a new path.
Because if you tweak the class itself you would risk breaking all the existing characters with rogue lvls. Which is a lot of characters. There are game limitations we need to acknowledge here. In theory every class should be on par as pure built but in reality it's never going to be the case for ALL classes and the game is built for multiclassing. So can you make a path and offer something different on top of what already exists. Sometimes it works alright (for example: Archer path, healer path) sometimes it doesn't (weave masters), but the initial idea of the devs is to create more mechanical options to serve your character theme which is a good idea.
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hoshi
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Re: Rogue / Assassin megatopic

Post by hoshi » Wed Oct 04, 2017 5:38 am

My idea at least wasn't meant as a separate path, but as a buff to all rogues with let's say 2/3s their levels in rogue (like rangers and animal empathy). I gave a bit of detail from maybe a bit too little to a bit too much just to illustrate the breadth of the idea. Personally I'd like to see small buffs across the various thematic elements of rogue as opposed to just buffing them in one area and calling it done.

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Durvayas
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Re: Rogue / Assassin megatopic

Post by Durvayas » Wed Oct 04, 2017 6:43 am

Honestly, the way to buff rogue is to gate Thieves Cant behind a higher level investment(ideally lvl 5 or 6), and give the class buffs starting after 3 levels are invested and scaling the deeper you invest in the class. This way, you make rogues appealing to play, without buffing the 15000 characters with only 3 lvls dipped into the class.

Additionally, you'd make thieves cant useful again, because not every single paladin and every other bob dick and harry will understand it by virtue of dipping.
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Tyrantos
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Re: Rogue / Assassin megatopic

Post by Tyrantos » Thu Oct 05, 2017 4:02 pm

I really just wish that some general love would be given to the Rogue class, to make more people intrested in playing one, rather than just the old master dip that most does.

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Re: Rogue / Assassin megatopic

Post by Wytchee » Thu Oct 05, 2017 4:12 pm

Durvayas wrote:Honestly, the way to buff rogue is to gate Thieves Cant behind a higher level investment(ideally lvl 5 or 6), and give the class buffs starting after 3 levels are invested and scaling the deeper you invest in the class. This way, you make rogues appealing to play, without buffing the 15000 characters with only 3 lvls dipped into the class.

Additionally, you'd make thieves cant useful again, because not every single paladin and every other bob dick and harry will understand it by virtue of dipping.
The whole point of knowing thieves' cant is to speak "secretly" in more or less public areas. The fact that every paladin with 3 rogue levels knows it as well completely defeats the purpose.
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Hunter548
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Re: Rogue / Assassin megatopic

Post by Hunter548 » Thu Oct 05, 2017 4:29 pm

Wytchee wrote:
Durvayas wrote:Honestly, the way to buff rogue is to gate Thieves Cant behind a higher level investment(ideally lvl 5 or 6), and give the class buffs starting after 3 levels are invested and scaling the deeper you invest in the class. This way, you make rogues appealing to play, without buffing the 15000 characters with only 3 lvls dipped into the class.

Additionally, you'd make thieves cant useful again, because not every single paladin and every other bob dick and harry will understand it by virtue of dipping.
The whole point of knowing thieves' cant is to speak "secretly" in more or less public areas. The fact that every paladin with 3 rogue levels knows it as well completely defeats the purpose.
Let's be fair here, everyone in the world knows you're speaking thieves cant when you are, because you start nodding constantly like a loon and your emote style changes completely. My experience as a rogue player for a few months was that you end up needing your own player-made cant anyways.
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andthenthatwasthat
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Re: Rogue / Assassin megatopic

Post by andthenthatwasthat » Sun Oct 08, 2017 1:28 am

Would changing Assassin special abilities to unlimited uses per day with a cooldown help? viewtopic.php?f=15&t=14631

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Re: Rogue / Assassin megatopic

Post by Ebonstar » Sun Oct 08, 2017 1:59 am

well the cant can always just be changed beyond "nods"

could be scratching his nose, covering his mouth, rubbing his ear, brushing his arm, touching his chin stuff like that.

and savvy players will adapt those emotes into their play so you wont know they arent just itching.

I think the biggest thing with cants and even animal or sign for the drow is this. its for swift simple communication, not mind numbing dissertations of why the sky is blue.

think in the movies when you have military forces and they use hand signals, it gets the general idea across. Same for Cant, sign and animal imo.

oh I also agree to stick it to level 5 or 6 and give it to assassins
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Re: Rogue / Assassin megatopic

Post by Nitro » Sun Oct 08, 2017 10:04 am

Ebonstar wrote:well the cant can always just be changed beyond "nods"

could be scratching his nose, covering his mouth, rubbing his ear, brushing his arm, touching his chin stuff like that.

and savvy players will adapt those emotes into their play so you wont know they arent just itching.
It is already like that, it includes several emotes, like:
*Coughs*
*Scratches nose*
*Nods*
*Looks upwards*

And so on. The problem with that is that there's a fairly large amount of people who like to use 3rd person to describe their emotes, for example: *She coughs awkwardly* or *he reaches up to scratch his nose* and so on. Obviously there's a huge difference in how descriptive these emotes are, and changing up your entire way of emoting just to be slightly less noticeable when using thieves cant seems a little unreasonable.

Not to mention how easy it is to spot someone holding a short thieves cant conversation, since it's always a very simple emote from a small list, and if you see two people going *coughs* or *looks upwards* out of the blue it's super obvious they just had a little chat.

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Traitor
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Re: Rogue / Assassin megatopic

Post by Traitor » Sun Oct 08, 2017 12:56 pm

I wish The Can't just let you say something in ANY language. A certain character limit. To everyone who doesn't understand it just looks like a normal sentence, but, actually they said something else. lol

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Re: Rogue / Assassin megatopic

Post by SwampFoot » Sun Oct 08, 2017 3:42 pm

I don't think the emotes are the problem with Cant. It's the fact that 80% of characters eventually know it as soon as they dip rogue. I wouldn't care that people knew I was speaking in Cant as long as they didn't know what was being said. It's currently a useless language.

My suggestion would be to gate it behind a much higher investment in rogue or assassin. 10+ for rogue, higher than 5 (6 or 7?) for assassin. Make it an earned language that comes from dedication to being a rogue/assassin rather than the first level gift it is currently.

Or gate it behind an NPC that checks the level of the character. Once those required levels are achieved the character receives the language.

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Re: Rogue / Assassin megatopic

Post by BrilliantInsanity » Sun Oct 08, 2017 7:08 pm

SwampFoot wrote:I don't think the emotes are the problem with Cant. It's the fact that 80% of characters eventually know it as soon as they dip rogue. I wouldn't care that people knew I was speaking in Cant as long as they didn't know what was being said. It's currently a useless language.

My suggestion would be to gate it behind a much higher investment in rogue or assassin. 10+ for rogue, higher than 5 (6 or 7?) for assassin. Make it an earned language that comes from dedication to being a rogue/assassin rather than the first level gift it is currently.

Or gate it behind an NPC that checks the level of the character. Once those required levels are achieved the character receives the language.
Thieves guild, get! :D

As for other ideas, lacking the ability to Feint is depressing. If a rogue finds themselves in a 1v1 scenario vs a fighter type they're handicapped out of the gate if they didn't dip into SD for HIPS. With the prevalence of UMD dumping and see invisibility wands, it's not even a reliable tactic to fall back on using invis pots to grant you the ability to use one of your classes defining features: sneak attacks.

Feint: Ye olde Bluff vs Concentration [it would be vs sense motive but that doesn't exist] and suddenly, even though they aren't as good of a fighter toe to toe, they could still dish out damage enough to give even the most hardened warriors pause.

Assuming lacking any way to implement this without haks: rogues need a boost to their damage output/ab to mitigate the loss of the this capability.

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Re: Rogue / Assassin megatopic

Post by SwampFoot » Mon Oct 09, 2017 12:45 am

BrilliantInsanity wrote:
Assuming lacking any way to implement this without haks: rogues need a boost to their damage output/ab to mitigate the loss of the this capability.

Giving rogues an ab and damage boost negates the ab and damage boosts some other classes have already gotten.

It's a choice to make a character that is going to make less damage in a straight up fight.

I posted a suggestion here: viewtopic.php?f=15&t=14413

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Re: Rogue / Assassin megatopic

Post by TimeAdept » Mon Oct 09, 2017 1:23 am

Changes to quarter locks and traps will never be relevant as long as you can have DC 127 locks, doors, traps, and trap disable DCs - for good reason, as there should be a certain expectation of persistence, rather than getting marauded by every random high level rogue that walks by.

Beneidalus
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Re: Rogue / Assassin megatopic

Post by Beneidalus » Mon Oct 09, 2017 2:47 am

Love almost all of these suggestions :o

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BrilliantInsanity
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Re: Rogue / Assassin megatopic

Post by BrilliantInsanity » Mon Oct 09, 2017 3:28 am

SwampFoot wrote:
BrilliantInsanity wrote:
Assuming lacking any way to implement this without haks: rogues need a boost to their damage output/ab to mitigate the loss of the this capability.

Giving rogues an ab and damage boost negates the ab and damage boosts some other classes have already gotten.

It's a choice to make a character that is going to make less damage in a straight up fight.

I posted a suggestion here: viewtopic.php?f=15&t=14413
I don't follow your logic that giving a class ab and damage boost negates another classes ab and damage boost. Neither negates the other, also following the logic of your second point, it stands to reason those same classes shouldn't have been given AB or damage buffs either, as it was a choice to make a class, prior to those buffs, that did less damage.

The argument I am making is that, in a solo scenarior, 1v1 what have you, a rogue is just shafted completely out of one of their bread and butter abilities in a fight: sneak attacks. A massive oversight in development of the game was them not being able to Feint (an ability they by all rights SHOULD have), thus opening up their target for the next round to sneak attacks.

I would be all for them being given the Feint ability (again as posted, a Bluff vs Concentration check, since we lack sense motive as a skill). This effect only lasts a round, and as written, likely only for the first attack following, so they get one opportunity to capitalize on it before having to do it again. It's in no way going to overly tip the scales in favor of the rogue but it sure as hell makes the scales slightly less overwhelmingly tipped in favor of the pure fighter.

If this is a function that can't be added in, then they absolutely need buffs to their combat capabilities, otherwise there is literally no reason to ever do anything but dip the minimum level of rogue and move on to the next powerbuild flavor of the decade.

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Re: Rogue / Assassin megatopic

Post by SwampFoot » Mon Oct 09, 2017 3:43 am

SD has HiPS, closest to Feint you're going to see, most likely, and the latter sounds like a perfect way for a rogue/SD to get sneaks at all time by alternating the two.

No one builds a rogue thinking they will be some 1v1 powerhouse. AB/Damage boosts will only tip the balance in the rogues favor. Knockdown is still a thing if you want a pure rogue to have sneaks in a 1v1.

I also think any rogue that's not running off in a 1v1 situation vs a fighter probably needs to get pounded.

Want to put a fighter in his place? Lay traps, taunt the hell out of him, pounce on him when he triggers your traps.

The biggest things rogues have against them is the fact that dip builds use their skills better. That's where they need help.

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Re: Rogue / Assassin megatopic

Post by Arise_Gargantua » Sat Oct 21, 2017 10:39 am

I think that Rogues would benefit from something that reflects their status as Dirty Fighters.

Maybe every few Rogue levels, their special attacks require a higher DISC than normal to resist? So that at Epic rogue levels, your super DISC fighter bard build is still gonna get knocked down or disarmed. Maybe have it so Called Shot does higher penalties at higher rogue levels too.

Problem with those is that they're based on the feats that the rogue takes, of course. Maybe each hit from a Rogue lowers your DISC?
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