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View Full Version : [3.5] A different core rogue build - "Robin Hood"



Sir Giacomo
2009-03-16, 04:12 PM
Hi everyone,

I've been toying for some time with an idea to create a (core) rogue who is not entirely dependent on sneaks in combat, and who will be fully fledged with his tactics well within the "sweet spot" of adventuring, i.e. around lvl 3-12.

Feel free to add comments and ideas!
Coming to think about it, it's unlikely this idea hasn't been tried somewhere before, I guess, but my cursory google search did not come up with anything...
EDIT: as pointed out by Eldariel, Snow Savant on gleemax came up a year ago with the principle first (http://forums.gleemax.com/showthread.php?t=297776). Some differences to this build:
- Robin Hood is core and achieves the necessary skill level with a lower starting DEX than Snow Savant's build
- Robin Hood steals and gives to the floor, instead of stealing and possibly giving to the poor, using quickdraw to store the stolen stuff into his bag of holding (necessitating a house rule)
- Robin Hood focuses on the overall combat tactics to relieve an opponent of his stuff, including disarm (and possibly sunder later).EDIT END

...anyhow...


Robin Hood

"Take from the rich, and give to the floor":smallbiggrin:

Parameters: Core rules, 28pt-buy, DMG recommendation of wbl, with 1/4 of the wbl going to single items.

The build idea: level 10 human rogue

Stats: STR 10, DEX 22 (4 enhance, 2 stat gain), CON 14, INT 14, WIS 8, CHR 12
stat gains for DEX (lvl 4, lvl 8).
FEATS: Skill Focus/Sleight of Hand, Deft Hands, Weapon Finesse, Expertise, Improved Disarm.
SKILLS: max sleight of hand, UMD, spot, listen, hide, move silently, bluff, tumble. Rest as needed/personal tastes.
WEAPONS: shortbow, spiked chain (untrained), shortsword.
ITEMS OF NOTE: masterwork items for sleight of hand and UMD, circlet of persuasion, wands of heroism and cat's grace, boots of speed, rod of lesser extend, +2 spiked chain. Rest as needed/personal tastes.
ROGUE SPECIAL ABILITY: Skill Mastery at 10th level.


The most important thing to know is that the total sleight of hand bonus of this rogue will be
13 ranks + 3 skill focus +2 deft hands bonus + 2 masterwork item bonus + 2 moral (heroism), +6 DEX (stat and cat's grace), +2 synergy from bluff for +30. With skill mastery, this rogue can take 10 for a total result of 40.

Now, the sleight of hand skill description says that (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/skills/sleightOfHand.htm)
1) you can with a DC 20 lift small items of creatures and
2) you can take -20 penalty to turn this into a free action.

The Strategy
Basically, this rogue buffs up with his wands (heroism lasting 80 minutes with the extend rod), strikes from hiding, activates haste from boots, moving up to 60ft in partial charge close to the opponent (possibly in the suprise round).
Then, he attempts to disarm the opponent at +7BAB/+6DEX/+2enhance/+2morale/+4disarm/+6spikedchain/+1 haste/+2charge/-4non-proficient for a total of +26.
If the opponent is not yet disarmed, the rogue could try to win the initiative, but it is best to just risk the AoO from stealing (likely only one since not many opponents have combat reflexes) and, with a couple of dozen free actions just takes all small items away.
There is even the possibility to do some kind of "spring attack" since you can steal everything from the opponent when you just move past him, since it only takes free actions to do so. Tumbling avoids the AoO from movement.
Small items encompass most items from medium-sized opponents (excepting large weapons carried) and means that probably all but armour is taken from the opponent.
These items are then just left on the floor.
Result: opponent is completely debuffed of items, possibly weaponless. "Robin Hood" in this case indeed takes from the rich...but just leaves the items on the floor, necessitating move actions and AoO to pick up again (and he can just drop his loot behind himself, or 2 squares away from the opponent).
In case the opponent is still flat-footed, Robin hood now could on winning the initiative do a full attack for 3x sneaks (+7 BAB, haste).

Expansion ideas
- At higher levels, Robin Hood can make use power attack and sunder to even get rid of opponent armour. Also, spiked chain proficiency would further boost the already high disarm check.:smallwink:
- For true "Robin Hood" feel and getting composite longbows, you could just grab a bracer of archery, multiclass into a martial class or be an elf (albeit with the coveted 40 check delayed, and/or some feat problems).
- Robin Hood is a great teamplayer: he can debuff protective items (for better party wizard attacks, or Power attacking martial characters), get rid of a ring of freedom of movement (for the party grapplers), take the most precious artefacts from the equipment of the BBEG etc.
- Against monsters, items on the monsters can also be stolen and dropped (there goes that dragon's ring of counterspelling...). The higher the skill bonus rises, the more likely that nobody will even notice Robin Hood robbing them naked - that is, until it is too late...
- otherwise, just use the regular rogue tactics vs monsters (sneak, ranged attack).
- at very high levels, Robin Hood can also make use of the fact that sleight of hands checks count as a perform check, and he can turn a friendly audience into fanatic followers with a DC of 60.

EDIT: 2 more notes:
1. You can also do all this with a bard, thanks to the good bard buffing spells and sleight of hand class skill. Lacking skill mastery, a bard could reach the crucial +39 to the skill possibly only by level 12 or so, though.
2. It is somewhat open whether you can really use sleight of hand to get all the items instead of having to use disarm. In my interpretation, disarm to get an item from someone is an ALTERNATIVE, but not replacing sleight of hand in this respect. So you can get rings worn by someone with a sleight of hand, and also items fixed on the opponent's equipment (the activity is often called "cutpurse" with some reason...)EDIT END.

- Giacomo

Flickerdart
2009-03-16, 04:44 PM
Except it's useless against opponents that have Locked Gauntlets, higher BAB and STR, bigger weapons, or are monsters. Simply not very many CR10 enemies are dependent on gear.

The image of two of these guys facing off is hilarious though.

PrismaticPIA
2009-03-16, 05:11 PM
Homebrew this into a prestige class.

Possible features:

Robb'em blind-
"Yes I'm happy to see you"- cod piece storage
Anything with an arrow-
Patriot Arrow-

DownwardSpiral
2009-03-16, 05:25 PM
"Unique" rogue build.



Well, this will be interesting.

Starbuck_II
2009-03-16, 05:44 PM
Hi everyone,

Basically, this rogue buffs up with his wands (heroism lasting 80 minutes with the extend rod),


Um, you can't affect the use a wand with metamagic unless you have the feat that allows that.
A Rod of extend won't help.

Sir Giacomo
2009-03-16, 06:11 PM
Except it's useless against opponents that have Locked Gauntlets, higher BAB and STR, bigger weapons, or are monsters. Simply not very many CR10 enemies are dependent on gear.

The image of two of these guys facing off is hilarious though.

Locked gauntlets: quite rare
higherBAB/STR/bigger weapons: I guess vs +26 it's a bit hard even for a full BAB class to get a higher mod without the improved disarm feat. There are no bigger weapons tha na two-handed one (and Robin Hood can also get enlarge; but watch out for the DEX penalty -wait until lvl 11 for that...)
And monsters? Well, as I said, the full usual rogue tactics are available against those on top.

But true, two Robin Hoods stealing from each other would be hilarious - the one going first likely wins, as he lifts the masterwork item off the other one first...:smallbiggrin:

- Giacomo

Sir Giacomo
2009-03-16, 06:16 PM
Um, you can't affect the use a wand with metamagic unless you have the feat that allows that.
A Rod of extend won't help.

Hm. The SRD says: Possession of a metamagic rod does not confer the associated feat on the owner, only the ability to use the given feat a specified number of times per day

Would you interpret that as the item to be usuable only by someone with the feat, or that this item simply does not mean you have the feat, only that you can use said feat x times/day? Is there a non-core rule update on this?

- Giacomo

Eldariel
2009-03-16, 06:33 PM
Hm. The SRD says: Possession of a metamagic rod does not confer the associated feat on the owner, only the ability to use the given feat a specified number of times per day

Would you interpret that as the item to be usuable only by someone with the feat, or that this item simply does not mean you have the feat, only that you can use said feat x times/day? Is there a non-core rule update on this?

- Giacomo

He means you need a feat (actually a class feature; Artificer and Incantatrix both have it, making them the best wand users by far - it's called "Metamagic Spell Trigger") to be able to apply metamagic to spell trigger items (such as Wands).

The Glyphstone
2009-03-16, 06:54 PM
You can't SoH something that's being worn by a target, as that falls under the rules for Grabbing Items via the Disarm action (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/combat/specialAttacks.htm#disarm). This build will be able to swipe everything they've got in their pockets, from metamagic rods to wands to spell component pouches to coins, but it can't get the ring on their finger or the cloak on their back, as both require the Disarm action, and the ring can't even be disarmed unless you pin them first.

Starbuck_II
2009-03-16, 06:56 PM
Would you interpret that as the item to be usuable only by someone with the feat, or that this item simply does not mean you have the feat, only that you can use said feat x times/day? Is there a non-core rule update on this?

- Giacomo

What Eldariel said.

I thought Metamagic spell trigger was a feat, but I guess it is class based. Wouldn't be a bad feat though.

ChaosDefender24
2009-03-16, 07:01 PM
I don't have the link to it, but Snow Savant already did a build involving this trick.

Props to you, sir giacomo, if you came up with this on your own, because that means that this time you thought like an optimization legend...

Flickerdart
2009-03-16, 07:07 PM
You can't SoH something that's being worn by a target, as that falls under the rules for Grabbing Items via the Disarm action (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/combat/specialAttacks.htm#disarm). This build will be able to swipe everything they've got in their pockets, from metamagic rods to wands to spell component pouches to coins, but it can't get the ring on their finger or the cloak on their back, as both require the Disarm action, and the ring can't even be disarmed unless you pin them first.
But you can steal their Eversmoking Bottle, an overpowered item around which many builds are based. And their partially charged wands.

tyckspoon
2009-03-16, 07:17 PM
What Eldariel said.

I thought Metamagic spell trigger was a feat, but I guess it is class based. Wouldn't be a bad feat though.

It is available as a feat as well- Metamagic Spell Trigger from Complete Mage, although the requirements are kind of harsh: One other metamagic feat, 15 ranks Spellcraft or Use Magic Device. That's outside the time Giacomo claims this build should hit its stride, as it can only first be used at level 12 thanks to the skill requirement, and it'd require taking an otherwise completely useless additional feat to satisfy the Metamagic Feat requirement (oddly enough, the PHB metamagic feats at least don't require that you have any ability to actually use them in order to take them.) There's also the Metamagic Wandgrip, same book, which effectively lets you use Metamagic Spell Trigger up to 3 times/day. Once you have that ability, you could try to form an argument for activating it with a Rod-based metamagic.. but I'm pretty sure it doesn't work by RAW, as both the feat and the item specify a metamagic you know, and the Metamagic Rods are pretty explicit that using one in no way means that you actually have the particular feat it mimics.

Eldariel
2009-03-16, 07:43 PM
I don't have the link to it, but Snow Savant already did a build involving this trick.

Props to you, sir giacomo, if you came up with this on your own, because that means that this time you thought like an optimization legend...

This (http://forums.gleemax.com/showthread.php?t=297776) is probably the thread you're speaking of. And I must say, Sleight of Hand abuse, while nasty, nasty stuff that might cause your crotch to become severely damaged when used in-game, is just sweet as far as theorethical builds go. Practically there's nothing wrong with the idea itself, but DMs probably want to add some difficulty factor to the whole works.

ericgrau
2009-03-17, 10:29 AM
Disarm applies to objects both worn and held by a target. You use sleight of hand to "lift" objects (or "pick pocket" in 3e), which sounds more like an out of combat pick pocket to me. As does "sleight of hand" for that matter"; it's sneaky finesse not grabby grabby. I couldn't find a definitive WotC answer on this, but what I did find showed disarm being used in combat and sleight of hand being used outside of combat. Plus sticking your hands into someone's pockets while fighting him sounds iffy at best.

In the linked thread I also found an example of sleight of hand used like this getting quickly out of hand:
http://forums.gleemax.com/showpost.php?p=4259728&postcount=40
Even if you think it's legal you'll quickly have to deal with the wrath of the DM anyway, like Eldariel mentioned.

You can grab an object instead of forcing it onto the ground by using an unarmed disarm attack, though that makes your net disarm modifier 10 points lower. You can use a ranseur instead of a spiked chain and you'll only need martial weapon proficiency instead of exotic.

Sir Giacomo
2009-03-21, 06:00 AM
Hi everyone,

thanks for the feedback - sorry I had been too buy in real life for an update and reaction here.

True, snow savant over at the WoTC boards first came up with that idea - I'll adjust my post above accordingly (I just had that hunch I had seen the idea somewhere, thanks for the link, Eldariel).

Having said that, my build idea is a combat variant of the other build's idea to simply steal stuff:
- the problem was that snow savant based her idea on a houserule for the quickdraw feat (which was acknowledged by her and discussed intensely). My build meant to debuff mainly just uses other free actions (dropping items).
- she did not take the idea to the combat conclusion as I did, in that I highlighted the good combination with disarm strategy (to avoid AoO and get the items held by the opponent). Similarly, she did not consider sunder to round out the build for high levels to also get at armour and medium-sized clothing (items)
- finally, I presented a core build instead of here (in part) non-core-dependent items.
- but definitely - the original idea definitely goes to her!

Now on to some of the other subjects:
- pls Flickerdart, if you wish to comment on my eversmoking bottle tactics, do so in a different thread (or start one).
- the disarm tactics can actually be done to ALSO get items off the opponent, but the way the sleight of hand is written, nothing should prevent a character from lifting everything of small and smaller size off an opponent that he does not hold in his hands (which disarming is for). Now, as a DM, truth to tell, I'd also consider not allowing sleight of hand used like this, in particular simply going by simple RAW would also lead to the problem that you cannot lift any money off someone (because coins are tiny/fine objects, not small objects!). But it could be some nice new way for rogue combat strategy, so why not?
- In my view, when staying within the core rules there is nothing that prevents a non-caster from using metamagic rods to affect the spells they cast from wands, rings or scrolls (like with an extending rod). But again, rules updates may trump that, and other DMs may not like it.

- Giacomo

Adumbration
2009-03-21, 06:41 AM
You can also use Sleight of Hand in conjunction with Quick Draw to shove stuff into their pockets. Good examples include Delayed Blast Fireballs, Elemental Lodestones, badgers and cursed items.

pjwaring
2009-03-21, 12:20 PM
You can also use Sleight of Hand in conjunction with Quick Draw to shove stuff into their pockets. Good examples include Delayed Blast Fireballs, Elemental Lodestones, badgers and cursed items.

Heh, the ole' Shady Sands Shuffle. Always fun.

Three things:

1) What masterwork item improves your sleight of hand for stealing? I could understand having, like, masterwork juggling balls for using as perform, but I was under the impression that stealing objects doesn't require any equipment other than your fingers.

2) This is more up to your DM but your whole build is based on the idea of using dozens of free actions. While there is no technical limit to how many free actions you do in a round, the PH does give some restrictions on how many of the same type of free action you can do per round. For example, speaking is a free action and you can generally get one sentence or so out. That does not mean you can use dozen of speak free actions to recite a whole essay in six seconds. If I were DMing, I'd definitely limit the number of steals, depending on the size and location of what was being looted.

3) The SRD (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/epic/skills.htm#sleightOfHand) specifically mentions lifting sheathed weapons.

"DC 50 Lift a sheathed weapon from another creature and hide it on the character’s person, if the weapon is no more than one size category larger than the character’s own size."

Draz74
2009-03-21, 12:35 PM
You can also use Sleight of Hand in conjunction with Quick Draw to shove stuff into their underwear. Good examples include Delayed Blast Fireballs, Elemental Lodestones, badgers, wolverines, or weasels (or dire versions thereof) and cursed items.

Fixed that for you. :smallbiggrin:

Sir Giacomo
2009-03-21, 01:25 PM
Ha! Good one, Adumbration...:smallbiggrin: I wonder what the DC would be...



Three things:

1) What masterwork item improves your sleight of hand for stealing? I could understand having, like, masterwork juggling balls for using as perform, but I was under the impression that stealing objects doesn't require any equipment other than your fingers.

Hmmm - I guess some sort of glove or stripes on your hand that are somehow adhesive (glue or electric effects). The system assumes that there is somehow a masterwork item for all skills to provide a circumstance bonus. There are probably skills that have more difficult MW items to imagine than sleight of hand boosters, I guess.



2) This is more up to your DM but your whole build is based on the idea of using dozens of free actions. While there is no technical limit to how many free actions you do in a round, the PH does give some restrictions on how many of the same type of free action you can do per round. For example, speaking is a free action and you can generally get one sentence or so out. That does not mean you can use dozen of speak free actions to recite a whole essay in six seconds. If I were DMing, I'd definitely limit the number of steals, depending on the size and location of what was being looted.

Well said! PHB p. 144 also cautions that the DM may límit the number of free actions. Still...-20 is an extremely high penalty (like pinpointing an invisible person), something nigh impossible. And for this kind of heroic category, it is not inconceivable that within 6 seconds, as a true masterthief you can strip your opponent of his two rings, amulet, belt, vest, backpack and sheathed sword, as well as his crossbow quiver plus crossbow on this back (9 items). Location does not matter, since you can simply steal and drop any items that are layered above a certain item (say, an amulet behind your vest).



3) The SRD (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/epic/skills.htm#sleightOfHand) specifically mentions lifting sheathed weapons.

"DC 50 Lift a sheathed weapon from another creature and hide it on the character’s person, if the weapon is no more than one size category larger than the character’s own size."

Yes, DC 50 is a worthy DC for not only lifting a sheathed weapon, but then also hide it on the character's person. That is really tough to pull all in one maneuver.

- Giacomo

ericgrau
2009-03-21, 01:34 PM
Similarly, she did not consider sunder to round out the build for high levels to also get at armour and medium-sized clothing (items)

The sunder rules say you can't sunder armor. Other than that it seems like all the other issues have been properly addressed so I won't say anything else on them.

This is a bit of a tangent, but personally I still don't think using a MW tool for everything is proper. It represents having a circumstance bonus from having just the right tool for the job. I.e., ideal circumstances. For sleight of hand I'd call that a crowded street, not any gadget that I've never heard of thieves using. For knowledge that might represent access to an entire reference library (and time spent hunting through it). For tumble I'd want a springboard floor. Etc. And last I checked I haven't heard of master thieves or gymnasts or etc. using anything else. Not everything is a 50gp tool you can carry in your pocket. Even some of the listed "tools" like an alchemist's lab don't follow that pattern. This seems to me like an area where tweaking and roleplaying come at odds to eachother, and roleplaying should win.

Vexxation
2009-03-21, 01:54 PM
Ah, but what happens when Robin Hood meets Vow of Poverty Druid?

Robin dies, that's what.

All in all, an interesting concept, but if I had to nitpick any one thing...


And for this kind of heroic category, it is not inconceivable that within 6 seconds, as a true masterthief you can strip your opponent of his two rings, amulet, belt, vest, backpack and sheathed sword, as well as his crossbow quiver plus crossbow on this back (9 items).

It's very hard to imagine stripping your opponent of 9 items in six seconds. I'm not saying it cannot be done, but... well... it's just hard to believe.

Then again, this is fantasy, so screw it.