Worst class in the entire game.

[kiryoku]

From all the books and dragon mags.

what is hands down the most broken and useless class to use. I hear about the best this and best that all the time or why this class is bad but what is the worst all time class.

[Waker]

Truenamer as presented in ToM.

[Psyren]

Truenamer is still useful if it focuses on buffing and support. Your own DC (and those of your party) will generally always be in reach, at least the first few times/day.

I think Soulknife is worse - they get nothing that WBL won't give you. At least Truenamer can do unique things on its own.

[Divide by Zero]

Risen Martyr. You can't multiclass out, and when you get to level 10 or if you ever perform a single evil act you die. Permanently. And the abilities it gives you are weak, especially if you were a caster.

[dascarletm]

Aristocrat.

[kiryoku]

Okay how about we give the reasons each is the weakest ones in the game so I know where you are coming from.

Edit: and give reasons why each is broken and horrible or weak.

[Arcanist]

Wizard LOLNOPE!

[Opperhapsen]

Okay how about we give the reasons each is the weakest ones in the game so I know where you are coming from.

The Truenamer's abilities are weaker spells that he must succeed on a DC check that gets more difficult the higher level the party is.
At high levels it's pretty much impossible to use said spells.

The Aristocrat is an NPC class, I don't remember it being worse than commoner though.

The Soulknife is a fighter that gets a sword instead of feats.

[Eslin]

Paladin can be the worst possible class depending on the campaign.

[Xerxus]

Commoner because yeah.

[Xaragos]

My vote goes to Monk. After you get flurry....what else really matters?

[kiryoku]

I see everyone is all over the place on this one. Hmmmmmm maybe I should narrow down what I want. The most broken one is what I want. the commoner while weak is supposed to be like that its a NPC only class. PCs are not supposed to use it at all.

[Turalisj]

The Truenamer's abilities are weaker spells that he must succeed on a DC check that gets more difficult the higher level the party is.
At high levels it's pretty much impossible to use said spells.

The Aristocrat is an NPC class, I don't remember it being worse than commoner though.

The Soulknife is a fighter that gets a sword instead of feats.

The soulknife's sword isn't even as strong as what you could buy at your level :smallannoyed:

NPC classes really can't be considered, they aren't meant to be in the same balance as the PC classes.

Just google DnD Class Tiers and look for the ones at Tier 5.

[Psyren]

I see everyone is all over the place on this one. Hmmmmmm maybe I should narrow down what I want. The most broken one the commoner while weak is supposed to be like that its a NPC only class. PCs are not supposed to use it at all.

That doesn't make it "broken" though. It does exactly what it's meant to do.

Compare to a Soulknife, Monk or Truenamer, which are meant to be badass heroes... and perform very poorly.

[kiryoku]

I could do that but that would be just a list of worst not the single worst one. No ones really agreed on a single worst one yet.

I pointed out that but I must have done it poorly I will edit that.

[137beth]

Commoner. Truenamer, soulknife, and samurai are all back, but they are all strictly better than commoner.

Unless you meant PC class...

[JaronK]

Actually, those aren't strictly better than Commoners, who get special flaws (such as Chicken Infested) that can be quite useful.

No, the worst class ever is the Shining Blade of Heironieous. That PrC has absolutely no point. I actually did a challenge once: make any build that involves that class at all that's in any way better than the same build where you replaced the SBoH levels with levels of any other class in the build. The only build that could do it used just one level and made use of the Paladin's dead level.

Seriously, there's just no point to this class at all.

JaronK

[Worira]

Risen Martyr. You can't multiclass out, and when you get to level 10 or if you ever perform a single evil act you die. Permanently. And the abilities it gives you are weak, especially if you were a caster.

OH IT'S ON SON.

[Psyren]

Now I'm confused, are we doing base classes or PrCs?

And obviously if Commoner is being considered it is worse than all of them. Even with poorly-worded unlimited chickens.

[TypoNinja]

Risen Martyr. You can't multiclass out, and when you get to level 10 or if you ever perform a single evil act you die. Permanently. And the abilities it gives you are weak, especially if you were a caster.

We might have a winner.

The Truenamer might suck completely, and get worse at what it does the more it levels up, but its hard to top built in death.

No matter how much your class features suck, still being alive to use them is a pretty large consideration.

[Black Jester]

The worst basic class is a tie between cleric, wizard and druid. They may not be the least fun classes to play, but they are almost certainly the least fun classes to play with.

[kiryoku]

Okay to clear up the frenzy I mean base, PRC, pretty much any NON-NPC class out there. The most broken and crappy one. I have to say though we may have a winner with instant death at level 10 PRC and no way to level out into something else. That would be pretty pointless and rather sucky. concidering you would have that tenth level indefinitely and it would kill you on rez possibly depending on their wording.

[Golden Ladybug]

In the same vein as the Risen Matyr (which is kinda useful; who doesn't like Charisma increases and a free Rez?),

EDIT: I'd like to elaborate on the Risen Matyr, actually. To start with, it gives you a ton of Immunities; you get the Deathless type at 0th level, which gives everything undead get but flipped. They get +4 Charisma, and Charisma to AC really early on in the class, a permanent Magic Circle against Evil/Maybe Bastion of Good?/Holy Aura, free action Daylight (never be in the dark again!), Cold, Acid and Electricity Immunity and a bunch of useful SLAs.

And you don't actually die. Your "perfect, spiritual body is taken whole into the upper planes". As far as I can tell, there's absolutely nothing saying that you can't just come back :smalltongue: You can't take any levels in anything else though

Back to your regularly scheduled programming:

I'd like to propose the Mountebank from the Dragon Magazine Compendium. Its certainly not the worst class ever, but it should bare mention.

Here's a quick summary of its abilities.

At 1st Level, it gets Beguiling Stare (a Standard Action, single target Save-or-Suck that makes the target lose their Dex bonus to AC and takes -2 to their Will Saves/-5 to Sense Motive. A Knowledge Check is required to realise anything went down at all), a choice of learning Abyssal or Infernal, Trapfinding and they sell their soul to Devilish/Demonic Masters; if you die, you must make a skill check to return to life, which gets easier as you level up.

Hmm...

At level 2 (not at level 1; level 2), she gets the first effect that works with her Beguiling Stare. Its sort of like Sneak Attack, but it progresses significantly slower, only effects targets that she hit with Beguiling Stare or Fiented against, can't be used with Ranged Attacks or to deal Non-Lethal Damage. It does, however, apply against everything; you cannot be immune to it. You get an extra dice for every four levels of Mountebank you have (to a maximum of +5d6 at level 18).

She then gets a number of abilities that are tied to her Charisma modifier (as most things are with the Mountebank), which she can use a number of times per day equal to half her Mountebank Level + Charisma Mod. A Medium Range 30ft Burst that Beguiles everything in it, if they fail their save. Alter Self as a Sorcerer of her Level. A Weaker Version of Undetectable Alignment that requires a Charisma Check opposed by a Sense Motive check (hey, class synergy!), but you get to choose what Alignment they see. Displacement, as a Sorcerer of her Level. Dimension Door! Confusion (That comes at level 12)! Teleport (but only herself, and a Familiar... if she has levels in a class that gives her a Familiar). Finally, as a Capstone, she gets Mislead (a 6th Level Spell)

All of these abilities come from the same pool of daily uses, of course.

Still, doesn't seem that bad. I mean, it could be worse? It can use Beguiling Stare forever and a day (but only once per day against an individual character, of course), and unresistable damage is pretty good. But then you realise you've got the Rogue's Chassis, you have to choose between making a Full Attack only after using a Standard Action to maybe set up whoever you're fighting for your extra damage. Or, you can feint, and get one attack per round, at a low attack bonus with meh damage.

You also can't multiclass freely, because that saving throw (and, in fact, the uses of all your abilites) scales off your class level. You're Charisma focused (again, all your abilities rely on it), so that needs to be a priority. But you are forced to be in Melee, so you also need good Con and good Dex to stay alive, so you can't prioritise it as much as you'd like. Your abilities come really staggered, and you've got six completely dead levels (and a few that might as well be).

Also, when you reach level 20, you become an NPC. Yeeeeah...

Your party can go on a quest to get the now-an-NPC-Mountebank back... but why?

I think I need to go to the Homebrew Design section...

[Xerxus]

The way a fighter was seemingly supposed to work at the very beginning is mindboggling. Here you have a mundane martial class that is apparently supposed to have at least 13 str, 12 dex, 13 int in order to run around with a sword and shield - possibly mounted on some poor 2 hd horse - putting his feats into power attack, combat expertise and some associated maneuver feats plus the mounted combat feats. And they actually expected a build like that to work?

Then again, the paladin might be worse in that respect (though basic mounted combat with a paladin is considerably better).

[thethird]

I think I need to go to the Homebrew Design section...

Please do. Flavor wise I always liked the class. Try to add some the totally terribad abilities of the mountebank in complete scoundrel too. Seriously its capstone is... almost as bad as the mountebank (base class) capstone.

[Arcanist]

Risen Martyr. You can't multiclass out, and when you get to level 10 or if you ever perform a single evil act you die. Permanently. And the abilities it gives you are weak, especially if you were a caster.

OH IT'S ON SON.

I cannot be the only one who laughed at this for a solid 5 minutes (or longer) :smallconfused:

[SiuiS]

I cannot be the only one who laughed at this for a solid 5 minutes (or longer) :smallconfused:

I would have but I got all my risen martyr jokes out about eight months ago, in an argument where everyone who didn't recognize the avatar thought I was calling him 'high and mighty' as an insult. Now I just chuckle and move on.


I've got one, that works mechanically but doesn't make sense, at first.
The Death Delver.

Death delivers are guys who die, come back and go "you know that was interesting, let's check that out." You get a new spell casting pool, some not-bad but not noteworthy bonuses, and eventually you get the ability to die 9 times, like a cat, before you kick it permanently.

There is also an international society of death delvers, who all gather and... Discuss... Death delving? On a class whose fluff is 'spooky guy who delves death and is spooky' and has no mechanics for it. They are a secretive society who try to keep people out until they earn their way in. I spent two years ranting about these guys, who have an international society with no goal and no mission, until it hit me.

They're a suicide cult. They build up people, right? They get everyone together to drink the cool-aid. And then they get up, take notes on the experience, and share them at an international seminar.

That is your class. That's what you sign up for when you become a death delver. Jumping off of a cliff, getting resurrected, and discussing it.

[tadkins]

No mention of True Necromancer yet? I'm surprised.

[Arcanist]

No mention of True Necromancer yet? I'm surprised.

I would agree with you if not for the fact that it still provided spellcasting and class features that function from start to finish. If anything, the True Necromancer is the best of a bad day when it comes to crappy classes.

[TypoNinja]

I would agree with you if not for the fact that it still provided spellcasting and class features that function from start to finish. If anything, the True Necromancer is the best of a bad day when it comes to crappy classes.

I think I remember some people mentioning PrC's that actually made you worse at their stated goal at one point, I can't think of actual classes at this point off the top of my head, but True Necro was actually one of them. Obviously the other classes would be contenders, but I'm sticking with the Martyr as the winner.

[Arcanist]

I think I remember some people mentioning PrC's that actually made you worse at their stated goal at one point, I can't think of actual classes at this point off the top of my head, but True Necro was actually one of them. Obviously the other classes would be contenders, but I'm sticking with the Martyr as the winner.

The True Necro was most likely in the Top 10. At beast the class gives you 7th level spells... AT BEST, which is better than most classes could offer.

[CaladanMoonblad]

The way a fighter was seemingly supposed to work at the very beginning is mindboggling. Here you have a mundane martial class that is apparently supposed to have at least 13 str, 12 dex, 13 int in order to run around with a sword and shield - possibly mounted on some poor 2 hd horse - putting his feats into power attack, combat expertise and some associated maneuver feats plus the mounted combat feats. And they actually expected a build like that to work?

Then again, the paladin might be worse in that respect (though basic mounted combat with a paladin is considerably better).

A few factual errors first... even ponies have 3 HD, and the Heavy Warhorse has 4HD. So... not 2 HD horse, unless maybe you think Fighters are buying nags or heavily emaciated starving mounts.

The combat feat trees you are referencing with the attributes; Power Attack, Dodge, and Combat Expertise are types of fighters (strong fighters, dexterous fighters, and smart fighters). These are very low prereqs to meet if someone wanted a fighter with all three aspects. But anyone with the requisite weapon and armor proficiencies can actually meet your criteria of running around with a sword and shield.

I realize it is part and parcel of this board to complain about Fighter... but please, don't start spreading lies about mounts. And what is stopping someone from acquiring a Warbeast Heavy Warhorse? Seriously? I've run comparative scenarios between Fighter vs. Every base class of appropriate levels at 1st, 5th, 10th, 15th, and 20th builds. It all depends on who has initiative; it's all 50/50 in the sessions I observed.

[NotScaryBats]

The Heirophant from DMG is a spell casting class that doesn't grant any casting advancement. Instead, you get to pick one "special ability" which range from +4 to turn checks (only against undead!), to getting any spell on your list as an SLA 2/day

1/2bab, good F and W saves

Requires 15 ranks know religion, 7th level divine spells, and any metamagic feat. 5 levels long.

[TuggyNE]

A few factual errors first... even ponies have 3 HD, and the Heavy Warhorse has 4HD. So... not 2 HD horse, unless maybe you think Fighters are buying nags or heavily emaciated starving mounts.

I considered correcting this myself, but a difference of one or two hit dice is not substantial. They still die to errant fireballs, just maybe a level or so later.


And what is stopping someone from acquiring a Warbeast Heavy Warhorse? Seriously? I've run comparative scenarios between Fighter vs. Every base class of appropriate levels at 1st, 5th, 10th, 15th, and 20th builds. It all depends on who has initiative; it's all 50/50 in the sessions I observed.

Well, I don't have access to Warbeast directly, but are you sure you can add it to a creature that's already, y'know, bred for war? That seems kind of specifically not OK. (Whether or not it's technically rules-legal I don't know.)

As far as the dueling goes, you'll probably find a lot of people to tell you that your Wizards or Druids or Warblades were doing something seriously wrong, and they may well be right; if nothing else, it seems quite strange that a Wizard 20 could lose initiative to any Fighter except perhaps a Dex-based one. (Frankly, even then, and even within Core only, contingency should make a substantial difference.)

[Xerxus]

I was only making a comment about the pure singleclass core fighter. Not a heavily optimized one, just one that a novice to intermediate player might have made back in the very beginning of 3.5. I can make a dungeoncrashing zhentarim fighter too, but that is not the point. A core fighter, unspecialized with improved sunder, bull rush, overrun etc is utter crap. The optimization floor for fighters is loooow.

[NilsRichter]

Aristocrat.

No, no, you said it wrong. It should be:

"The Aristocrats."

Bah-Dush!:smallbiggrin:

[Thebar99]

Without a doubt, Rogues. Unlike the NPC classes, they are actually supposed to be usable by players. Unlike Monks and Truenamers, they didn't fail at that but then succeed at being useful for monsters - not even they can make good use of it. Even Monk levels are superior on a monster, and a PC for that matter.

Is there even a single worthwhile thing they can do, a single meaningful way they can be shown in a positive light? Unless you count troll answers such as "Monsters gotta get their XP somehow!" there is not.

[otakumick]

I've always liked Rogues... sure factotums do it better, but factotums haven't always been an option... I've seen plenty of effective rogues... more than I've seen effective monks... and I've seen a number of effective monks.

[FleshrakerAbuse]

Rogues don't fail; They are pretty versatile, and getting a way to sneak attack constructs and undead isn't too hard. Two-weapon fighting rogues can do quite a bit of damage, and they have enough skills to get out of most situations with tumble. But, yeah, they are still low tier 4.
I'd say Complete warrior's samurai. They gain basically no class abilities, just a few bonus feats that apply only to katanas and two-weapon fighting. Pretty crappy.

[CaladanMoonblad]

I considered correcting this myself, but a difference of one or two hit dice is not substantial. They still die to errant fireballs, just maybe a level or so later.


Except... what level 15 fighter who fights from mount isn't buffing his mount? Or isn't investing some gold into his favorite mount's armor? Again, this assumption depends on a stupid player to be a stereotype for all fighters.




Well, I don't have access to Warbeast directly, but are you sure you can add it to a creature that's already, y'know, bred for war? That seems kind of specifically not OK. (Whether or not it's technically rules-legal I don't know.)



Monster Manual III of 3.5, towards the back. Just like every other template, you can stack unlike templates all you like. The Heavy Warhorse is a base creature. Just like a Pony. Just like a War Dog. Think of like this; the war beast is a masterwork version of a base creature. Your options as a mount oriented Fighter is not just vanilla PHB.



As far as the dueling goes, you'll probably find a lot of people to tell you that your Wizards or Druids or Warblades were doing something seriously wrong, and they may well be right; if nothing else, it seems quite strange that a Wizard 20 could lose initiative to any Fighter except perhaps a Dex-based one. (Frankly, even then, and even within Core only, contingency should make a substantial difference.)

Here's the thing; most pro-wizards on this board ASSUMES a lot of buffing time. Here's how the scenario works; put your two combatants, of any of the core classes of equal level, in a 50'x50'x50' room. Stagger that room with appropriate cover at every 15'x15' intersection. Open the doors and let the combatants into the room. Roll initiative.

Every time, whoever won initiative in the order generally won at levels 1, 5, 10, 15 etc., but at levels 1-10, I noticed Fighters often won even when they lost initiative.


I was only making a comment about the pure singleclass core fighter. Not a heavily optimized one, just one that a novice to intermediate player might have made back in the very beginning of 3.5. I can make a dungeoncrashing zhentarim fighter too, but that is not the point. A core fighter, unspecialized with improved sunder, bull rush, overrun etc is utter crap. The optimization floor for fighters is loooow.

Then... if I rag on a non-optomized anything vs. an optimized something... all I've done is set up a scarecrow. A core fighter can easily get improved sunder, bullrush, overrun, because it is a feat monster class. Those are all core feats. Try the above dueling scenario sometime with your group; craft basic characters using the same parameters as the DMG tables and run it with every possible duel between the base classes. I see a lot of theorizing on this board, and claims of certitude, but I rarely see people bother to run the game mechanics in a controlled environment in the way prescribed (25 point buy).

[The Trickster]

In a game with normal WBL, soulknife is one of the worse. But in low wealth games, their abilities certainly help. Honestly, the "worse" class will depend on the game you play. A fighter can be the worse class if you play a very heavy skill based roleplay game, for example (obviously).

[CaladanMoonblad]

In a game with normal WBL, soulknife is one of the worse. But in low wealth games, their abilities certainly help. Honestly, the "worse" class will depend on the game you play. A fighter can be the worse class if you play a very heavy skill based roleplay game, for example (obviously).

Setting helps a lot; imagine that soul knife in say, a Burning Sun campaign setting.

[Hecuba]

The Heirophant from DMG is a spell casting class that doesn't grant any casting advancement. Instead, you get to pick one "special ability" which range from +4 to turn checks (only against undead!), to getting any spell on your list as an SLA 2/day

1/2bab, good F and W saves

Requires 15 ranks know religion, 7th level divine spells, and any metamagic feat. 5 levels long.


This does have some uses: Ur-Priest, Divine Crusader, Blighter and Apostle of Peace. Probably not worth 5 levels, but they can use it.

You also see 1 level from time to time for Divine reach.

[Turalisj]

In a game with normal WBL, soulknife is one of the worse. But in low wealth games, their abilities certainly help. Honestly, the "worse" class will depend on the game you play. A fighter can be the worse class if you play a very heavy skill based roleplay game, for example (obviously).

I think for the sake of fairness, we should apply a single "setting" as judgement for all classes:

Standard WBL
Level 20
40/60 Social/Combat
Operating in a party with the ideal caster-fighter-healer-thief-other paradigm.

[KillingAScarab]

A little while ago, I started a thread similar to this one to try to solicit the worst of the 3rd party classes. So far, Susano-wo gave a summary of a disappointing exorcist "power class" by Mongoose Publishing, WhatBigTeeth said that there are Avalanche Press books out there with quite poor skillmonkeys, and Callin pointed out an apothecary by Bastion Press. My reason for starting the thread came after taking a closer look at the shadowsworn from Malhavoc Press and realizing it is a terribly, terribly written magical rogue, and I wrote an in-depth rant on it.

The thread is here (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=279059) if you want to read more. I think Golden Ladybug might appreciate the shadowsworn bit, since she seems similarly "inspired" by mountebank.

[JaronK]

In a game with normal WBL, soulknife is one of the worse. But in low wealth games, their abilities certainly help. Honestly, the "worse" class will depend on the game you play. A fighter can be the worse class if you play a very heavy skill based roleplay game, for example (obviously).

Not really. Find ANY game where the Shining Blade of Heironieous is useful. I challenge you!

JaronK

[Gerrtt]

Commoner because yeah.

I made a commoner build that is explicitly better at disarming than a monk at every level. I know it's just disarm...but still, it's better at it than the monk is.

[Twilightwyrm]

Without a doubt, Rogues. Unlike the NPC classes, they are actually supposed to be usable by players. Unlike Monks and Truenamers, they didn't fail at that but then succeed at being useful for monsters - not even they can make good use of it. Even Monk levels are superior on a monster, and a PC for that matter.

Is there even a single worthwhile thing they can do, a single meaningful way they can be shown in a positive light? Unless you count troll answers such as "Monsters gotta get their XP somehow!" there is not.

What exactly do you have against rogues? Or did someone in your group just play a crap one one time?

The thing is, any way you cut it this assertion is objectively wrong. Let's take a look as to why:

-Increased Damage: The rogue's Sneak Attack is a fairly excellent source of extra damage. Sure there are many monster types it doesn't work against (I don't buy that it doesn't work against larger creatures, as even if the rogue can only attack their foot, arteries are still pretty vital), but you have ACFs and class features to mitigate it. Further, let's face it: the vast majority of monsters is does work against. So, assuming a 20th level rogue, a potential 30d6 (60d6 if you are two weapon fighting) extra damage on a single attack (one for each iterative) is probably the simplest way to get one of the highest potential damage amounts in Core.
Skills- Even if you ignore this extra source of damage, which it would appear that you are, the fact of the matter is a large amount of skill points help, and the rogue's large number of class skills let them get the most out of this. For combat you have tumble, jump, hide, move silently and use magic device to name a few. For detecting monsters and traps, you have spot, listen and search. For trap killing you have said manners of detecting traps, and disable device and open lock for killing them. And for social situations, you have diplomacy, gather information, bluff, intimidate, knowledge (local) and sense motive. A 1st level rogue could theoretically have ranks in all these skills, if not necessarily max ranks in them. And you mean to tell me that is useless? You would be hard pressed to think, in core anyways, of a character that can do all these things better than a rogue from the onset of the game.

[Turalisj]

Not really. Find ANY game where the Shining Blade of Heironeous is useful. I challenge you!

JaronK

Set the game in a massive kingdom where Heironeous is the patron deity. The Shining Blades are the FBI of the kingdom, they are the ultimate authority when it comes to enforcing the law. The kingdom is also under constant threat by a species of acid monsters which happen to be very weak to electrical attack and arcane spellcasting is considered a heresy.

There you go, a setting where the SBoH are useful.

[Hyena]

Frenzied berserker. Do I even need to explain? Nothing says "worst class" better then an axe in your head, which is there because you were unfortunate enough to stand near your friend when he was raging.

[Shining Wrath]

I will put in a word for "Bereft", which is a PrC progression for Truenamer. You have to have 13 ranks in Truespeak to qualify, which means you have to take 10 levels of Truenamer. And you have to speak at least 3 languages and spend 3,700 GP.

Having sunk those resources into entry, you gain the following:
An Obscure Truename.
Knowledge of words of unmaking. The capstone of which is the terrifying power to prevent a creature which is already dead from being raised. Other amazing powers include the ability to maze a creature for one round.

5 level class, 3/4 BAB, good Will saves.

[Vaz]

Forsaker.

Give up all magic items and ability to use magic. To do... very little against Magic Users.

[RandomLunatic]

Blighter nukes your entire druid progression and abilities to give you weaker abilities that would have been relevant 3 or 4 levels ago.

[Thebar99]

Rogues don't fail; They are pretty versatile, and getting a way to sneak attack constructs and undead isn't too hard. Two-weapon fighting rogues can do quite a bit of damage, and they have enough skills to get out of most situations with tumble. But, yeah, they are still low tier 4.
I'd say Complete warrior's samurai. They gain basically no class abilities, just a few bonus feats that apply only to katanas and two-weapon fighting. Pretty crappy.

Nope.

Let's break it down:

Lockpicking: Requires you to roll a 20 sided die and get a result greater than 20 on the die. Alternately, you can do the skill based equivalent of struggling to defeat a single Ogre at level 10. At some levels a 20 might actually succeed... that's still 2 minutes wasted on a single lock that could be defeated in 2 rounds or less by anyone else.

Trap stuff: Old edition thieves had something like a 25% aggregate chance of successfully managing a trap. Rogues are actually worse. And remember kids, thieves got replaced by 10 foot poles because those don't cost a share of the loot.

Stealth: Oh gods LOL. Your default position is being hard countered by absolutely everything in the game except non magical humans and halflings. After burning a bunch of feats/items/other resources you're hard countered by about 90% of the game instead of 99.99%. (the other 10% still kills you, it just doesn't automatically detect you)

Damage: If the stars align you do half as much damage as a Barbarian. You also have half his survivability. Why are you here again?

UMD: Perhaps the best of the lot... until you remember Warlocks are a thing, and unlike Rogues they get actual relevant class features to go with it.

You don't even need to compare to higher tiers to make them look bad. The same or in many cases lower tiers do that, and of course the encounters do as well.

[TypoNinja]

What exactly do you have against rogues? Or did someone in your group just play a crap one one time?

The thing is, any way you cut it this assertion is objectively wrong. Let's take a look as to why:

-Increased Damage: The rogue's Sneak Attack is a fairly excellent source of extra damage. Sure there are many monster types it doesn't work against (I don't buy that it doesn't work against larger creatures, as even if the rogue can only attack their foot, arteries are still pretty vital), but you have ACFs and class features to mitigate it. Further, let's face it: the vast majority of monsters is does work against. So, assuming a 20th level rogue, a potential 30d6 (60d6 if you are two weapon fighting) extra damage on a single attack (one for each iterative) is probably the simplest way to get one of the highest potential damage amounts in Core.

The MIC made Sneak Attack even better. Weapon Augment Crystals of True Death and Demolition allow you to crit and sneak attack Undead and Constructs. Excellent investment. Ask your DM for Elemental and Ooze versions at the same price.


Snippity

The 1st was some time ago.

[Turalisj]

Stealth: Oh gods LOL. Your default position is being hard countered by absolutely everything in the game except non magical humans and halflings. After burning a bunch of feats/items/other resources you're hard countered by about 90% of the game instead of 99.99%. (the other 10% still kills you, it just doesn't automatically detect you)


Proof, please. Because I've seen rogues sneak up on dragons fairly easily.

[Golden Ladybug]

A little while ago, I started a thread similar to this one to try to solicit the worst of the 3rd party classes. So far, Susano-wo gave a summary of a disappointing exorcist "power class" by Mongoose Publishing, WhatBigTeeth said that there are Avalanche Press books out there with quite poor skillmonkeys, and Callin pointed out an apothecary by Bastion Press. My reason for starting the thread came after taking a closer look at the shadowsworn from Malhavoc Press and realizing it is a terribly, terribly written magical rogue, and I wrote an in-depth rant on it.

The thread is here (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=279059) if you want to read more. I think Golden Ladybug might appreciate the shadowsworn bit, since she seems similarly "inspired" by mountebank.

Oh yes. That Thing.

I remember reading about That Thing. I have rarely been as sad and amused at the same time :smallbiggrin:

I'll post a link in this thread when I'm finished attempting to fix the Mountebank, if anyone is interested.

[Thebar99]

The 1st was some time ago.

Exactly why I'm not claiming they're good. Hint: Precision immune is the least of your concerns. Barb has double offense, double defense, and is much less conditional.

[ArcturusV]

It's mostly due to things like DM screw (Nothing is immune to that) or people overestimating things.

At low level, people look to Scent as the thing that ruins Stealth. Scent's pretty good at low level. But... it's 30 foot range. Meaning that by the time that dog detects you, you're saying "SNEAK ATTACK BITCH" and putting a 2d6 x2 into the dog.

But if the DM screws you, and says that you're upwind from it no matter what, sure. Gonna suck. If you have a reasonable DM or can "trap" them by actually asking/discerning the wind direction they have only a 15' foot range, so you can avoid it entirely.

Similarly there are ways to avoid things like blindsence (Or sight? I can't recall which one is which ever off the top of my head other than knowing one is Mundane, one is Magical) that is pretty easy to work around.

It's mostly when you get to that "it's magic" stuff for detection. Then again that's not a problem with rogues/stealth so much as the system as a whole deciding Magic Is Just Plain Better.

Though a one feat tax could solve that problem of Magical Senses. Just have to avoid random stuff that might come up like Guidance of the Avatar Spot/Listen checks.

[TuggyNE]

Except... what level 15 fighter who fights from mount isn't buffing his mount? Or isn't investing some gold into his favorite mount's armor? Again, this assumption depends on a stupid player to be a stereotype for all fighters.

OK, stuffing energy resistance (for all types) on armor might help in some cases. Maybe it'll give you another few levels of usefulness, even. But by the time you can pour +90000gp into barding for 10 resistance to 5 elements, how much damage are you getting hit with?

Also, strictly speaking, how does a Fighter "buff" his mount, lacking any class features to do so?


Monster Manual III of 3.5, towards the back. Just like every other template, you can stack unlike templates all you like. The Heavy Warhorse is a base creature. Just like a Pony. Just like a War Dog. Think of like this; the war beast is a masterwork version of a base creature. Your options as a mount oriented Fighter is not just vanilla PHB.

Yes, I get that. I'm curious as to why "Warbeast" can be applied to something that is already a war-beast-type creature. "Heavy warhorse" is already, as it were, masterwork. That's why it's listed separately!


Here's the thing; most pro-wizards on this board ASSUMES a lot of buffing time. Here's how the scenario works; put your two combatants, of any of the core classes of equal level, in a 50'x50'x50' room. Stagger that room with appropriate cover at every 15'x15' intersection. Open the doors and let the combatants into the room. Roll initiative.

Every time, whoever won initiative in the order generally won at levels 1, 5, 10, 15 etc., but at levels 1-10, I noticed Fighters often won even when they lost initiative.

So, no long-duration buffs that would normally be up while adventuring? No permanent buffs? Nothing? OK then! (Also, apparently, no non-Core spells like nerveskitter.)

[navar100]

The soulknife's sword isn't even as strong as what you could buy at your level :smallannoyed:

NPC classes really can't be considered, they aren't meant to be in the same balance as the PC classes.

Just google DnD Class Tiers and look for the ones at Tier 5.

No, no, no! Being in Tier 5 does not make a class bad, terrible, sucky, or whatever negative connotation you want to give. The Tier System is not a value judgement on the worth of a class.

What is the "worst" class is highly subjective to the individual. Despite the bad-mouthing it gets around here, I know of players who like the monk very much and have no issues with it whatsoever. My issues with the class is it's too MAD and can't get a decent AC for a warrior-type. It must have bracers of armor. A class that must, must have a specific magic item I find to be a glaring weakness. However, I don't find it the subjectively worst class in the game.

A class that is probably objectively terrible is the Truenamer. Its own rules on how it works fails to work. The major offender is the x2 multiplier in determining the Truename DC. Get rid of that, and the class becomes playable. Otherwise, to make it work you must, must have specific feats and must, must have specific magic items. Deviate from that specific build, your character fails to work.

Another class that fares little better is Samurai from Complete Warrior. Samurai is the Fighter class with a specific feat selection already decided and written up as a class. They would have been better off using Oriental Adventure's Samurai and polish off any setting specific flavor text.

Though not terrible, another class poorly done is Hexblade. They were trying to do an arcane version of the Paladin mechanics - a warrior with a limited amount of magic that's arcane instead of divine. The problem is they were paranoid about combining warrior and spellcasting prowess. They were still suffering from overvaluing making a melee attack and undervaluing casting a spell, which is the cause of the power gap between Wizard and Fighter. Hexblade works, but its abilities don't have a "wow!" factor. They learned their lesson and made a better warrior-spellcasting class in the Duskblade.

[VeisuItaTyhjyys]

That is your class. That's what you sign up for when you become a death delver. Jumping off of a cliff, getting resurrected, and discussing it.

Honestly, this class sounds better than some lit classes I've been in.

Whoah!

Whoooooaah!

Zzzzzziiing!

[The Trickster]

No, no, no! Being in Tier 5 does not make a class bad, terrible, sucky, or whatever negative connotation you want to give. The Tier System is not a value judgement on the worth of a class.

What is the "worst" class is highly subjective to the individual. Despite the bad-mouthing it gets around here, I know of players who like the monk very much and have no issues with it whatsoever. My issues with the class is it's too MAD and can't get a decent AC for a warrior-type. It must have bracers of armor. A class that must, must have a specific magic item I find to be a glaring weakness. However, I don't find it the subjectively worst class in the game.

Someone have argued that T1 classes are the "worse" because they have game breaking powers, which makes playing one unfair. The only thing I would argue (with that argument in mind) is that choosing to play a not-broken druid/cleric/whatever is easy: Don't pick broken stuff. Making othet classrs not suck may require a little work. That, to me, makes a class "bad".

[JaronK]

Set the game in a massive kingdom where Heironeous is the patron deity. The Shining Blades are the FBI of the kingdom, they are the ultimate authority when it comes to enforcing the law. The kingdom is also under constant threat by a species of acid monsters which happen to be very weak to electrical attack and arcane spellcasting is considered a heresy.

There you go, a setting where the SBoH are useful.

Doesn't work. A Paladin of Heironeous could do it better (every aspect, including having electrical attacks on his blades since at that level you can just have a +1 Shocking weapon). There's no reason for the enforces to be SBoHs.

Seriously, try to make any build for any setting where you're better off with SBoH than with just more levels of whatever class you used to enter the class. Even the setting you just named (whether you enter as a Cleric or as a Paladin, just staying in that class would have been better).

JaronK

[A_S]

Actually, those aren't strictly better than Commoners, who get special flaws (such as Chicken Infested) that can be quite useful.

No, the worst class ever is the Shining Blade of Heironieous. That PrC has absolutely no point. I actually did a challenge once: make any build that involves that class at all that's in any way better than the same build where you replaced the SBoH levels with levels of any other class in the build. The only build that could do it used just one level and made use of the Paladin's dead level.

Seriously, there's just no point to this class at all.

JaronK

I realize this was, like, two pages ago, but...

Commoner 1/Survivor 5/Ur-Priest 6/Shining Blade of Heironeous 8

BAM! It's absolutely terrible, but I'm pretty sure it can't be improved by taking more levels in its other classes...

I dunno why that post read like a challenge to me.

*edit* Oh, hey, it's topical again!

[Thebar99]

It's mostly due to things like DM screw (Nothing is immune to that) or people overestimating things.

Like melee SA range (not 30 feet, try 5)? Like the shadows you're not hiding in? LLV, hard counter? Like your damage? Considering you need a double hit and at least average damage for any chance at the dog, much less its handler? If you even get that far you've now blown your load in the dog and made it mad. Good job.

Auto detect abilities aren't even your biggest concern getting to try at all is.

[NotScaryBats]

I have played a Healer in a game before, and that class is extremely boring and binary to play as.

Everything you get from the class is reactionary (cure hp damage, remove conditions, no buffing). You don't get to wear medium+ armor, despite your divine casting because "Her ethos requires a certain vulnerability that allows her to more fully empathize with those in their care. A healer who uses prohibited armor is unable to cast healer spells or use any of her supernatural or spell-like class features while doing so and for 24 hours after the armor is taken off."

So, you can enjoy your simple weapons and attack, or wait around for an opportunity to heal someone. If you're in melee, you are a really easy target, and will have to use your healing on yourself. Yay.

Maybe not the worst class ever, but it has been pretty boring in my exp

[Turalisj]

Like melee SA range (not 30 feet, try 5)? Like the shadows you're not hiding in? LLV, hard counter? Like your damage? Considering you need a double hit and at least average damage for any chance at the dog, much less its handler? If you even get that far you've now blown your load in the dog and made it mad. Good job.

Auto detect abilities aren't even your biggest concern getting to try at all is.

I... what? Just. What? Are you even being serious now?

Sure, rogues suck compared to casters. EVERYONE sucks compared to casters. Auto-detecting abilities are easy to defeat- Darkstalker. Take it at first level, now blindsense, blindsight, scent, et al are useless against you.

[nobodez]

I have played a Healer in a game before, and that class is extremely boring and binary to play as.

Everything you get from the class is reactionary (cure hp damage, remove conditions, no buffing). You don't get to wear medium+ armor, despite your divine casting because "Her ethos requires a certain vulnerability that allows her to more fully empathize with those in their care. A healer who uses prohibited armor is unable to cast healer spells or use any of her supernatural or spell-like class features while doing so and for 24 hours after the armor is taken off."

So, you can enjoy your simple weapons and attack, or wait around for an opportunity to heal someone. If you're in melee, you are a really easy target, and will have to use your healing on yourself. Yay.

Maybe not the worst class ever, but it has been pretty boring in my exp

In late Living Greyhawk I played a Healer (realize that LG gave Healers the vigor spells as well as a few others from CD and SpC), and I was fraking awesome. Maxed charisma and used Augmented Healing (or whatever it is, it's been a few years since I played v.3.5) and even my 0-level spells healed the party up to nearly full (so it was at first and second level, so what, those are the levels where healing is important). Combined with the vigor spells, and it didn't matter that I only had simple weapons and stupid armor, people made sure I was alie because I kept them alive.

As for the earlier discussion about fighters and their mounts, well, I am reminded again about LG, and about how it was a joke that mounted fighters (if they weren't rocking dire bats) were riding "Buffet Nineteen" or some such. Heck, for the first few levels I spent my wealth on MW studded leather barding and riding dogs. Make sure you teach them the "combat riding" suite, and they make excellent extra fighters. Made the rogues happy and the DMs mad.

[Preaplanes]

I'm casting my vote for the Truenamer. Sheesh, class doesn't even function properly.

[Pickford]

I made a commoner build that is explicitly better at disarming than a monk at every level. I know it's just disarm...but still, it's better at it than the monk is.

Is this sarcasm? I don't understand what you're talking about.

My answer: Swanmay. You get to turn into a swan. Kind of awful.

The Emissary of Barachiel may be worse though, the big class feature is changing peoples alignments.

[Larkas]

Just dropped in to say this: you CAN'T apply Warbeast to a Warhorse or a Warpony or whatever. It is specifically called out in the template.

[Cirrylius]

I cannot be the only one who laughed at this for a solid 5 minutes (or longer) :smallconfused:

At first I was all like LOL.

...but then I continued to LOL.:smallbiggrin:

[TuggyNE]

Just dropped in to say this: you CAN'T apply Warbeast to a Warhorse or a Warpony or whatever. It is specifically called out in the template.

Thank you, I thought I'd heard that before, but couldn't be sure. (And I didn't want to assert something by common sense that might, after all, not actually be RAW.)

Anyway, that's probably enough of that little digression; Fighter is certainly not the worst class, in any case. (It's merely somewhat lousy.)

[KillingAScarab]

Oh yes. That Thing.

I remember reading about That Thing. I have rarely been as sad and amused at the same time :smallbiggrin:Ah, it's reputation precedes it. Unless you mean you're one of the seemingly rare people who got to look at the class itself? I can't say I have seen much else written about it.


I'll post a link in this thread when I'm finished attempting to fix the Mountebank, if anyone is interested.I would be interested to see what you come up with. I would try to fix shadowsworn, but I need a better grasp of 3.5 class homebrewing.

[Emperor Tippy]

Truenamer isn't mechanically the weakest (free gate precludes that even if it requires twenty Truenamer levels to get said ability) but it is probably the worst class in the game.

[Sheogoroth]

Mariner from Dragonlance is the worst PC class.
You get an extremely minor bonus to balance and sailing checks every few levels and a d4 sneak attack that increases much slower than that of a rogue. They also get limited BAB and pitiful saves.

They updated it in errata giving it bonus feats and full BAB, but it's still pretty bad.

[JaronK]

I realize this was, like, two pages ago, but...

Commoner 1/Survivor 5/Ur-Priest 6/Shining Blade of Heironeous 8

BAM! It's absolutely terrible, but I'm pretty sure it can't be improved by taking more levels in its other classes...

I dunno why that post read like a challenge to me.

*edit* Oh, hey, it's topical again!

Points for creativity, but Ur Priests must be Evil and can't worship a living god, and Shining Blades must be Lawful Good and worship Heironeous. Otherwise that might almost work!

JaronK

[Bakeru]

Points for creativity, but Ur Priests must be Evil and can't worship a living god, and Shining Blades must be Lawful Good and worship Heironeous. Otherwise that might almost work!

JaronKObviously, the character had a change of heart, became good and started worshiping Heironeous! Which makes taking more levels in Ur-Priest not only bad, but impossible.

[Turalisj]

Points for creativity, but Ur Priests must be Evil and can't worship a living god, and Shining Blades must be Lawful Good and worship Heironeous. Otherwise that might almost work!

JaronK

Do you have to be evil even after you've multiclassed out? Because if not.....

[JaronK]

Do you have to be evil even after you've multiclassed out? Because if not.....

As usual for PrCs, if you did this you would lose the Ur Priest casting due to no longer qualifying for the PrC. This would now make you FAR weaker. The build would thus be far better replacing the Shining Blade levels with more Ur Priest and Commoner... or just a bunch of Commoner levels.

JaronK

[Bakeru]

As usual for PrCs, if you did this you would lose the Ur Priest casting due to no longer qualifying for the PrC. This would now make you FAR weaker. The build would thus be far better replacing the Shining Blade levels with more Ur Priest and Commoner... or just a bunch of Commoner levels.

JaronKObviously, the character first became good, thus loosing his Ur-Priest access and making the class useless.
Contrived role-play reasoning ftw!
My mistake, SBoH needs divine spellcasting. So, you can't jump from Ur-Priest to SBoH at all - you're either evil and can't become a SBoH, or you're good and can't cast divine spells as an Ur-Priest.

[GoatBoy]

The worst class in the game is the one you're playing when you get a run of bad luck.

The best class is whatever the other person is playing.

[Larkas]

Substitute Ur-Priest for Apostle of Peace or Divine Crusader, then? I don't remember if they have class abilities, though.

[Thebar99]

I... what? Just. What? Are you even being serious now?

Sure, rogues suck compared to casters. EVERYONE sucks compared to casters. Auto-detecting abilities are easy to defeat- Darkstalker. Take it at first level, now blindsense, blindsight, scent, et al are useless against you.

This is a prime example of what I mean.

So let's review. You are a low level Rogue. You're literally incapable of hitting anything as you can't possibly take Finesse until 3. You now no longer have TWF and its resulting second attack because you've taken this other thing instead that lets you attempt sneaking 10% of the time instead of 0.01%.

Meaning even if you somehow, miraculously sneak up on the dog you never, ever kill it.

Which is even worse than getting within 30 or 15 feet (neither of which are melee range, then getting detected before actually launching your two attacks which would both miss anyways) which is the absolute best case scenario otherwise. And that's the problem. Your absolute best case scenarios are average at best and usually just bad. It isn't just because stealth rules are terrible either.

[Bakeru]

This is a prime example of what I mean.

So let's review. You are a low level Rogue. You're literally incapable of hitting anything as you can't possibly take Finesse until 3. You now no longer have TWF and its resulting second attack because you've taken this other thing instead that lets you attempt sneaking 10% of the time instead of 0.01%.

Meaning even if you somehow, miraculously sneak up on the dog you never, ever kill it.

Which is even worse than getting within 30 or 15 feet (neither of which are melee range, then getting detected before actually launching your two attacks which would both miss anyways) which is the absolute best case scenario otherwise. And that's the problem. Your absolute best case scenarios are average at best and usually just bad. It isn't just because stealth rules are terrible either.That's why low-level rogues use shortbows. 1d6 regular damage (+1d6 sneak attack, because you don't have to be melee, only within 30 ft.), using dex instead of str on attack rolls.

Dogs have a flat-fooded SC of 12, and if you don't have at least 16 dex, you don't deserve to be a rogue, so you're probably going to hit that. 1d6+1d6 happens to average out at 6, which is exactly the HP a dog has.

Also, with 16 dex and 4 ranks in hide and move silently, you have at least +7 on move silently and hide. Add in circumstance modifiers (distance, mostly: You're about 30ft away when you make your last check, and the dog gets -1 per 10 ft, so it's effectively another +3 for you), and you have a good chance of sneaking up on the dog with its +5 on listen and spot.

[Hand_of_Vecna]

Doesn't work. A Paladin of Heironeous could do it better (every aspect, including having electrical attacks on his blades since at that level you can just have a +1 Shocking weapon). There's no reason for the enforces to be SBoHs.

Seriously, try to make any build for any setting where you're better off with SBoH than with just more levels of whatever class you used to enter the class. Even the setting you just named (whether you enter as a Cleric or as a Paladin, just staying in that class would have been better).

JaronK

I assumed his acid monsters had weapon destroying abilities, making the SBoH's imbue ability better than carrying a shocking weapon. Cleric/Paladin is still better with Weapon of the Diety which gives them a shocking weapon on command. As a spell it can be made a swift action trivially an ability that SBoH never gets.

[ArcturusV]

I actually don't use Shortbows on my Rogues (Heresy, I know!). I use thrown weapons instead. So you still do it with two weapons. So my Javelin Chuck for example would be 1d6+1d6+1d6+1d6. For an average damage of 14 + Strength Mod Doubled.

Which is enough to drop the dog, or most any opponent I'm facing at level 1. If need be I take out my dagger and stab them in the throat (for another 1d4+1d6+Strength Mod) while they are bleeding out, just to make certain that they actually stay dead.

Rogue does have some issues though. My big one being "Does not do what it says on the Tin". Trapper/Face+Stealth+DPS. The Face thing is easy enough that anyone who invests even moderately in it with whatever leftover they have in their builds can excel at it. The trap DCs are kinda set to the point where they're a pain in the ass at low level, then so trivial it doesn't matter so much at high levels, anyone could do it other than needing your "Trapfinding" ability to locate magical traps... except Detect Magic... Stealth is... okay. But usually foiled by the fact that you're stuck with decidedly non-stealthy people, and is far more vulnerable to DM Fiat Powers in my experience than anything else. Yes, even Illusions. And the DPS role only applies to them at very few points, mostly low levels. Eventually everyone else passes them up and does so without pesky requirements like Flanking or Flat-Footed.

But I wouldn't consider it the worst. Though something I would consider the worst would definitely have to have that "Does not do what is says on the Tin" issue. Thus why Monk is up there for me. Just nothing about it works the way the class is supposed to ideally work as.

Some of the Undead Monster Classes in Libris Mortis might count. While it does at least do what it says in regards to "Lets you play an undead that would have LA from level 1"... just... Ug. Missing hitdice. No feats (Only gain limited "Racial Bonus" sort of feats you'd get from the Template). Very limited skill points. Trapped progressing as that until you finish. Having more levels you have to take than the LA of what you are so that you're ultimately weaker than you would have otherwise been.

Ghoul... +4 LA (+2 for the Template in Libris Mortis though). But 8 level Monster Progression. So a template Ghoul would have the same number of Hitdice at level 8 (Or more if you used the template in Libris Mortis), but have class features, will have +2 feats (+3 for the Libris Mortis Template), will have all the powers of the Monster Class Progression, and still can level up more before hitting Epic than the Monster Class. AND because they got more feats (And more Skills), will qualify for PrCs you might want to take about a good 4 levels faster.

[Turalisj]

This is a prime example of what I mean.

So let's review. You are a low level Rogue. You're literally incapable of hitting anything as you can't possibly take Finesse until 3. You now no longer have TWF and its resulting second attack because you've taken this other thing instead that lets you attempt sneaking 10% of the time instead of 0.01%.

Meaning even if you somehow, miraculously sneak up on the dog you never, ever kill it.

Which is even worse than getting within 30 or 15 feet (neither of which are melee range, then getting detected before actually launching your two attacks which would both miss anyways) which is the absolute best case scenario otherwise. And that's the problem. Your absolute best case scenarios are average at best and usually just bad. It isn't just because stealth rules are terrible either.

I'm just going to assume you've never actually played a rogue, or you had a horribad DM when you did, and move on.

[Thebar99]

That's why low-level rogues use shortbows. 1d6 regular damage (+1d6 sneak attack, because you don't have to be melee, only within 30 ft.), using dex instead of str on attack rolls.

Nope again. He said 2d6 twice. In order to attack twice that means TWF... which he can only do in melee, and only if he doesn't take Darkstalker. If he only attacks once, he never OHKOs.

Remember, we are discussing a guard dog here.

The following is not a guard dog:

"The statistics presented here describe a fairly small dog of about 20 to 50 pounds in weight."

The following is a guard dog:

"This category includes working breeds such as collies, huskies, and St. Bernards."

Note that 13 HP is never OHKOed by 12 damage, you need 2 attacks (that won't hit, lol -2 to hit vs 19 AC) for any chance at all.

One attack at +3 that will never OHKO isn't really an improvement though.

You can see how bad Rogues are by seeing how their supporters ignore the rules and subconsciously nerf their foes to be as bad as they are. Because illustrating how Rogues struggle to take out a guard chihuahua makes your point I guess?

Let's flip this around. Take a Commoner. Have them use 50-95% of their wealth on combat gear. You won't get a good combatant, but they will hit on something other than a 20, they will kill stuff in under 2 minutes.

Commoners have no combat ability whatsoever. They are not supposed to be good at anything except dying horribly and opening the odd Karrnath Fried Chicken store. And yet, despite that they are still able to do better at combat than a PC class - a class that is actually supposed to be good, does at lockpicking - a thing they are actually supposed to be good at. The Commoner is also likely a better combatant than the Rogue is a stealther... which is to say still bad, but fails less often.

A Commoner plays against type better than a Rogue plays for type.

If that isn't a sign it's the worst class in the entire game, I dunno what is.

[Xerxus]

Nope again. He said 2d6 twice. In order to attack twice that means TWF... which he can only do in melee, and only if he doesn't take Darkstalker. If he only attacks once, he never OHKOs.

Remember, we are discussing a guard dog here.

The following is not a guard dog:

"The statistics presented here describe a fairly small dog of about 20 to 50 pounds in weight."

The following is a guard dog:

"This category includes working breeds such as collies, huskies, and St. Bernards."

Note that 13 HP is never OHKOed by 12 damage, you need 2 attacks (that won't hit, lol -2 to hit vs 19 AC) for any chance at all.

One attack at +3 that will never OHKO isn't really an improvement though.

You can see how bad Rogues are by seeing how their supporters ignore the rules and subconsciously nerf their foes to be as bad as they are. Because illustrating how Rogues struggle to take out a guard chihuahua makes your point I guess?

Let's flip this around. Take a Commoner. Have them use 50-95% of their wealth on combat gear. You won't get a good combatant, but they will hit on something other than a 20, they will kill stuff in under 2 minutes.

Commoners have no combat ability whatsoever. They are not supposed to be good at anything except dying horribly and opening the odd Karrnath Fried Chicken store. And yet, despite that they are still able to do better at combat than a PC class - a class that is actually supposed to be good, does at lockpicking - a thing they are actually supposed to be good at. The Commoner is also likely a better combatant than the Rogue is a stealther... which is to say still bad, but fails less often.

A Commoner plays against type better than a Rogue plays for type.

If that isn't a sign it's the worst class in the entire game, I dunno what is.


"If you wield a second weapon in your off hand, you can get one extra attack per round with that weapon...

...The same rules apply when you throw a weapon from each hand."

Right from the srd.

[Bakeru]

Nope again. He said 2d6 twice.He said. I didn't. Also, Surprise Round.

(that won't hit, lol -2 to hit vs 19 AC)The riding dog you quote has an AC of 16, not 19. And given that the rogue attacks by surprise, he gets the flat-footed AC of 14. Then he's got a slight more than 50% chance of beating the round for initiative, and get another attack at flat-footed SC in. Goodbye, Guard Dog.

Please note that the Guard Dog is a CR 1 creature. So, the rogue has a pretty good chance of sneaking up on him (+10 vs. +5), an about average chance of hitting him in the first round, and if we give him 18 dex (still pretty easy for an elf or a dedicated human), his chances are even better. And this thing is supposed to be taken on by a group of four level 1 characters.

You can see how bad Rogues are by seeing how their supporters ignore the rules and subconsciously nerf their foes to be as bad as they are.Like you're doing by ignoring spot/listen-penalties because of distance, surprise, and giving the dog an AC 5 points higher than it actually is?

[Thebar99]

"If you wield a second weapon in your off hand, you can get one extra attack per round with that weapon...

...The same rules apply when you throw a weapon from each hand."

Right from the srd.

Right, the TWF you gave up and can't hit with anyways.

Bakeru: You're right. He couldn't get a second attack even if he had one. That's even worse!

Guard dogs get armor, and even without armor you still hit... what is it? 15% of the time? Not exactly an improvement when you need to hit twice, and get at least 14 damage. Let's see, what's that... 0.15 * 0.15 * .5 = 1/80 chance of actually jumping the guard dog? Less if it has barding? Weren't you trying to prove Rogues were competent?

Oh and I'm ignoring stealth because you can't hide. As mentioned before, LLV hard counters you because the dog can still see you even if it's dark.

[Bakeru]

Guard dogs get armor,I have, quite literally, never seen a dog with armour. I could imagine war dogs with armour, but not simple guard dogs.

and even without armor you still hit... what is it? 15% of the time?Actually, try 50% on a rogue with 18 dex. 45% if he has only 16. And even if we ignore flat-footedness, that's still 40% (35% with dex 16). And even if we give it armour with +3 AC and ignore flat-footed, that's 25%, or 20% with dex 16.
You're not very good with statistics, are you?

Oh and I'm ignoring stealth because you can't hide. As mentioned before, LLV hard counters you because the dog can still see you even if it's dark.LLV is anything but a hard counter. You see better in the dark, but still only twice as far as a human.
Still, I assumed bright daylight. All you need is some concealment or cover, which is what the surrounding is for. Unless your guard dog is standing in an open field, in which I'd ask: "What does he even guard?".

[Eldest]

Oh and I'm ignoring stealth because you can't hide. As mentioned before, LLV hard counters you because the dog can still see you even if it's dark.

I swore I wouldn't get involved in this...
How? Please tell me how the dog can spot the rogue. It can't be with scent, can't be with vision, and can't be with hearing, since people have already produced numbers to that effect.
Edit: In addition, I suggest making your own thread in order to address your problems with the rogue class. Perhaps a duel or a competition, to see if a rogue could go through some encounters, with you testing some other class you prefer (perhaps a monk, or a fighter, or such.) I would be willing to run the rogue in that case.

[Thebar99]

I have, quite literally, never seen a dog with armour. I could imagine war dogs with armour, but not simple guard dogs.
Actually, try 50% on a rogue with 18 dex. 45% if he has only 16. And even if we ignore flat-footedness, that's still 40% (35% with dex 16). And even if we give it armour with +3 AC and ignore flat-footed, that's 25%, or 20% with dex 16.
You're not very good with statistics, are you?
LLV is anything but a hard counter. You see better in the dark, but still only twice as far as a human.
Still, I assumed bright daylight. All you need is some concealment or cover, which is what the surrounding is for. Unless your guard dog is standing in an open field, in which I'd ask: "What does he even guard?".

Barding is a thing. Note that the atrocious numbers were without armor.

Even if we give him far more accuracy than he already has (and he already has HiPS that is HiPS, so why not give him more free abilities?), let's see... oh right, his chance of jumping the guard dog is now a whopping 8% (.4 * .4 * .5) and you still haven't addressed the actual guard yet. You also need a building specifically designed to be snuck up to even though the whole point of guard dogs and handlers is to prevent people from sneaking up to it... otherwise, there is no concealment unless it's dark (which the dog sees in) and there is no cover because everyone knows to clip their damn hedges, especially the ones in front of windows.

You're making them look worse than I am!

[Notalion]

But D&D buildings are designed to be snuck up on.

[TypoNinja]

I'm just going to assume you've never actually played a rogue, or you had a horribad DM when you did, and move on.

I'm gonna hafta add "never seen a rogue played ever" as well onto that.

Hes so far off the mark I'm honestly at a loss where to start, its just... no.

[Turalisj]

I'm gonna hafta add "never seen a rogue played ever" as well onto that.

Hes so far off the mark I'm honestly at a loss where to start, its just... no.

At this point, I'm chalking it up to the t-word.

Moving on because this thread has become extremely derailed- In my honest opinion, the 'worst' classes can be broken down into:

Melee- Fighters and CW-Samurai.
Spellcasting- Truenamers
Psionics- Soulknifes, Divine Minds

[Thebar99]

I'm gonna hafta add "never seen a rogue played ever" as well onto that.

Hes so far off the mark I'm honestly at a loss where to start, its just... no.

Sure I have. In the best case scenario they got themselves killed, then the player made a good class and everyone continued the game happily.

More commonly they drug other members of their party down with them. Unless team griefing is now considered success, getting your own party killed by your screw ups is a bad thing.

I particularly liked the one where if the party had left the Rogue at home and replaced them with nothing they'd have avoided approximately 90% of the problems they encountered. An empty slot was an order of magnitude less problematic.

[jindra34]

Yes bar when sneaking up on someone i'm going to walk/crawl straight towards them and not bother to use things like CORNERS, or WALLS, or AWNINGS to my advantage. Or if I'm part of a party and we all agreed on this plan not have some go be LOUD, DISTRACTING, or FANCY on the other side.

[Thebar99]

So that's another vote for "Needs buildings people don't want people sneaking in to be deliberately designed to be easy to sneak up on."

Got it.

Now here's what I'd like for you to understand. People are smart enough to trim their hedges so that if a burglar attempts to break in, someone will see them. Even people in safe neighborhoods do this. Here you have a place where you have guard teams patrolling... and you want them to make it easy for you? Not want, NEED, as you auto lose if it isn't easy.

Otherwise, you lose to ONE guard/dog pair. Just one. Doesn't even have to be a whole team of these guys working the perimeter.

Now explain to the rest of the class how this doesn't definitely prove that not only are Rogues the Worstamest Class Evar(tm), but also that stealth is absolutely terrible in D&D no matter what class is using it. I'll wait.

[jindra34]

Who said anything about hedges? And last I checked wall and corners were kinda an integral part of buildings. And if it involves a building its likely in a city where there are OTHER buildings/walls that you can use. Or with a little patience, you can select one place along the edge, hide there and wait for a patrol to come by. And if its not in a city, well pillars need to support ceilings, trees, and various rock formations all can provide good help. Seriously your issue is that the rogue fails if its played like a big, dumb, fighter. Which even the fighter fails if played in that way. Pause think, do a little long range looking, make a plan then act. Its simple and actually helps a lot.

Also losing to 2 CR 1 entities at first level? Thats to be expected if you are taking them on alone (at least by the intended standards) as thats a level 3 encounter by itself. Which a level 1 party of four is expected to be able to handle 2-3 of before needing to rest.

[Bakeru]

Also, integral thing to note:
That riding/guard dog you're using as an example?
It's a CR1 encounter. So, it's supposed to be a fight for four level 1 characters.
And that's without any armour or handler.

Do you expect rogues to solo encounters above their character level? That he has a chance to one-shot the dog at all already means he has basic competence.

[Thebar99]

Also, integral thing to note:
That riding/guard dog you're using as an example?
It's a CR1 encounter. So, it's supposed to be a fight for four level 1 characters.
And that's without any armour or handler.

Do you expect rogues to solo encounters above their character level? That he has a chance to one-shot the dog at all already means he has basic competence.

Uh huh. Now here is what I'd like for you to understand. Because you are sneaking off alone, like a dumbass you have to deal with it alone, instead of having your party there to fight (while you do all of nothing).

Also, this was a low level Rogue. Not necessarily level 1. He could be level 2, he still loses. Even at 3 or 4, if he survives it's because he got caught then barely survived the opening attacks, and not because he was successfully sneaky.

And then, without being at least level 3 he can only have ANY chance of OHKO with TWF... meaning no Darkstalker (he gets detected the instant he's in range = no surprise round as a best case) and most people were assuming he only attacks once (so even if the stars align and he hides in the nonexistent shadows, he still doesn't do more than screw up at screwing the pooch).

Want to OHKO dogs? Be a Barbarian. Now you swing at +11 or +12, do xdy+12 (aka any hit kills), and attack twice.

[Turalisj]

How are you getting +11 at first level as a Barbarian?

I could do it as a Warblade, but that's because they are built to do tons of damage and not much else.

[jindra34]

So your whole arguement bar, is that if a rogue goes off and decides to be an idiot he will get himself killed? How does that reflect on the class and not the player?
Also a 1-2 foot tall wall or hedge is enough to hide behind as long as your close to it than the guard.

[Thebar99]

Charge, rage, Str bonus race. +11, +12 with a MW weapon. Barbarians are good at damage, bad at everything else but doing 1 thing > doing 0 things.

And "doing something stupid" = using stealth at all, ever.

[Turalisj]

Charge, rage, Str bonus race. +11, +12 with a MW weapon. Barbarians are good at damage, bad at everything else but doing 1 thing > doing 0 things.

And "doing something stupid" = using stealth at all, ever.

And if the dungeons are anything other than flat planes?

I'm going to amend my previous statement. I don't think you've ever played DnD.

[jindra34]

I'm going to amend my previous statement. I don't think you've ever played DnD.

He might have played DnD. I doubt he has played it with a DM who didn't RAILROAD right over any players who tried anything unexpected or tricky.

[Bakeru]

And then, without being at least level 3 he can only have ANY chance of OHKO with TWFWith Darkstalker, he still has a more than 55% chance (at dex 16. With dex 18, it's above 60%) of beating the dog to initiative, thus getting a surprise round for sneak attack damage and getting in another sneak attack in the first regular round.
And that's still at level 1.

[Notalion]

Thebar99, maybe if you had a proper argument you'd be able to support it based on situations that Rogues might actually find themselves in rather than contriving ones that set him at an unnatural disadvantage.

By the same logic I could 'prove' that a class based entirely around illusions was the worst in the game if every single enemy he met were immune to them. Unless your DM is trying to get you killed that won't happen, and pretending that D&D characters don't live in a universe that follows D&D logic is insanely disingenuous.

Now I'm not saying that Rogues are the best class, but they're in Tier 4, not Tier 6.

[Eldest]

Ok. Since I appear to be ignored.
Thebar99. Would you like to prove your allegations, in either a test of circumstances or a duel? I would be willing to run the rogue side, and you are welcome to use whatever you'd like: I would warn you against using cheese. If not, please withdraw them, or start another thread about it. In any case, please stop talking about it in this thread.
Edited to add a bit of clarification about the contest.

[Eldan]

Okay. How in all the lower planes can anyone ever think that stealth is not worth it. Not being seen by your enemy is the best way to circumvent a ton of encounters with a minimum of resources invested.

And, well, I could easily find a dozen arguments of the same quality why your barbarian can't work.

Here: let me prove it:

You charge? Pssh. What crap. No one ever manages to charge successfully in a proper D&D game.

[jindra34]

Okay. How in all the lower planes can anyone ever think that stealth is not worth it. Not being seen by your enemy is the best way to circumvent a ton of encounters with a minimum of resources invested.

Because theBar apparently thinks every encounter takes place on a flat plain with no features other than 2" grass. Which precludes all forms of hiding.

[TuggyNE]

Let's flip this around. Take a Commoner. Have them use 50-95% of their wealth on combat gear. You won't get a good combatant, but they will hit on something other than a 20, they will kill stuff in under 2 minutes.

Commoners have no combat ability whatsoever. They are not supposed to be good at anything except dying horribly and opening the odd Karrnath Fried Chicken store. And yet, despite that they are still able to do better at combat than a PC class - a class that is actually supposed to be good, does at lockpicking - a thing they are actually supposed to be good at. The Commoner is also likely a better combatant than the Rogue is a stealther... which is to say still bad, but fails less often.

A Commoner plays against type better than a Rogue plays for type.

If that isn't a sign it's the worst class in the entire game, I dunno what is.

I almost thought you said "Commoners are better combatants than Rogues", which would be sufficiently risible to sig. Still, "Commoners fight better than Rogues pick locks or sneak" is amusing enough.


Also, integral thing to note:
That riding/guard dog you're using as an example?
It's a CR1 encounter. So, it's supposed to be a fight for four level 1 characters.
And that's without any armour or handler.

Do you expect rogues to solo encounters above their character level? That he has a chance to one-shot the dog at all already means he has basic competence.

More precisely, there should be a roughly 50% chance of success in that case, according to the usual CR metrics. Anything more indicates more competence than usual.


1
All that said, Eldest is right; this is a topic for another thread, because no one here will agree that Rogue is the worst class ever.

[Susano-wo]

Wow...jsut wow
love how the barb gets to charge with pounce for his attack[best possible scenario], but the rogue can't sneak up on the enemy because it is magically in an un sneakable positon.[worst possible]

You are judging the rogue based on how hard it is to sneak into a place if htey are using proper security, combined with Dnd's I see you if you are unhidden and cross my perimeter RAW(IE it ignores the fact that in reality you can get by someone if he is just looking the wrong way)

Also, you are taking 1 stealther vs a party-challenge, and making it take it on in the dumbest way possible. you don't have to kill the guard dog, just get past it

Really, though a lot of what you are talking about it the oddness of the dnd rules in regard to stealth, vison, quick kills, etc. its not inherent to the rogue class.

And finally we have this commoner stuff. nhow the hell are you getting better at combat out of commoner. It has no class features and less BAB than rogues. and it has no armor proficiency. care to explain how its a better combatant than a rogue?

[TypoNinja]

In my honest opinion, the 'worst' classes can be broken down into:

Melee- Fighters and CW-Samurai.
Spellcasting- Truenamers
Psionics- Soulknifes, Divine Minds

I would disagree with the melee.

While Fighters, and the CW samuria might be crappy classes on the power level scale, they still do whats on the tin. You aren't going to take fighter levels and be surprised he can/can't do something. Its not like say, a Drunken Master which makes you a worse monk by piling on wisdom penalties for using your class features.

If we set the bar with casters like the truenamer who gets less able to use his abilties as he levels, we aren't just talking weak classes were talking straight up dysfunctional.

[ArcturusV]

And finally we have this commoner stuff. nhow the hell are you getting better at combat out of commoner. It has no class features and less BAB than rogues. and it has no armor proficiency. care to explain how its a better combatant than a rogue?

Unlimited Chicken Works?

Hey? It worked for Legend of Zelda. No one messes with Chickens there.

I'd still say Worst Melee would be something like Ghoul/Ghast Monster Class. Wight gets mitigated by at least having unlimited spawns as a capstone to it's 8 levels of slogging and falling behind everyone else.

[Thebar99]

And if the dungeons are anything other than flat planes?

I'm going to amend my previous statement. I don't think you've ever played DnD.

Then you're still harder to counter, which is the point.

I am not the one thinking stealth = invis or HiPS. I play D&D. Do you?


Thebar99, maybe if you had a proper argument you'd be able to support it based on situations that Rogues might actually find themselves in rather than contriving ones that set him at an unnatural disadvantage.

Sneaking past a guard dog isn't fair? I don't think I even picked that one.

A normal, low level situation = unnatural disadvantage.

Good, you get it.


Thebar99. Would you like to prove your allegations, in either a test of circumstances or a duel? I would be willing to run the rogue side, and you are welcome to use whatever you'd like: I would warn you against using cheese. If not, please withdraw them, or start another thread about it. In any case, please stop talking about it in this thread.

On what terms, and define cheese. Almost everything save non magical humans/halflings has at least 1 auto detect. Is it unfair that stealth is hard countered by most everything? Perhaps, but that's not my fault and I won't go out of my way to select the 0.01% he might make it past.

[Eldest]

On what terms, and define cheese. Almost everything save non magical humans/halflings has at least 1 auto detect. Is it unfair that stealth is hard countered by most everything? Perhaps, but that's not my fault and I won't go out of my way to select the 0.01% he might make it past.

Cheese would, for example, be playing a Psion with (somehow persistant) Touchsight. Playing an elf Ranger with a wolf companion would not be. I am curious, however, which you were interested in: a duel or a contest? A contest would require somebody to moderate it, a duel would not.

[jindra34]

Bar: 1. A successful hide check is essentially invisibility, they flat out won't know where you are (at least not without inhuman sense, and even then only if you don't have darkstalker).
2. You don't need a whole lot to make a hide check, a single shrub, stump, small pile of stuff, short wall, shallow ditch, or thin (like 1' diameter thin) pillar is enough. Its not standing there and hoping they don't see you, its actually trying to either blend in or otherwise block there line of sight to you.

[Thebar99]

Cheese would, for example, be playing a Psion with (somehow persistant) Touchsight. Playing an elf Ranger with a wolf companion would not be. I am curious, however, which you were interested in: a duel or a contest? A contest would require somebody to moderate it, a duel would not.

(I hope) no one is surprised other classes, even low tiers are better.

People are surprised the encounters are better. And you fight them, not your party. So that's what counts.

People also fixated on locks and stealth, their biggest failings.

Remember though, Rogues are the spotlight. A party of Cleric/Druid/Wizard/Rogue would do fine... in spite of the Rogue. Same for Beguiler/Bard/Warblade/Rogue.

Party carries don't count.

Edit: Invis doesn't require cover/concealment and works if stuff is looking at you.

[jindra34]

Let me point out how silly hide can actually get: I'm in a space with a thin pillar/tree. This grants me cover against everyone not within 5 feet of the space. Meaning if I attempt to hide, everyone in every direction has to make the opposed roll or lose track of me.
And of course if I'm already sneaking around, and you HAVEN'T yet beaten my hide check with a spot check, you CAN'T be looking at me.
EDIT:Yes a party constisting of primarily t3 and higher (especially one that includes another character who covers the same ground) will consitently out shine the rogue. But does that really say much about the rogue? Or does it say more about the other characters? And how is having an extra hand around ever harmful?

[Eldest]

(I hope) no one is surprised other classes, even low tiers are better.

People are surprised the encounters are better. And you fight them, not your party. So that's what counts.

People also fixated on locks and stealth, their biggest failings.

Remember though, Rogues are the spotlight. A party of Cleric/Druid/Wizard/Rogue would do fine... in spite of the Rogue. Same for Beguiler/Bard/Warblade/Rogue.

Party carries don't count.

Edit: Invis doesn't require cover/concealment and works if stuff is looking at you.

Answer the question or drop the argument: contest or duel? Or suggest some other manner of proving your argument.

[Notalion]

Sneaking past a guard dog isn't fair? I don't think I even picked that one.

A normal, low level situation = unnatural disadvantage.

Good, you get it.You aren't even trying any more. Pathetic. Goodbye.

[jindra34]

You aren't even trying any more. Pathetic. Goodbye.

Well technically he didn't. he is however the one who decide to make it into a full fledged war dog, with barding, and give it a handler. And claim that the point was still being made.

[Thebar99]

Answer the question or drop the argument: contest or duel? Or suggest some other manner of proving your argument.

I just did. Rogue vs encounters.

[Eldest]

I just did. Rogue vs encounters.

Very well then, pick your class. Anybody in this thread willing to create 3 encountered, themed around, oh, entering an aristocrat's manor? And then run it?

[Notalion]

Well technically he didn't. he is however the one who decide to make it into a full fledged war dog, with barding, and give it a handler. And claim that the point was still being made.Oh for the love of-

Look at my posts to him in this thread. In all of them I've been talking about one thing. It isn't the bloody dog.

I don't care about the dog, I don't care if it has Barding. I don't care if it's Awakened and has levels in Bard. None of those are as disingenuous as his continued insistence that his 'fair test' of the Rogue's capabilities take place in an arena that it is literally impossible to Hide in. That just isn't how things work and he knows it, which is why he selectively quoted my post so he could pretend it was about the bloody dog. THAT'S why he's not trying, is pathetic, and I've decided not to bother talking to him.

[CIDE]

Planar Shepherd, Initiate of the Sevenfold Veil, etc.

Why? They're breaking **** unless you house rule something there or have a campaign optimized against them somehow.

[Arbane]

Planar Shepherd, Initiate of the Sevenfold Veil, etc.

Why? They're breaking **** unless you house rule something there or have a campaign optimized against them somehow.

Thank Gygax, an actual post about the topic instead of Rogue vs. Dog. (The new Cat vs. Commoner, only not amusing!)

They're "bad" in the opposite direction, by being too powerful rather than incompetent.

I don't know Incarnum stuff very well, but isn't Soulborn famously bad at its job?

[Turalisj]

The Soulborn is like a bad Paladin hack.

[Pickford]

I would disagree with the melee.

While Fighters, and the CW samuria might be crappy classes on the power level scale, they still do whats on the tin. You aren't going to take fighter levels and be surprised he can/can't do something. Its not like say, a Drunken Master which makes you a worse monk by piling on wisdom penalties for using your class features.

If we set the bar with casters like the truenamer who gets less able to use his abilties as he levels, we aren't just talking weak classes were talking straight up dysfunctional.

You do realize they can breath fire 10 times in a row as a free action for a combined 30d6 damage, this after they deal upwards of 26d8 per melee hit (with a 40 str you're capable of wielding a small (~2500lb) boulder as an improvised weapon)?

Sometimes classes require a little ingenuity, and Drunken Master has the potential to be a devastatingly good class.

[Sith_Happens]

And then, without being at least level 3 he can only have ANY chance of OHKO with TWF... meaning no Darkstalker

Since you apparently don't know this, I'd like to point out that humans start with two feats.

[ArcturusV]

4 if you put in flaws. Seems flaws are fairly common to use in the PbP area. Not so in my table experience. But common enough I wouldn't discount them. So that first level rogue could have Darkstalker, Two-Weapon Fighting, and their choice of two other, relevant feats.

As for other classes I might consider pretty near the worst? Shugenja might be up there for me. All the weaknesses of Sorcerers, Wizards, and Healers rolled into one class. No armor, no weapons worth mentioning. Low HP. Bad spontaneous caster progression with limited spells known. The spell list they have is this unholy mess of Blasting and reactive healing and generally their best "offensive" spells require getting into melee. Course, you also get the weaknesses of wizards as well beyond just the low HP. You end up having to give up 1/4 your spell list, painful when your list wasn't that great to start with. You need to keep a ton of Scrolls around in order to cast. Without your scrolls, you can't cast AT ALL...

So... You got the weaknesses of:

Wizard: Low HP, "Spellbook" dependency, Automatically have to specialize and kick out 1/4 of your spell selection.
Sorcerer: Slower spell leveling. Highly limited "Spells known". Slow Metamagicing,
Warmage: Crappy blasting spells.
Healer: Crappy reactive healing spells.

The only strengths I can think of? Well... Umm... it's a Spontaneous Caster so if some PrC said "Spontaneously casts X level spells" it could qualify?

Sense Elements is possibly useful as a detection ability, but it takes too long to really be useful, along with limited range and limited times per day.

But yeah. Definitely bad. I like the class if only because it's so bad it's hard to break it open. Unless I PrC out to something like Void Disciple which isn't so much breaking Shugenja as just a broken PrC. It's probably one of the worst "Full Caster" classes I can think of right next to Healer. Course Healer is more well known and mentioned. But I still think that's pretty bad. Course it also lacks any class features other than "Sense Elements", so that might cut it down even below Healer.

[TuggyNE]

You do realize they can breath fire 10 times in a row as a free action for a combined 30d6 damage, this after they deal upwards of 26d8 per melee hit (with a 40 str you're capable of wielding a small (~2500lb) boulder as an improvised weapon)?

Sometimes classes require a little ingenuity cheese, and Drunken Master has the potential to be a devastatingly good class.

Fixed that for you. Most games will find the listed strategems intolerably rich in lactose. (Even though, of course, fire resistance applies to each breath separately, so a mere 10 resistance reduces it to an average of 5 damage total.)

[Sylthia]

Have to go with commoner.

[KillingAScarab]

I don't know Incarnum stuff very well, but isn't Soulborn famously bad at its job?I seem to stumble upon "Soulborn are bad" comments with some frequency. I'm trying out one, currently. I don't have enough personal experience, yet, to make a good case on my own. From this archived handbook (http://web.archive.org/web/20080611162349/http://forums.gleemax.com/wotc_archive/index.php/t-592729) I get the impression that they can do their job well enough to not qualify for this topic. Not when there are classes like the Shadowsworn (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=279059), which can apparently be referred to as "That Thing."

[Norin]

Beguiler in a kick down the door group with no scouting, minimal social encounters, and more or less only constructs and mindless undead monsters.... *sigh* :smalltongue:

(That was just a vent of frustration, I know beguilers are not crappy. Atm I'm just getting shafted by situational stuff and want to reroll a gish or whatever.)

Looking at the truenamer, I must say I'm rather unimpressed with the design, and put that pretty high on the crappy list.

[Feddlefew]

I'd argue that commoner doesn't count as a class. Unless we want to say that the basic writeup and HD advancement for badgers or some other critter is the worst class in the game. Because that's what commoners are- HD advancement for humanoid that's conveniently located in the DMG NPC section instead of buried in the back of the MM.

[Worira]

Actually, humanoid HD (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/typesSubtypes.htm#humanoidType) are significantly better than levels in Commoner.

[Sith_Happens]

I seem to stumble upon "Soulborn are bad" comments with some frequency. I'm trying out one, currently. I don't have enough personal experience, yet, to make a good case on my own. From this archived handbook (http://web.archive.org/web/20080611162349/http://forums.gleemax.com/wotc_archive/index.php/t-592729) I get the impression that they can do their job well enough to not qualify for this topic. Not when there are classes like the Shadowsworn (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=279059), which can apparently be referred to as "That Thing."

The problem comes when a Fighter can be a better meldshaper than a Soulborn and have enough feat slots left over to still be better at fighting than a Soulborn too. At which point the Fighter is in every way that matters a better Soulborn than the Soulborn. And if a Fighter can do every part of your own job better than you, you have a serious problem.


I'd argue that commoner doesn't count as a class. Unless we want to say that the basic writeup and HD advancement for badgers or some other critter is the worst class in the game. Because that's what commoners are- HD advancement for humanoid that's conveniently located in the DMG NPC section instead of buried in the back of the MM.

Except there actually is a HD advancement for humanoids (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/typesSubtypes.htm#humanoidType) (which, incidentally, is much better than Commoner levels).:smallconfused:

EDIT: Ninja'd (incidentally, the Ninja is a relatively strong candidate for this thread).

[Feddlefew]

I'll just file this under "Dear gods this is stupid." and "I did not know that.".

Time to do some home brewing....

Edit: One of the things that's always bugged me: Why replace the single HD of someone's (whatever they are) advancement with a class instead of keeping it as "level zero"?

[molten_dragon]

Apostle of peace. Well, it's really vow of nonviolence and vow of peace that cause the problems, but since apostle of peace requires them I'd say it counts.

It's not broken in the sense that it's underpowered. It's broken in the sense that the game doesn't work right any more if you play it.

D&D is a game about killing monsters and taking your stuff, and the apostle of peace requires that not only do you not kill anything, but you do your utmost (including applying mechanical penalties to them and hitting them with mind-affecting peace auras) to stop your allies from killing anything too. And if they do kill something, you lose your abilities. It's all the roleplaying problems of having a paladin in a non-good party but cranked up to 11.

Unless played in a game that is specifically designed around its playstyle, apostle of peace is pretty much guaranteed to cause intra-party conflict, generally ending in the death of the person playing the apostle of peace.

[Thebar99]

Very well then, pick your class. Anybody in this thread willing to create 3 encountered, themed around, oh, entering an aristocrat's manor? And then run it?

Class? I just said it wasn't a duel. Rogue vs encounters means I make the encounters. It'd only take one, really.

Given people's penchant for ankle biter guard dogs and other obvious massive nerfs while still claiming Rogues are relevant if anyone else is making the encounters it's a waste of my time. They'll set up a strawman, knock it down, then claim victory and miss the point all the while.

Which means the question is, who is the ref? Not anyone involved in this thread so far, as their biases are obvious.

[Leon]

Compare to a Soulknife, Monk or Truenamer, which are meant to be badass heroes... and perform very poorly.

Seen a Number of Badass Monks and one Badass Soulknife played over time.
Never seen a Truenamer played tho.


The worst basic class is a tie between cleric, wizard and druid. They may not be the least fun classes to play, but they are almost certainly the least fun classes to play with.

Played right they are the best classes to play with ~ too bad the majority cant use them in the role they shine in: Supporting the rest of the group and making everyone better.

[DarkEternal]

Once upon a time I wanted to play a summoner that relied on one really good creature that would protect him from everything. I didn't really know about the Pathfinder things then, so I went to see some prestige classes.

I came across an Bonded Summoner. The lore could actually work. You choose an elemental that grows in power with you as you level up. EXACTLY what I was looking for.

Except it sucks. Oh God, does it suck. To qualify you must be an arcane caster(capable of casting level 2 spells), so it comes to reasoning that spell casting will be kind of your thing. Except every second level is a dead level to you in terms of gaining a spellcasting class once you get into this.

Then you think "okay, my elemental buddy must have some awesome abilities, right? It's the reason I went for this class!"

Ho-ho-ho, I say with a Jabbaesque tone. No. It sucks. It sucks so much that the rangers animal companion would tear it a new one. The summoner also becomes an "elemental" in time which gives you far less than what you might think. It's one "good" thing is that the elemental gets saving resistance equal to your arcane level +5(after level 9 that is).

So yeah, I just went with malconvoker instead and never looked back.

[Maugan Ra]

Class? I just said it wasn't a duel. Rogue vs encounters means I make the encounters. It'd only take one, really.

Given people's penchant for ankle biter guard dogs and other obvious massive nerfs while still claiming Rogues are relevant if anyone else is making the encounters it's a waste of my time. They'll set up a strawman, knock it down, then claim victory and miss the point all the while.

Which means the question is, who is the ref? Not anyone involved in this thread so far, as their biases are obvious.

*wanders past*

Ok, sure, why not. I have some time. Give me a bit and I'll have a couple of quick scenarios worked out for this sort of thing.

[Maugan Ra]

Right. Here (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?p=15131992#post15131992) can be found that initial setup challenge for the rogue-related competition. First task, recovering a stolen item from a group of bandits living in the forest. Hopefully people will agree that this is not an entirely unrealistic example of a small mission?

5th level characters, WBL, most books allowed. Go with 28 point buy for stats. I'm not getting immensely into specifics and making rulings on everything that may or may not come up in terms of character creation, because this is a random little challenge thing, and not a full game I'm running here.

And to keep it on the same topic as the thread, everyone else, feel free to offer commentary on how folks do, possible tactics, and how your very own 'worst class' would do in this situation.

[Thebar99]

Nope. I don't think you understand how this works.

Here's how it works.

He makes and plays the Rogue. I make the encounter(s) and scenario. Someone not involved in this thread prior acts as ref.

Once we have a ref, someone else who also has not been involved prior selects a map. The map should be of an indoor, multilevel complex of moderate size. They submit the map privately to myself and the ref for approval (I will almost certainly approve any map that meets those criteria). The Rogue doesn't get to see the map as he wouldn't necessarily know the layout of the place in advance.

The target level will be 10, 32 PB to give the MAD little Rogue the illusion of a chance, and because it doesn't matter anyways he can use any official 3.5 material as long as it isn't TO stuff.

[Feddlefew]

So you can make a well lit, infinite, and featureless plane filled with creatures that have blind sight (ex)? :smallconfused:

[Maugan Ra]

I think it works precisely how I say it works. Because you threw open the doors to ask for a potential moderator/referee to help you (and by 'you' I refer to the generalized category of 'folks involved in this debate') run a 'Rogue vs encounter' competition to help work out the ongoing conflict here.

At no point were any of these secondary rules mentioned or indicated, so I decided I'd go out of my way and set it all up for you. And even help run it, because I am generally interested by this whole debate.

If no one else in this thread is allowed to be a referee or map-selector because of bias, then you most certainly do not get to be the one to choose the encounters and the general peramters of the map.

[jindra34]

Seconding the your not designing/running the thing that others have said. Your just as invested in it as the rest of us, and if we can't be on that side of things then neither should you. If you want to call something out as wrong in Maugan's running of it fine, but note that is not something unique to you, and only expressing your opinion. Though also for comparison's sake it might be reasonable to have you run a similar TIER character just so we have a baseline to compare the results to. If you want.

[Xerxus]

Does your DM cast Disjunction? If no, then you understand the conflict between using the rules as competitively and aggressive as possible versus having your PCs actually work. This is a case of which DM you have - if the map is featureless and impossible to sneak through you have a DM that dislikes rogues. If you can complete challenges using at least a modicum of stealth then rogues work.

Exactly the same point could be made about spellcasters. I say spellcasters are useless because there is nothing in RAW that says that your monsters couldn't have unbeatable SR - so they should have unbeatable SR or you are being lenient on them. Martial characters are likewise useless because your Ogres now wear full plates - why couldn't they?

Rogues aren't useless because their class features can be made to work without unbalancing the game if your DM actually wants them to, unlike Truenamers and Samurai.

[Thebar99]

I think it works precisely how I say it works. Because you threw open the doors to ask for a potential moderator/referee to help you (and by 'you' I refer to the generalized category of 'folks involved in this debate') run a 'Rogue vs encounter' competition to help work out the ongoing conflict here.

At no point were any of these secondary rules mentioned or indicated, so I decided I'd go out of my way and set it all up for you. And even help run it, because I am generally interested by this whole debate.

If no one else in this thread is allowed to be a referee or map-selector because of bias, then you most certainly do not get to be the one to choose the encounters and the general peramters of the map.

For someone to help me, they'd have to be interested in what I am doing. If they're actually doing something else entirely, namely constructing a strawman to knock down and then declare victory that does not help me.

A referee is a term with a clear definition. They are there to act as arbitrator between the two sides. Now you could still act as a ref, but since you joined in and immediately started making assumptions favorable for the other side I doubt you.

As for the map, look at the parameters I detailed. It could be just about any dungeon, tower, building... It would not be a "well lit, featureless, and infinite plane where everyone has blindsight".

So what are you actually saying here? Rogues cannot handle any indoor area? Because it's already been illustrated they can't handle outdoor areas, meaning they cannot handle any areas. If so, glad we're in agreement Rogues are the worst class in the entire game.

If not, you'd have no problem with someone selecting an indoor area of some sort to act as our setting.

Running other characters of the same tier would be pointless. They'd be better than Rogues, but likely still lose to encounters, and they certainly could not carry a Rogue through encounters, whereas a Tier 1 or 3 party could.

A Barbarian is much harder to counter than a Rogue... but is still easily countered. And so on.

Edit: Enemies don't use Disjunction because they want to kill you and take your stuff and not destroy their own treasure, same reason parties don't sunder or use things that replace sundering.

Ogres can easily wear full plate. If that hard counters melee characters then that's what happens. It only hard counters the bad ones, the good ones can fight half a dozen such Ogres + many other enemies of various types and hardly even take damage.

Stealth is something that doesn't work even if you don't have flat, featureless planes because literally 99+% of the game sees in the dark, so you literally need enemies to be as inept as Metal Gear guards (can't see > 10 feet away, don't think anything's odd about that mysterious box) in order to even attempt sneaking past them much less actually succeed. As mentioned before, your biggest obstacle is getting to try - most enemies you cannot even ATTEMPT a stealth check on without HiPS, invis, or similar.

Infinite SR is something enemies lack the actual abilities to get. And even if they had it, most of the good spells are SR: No, so it means exactly nothing.

Oh and while we're at it let's look at redemptive value.

Samurai: Has exactly one trick, infinite stun juggles on non fear immunes. Most things are fear immune, but not 99+% of things. Also, preventing people from taking any actions ever > anything the Rogue can do.

Samurai > Rogue.

Truenamers are totally worthless as PCs. Rogues are totally worthless as PCs.

Rogues remain totally worthless as monsters, whereas Truenamers can actually pose a threat as a monster.

[jindra34]

Running other characters of the same tier would be pointless. They'd be better than Rogues, but likely still lose to encounters, and they certainly could not carry a Rogue through encounters, whereas a Tier 1 or 3 party could.

This right here is the problem with your logic then. If other similar grade characters would run into problems and fail, then the problem is NOT with the rogue, its with that ENTIRE GRADE of characters. So your arguement amounts to rogues are useless because there are all these more awesome characters playable. Its no longer about stealth, sneak attack, pick lock, disable device, search or trap finding. Its about comparing a moderate to weak class to the top grade stuff and when it fails to measure up saying its worthless.

And the problem isn't the environment, its trusting YOU, someone who has displayed an astounding hatred for how stealth might actually work, to give it a fair chance.

[Emmerask]

From the core books (and only pc classes) I would go with

Fighter

While the fighter is better in combat then a monk (if both are build equivalently good) its not by that much.

Out of combat though the fighter with only 2 + int skillpoints and an extremely BAD class skill list just can´t do anything, the player might as well just take an extended break until the next combat.

The monk with 4+int and an okayish skill-list (Diplomacy, Listen, Hide etc)
can at least contribute somewhat there.

So Fighter can´t do much in combat, can´t do anything outside of combat a complete waste of space.

As for all the books, I don´t know them all, but the fighter might still have a very good shot at that position while there are worse performers in combat I doubt there are any contenders out of combat :smallbiggrin:

[Thebar99]

This right here is the problem with your logic then. If other similar grade characters would run into problems and fail, then the problem is NOT with the rogue, its with that ENTIRE GRADE of characters. So your arguement amounts to rogues are useless because there are all these more awesome characters playable. Its no longer about stealth, sneak attack, pick lock, disable device, search or trap finding. Its about comparing a moderate to weak class to the top grade stuff and when it fails to measure up saying its worthless.

And the problem isn't the environment, its trusting YOU, someone who has displayed an astounding hatred for how stealth might actually work, to give it a fair chance.

They're not similar grade. They're superior. They just can't three man four man challenges, and while they can do something they cannot do enough.

A Barbarian functions as glass cannon DPS. However glass cannons die easily, and just DPS isn't that useful. Tier 4.

A Rogue is glass, but not a cannon, not DPS, and not anything else. It's listed as a 4, but this is clearly false as the Barbarian does everything they do except UMD vastly better, and the Warlock does UMD vastly better. Note also I'm ignoring the things that never work, like lockpicking.

[Xerxus]

You don't understand (or are most likely trolling), every encounter can be designed to exclude every single kind of playstyle if the DM feels like it. A dead magic area could be close to impossible to beat if you are a level 1 or even 20 wizard. The same area filled with high-ac monsters could also exclude martials. But lo and behold, all the monsters in this area have poor spot and listen, suddenly the rogue can get in there and steal the thingamabob.

If your DM can't enable a rogue then that's a bad DM, or just a very prejudiced one.

[ArcturusV]

No one has said they're useless in any environment, other than "DM is out to get you" environments. Which no one is immune to no matter what your class, build, or features are. You don't win that scenario.

But yeah. All he was commenting on is that you yourself are inherently biased in this situation as well. And it has been stated as per above, the one real weakness to it is "DM is out to get you". And you're setting up the parameters to be the DM, and your stated mission is to be out to get the rogue and prove it's the worst class.

It'd be a fairer compromise to have you run something else. Barbarian is one you mentioned. Same challenge. Rogue player running it, Barbarian running it in separate runs. Same Scenario, same DM.

This would prove things a lot more conclusively than the system you have proposed.

1) To prove something is "Worse" you need a baseline comparison. A control group. This would be the Barbarian in the above suggestion. Saying something failed in a vacuum with no competition just proves that it failed. It doesn't prove that it's any more or less effective than a baseline average.

2) If there was bias on the part of the DM, it would be blatantly obvious. Particularly with open rolled results on the forum, as the session is being run twice and you can clearly compare. If there's just one session, with the express purpose to prove a point, then it's already starting from a tainted foundation.

3) Claiming that running something in the same tier is pointless seems... off. The whole point of the tier system as I understand it, is that people in the same tier are supposed to be roughly equatable in their ability to contribute and solve problems. Some by having a narrow focus (e.g.: Warblade), some by having a wide array of options that are not as highly developed (e.g.: Beguiler). It's not a measure of sheer combat power (though it seems I see it mistaken for that quite a bit) but directly relevant to the test at hand. The ability to face a scenario and be able to contribute and solve things.

[Pickford]

Fixed that for you. Most games will find the listed strategems intolerably rich in lactose. (Even though, of course, fire resistance applies to each breath separately, so a mere 10 resistance reduces it to an average of 5 damage total.)

Good thing ~1% of classes have innate fire resistance. Right?

And it's not cheese to 'use' your class specific features. If you have the str to wield a tree, you can wield a tree. By that definition it would also be cheese to disintegrate the ground under someone and have them take falling damage.

[Xerxus]

Most games will find the listed strategems intolerably rich in lactose.

Actually, cheese usually contains very little lactose.

[Maugan Ra]

...at what point did I 'start making assumptions favourable for the other side'?

There is a scenario there, which I have created. It is a group of bandits in a forest. This seems to me to be a reasonable sort of baseline encounter. Bandits are a traditional low-to-mid level enemy, and there are certainly enough bloody forests in the world for it to be an acceptable setting.

Where is the problem here?

[Emmerask]

The topic is worst class not worst class in combat.
To determine a worst class you guys would actually need to take everything into account :smallconfused:

So the rogue is about a billion times better then a barbarian, a samurai or a fighter (hence why he is in a higher tier)...

Yes he doesn´t really have the one combat power that insta kills one enemy or locks down a bunch, but having one ability that can solve one VERY specialized situation is not what a good class makes.

A good class can solve a variety of situations and none combat ones are in that list ^^

Fighter still seems to be the worst class, maybe samurai is a close second or actually first (would have to know the skill-list^^)

[CIDE]

Thank Gygax, an actual post about the topic instead of Rogue vs. Dog. (The new Cat vs. Commoner, only not amusing!)

They're "bad" in the opposite direction, by being too powerful rather than incompetent.

I don't know Incarnum stuff very well, but isn't Soulborn famously bad at its job?

I can't speak to your question at the end of your post but I'd still say they're "bad" classes. They're on the opposite end of the spectrum but it's still equally valid in most campaigns available. As for myself I'd probably have more fun playing a soulknife skillmonkey (and have done so) as opposed to a more-broken-than-normal wizard/druid.

I will admit to that I personally wouldn't be a skilled enough player to use either of the classes without breaking something and making less powerful classes or players feel inadequate. Even if I did try.


Fixed that for you. Most games will find the listed strategems intolerably rich in lactose. (Even though, of course, fire resistance applies to each breath separately, so a mere 10 resistance reduces it to an average of 5 damage total.)


I've been blessed with a group that would find something like the boulder wielding drunken master hilarious rather than game breaking.


Actually, humanoid HD (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/typesSubtypes.htm#humanoidType) are significantly better than levels in Commoner.

Yeah, I had to point that out to the GM in my online game. HE didn't believe me at first.


Apostle of peace. Well, it's really vow of nonviolence and vow of peace that cause the problems, but since apostle of peace requires them I'd say it counts.

It's not broken in the sense that it's underpowered. It's broken in the sense that the game doesn't work right any more if you play it.

D&D is a game about killing monsters and taking your stuff, and the apostle of peace requires that not only do you not kill anything, but you do your utmost (including applying mechanical penalties to them and hitting them with mind-affecting peace auras) to stop your allies from killing anything too. And if they do kill something, you lose your abilities. It's all the roleplaying problems of having a paladin in a non-good party but cranked up to 11.

Unless played in a game that is specifically designed around its playstyle, apostle of peace is pretty much guaranteed to cause intra-party conflict, generally ending in the death of the person playing the apostle of peace.

IIRC having the class apostle of peace requires you to have those feats but doesn't require you to KEEP those feats and to keep the vows tied to them.


Actually, cheese usually contains very little lactose.

And yet I still have issues eating it....

:smallfrown:

[Thebar99]

You don't understand (or are most likely trolling), every encounter can be designed to exclude every single kind of playstyle if the DM feels like it. A dead magic area could be close to impossible to beat if you are a level 1 or even 20 wizard. The same area filled with high-ac monsters could also exclude martials. But lo and behold, all the monsters in this area have poor spot and listen, suddenly the rogue can get in there and steal the thingamabob.

If your DM can't enable a rogue then that's a bad DM, or just a very prejudiced one.

I understand just fine.

Enemies can get actual abilities that give them high AC.

Enemies have by default actual abilities that let them see in the dark, no need to get them.

Enemies do not have and cannot get infinite SR or a dead magic effect (some can get high saves... casters can still deal with those).

So enemies by default counter Rogues, can counter bad melee characters with little effort (good ones still hit and kill them), but cannot just shut off casters. Hell, I can't remember the last time I've ran a boss that wouldn't pass any saving throw on a 2-5... interestingly enough, casters are still useful, even though bosses have the actual ability to near auto pass saves (hint: Dispels, debuffs, saveless effects).

Note your own words: Enemies do not need to nicely allow good melee characters to succeed. They do not need to nicely allow casters to succeed. They can act as... wait for it...

ENEMIES!

And yet, good melees and casters can overcome those enemies.

In order for the Rogue... any Rogue, even the best possible Rogue to succeed the enemy - ENEMY must nicely allow them to succeed. Because if the ENEMY is not completely and utterly incompetent, no Rogue can succeed against them.


...at what point did I 'start making assumptions favourable for the other side'?

There is a scenario there, which I have created. It is a group of bandits in a forest. This seems to me to be a reasonable sort of baseline encounter. Bandits are a traditional low-to-mid level enemy, and there are certainly enough bloody forests in the world for it to be an acceptable setting.

Where is the problem here?

Cooks and kitchens.

Now since this is developing into a cooks and kitchens problem with lots of pointless *****ing, how about this.

1: Eldest will select a referee. This must be someone who hasn't been involved in the whole Rogues suck vs no they don't thing before. He submits the name for my approval. Assuming they have not been involved in this debacle prior, I will almost certainly accept whoever he picks.
2: Once we have agreed upon a referee, another person who is not me, Eldest, or the ref, and has also never been involved in this debacle before will select a map of some indoor, multilevel area of moderate size and submit it for my and the ref's approval. I will almost certainly approve any map that meets this criteria, be it a dungeon, building, or tower. This map will not be shown to Eldest in advance, as the Rogue would not necessarily know the floorplan ahead of time.
3: Eldest submits his Rogue to the ref (level 10, 32 PB, 3.5 official sources), I submit encounter and scenario to the ref.
4: We run through it. Rogue dies horribly.
5: ???
6: Profit!

[Bakeru]

Where is the problem here?The problem is that trees give cover, so any self-respecting band of bandits would rather raze a forest than make a lair in it, because they totally don't have to hide from the law themselves.

[jindra34]

I can clarify what step 5 should be
Check to make sure a so called 'useful' class of similar grade (as declared and likely built by you Bar) can clear the challenge. If not the test was inconclusive, so go back and re-do the prep and repeat till one option or the other succeeds. If one succeeds and the other fails, hey we have a data point, lets get a few more in varying situations. Then look at them, and draw conclusions.

Or... we could let Maugan Ra run his test and wait till after its done to claim that it didn't live up to your standards and didn't address your point, and if it didn't why. Like rational people.

[Maugan Ra]

I may have to ask what exactly you mean by 'cooks and kitchens' here. Something about a specialist in their preferred area? Because it's just not clicking in my mind right now for some reason.

I will however point out that being able to see in the dark does not utterly negate stealth. This is because stealth does not involve creating a field of darkness around you. It is about moving quietly, about identifying likely enemy positions and lines of sight, about avoiding anything that might make you easier to spot (standing silhouetted on a horizon, for example), that sort of thing. Rogues (and stealth builds in general) are therefore not reliant upon darkness... it just makes it easier for them.

Beyond that, and assuming you don't take a simple case of logic as evidence of me being horribly biased and unsuitable, what exactly is wrong with my proposed scenario that makes it unacceptable? I haven't posted in the thread before this, and while I certainly have an opinion on the ongoing debate (because if I didn't I wouldn't be reading the thread), I like to think that a sensible DM can avoid letting his own beliefs taint the scenario.

The bandits in the forest is a simple, flexible, baseline scenario. I know the details of it, the participants do not (until they come up in play). If it's the fact that it's outdoors, then afterwards I might also run an inside scenario for comparison purposes. But you've yet to explain why exactly my proposed experiment and demonstration is invalid.

[Xerxus]

Enemies do not have and cannot get infinite SR or a dead magic effect (some can get high saves... casters can still deal with those).

Watch this!

Magic item (only useable by bad guys, UMD is rocket high for this thing)


Thingy

Projects a dead magic zone around you.

Or any variation on this theme. But a good DM wouldn't use this.

And if you define your DM as the enemy then I see the issue.

[Thebar99]

Watch this!

Magic item (only useable by bad guys, UMD is rocket high for this thing)



Or any variation on this theme. But a good DM wouldn't use this.

And if you define your DM as the enemy then I see the issue.

Watch this!

WBL: Enemies have limits on their wealth. Such an item would be impossible to afford by a PC, much less an NPC if it existed at all. It would also disable itself, becoming the most overpriced doorstop ever.

This is an Aelryinth quality argument. Just stop now.

Maugan: Ever cooked anything before?

If you have one person working in the kitchen, they can cook anything they know how to cook. Depending on the dish, having some people help you can make things easier. If there are too many cooks in the kitchen, you just get in each other's way, argue a lot, and don't get things done. Hopefully you can see how that applies to the current situation with everyone running off on tangents and being more easily distracted than an Aspie?

And to hide you need cover or concealment. Period, full stop. Since no one guarding something is going to leave the area littered with stuff so that anyone can just sneak right up to them, that leaves concealment. Which means darkness (I've been assuming the Rogue acts at night the whole time... his supporters are putting him in broad daylight and pretending he works).

If something can see in the dark, you can't hide in the shadows because to them there are no shadows. And just about everything in the game can. Meaning you cannot even attempt a hide check, so it doesn't even matter that any hide check you make will either auto pass or auto fail with no in between.

Now, as an exercise to the readers tell me why even if the Rogue (or any stealther) does miraculously get to make his stealth checks that he still has to auto pass them all or he loses anyways. This is an easy one.

All that said, I'm ignoring tangential strawman scenarios. If Eldest selects you as the ref for this, then fine. I think you're biased, but I also think you'd have to make your bias painfully obvious for the Rogue to not auto lose (much less win) so if he picks you I'll accept you.

[nobodez]

Watch this!

Magic item (only useable by bad guys, UMD is rocket high for this thing)



Or any variation on this theme. But a good DM wouldn't use this.

And if you define your DM as the enemy then I see the issue.

Hmm… would a magic item that produces an Anti-Magic Field (or a Dead Magic Zone) still gain the bonus to Hardness and HP from being a magic item?

[Eldest]

Cooks and kitchens.

Now since this is developing into a cooks and kitchens problem with lots of pointless *****ing, how about this.

1: Eldest will select a referee. This must be someone who hasn't been involved in the whole Rogues suck vs no they don't thing before. He submits the name for my approval. Assuming they have not been involved in this debacle prior, I will almost certainly accept whoever he picks.
2: Once we have agreed upon a referee, another person who is not me, Eldest, or the ref, and has also never been involved in this debacle before will select a map of some indoor, multilevel area of moderate size and submit it for my and the ref's approval. I will almost certainly approve any map that meets this criteria, be it a dungeon, building, or tower. This map will not be shown to Eldest in advance, as the Rogue would not necessarily know the floorplan ahead of time.
3: Eldest submits his Rogue to the ref (level 10, 32 PB, 3.5 official sources), I submit encounter and scenario to the ref.
4: We run through it. Rogue dies horribly.
5: ???
6: Profit!

I feel like you misunderstood what I meant. You have said, several times, that the barbarian is better than the rogue at problem solving. And that was what I was offering: a contest, to see if the rogue is better, worse, or equal. Now, you cannot create the map, for the same reason I can't: we're both biased. You can't run the encounter for the same reason. However, you can run through a duplicate of the encounter, if Maugan Ra would be ok with running two of them.
Also, reread the thread: Maugan Ra first posted in the thread to accept my request for somebody to run this contest. He has only posted about this topic or to respond to things you said to him or about him. So, according to your criteria, he's an acceptable person to run the contest.
So here's how I meant it to work.
1. We get somebody to run this. (Thanks, Maugan Ra!)
2. They create an encounter, and give us what level to go with.
3. We both create characters, mine a rogue, you some other tier 4 or below (I would suggest barbarian.)
4. We both run the encounter separately.

That was my intention. Now, if you accept it, great. If you don't, then come up with some other way of proving that rogues are worse. But do it here (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?p=15132525#post15132525), instead of on this thread. This derailment has gone on too long.

Edit:

All that said, I'm ignoring tangential strawman scenarios. If Eldest selects you as the ref for this, then fine. I think you're biased, but I also think you'd have to make your bias painfully obvious for the Rogue to not auto lose (much less win) so if he picks you I'll accept you.

This...
You accuse him of bias, then state that if I manage to pull it off, it was because of blatent DM cheating. You have ignored a valid reason for the bandits to keep objects around to hide behind (they're bandits, they need to hide!) and you keep throwing in references to strawmen. Please consider what you said.

[nobodez]

Watch this!

WBL: Enemies have limits on their wealth. Such an item would be impossible to afford by a PC, much less an NPC if it existed at all. It would also disable itself, becoming the most overpriced doorstop ever.

This is an Aelryinth quality argument. Just stop now.

Maugan: Ever cooked anything before?

If you have one person working in the kitchen, they can cook anything they know how to cook. Depending on the dish, having some people help you can make things easier. If there are too many cooks in the kitchen, you just get in each other's way, argue a lot, and don't get things done. Hopefully you can see how that applies to the current situation with everyone running off on tangents and being more easily distracted than an Aspie?

And to hide you need cover or concealment. Period, full stop. Since no one guarding something is going to leave the area littered with stuff so that anyone can just sneak right up to them, that leaves concealment. Which means darkness (I've been assuming the Rogue acts at night the whole time... his supporters are putting him in broad daylight and pretending he works).

If something can see in the dark, you can't hide in the shadows because to them there are no shadows. And just about everything in the game can. Meaning you cannot even attempt a hide check, so it doesn't even matter that any hide check you make will either auto pass or auto fail with no in between.

Now, as an exercise to the readers tell me why even if the Rogue (or any stealther) does miraculously get to make his stealth checks that he still has to auto pass them all or he loses anyways. This is an easy one.

All that said, I'm ignoring tangential strawman scenarios. If Eldest selects you as the ref for this, then fine. I think you're biased, but I also think you'd have to make your bias painfully obvious for the Rogue to not auto lose (much less win) so if he picks you I'll accept you.

Yes, we all know that darkvision defeats the shadows that many rogues can use to hide in. What about the cover or concealment that the rogue can also use to hide in?

Of course, as a GM, I'd rule that as long as the rogue has the appropriate cover or concealment at hand, that rogue can use their Hide skill to Hide from things (though tremmorsense, blindsense, and blindsight would negate these cover/concealment. But, again, I don't play as an adversarial GM. My players come to have fun, that's what the game is about, not GM vs. Players.

[Xerxus]

Hmm… would a magic item that produces an Anti-Magic Field (or a Dead Magic Zone) still gain the bonus to Hardness and HP from being a magic item?

The magic item suddenly changes to a major artifact at the very end of my hypophetical dungeon. It doesn't matter, the DM can shape the world to his liking no matter what you say about WBL. That scenario could be as low as a CR 1 encounter because a fighter could kill the kobolds guarding it and a rogue could sneak past them - all without magic. The point is that scenarios where spellcasters are useless aren't exactly hard to create for a (admittedly bad) DM and not even accepting that is a clear sign of trolling. I'm out.

[nobodez]

The magic item suddenly changes to a major artifact at the very end of my hypophetical dungeon. It doesn't matter, the DM can shape the world to his liking no matter what you say about WBL. That scenario could be as low as a CR 1 encounter because a fighter could kill the kobolds guarding it and a rogue could sneak past them - all without magic. The point is that scenarios where spellcasters are useless aren't exactly hard to create for a (admittedly bad) DM and not even accepting that is a clear sign of trolling. I'm out.

Um, I think you quoted the wrong post. I just asked if an AMF item would have the bonus hardness and HP from being a magic item, or would it keep the original non-magical ones. This would make sundering the item with an adamantine weapon trivially easy unless the AMF item was made from adamantine itself.

[Emmerask]

While about 50% of the monsters have darkvision and this is a big problem for rogues you can still just umd invisibility (wand, scroll etc) or have a ring of invis etc for such circumstances.

It negates darkvision and give you a nice +20 to hide on the move (so its practically impossible to detect you even with very acute senses).
Then you proceed to sneak past the enemy thanks to your move silently.

Anyway the problem with these scenarios is that they proof VERY VERY little in the end the only thing that can be concluded is that that particular scenario can or can´t be solved by the rogue ie its nearly meaningless no matter the outcome.


Yes, we all know that darkvision defeats the shadows that many rogues can use to hide in. What about the cover or concealment that the rogue can also use to hide in?


That is actually within the rules, as long as there is something <hide skill> feet to hide behind the rogue may do his hide check to hide there.

[Thebar99]

I feel like you misunderstood what I meant. You have said, several times, that the barbarian is better than the rogue at problem solving. And that was what I was offering: a contest, to see if the rogue is better, worse, or equal. Now, you cannot create the map, for the same reason I can't: we're both biased. You can't run the encounter for the same reason. However, you can run through a duplicate of the encounter, if Maugan Ra would be ok with running two of them.
Also, reread the thread: Maugan Ra first posted in the thread to accept my request for somebody to run this contest. He has only posted about this topic or to respond to things you said to him or about him. So, according to your criteria, he's an acceptable person to run the contest.
So here's how I meant it to work.

Wrong. What I said was:

The Rogue is the worst class in the game.
Other classes are superior, often in every way that matters (Barbarians used as a specific example the most often).
I specifically mentioned the Barbarian has double offense and defense, because he does.
I specifically mentioned Barbarians are less conditional/harder to counter, because they are.

Now the point of all this was to illustrate that if you wanted someone who did DPS, and nothing else Barbarians were vastly superior (and note: This is all Rogues can do, they fail at everything else even harder).

However the goal in a party is to overcome encounters, because that is what you are actually fighting. And so, when you are fighting it doesn't matter if PC x is superior so much as it matters that your opponents are superior. And your opponents are also the ones you are trying to sneak past, not get killed by while waiting for a 20 on your lockpick check etc.

Therefore, it is your performance vs opponents that matters, and I believe I've said as much from the start.

Now someone else would select an indoor map of some kind, according to some very loose parameters. That is even less specific than saying "a cave", or "a forest", the latter of which YOU selected. So I'm not picking the map.

If I'm not running the encounter this is a waste of my time, as I have no interest in watching people erect strawmen, knock them down, and then declare victory.

Maugan Ra can act as a ref if he wants, but a ref is just that - a go between (in this case between me and you).

In which case you do the character, I do the encounter/scenario, and he makes sure it's all legit.

As for the Barbarian, again that'd be quite pointless. Barbarians are clearly superior, it's undeniable. In a their numbers > Rogues numbers pure and undeniable mathematical sense. Whether they are superior enough to win any given encounter is actually immaterial. They just have to do better, not actually win. But if people really insist on this point I can make the best possible Barbarian, and then someone else (not me, Eldest, the map selector, or anyone else involved) can play them through the same scenario.


This...
You accuse him of bias, then state that if I manage to pull it off, it was because of blatent DM cheating. You have ignored a valid reason for the bandits to keep objects around to hide behind (they're bandits, they need to hide!) and you keep throwing in references to strawmen. Please consider what you said.

I ignored the entire bandit scenario because it was an irrelevant tangent. I also said Rogues cannot possibly win unless they are blatantly cheated for, as their supporters have already demonstrated with chihuahua guard dogs, random hedge mazes in front of areas supposed to keep intruders away, and other attempts to make the guards completely and utterly incompetent just so the Rogue doesn't auto lose. Not even win, just not auto lose.

[jindra34]

See bar here's the problem with you running it when you are also asking for there to be no bias against it anywhere else: Your one of the most biased, if not the most biased, people in the discussion. If an unbiased ref has to be present to make sure you don't cross the line and fiat away options for the rogue, then why ISN'T that unbiased person just running the thing? And how can you tell whether something you know NOTHING about is a strawman or not without observation.
We are essentially acting as scientists here, Eldest and Maugan have agreed to run an experiment to test YOUR theory, and your objecting simply because you don't actually know what the experiment is beyond the basics. If you are going to object wait till after everything is done. And hey if you can articulate the objections well enough someone might even run a second experiment that takes them into account. But not you, because if you are running an experiment, where you control the variables, you can get the outcome you want.

Edit: Random hedge mazes? Your the first person to use that term. All I would need is a couple of things (at worst) from this list: Trees, shrubs, piles of leaves, piles of grass, piles of dirt, piles of trash, drainage ditches, signs, doors, corners, or walls. And how many houses DON'T have any of those?

[Emmerask]

The Rogue is the worst class in the game.
Other classes are superior, often in every way that matters


"Every way that matters" is completely subjective and differs greatly from game to game...

For me for example skills are one of the most important parts of a class, because they allow me to do stuff outside of combat.
Which in the games I participate in is about 60 to 70% of the time.

Now tell me with a straight face that Barbarians have a better skill selection or more skillpoints then a rogue...

I think your main problem is that you can´t even conceive of a playstyle that differs from your own and based on this extremely narrow view you base your assessment of a class.

[Maugan Ra]

*rubs temples, staving off a headache*

I hereby withdraw my offer to run the experimental encounter. Now, having done so, let me go through a series of points regarding this.

1) Your terms of 'better in every way that matters' appear to come down to what they can do in straightforwards combat. Worse, in flat out damage dealing. That is not the only thing that matters. A Rogue that does not attempt to make use of their many, many skill points is just utterly crippling themselves. They lie, they sneak, they pickpocket, they make nice with the diplomacy, they spot and disable traps before they can get cut in half by saw blades coming out of the walls.

2) Setting up a scenario so that the circumstances are firmly on your side is not cheating, or being cheap, it's being intelligent. Of course the Rogue will wait until it's dark if that's practical, of course they'll avoid fair fights where possible.... that's what they do. They are thieves, assassins, scouts and skirmishers. They are not supposed to be getting involved in a Mano-a-Mano fist fight with the bad guy atop a pillar of rock surrounded by lava. Leave that for the fighter and the barbarian.

3) I do not appreciate my attempts to help mediate a discussion being brushed off as completely irrelevant, because I didn't do so in the way you were intending. News flash: I am not goddam telepathic, and even if I was I wouldn't agree with your proposed method, because your proposed method is not as fair and unbiased as you apparently think it is.

[Thebar99]

The ref is for your sake. I don't need to cheat to win. I could cheat in the Rogue's favor and he'd still lose because I didn't cheat enough.

Why? Because a fair fight... isn't. A Rogue isn't level appropriate, so level appropriate foes easily defeat him instead of the inverse intended by the game.

It'd be a waste of my time if someone else did the scenario because just about everyone here has assumed the guards are completely incompetent, and then ignored that if they need completely incompetent guards to look competent they aren't. Just like making everyone totally ineffective doesn't mean Monks are suddenly good. Seriously, that is an argument straight from a Monk thread.

Now I have no idea what map our map selector will pick. I have no idea exactly what his Rogue will look like, but since they aren't exactly a diverse class it's not exactly hard to predict what he'll do.

We're still on step 1 though, because Maugan hasn't agreed to ref, only to do something else entirely.

Edit: Nope. Skills are worthless because they either 1: Don't work. 2: Don't do meaningful stuff when they do work. 3: Cannot be effectively used by Rogues, or some combination of those. So what happens is that Rogues were made worthless in combat but can do this other stuff... but the other stuff is also worthless, so you have old school Thieves all over again.

Edit again: It also seems he never will. So someone else can act as ref if they want. If no one is willing to defend the Rogue then we can just call it worst in game and move on.

[Emmerask]

Edit: Nope. Skills are worthless because they either 1: Don't work. 2: Don't do meaningful stuff when they do work. 3: Cannot be effectively used by Rogues, or some combination of those. So what happens is that Rogues were made worthless in combat but can do this other stuff... but the other stuff is also worthless, so you have old school Thieves all over again.

You must have a TERRIBLE Dm, which is kind of sad really :smallfrown:

[Dr.Epic]

Druid, they don't get any flurry of blows!:smallwink::smalltongue:

[Thebar99]

You must have a TERRIBLE Dm, which is kind of sad really :smallfrown:

Nope again. Even when skills are made better than most DMs actually allow them to be they're still bad. Everyone talks about broken uber Diplomancers, but if you're not stacking eleventy billion bonuses to it, and attempting to use it in a remotely normal fashion it's absolutely TERRIBLE (DC 35 and an entire round to try and get something killing you to not particularly care about you... and depending on the creature indifferent can very well mean "Nothing personal, but I'm still hungry.") Also, no DM will let you stack eleventy billion bonuses to it.

Diplomacy is also one of the BEST skills, so you can imagine how bad the others are.

[jindra34]

First of bar, when the guard plus dog (which originally started out as just a dog before you ramped it up) came out we were talking about a level 1 rogue, which to no one's shock but your own is not a match for your proposed guard plus dog, and definitely not when the combined wealth is over what a level 1 guard should have. In fact the run of the mill kobold (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/monsters/kobold.htm) is an appropriate encounter for a lone rogue. And what are the odds there? And if we ramp the rogue up to the level where it would be appropriate for the guard plus dog (which by using this tool (http://www.d20srd.org/extras/d20encountercalculator/) would be level 7) the numbers are quite in the rogues favor. So how is the rogue not able to live up to level appropriate encounters?

[TengYt]

Nope again. Even when skills are made better than most DMs actually allow them to be they're still bad. Everyone talks about broken uber Diplomancers, but if you're not stacking eleventy billion bonuses to it, and attempting to use it in a remotely normal fashion it's absolutely TERRIBLE (DC 35 and an entire round to try and get something killing you to not particularly care about you... and depending on the creature indifferent can very well mean "Nothing personal, but I'm still hungry.") Also, no DM will let you stack eleventy billion bonuses to it.

Diplomacy is also one of the BEST skills, so you can imagine how bad the others are.

Everyone ignore this guy, he has never played D&D before :)

Anyway, back on topic, I'd have to say the poor Monk. My reasoning is pretty simple, it was just designed badly. It's quite clear that whoever sat down and wrote the mechanics of the Monk for 3e/3.5e had no idea what they wanted a Monk to actually DO or what role it was meant to play in the party. Instead of a class that could perhaps do 1 or 2 things fairly well, it ended up as an unfocused mess that tries to do about 5 things, but fails at each of them. Kinda sad really. :(

[Thebar99]

Wrong yet again.

The Rogue was demonstrably incapable of dealing with the dog. I believe the best case was an 8% success rate? (For those of you wondering, the Barbarian mentioned is more like an 8% failure rate, he also has double the HP so he can survive any counterattacks more than 0% of the time)

Barding was mentioned, it wasn't factored into any of the math.

A guard with the dog was mentioned, he wasn't factored into any of the math.

You lose to PART of this scenario, a tiny part of it. You don't even need to consider the entire thing.

The Rogue then was low level, either 1 or 2. Even if he comes back at 5, he still instantly and automatically fails to sneak past the guard and dog, as he still cannot even attempt a stealth check.

He might kill them at this point, simply because 30 HP isn't gone in a round or two, but he doesn't sneak past them.

He has to come back MUCH later, when he has HiPS or Invis to even try. Which is to say, he has to do the non combat equivalent of struggle to defeat a single Ogre at level 10. (and no, your opponent in my scenario will not be an Ogre)

Now I'm ignoring all off topic posts henceforth. On topic posts are:

Someone who hasn't gotten involved yet volunteering as a ref, getting selected by Eldest, and approved by me.
Someone else not involved yet selecting a map and submitting it for my and the ref's approval.
Stuff relating to the scenario itself as it gets underway.

[Elricaltovilla]

I am willing to serve as referee to this possible experiment that is currently derailing the thread. Although I do have a question for Thebar99, which is: why do you feel that you should be the one to DM the encounter as opposed to someone else who is not otherwise involved in this debate?

[Emmerask]

Nope again. Even when skills are made better than most DMs actually allow them to be they're still bad. Everyone talks about broken uber Diplomancers, but if you're not stacking eleventy billion bonuses to it, and attempting to use it in a remotely normal fashion it's absolutely TERRIBLE (DC 35 and an entire round to try and get something killing you to not particularly care about you... and depending on the creature indifferent can very well mean "Nothing personal, but I'm still hungry.") Also, no DM will let you stack eleventy billion bonuses to it.

Diplomacy is also one of the BEST skills, so you can imagine how bad the others are.

Diplomacy is a very good skill indeed, but you are still in the combat mindset...
Yes using diplomacy so that someone doesn´t want to kill you anymore is hard (and it should be)...
but what about someone that actually doesn´t want to kill you, you just want to get some important information from the lord/lady/king...

You need to steal an envelop without the target realizing it for some time.

You want to realize if someone is lying to you without violence or insulting him

You want to decipher a secret massage that gives you a clue about the boss of the weeks current plans so that you may counter them.

(about a billion more scenarios)

There are so many ways to make use of skills and most of the dcs are very much beatable if you put points in that skill.

A good dm will have these options available to the players and will adjust the adventure accordingly on the fly.

[TengYt]

Now I'm ignoring all off topic posts henceforth. On topic posts are:

Someone who hasn't gotten involved yet volunteering as a ref, getting selected by Eldest, and approved by me.
Someone else not involved yet selecting a map and submitting it for my and the ref's approval.
Stuff relating to the scenario itself as it gets underway.

Actually, this whole silly "Rogue" debate is off topic, you guys should really take it to another thread as you've derailed this one quite spectacularly ;)

[Maugan Ra]

Edit again: It also seems he never will. So someone else can act as ref if they want. If no one is willing to defend the Rogue then we can just call it worst in game and move on.

Stop that. Please. It is very hard to have an actual debate with someone who simply makes unsupported assertions and ignores counter-points with a 'Nope'. And just about everyone else involved in this so far has been defending the Rogue, so you ignoring all of them isn't a victory.

Skills have their place, often a very valuable place. Bluff, for example, can let you convince people of something that isn't true, and a little creative effort can make that so incredibly worthwhile. Likewise, Diplomacy's main value isn't so much stopping a hated foe from attacking you, it's to get the indifferent or doubtful guy on your side as an ally, however temporary.

Knowledge skills are likewise very useful, since knowing what a potential enemy can do before it does it to you can save your life, and the more you know about the world the more options there are. Search and Spot are virtually necessary if you ever want to be reasonably effective at avoiding ambushes or locating valuable loot. Etc etc.

Sneak Attack is a massively good damage enhancer, even at lower levels. Yes, fine, it's situational.... because the Rogue is supposed to be a situational character. By which I mean one who alters the situation to their benefit. The Rogue who accepts a given situation at face value and doesn't try to find better ways to handle it is a terrible Rogue.

[Shazek]

Nope again. Even when skills are made better than most DMs actually allow them to be they're still bad. Everyone talks about broken uber Diplomancers, but if you're not stacking eleventy billion bonuses to it, and attempting to use it in a remotely normal fashion it's absolutely TERRIBLE (DC 35 and an entire round to try and get something killing you to not particularly care about you... and depending on the creature indifferent can very well mean "Nothing personal, but I'm still hungry.") Also, no DM will let you stack eleventy billion bonuses to it.

Diplomacy is also one of the BEST skills, so you can imagine how bad the others are.

I take offense to this. Skills are very useful, and sometimes even necessary, when there's no caster around to make them obsolete.

Going through all the Skills on the SRD:

Appraise: Not particularly helpful, but may let you avoid getting ripped off. Not something I'd use.

Balance: Useful for avoiding traps and dealing with Marbles. Great in its niche.

Bluff: When is lying not helpful? Lets you get past guards, get money, and get out of all sorts of tight spots with some creativity, like "I am an avatar of your god, Gruumsh. Bow to me, orcs, and give tribute." That one obviously requires some seriously high skill, but smaller uses abound.

Climb: Lets you Climb, getting into places you really shouldn't be. Great for thievery and escape.

Concentration: Necessary for casters. Rogues, not so much.

Craft: Free money

Decipher Script: Not so useful outside of niche situations with no spellcaster support. Invaluable then.

Diplomacy: Godlike, allows you to make anyone your ally with a modest check.

Disable Device: Lets you not get hit by traps. That's a plus, in my book.

Disguise: Lets you be in places you shouldn't be, works well with Bluff.

Escape Artist: Get out of Jail Free Card, much?

Forgery: Depends on how creative you are and how social your campaign is. Can mean anything from nothing to saving a kingdom.

Gather Information: Plot Power! Depends on how good your DM is, really

Handle Animal: Broken Beyond Belief, if you know how to use it.

Heal: Good for Low-Magic, Low-Level, or when dealing with poisons. Otherwise Sub-par

Hide: Stealth is brokenly powerful in this game with a decent bonus. You can use a tree to become effectively invisible. Only weakened by the fact that invisibility exists as a low level spell.

Intimidate: Not very good without a feat investment. With, it's decent.

Jump: Fun, useful in niche situations, potentially combat powerful.

Knowledge: Ridiculously useful, especially with Feats. Great way to avoid metagaming and still use weaknesses against enemies.

Listen: Good for scouting, battle against invisible or stealthy foes.

Move Silently: Great for stealth.

Open Lock: Rendered kinda obsolete by Knock, but necessary without it.

Perform: Free cash, feat prerequisite, flavor

Profession: Kinda terrible, needs to be there so commoners can do something.

Ride: Not very important unless you invest a lot into a mount. Decent then.

Search: Used quite often in games, can find clues, loot, etc.

Sense Motive: Fights Bluff, so quite nice

Sleight of Hand: Hide weapons, steal things, what's not to like?

Speak Language: Doesn't really count, but handy without Tongues.

Spellcraft: Godly, but not a Rogue thing. Useful with feats/class features for casters.

Spot: See both Search and Listen

Survival: Free food in the wild, tracking w/feat

Swim: Niche, but great in the niche, like the other athletic skills

Tumble: Ridiculously powerful, but only to a point. Good for everyone.

UMD: 2nd most powerful skill, behind Diplomacy. Requires significant cash investment.

Use Rope: Fairly niche, but less so than others. Nice to keep captives.

In short, Skills are great. If you don't use them, you aren't trying hard enough.

[Eldest]

Edit again: It also seems he never will. So someone else can act as ref if they want. If no one is willing to defend the Rogue then we can just call it worst in game and move on.

Ok, ignoring everything else and correcting this one bit.
I am willing to defend the rogue. So, I bet, are large numbers of people in this thread.
What I am not willing to do, however, is to appease your... frankly, skewed, sense of what is and is not an appropriate encounter. Ignoring all else, the guard dog, with handler, barding, et al, is (at a guess) a CR 1.5, 2. A party of four level 1-2 people are supposed to handle it.

Now. Are you rejecting the contest? Because that's all I offered. A side by side comparison, or a duel. I will not run a single rogue through an encounter in a vacuum, without something to compare it to.

[Thebar99]

I am willing to serve as referee to this possible experiment that is currently derailing the thread. Although I do have a question for Thebar99, which is: why do you feel that you should be the one to DM the encounter as opposed to someone else who is not otherwise involved in this debate?

The topic is "Worst class in the entire game". Discussing what that is is on topic. It shouldn't have gone on this long, but that's mostly because people can't face facts.

And the answer is so that the opposition is played intelligently.

Remember, Metal Gear is a game about an infiltration expert who only succeeds because enemies can't see more than 10 feet in front of their faces, don't think random boxes are odd, and have no short term memory. If the guards were remotely competent, he couldn't sneak past them ever. Stealth is useless isn't just a D&D thing. D&D goes out of its way to make it useless with auto detects everywhere, and no facing rules and so on but that's the game. Not me.

Anyways, if Eldest accepts you that's step 1. After that is step 2: Map selection. Remember, don't post the map openly, PM it to myself and the ref once selected.

[TengYt]

D&D isn't a solo game.

Stop pretending it is.

If a level 1 Rogue saw a Guard Dog and a guard, he wouldn't try and take them on. He'd get his three-four buddies to help him take them down or get past them.

D&D is a team game.

[Maugan Ra]

The guards in Metal Gear have limited sight range. The guards in things like Hitman or Splinter Cell are considerably better.

And I say again, there are no auto-detects against stealth. Congratulations, you have Darkvision and constant True Seeing and are standing in the middle of a featureless plane. That doesn't help you spot me if I walk up behind you. Or in front of you with a mundane disguise, for that matter.

It's not that everyone else is refusing to face facts, it's that what you are presenting are not actually facts.

[jindra34]

The guards in Metal Gear have limited sight range. The guards in things like Hitman or Splinter Cell are considerably better.

And I say again, there are no auto-detects against stealth. Congratulations, you have Darkvision and constant True Seeing and are standing in the middle of a featureless plane. That doesn't help you spot me if I walk up behind you. Or in front of you with a mundane disguise, for that matter.

It's not that everyone else is refusing to face facts, it's that what you are presenting are not actually facts.

Well there are auto-detects (scent at 30ft, blind-sense, blind-sight, and tremor sense.) but all those are circumvented by one feat. Though I would note for bar that looking in the direction of someone does not mean looking at someone. And if you were patroling and you didn't see anything of interest in a direction (successful hide opposed by spot does that you know) why would you keep looking in that direction as opposed to looking in others?

[angry_bear]

You forgot about improved feint, a bluff related feat. If your skill is high enough, you get to deliver sneak attacks in one on one melee. And, since it's low level, the enemy's base attack bonus won't be particularly high, so it should be easy enough to pull off.

Or hell, if the objective in this scenario is getting by the guard and dog, forge a document saying you're allowed entrance, and back it up with your bluff and disguise checks. Anyone who calls skills useless, has probably never put much thought into what they can do with them.

Rogues aren't combat gods the way other melee classes are, but they've been designed so that they don't have to be. And even when they are stuck in a one on one fight, what's to stop them from taking a handful of ground up glass, and making a ranged touch attack to the enemy's eyes, and effectively blinding them? Which, I'm pretty sure let's the rogue use his sneak attack doesn't it?

[Elricaltovilla]

And the answer is so that the opposition is played intelligently.

I am certain you don't mean it that way, but this sentence makes it sound as though you don't believe anyone else is capable of intelligent DMing.


Remember, Metal Gear is a game about an infiltration expert who only succeeds because enemies can't see more than 10 feet in front of their faces, don't think random boxes are odd, and have no short term memory. If the guards were remotely competent, he couldn't sneak past them ever. Stealth is useless isn't just a D&D thing. D&D goes out of its way to make it useless with auto detects everywhere, and no facing rules and so on but that's the game. Not me.

Anyways, if Eldest accepts you that's step 1. After that is step 2: Map selection. Remember, don't post the map openly, PM it to myself and the ref once selected.

I have a couple more questions and concerns regarding the nature of your analogy and the specifics of this challenge, however I'm posting from my phone so I will save those for a new post once I am back to my computer.

Do you have a strong objection to me starting a new thread to properly discuss this further?

[The Trickster]

The topic is "Worst class in the entire game". Discussing what that is is on topic. It shouldn't have gone on this long, but that's mostly because people can't face facts.

And the answer is so that the opposition is played intelligently.

Remember, Metal Gear is a game about an infiltration expert who only succeeds because enemies can't see more than 10 feet in front of their faces, don't think random boxes are odd, and have no short term memory. If the guards were remotely competent, he couldn't sneak past them ever. Stealth is useless isn't just a D&D thing. D&D goes out of its way to make it useless with auto detects everywhere, and no facing rules and so on but that's the game. Not me.

Anyways, if Eldest accepts you that's step 1. After that is step 2: Map selection. Remember, don't post the map openly, PM it to myself and the ref once selected.

Well yes, MGS does have some of the worse security guys out there, but it is a game. D&D is also a game. The thread is "Worse class in the game". If you play by the rules of the game (the skill check part if the PH gives many of the rules), then you can see that rogues are not the worse class. Mediocre? I think so. But they do have skills (which are not useless), which have greater versatility then just swinging a big sword around all day.

[Thebar99]

Stop that. Please. It is very hard to have an actual debate with someone who simply makes unsupported assertions and ignores counter-points with a 'Nope'. And just about everyone else involved in this so far has been defending the Rogue, so you ignoring all of them isn't a victory.

When someone is not only blatantly wrong but totally off base there's nothing else to say but Nope. Like here.


Skills have their place, often a very valuable place. Bluff, for example, can let you convince people of something that isn't true, and a little creative effort can make that so incredibly worthwhile. Likewise, Diplomacy's main value isn't so much stopping a hated foe from attacking you, it's to get the indifferent or doubtful guy on your side as an ally, however temporary.

Knowledge skills are likewise very useful, since knowing what a potential enemy can do before it does it to you can save your life, and the more you know about the world the more options there are. Search and Spot are virtually necessary if you ever want to be reasonably effective at avoiding ambushes or locating valuable loot. Etc etc.

Nope. See, convincing people of something that isn't true, even if it works is not that useful. You're not altering reality. So if you say you're the guy he hired yesterday and he's hired no new people in a week? Auto fail. If you tell him his shoes are untied at best he glances down (free action), sees they are in fact tied, then says "Nope." (free action)

If you can only use Diplomacy to get people that would already help you to help you, it fails. Full stop. Making Hostile Indifferent is DC 35, because they won't wait 1 minute to start eating your face. Remember, one of the best skills in the game, still almost entirely impractical to actually use.

Knowledge skills are just about worthless except as Knowledge Devotion fuel, since the DC is 10 + HD, enemies have more HD than you often by far, and then that only gives you ONE piece of info... every 5 points gives you another bit.

So even something like a DC 50 check can very well only tell you 1-3 things... know what else will tell you 1-3 things about a creature? Fighting it for 1 round.

Knowledge guy: Hai guys, that thing breathes fire!
Burned guy: Thank you Captain Obvious.

And lol Search. Just lol Search.


Sneak Attack is a massively good damage enhancer, even at lower levels. Yes, fine, it's situational.... because the Rogue is supposed to be a situational character. By which I mean one who alters the situation to their benefit. The Rogue who accepts a given situation at face value and doesn't try to find better ways to handle it is a terrible Rogue.

Except for the part where you're still out DPSed by less/non conditional DPSers even within the same tier, and the part where you have no influence over the situation at all.


Ok, ignoring everything else and correcting this one bit.
I am willing to defend the rogue. So, I bet, are large numbers of people in this thread.
What I am not willing to do, however, is to appease your... frankly, skewed, sense of what is and is not an appropriate encounter. Ignoring all else, the guard dog, with handler, barding, et al, is (at a guess) a CR 1.5, 2. A party of four level 1-2 people are supposed to handle it.

Now. Are you rejecting the contest? Because that's all I offered. A side by side comparison, or a duel. I will not run a single rogue through an encounter in a vacuum, without something to compare it to.

Again, the guard wasn't factored into the math at all. He had a max 8% chance vs just the dog, and with 8 HP he's not surviving the counterattacks. Barding wasn't in the math either.

That said, the party is supposed to deal with the guard and dog... meaning the Rogue doesn't sneak past it, doesn't contribute in combat against them, and succeeds or fails based on the other's merits. The Rogue is, at best an empty slot.

And the point of contention is Rogue abilities don't work vs yes they do. So a scenario that showcases the failure of Rogue abilities is apt. It isn't just an encounter, I can save you the trouble there and say you die, game over. You are being compared to the encounter, as that is what actually matters.

Other classes being superior, while true is quite irrelevant. You're not fighting the Barbarian.

So, are you willing to showcase Rogue abilities not working? If so, are you willing to accept Elric as the ref?

[Xerxus]

All this is coming from a guy who thought that you couldn't throw two weapons at the same time with twf. Which you can, to great effect, and your calculation was based on it being false.

So nope, you're wrong.

[KillingAScarab]

The problem comes when a Fighter can be a better meldshaper than a Soulborn and have enough feat slots left over to still be better at fighting than a Soulborn too. At which point the Fighter is in every way that matters a better Soulborn than the Soulborn. And if a Fighter can do every part of your own job better than you, you have a serious problem.That's the part of the argument I don't buy. Not yet, at least. Fighters don't get any essentia or binds from their class to improve soulmelds, while a Soulborn at least gets some essentia (3 additional from the Incarnum bonus feats they must choose, too) and open an entire category of chakras at once. A single classed fighter also doesn't get a smite, to the best of my knowledge.

Anyway, I don't care much about, "I can build a X which does Y better than Z," power level so much for this thread. I care about whether or not the class works.

[Thebar99]

The guards in Metal Gear have limited sight range. The guards in things like Hitman or Splinter Cell are considerably better.

And I say again, there are no auto-detects against stealth. Congratulations, you have Darkvision and constant True Seeing and are standing in the middle of a featureless plane. That doesn't help you spot me if I walk up behind you. Or in front of you with a mundane disguise, for that matter.

It's not that everyone else is refusing to face facts, it's that what you are presenting are not actually facts.

D&D has no facing rules, there is no "behind".


You forgot about improved feint, a bluff related feat. If your skill is high enough, you get to deliver sneak attacks in one on one melee. And, since it's low level, the enemy's base attack bonus won't be particularly high, so it should be easy enough to pull off.

I didn't forget, I disregarded it entirely. With full attack sneak attacks your DPS is still bad. With single hits? Totally and completely laughable.

You also ran out of feat slots a long time ago. To reiterate, this Rogue supposedly has:

1-3 feats for TWF line.
Weapon Finesse.
Improved Initiative.
4 charge feats.
Darkstalker.
Improved Feint.

You have level / 3 + 1 or 2 feats. Hint: That's a lot less than 11.


Rogues aren't combat gods the way other melee classes are, but they've been designed so that they don't have to be. And even when they are stuck in a one on one fight, what's to stop them from taking a handful of ground up glass, and making a ranged touch attack to the enemy's eyes, and effectively blinding them? Which, I'm pretty sure let's the rogue use his sneak attack doesn't it?

So you need:

Random glass.
Called shot rules that don't exist.
Probably something else I'm forgetting.

...Yeah.


I am certain you don't mean it that way, but this sentence makes it sound as though you don't believe anyone else is capable of intelligent DMing.

Anyone else? No. I know people that are. I trained several dozen personally.

Most people however are not. And you can see that in people's underlying assumptions that enemies are even less aware than Metal Gear guards, and are completely flabbergasted by the mere notion intelligent enemy responses can exist, much less actually presenting one.

Some guy a while back had this long thing to the effect of "If intelligent enemies actually act intelligent at all, or at least more intelligent than a bad AI script this vastly increases CR".

Um no, if you fight something with Int 10 it's as smart as an average person. Something with Int 18? Super genius. That's part of its CR.


I have a couple more questions and concerns regarding the nature of your analogy and the specifics of this challenge, however I'm posting from my phone so I will save those for a new post once I am back to my computer.

Do you have a strong objection to me starting a new thread to properly discuss this further?

Eldest hasn't accepted you yet. Assuming he does, go ahead.

[molten_dragon]

IIRC having the class apostle of peace requires you to have those feats but doesn't require you to KEEP those feats and to keep the vows tied to them.

I thought if you ever lost the prerequisite of a prestige class you lost the class features of that prestige class. Or at least couldn't continue taking levels in that class.

[Maugan Ra]

Nope. See, convincing people of something that isn't true, even if it works is not that useful. You're not altering reality. So if you say you're the guy he hired yesterday and he's hired no new people in a week? Auto fail. If you tell him his shoes are untied at best he glances down (free action), sees they are in fact tied, then says "Nope." (free action)

Well yes, presumably you actually try telling plausible lies. So if a guard spots you in an area meant to be off-limits, using bluff to convince him that you were just lost and oh thanks the gods he's here and does he know the way out is entirely valid and generally better than getting oneself arrested.

As for your second example, what, you've never seen the classic heroic ploy of 'you've left the safety catch on'? If a feint or a bluff gives you a momentary advantage, that's still an advantage. In this case, the enemy is slightly distracted and thus loses their dexterity bonus to AC for a round. Hey, guess what Rogues have that can turn that into a decided win?


If you can only use Diplomacy to get people that would already help you to help you, it fails. Full stop. Making Hostile Indifferent is DC 35, because they won't wait 1 minute to start eating your face. Remember, one of the best skills in the game, still almost entirely impractical to actually use.

There are steps in-between 'about to murder you' and 'willing to help you'. Diplomacy is for when you want to convince the irritated bouncer to let you in, or the cop to forgive your minor indiscretion, or the mob boss to loan you money. Or just about anything else.


Knowledge skills are just about worthless except as Knowledge Devotion fuel, since the DC is 10 + HD, enemies have more HD than you often by far, and then that only gives you ONE piece of info... every 5 points gives you another bit.

So even something like a DC 50 check can very well only tell you 1-3 things... know what else will tell you 1-3 things about a creature? Fighting it for 1 round.

Knowledge guy: Hai guys, that thing breathes fire!
Burned guy: Thank you Captain Obvious.

Alternately, use it before combat to work out the capabilities of the enemy and whether you should engage or flee. Or when you spot interesting runes on the wall and want to get a clue as to what they might mean. Or when trying to stop an evil ritual and wanting to know how long you have before it is complete.

You seem to, again, be stuck in the mindset of 'if it doesn't help me stab this guy to death right now with no preparation, it is useless'.


Again, the guard wasn't factored into the math at all. He had a max 8% chance vs just the dog, and with 8 HP he's not surviving the counterattacks. Barding wasn't in the math either.

He had an 8% chance in the fight because your calculations completely denied him any chance of using his sneak attack, or getting a surprise round, or in general doing anything else to tilt the chances in his favour. Just off the top of my head, by poisoning some steak and leaving it within the dog's scent range.


That said, the party is supposed to deal with the guard and dog... meaning the Rogue doesn't sneak past it, doesn't contribute in combat against them, and succeeds or fails based on the other's merits. The Rogue is, at best an empty slot.

How does your mind even work? Even arbitrarily denied all his specialist options (like, for example, sneak attack being enabled when you flank an enemy, and thus much easier to do when you have friends), there is still a world of difference between 'cannot take these guys on his own' and 'cannot contribute in a fight against them'.


D&D has no facing rules, there is no "behind".


Really? REALLY? Did it occur to you that it might possibly be that the authors assumed that they didn't need to waste word count on saying 'people do not usually have all-round vision and thus it is possible to sneak up behind them with a good skill check', because only the most anal rules lawyer would try to use that in a serious argument?

We're getting into the territory of 'well the rules don't SAY you can't just keep fighting once dead'.



I didn't forget, I disregarded it entirely. With full attack sneak attacks your DPS is still bad. With single hits? Totally and completely laughable.

In what way? In what way is adding another half dozen odd dice onto your attack damage a 'laughable' DPS?



You also ran out of feat slots a long time ago. To reiterate, this Rogue supposedly has:

1-3 feats for TWF line.
Weapon Finesse.
Improved Initiative.
4 charge feats.
Darkstalker.
Improved Feint.

You have level / 3 + 1 or 2 feats. Hint: That's a lot less than 11.

Or he could be using just some of those, because any of them have their own uses and just because it is an option doesn't mean he has to take it.



So you need:

Random glass.
Called shot rules that don't exist.
Probably something else I'm forgetting.

...Yeah.

Or you need a DM willing to say 'yes' to a creative idea, rather than 'no, there's no rules for that'.

Here's a hint - such behavior crops up in most DM-guides as a good idea for a reason.



Most people however are not. And you can see that in people's underlying assumptions that enemies are even less aware than Metal Gear guards, and are completely flabbergasted by the mere notion intelligent enemy responses can exist, much less actually presenting one.

...and you are accusing us of using straw men? Nobody has said anything like that.

[Eldest]

Whoever the deuce offered to run the encounter, go ahead. Already have an OOC thread for it. (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?p=15132777#post15132777) Name the level, point buy, and restrictions. Throw together an encounter. And (here's the part where I pity you) explain exactly to Thebar99 why your encounter is actually logical. Then I'll try to beat it. Then I will explain why by refusing to run a parallel encounter, Thebar99's point is invalid, regardless. All, hopefully, in that order.

[Elricaltovilla]

Anyone else? No. I know people that are. I trained several dozen personally.

Most people however are not. And you can see that in people's underlying assumptions that enemies are even less aware than Metal Gear guards, and are completely flabbergasted by the mere notion intelligent enemy responses can exist, much less actually presenting one.

Once again, this isn't much better. The implication with this statement is that anyone who you haven't trained (presumably to fit your concept of how DMing is supposed to work) is incapable of DMing fairly.

Once again, I kindly suggest you try and be more tactful with your posts. Because when you say things like this people tend to ignore any potentially good points you have in favor of being insulted or upset by your implied attack on their preferred style of play.



Some guy a while back had this long thing to the effect of "If intelligent enemies actually act intelligent at all, or at least more intelligent than a bad AI script this vastly increases CR".

Um no, if you fight something with Int 10 it's as smart as an average person. Something with Int 18? Super genius. That's part of its CR.


This here raises some concerns for me as a potential referee. Specifically, if you have a guard with 18 INT, are you going to assume that he automatically knows everything going on within his immediate area because he is "so smart?" If that's the case, then at what point does his intelligence stop exactly? If the rogue rolls bluff and succeeds to convince the guard to let him past are you going to step in and say "This guard has 18 Intelligence and has already memorized the faces of every party guest on the list, so he knows you don't belong and shoots you with a crossbow."

If that's going to be the case, then there is no way that this can be run fairly.

-------------------

If you're going to be designing encounters for a singular rogue to overcome, I want to make it known explicitly that a CR encounter equal to the Level of a singular rogue is NOT a CR appropriate encounter for that rogue. This is true for every character class, in a 1 on 1 fight against an opponent of CR equal to your Character Level, a character should only have a 50% chance of coming out alive. A party of four should be able to succeed on an encounter against a CR appropriate enemy with an expenditure of approximately 1/4th of their resources.

Therefore, I expect your encounters to be at least 2 CR below the rogue's level because he lacks the support and action economy provided by having three additional party members.

Additionally:

1. I need to know what the expected role of the Referee is going to be. Am I supposed to step in and say "you can't do that" to either side if they're violating the rules or am I simply there to make sure the dice roller isn't screwed up?

2. Due to your comments regarding the Bluff/Diplomacy/Social skills, I'm going to expect a list of each individual enemy's knowledge. This is because it's unreasonable to assume that every guard knows everything about the area in which they work. A low level guard is not going to know that they haven't hired any new guards that week because it isn't his job to know that. I've worked in security for two years, and they don't tell the grunts crap.

3. Assuming that the referee's job is to supercede the DM if his actions aren't in line with the rules, or his NPCs are acting beyond their capabilities I will declare the entire exercise void and you will forfeit the experiment. THIS IS NON NEGOTIABLE.

This also holds true for the rogue's player.

---------------

I'm sure I'll come up with more questions/concerns as I read through this thread more thoroughly, but for now those are the concerns I have.

[Thebar99]

Elric, it seems he's refusing my scenario entirely now. So I suspect this is all moot. Instead he'd rather go knock down someone's straw man and declare victory. If this were not so, he'd have accepted you or declined you when prompted instead of ignoring that entirely and continuing on tangents. If he doesn't get back on topic soon I will assume he's bowing out and get someone else to run the Rogue.

It'd be nice if there were more good players I was not personally involved with creating or at least had a secondhand role. There isn't - in part because people learn bad play habits from bad players, in part because it's easier to learn habits than unlearn them, and in part because so many are personally offended by things that should not be personal at all, such as "Rogues suck".

I will not show any remorse for telling the truth, even if it hurts. And anyone that would ignore my good points just because they don't like me isn't worth my time anyways, so it's actually a good thing they filter themselves out for me. After all, I deal in objectivity. Anyone not objective enough to realize "He's a jerk, but right." is literally incapable of getting it.

And 18 Int isn't omniscience. Even 38 isn't. However it does mean he's not going to act as if basic tactics are beyond him. Which is what most people seem to think should happen, then they get mortally offended by things like a creature using its natural environment to its advantage in a basic way.

CR stuff: First of all, that means the Rogue should pass half the time. I believe he'll fail 100% of the time. I am also so confident in this fact I was already going to not use a level appropriate encounter, but instead use something lower. I still believe he'll fail 100% of the time. As for a party, a party would handle a level appropriate foe with 20% resources. However they'd do so in spite of the Rogue, not because of him. Again though I was already going to use a mook and win anyways, so objection's moot.

Other stuff:

1: Yes. The Rogue player (probably not Eldest at this point) forwards his actions to you. I act for my guy(s) and post that to you. If someone does something the other side becomes aware of, you pass the info on. You also make sure the numbers are correct.

2: Those were examples of how Bluff has a very limited scope, because it does and also a statement Diplomacy is impractical in actual play, because you can't hit the DCs without TO stuff (in other words, the lockpicking problem except slightly less pronounced and convincing people > picking locks). There aren't any "guards" in this scenario though, so point's moot.

3: Define beyond their abilities. People have declared with a straight face that a creature with 22 Int, Greater Teleport at will, and a high level Wizard giving him coordinates and a travel path cannot intercept a party moving in a predictable manner, hide from them, and then ambush them. They claimed it was severely unfair the creature did this, and was worth a 2-7 point increase in CR. There won't be any 22 Int scores or Greater Teleports or WizPSes involved here, but if you are going to declare that a creature using its abilities in a basic and obvious manner is unfair we're done, as that'd be a prime example of most players being bad because they fight MMO mobs and not play D&D.

[georgie_leech]

3: Define beyond their abilities. People have declared with a straight face that a creature with 22 Int, Greater Teleport at will, and a high level Wizard giving him coordinates and a travel path cannot intercept a party moving in a predictable manner, hide from them, and then ambush them. They claimed it was severely unfair the creature did this, and was worth a 2-7 point increase in CR. There won't be any 22 Int scores or Greater Teleports or WizPSes involved here, but if you are going to declare that a creature using its abilities in a basic and obvious manner is unfair we're done, as that'd be a prime example of most players being bad because they fight MMO mobs and not play D&D.

Maybe I'm just not seeing it, but when did this happen? In one of your games, or in this thread?

[Thebar99]

A while back, but people here today have the same mentality.

I do not have an 18 Int, so any and every plan I come up with an 18 Int guy could also construct. If anything the problem is that they're smarter than me, not that I am smarter than them.

So if he's going to be the type to claim smart creatures can't act like it, there's no point.

[Norin]

Thebar99 are you Iron Tarkus by any chance? This whole discussion really reminds me of the low tier competence thread from a while back. :smalleek:

[Turalisj]

Thebar99 are you Iron Tarkus by any chance? This whole discussion really reminds me of the low tier competence thread from a while back. :smalleek:

I don't think he would be allowed to answer that question.

[Thebar99]

Sure I can. No. And I'm very confused as to how you think I'm that nice.

Now can we focus guys? It seems we don't have a Rogue player anymore. It seems we do have a ref, if the new player approves them.

It shouldn't take this long to get past step 1. This is like herding cats.

[Arundel]

Sure I can. No. And I'm very confused as to how you think I'm that nice.

Now can we focus guys? It seems we don't have a Rogue player anymore. It seems we do have a ref, if the new player approves them.

It shouldn't take this long to get past step 1. This is like herding cats.

Well you have effectively established yourself as someone no one wants to play with. I don't really have a horse in the fight on the superiority/inferiority of the rogue, but I can't certainly say from your attitude that I would have no interest in a game you're a part of. Games have to have a much less aggressive attitude to peak my interest at least.

As suggestion on the fake challenge though, why not use a published scenario? I am sure there is a sample adventure or encounter somewhere that would fit the bill and be (by definition) RAW neutral.

[JaronK]

A while back, but people here today have the same mentality.

I do not have an 18 Int, so any and every plan I come up with an 18 Int guy could also construct. If anything the problem is that they're smarter than me, not that I am smarter than them.

So if he's going to be the type to claim smart creatures can't act like it, there's no point.

Hah! And I just recognized who you are.

IIRC, the argument was that the creature (a demon or devil that was burried in ice exactly on the path of the party) couldn't actually ambush the proposed scout character because it lit up the sky due to Lifesense from well outside the creature's own detection radius, and that Mindsight also auto detected it, and if it was supposed to be arbitrarily immune to those in addition to the "it gets to set up the encounter perfectly in advance" it should have a CR bump.

Not quite the same thing. Though the Wizard scrying on the party was never mentioned, so maybe it's different.

JaronK

[Lans]

Which means the question is, who is the ref? Not anyone involved in this thread so far, as their biases are obvious.
I'll volunteer as Ref

Though at this point if we need a player I'll be interested in that too if there is nobody else willing. I want to see how this plays out.



Enemies do not have and cannot get infinite SR or a dead magic effect (some can get high saves... casters can still deal with those).
Technically Golems and several other monsters have effectively infinite SR, its just not helpful as people think it is.

D&D has no facing rules, there is no "behind".




Really? REALLY? Did it occur to you that it might possibly be that the authors assumed that they didn't need to waste word count on saying 'people do not usually have all-round vision and thus it is possible to sneak up behind them with a good skill check', because only the most anal rules lawyer would try to use that in a serious argument?

To both of you, Dnd does in fact have facing rules, on page 124 of UA, how ever those rules are variant/optional and not at all applicable to this discussion.


A dead magic area could be close to impossible to beat if you are a level 1 or even 20 wizard. Wizards are quite capable of curb stomping DM fiated dead magic zones, infinite SR, and saves.

[Eldest]

Elric, it seems he's refusing my scenario entirely now. So I suspect this is all moot. Instead he'd rather go knock down someone's straw man and declare victory. If this were not so, he'd have accepted you or declined you when prompted instead of ignoring that entirely and continuing on tangents. If he doesn't get back on topic soon I will assume he's bowing out and get someone else to run the Rogue.

It'd be nice if there were more good players I was not personally involved with creating or at least had a secondhand role. There isn't - in part because people learn bad play habits from bad players, in part because it's easier to learn habits than unlearn them, and in part because so many are personally offended by things that should not be personal at all, such as "Rogues suck".

I'm saying that it is flawed. I'll still run it.
Now, since you seem to be confused as to what a straw man is, it is: to create the illusion of having refuted a proposition by replacing it with a superficially similar yet unequivalent proposition (the "straw man"), and to refute it, without ever having actually refuted the original position.
Now, name me a spot where I did that, please. I'd appreciate it if you laid off on the claim of straw men without point out exactly where one happened.
Secondly, I, at least, am not personally offended by your allegation that rogues suck. I disagree. I am (trying) to prove it.
Edit: I don't know what gave you any idea to the contrary, but I will still run the rogue.

[Thebar99]

Oh good, we're getting somewhere again.

Lans: I mean infinite SR isn't just something you can get. DC 40 locks are cheap. Full plate for an Ogre only costs twice as much as full plate for a human, and a single level of Fighter grants proficiency. If such an infinite SR/dead magic item did exist it'd cost closer to 150 million gold than 150. It'd also turn itself off. Of course, he was never presenting a serious argument to begin with, as all he really did was take "Anti Magic Torcs" up to 11.

Eldest: What people are doing here is creating scenarios in which the enemies are made to be far less competent then they actually are. Then the Rogue supposedly beats them (but typically actually does not), then victory is claimed. This is often followed by deliberately misstating the parameters... for example, the claim I ignored TWF with javelins... no, that's where the 8% success rate came from. Or the claim that barding was unfair. It was never included in the math. Never.

For both of you: Elric agreed to ref, he hasn't withdrawn that offer yet. Eldest has not accepted him. In the event Elric does back out, I'm fine with Lans reffing if Eldest is, although he has been involved in the Rogues suck argument quite a bit.

Eldest, do you accept Elric as ref? And Elric, are you still willing? If so, let's get a bloody move on already - it's no fun if the Rogue dies of starvation.

[Eldest]

Oh good, we're getting somewhere again.

Lans: I mean infinite SR isn't just something you can get. DC 40 locks are cheap. Full plate for an Ogre only costs twice as much as full plate for a human, and a single level of Fighter grants proficiency. If such an item did exist it'd cost closer to 150 million gold than 150. It'd also turn itself off.

Eldest: What people are doing here is creating scenarios in which the enemies are made to be far less competent then they actually are. Then the Rogue supposedly beats them (but typically actually does not), then victory is claimed. This is often followed by deliberately misstating the parameters... for example, the claim I ignored TWF with javelins... no, that's where the 8% success rate came from. Or the claim that barding was unfair. It was never included in the math. Never.

For both of you: Elric agreed to ref, he hasn't withdrawn that offer yet. Eldest has not accepted him. In the event Elric does back out, I'm fine with Lans reffing if Eldest is, although he has been involved in the Rogues suck argument quite a bit.

Eldest, do you accept Elric as ref? And Elric, are you still willing? If so, let's get a bloody move on already - it's no fun if the Rogue dies of starvation.

Frankly, don't care who refs. So Elric is cool with me for a ref. But you might want to be a bit more patient. This will take a week or two, most likely. Play by post does that.
If I have time, I'll address the rest of that post later.

[Emmerask]

Eldest, do you accept Elric as ref? And Elric, are you still willing? If so, let's get a bloody move on already - it's no fun if the Rogue dies of starvation.

Oh the rogue does not starve, he has knowledge local and knows where to buy food and get all the money he needs from his other useful skills: pickpocket, open lock, perform etc :smallwink:

[Turalisj]

Oh the rogue does not starve, he has knowledge local and knows where to buy food and get all the money he needs from his other useful skills: pickpocket, open lock, perform etc :smallwink:

Why do you need skills for that? The barbarian can just use his axe to break into a store and can obviously OHKO a guard because BARBARIANS DO EVERYTHING BETTA!

[Thebar99]

Eldest, I'm getting impatient because in addition to cat herding this thread is breaking down into trolling. I'm having to be very strict just to keep people focused.

So assuming Elric is willing to ref, we need someone not involved thus far to select a map of an indoor, multilevel area of moderate size and submit it to myself and Elric for approval. Again, I will almost certainly approve the first map picked that meets those criteria, which is just about any dungeon/tower/building.

[Emmerask]

Why do you need skills for that? The barbarian can just use his axe to break into a store and can obviously OHKO a guard because BARBARIANS DO EVERYTHING BETTA!

But wouldn´t THE BARBARIAN breaking into the store practically disintegrate the whole building plus everything inside it?


this thread is breaking down into trolling. I'm having to be very strict just to keep people focused.

We are having a serious discussion about the awesomeness of THE BARBARIAN here :-/

[JaronK]

What was this trying to prove again? Is it now a solo infiltration/assassination/stealing stuff scenario? I'm pretty lost at this point. It certainly couldn't show the Rogue to be the worst class in the game, as if you made a solo "just kill things" scenario for the CW Samurai I think that class would do worse...

JaronK

[Elricaltovilla]

I am still willing to referee the scenario. I will go ahead and post an IC and OOC thread in the next couple of minutes here.

If you would be so kind as to post the build requirements for the rogue here I would appreciate it.

Additionally, Thebar99 I'm going to request that you and Eldest keep your namecalling to a minimum on the threads I create. Talk of herding cats, strawmen and trolls will not be tolerated. I am serious when I say I expect you both to behave like gentlemen (or gentlewomen).

[Thebar99]

A strawman is a logical fallacy and herding cats just means people are disorganized. Only "troll" is namecalling. But fine.

He can be level 10, 32 PB, and use any official 3.5 material.

I will be using encounter(s) below level 10, and will not tell him if he will face one or multiple foes. I also will not tell you, until it comes time to submit the encounters/scenario.

[Elricaltovilla]

A strawman is a logical fallacy and herding cats just means people are disorganized. Only "troll" is namecalling. But fine.

I'm aware of that, but it doesn't particularly concern me whether they're actually insults or not. Thess threads don't go beyond rolls and IC dialogue.


He can be level 10, 32 PB, and use any official 3.5 material.

I will be using encounter(s) below level 10, and will not tell him if he will face one or multiple foes. I also will not tell you, until it comes time to submit the encounters/scenario.

What about WBL, Single class/multiclass, XP penalties, Level adjustment, Templates?

Additionally, what is the ultimate goal of the rogue character? I suggest retrieving a macguffin. Something kept in a safe or lockbox that is, once taken from said safe, easy to carry out of its location, no bigger than 1-2 lbs.

That way the rogue character can deal with the encounters in multiple ways, and if he chooses to avoid the guards on the way in, he will have to face them a second time on the way out, dealing with them as necessary.

[JaronK]

But is it supposed to be a solo run? I mean, if a character was going to be in a solo campaign, that at least he'd know in advance. He'd probably also know the overall style of the campaign (but not the specific encounters, obviously).

JaronK

[Thebar99]

I'm aware of that, but it doesn't particularly concern me whether they're actually insults or not. Thess threads don't go beyond rolls and IC dialogue.



What about WBL, Single class/multiclass, XP penalties, Level adjustment, Templates?

WBL is standard. 49k? I think it's 49k.

I dunno about classes. He's trying to prove Rogues are viable, I know the most you could possibly argue for is 2 levels (and it'd be demonstrably inferior to Monk 2). I don't care if he multiclasses, but don't think it proves anything about Rogues if he does. Especially if he does the obvious Rogue 1/Wizard 9.

If he really wants to make his point he'd just go Rogue 10 and try to use what little, bad abilities he has.

But if he does go multiclass, stick to the rules for favored class penalties. Yes, they suck and in any actual game I'd banish them to Hell instantly. But them's the rules, and a big part of "Rogues suck" is that the rules screw them over at every turn. So if that's a problem for him it's one more example.

LA and templates he should definitely avoid, as they'd obviously be doing all the work. LA 0 I'm fine with.


Additionally, what is the ultimate goal of the rogue character? I suggest retrieving a macguffin. Something kept in a safe or lockbox that is, once taken from said safe, easy to carry out of its location, no bigger than 1-2 lbs.

That way the rogue character can deal with the encounters in multiple ways, and if he chooses to avoid the guards on the way in, he will have to face them a second time on the way out, dealing with them as necessary.

Amusingly, retrieving an item was actually my idea. There is a catch though, and you'll understand what I mean when I submit the scenario to you.

Since we are finally getting somewhere, where is the thread? While "Rogues are the worst class" is on topic here, anyone that doesn't get it by now never will, so let's take it elsewhere.

[Callin]

To make it semi fair it needs to give options of In Combat Out of Combat Mundane and Magical obstacles. Of course circumvention and smart thinking should be encouraged to be an alternate way to "defeat" each obstacle.

That way it can be proved that it is the "worst" class and not be given a straight up encounter designed for a rogue to defeat.

[Elricaltovilla]

This is the OOC Thread (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?p=15134369#post15134369)

And this is the IC Thread (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?p=15134376#post15134376)

Anyone who cares is welcome to post in the OOC thread, but only Thebar99 and Eldest are approved to post in the IC thread.

[Emmerask]

I will be using encounter(s) below level 10, and will not tell him if he will face one or multiple foes. I also will not tell you, until it comes time to submit the encounters/scenario.

To be precise CR 6 is a challenging encounter for a solo lvl10 by raw :smallwink:

[molten_dragon]

Eldest, I'm getting impatient because in addition to cat herding this thread is breaking down into trolling. I'm having to be very strict just to keep people focused.

Considering this isn't your thread and you've pretty thoroughly derailed it, it's pretty arrogant to accuse others of not being focused and trolling.


So assuming Elric is willing to ref, we need someone not involved thus far to select a map of an indoor, multilevel area of moderate size and submit it to myself and Elric for approval. Again, I will almost certainly approve the first map picked that meets those criteria, which is just about any dungeon/tower/building.

I sent you and elric a map. Now please go away and discuss your challenge somewhere else.

[Turalisj]

To be precise CR 6 is a challenging encounter for a solo lvl10 by raw :smallwink:

A warblade can take on a CR10 opponent solo :smallamused:

[Elricaltovilla]

A warblade can take on a CR10 opponent solo :smallamused:

In theory the CR is set up so that any 10th level character has a 50% chance of beating a CR 10 challenge solo. Obviously though, no system is perfect.

[angry_bear]

Well yes, presumably you actually try telling plausible lies. So if a guard spots you in an area meant to be off-limits, using bluff to convince him that you were just lost and oh thanks the gods he's here and does he know the way out is entirely valid and generally better than getting oneself arrested.

As for your second example, what, you've never seen the classic heroic ploy of 'you've left the safety catch on'? If a feint or a bluff gives you a momentary advantage, that's still an advantage. In this case, the enemy is slightly distracted and thus loses their dexterity bonus to AC for a round. Hey, guess what Rogues have that can turn that into a decided win?



There are steps in-between 'about to murder you' and 'willing to help you'. Diplomacy is for when you want to convince the irritated bouncer to let you in, or the cop to forgive your minor indiscretion, or the mob boss to loan you money. Or just about anything else.



Alternately, use it before combat to work out the capabilities of the enemy and whether you should engage or flee. Or when you spot interesting runes on the wall and want to get a clue as to what they might mean. Or when trying to stop an evil ritual and wanting to know how long you have before it is complete.

You seem to, again, be stuck in the mindset of 'if it doesn't help me stab this guy to death right now with no preparation, it is useless'.



He had an 8% chance in the fight because your calculations completely denied him any chance of using his sneak attack, or getting a surprise round, or in general doing anything else to tilt the chances in his favour. Just off the top of my head, by poisoning some steak and leaving it within the dog's scent range.



How does your mind even work? Even arbitrarily denied all his specialist options (like, for example, sneak attack being enabled when you flank an enemy, and thus much easier to do when you have friends), there is still a world of difference between 'cannot take these guys on his own' and 'cannot contribute in a fight against them'.



Really? REALLY? Did it occur to you that it might possibly be that the authors assumed that they didn't need to waste word count on saying 'people do not usually have all-round vision and thus it is possible to sneak up behind them with a good skill check', because only the most anal rules lawyer would try to use that in a serious argument?

We're getting into the territory of 'well the rules don't SAY you can't just keep fighting once dead'.



In what way? In what way is adding another half dozen odd dice onto your attack damage a 'laughable' DPS?



Or he could be using just some of those, because any of them have their own uses and just because it is an option doesn't mean he has to take it.


Or you need a DM willing to say 'yes' to a creative idea, rather than 'no, there's no rules for that'.

Here's a hint - such behavior crops up in most DM-guides as a good idea for a reason.



...and you are accusing us of using straw men? Nobody has said anything like that.



Was just listing a few ways that skills available to a rogue, particularly ones such as bluff can be used to keep NPC's off balance, and how that could come in handy.

Looking at the core classes in the 3.5 PH, I think that the monk class relies on the most factors to be good. I'm not going to say that it's the worst in the game, built correctly and it can be fantastic. However, considering that you need two primary abilities to be high (Dex and Wis), and one to be at least above average (str), you're going to have to play creatively and effectively to bring the best out in that class.

[Maugan Ra]

Additionally, what is the ultimate goal of the rogue character? I suggest retrieving a macguffin. Something kept in a safe or lockbox that is, once taken from said safe, easy to carry out of its location, no bigger than 1-2 lbs.

That way the rogue character can deal with the encounters in multiple ways, and if he chooses to avoid the guards on the way in, he will have to face them a second time on the way out, dealing with them as necessary.

If Thebar accepts that, once everything else has been resolved, then I for one will be amazed. Mostly because that was precisely what I was going for with the 'retrieve the necklace stolen by a bunch of bandits, now camped in a forest' setup.

Though I suppose the objection might have been that he didn't get to design the encounter himself, and thus it wasn't balanced. Because as we all know, no one can possibly make a scenario as balanced and level as Thebar99... unless of course he's personally trained them in his own methodology which everyone else for some reason disputes the sheer perfection of. Heathans.

[Turalisj]

There's a reason it's called MADness. It's completely insane.

And I'd say that out of the Core classes, the Fighter is the worst. The worst in mechanics, it gives you feats and nothing else. The worst in flavor, it tastes like a stale cracker.

[Emmerask]

There's a reason it's called MADness. It's completely insane.

And I'd say that out of the Core classes, the Fighter is the worst. The worst in mechanics, it gives you feats and nothing else. The worst in flavor, it tastes like a stale cracker.

Yeah the fighter really has very little going for it, some of the feats in CW went somewhat in the right direction with multiple "tricks" combined in one feat but really it is not enough... overall I agree

[Elricaltovilla]

If Thebar accepts that, once everything else has been resolved, then I for one will be amazed. Mostly because that was precisely what I was going for with the 'retrieve the necklace stolen by a bunch of bandits, now camped in a forest' setup.

Though I suppose the objection might have been that he didn't get to design the encounter himself, and thus it wasn't balanced. Because as we all know, no one can possibly make a scenario as balanced and level as Thebar99... unless of course he's personally trained them in his own methodology which everyone else for some reason disputes the sheer perfection of. Heathans.

Right now I'm waiting on Thebar99 to approve the map that molten_dragon supplied to us via PM. I'm going to go ahead and suggest that if he does approve it, he say so in the OOC thread link I so kindly provided. That way everyone can return to their regularly scheduled programming.

[angry_bear]

There's a reason it's called MADness. It's completely insane.

And I'd say that out of the Core classes, the Fighter is the worst. The worst in mechanics, it gives you feats and nothing else. The worst in flavor, it tastes like a stale cracker.

The thing about the fighter though, is that it's intended to be a near blank slate at level one. It allows the player to get almost exactly what they want out of the character. It's not as flashy as other classes, but it does the job you give it, without too much difficulty. A class like the monk, it's an uphill battle just to make it play reasonably well.

As far as it's flavour goes, just make sure to add some cheese. :smallwink:

[Venger]

You do realize they can breath fire 10 times in a row as a free action for a combined 30d6 damage, this after they deal upwards of 26d8 per melee hit (with a 40 str you're capable of wielding a small (~2500lb) boulder as an improvised weapon)?

Sometimes classes require a little ingenuity, and Drunken Master has the potential to be a devastatingly good class.

glad that that's finished.

with that business out of the way, drunken masters' breath of flame ability is a standard action, not a free. the damage of 3d12 is abysmal once you're the requisite level 15. there is no way to boost that damage (with the class's own innate abilities) and it burns drinks in your body, reducing your physical ability boosts.

your math on improvised weapon hulking hurler style is fine, but I'm unsure of where you heard about breath of flame working that way.

[VeisuItaTyhjyys]

Why do you need skills for that? The barbarian can just use his axe to break into a store and can obviously OHKO a guard because BARBARIANS DO EVERYTHING BETTA!

Barbarians are a tier six class, since it's just an alternate name for Aristocrat (http://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/4212/pg4212.html).

[kiryoku]

By the gods I didn't realize so many would rage at some classes a few people kept a level head they know who they are and gave valid arguments that I liked reading. The reasoning is sound. Others though..... well they tried but they just can't seem to grasp a lot of the concepts. Seemed like a few got screwed by their DM or were just trolling us. I am honestly not sure because I have seen wizards fall to a well built rouge. each level twenty and each having the same money and no prep time just like you said put in a room with cover that honestly gave the rouge better chances then the fighter. it was over in very few attacks honestly and if you use the rouge right its a thing of terror. It kills before being seen if its ever seen. Hell a lot of them carry staffs or wands with improved invisibility. that pretty much makes them gods of sneak attacks. As for the truenamer it needs a fix to work even half like it says it should. I have no Idea about the divine paladin like one. as I hate the little goody two shoes. I also have very little experience with a few others but they gave a lot of clear written reasons they sucked and I understood where they were coming from.

[Elricaltovilla]

By the gods I didn't realize so many would rage at some classes a few people kept a level head they know who they are and gave valid arguments that I liked reading. The reasoning is sound. Others though..... well they tried but they just can't seem to grasp a lot of the concepts. Seemed like a few got screwed by their DM or were just trolling us. I am honestly not sure because I have seen wizards fall to a well built rouge. each level twenty and each having the same money and no prep time just like you said put in a room with cover that honestly gave the rouge better chances then the fighter. it was over in very few attacks honestly and if you use the rouge right its a thing of terror. It kills before being seen if its ever seen. Hell a lot of them carry staffs or wands with improved invisibility. that pretty much makes them gods of sneak attacks. As for the truenamer it needs a fix to work even half like it says it should. I have no Idea about the divine paladin like one. as I hate the little goody two shoes. I also have very little experience with a few others but they gave a lot of clear written reasons they sucked and I understood where they were coming from.

Heheh... sorry your thread got derailed there. There's some really interesting arguments for or against different classes in here that's for sure.

[kiryoku]

It did just a little but it was interesting until that one guy seemed to not drop that rouges suck even though we all know they are pretty good. I mean for all the things they do. most of the other jacks of all trades seem to suck a great deal more.

[Thebar99]

No self respecting 9+ Wiz ever dies to a Rogue. It's called better init = precision immune + 0 def Rogue.

PS: If you want me to not post here don't talk to or about me here.

Be wrong on the internet if you must but leave me out of it.

On phone so map approval later.