i need help in building a strange rogue

[galan]

hello playground
i don't come here (the 4e subforum) often, mostly i'm a silent reader/ask for help, and i'm sorry for that. anyway, once again i ask for help and hope you guys can show me how to build that character i wish to play.

i want to play a human rogue (we start at 6th level) who starts every fight not-very-effective, and as time goes on he becomes better and better.
now, i know as far as optimization goes, this is a terrible idea. and i still wish to do it for two reasons:
1. this idea fit just oh-so-well to my char concept
2. it will let me optimize freely within this idea. i'm not sure who will also play (it's a pbp game), but i'm almost certain i will be the only one who optimizes. i don't want to steal spotlight from the other players.

being bad at the start of the encounter is easy (using only at-wills, not working very hard to get combat advantage etc. etc.), but how should i become actually good at the end of the encounter? are there any good feats that will help me to deal more damage when i'm bloodied? maybe some effects that helps only long-term, as far as the encounter goes? i'm really short of ideas, as i'm not very comfortable in the 4e ruleset.

[Inevitability]

Hm... There is a lot of support for being bloodied. You should be able to make this work...

[Tegu8788]

Actually, this sounds like the Assassin class. It's also stealthy and Dex-based, but it applies Shrouds. The more Shrouds you have on a target, the more damage you do when you pop the Shroud. So you start off with lower damage, and then get high damage a few turns in.


But you're right, this is a bad plan from an optimization point. Combat already can take a long time, a PbP I was in once took a month and a half to finish a fight, and we were going full bore. The longer monsters are not dead, the more damage they do to your party, and as a Rogue your job is to make monsters dead.

If I was going to do this, I'd play like a Lurker. Find a strategic spot on the first round, then do heavy damage in the second. Then keep going. Wait too long, and you can get a TPK, and nobody likes that.

[Epinephrine]

You may need houseruled feats etc. to really do it. I'd totally allow some houserules, especially if they didn't substantially boost your effectiveness really over the encounter.

e.g.
Delayed Gratification
Prerequisite: Sneak Attack
Your base Sneak Attack die drops to d4. On the second round of combat and every round thereafter you can increase your sneak attack damage die to the next highest die, up to a maximum of d12s.

Over 4 rounds of attacks on your turns, you would deal 2d4, then 2d6, 2d8, and 2d10, or 5+7+9+11 = 8 per sneak attack, compared to the 7 per sneak attack most people get. That's probably not worth a feat.
You have the additional disadvantage of being the opposite of front-loaded, delivering damage late in the fight.
You do a little better over 5-round fights.
You do, however, gain the ability to deliver an increased amount of damage if you save your off-turn attacks till later (again, not good tactically, but impressive for you!). If you had 2 off-turn actions (say, immediate reactions or something) and waited until the 3rd or later round you'd be doing a bit of extra damage from them, and if enemies trigger an OA from you on round 5, they know it. And it would make you a terror late in a fight, unloading your d12 sneak attacks.

[galan]

tegu - iirc the fights will actually take place in skype, so it won't be annoying to the other players. anyway, worst case scenario i will stop playing like that. i won't play in a way that is not fun for the other players, so no harm done.

it will be a bit hard for me to play an assassin (i will need to borrow the DM's insider quite often), but MC into one with the feat that gives me 2 shrouds every encounter seems like a good idea, so thanks for that.

@playing him like a lurker - i'll try i guess? that does sound good, but its more of a playing advice then a build one (unless i didn't understand you, which is possible).

Dire_Stirge - maybe you can give me a name of a guide/handbook/anything that will help me find some of them? my google-fu isn't amazing, and searching ALL the books sounds extremely hard.

thanks for the help :smallbiggrin:

[GPuzzle]

If you're going for Bloodied...

I highly recommend you take a few things:

Fast Hands skill power.
A Battlecrazed Weapon
A ton of of Blood Fury Weapons
Versatile Duelist Feat.

The way it works is simple.

Use Blood Fury weapons to make you Bloodied.

Use your Battlecrazed Weapons to deal an extra 1d6/2d6/3d6 damage dice on attack. Cue massive sequence of attacks.

Actually...

I might do that build.

[Tegu8788]

Something that might be helpful is to look for trigger powers. If the monster hit you a couple times, and then you use a trigger, that could increase your effectiveness later on. I'm not a rogue expert, so my advice is gonna be more playing based. Get non-standard attacks and delay using them.

I'd be hesitant about focusing too much on being bloodied. That can take a while, and a rogue isn't meant to be bloodied every fight. Unless you have a way of sharing surges, you'll be a drag on the party.

Skype fixes that issue. And I don't wanna say don't do it. Just that it may be a bit challenging.

[Inevitability]

If you're going for Bloodied...

I highly recommend you take a few things:

Fast Hands skill power.
A Battlecrazed Weapon
A ton of of Blood Fury Weapons
Versatile Duelist Feat.

The way it works is simple.

Use Blood Fury weapons to make you Bloodied.

Use your Battlecrazed Weapons to deal an extra 1d6/2d6/3d6 damage dice on attack. Cue massive sequence of attacks.

Actually...

I might do that build.

This.

There are plenty of other bloody goodies, particularity for Dragonborn. Dragonborn normally aren't that hot as rogues, but the Kapak Draconian variant is. It's somewhere in Draon 421.

[Epinephrine]

This.

There are plenty of other bloody goodies, particularity for Dragonborn. Dragonborn normally aren't that hot as rogues, but the Kapak Draconian variant is. It's somewhere in Draon 421.

But the bloodied build being assembled isn't actually getting any better late in the fight, it's just getting better when bloodied, which it would do first round. There are a few things like cumulative bonus weapons, but they tend to be based on hitting the same target. The assassin has the shroud mechanism, which can be ok, but it's generally best to dump shrouds as often as possible, and the shrouds actually lend themselves to strong openings if you go stealth and pre-shroud the enemy, more like what you'd expect an assassin to do.

The Drow assassin in the game I run does well against bloodied targets granting CA, which does bump her damage up later in the fight; I think she's at +11 damage vs bloodied targets at this point, which is certainly noticeable. I suppose that piling on +damage versus bloodied targets is one way to get better later in the fight, when more things are likely to be bloodied.

[Tegu8788]

I second the notion of targeting bloodied things, rather than blooding yourself. The Dex/Cha Dragonborn being the only real exception to that I can think of, for a Rogue.

[Yakk]

Build a highly optimized rogue.

Then play poorly (suboptimally) the first half of each fight.

In the later half, pull out your big (optimized) guns.

Another approach might be to build a character who requires lots of work to get going. A rogue isn't a good example, but a minor-action constrained hybrid could be (like a swordmage|warlock) especially if you roll on even more minor-action based powers and the like (MC avenger!).

[The_Ditto]

The only issue I see with "choosing" to hold back the big guns, is everyone will know what you're capable of, and be irked that you don't just use it early on to prevent issues.

However, if you have no control/option on it, it becomes interesting. What if you (and your DM) discussed "conditions" for all your powers - something as simple as: "I can use Power A on the round following Power B".
Basically, it's almost like your character needs to "build up momentum" through a complex fighting sequence before getting to the really big hits. He can't just start up at them, but actually has to work up to them ??

Not sure how that would work, or if there's other ways to do it .. *shrug*.
(Ie I'd hate to see "Power A can only be used on round 3 or later". Don't do that .. but having a "chain" might work .. almost like "combos" or such. )

[Zaq]

Are you stuck on being a Rogue? A Warlock kind of does this by default. Early on, they might have one or two enemies Cursed, but that's it. But as the fight rolls on, they have lots of enemies Cursed, and more importantly, Cursed targets start dying, thereby triggering your Pact Boon, which can be all kinds of fun.

(Sure, an optimized Warlock will have more ways of forcing Curses and Boons, but not necessarily at level 6.)

[The Dolman]

If you're going for Bloodied...

I highly recommend you take a few things:

Fast Hands skill power.
A Battlecrazed Weapon
A ton of of Blood Fury Weapons
Versatile Duelist Feat.

The way it works is simple.

Use Blood Fury weapons to make you Bloodied.

Use your Battlecrazed Weapons to deal an extra 1d6/2d6/3d6 damage dice on attack. Cue massive sequence of attacks.

Actually...

I might do that build.
As far as I can tell, by RAW, that wouldn't work, unless you had the quick draw feat and were a Thri Kreen, and fast hands will still only work once per round, limiting you to one free weapon switch, with an attack per round.
That would leave you with:
1: Minor action to use encounter power on Blood Fury weapon
2: Minor action to put away Blood Fury
3: Minor action to switch to Battlecrazed weapon, and attack
4 and 5 use Fast Hands and Thri Kreen ability to put away and draw a new weapon, attacking with it.
Next turn, however, you could use your standard action to attack instead of converting into a minor to be used in activating bloodied, and gain a third attack. This is all assuming you do not need to move.

[GPuzzle]

Free-Draw Blood Fury with one hand (Drow Long Knife, since you don't need to be proficient with it).
Minor-Use its Encounter Power.
Move-Move to Target
Standard-Attack Target with Battlecrazed Bastard Sword.

Dual-wielding, but attacks with one.