looking into building a consumate rogue

[dehro]

I have been thinking about building a rogue for a somewhat high-level campaign which will start in a good while. I think it will start around the 17 level mark, and possibly even go epic.
the idea is not to break the game or build the ultimate anything.. but I would like to create a character that is most definitely a thief and a scoundrel, and has honed his craft to those ends not just by the numbers but also in characterisation.

I'm quite liking the flavour of a combination of Rogue, Telflammar Shadowlord and Trapsmith...
can those three work together or are they in conflict? are they sufficient to create a character that may survive a few encounters?
No, I don't want him to jump all over the place and do a lot of stabbing (swiftblade is too remote a source anyway for my fellow players to not argue against it), but rather focus on overcoming obstacles, lateral thinking and generally being really good with locks and traps/avoiding damage or handicaps/hindrances.
He would be the kind of guy you would recruit to get into the impenetrable fortress, steal the gem from the sleeping king's brow and replace it with a dog-turd, and then leave without anybody figuring out how he did it, or that it wasn't an act of god.
Fluff and flavour over substance and stats... but still in a somewhat decent way as to give him at least one thing he can use to get him through combat (whether it's high AC, superior ability to not getting hit, high save rolls, a strong attack, some use of magic or whatever else) without having to resort to half a dozen dips to round the character out.
Specifically, I wouldn't want to take on more than a +1LA (shadow walker, I presume), possibly not more than 2 classes and 2 PrCs, 3 at the most... no psionics (because I don't like them)
and no "just be a mage" is also not the answer I'm looking for.
a variation could be him becoming a thief of such standing in the thieving comunity, as to gain the favour of Mask and become a cleric or some other figure to reflect this (does Mask have a champion?)

to recap: I'm aiming, in a purely academic way that may never see the light of day at a gaming table, to create a character that Mask wouldn't mind picking as his champion. are there any other classes more suited to that end than the ones I am thinking of?

[Efrate]

Whisper gnome race. Very good, penultimate rogue race, arguably a LA +1 without actually being LA+1. Super stealthy.

+2 Dexterity, +2 Constitution, -2 Strength, -2 Charisma
Small Size
Base Speed 30 feet
LLV and DV 60
Gnome hooked hammers as martial weapons
+4 dodge vs. Giants
+4 Hide and move Silently
+2 listen and spot
1x/day silence centered on gnome,
Cha 10+ 1/day -- ghost sound, mage hand, message. Caster level 1st; save DC 10 + whisper gnome's Cha modifier + spell level.
Favored class rogue
2 special feats available in races of stone that play decently with your racial silence

Dark Creature Template: +1 ECL. Hide in plan sight, 10 ft. more all movement modes, 10 cold res, DV 60 (whisper gnome has this already), Superior LLV, Hide +8, Move Silently +6

Take darkstalker feat. Now almost nothing can ever detect you.

Rogue 4/swordsage 1 or 2/warblade 1/swashbuckler the rest with daring outlaw for combat.
Rogue 4/Swordsage X/Exemplar X/your choice X. Swashbuckler with daring outlaw is still really good here, good hit die (d10), full BAB, good fort. Factotum for versatility.
Rogue 16/scout 3/cloistered cleric 1 gives you travel, knowledge plus any other domain and/or devotion, a ton of sneak attack and skirmish and a good way to use it all together.

Shadow hand maneuvers are sweet and assassins's stance and a few of the other shadow hand maneuvers are amazing. Typeless touch attack damage, short hand teleportation effects ad naseuem, and others. Take as many level of swordsage at whatever point in the chargen to get the most manuevers. Level 9 is ideal. You also get wis to AC in light armor after 2 levels and better weapon proficiency. Or go unarmed swordsage to get improved unarmed strike for snap kick if you want.

One level in warblade at the right time can get you iron heart surge, white raven tactics, and other assorted goodies. You lose a little but save feats for a few of the best maneuvers.

For taking skill focus (anything) and 6 ranks in diplomancy (or a 1 level dip into marshal), you get into exemplar, which gives you +4 on your skill focus skill, and the ability to choose a 1+int skills to always take 10 on regardless of anything. Boost your int to 18+ and have search, disable, open lock, hide, and move silently plus whatever else depending on int to always be able to take 10 on. Must have 13 ranks in said skill to use this. Each level get another skill. Its a single level with good int or a couple of levels if your int isn't great. Not optimal but you can guarantee you will always find those traps, get that lock open, and whatever.

Also this is on the site
http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?156350-3-5-The-Rogue-Handbook-A-Fistful-of-d6

[dehro]

so I shouldn't take telflammar shadowlord at all then? I was kinda intrigued by the flavour it brought to the character, and the affiliation to Mask and I wouldn't mind for it to be sub-par compared to the build you suggest.. is it that crippling, in comparison?

[Efrate]

Telflammar shadowlord has some neat stuff, but it takes a LOT to get in to. Dodge, mobility, spring attack, blind fight. Plus either a bunch of levels in a caster class to get dimension door, or four levels in shadowdancer, which also requires combat reflexes. You cannot enter shadowdancer before level 8 because of skill reqs, so you end up rogue 7/shadowdancer 4/shadowlord 5 with the template.

You get less HP, less BaB, less Fort save, less sneak attack, a BAB of 12, 20ft a day of ghetto dimension door, a pseudo pounce once a day if you are lucky for 15d6 max damage if all 3 of your attacks hit and you can sneak, and you have no feats. Your feats assuming no bonus feats are dodge, mobility, spring attack, blind fight, combat relfexes, with one open (your level 15), but you likely want weapon finesse so thats all of your feats for less skills, less damage, less life, less fort, and less attacks.

You get a potentially unlimited number of shadows which is nice but I'd call cheese hard if you tried it any of my games, haste, greater invisibility, dimension door, and a few other spells. So you get one extra hop a day then to get fake pounce if you have enough intellience to get a bonus in your 3rd level spell and don't mind using that on dimension door. You do get Hide in plain sight, and darkvision if you don't get it already. You can see through magical darkness (nerfed heavily in 3.5 to be just shadowy), but you have blind fight to help negate the 20% miss chance. You also get to be able to not die if you are buy shadows and don't mind being able to do nothing until sunset the next day, with nothing to make that quicker, so you could fail a roll early, die, and not get to play for a session with no recourse, whereas if you HAD died, a raise dead or equivalent/better would have you able to fo something at least.

Disable device is not a shadowdancer nor a shadowlord skill. Shadowlord gets UMD, doesnt. Everyone gets tumble at least.

Any build I have above gets you more feats, more mobility, more options in and out of combat (maneuvers), more mobility, more fort save, more BaB, more skills, more (and more reliable) sneak attack.

Being a shadowlord in faerun is potentially cool and a nice hook, but they don't get to do a whole lot and your abilities are highly limited. I see the fluff bits for style as a mask follower, but everyone who knows anything knows the shadowlords are his agents. Its much sneakier to NOT be one, better chance to get by without as much notice and do what really needs to be done, AND it doesn't come back to the shadowlords.

My 2 copper.

[dehro]

on one hand, I see your objections and agree with most of them... on the other hand, some of the proportionally minor/lesser benefits of being a shadowlord are still very very appealing.. one above all, the ability to return from the grave without depending on the goodwill and efforts of my fellow players who would rather loot my corpse and move on, or resurrect me purely to be able to rub it in my face.
the reason I mentioned trapsmith and rogue was to take care of the disable device aspect, also, knock is a 1st level class spell both for telflammar shadowlord and for trapsmith, which should help a lot in that area.
as for TSL being known as Mask's agents, that should be less of a problem, as long as I don't go about town advertising I am one.
I agree that the entry cost for the PrC is on the steep end.. but at least part of that cost translates, fluff-wise, in things that I think fit well with the character concept.
finally, with my DM, it's one thing to pick classes and feats in order to qualify for a certain PrC, a completely different thing to pick them for the sake of maximising the build. it matters not that it would still amount to less than, say, a tier 1... it's the act of deliberate minmaxing that opens the door to verbal abuse/mockery and throwing of manuals.

all that said, I admit that I rarely know what I'm doing and my curiosity towards character concepts over playability tends to guide my choices more often than not, which I suppose must be frustrating for an experienced character builder.

[Efrate]

Neither is tier 1. Maybe tier 3, likely tier 4.

Knock opens doors, doesn't do anything about traps. If you are that worried about dying just pony up a bit of WBL to get a contingency that mitigates that. UMD gets you knock, a wand of which is fairly cheap, 4500gp is a drop in the bucket for a 17th level character. A +2 cha bonus and 17 points in UMD lets you always active any wand. You can drop the ranks if you have higher cha, and get a masterwork took for another +2 to ease the points.

You do lose hide in plain sight unless you want two LA +1 templates since you must have shadowwalker template. Or you go shadowdancer. I'd suggest being human/strongheart halfling then, you won't be near as stealthy but you will at least get a bonus feat for something.

Also once you become a shadowlord you never need to make a UMD for knock since its on your list so that's something. Read your discorporation carefully. If you are within the illuminated radius of a light source it doesn't work, so you have to die likely by yourself alone and scouting to get the benefit, because its very hard to be in combat with anything with a team and not have a light source, unless everyone has Dark Vision.

Both regular and combat trapsmith require 8 ranks in a skill, and You'd want to max them I would think if you are using them, the bonuses are not great. Regular trapsmith can't really make a trap in combat, needs to set up for a full round, and its traps aren't great, has a sweet spell list though. Combat trapsmith lets you do a little bit of stuff in combat though until you max it its full round option, so its better than regular trap smith on that account but loses on on the rest of regular trap smith's abilities and spells. Dimension door is on regular trapsmith's class list though

You could do rogue 5 trapsmith 5 shadowlord 6 with your template, or depending on when you get your template in backstory could go rogue 5 combat trapsmith 5 shadowalker template shadowlord 6 since the template gives you dimension door based on your HD, I missed that. Your next level can be whatever.

However you are still left with even more issues of power, no HiPS, and a paltry 3d6 sneak attack. Also your BaB at ECL 17 is 10. You don't even get a 3rd attack yet. You have bad will and fort, ok skillpoints, and all d6s as HD. You get a few spells, some of them quite good, but nothing really earth shattering. You have super limited slots though, and half are prepared and half are not so that is more book keeping.

Your shadow pounce gets you a whole whopping 8d6 a turn, 12d6 with haste, a few times a day, if both your attacks hit and overcome DR. A CR 16 has an average AC of 31. If you have 24 dex and a +1 weapon your to hit is +18/+13. You hit it on a 13 with your first (35%), and a 18 on your second (15%), going up with GMW you are at 23/18, which is a bit better 60% and 35%. If you can sneak them. If you have what overcomes their DR. You mostly should.

You could alternately set a lowish dc trap. Since combat trapsmith all your traps have a save of 10 plus int mod plus combat trapsmith level, at 22 int you are at dc 21 combat traps. your have 5d6 fire damage/entangle/trip vs. average reflex of 12/13, or blind/deaf/fatigue vs. average of 14/15 fort.

Regular trapsmith traps have even less effects but but dc equal all(once lvl 3 trapsmith) of your craft trapmaking check, so if you go all in on the skill you are looking at average dc 32, assuming average roll and a +22 mod on the check, much better. Your options are fire 3 crossbows for 3d10 damage, to hit bonus +32 which is reasonable. They are unmagiced and 3 seperate hits unless you want to invest more into them. Ring a bunch of bells so people can hear. Drop a heavy object, 3 alchemical items or a net for damage or entangle at DC equal to your check for half damage/not be entangled if they fit under the net. Or trip up to 2 of them with a bonus on the check equal to your craft trapmaking. That is potentially really good. +32 trip if your enemy is walking down a pre set up hall is quite good. I question the viability of this at high levels since not much walks, but this is potentially pretty solid. Other traps with similar effects in line are up to your DM to adjudicate.

I'd stay away from it personally, you can just do better with many other things, but if you want to play a shadowlord then feel free.

My 2 cp.

[Gildedragon]

Consumate Rogue with lots of lateral thinking:
Dark Creature Changeling is probably a race you want; Deep might also be worth it.
You want to take 3 levels in the Ghost savage progression class (and buy off the LA), being incorporeal lets you bypass a lot of obstacles and affect them from the other end. You will need ghost touch gear and protection from getting turned, but that's what phasing into the ethereal, or into a lead-lined box, is for.

Why changeling: ability to change your looks, and access to a lot a lot bonus skillpoints. Yes you will lose trapfinding, but dip into Factotum will give it right back to you, alongside a bunch of wonderful skills...

if you don't want to be a changeling, may I suggest Beguiler: always on true seeing is extremely handy

Dark boosts your speed and lets you hide in plain sight; get the child of shadow stance and you have a very nice chassis for sneaking around

Deep: boosts your int

[Troacctid]

The classic entry for Telflammar Shadowlord is Jaunter. It shares the prerequisite feats, and three levels gives you Dimension Door and Teleport as spell-like abilities, with a fourth level offering Plane Shift.

[Rangô]

Hey there!,
I would like to suggest a different built, I thought in creating a similiar PC and I paid attention to PrC Hellbreaker in Fiendish Codex II. The ninja example could have a tasty background, fitting the avoiding obstacles, tramps, lateral thinking using the steal SLA, coceilment... I'm on the way to aim it from a different path but under-optimized, It's a half-drow dragonblooded Dragon Shaman (Shadow dragon), taking 1 level dip with the Expert from Unearth Arcana in order to get +2d6 sneak attack and fit the prerequisites, plus draconic aura Darkness.
So I invite you to have a look to it.

[dehro]

I'll look into the various alternatives..the potential campaign in which the character may appear is still some time away.. and afaik, the DM may even ban the main prc I'm interested in (telflammar shadowlord), and if that happens, the whole thing changes anyway.

[Twurps]

All suggestions I would have, were mentioned already above. So I'll just mention a nifty item:
collar of umbral metamorphosis (ToM) essentially gives the 'dark creature' for free. (Well: for gold of course, but no LA)