Whisper Gnome or Changeling for Rogue.

[Ozzie831]

Good afternoon,

Im making a new character for my game and I was curious of what you guys thought of these 2 races for a rogue. I was thinking the Changeling variant for the changeling (all the skill points) and basically whatever for the gnome.

I was leaning more towards a ranged skill monkey.

So any opinions would be great. THANKS!

[Goaty14]

Social (Aka "Face") Rogues are Changelings
Stealth (Aka "Normal") Rogues are Whisper Gnomes

Neither in particular should probably be Whisper Gnomes anyways.

[RaiKirah]

Good afternoon,

Im making a new character for my game and I was curious of what you guys thought of these 2 races for a rogue. I was thinking the Changeling variant for the changeling (all the skill points) and basically whatever for the gnome.

I was leaning more towards a ranged skill monkey.

So any opinions would be great. THANKS!

Ranged skillmonkey is probably better off with Scout, as Skirmish is way more reliable at range than Sneak Attack

[SangoProduction]

Ranged skillmonkey is probably better off with Scout, as Skirmish is way more reliable at range than Sneak Attack

mm....That's debatable. Depends on your definition of reliable. If you get a sneak attack off only once per two rounds, you have equally reliable damage. But if you can get it off once, you can probably get it off multiple times, while the scout must ran around.

So, even if you are having to hide every round, and if your "stealth" is immediately broken on your first attack, you'd still be equally reliable, without any other enablers. Shadow and Dark templates help with this for really cheap (for their value). And ring of blinking is effectively the same as "-4 to hit, apply sneak attack to all attacks" (if the common interpretation is correct), which breaks even with Power Attack at +12 average damage, or 4d6.

[RaiKirah]

mm....That's debatable. Depends on your definition of reliable. If you get a sneak attack off only once per two rounds, you have equally reliable damage. But if you can get it off once, you can probably get it off multiple times, while the scout must ran around.

So, even if you are having to hide every round, and if your "stealth" is immediately broken on your first attack, you'd still be equally reliable, without any other enablers. Shadow and Dark templates help with this for really cheap (for their value). And ring of blinking is effectively the same as "-4 to hit, apply sneak attack to all attacks" (if the common interpretation is correct), which breaks even with Power Attack at +12 average damage, or 4d6.

Yeah, you're probably correct that it can be pretty comparable, particularly with the application of Dark and/or Shadow templates for HiPS and a ring of Blinking. But in the absence of items it's going to be easier to arrange to move 10' than most anything else. Change it into a Swift Hunter build and you can apply precision attacks to normally immune creatures with judicious choices of Favored Enemies and I think it becomes simpler to set up Skirmish than Sneak Attack at range, particularly since Penetrating Strike only works for melee attacks.