Hi everyone,
I've been toying for some time with an idea to create a (core) rogue who is not entirely dependent on sneaks in combat, and who will be fully fledged with his tactics well within the "sweet spot" of adventuring, i.e. around lvl 3-12.
Feel free to add comments and ideas!
Coming to think about it, it's unlikely this idea hasn't been tried somewhere before, I guess, but my cursory google search did not come up with anything...
EDIT: as pointed out by Eldariel, Snow Savant on gleemax came up a year ago with the principle first. Some differences to this build:
- Robin Hood is core and achieves the necessary skill level with a lower starting DEX than Snow Savant's build
- Robin Hood steals and gives to the floor, instead of stealing and possibly giving to the poor, using quickdraw to store the stolen stuff into his bag of holding (necessitating a house rule)
- Robin Hood focuses on the overall combat tactics to relieve an opponent of his stuff, including disarm (and possibly sunder later).EDIT END
...anyhow...
Robin Hood
"Take from the rich, and give to the floor"
Parameters: Core rules, 28pt-buy, DMG recommendation of wbl, with 1/4 of the wbl going to single items.
The build idea: level 10 human rogue
Spoiler
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Stats: STR 10, DEX 22 (4 enhance, 2 stat gain), CON 14, INT 14, WIS 8, CHR 12
stat gains for DEX (lvl 4, lvl 8).
FEATS: Skill Focus/Sleight of Hand, Deft Hands, Weapon Finesse, Expertise, Improved Disarm.
SKILLS: max sleight of hand, UMD, spot, listen, hide, move silently, bluff, tumble. Rest as needed/personal tastes.
WEAPONS: shortbow, spiked chain (untrained), shortsword.
ITEMS OF NOTE: masterwork items for sleight of hand and UMD, circlet of persuasion, wands of heroism and cat's grace, boots of speed, rod of lesser extend, +2 spiked chain. Rest as needed/personal tastes.
ROGUE SPECIAL ABILITY: Skill Mastery at 10th level.
The most important thing to know is that the total sleight of hand bonus of this rogue will be
13 ranks + 3 skill focus +2 deft hands bonus + 2 masterwork item bonus + 2 moral (heroism), +6 DEX (stat and cat's grace), +2 synergy from bluff for +30. With skill mastery, this rogue can take 10 for a total result of 40.
Now, the sleight of hand skill description says that
1) you can with a DC 20 lift small items of creatures and
2) you can take -20 penalty to turn this into a free action.
The Strategy
Basically, this rogue buffs up with his wands (heroism lasting 80 minutes with the extend rod), strikes from hiding, activates haste from boots, moving up to 60ft in partial charge close to the opponent (possibly in the suprise round).
Then, he attempts to disarm the opponent at +7BAB/+6DEX/+2enhance/+2morale/+4disarm/+6spikedchain/+1 haste/+2charge/-4non-proficient for a total of +26.
If the opponent is not yet disarmed, the rogue could try to win the initiative, but it is best to just risk the AoO from stealing (likely only one since not many opponents have combat reflexes) and, with a couple of dozen free actions just takes all small items away.
There is even the possibility to do some kind of "spring attack" since you can steal everything from the opponent when you just move past him, since it only takes free actions to do so. Tumbling avoids the AoO from movement.
Small items encompass most items from medium-sized opponents (excepting large weapons carried) and means that probably all but armour is taken from the opponent.
These items are then just left on the floor.
Result: opponent is completely debuffed of items, possibly weaponless. "Robin Hood" in this case indeed takes from the rich...but just leaves the items on the floor, necessitating move actions and AoO to pick up again (and he can just drop his loot behind himself, or 2 squares away from the opponent).
In case the opponent is still flat-footed, Robin hood now could on winning the initiative do a full attack for 3x sneaks (+7 BAB, haste).
Expansion ideas
- At higher levels, Robin Hood can make use power attack and sunder to even get rid of opponent armour. Also, spiked chain proficiency would further boost the already high disarm check.
- For true "Robin Hood" feel and getting composite longbows, you could just grab a bracer of archery, multiclass into a martial class or be an elf (albeit with the coveted 40 check delayed, and/or some feat problems).
- Robin Hood is a great teamplayer: he can debuff protective items (for better party wizard attacks, or Power attacking martial characters), get rid of a ring of freedom of movement (for the party grapplers), take the most precious artefacts from the equipment of the BBEG etc.
- Against monsters, items on the monsters can also be stolen and dropped (there goes that dragon's ring of counterspelling...). The higher the skill bonus rises, the more likely that nobody will even notice Robin Hood robbing them naked - that is, until it is too late...
- otherwise, just use the regular rogue tactics vs monsters (sneak, ranged attack).
- at very high levels, Robin Hood can also make use of the fact that sleight of hands checks count as a perform check, and he can turn a friendly audience into fanatic followers with a DC of 60.
EDIT: 2 more notes:
1. You can also do all this with a bard, thanks to the good bard buffing spells and sleight of hand class skill. Lacking skill mastery, a bard could reach the crucial +39 to the skill possibly only by level 12 or so, though.
2. It is somewhat open whether you can really use sleight of hand to get all the items instead of having to use disarm. In my interpretation, disarm to get an item from someone is an ALTERNATIVE, but not replacing sleight of hand in this respect. So you can get rings worn by someone with a sleight of hand, and also items fixed on the opponent's equipment (the activity is often called "cutpurse" with some reason...)EDIT END.
- Giacomo
[3.5] A different core rogue build - "Robin Hood"
