Rogue Guide

Hi Quint
You called it perfectly. To select "Exotic Weapon Proficiency: Bastard Sword" (or Dwarven War Axe) you need to have a +1 Base Attack Bonus (BAB) AND a Strength of 13.
http://www.d20srd.org/srd/feats.htm#exoticWeaponProficiency
The Royal Canadian

 

glitterdust is indeed an effect method of gaining sneak attacks before you get the improved invisibility spell.

I usually have both my wizard and bard throwing glitterdusts around anyways.
it makes a person lose their dex to AC, vulnerable to sneak attacks, limits their speed, 50% miss chance, and nowers their to hit and AC further by a set amount.
very nice spell...

 

Although it's already been said I'd like to emphasize that a combat-oriented rogue is potentially more deadlier than any of the warrior classes. If you really want to witness this first-hand build a pure-DEX rogue with weapon finesse and exotic weapon feat for spiked chain. You'll do good to keep maximizing DEX for many reasons: with a finesseable weapon, every 2 dex will increase your to-hit by +1. Also, if you are wary of the max dex bonus on your armor and keep wearing lighter and lighter armors as your dex goes up, you'll eventually have an incredibly high AC. Ultimately you'll be wearing bracers of AC and have no armor on. Now, there's also the feat combat reflexes that allows you to make AoO every time an enemy enters your threat zone. So with your incredibly high DEX bonus and your reach weapon, you'll wipe out hordes of weak enemies that dare try to run through your threat zone.

I personally don't dual wield because of the penalties to-hit and because you can use a buckler with the spiked chain so your AC is much higher.

Also, personally I don't like the a ranged-build because you need to invest all the ranged feats. Also you need to be quite close to get those sneak attacks, so why not just make him melee since he'll be pretty close anyway. And the enemy gets an AoO if he's right next to you and you are using a ranged weapon. Just an opinion though, and my spiked-chain rogue usually has a back up bow anyway.

Now with this rogue you can't be the "face" person, but you can still have all the stealthy and dexterous skills easily. The two highest stats for my rogues are 1) DEX and 2) INT. But that is just personal preference, because IMO rogues should be smart, able to disarm traps and learn many skills e.g. tumble, use magic device, etc. So I typically use:

STR: 6-8 (you don't really need STR for a DEX rogue)
DEX: MAX: 20 (if you are elf or halfling)
CON: 10-12 (higher if you want more HP but he's not really a front-line fighter)
INT: 16 (if possible, more skills, and INT is modifier for disable device which SHOULD be a priority for a trap disabling rogue)
WIS: 12-14 (nicely meshes with SPOT skill. Can't disarm a trap if you can't spot it)
CHA: MIN (only good for UMD, but can be sacrificed)

Skills: hide, move silent (nice for scouting), SPOT, disable/pick locks, tumble is great, as is UMD. appraise is great too with your high INT.

As your rogue matures you should find he'll have the highest AC (almost for certain) and probably the same to-hit as your fighters and possibly higher. The rogue bonus feats are really awesome too. My favorite is crippling strike because it destroys your enemies ability to hit you back (-2 STR per successful sneak attack).

I played through ToEE with this rogue and let me tell you he mopped the floor. Was awesoem to watch his AoO go off with that spiked chain!

 

A rogue will never have an AC as high as a monk with high WIS, since the monk gets WIS bonus as well as DEX bonus to AC. Actually, I'd be interested in trying to dual-class a monk into a rogue or vise versa sometime, could be a cool experience.

I think giving the combat-oriented rogue a level or two of Fighter makes him into a more effective combatant, if just for the extra feats (or possibly 4 levels, for wpn specialization). With a bit of extra constitution, this works just as well as a replacement for a front-line fighter.

Range-build and melee build require same amount of feats in the end, since you have to have P. Attack, Cleave etc. for a melee fighter just like you need the feats for the ranged rogue.

Low STR is fine I guess, but doesn't that mean less damage as well? IIRC, finesse only affects to hit and not damage rolls. I'd rather make INT lower (13 would suffice), especially since a "lockpick" rogue isn't necessary in TOEECRPG at all.

As for the race, I think it's really b/w human and halfing, human for the extra feat, halfing for the size bonuses (+1 to hit, +1 to AC against bigger crits)... I don't like elf rogues, they die too easily. High Dex is good and all, but one lucky enemy critical and you're gone.

 

I would totally agree, except for the one chest that cannot be opened with knock. Brother Smythe's chest with the horn of selling in it.

It might be a idea to chew to maybe make a chest like that a pivotal plot related thing in order to get the blacksmith to open a new/certain questline, as opposed to being a nod to Diablo 2. :yes:

And make a lockpick thief crucial.

 

Wouldn't that limit playability if you "make a lockpick thief crucial". I like the choice to never have to play with a rouge. Becise I think I was able to open that chest with a level 1 Fournok (if you buff him up a lot) that I picked up just for it.

 

Isn't Furnok lvl5 off the bat?

 

But why put the chest there at all then? You can store stuff in any number of empty barrels around town as well as your 2 empty chests at your house in Nulb, if you bought it.

I myself never store anything but sell it all off as I get it so the chest for me is just another source of money, that being whatever the horn is worth. It could be more interesting but it doesn't really affect anything as it is now.

 

Don't know; I just assumed he was level 1 as in my games he does a grand total of 5 minuites of adventuring.

 

I really should have stated this is for a rogue-rogue thats also good at fighting. Sure, fighter levels can offer many things to a combat-rogue, but at the expense of his rogue-like abilities , special feats, skills, sneak attack, etc. Again, to each his own, there's no right answer.

I guess so, if you put P.attack and cleave on your rogue. I personally don't, many more useful feats that make him better at his rogue profession.

So maybe the rogue does 2-3 less damage from this STR. Not really a huge difference at higher levels where his sneak attack is doing 7d6 damage itself.

Sure you can probably tune a rogue specifically to the ToEE module and precisely plan out which DC's on which traps he'll face, but that's not very practical outside of this module. So, I suppose INT is not so important if you know exactly what kinds of traps you are facing. Not recommended in a module where you don't have this information.