Which weapon type is good for rogue?

So far I've been assuming rogues could make the best use of daggers but now my guy is starting to do crappy damage with them. Should I always give him any weapon he can use with the best dice or do rogues do better with daggers?...

Codeguru

PS- Also I know I want to get him Opportunist at lvl 10 but does that need any certain weapon to work, assuming I'm even guessing right at it being an attack.

 

Rapier or short sword (for melee).
Both do better damage than daggers, and you can use the Finesse feat to get your Dex bonus on attacking and damage.
I prefer rapiers, although you'll only find one in the game that can be crafted afaik, and even that one only appears if you follow a particular chain of events.
If your rogue dual-wields, maybe you could give him a magic shortsword and a dagger of venom.

As for Opportunist, I'm pretty sure that you get the AoO as long as you're within range.

 

Well crap, I guess I'll have to give up his daggers then. He is getting low on feats and I wanted to weapon focus the right one before I screwed him up yet again. Thanks for the tip, I guess I'll just try with rapier since it seems like that is a specialized weapon type rogues can use other than the light weapons and therefore should have some sort of insanely powerful version somewhere in the game crafted or dropped...

Codeguru

 

Rogue Weapons.

My rogue uses the rapier when in melee. I started with the rapier and heavy crossbow to start out but soon I found my rogue to be an even nastier archer than the fighter I set aside for that role. As she advanced in level I gave her martial weapon:longbow, point blank shot, and precise shot. It is quite often that I see 30+ points of damage (1d8+ the rogues sneak attack) vs living foes (giants, ogres, goblins (30 points to a 3 hit point goblin is just shy of overkill ). Between her and my fighter archer many opponents are either dead or seriously damaged before they get into melee with me. Add that to a fireball from my mage and a holy smite from my cleric you can just say the nuke did the job the bb was supposed to do. My suggestion is experiment and perhaps even go outside of the rogues weapon proficiencies.

 

I'm partial to giving the rogue a couple fighter levels and having him use a spiked chain. Have him feint and then trip every round (unless you are trying to trip someone a lot stronger than your rogue). With improved trip, the attack you get after the trip is always a sneak attack if the feint is successful. It's almost too easy.

 

Mix your rogue with ranger (as an alternative to fighter) & give him two weapon fighting for some good melee power IF the dex is really good. Also, try the bow track for a different kind of fun in your next game. High dex of the rogue also come in handy there.

 

I'm just not partial to the mixed Ranger/Rogue. Even if you want a dual wielder, you can do that adding fighter levels instead.....and you'll get extra feats. If all you were planning to take was 2 levels of ranger, you'll have one extra feat. If your plan was 4 levels, you'll get 2 (and can specialise). On the other hand, mixing Ranger and Rogue will be better for your skill points than mixing Ranger and Fighter levels. I usually space out my fighter levels, though, so I never have a problem.

 

If you can get the staff, I believe, from completing the water temple, a rogue kicks butt using that weapon, especially with their sneak attack. You will want to add magic cold damage to it, too - that will additionally help.

 

I usually mix ranger for the bow skills, not the melee. My ranger/rogue halfing archer was instrumental in the defeat of the Balor, once. I like to do ranger/wizard also....for the bow. Gives them something else to launch aside from spells. 3 or 4 levels is generally good enough.

 

Heh, well my high dex rogue now has the ability to focus on short swords which cannot be used with his weapon finesse ability and still cannot hit much for any damage with his low str. Maybe I'll craft up a few daggers later but for now he's fodder. By the way, just so anyone knows, there is an ample supply of 7 masterwork rapiers that you can get from the water node along with 7 masterwork shortswords. So either one is decent but only with a str rogue I'd bet. Time to summon up some demons and beat the game I guess...

Codeguru

 

Some might disagree or argue with this. You could train your rogue for one level as a fighter to gain access to use more weapons.

 

You can also buy masterwork stuff from the smith in Hommlet, if that is your concern.

 

Short swords are light weapons, and are thus finessable. Unless the character in question is small, in which case they're one-handed.

A rogue's main damage comes from sneak attack, not the weapon itself. Having a better weapon is useful, but even the best weapon isn't going to compare to the sneak attack ability of a high level rogue. You want to try to hit opponents who are flat-footed, blinded, or otherwise denied their Dex bonus. Barring that, you should flank with one of your other meleers to sneak attack (but be careful not to let the rogue get surrounded.)

 

longspears quick draw to shortswords, sneak attack from 10' + the AoOs then switch if you get into trouble.

 

See, silly me I assumed halflings being the rogue race were the best rogues. I'd have been better off being human just so I could get an additional feat and just use str gloves and train up dex. Short swords are not light on my halfling rogue because it uses my str to check for hits on every swing. Plus he's got 2 weapon fighting feat and each swing is STILL -6 because of dual wield which is what is suppose to be cancelled out by that feat I thought. But, I beat the game anyway, no thanks to him ...

CodeguruX