Rogues Are Bad

[Nevurs]

Rogue has always had a particular niche in a standard Dungeons and Dragons group, being a skill monkey who can sneak into places, talk their way out of trouble, and take advantage of group melees to get some good damage in.

Unfortunately, that doesn't translate well to Neverwinter Nights, where balance can fall apart completely.

Rogues are in a uniquely bad position. They're the only 3/4 AB class completely reliant on attacks landing in combat that cannot improve their own attack and defenses outside of consumable items. The others - Bard, Cleric, and Monk, all have class mechanics that can allow them to improve their own AB, ignore magical defenses, or get more APR if using certain weapons. Rogue is reliant on attacks landing but falls behind in actually making that happen.

Additionally, the other classes aren't encouraged into a style of play that stops them from improving their own non-sneak-attack damage. Clerics and Druids have powerful spells that can do non-physical damage to wide swathes of enemies and can use certain spells or Wildshapes to improve their fighting capabilities. Bards can buff themselves and use songs to get even more power. Monks have excellent defenses and powerful offensive abilities to supplement their numerous unarmed or kama attacks.

Indeed, the classic counteraction to rogues' weak APR has been dual-wielding, which harms their attack bonus even further. In most servers this gets made up for by access to ability-score improving items that make it only a minor drawback, but on EFU, such items are vanishingly rare and valuable.

Stealth, one of the primary survival tools of a sneak, is also not a reliable way to live on this server. One must hit high levels and have a full set of gear for it to reliably bear any fruit, due to creatures in general having decent spot and listen abilities.

The rogues' d6 hit die is pitiful for a class that can potentially engage in melee combat.

I've found the only reliable way to traverse the server with any safety whatsoever, even the nearest areas to the Peerage Ward, is to have a party consisting of better classes to stand behind shooting enemies with a bow. No other class is so pitifully weak in solo engagements as to be completely incapable of stepping outside of safety to fight basic enemies without having to burn numerous consumables to stay alive.

Finally, they're the only class that must expend a feat not to gain some great advantage but to have decent AB in the first place, if building traditionally.

The perks provided are interesting and can somewhat provide a niche of strength but they're far away from making up for the many weaknesses that make rogues utterly dependent on better adventurers to function on the most basic level without spending one hundred gold worth of consumables to approach the level of any other character.

Therefore, I am proposing the following quality-of-life improvements, to make this one class (that's even called out in the new player survival guide for being awful) more viable in genral:

1. Increase Rogue HD to d8. This will give level 10 rogues and extra 20 HP to work with, which is not much but can make a great amount of difference in survivability for a class that can potentially be involved in melee combat.
2. Give Rogues Weapon Finesse for free at level 2. Make this benefit disappear if they multiclass if you must, but make Rogue a 4 feat class instead of a 3 feat class.
3. Bump the general level of Spot/Listen among enemy monsters down a tad, so that an entire feature doesn't require being level 10, having a perk and a feat, and a full gear set to get any reliable use out of it.
4. Give rogues some reliable way to get one sneak attack in while solo. A 30 second or 1 minute cooldown ability called Underhanded Strike that delivers a normal attack with sneak attack damage if it hits similar to Smite Evil could work for this. This doesn't need to be constant, but it needs to be available enough that stepping outside of town alone isn't a death sentence.

I don't believe any of this will throw off the PvP meta too much, but it will make PvE more tolerable if you're trying to do something minor and don't have an entire guard squad to rely on. After playing the server's opening act as a Rogue and as a Fighter, I've seen how night-and-day it is. Rogue is objectively much more difficult for very little upside- sneak attacks are unreliable and don't work on many creatures, and the skills that enable opening locks and disabling traps don't help you if an orc is trying to kill you and take away 30% of your experience. If three rats is a potential lethal encounter without spending half your rounds using Ash, you're in trouble.

I understand that in the grand scheme of Dungeons and Dragons, the Rogue is a class designed entirely around the existence of a party around them. I counter that with the fact that Neverwinter Nights, as close as it is, is not Dungeons and Dragons, and requiring one character class among all of them to be completely dependent on other players until the highest levels they can reach in exchange for fringe benefits that require specific creature types and not having aggro to function is a little unreasonable.

If this seems like frustrated venting, it is. I welcome counter-arguments. Convince me my lived experience is incorrect.

(For the record I've only died once because I attempted to sneak in a mid-level area despite only being mid-level. This isn't death-venting, it's just that the lessons I've learned haven't given me a good impression.)

[Bearic]

Rogues aren't necessarily as useful in combat as a kitted out Fighter, or magically agile, but they can do things pretty much no other class can do. Open lock, remove trap and high search can get you places and sights all other classes fail to see. They also get to keep their level eight perk even after death, so buffs like commander are useful forever after.

I would treat them like bards, best on a flank and in numbers, but not useless alone. There's a lot of niche items they can employ that make them more enjoyable too.

As for spot/listen on monsters, it's more a law of averages, you can sneak around 80% of monsters most of the time with an invisibility potion and 20 move silently, but if there's five mobs looking for you at the same time, one will probably see you a quarter of the time.

Darkness is an option for solo sneak attacks, at least on some enemies.

[Castle_of_Moonlight]

Rogues are in a uniquely bad position. They're the only 3/4 AB class completely reliant on attacks landing in combat that cannot improve their own attack and defenses outside of consumable items. The others - Bard, Cleric, and Monk, all have class mechanics that can allow them to improve their own AB, ignore magical defenses, or get more APR if using certain weapons. Rogue is reliant on attacks landing but falls behind in actually making that happen.

- In a server with a level range between 2 and 11, consumables are definitely a viable option for triggering sneak attack. Additionally, most rogues with 18 dex can get up to roughly 16 ab from a dex buff and the trinity potions (Bless, aid, and DF). This is also ignoring the fact that you can get a +2 when flanking or if an enemy is tangled or otherwise disabled.

... Clerics and Druids have powerful spells that can do non-physical damage to wide swathes of enemies and can use certain spells or Wildshapes to improve their fighting capabilities. Bards can buff themselves and use songs to get even more power. Monks have excellent defenses and powerful offensive abilities to supplement their numerous unarmed or kama attacks.

- Yes and no, technically speaking, UMD can allow a rogue to access most spells. In fact, UMD opens a lot of possibilities for rogues.  For example, a rogue with a wand of Tasha's hideous laughter or Sound burst can be pretty threatening.

1. Increase Rogue HD to d8. This will give level 10 rogues and extra 20 HP to work with, which is not much but can make a great amount of difference in survivability for a class that can potentially be involved in melee combat.
2. Give Rogues Weapon Finesse for free at level 2. Make this benefit disappear if they multiclass if you must, but make Rogue a 4 feat class instead of a 3 feat class.

- I actually agree with both of these, although in the case of the second suggestion, I would push for weapon finesse to be made a perk. From my perspective, being penalized by needing to expend a feat (of which a non-human rogue only gets four of unless they are able to reach level 10) in order to play a melee rogue (which is arguably a worse pick for rogues since you are less safe) seems to push most non-human rogues into being ranged.


All-in-all, rogues are pretty bad if you compare them to most other classes at a base (no special tricks; just 1-to-1), however, depending how many tricks they have up their sleeve, I think they can be pretty good.

[Ramc]

I do kind of think Rogues could do with d8 HD and Thug gets something else. Clerics get D8 and full spell-casting progression and heavy armor and etc etc and etc. Rogues get a lot of skills but a lot of those are relatively niche in execution in the module (traps/doors come to mind)

Also I think, at least mono-rogues, should get weapon finesse for free at some point in their class progression. It is kind of a feat tax to play to the archetype of a dex rogue.

Also as for the sneak attack thing, I think at minimum corporeal undead should be vulnerable to sneak attacks. Vampires and Zombies very famously have melee weaknesses.