Rouge

[GM_Chris]

I griped? You can never go off of what I gripe about because my mind changes like a crazy person. Infact I dont remember griping, but then again I can hardly remember what game I am playing half the time

[Todd]

The question that needs to be asked is if you are going to take out a lone apponent by sneak attack, and they do not see you, then do you walk up and attempt a knock out, or do you lead with a backstab assuming time is not an issue. If the answer is always knockout then well I would say backstab is underpowered.

I disagree most heartedly. I think knockout IS the solution. Even with supprise you should never 'Plan' to go toe-to-toe with the warrior.

The skill is backstab. Not assasinate. Its not supposed to be a one-shot one-kill strike.

Personally if I had to pick the lesser of two evils, I could see lowering the damage a bit more and letting them charge while moving.

[dier_cire]

Charge while moving goes against the whole charging concept. There's basic rules for charging and adding an exception is a bad idea. The whle point of this change was to remove exceptions and rules...

Reason I brought up critical strike idea to Aaron:

Backstab is underpowered compared to the empath boom.
Rogue is a combat class without a mainstay combat skill.
It's the only skill that requires a location of the body. (Flee, hold ground, defensive martix and parry are based on the user knowing not the target).
It would remove a call from the game.
It will make the rogue a more useful member in combat as the game moves from the mass melee style to a more organized system.

Also for note:
There is no "adding damage" involved in this change. In fact it lowers damage.
Damage would be 3, 6, 9 for a 5, 10, 15 respectively (this is overall lower as most rogues are full path)
Attacking from the front would be blockable via parry and hold ground thus making the back still the best spot.

Now with the change rogues still have to be sneaky as you can't go "toe to toe" with a warrior as interrupting the charge is easy. They are hit and run type characters still. Without the location requirement the call 'backstab' goes away. As well, it's the the only hit location skill in the game. Removing it simplifies combat. For these reasons, I'd say it's a huge winner. The possible minor increase in damage delivered from the rogue (percieved or real) is very minor to the benefits you gain.

Comparing rogue and empath you have:
5 for a 10 count ranged damage (basic)
6 for a 10 count melee damage (advanced)

This is balanced, in fact the rogue is still outmatched.

Now yes, rogues also have knockout, but empaths have fear and sleep, so this is balanced out. Rogues have traps and empaths have their lash. Rogues have other skills but so do empaths. Both the empath and the rogue are not front line fighters but both should have uses in combat.

[dier_cire]

I could see time being decreased. Lets say 2 rogues square off on a warrior and we reduced the counts to say 2,4, and 6 seconds. Assuming people properly cound one 1000, two 1000 then each rogue could take turns doing 3 damage to the back of the warrior. Might be interesting

Chris we already tried that. I could take two rogues at a 12 for a 2 count. The fact that I can hit them and disrrupt them negates a lower count. Even at a 2 count I'd let one charge while beating on the other then switch. Now if it were from the front it'd still be the same as I can disrrupt and now I could parry their hits.

I do this fighting the disrruptable golems (last event they could be disrrupted) and get hit once out of maybe 8 strikes and that's a 1 maybe 2 count charge.

[Todd]

For a change I agree with almost everything you said Eric. Let me clear up my statements.

Charge while moving goes against the whole charging concept. There's basic rules for charging and adding an exception is a bad idea.

I agree. My statement was if I had to pick the lesser of the evils (exceptions) That one would be my choice. I personally dont think any changes are neccessary, but as stated in my original post.. Im interested to hear the suggestions.

Backstab is underpowered compared to the empath boom.
Rogue is a combat class without a mainstay combat skill.

Why does it need to be compaired to the Boom? And I (again, personally) dont neccessarily think of the Rogue as a combat class.

It's the only skill that requires a location of the body. (Flee, hold ground, defensive martix and parry are based on the user knowing not the target).
It would remove a call from the game.

These are fantastic points, that I think are over shadowed because you and nelkie always appear to be saying 'Combat. Combat. Damage. Combat. etc.' I think this should be the major focus of the proposed change.

It will make the rogue a more useful member in combat as the game moves from the mass melee style to a more organized system.

See.

Also for note:
There is no "adding damage" involved in this change. In fact it lowers damage.
Damage would be 3, 6, 9 for a 5, 10, 15 respectively (this is overall lower as most rogues are full path)
Attacking from the front would be blockable via parry and hold ground thus making the back still the best spot.

The reduction of the damage is nice, I like it. The sticking point is, that that was the trade off. Higher damage. Limited target. Now youve opened up the target area. Granted Parry etc. still cover it.. but that only Warriors. Once again we have a possible skill that could decimate 80% of the Archetypes.

In closing, Im not saying I dont like the intent. Im just not sure I like the direction.

[GM_Chris]

Todd I was never tring to argue that backstab should be a 1 shot kill. My thought is all skills should be situational and if every surprise situation call for knockout then I think there might be an issue.

my thought is how much should backstab cripple a person?

IF this was a vid game then I would probably add a stun or some other debilitating secondary effect to the rogue.

Problem is this is not a vid game and we can not get too grainual.

I would have to agree that the strongest argument for critical strike is the idea that backstab has the only directional attack in the game and this would change that.

[Onimaster]

I think that Backstab and Knockout are damn near perfect the way they are. If you want to tweek rogue at all it should be in the other non-combat skills.

[Ian_McAllister]

Well I guess as a Rogue I can try to make a few comments.

The one thing I have noticed about playing a rogue is that in general I feel more than a little weaker against NPC's than Pc's.. Now mind you I am by no means a combat rogue even though I wind up fighting (and dying ) a lot. IN general I feel wekaer because when interacting with a PC I have a general idea about what kind of skills and abilities I am facing.. I know I am going to have to be sneaky to do anything and it is really not that hard to get a backstab or KO off on an unsuspecting PC.

Now mind you when interacting with NPC's, especially in the field I almost 100% of the time have no idea what sort of armor if any the NPC's are wearing or armor points in general as a lot of creatures have natural armor.. so if I try a KO and fail it puts me in a dangerous spot.. meanwhile if I just go straight damage and backstab I am usually not heard if there are more than 3 people attacking the NPC (Just the way it is we are only human) and I am pretty sure Empaths have the same problem in mass battles.

I am not saying Rogue is under or over powered, but I do feel like I have limited uses save for disarm and set trap in a lot of purely NPC plots. Now mind you if I wanted to start killing PC's I would get a group of rogues and that would be that. I also believe that no rogue should be able to go toe to toe with a warrior.

Also I have had my share of run by backstabs as it is sometimes the only way to get one off in certain combat situautions.. I try to be as safe as possible and only do it in dire situautions. If there were any changes made I would prefer to see it on the NPC side. Not saying they don't do an awesome job, especially for certain monsters and NPC's, but for lke random bandits and monsters I know it would help me and most rogues I am sure if we had a better idea to determine how armored something is. I figure with spot and such we could at least see an armored hide, hidden armor or the like to open up our options, rather than just resorting to backstab. My two cents.

[Kalphoenix]

Thank god, a post by someone who is currently playing a rogue

So basicly, rogues aren't underpowered because of the way backstab works, they appear underpowered because it's hard to percieve what kind of armor NPCs are wearing or how tough they are. This could be fixed with some color coded tunics maybe?

I would like to see the non-combat rogue skills be tweaked as well, I agree with Matt. I think the combat skills are fine, and I really think combat comes down to the player's skills and not the class abilities. Can a rogue kill a warrior one-on-one? Probably. Should they? I don't really think so. They are a sneaky class, once they are noticed, they should loose a lot of their power.

I'd like to see rogues get a version of Track, imoho, or maybe a more powerful version of knockout (In addition to what they have) that wakes the target if damage is dealt to them (To allow for subdual or dividing the ranks). I guess I need to give it some thought.

I think the reason why a lot of people aren't rogues is because they don't want to fit into that archetype, not because it is underpowered. Ian excepting, rogues don't really SEEM to fit into the brave and noble character that a lot of people want to play, especially a lot of new players that haven't done any LARPing. I also think the fact that you have to make buzzer traps to utilize traps throws a lot of people off.

[dier_cire]

Why does it need to be compaired to the Boom? And I (again, personally) dont neccessarily think of the Rogue as a combat class.

I compare to boom mainly due to the fact that boom is generally considered to be balanced. Comparatively, backstab isn't as powerful, and the rogue and empath both serve as support combat classes. Reason I consider rogue a combat class is that a good chunk of their skills are combat related. Healer and sage are non-combat classes, with rogue, empath and warrior being mainly combat.

And yes, we bring up combat but hey, it's 80% of the reason there are rules.

The reduction of the damage is nice, I like it. The sticking point is, that that was the trade off. Higher damage. Limited target. Now youve opened up the target area. Granted Parry etc. still cover it.. but that only Warriors. Once again we have a possible skill that could decimate 80% of the Archetypes.

In closing, Im not saying I dont like the intent. Im just not sure I like the direction.

Now see I see the backstab / critical hit as a trade off of time versus damage. A warrior can whack a monster 10 times while the rogue goes for the single hard hit. Higher single damage is sometimes better than lots of little hits. The target area is just icing (which I'd like to lose ).

As for it destroying most archtypes, it could before. So can empath booms. There wasn't any change here beyond making it slightly easier to use (as hitting with a melee charged skill from the front is still tough).

The change also opens up some more options for a fighter that is more purely offensive (without even being a "warrior" path). And note this in no way would affect (beyond the lower damage at master) current rogues. If they want to still hit the back, they can.

But as I said before, the main goal was to reduce calls and remove the target knowing if they should count the hit.

[Todd]

I have to admit.. I think you've swayed me. At least into the idea that a playtest wouldnt be a bad idea.
What do you think of this..

Critical Strike (Basic)
The Rogue is a master opportunist who must sometime exchange time for damage.
After studying his intended target he may deliver a more damaging blow. At this level the Rogue can only do 3 damage. It takes a target and an uninterrupted 5 seconds to charge this skill. Once the count is made your next offensive damage call must be the critical strike. Once the attack is charged you can use no skill nor perform any actions except walking, talking, or running until the attack is used. If you attack someone other than your target, make another offensive move, or use another skill, the critical strike is wasted.
_______

Critical Strike (Advanced)
At this level the Rogue can do 6 damage. It takes a target and an uninterrupted 10 seconds to charge this skill. Once the count is made your next offensive damage call must be the critical strike. Once the attack is charged you can use no skill nor perform any actions except walking, talking, or running until the attack is used. If you attack someone other than your target, make another offensive move, or use another skill, the critical strike is wasted.
_______

Critical Strike (Master)
At this level the Rogue can do 9 damage. It takes a target and an uninterrupted 15 seconds to charge this skill. Once the count is made your next offensive damage call must be the critical strike. Once the attack is charged you can use no skill nor perform any actions except walking, talking, or running until the attack is used. If you attack someone other than your target, make another offensive move, or use another skill, the critical strike is wasted.

[dier_cire]

Looks fine to me. Not sure if the explanation of how a charged skill works is necessary but that's the idea I was thinking of.

[Todd]

All I did was copy the text (with a little bit of juggling) from the rulebook from the Empath; Channel, and the Rogue; Backstab and Knockout.

I'll run it past the GMs and see if they're up for playtesting it.

[dier_cire]

That's cool, like I aid no big deal as the concept is sound.

It'd be interesting to see as I can't see it making much difference overall, beyond the rules simplifications. I mean it's still interruptable via a sword swing so one on one or one on two probably won't change (two rogues with surprise will still take out everyone, without it they are in trouble versus a warrior probably). The multiple on multiple may change a bit based on fighting styles.

Two rogue combo, btw: first rogue has critical hit / backstab charged, and the other has a full knockout charged. The first hits with the critical in the back, slighty before the second hits with the knockout. Should go over almost every build's armor. (as at minimum it covers 18, but easily covers 23-25).

[General Maximus]

Now where cooking. I like it and thats what I was trying to say, but failing miserbly. Thanks all for your feedback and ideas.
Lets play test it and see how it goes!