GM's Tip of the Week.
Hello, fellow Portalites!
I’m still taking a shot at classes, picking them apart for you guys. This week, it’s rogues, those loveable pains in every paladin’s butt… or, as some prefer to be called, ‘specialists in property transfer’ … and most of them get immediately saddled with trapfinding, or backstabbing, but really, there’s so much more for a clever player or GM to take advantage of. And that’s just in one system! As always, we welcome commentary; anyone with experience playing rogues in other systems should feel free to speak up!
You can do a lot with a rogue, from infiltration to property allocation to social assassination to actual assassination to trapsmith; the rogue is what we call a versatile class. I’ve seen mostly combat rogues in play; Ferris ‘The Blender’ was run by a friend of ours, and he lived up to the name.
If you’re running a social-combat campaign, a rogue is a good addition; their spread of skills makes them naturals for face roles, even if their charisma doesn’t; skills like Bluff have more application that just making successful feint checks in combat, after all. A lot of skill points can also mean a lot of knowledge skills; if your group doesn’t have a wizard filling that slot, there’s always the rogue to pick up the slack.
A rogue does not have to be a combat monster to be useful, although I notice that most are, simply because combat is a thing that happens frequently in most games. Locked doors are an obstacle that a rogue is usually the best choice to remove. Traps? Again; frequently the demesne of the rogue. Swiping the Shiny Object of Shininess from the BBEG? Also frequently the rogue’s job, with hilarious consequences if they fail. Scouting? Something most rogues can do, and probably should. Even better if they can see in the dark and don’t need one of those pesky torches. Go on, build a dwarf rogue, you know you want to ….
A GM might want to take more and heavier advantage of the rogue’s stealth for tailing groups and their guile for gathering information; needless to say a rogue who’s specialty is information gathering might have as many faces as they need to get the job done; and not all of them must be magical to work; that Disguise skill – by whatever name – is very useful!