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I don't get all the rogue love kids have these days

NukefaceNukeface Member Posts: 91
in Off-Topic
Way back in the days of yore a thief was a thief and a fighter was a much better fighter than a thief. Kids these days seem to want to have thiefs that fight better fighters who sing better than bards who wizard better than clerics who fight better than Bob. Ain't right, I tell ya!

Back in my day a thief wouldn't have the stones to assault a fighter - that's why they were a thief! A fighter fights and a thief steals stuff - that's why they're thieves. Oh, sure, you could have your thief set up an unassailable fortress with the most mind numbingly despiccable set of traps and locks but that required grit, and determination, and lots and lots of resting!

Nowadays you have these "rogues" who think they own the place, what with their DPS and their whatsits and hoodads! They don't even have the sense to lock things, or to look for traps, or to be useful! They just walk right up dandy as you please and start whacking things. That's supposed to be the fighter's job, ya git!

Then there's the issue of rangers - never occurs to people how damn painful it is to get shot in the butt with an arrow. Nah, they think just 'cause a greatsword has great in the name it's somehow more powerful! By golly, it's not smart to attack somebody with a sword if they're willing to put an arrow in yer eye!

Does it not occur to people that a Druid, who has the ability to turn into a freaking BEAR, might possibly be more frightening than "Waldinald Sticky Fingers"? BEAR! FRIGGING BEAR! TEN FEET TALL WITH ITS PRIMARY ATTACK BEING HUGS! THAT'S HOW CONFIDENT IT IS THAT IT CAN F*** YOU UP!

Then you have the cleric - ya know, that guy who calls down divine wrath just because he needs to go find out if turducken is a thing?

Have we even mentioned the wizard? Master of the impossible? Library card with a massive list of overdue books THAT WILL END THE WORLD?!

Then you even have the Monk - that guy who's basically a thief but is far more willing to crush your spine with his willingness to let you off the hook than with his fists. Though his fists will definitely find a way to crush your spine. That's why he's a monk.

So, for the love of all that is holy, HOW DID THE THIEF MAKE IT TO THE TOP OF THE LIST?!

I'm calling it like I see it - Game Designers have officially rediscovered 80's Ninja Syndrome. Knock it off. We had this discussion and Pirates VS Ninjas was fun for like a minute but the world has moved on - let the Fighter have his day. It's in the name.

*Hangs a sign on the bear (APPROACH WITH CAUTION) and is quickly eaten in response*
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Comments

  • NukefaceNukeface Member Posts: 91
    Exactly.

    I'm starting to envision an RPG system somewhat like IWD with your own custom party but the party ends up interacting with the world, not just your "face" character.

    What I mean by this is your party takes time to strategize and provide possible solutions to scenarios instead of the NPC's dictating terms of engagement. If your thief says "Hey, lemme get this guy nice and SOWSED and then we can jump him in the alley for his key" then you would be able to queue that up as part of the plan.

    Your Paladin might interrupt with "Feel free to get him drunk, but let me interrogate him in the mean-time so that I can convince him to hand over the key of his own free will."

    Your Wizard might lean over to your Druid and say "And when that doesn't work you can jump him in the alley as a bear and I'll cast a Forget spell on our stalwart defender and we can be on our merry little way."

    The cleric might say "Then I can raise the man from the dead and offer spiritual guidance on his drinking problem."

    Ta-da! You just got the key to get into the Royal Palace and had to deal with how the scenario actually plays out. Does it go according to plan or does somebody botch it up? Was the Paladin succesful or did he get the proverbial "Uncle Gob's Forget-Me-Now's?" Now you just have to figure out how you're going to go about snatching them royal underoos before you report back to the guild hall. What a day!

    It would really add depth if each scenario played out according to your character's strengths, not just how you personally go about things. So much gameplay is based on MMO crap - single player games have really lost a lot of their appeal since they're being developed with multi-player mechanics in mind.
  • TeflonTeflon Member, Translator (NDA) Posts: 515
    Your hearwarming words reminds me of thief dual class character I once played BG2.
    With high class ability use any item it was one man army.
    Anyway, I agree with you Nukeface since Nobody is perfect, well it should be.
  • The_Potty_1The_Potty_1 Member Posts: 436
    edited January 2015
    Hm. Never tried the early Fallouts, but I do really like New Vegas, and my daughter's currently having a go at F3, which she digs. Neither Skyrim or Oblivion grabbed me, I ran a sneaky build in both, but got bored and stopped. I tried a thief in WoW for the free first 20 levels, and then started with a caster, but I sucked, and didn't really see the appeal.

    In fairness, neither Fallout nor Skyrim are multiplayer. I kinda see your point on blowback into single player from MMOs, but there's as much effect from consoles into PC games, if not more.

    Wait. My earliest multiplayer game is still in existence. It's a text-based MUD called Ishar: www.ishar.com It's super hard, utterly unforgiving, and .. well perhaps it's balanced, perhaps not. Certainly I didn't get into PvP much, group co-operation was more the thing, and there it was useful to initiate with a thief, then have a fighter take over tanking, while a cleric kept the fighter alive, and whoever else was around dealt damage. Fairly classic stuff in other words. Give it a whirl if you're feeling oldschool.
  • KaltzorKaltzor Member Posts: 1,050
    O_Bruce said:


    Also, Rouge/Thief doesn't meant Ninja. Ninjas, in real life, were something like Fighter/Rouge dual class. Some of their task required much stealth and such, but they were perfectly able to do straight-up combat. Think of them as the "Special Force" or something.

    Actually, I think an older RPG Thief would fit pretty much into what a Ninja was as they were primarily spies, they did have the skills to fight if they absolutely had to but they were more likely to run from a fight and possibly set up traps as they go...
  • SquireSquire Member Posts: 511
    scriver said:

    ...wizards in the new 5th Edition are have at will "cantrip" damage spells that rival the damage potential of an optimized fighter (at reach), meaning the fighter no longer have the advantage of not being restricted by spells/day.

    That's true. Wizards do have to roll to hit with a lot of them, but they're rolling using their intelligence (their most typically optimised stat) rather than their dexterity (not generally a highly optimised stat for wizards), so they're less likely to miss.

    Again, though, it's because people moaned about how wizards were useless at level 1. While I do agree to some extent, and I do like the idea of free cantrips, in order to prevent wizards being reduced to amateur crossbowmen at level 1, I do feel that they've made these spells too powerful. The warlock's free attack uses his charisma, and does, like, 1d10 damage!!
  • DreadKhanDreadKhan Member Posts: 3,857
    The reason Rogues got a substantial bump in combat prowess in 3rd and later editions was because not many people liked to play an Thief in earier DnD iterations. They were purely support characters, and thus were not very popular to play, despite being pretty important in PnP, where you do not know where all the traps are hidden. Heck, in BG1, we get practically barraged with viable Thief NPCs, because the devs probably knew not nearly as many folks wanted to run a low level thief. By BG2, with the addition of kits, the Thief became more enjoyable to play, as they could actually be useful, by using speed weapons especially. A Thief with the Tuigan Bow and later the Gesen Bow were fun AND useful as a PC. Melee they can use either Kundane or Belm, though a new player can easily miss these both. SWS for backstabbing was also a nice boost, doubling your crit chances. To say nothing of the joy that is traps. Great addition IMO that a new player might not find right away. Detect Illusion can be very powerful too, especially without an Inquistor or Cleric of Helm.

    In a CRPG it is true that you don't need every class to be strictly equal if they have a unique roll (Only thieves can disarm traps for example). BG2 doesn't make Thieves the best, but ToB certainly lets them be very viable at high levels, a nice change. In PnP though, UAI is not nearly as good, and Thieves really were kinda lackluster, if useful characters. They needed to change, so people would WANT to play a Rogue.

    In 3.x, I think Rogues really came into their own niche in DnD, being secondary combatants on par with Clerics (though clearly worse at tanking, they were great niche damage dealers with smart use of Sneak Attack), while still being a strong supporting character... Heck, you could easily design a thief in 3rd that was primarily a combat character, but the character will NOT be anywhere near as good at just slogging as a front liner like a Fighter or Paladin, or even a Ranger. They lack the BAB, and they get fewer straightforward combat options. A Thief built for combat is a dangerous opponent for an opponent with a discernable anatomy, but vs a golem, elemental, aberration etc, they have very little to fall back on other than being a feat anemic archer, and 3rd really made archery feats necessary to being a great archer. Of course, a Rogue could be built for ranged combat in 3rd easily enough, and with good dex be quite effective, but a Ranger will likely be better, and for sure a Fighter will be a much better archer. *shrug* I do not see a problem here.

    It is no coincidence that Thieves' World d20 did a solid job of making non-casters viable vs casters. A high level caster can probably still win, but a well played skill based character could take one down. I like this personally, as I dislike how ridiculously exponential caster power is in all editions of DnD I looked at. That said, Thieves' World d20 had such a byzantine casting system not many would care to actually use it, but the potential exists if someone can simplify it.
  • DreadKhanDreadKhan Member Posts: 3,857
    IIRC, thats 2 levels of Paladin, and you have to follow the Paladin Code to keep that bonus. Not that charisma builds weren't stupendously good in 3.5, but they did have drawbacks.

    The best dabbling classes were usually Ranger, Fighter, Barbarian and Paladin, as they front load. Barbarians was probably the most messed up by this, since you could take the Extra Rage feat after 1 level of Barbarian, making extra Barbarian levels usually a poor mechanical choice. :disappointed: However, in 3rd nobody says you have to build a min-maxed 'I have 8 different classes' character to be successful with a party. It just made life easier for very small parties. In general, unless you had lots of expansion material, Fighters ran out of great feats to take quickly, especially if he lacked the dexterity for TWF or archery, or the intelligence to unlock the Combat Expertise tree. Power Attack is a biggish tree, and powerful if used right, but without expansion material more than 10 levels of Fighter could be hard to make work.

    3rd was a great edition though if your DM was running a small group, and nobody wanted to run 2 or 3 characters, since you could, with planning, do some pretty cool stuff at mid to high level with the open multiclass. If this has no appeal, just do not use the option maybe.
  • the_spyderthe_spyder Member Posts: 5,018
    edited January 2015
    @DreadKhan - I am specifically referring to several persistent worlds that I played on in NWN2 and not so much PnP. 1 level or 2 (and my poor memory says 1?? I could be wrong) was nothing. Beyond that, no DM actually monitored the interaction so they didn't "Have" to follow any code. it became routine that if you were a Sorcerer, you were a Pali-Sorcerer and therefore had INSANE saving throws.

    And another favorite was 1 level of BARD which made you eligible for RDD. there were a LOT of Barbi-Bard-RDD running around the servers (occasionally throwing in Blackguard for EDM). I'd say that the three most abused on those servers were "Pali-Sorcerers", "Barbi-Bard-RDD" and "Whatever-Shadow Dancer" with a single level (or two??) in the "Offending" class to seal the deal.

    For me, I always role play my characters. It would be anathema to me to only pick one (or two) level in a given class. So I never joined the power elite. Maybe it's just sour grapes on my part but I get what the OP was saying as this happened a LOT on those servers. An active DM would have made a lot more sense and cut out most of that crap.

    @Squire - Oh, no doubt that a lot of the realism of actual armor has been removed from the game. I wasn't very clear, but I was trying to express that, focus and specialization in a given skill should subsume any advancement along another line entirely. Therefore a fighter who focuses on being "A wall of steel and blades", should be a better "Tank" than someone who dances around in leathers. The guy in Leathers should have OTHER benefits to be sure. I think the OP was trying to express that to often today someone can be a master thief AND as good a fighter or Wizard or whatever else all at once.

    Focus in a skill should give benefits not achievable without it. Specialization should be required to reach the highest levels of power in a given discipline and to the exclusion of all else.
  • DreadKhanDreadKhan Member Posts: 3,857
    NWN is not PnP though, and I agree if the Paladin Code can not be adequetly enforced it is probably going to be broken.

    In IWD2, I found my Aasimar Paladin 2 Sorcerer X was great early, but other characters were much better later. The Banemonk was the true beast (Mass Domination with a huge DC was his hallmark), followed by my Enchanter, but Cha was a hard stat to pump in IWD2, so that might be why. In PnP, my most beefy villain characters were usually Sorcerer (or Battle Sorcerer, which has better BAB but way less spells, and better HD), Blackguard or Paladin of Tyranny, and usually either some Spellsword to cast in Heavy Plate and or Eldritch Mage. Relies on Charisma and Rebuke Undead to power some absurd melee stuff, with either 7th level spells or 8th if you used a Dragonspawn template. But this is a pretty extreme example, and even it would have trouble soloing many ECL 20 encounters, IE Baalors. 3.5 made high level encounters REALLY tough towards the end of it's life. It was actually more party friendly because of that, without teamwork most high level encounters would steamroll ANY solo, no matter how uber it was. If it didn't, your DM was probably not very good at running encounters!

    3.x really shone in that it let you build towards whatever archetype you wanted... 2 levels of Fighter are nothing to throw RPing out the window to achieve, and gave feat access several levels sooner. You could make a character that was much more organic that way, though you could also just refuse to RP and do something powerful that made no real sense, but a DM should punish that if the group isn't a fan of such builds. It really comes down to the DM in later DnD, while DMing was pretty straightforward in earlier editions. You could be mean, or nice, or in between, but 3.x finally let you REALLY tailor things to the party, IE to screw over a minmaxed munchkin in an RP party.

    For example, in PnP powergamery in 3.x, lots of fighter builds make use of Charge boosters, or Power Attack synergy, but either a small encounter area (no charging!) or an opponent with the Elusive Target feat (no benefit for PA...) lets a DM subtly encourage people to play nicely. NWN or other CRPGs typically does not have the DM function, so this goes right out the window. :neutral_face:
  • DreadKhanDreadKhan Member Posts: 3,857
    @the_spyder‌ Well, I think we can totally agree that the DM Guide could have used a more thorough set of instructions on how to actually DM, rather than just being a big reference book. When you get down to it, DMing is almost like an apprenticeship type skill, and just knowing the rules does not cut it. Hard to teach that by book I suppose, but in some ways, the overly paternalistic old Gygax books are a great introduction to DMing, even if you never play the game, since he does a good job of showing how a DM needs to take control of the situation, and guide play. @atcDave‌ probably knows what I mean on this.

    If you ever played Quest for Glory, it sounds a bit like Oblivion or Skyrim, where skills are improved only by use. The games are old, so and gaming has advanced mechanically a fair bit, but thats a good idea for a CRPG generally. In QfG, you were either capable of the rudiments of a skill, or had no hope of using it... Thieves were the only class that could really be good at everything, but unless you did skill grinding, you would likely be maxed out only in the skills you used very often. It was also unusual in that the Magic User was hands down the worst choice in most of the games. In the first few, a Thief with the Magic Use skill could do anything a Magic User could, while a Magic User had a pretty limited skill set. This is probably reasonable, since you are supposed to be a beginner mage until well into the 3rd game, if not through to the 4th. But still, the Fighter was much better at actual fighting, and eventually the Magic User was best a doing magic, and the Paladin (import only) was the Paladin, with a flaming blue sword of buttkicking.
  • the_spyderthe_spyder Member Posts: 5,018
    @Nukeface - check out the original "Thief" game. It's exactly what you describe. You had to sneak everywhere. You were naph at hand to hand combat and often times you RAN or you died. It was all about the 'heist', planning your strategy, staying to the shadows and using your stealth skills to your advantage.

    Later iterations of the franchise turned more into 'Action/stealth' games where you were still a bad---ss in combat. Thief was NOT that sort of game, at least not the original game.
  • DreadKhanDreadKhan Member Posts: 3,857
    edited January 2015
    Now that you mention it, it is a bit odd that the saving throw bonus' based on CHA are not restricted to a level cap, whereas abilities like an AC bonus from intelligence were restricted that way in 3.5 vs 3.0... Duelist was no longer a great solution to cheaply boost AC for a wizard that never actually fights! That would be a great houserule though, possibly only affecting multi-class Paladins... though not many people planning to run a Paladin as a Paladin made Charisma their primary stat, I would not want to discourage it and punish a pure Paladin unduly, since Charisma is otherwise not a high utility stat early on. Even with 4 ranks in Diplomacy at level 1, 18 charisma still nabs you only a grand +8, which is not going to sway many not already disposed to be swayed.

    Utility thievery is indeed hard to make glamorous in CRPGs... it is important in some games (Not really in IWD2 for example, unless you REALLY want that Lucky Trout thing! Traps are easy to find and disarm, and locks are easy to pick, so you could easily get by with a lvl 1 Rogue multiclass Wizard to deal with that stuff), but never all that interesting unless the devs really, really make it important, which I fear the results in people whining that they need a Thief.

    An interesting blurb in a Dragon Magazine I read made an interesting and relevant argument I remember, recommending people try a more SWAT style party... IE emphasize speed, surprise, and overwhelming force to end encounters very, very quickly rather than relying on a big slow fighter to tank, and hope he doesn't get dominated, or petrified. It even suggested using a more Rogue oriented party to benefit from Sneak Attack to end fights sooner, both from opening salvos and from speed to get good positions to flank. Casters obviously make great scouts at higher levels, and can offer good area of effect support, as well as debilitating spells and good ol' charms and Domination to help with larger groups that are well prepared. A big point was emphasizing team play, rather than having a party of individuals.

    Edit: Hide in Plain Sight in PnP 3.x is certainly not that overpowered... it is a good skill to have, but it is very situational. By the actual rules, the only character that can ACTUALLY fight and hide again is a very high level Ranger, with his concealment ability AND Hide In Plain Sight... and he has to be outside to use this trick. I suspect it was implemented incorrectly if it allows much in the way of shenanigans. Even sniping, IE firing a ranged weapon and IMMEDIATELY hiding again suffers a big -20 penalty, and HiPS does not negate that. Assuming you have a pretty impressive net +30 to hide, that means you are hiding as a well as a 5 or 6th level rogue.
  • cognoscentuscognoscentus Member Posts: 65
    I don't get all the rogue hate kids have these days.

    Unlock the door, rogue.

    Disarm the trap, rogue.

    Make me a sammich while I kill these monsters, rogue.

    Rogue type characters with many utility skills and little combat skill in a game is dumb. Opening locks and disarming traps are abilities that rogues are expected to have and should have. It's part of the job and not really a lot of fun. Killing monsters is not only fun, but it is usually the most important part of advancing a quest.
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