In Dungeons and Dragons 3.5, the character classes received revisions and updates. A few classes changed significantly, while others, such as the rogue, received only minor changes. Although the rogue didn’t undergo a complete overhaul, there are still a number of new tricks for the class that even experienced players might have overlooked. This article provides options, advice and new prestige classes for building interesting rogue characters.
Before you can build a cool rogue character, it is important to consider how the rogue class works, its strengths, and its weaknesses.
On adventures, the rogue is perhaps the most versatile of all character classes. With her copious skill ranks, extensive list of class skills, proficiency with a variety of weapons and armour, and sneak attack ability, there are few situations in which a rogue cannot play a role. The key lies in figuring out how much of a role a rogue can play. The rogue can wear armour, but she is restricted to leather and other light protection. She can use many weapons, but most of them are one-handed or deal relatively light damage. Her hit points are mediocre at best, making her a poor choice to face off against tough monsters alone. Despite these drawbacks, the rogue is a valued member of any adventuring party. Her ability to defeat traps is unparalleled, and her sneak attack damage combined with her stealth allows her to defeat even mighty foes with a single strike.
The rogue is at her best when she uses an indirect approach to overcome an obstacle. To defeat a squad of soldiers guarding a tower, a fighter might charge into battle, while a sorcerer might unleash a fireball. In contrast, a rogue could sneak past them, use her glib tongue to bribe them, assume a disguise to trick them or read their lips (using Spot) while employing the Hide skill to learn their password and walk right by them.
The rogue’s primary strength is her wide selection of skills. Not only does this provide you with a lot of options when designing your character, it gives her much more versatility during an adventure. Wizards and sorcerers might run out of spells, but a rogue can use her skills again and again. Her secondary strengths include her ability to defeat traps, a key talent in dungeon adventures, and her ability to play a critical, supporting role in combat. With her light armour, sneak attack damage and Tumble skill, the rogue can wreak havoc on enemies who are already engaged in battle with the party’s melee fighters. While in combat, try to find a safe way to flank an opponent. Remember, with her low AC and poor hit points, your rogue cannot afford to go it alone in battle. Team up with your allies to defeat an opponent before it can do much damage. Finally, although players often overlook the Use Magic Device skill, it can be quite useful once the rogue reaches 7th level, allowing you to use wands reliably. Until you reach 11th level. focus on magic items that play a role outside of combat such as a wand of cure light wounds. You can repeatedly use such items to help the party without worrying about any major complications if your Use Magic Device check fails. If you rely on a wand of fireballs at early levels, you might find your skill failing you at critical moments.
Since the rogue relies on light armour, her low hit points can quickly become a pressing issue in battle. One lucky hit from an ore can drop even a 3rd- or 4th-level rogue to zero or fewer hit points. Even with a high Dexterity score, leather armour or a chain shirt provides little protection against giants, trolls and other creatures that specialize in melee combat. To overcome these weaknesses, rogues should stay away from tough monsters and let the Fighters deal with them. Unless you can flank an opponent or the situation is truly dire, avoid melee. Try to find magic items that increase your AC. Amulets of natural armour are great for rogues since they don’t carry an armour check penalty and can stack with magical armour.
Perhaps the most important choice in moulding how your character operates, race can dictate if your rogue is best suited for social situations, ranged combat, sneaking or melee.
The bonus feat humans gain comes in very handy for low-level rogues who favour ranged weapons, as it allows you to combine Point Blank Shot with Rapid Shot or Precise Shot. With this combination of feats, even a 1st-level rogue can ably perform as an archer. A human rogue is perhaps the most versatile character combination possible, as the bonus feat and skill points expand the rogue’s already wide range of talents.
The dwarf’s Constitution bonus helps balance out the rogue’s low hit points, but the penalty to Charisma makes class skills like Bluff and Diplomacy poor choices. Even worse, the dwarf’s low speed makes it more difficult to get into position for a sneak attack or to escape a powerful creature. However, a multiclassed dwarf fighter/rogue excels if you avoid skills that suffer armour check penalties. Instead, take ranks in Search, Disable Device, Open Lock and similar skills to defeat traps and overcome social obstacles while wearing the heaviest plate armour you can find.
The elf’s Dexterity bonus makes it an attractive choice for a rogue character, but his penalty to Constitution aggravates the class’s weaknesses. An elf rogue works best when he emphasizes stealth and archery, two areas that benefit from this race’s Dexterity bonus. Avoid melee combat, but if you have a 14 or higher ability score, consider assigning it to Constitution. Doing so allows you to build a very effective elf character.
Due to her Small size, a gnome rogue should make the most of her +4 size bonus to Hide checks and focus on stealth. While the gnome suffers a penalty to Strength, her sneak attack damage and size bonus to hit more than compensate. Best of all, her size bonus to AC helps overcome the rogue’s reliance on light armour. Furthermore, her innate spells are ideally suited to creating tricks to confuse and neutralize opponents. A well-timed ghost sound can distract a guard long enough to let you loot an evil temple’s treasury. The gnome rogue’s primary drawback is her low speed.
With his penalty to Intelligence and Charisma, the half-ore seems like a poor choice to be a clever, dashing rogue. However, this race’s bonus to Strength and affinity for the barbarian class makes a multiclassed barbarian/rogue a powerful combination. While half-ores generally perform poorly as scouts and spokesmen, they can balance out the rogue’s weaknesses and tum this class into a potent melee warrior.
While the half-elf lacks the hurnan’s versatility, her racial bonuses to Diplomacy and Gather Information skills make her an excellent choice if you want to play a silver-tongued rogue who charms her victims while robbing them blind. Although the race’s +1 bonus to Listen, Spot and Search checks isn’t as strong as an elves’ skill bonuses, they still help half-elven rogues become good scouts.
Perhaps the best-suited race to the rogue class, the halfling’s small size and skill bonuses make him a scout and sneak without equal. As with the gnome, his poor Strength is offset by his size bonus to attack rolls, armour class, Hide checks and sneak attack damage. The halfling’s skill with thrown weapons makes Quick Draw a good feat choice, as it allows you to use daggers and throwing axes without wasting actions to ready a second shot.
The rogue’s primary strengths, good skills and sneak attack damage blend well with almost any other character class. Neither of these abilities suffers much if it lags behind due to multiclassing. Wizards and clerics lose critical spellcasting levels if they take a second class, but the rogue can gain more than she loses with a well-chosen additional class.
The barbarian class’s reliance on light armour is a perfect match with the rogue’s abilities. In addition, the barbarian gains damage reduction and uses a d12 hit die, the perfect remedies to the rogue’s poor hit points. Focus on Dodge, Mobility and Spring Attack for feats to make the most of this class’s improved speed. With these three feats you can easily move around a monster and attack on your action, allowing you to regularly gain your sneak attack damage.
While the fighter’s reliance on heavy armour seems to make her a poor partner for the stealthy rogue, this belief assumes that rogues must be stealthy. Many of the rogue’s most useful class skills, such as Disable Device, do not suffer armour check penalties. Thus, a fighter/rogue can wear the heaviest armour available and still take advantage of many of the rogue’s class skills. The fighter’s main drawback is that she contributes pitiably few skills to the equation, but her many feats more than compensate for this. Focus on improving your combat abilities with Weapon Focus, Weapon Specialization and Cleave to make the most of your sneak attacks. In battle, you can rely on your heavy armour to wade into the thick of things and flank your enemies.
In some ways, the Dungeons and Dragons 3.5 ranger duplicates many of the rogue’s abilities. Many players found that in Dungeons and Dragons 3.0, taking a single level of ranger was a great option to gain access to bonus feats, but that option is no longer available. Still, the ranger’s reliance on light armour and her abilities that help her avoid detection (camouflage and hide in plain sight) make her a good choice for a rogue who wants to multiclass. The archery combat option is probably the superior choice for a ranger/rogue, as two-weapon fighting causes penalties that aggravate the rogue’s already mediocre base attack bonus. Furthermore, the ranger’s d8 Hit Die does little to compensate for the rogue’s mediocre hit points, giving even more reason for the multiclassed ranger/rogue to stay out of close combat. These two classes are a good combination, as they have similar strengths and weaknesses, but remember that although the classes play on one another’s strengths, the ranger class does little to balance the rogue class’s weaknesses.
The new feats presented here are designed to enhance the rogue’s strengths. For example, Mercurial Strike emphasizes the rogue’s speed and role as a supporting fighter, while Tutor plays into his wealth of skill ranks.
Starting at 10th level, the rogue gains the option to choose from a list of special abilities. Presented here are a couple new options you can choose.
Knockout Blow: When a rogue would make a sneak attack that deals subdual damage, she may instead attempt to stun her opponent before rolling her attack. If she hits, her opponent must succeed at a Fortitude save (DC 15 + 1 per die of sneak attack damage) or be stunned for 1d3 rounds.
Painful Strike: The rogue’s knowledge of anatomy allows her to inflict tremendous pain. The rogue must make a sneak attack attempt with an unarmed strike. If she hits, her target mus1 make a Fortitude save (DC 10 + 1 per die of sneak attack damage + Intelligence modifier). If the target fails this save. he must make a Concentration check (DC 15 + 1 per die of sneak attack damage + spell level) to cast a spell or use a spell-like ability for the next 1d6 rounds. The target suffers only normal damage for the unarmed strike, not sneak attack damage, when a rogue uses this ability.
The prestige classes presented below provide rogue characters with more direction. They are intended to help focus your rogue while still leaving you room to pick up the class’s best features.
Source: Dragon Magazine #310 (Page 67)