I promised buffs to Rogue prior but have not delivered. The reason is this:
TL;DR: Rogue is in a good place. It does not need overall buffs with bonus feats but a more surgical examination and adjustment in its features and improving them individually.
Rogue is a high-skill ceiling class. Its potential to be competitive depends more on the player playing the class than the build itself.
One can build a Rogue like a toe-to-toe frontline warrior: focusing on raw AB, AC, crit, and damage output. That approach can be solid and viable but not as good as other classes (fighter, ranger, and barbarian) designed to be built that way. Rogues begin to shine (perhaps in an unfair way) when the player utilizes gameplay mechanics and their given tools like poison/venom, traps, grenades, and corner-sneak to further improve their damage potential, utility, and versatility in both scenes of PvE and PvP.
The design of Rogue isn't solely based on raw fundamental mechanics that is AB, AC, and damage potential. That makes it harder to gauge where Rogue is compared to the rest of the meta, as it may require qualitative user feedback than calculations on paper. This is also where I recognize that the team and I will have to take user feedback with more circumspection.
Here is what will help:
Provide very specific PvP or PvE encounters you have, both as an opponent to or the player of a Rogue. Feel free to send me a private message here, on Discord, or post in public. (Please expunge any IC names, but only focus on the mechanics and the recollection of the combat or mechanical interaction) I ask that everyone reading this recognize user experience may vary and opinions may be subjective, but paper calculations will not suffice for a class such as Rogue.
Also, to finish this address:
Kenji wrote: ↑Wed Oct 05, 2022 12:25 am
Roguish PrCs
For the purpose of discussion, these classes are considered the Roguish PrCs as they share a certain amount of synergies with Rogue:
Invisible Blade
Shadow Dancer
Assassin
Vigilante
Liberator
Shaman and Cleric Seeker are excluded from the list as they are caster-based rather than mundane or martial.
Rogue is a base class with foundational baseline features. The Roguish PrCs shall selectively improve, specialize, and/or grant limited access to those baseline Rogue features while potentially introducing more features pertinent to the PrC's theme.
Consider that to be the mission statement, design doctrine, design philosophy, whatever nomenclature that is, for future adjustments, designs, rework, redux, and/or overhaul pertaining to Rogue and Roguish PrCs. Note that any class can build into Roguish PrCs and Rogues are not the ones with exclusive access to them.
Vigilante specializes in improving the raw fundamental mechanics for Rogues, which is the AB aspect of things (full BAB, various ways to improve AB), while also granting (somewhat limited) access to Grenades. Liberator is then simply the Divine variant of Vigilante, introducing what Rogue does not have - access to Divine Might/Shield.
These Roguish PrCs are meant to improve certain aspects of Rogue while giving up progression on the rest of the Rogue features, at least that will likely be the approach going forward. With this design doctrine, the team has a clearer objective when looking at reworking the existing Roguish PrCs.