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View Full Version : D&D 3.x Class The Rogue Project: a class for being Batman [WIP/discuss]



Belial_the_Leveler
2014-03-04, 08:44 AM
As the title says, this project here is for designing a useful rogue class. Instead of the usual ground-up approach of setting class goals and trying to achieve them however, let's take the top-down approach of picking a famous high-level character who is an icon of all the things a rogue can be - stealth, deception, theatricality, scouting, investigation, weakness analysis/exploitation, traps/gadgets, asymmetric combat, general skills, wealth (ill-gotten or not) - and reverse engineering said paragon of roguedom into a class.
Looking at that list the one character that encompasses it in its entirety, and is capable enough to frequently clash with great supernatural or alien forces and not only survive but be instrumental in his group's victory is Batman. With that as a starting point;

1) How would Batman's abilities be reflected in a DnD setting?
2) Should the rogue pick from tables of talents or get all of them?
3) What kind of mundane abilities and tricks defeat spellcasting within the rogue's specialty?
4) How can a combat rogue be different than other melee characters?



The basic class "chassis" I am planning to use is this;
Medium BAB, strong reflex/will saves, d8 HD, 6 skills/level

Plus the Rogue would get a number of talents like now, except they'll be powerful enough to reflect Batman's abilities in high levels. A good number probably starts at 2-3 at first level, with 20 or so at the highest level, with talents either progressing (i.e. sneak attack would be one talent), or being of significant power and available at higher levels (i.e. the mundane ability to conceal one's actions and holdings from scrying, or good-enough forgeries to deceive the laws of magic into functioning as if they were magical)

anacalgion
2014-03-04, 10:52 AM
I would love to help on this, and I've got a pretty serious Batman collection and a bunch of ideas, but unfortunately I'm stuck on a phone right now so I can't post much. I'll bounce some ideas off you once I get to a computer.

PairO'Dice Lost
2014-03-04, 03:42 PM
1) How would Batman's abilities be reflected in a DnD setting?

Honestly, plot-bending abilities would be the best way to represent a lot of them. Factotum-style abilities to add Int to rolls, duplicate abilities, and such can cover some of it, but genius-level detective abilities, always having a useful gadget, and similar tricks require either abilities that affect the plot, very complicated investigation/gear improvisation/etc. subsystems, or an Always Prepared player, and the former is both the easiest to design and the most forgiving for new players.

That stuff aside, Batman's stealth, mobility, social skills, and similar abilities are basically duplicating the effects of spells with high skill checks because skill-users don't get Nice Things. Either a series of talents that auto scale (e.g. choose Just That Sneaky and you get scaling stealth benefits from Hide in Plain Sight at low levels up to Superior Invisibility at high levels) or a set of generic skill boosts that you can take talents to improve (e.g. the rogue gets the first level of Just That Sneaky, Just That Scary, Just That Fast, etc. and chooses which to advance with talents as he levels) would work.


2) Should the rogue pick from tables of talents or get all of them?

Choose. The idea isn't to make the rogue Batman, it's to make a rogue inspired by Batman, and not every rogue player necessarily wants the same stuff. Not to mention that if you come up with some cool abilities later it's much easier to make them a handful of selectable options rather than trying to balance adding three talents to every single rogue.


3) What kind of mundane abilities and tricks defeat spellcasting within the rogue's specialty?

Three things:

1) "Sneak attack to the throat" will interrupt spellcasting quite nicely. Tweaking sneak attack with Ambush-feat-like effects so it can deal stat damage, add status effects, and otherwise have ongoing effects will ensure that the rogue doesn't have to constantly smack a caster to have an effect, and allowing it to work at farther ranges, ignore or reduce concealment, and so forth will help overcome common "screw you, noncasters!" effects.

2) The ability to disable magical traps can be expanded to include other spells. We already abstract things to the point that a rogue lacking any magical ability can somehow find and disable an invisible, intangible magical alarm with no moving parts, so whatever minor rituals, random reagents, scattered knowledge of runes, or other tricks he can use to do that can plausibly work to take down walls of force, ride along with teleporters, disable (or co-opt) buff spells, and the like.

3) The ability to make the best use of magic items lets him compete with casters. Fighters and barbarians who rely on certain magic items to compete while not being guaranteed to have any such items are a problem, but if the rogue has class features that explicitly let him use magic items better than anyone else and that ensure he can always pull out a needed item, those mandatory items are no longer a problem because he has guaranteed access to exactly what he needs.


4) How can a combat rogue be different than other melee characters?

You know how the monk was supposed to be an anti-caster, with its debuffing abilities, great defenses, superior mobility, and all that? The rogue would kind of be like that, except without the suck. No other build really uses mobility well aside from swift hunters and shadowpouncers, no other martial class really uses combat stealth or debuffing well.


The basic class "chassis" I am planning to use is this;
Medium BAB, strong reflex/will saves, d8 HD, 6 skills/level

Why not 8 skills per level?

Belial_the_Leveler
2014-03-04, 05:42 PM
Thanks for the comprehensive reply. On to a few points;


Preparedness and gadgets;
I like how spell component pouches work with non-prepared casting. When was the last time a sorcerer ran out of crystal rods, bat fur, charcoal and ground mica for lightning bolt, darkness and glitterdust respectively? How about a wizard that leaves some spell slots open to prepare them later - what spell components does he have? How about someone with spontaneous divination - did they remember powdered silver for their see invisibility or the eyes of a hawk, nitric acid, copper and zinc they need for scrying?
A Rogue with tricks/gadgets could work like that. They get a number of gadgets per day but they don't need to declare it in advance - as long as they make the skill checks to guess what types of situations to expect, they could be assumed to have prepared the right gadgets.

sneak attack;
One talent for dice and range progression. Another for extra effect and potential targets progression. Then the rogue could happily go hamstring, bleed, blind, daze, silence, knock out or outright slay their victim. Because headshotting zombies, staking vampires, disrupting elementals and fey with cold steel and erasing a critical rune on a golem happens. Oozes are still safe though.

Using items;
"Contacts" could be a talent to more cheaply and reliably get magic items much like casters could create them.
"Ill-gotten gains" would be a talent increasing his WBL to reflect not only stealing but other income in the background like a smuggling ring, debt/protection collection, or even legit business run indirectly for him by others. It'd be what a rogue of his skill could reliably get - sure, anyone can steal but only a rogue of a given skill could fence the goods without eventually getting caught.
"Magical Stockpile" would allow him to get a small amount of expendable items every so often. Sure, everyone can buy or even brew a potion but only the Rogue would have contacts with the underworld or agreements with merchant houses that gets him a potion every day.


@skills:
I'm planning on talents that increase the rogue's skills as he gains levels. After all, a charismatic mediator would be good with diplomacy, persuasion, bluff and sense motive without necessarily being smart, while a street thug might be good with intimidation, stealth, moving silently, lockpicking and survival and also be downright dumb.
Effectively, a Rogue with several skill-related talents at high level could have the all-round brilliant skills shown by Batman, something that might require 20+ skill points per level.

PairO'Dice Lost
2014-03-04, 06:09 PM
sneak attack;
One talent for dice and range progression. Another for extra effect and potential targets progression. Then the rogue could happily go hamstring, bleed, blind, daze, silence, knock out or outright slay their victim. Because headshotting zombies, staking vampires, disrupting elementals and fey with cold steel and erasing a critical rune on a golem happens. Oozes are still safe though.

Are you planning to organize these talents into a tree with Sneak Attack as the prereq and various talents building on that, or just have one "Improved Sneak Attack" talent that grants an increasing pool of debuffs to choose from? The former runs into the fighter feat tree problem of requiring a dozen feats to be halfway competent, but sticking all the possible effects into one talent would mean all of the other "Improved X" talents would have to be huge to match, and only giving a certain small list of effects would be conceptually limiting.

What you might want to do, come to think of it, is come up with a subsystem to procedurally generate balanced combat maneuvers/debuffs and just have Improved Sneak Attack either give you access to that subsystem or let you use it more cheaply or easily.


Using items;
"Contacts" could be a talent to more cheaply and reliably get magic items much like casters could create them.

Not just magic items, but other favors like sneaking into well-guarded facilities ("Don't worry, my old buddy John works there, he can get us inside"), finding out obscure knowledge ("Actually, my friend Gareth wrote his arcane thesis on planar incursions from Limbo, lemme ask him"), and other plot-relevant stuff. Perhaps a scaling talent that starts out at low levels just letting you do stuff you could normally do, but faster (Gather Information in a few minutes by asking a friend, travel overland in a few hours by hiring a friend's coach, etc.), and scales all the way up to "There's no way you're personal childhood friends with the royal vizier!" territory.


@skills:
I'm planning on talents that increase the rogue's skills as he gains levels. After all, a charismatic mediator would be good with diplomacy, persuasion, bluff and sense motive without necessarily being smart, while a street thug might be good with intimidation, stealth, moving silently, lockpicking and survival and also be downright dumb.
Effectively, a Rogue with several skill-related talents at high level could have the all-round brilliant skills shown by Batman, something that might require 20+ skill points per level.

So you're planning to give the rogue big bonuses to certain skills via talents and leave his skill points for more "flavor" skills, essentially. That works, I suppose, but what about Dex-focused assassin rogues who pick combat-focused talents over skill-focused talents, or Cha-focused gadgeteer rogues who pick magic-focused talents over skill-focused ones?

Are you planning to give the rogue skill-focused benefits outside of talents to throw those sorts of rogues a bone, or just accepting that they're giving up their skillmonkey-ness for DPR or face benefits?