# Rating Rogue Talents



## StreamOfTheSky (Jan 12, 2011)

I decided to go through all of the talents in core and the APG and rate my opinion of their usefulness.  I suppose this could be considered a short guide for picking out talents.  One thing I assumed when reviewing them was that the talent would only be looked at by someone that could make good use of it -- Anything relating to poison being for Assassins or others with poison immunity (otherwise rogue's low fort save doesn't mix too well with poison...), only someone who uses disguises for anything related to that, etc...  So just because something has 3 stars doesn't necessarily mean it could be useful to your Rogue.  Ratings range from 1 to 4 stars.

[sblock]Assault Leader*: Even if you have another rogue to use this for, it’s still only once/day.

Befuddling Strike**: Only take it if you aren’t getting any other sneak attack talents before level 10.

Bleeding Attack***: Probably the best of the early sneak attack talents, especially if your DM lets it double as a means to keep tabs on a foe that goes invisible.

Camouflage*: Hmm.. Only helps in one type of terrain per day, can be fairly easily destroyed (it is hilarious that scorching ray doesn’t affect it, though), and all for a skill bonus barely better than skill focus until level 10?  Pass.

Canny Observer**: Another situational +4 skill bonus, though this time it can never be “lost,” and used on a better skill.

Charmer*: It’s eventually more than once/day…

Coax Information*: Why doesn’t a Rogue with diplomacy already just use that to make someone friendly, or if he only has bluff use that to lie his way out of trouble?  The name is completely misleading, I think.

Combat Swipe*: Steal is a crappy maneuver that has lots of overlap with disarm and doesn’t really get good until Greater Steal.  And this trait does nothing to let you bypass the pre-reqs of that feat like it does for Improved Steal.

Combat Trick****: You get a feat!  And you can choose it yourself!

Cunning Trigger***: If your DM lets you set up and choose the place of battle on a fairly regular basis, this can be both cool and powerful.  Or use it in social situations with a Rube Goldberg device unnoticed, maybe.

Distracting Attack* or ****: Awful on you.  Absolutely awesome on another PC or cohort that dips Rogue 2 for it.  Actually one of the few easy ways left in PF for a ranged Rogue to reliably get sneak attack.

Expert Leaper**: In core PF, I don’t see this being useful at all.  With 3E material allowed like Leap Attack and Tiger Claw maneuvers, it may find greater use.

Fast Fingers*: No, just no.

Fast Getaway**: Decent means of escaping someone with a better full attack than you, though if you’re nearing level 10 when considering this, you may want to hold out for 
Entangling Blade instead.

Fast Picks*: In the right sort of game, any ability could be useful.  But it’s not very likely.

Fast Stealth**: If the issue of travel speed comes up often in your games, being able to go into stealth mode all day long without slowing the party isn’t shabby.

Finesse Rogue****: Assuming you do melee and have a low strength, this feat is essential.   You can actually snag it at level 1 in PF, but you may as well wait till level 2 for this talent, since you can only take Combat Trick once.

Guileful Polyglot*: Just put more ranks in Linguistics.  Or be a Tengu and put more ranks in Linguistics.

Hard to Fool*: Were these once/day/5 levels weak dual-roll skill abilities meant for NPCs?

Honeyed Words**: This gets 2 stars because it’s a very important skill to certain rogues, and sometimes you REALLY can’t afford to fail the roll.  Still not recommended.

Lasting Poison**: If you’re spamming cheap, weak poisons that only work when the foe rolls a 1 on his save anyway, this is doubling your investment for no real loss. 

Ledge Walker*: A class with Uncanny Dodge doesn’t need “flatfooted protection.”

Major Magic***: I’m not sure if the Rogue has to choose one spell upon picking this ability and only use that, or he can choose different ones on the fly, but I assumed the latter.  If the former, it’s 1 star.

Minor Magic**: As with Major Magic above, though this one’s weaker.  Best use is probably Acid Splash on a surprise round generally.  Or Prestidigitation in general.

Nimble Climber*: In other words, this reduces the DC to catch yourself while falling (but only as a result of badly failing to climb, not other possible situations where you just happen to be falling near a wall/ledge) by 10.  Oh, it actually does nothing at all for you on a slope, either.  And really, if you JUST failed the climb DC by 5 or more, are you really going to make it when the DC is 10 higher?

Offensive Defense*: You have better things to apply to your sneak attack and can only apply one.

Peerless Maneuver*: Just because PF made tumbling impossibly hard doesn’t make this talent useful.  Get Fast Getaway instead.

Positioning Attack*: Doesn’t even get more uses/day with levels.  This is clearly meant for NPCs.

Powerful Sneak*: It's a trap!  Unless you're only hitting on a 19-20 or missing on a 1-2, this is simply not worth the attack penalty, and if you're in such a situation, you have other problems.

Quick Disable*: Still won’t limit the time to less than one round, so even for the uber situational “must disarm this trap during a fight” it’s marginally of benefit at best.  Your DM knows how long it takes you to disarm a trap, if he doesn’t want to make disarming them practical for you, just let the Barbarian smash it.

Quick Disguise***: I don’t think making a disguise in 1-4 minutes instead of 10-30 will make a huge difference often, but the option of changing minor details only as a full round action certainly could be important lots of times.

Quick Trapsmith***: This seems like it would require a bag of holding to even be plausible, but if you have one, this has nice synergy with Cunning Trigger if your DM allows you to use your massive stealth check to spend several rounds laying down traps unnoticed, to use gradually (one swift action trigger per round) in the later combat.  This is probably getting a better rating than it deserves due to coolness factor.

Resiliency*: Too limited and small for me to rate favorably, even if it has potential to be a life saver.  Grabbing a bunch of crappy abilities that marginally boost your survival rate is how the 3E monk happened.

Rogue Crawl***: This could be handy in a lot of situations.  It also can be useful for moving between points of cover while sniping, since you can fire crossbows while prone.

Slow Reactions***: Good for the tactical applications alone, not to mention the “save your ass” applications.  Probably superior to Fast Getaway overall for that.

Snap Shot**: Sounds great at first, but in reality is very situational, aside from the ranged weapon limitation.  If only you or your side, or if only the enemy side gets a surprise round, this talent does nothing at all.  Only when some from each side (including you) get a surprise round will this be a factor.  Even then, the benefit is only for that one round.

Sniper’s Eye*: Rogues should be able to ignore partial concealment for sneak attack without a talent! *angry* In any case, just get Shadow Strike feat, a Seeking weapon, or Improved Precise Shot rather than this.

Stand Up**: If you have nothing better to take, this is decent…

Strong Impression*: I find it very unlikely that a rogue’s strength bonus would be high enough to make this more useful than Skill Focus.  Probably best for those dipping Thug Rogue, and even then not that spectacular.

Surprise Attack**: Smaller benefit than Snap Shot but also not limited to ranged weapons.  Choose one or neither of these, not both.

Survivalist*: Not very good skills, and if you just want it to fit your archetype, dipping ranger, druid, or something else instead really isn’t so bad.

Swift Poison*: Why not just apply the poison out of combat?

Trap Spotter*: Whenever or not you're actively looking for traps, don’t be the lead person walking.  Actually good advice for even when you are actively searching for traps.

Weapon Training****: Gives you the required feat for the Dazzling Display tree, a solid route to get melee sneak attack.  In a PF-only game, it’s far from a bad feat in its own right, also.



Advanced Talents

Another Day*: It sounds awesome, but practically-speaking, not so much.  Yet another one/day “save my ass” ability, except it leaves you staggered the next round.  Which leaves you vulnerable to being beaten on more, which since you can only use this if an attack was about to drop you, probably means you’re doomed anyway.

Crippling Strike**: A solid, reliable choice, though you’ll probably kill the guy anyway long before you really enfeeble him.

Deadly Cocktail*: Unless PF drastically buffed poison DCs, this is reaching the level where the save DCs just plain aren’t useful anymore.  So this advanced talent is effectively just as good as the regular talent lasting Poison IMHO.

Deadly Sneak*: It's an about even trade (not at level 10, but eventually...), but requires the worthless Powerful Sneak and is still limited only to full attacks.

Defensive Roll*: Once/day.  On an attack that would drop you only.  On physical attacks only.  Only if aware of the attack (shouldn’t be an issue w/ Uncanny Dodge)  and able to move.  This is just garbage, sorry.  Go look up the Barbarian’s Flesh Wound rage power if you still don’t think this is garbage.

Dispelling Attack***: Based on it targeting the lowest (caster?) level spell effect, I don’t think you get to check against other spell effects if you fail like an actual dispel magic.  This is still a handy thing to chain on every attack you make, but it’s not “4 star caliber” to have a badly gimped 3rd level spell effect at level 10+, either.

Entanglement of Blades****: This is awesome, great way to force a foe to be less aggressive with you or settle with trading single attacks for your full attacks.

Fast Tumble**: Not using PF tumble at all is better for your health, but this is still decent if you want to be incredibly reckless.

Frugal Trapsmith*: It’s not a big cost reduction, even if you make traps often.  If you have nothing better to spend an Advanced Talent on, just get a feat.

Feat****: Once you run out of cool talents to pick up, you can’t go wrong with another feat!  In 3E you could take this multiple times, by RAW in PF you cannot.

Hunter’s Surprise*: Once/day, grr!  By now you shouldn’t have much issue doing melee sneak attack, so this is useless.  IF you can use it to sneak attack things usually immune, it gains some promise though I still don’t think it’s worth it.

Knock-Out Blow*: Way too limited, and the foe will likely make the save.  A high level fighter can debilitate things much better with critical feats, just let him take care of this stuff.

Improved Evasion**: You probably only fail on a 1, but extra insurance is still nice.

Master of Disguise*: I thought advanced Talents would finally be done with lame one/day skill bonus abilities.  Doesn’t even get the once/5 levels deal!  Not just mechanically weak, it’s also flavorless and uninspired.

Opportunist***: Will likely lead to granting you at least 2-3 extra attacks every single combat, typically.  Sounds worth it to me.

Redirect Attack*: Slightly better and more amusing than the other 1/day “save my ass” options, since it involves hurting someone else.  Still much better for an NPC.

Skill Mastery***: A fine option, though sadly I don’t think it works with Use Magic Device.  Even more sadly, Bard 19 makes this look like a joke by comparison.

Slippery Mind**: If your will save isn’t as horrific as most Rogues’ are, this is good.  Until the Wizard can just start passing out Mind Blanks like candy.

Stealthy Sniper**: At this point, it gets a bonus star just for not being once/day.  *sigh*

Thoughtful Reexamining*: That’s it, I quit![/sblock]

So, IMHO with the APG there are enough good talents to pick one for a Rogue all the way up to 20, and enough variety to have at least some tough choices along the way.  At the same time, there's a LOT of garbage in there and "real options" are more limited than the massive list of talents would lead you to believe.


UPDATE!  Ultimate Combat released new talents!  TL;DR: They mostly suck, pretty much.  If you want to know how and why they suck, read below!
[sblock]Black Market Connections*: If your DM is extremely by-the-book when it comes to buying items, add 1 star.  But most DMs will either just let you buy level-appropriate stuff without issue already, or are alienated against the idea of "magic Walmart" and will not like you for taking this talent, either.  Further, using the black market options has major, very open-ended consequences for rolling poorly.  Avoid this.

Convincing Lie (*minus ONE BILLION STARS*): This talent is actually the single biggest stealth nerf to scoial rogues that I've ever seen.  Most if not all DMs would have, before this was printed, agreed that you're not lying if you're saying what you think is correct.  In other words, it's not lying to be misinformed.  But this talent asserts that it IS lying, and the middle man NPC must roll bluff when reciting the lie you told him to others.  No matter how high your Bluff mod is, it's never going to beat *not having to make a bluff check*.  And that's assuming you're willing to pay this new tax in the first place, otherwise lies via a 3rd party is just plain unuseable now.  In short, just by _existing_, this talent screws over rogues and bluffers of all stripes.  Worst talent ever printed!

Deft Palm**: Like Hide in Plain Sight for hidden weapons.  Decent.  Wording could've clarified how it works better.

Esoteric Scholar*: Once per day, you get to fail a Knowledge check!

Firearm Training**: It's a feat.  How useful it is depends on what guns are available in your game.

Getaway Artist**: Saves you a 1 level dip for class skills if you really needed Fly that badly.  Also gives a small bonus to drive checks, which will probably only ever come up so the DM can reward you for taking this talent, if at all.  I feel wrong making this 2 stars, but it's not as strictly bad as a lot of other things.

Grit**: Gives you two gun-related feats, but between this and Firearms training, why not just dip Gunsligner instead?

Hold Breath*: I feel wrong giving this one star, but I reserve negatives for things that literally make you worse.  This talent quoted shold be the default retort whenever someone claims Rogue talents are awesome.

Iron Guts*: A lot of classes just get immunity, you get...pathetic save bonuses!

Ki Pool*: Wisdom is a low priority stat for Rogues, you will barely get use out of this, and it basically requires Ninja Tricks to be worthwhile at all.  The half wis bonus to an existing ki pool might make Rogue 2 an interesting dip choice for ki-hungry monks, on the other hand (probably not)...

Ninja Trick***: Ninja Tricks are what Rogue Talents would look like if Paizo wanted Rogues to be competent.  The only reason this isn't 4 stars is because you're pretty much disenfracnhised from the ki-based tricks, greatly limiting options.  Some good tricks that don't use ki: Combat Trick ("cheat" the system to get 2 non-specified combat feats!  ), Hidden Weapon (makes underhanded look pretty sad), Undetected Sabotage (this with Cunning Trigger and Combat Trapsmith would be fun to play), and Wall Climber (as it implies...).

Rope Master*: Too situational; climb goes obsolete pretty fast.

Strong Stroke*: The name makes me giggle, but I have a dirty mind.  Too situational, and in an aquatic game, you'd be maxing swim anyway, and swim DCs are generally cake.  Possibly 2-3 stars in an aquatic game, though.

Terrain Mastery*: Benefits are weak, and highly situational.  If the entire campaign will be on the same kind of terrain (like...the Abyss) this can easily jump up in rating a lot, of course.  Notably, gives Rogue the ability to enter Horizon Walker, which may or may not (again, less types of possible terrain to encounter, the better) be worth looking in to.

Underhanded*: Mediocre bonus to a very specific skill use, and...HOW are you drawing and attacking with a concealed weapon as a standard action (surprise round), anyway?  It says a concealed weapon the foe didn't know about.  So...you would have to draw it right before the DM threw down initiative, then?  Usable cha mod times/day.  So, not that many.

Wall Scramble*: Climb goes obsolete fast, and lotss of other classes can just get a friggin' climb speed...

*Advanced Talents*

Confounding Blades*: Update!  My mistake, this uber sucks.  Compare to the NOT advanced talent, Slow Reactions.  SR works with ranged SA in addition to melee SA, and it is not asterisked (ie, "can only apply one of these to a sneak attack"), it's just always on.  Neither can be said for confounding blades, not to mention it's the advanced talent!  Otherwise, the two are identical.  An utterly pathetic talent.

Familiar*: You get it 10 levels late and w/ a -4 level penalty to...what?  Deliver your non-existent touch spells?  Do the scouting for you?  Share your non-existent buff spells?  Requires two bad talents to acquire.

Getaway Master*: Maybe if you had decent combat skills, you wouldn't need to run away so much.  And it doesn't matter what you're "driving" at level 10+.  Teleport.  Flying.  Scrying.  'Nuff said.

Hard to Fool***: This is a rare "good" talent!  Lets you save from stuff that didn't even allow a save in the first place!  The downside is: your will save is crap, and once the wizard can pass out Mind Blanks (and as the rogue, you're either the first choice or 2nd after the melee brute) this becomes worthless.

Hide In Plain Sight* or ****: If you're in a normal game, this is too limited to be useful.  Just prestige out for HiPS if you need it so badly.  IF, however, you're in a specific module/homebrew campaign set entirely in the same terrain type (again, such as "The Abyss") this skyrockets in benefit!

Rumor Monger*: Something most DMs would've just let you do (due to lack of exact rules for it) with some roleplaying and Bluff and/or Diplomacy checks, now hard coded as a high level rogue talent...with limited uses per week (wtf?).  Since this explicitly allows you to turn what you say into an accepted "fact," this isn't as horrendous as Convincing Lie and is probably actually a small boost from what you could normally accomplish through gossip and calumny.  Still weaksauce.

Unwitting Ally**: A swift action buff to gain flanking.  Very situational in use and limited to once per foe and might get shut off for an entire combat if you fail by 5+.  It's still a pretty good pick up.

Weapon Snatcher**: This should not be an advanced talent and should come with Improved Disarm for free.  *grumble*
[/sblock]


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## StreamOfTheSky (Jan 12, 2011)

Ok, I think I've got a basic conept for analyzing the benefit and cost of Deadly and Powerful sneak attack talents.  1d6 normally averages 3.5 damage, but a roll from 2-6 instead averages 4 damage.  So +0.5 damage per SA die.  With Deadly Sneak Attack, 3-6 averages to 4.5 damage, so it's an extra 1 damage per SA die.

Which means, using one-handed power attack for a comparison, Powerful Sneak Attack doesn't "break even" until level 15 (+8d6 SA).  Deadly doesn't until level 7 (+4d6 SA), but can't be taken until level 10+ anyway.  Of course, this is sugarcoating two key negative points:
1) You can only do these on a full attack
2) You're not _actually_ rolling 2-6 or 3-6, you're treating 1's s 2's or 1's and 2's as 3's.  Which means the lower ends have a higher probability of occuring, so the average damage is actually lower than I estimated.

That leads me to believe that Powerful Sneak Attack is simply never worth using unless the foe has abysmally low AC anyway, and that Deadly Sneak Attack at high levels will more than break even in benefit for the cost, but still is of questionable benefit since it requires you to invest in 2 rogue talents just to make the trade-off worthwhile.


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## Mojo_Rat (Jan 12, 2011)

while a agree on some of your not on all, the errata offering defense seems pretty good, at lvl 10 with befuddling strike that's a 7 point ac swing in the rogues favor. this seems pretty good to me,


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## StreamOfTheSky (Jan 13, 2011)

Mojo_Rat said:


> while a agree on some of your not on all, the errata offering defense seems pretty good, at lvl 10 with befuddling strike that's a 7 point ac swing in the rogues favor. this seems pretty good to me,




What are you talking about?  Can you link to this errata?

EDIT: I just realized that Befuddling Strike is an untyped penalty, so if that -2 stacked with further sneak attacks, then that talent is potentially very good.


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## Kaisoku (Jan 13, 2011)

I agree with a lot of the assessment. There's a few there that I'd still peg a little higher, simply because they allow you to spend your feats on other things, but mostly I wish they were just "slightly" better.
Especially the 1/day stuff... if it scaled, it would make higher level roguery nicer.

Since one of the rogue talents is to choose a combat feat (or at later levels, any feat), even if you can't pick those talents more than once, then bare minimum for the other talents *must* provide something that gives more than you'd get for having picked a feat.

Personally, I prefer "options that can't be replicated by feats". You can already get a ton of +'s to things... I was hoping to see more "change the mechanics" type of talents.


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## StreamOfTheSky (Jan 13, 2011)

Kaisoku said:


> Personally, I prefer "options that can't be replicated by feats". You can already get a ton of +'s to things... I was hoping to see more "change the mechanics" type of talents.




Oh, me too.  I'd rather not get any feats and just get unique class features that you can't find elsewhere that rock.  But...that's not how it turned out.  There's only a handful of truly good rogue talents (and not counting the two "have a feat!" ones cuts that number down by like 33% further), the rest are middling at best with a massive amount of utter waste.  Advanced Talents especially stick out as disappointing, IMO, there's just not many good ones and depending on what kind of rogue you're making, not all of those will necessarily be useful to you.


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## Mojo_Rat (Jan 13, 2011)

StreamOfTheSky said:
			
		

> What are you talking about?  Can you link to this errata?
> 
> EDIT: I just realized that Befuddling Strike is an untyped penalty, so if that -2 stacked with further sneak attacks, then that talent is potentially very good.




it's on the d20pfrpg site now. not sure how to link to the specific section but look  up the rogue talents there. I bought the Harefoot from the. so get a new updated PDF whenever they errata things. it also looks like since it is a dodge bonus it would stack with itself. so combined with befuddling strike at lvl 9 hit twice and your ac vs that one target shifts 14 points.

in honestly don't thinking ever make a melee rogue without either of these.


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## StreamOfTheSky (Jan 13, 2011)

Mojo_Rat said:


> it's on the d20pfrpg site now. not sure how to link to the specific section but look  up the rogue talents there. I bought the Harefoot from the. so get a new updated PDF whenever they errata things. it also looks like since it is a dodge bonus it would stack with itself. so combined with befuddling strike at lvl 9 hit twice and your ac vs that one target shifts 14 points.
> 
> in honestly don't thinking ever make a melee rogue without either of these.




Ok, here's what I'm seeing on the Rogue page:

"Befuddling Strike** (Ex): When the rogue deals sneak attack damage against an opponent, that opponent takes a –2 penalty on attack rolls against the rogue for 1d4 rounds. Source: Advanced Player's Guide"

If there's some sort of eratta page that says differently, please link me.  I can ctrl + F to find the info on Befuddling Strike if you can't link directly to that section.  Otherwise can you paste the eratta'd version here, it sounds like they significantly altered it if it's giving YOU a dodge bonus now instead of the enemy taking a penalty.


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## Mojo_Rat (Jan 13, 2011)

StreamOfTheSky said:
			
		

> Ok, here's what I'm seeing on the Rogue page:
> 
> "Befuddling Strike** (Ex): When the rogue deals sneak attack damage against an opponent, that opponent takes a –2 penalty on attack rolls against the rogue for 1d4 rounds. Source: Advanced Player's Guide"
> 
> If there's some sort of eratta page that says differently, please link me.  I can ctrl + F to find the info on Befuddling Strike if you can't link directly to that section.  Otherwise can you paste the eratta'd version here, it sounds like they significantly altered it if it's giving YOU a dodge bonus now instead of the enemy taking a penalty.




I was talking about two  talents befuddling strike and offensive defense. the errata of OD means at lvl 9 you sa someone and get a +5 to your ac as a dodge bonus so with this and befuddling strike therevis a 7 pt swing in your ac vs 1 target.


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## StreamOfTheSky (Jan 13, 2011)

Then show me where the eratta for OD is then.  Because the Rogue page still shows it as only +1 AC and never getting better, which is really weak.


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## Mojo_Rat (Jan 13, 2011)

StreamOfTheSky said:


> Then show me where the eratta for OD is then.  Because the Rogue page still shows it as only +1 AC and never getting better, which is really weak.




on Rogue - Pathfinder_OGC

under Offensive Defense

_Offensive Defense** (Ex)_: When a rogue with this talent hits a creature with a melee attack that deals sneak attack damage, the rogue gains a +1 dodge bonus to AC for each sneak attack die rolled. *Source*: Advanced Player's Guide




When they did the APh errata it was changed i will see if i can find a link to the eratta

here on Paizos site on the APG

http://paizo.com/download/pathfinder/AdvancedPlayersGuideErrata1_0.zip


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## Friend of the Dork (Feb 15, 2011)

Trap Spotter rating 1? Am I missing something here? Not having to actively search is awesome in my book, and can really speed up dungeon delwing. And in a dungeon filled with traps of course the Rogue walks first, if he doesen't he's not doing his job. After the barbarian or fighter trigger the 3rd trap I think they would insist, and as stated the Rogue just doesen't have the combat ability to say no to them 

Back in the day the Rogue was varied, but now they are the class with the best Perception and Disable Device against traps, no hands down. Which means there is no one better for going first in corridors, checking each door, etc. before the party enters. Once enemies are spotted or doors are opened however, the Fighter etc. will probably go in first again (that's HIS job).


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## StreamOfTheSky (Feb 15, 2011)

Maybe it's just my experience and it's highly game-dependent, but I've typically found it not a problem to just take 10 and tell the DM I'm checking the door, chests, path we walk down, etc...  the basic stuff.  In fact, so common was this style of play that 4E made a "passive search" function part of their rules.  Why do I think this is fairly prevalent?  Because I've also had DMs that made you declare what you were searching.  It...was "interesting."  In the sense of game-lengthening boring dragged out monotonous drivel "interesting."  So, IMHO Trap Spotter is one of those things that sounds great hypothetically and looks important on paper, but in actual play, metagame elements make it fairly moot and you'd be wasting a precious class feature to pick it up (again, IMHO).

For the record, when I started playing rogues in 3E, I loved to dip Barb 1 for fast movement, because I honestly thought the ability to search for traps at a half speed of 20, equal to anyone in medium/heavy armor, small characters, and dwarves (ie, "the speed the party is probably moving at normally because surely they have one of those") was so super important to achieve, so that my searching wouldn't slow down the party.  I later learned it really wasn't that important, almost no one uses (non-mithral) heavier armors, and almost no one plays small races or much of anything other than Human.  

I did discover Barb/Rogue multiclassing was an awesome combo for _other_ things, though.


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## Mojo_Rat (Feb 15, 2011)

Its been discussed alot int he Ninja stuff in the playtest. But basically the value of Trapfinding is totally dependant on the game. I dont have any experience with it but apparently its easier to just ignore Traps and heal your fighter after he sets them off than to worry about wether the rogue can disarm them.

since we started PF only one player in our group has played a rogue so it hasnt come up and he was killed by assasin vines in book two of second darkness


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## StreamOfTheSky (Feb 16, 2011)

I may need to revise some ratings, now that I look at it.  Specifically:

-Upgrade Offensive Defense, it does seem promising upon further examination.
-Lower Major and Minor Magic, as the more I read them, the more it seems you're stuck with the same spell choice forever.  That's pretty lame for what are already extremely low level limited use spells, may as well just shrug and buy more stuff to use with Use Magic Device at that point.
-Lower Powerful Sneak to 1 *, the maths seem to make it a bad trade until extremely high levels.
-Lower Deadly Sneak, the math seems to make it take longer to pay off than I expected.
-Lower Dispelling Attack, in light of its 2 pre-reqs being judged as less useful and really being kind of underwhelming in its own right.


And I may have been too kind overall.  All but one of my 4 star ratings were for bonus feat talents, and using a class feature to pick up a (in all but 2 cases) specific feat is pretty lame if not also underpowered.

EDIT: And I somehow left out Opportunist!  Fixing that...


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## Jadeite (Feb 16, 2011)

Powerful sneak should never be used. It's horrible. The only time it's useful is when you would only hit on a 20 without it or on a 2 when using it. The average damage per sneak die rolled is increased by less than 5 percent. Even without the penalty it would not be a very good choice since there are much better SA riders.
Deadly sneak is a slightly better, you'll need the utterly worthless powerful sneak to take it. I'd say it's not worth two rogue talents either.


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## StreamOfTheSky (Feb 16, 2011)

Not to mention you can only use it on a full attack sneak attack, something you can't rely on happening even a majority or rounds, necessarily.  Yeah, I'm dropping their rankings.

EDIT: The actual damage averages for regular sneak attack, powerful sneak, and deadly sneak (unless I messed up the math somewhere):

regular sneak: 3.5 damage per d6
powerful sneak: 3.67 (3 2/3 more precisely) per d6; +0.17 damage per die
deadly sneak:  4 damage per d6; +0.5 damage per die

So, using the "power attack / deadly aim" model, the -2 attack should be giving +4 damage to become a fair trade.  For powerful sneak, you'd need... ~23.5 sneak attack dice to get that.  Yeah, that's freaking terrible.  For deadly sneak, you'd need... 8 sneak attack dice, ie Rogue 15, for a fair trade.  So yeah, overall, Deadly Sneak is actually a roughly equal trade (slightly worse at level 10, slightly better at 20, even at 15).  Of course, "pulling even" isn't an amazing benefit for a high level class feature with an utterly atrocious pre-req.


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## StreamOfTheSky (Aug 10, 2011)

OP has been updated with a review of the Ultimate Combat rogue talents.


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## 1Mac (Aug 11, 2011)

I remember when the OP went up. Quite interesting! Since so many of the talents you blammed were so blammed because they were limited to one use per day, how would your ratings change if these abilities could be used more frequently? They could either just always be on, or powered by a generous pool or Ki or Rage type resources.


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## StreamOfTheSky (Aug 11, 2011)

I was actually thinking of "what if the once/day abilities were once per day + one use per ki spent" like the playtest ninja...before that got nerfed.

They're definitely be more useful, probably in general go up a star rating.  I just don't know, other than stuff you really really can't fail (like Bluff) if it's worth something about equal to a feat just to reroll a specific skill check a few times a day.  Skill Mastery to always take 10 is at least as handy for not failing, helps multiple skills, and you get to pick them, rather than be limited to the specfic ones Paizo thinks you should be good at.  Yeah, it's an advanced talent, but you only get 4 talents before hitting level 10 anyway (and the X/day talents usually give an extra use per like 5 levels, so it's not like you're getting major use out of them pre-level 10 anyway), so seems like an easy decision to wait for the better option to me.  And skill mastery isn't even that great.


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## StreamOfTheSky (Sep 9, 2011)

Updated my extremely too generous rating on Confounding Blades from UC.  I had not realized that the core, NON advanced talent Slow Reactions was actually the exact same benefit, except better in every conceivable way.  Woops.


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