The Ulimate Combat Rogue: The Slayer

The playtest version of the Slayer came out late last year and the final version is coming this summer. The Slayer is supposed to be a hybrid class of a Ranger and a Rogue and borrows many of the best features from both.

Now I will do my best from going into why I don't like the Rogue class but many, many people like the idea of a rogue so if there was another class out there that do the same sorts of things but only better then the world will be a happier place for all.

Few classes can do melee combat well. In later levels there are lots of heavy hitters and a good melee combatant needs some way to take (or avoid) the hits. There is no perfect solution but as long as you have your basses covered in at least one area you should be ok.

The first is AC. Have a high enough armor class and you are almost unhittable. The PC Sergent Fenton in my current campaign is a good example of this. Most sessions go by without him getting hit at all. Even his touch AC is really good.

The second is DR. It doesn't matter if you get hit with every swing if they have to subtract 10 or 15 points of damage from each blow.

The third is avoidance. There are a few options here. You can use Mirror Image, Displacement, if available pre-nerf Crane Wing, or Duelist's Parry.

Since the Slayer (like the Rogue and Ranger) can't really achieve any of these three objective ( a dex based sword and board Ranger might be able to pull off AC), they are best suited for ranged combat.

So how good are Slayers at range combat? Let's look at their derivative classes to get a starting point. The rogue is pretty bad. Sure she can can do some serious damage when she has surprise but once she's seen those 1d6+5 arrows are a joke. The ranger does much better. In fact, I would argue its the rangers most effective style. In Pathfinder archers are crazy powerful since they can just stand at the back and launch volley after volley of death. It is a bit boring to play but hugely effective.

The good news here is that the Slayer is perhaps an even better archer than a Ranger. The Slayer will get sneak attack on each arrow during surprise but remains very effective even without it. The ranger gets a few spells that can help out but in any case they are quite comparable.

In a campaign where all you face are Drow, the Ranger is much better since your favored enemy is obvious. Any other time the slayer is really good since you just spend a standard/move/swift action studying your foes and you instantly get a bonus equal to half of the rangers (Favored Target). No limits per day, no limits on enemy type.

What else makes the Slayer awesome? You still get to throw lots of sneak attack dice. Not as many as a rogue but its still good. The better part is that you don't do trivial damage without it.

You get slayer talents, which are like Rogue talents but better. You get to cherry pick most of the best talents form the Rogue and Ninja list and get a few awesome ones of your own. You can pick Trapfinding making you the ultimate combat rogue. You can take Ranger Weapon Styles as talents. You can get Evasion as a Talent. You get full BAB so you can hit things. Favored Target really makes sure you hit things. You still get a decent number of skills and you should have decent hit points.

What sucks about the Slayer? They still have crappy saves with no easy way to fix that. They still get beat hard in melee combat but do have a few more hit points so its not quite as bad as a Rogue.

Overall I really like the Slayer class (not crazy about the name). It is a great Rogue replacement that is effective in combat without trying too hard. Bards still make better skill monkeys but not everyone likes classes with spells. Just tell your adventuring buddies that you are a rogue, do rogue stuff but be awesome at combat as a Slayer.

Let's hope the final version of the class doesn't get nerfed.

Banned! And I Complain about the Rogue class

There is currently a thread on the Paizo boards that made me both sad and rather annoyed - to the point I stopped reading it. There are a lot of people out there that I'm glad I don't have to game with. They don't like something so they ban it from all of their games. It isn't necessarily over powered or "broken" or imbalanced or bad flavor. They just don't like it so its banned. These people come across to me as being narrow minded which is a big reason why I have not posted on that thread but rather making a post here.

I play with a pretty open minded group of people. Nothing is banned! Now we do tend to rotate DMs so maybe this helps as well. With that being said  there are some limitations we try to stick to whether they are written or unwritten.

Alignments: This tends to be pretty relaxed in most games but most APs have a certain flavor too them and it doesn't work as well playing evil in a heroic campaign or playing good in an evil one.

3rd party material: The general rule here seems to be let me look it over first and then go for it. It it becomes disruptive you may have to change it. In fact this general rule seems to apply to most things.

Classes: People can play what they want. No one has tried a gunslinger yet but I think that has more to do with lack of interest than anything else.

Flow of the game: Early levels this isn't an issue but after a while combat turns take forever and it can be over 30 minutes between turns. With this in mind we have a gentlemen's agreement in place that tries to keep things moving as fast as possible. Pet classes are frowned upon, summoning multiple creatures is a no-no, wide area long duration spells that involve checks each turn like black tentacles are best avoided. In boss fights it tends to be anything goes, but if someone is summoning 10 creatures every time a bunch of goblins show up they are going to get a lot of dirty looks from the other players. Leadership is usually not a valid option.

Flavor: This is probably the loosest restriction. The DM usually has some idea about how the PCs are going to fit into the campaign and it is is supposed to be very elf-centric and the party are a bunch of random obscure races, its probably not going to work so well. On the same note lots of DMs like to keep the Asian flavor out of Western fantasy (no Ninjas!, although why you can't just call the class something different is beyond me). The monk class is already a bit of an oddball here.

So that's it. I like a nice wide open game with few restrictions. I don't like heavy handed DMs who ban stuff just because they don't like it. If there is an agreement that something has become disruptive then I'm OK with that. Disruption usually comes into play when several factors come together. The Witch class can be OP in a very humanoid-centric campaign but is pretty much useless in an undead-centric campaign. The Witch class should not always be banned just because it is very strong against certain classes of enemies.

A final thing that pisses me off is people that ban classes or archetypes because they are better than another class. "I ban the Vivisectionist archetype for the Alchemist because its is better at sneak attacking than a Rogue". Dude, I hate to break it to you but the Rogue class sucks. Banning something because another class is better is going to get everything but the monk, rogue and fighter banned. And for that matter most of the monk archetypes will be banned because almost all are stronger than the base class.

I'm getting off topic here but I don't see why people are so hung up on class names. "I love being a Rogue". Why? They have terrible saves, sneak attack doesn't work most of the time, they can't hit in melee, they can't do damage at range. Let's see: they have lots of skills, have a cool class name, and trap finding. Why not just take another decent class/archetype that actually does everything a rogue can do but better and call it a Rogue? Archaeologist bard, Trapper ranger, or Crypt breaker alchemist are all very roguish but have a lot more options available to them. Play one of them and call it a Rogue.

Maybe its just me, but why be mediocre in a heroic game? Why do you want to be good at just sneaking and disabling traps, when you can be good at sneaking and disabling traps as well be able to buff the party, throw bombs, and have decent defenses? I just don't know.

Don't give me any BS about role-playing either as the mechanics of your character have a limited at best connection to how you role play them.

And I did spend a campaign playing a Rogue. Even being over the WBL guideline I still was over shadowed in combat by the martial characters and didn't shine especially bright in any other areas of the game.  I optimized like mad to make him an effective combatant and in the end realized that it wasn't worth the trouble. Other roguish classes can have the same flavor and be twice as effective with half the effort. So yes, I've tried to make an awesome rogue. Unless you are playing a very restricted type campaign where everyone is playing a rogue, I can't see any reason to play one.