Rogues in the current version

[Talharim]

Hi
I was thinking about trying to play rogues in this version but I don't know:

1. What should my stat allocation be?
2. What are its strengths and weaknesses, specifically, how does it fare in combat? Should I prioritize a missile weapon?
3. Do you guys prefer the current version of the Rogue or the old one?

[Estie]

ad1: Personally, I put everything into Str/Dex; some people prefer a few points into Con to decrease the grind time later.

ad2: Rogue has become weaker in combat. Its hard to compare the spell set to the old version. As for melee vs ranged, use whatever is better for the situation. What do you mean by "prioritize" ?

ad3: I liked the old version with stronger combat and buff spells better. I cant find much utility in the new books.

[Talharim]

What do you mean by "prioritize" ?

It was a bad choice of words. I meant if the main source of damage is usually melee or ranged. For instance, for ranger I guess it is ranged.

At least my ranger seems to do much more damage with ranged than melee

[Estie]

Well a hobbit rogue with a sling of power is going to use ranged almost exclusively, while a HT rogue with a *thanc will just melee most things.

Everyone else falls in between.

[Pete Mack]

Estie said it: rogue got a little too nerfed. No more buff spells; just top notch detection, stealth, and haste self. The stats got nerfed again, IIRC, so melee is poor in the early game, as is HP. It used to be the go-to spell-warrior class; no longer. Paladin holds that role now.

[PowerDiver]

Rogue is now a difficulty option, like forced descent. If that's not what you are looking for, play another class.

If you do play a rogue, put all of your initial stat points into str and dex.

[Nick]

One of the aims with the class re-vamp in 4.2 was to make the classes more distinct. So rather than rogue being "warrior with a bit of magic", I was looking for a distinct niche, and the obvious one is stealthy play. So they got worse melee, better throwing, great stealth and escapes, good device use and disarming, and stealing. The opinions in this thread (which seem to me to summarise general feelings about 4.2 rogues well) indicate that this has been unsuccessful. I think part of this is that stealing hasn't really caught on, probably because there isn't enough incentive to do it.

So I think rogues need something (or things) extra. Here are few ideas, mostly inspired by similar character types in NPP/O/Sil:

• Evasion;
• Sneak attacks on unwary monsters;
• Bonuses when wielding light weapons;
• Ability to set monster traps;
• Experience for stealing;
• Superstealth/invisibility.

Another thing to consider is an expansion of the monster sleep mechanic to include being awake but unaware of the player, and allowing rogues to exploit that.

[Cryomaniac]

Utility-related benefits (high stealth, detection, disarming, bonus experience) end up being less useful by the endgame; you could either make Rogue the designated 'comfortable early game, harder endgame' class, or add some specific benefits for the class, like bonuses for light weapons/armor, or something like Hengband's Ninja superstealth.

[ewert]

Honestly, end-game doesn't really require you to kill many monsters, most people just play the hack n slash kill em all way. Including me.

However, my last rogue winner just a few months ago, I actually ended up killing with wands the end uniques that were alive, and I think a Mace of Disruption for the undead uniques.

I only dabbled with steal a couple times, but I could see how one could do that and teleport others for non loot carrying ones and just clear vaults and stuff for gear. Then grind simple things for the exp.

I felt the new rogue was very nice in its niche.

[Djabanete]

In Heng, ninjas have a spell called “Quick Walk,” which is a buff that makes walking take much less energy than usual (that is, you perform the directional movement action as though your speed were much higher, but all other actions are unaffected). It’s fun and very powerful from the early game to the late game, and it helps give ninjas a distinct feel from other classes.

It could be a way to buff Rogues without needing to make changes in how stealth works.

I like how it’s extremely useful in combat without being a buff to damage/AC/HP, which might feel out of place. It’s usefulness lies in allowing you to position yourself better, avoid getting surrounded, escape down corridors, create distance for ranged attacks, close the distance against ranged attacks… having superior battlefield positioning feels very “Rogue” to me in a game that’s fundamentally about combat (which is not what Rogues are fundamentally about).

Edit: no idea what is going on with my phone and certain punctuation characters, sheesh.

[Estie]

One of the aims with the class re-vamp in 4.2 was to make the classes more distinct. So rather than rogue being "warrior with a bit of magic", I was looking for a distinct niche, and the obvious one is stealthy play. So they got worse melee, better throwing, great stealth and escapes, good device use and disarming, and stealing. The opinions in this thread (which seem to me to summarise general feelings about 4.2 rogues well) indicate that this has been unsuccessful. I think part of this is that stealing hasn't really caught on, probably because there isn't enough incentive to do it.

So I think rogues need something (or things) extra. Here are few ideas, mostly inspired by similar character types in NPP/O/Sil:

• Evasion;
• Sneak attacks on unwary monsters;
• Bonuses when wielding light weapons;
• Ability to set monster traps;
• Experience for stealing;
• Superstealth/invisibility.

Another thing to consider is an expansion of the monster sleep mechanic to include being awake but unaware of the player, and allowing rogues to exploit that.

The rogue plays like a squishy version of its former self, so yes its not great.
Stealthy play already exists, it is called diving and it is very different from conservative play. However, rogue does not have a stealth monopoly so its not class defining (and thats a good thing imo).

Evasion: Please no; if you want to introduce an additional layer of tankiness, give it to the warrior, he can use it (but dont call it evasion, instead give him damage reduction/level).

Sneak attacks on unwary monsters: Lets say, a doubling of the damage in the first combat round, would be a simple change that would warrant weakening the combat stats; kill it while it sleeps, if you cant do that, use wands or launcher instead. More elaborate versions like requiring light weapons or undead being immune could be considered but you approach the point where the mechanic just gets ignored, like current stealing.

Bonuses when wielding light weapons: weapon weight is already tied to stats/game phase; the only thing I can think of to add to that would be to make it so late game rogue prefers, say, Belangil over Aule (but he probably still wants Ringil). Good luck trying to hit that niche.

Ability to set monster traps: Now this has a lot of potential, but it also would be a lot of work. The issue I see with it is that it is at cross purposes with the traditional stealth skill, diving, because laying traps and luring monsters into them requires control of the environment.

Experience for stealing: If you want to fix stealing, just return it to the way it was implemented initially by not depriving uniques of later loot. Stealing, as the name implies, should be an additional source for items (and not xp or anything else).
If you really hate that idea, another way might be to make it worthwhile to steal from non-uniques. You could modify the object detect spell to also detect carried items in the area (and list them in the item window) so rogue would seek out that great Wyrm randomly carrying Wrath. I dont know how much work it would be to implement that, though, since carried items currently get determined on death.

Superstealth/Invisibility: I think stealth is very powerful already; more of the same doesnt make much sense, rather nerf stealth for everyone else. I wouldnt like that, though, just to make the rogue more unique.

[PowerDiver]

Pickpockets do not belong as player choices in this game. Nor do burglars. Nor barkeeps, nor blacksmiths, nor falconers, nor carpenters. For the record, I've won in variants with chars that specialized in trap setting and in forging, so my opinion is not uninformed.

Some guy put it well in another thread.

In my opinion part of it is in the name. Angband is the fortress of the great evil of the world, Morgoth. Getting to the bottom of it, and killing him, is going to have to be epic. This is not a "let's go on a random Dungeon Crawl to kill some generic monsters and grab loot" exercise, it's an attempt to overthrow the Middle-Earth equivalent of Satan, defeating most of his minions along the way.

A burglar like Bilbo is a support class. If you want a sub-game where the hero Thorin sends Bilbo on a mission to steal the Arkenstone, fine, but Bilbo shouldn't be killing anyone important.

If you want a class for a thief, use perhaps the most famous thief in fantasy literature as your template. I refer to Conan, of course. He might team up with a sidekick burglar on occasion, but he's the one to overthrow Morgoth, not the sidekick. Now that I write this, I wonder whether Lupin is better known, but his type would never go on a quest where he would have to get his hands messy.

https://www.google.com/search?&q=is+conan+a+thief

I like the idea of half-classes. Someone whose magic level is half his CL, or CL - 10, or whatever. They are fun to me. The way to differentiate them is to differentiate the underlying spell books. If you do a good job differentiating mage books from priest books, their half-classes differentiate themselves without any effort at all.

If you are going to make a new class, I beg that you design it so that it doesn't only work due to LOS abuse. If you insist on monster traps, those need to be an entirely new spell system to make any sense.

[Grotug]

One of the aims with the class re-vamp in 4.2 was to make the classes more distinct. So rather than rogue being "warrior with a bit of magic", I was looking for a distinct niche, and the obvious one is stealthy play. So they got worse melee, better throwing, great stealth and escapes, good device use and disarming, and stealing. The opinions in this thread (which seem to me to summarise general feelings about 4.2 rogues well) indicate that this has been unsuccessful. I think part of this is that stealing hasn't really caught on, probably because there isn't enough incentive to do it.

So I think rogues need something (or things) extra. Here are few ideas, mostly inspired by similar character types in NPP/O/Sil:

• Evasion;
• Sneak attacks on unwary monsters;
• Bonuses when wielding light weapons;
• Ability to set monster traps;
• Experience for stealing;
• Superstealth/invisibility.

Another thing to consider is an expansion of the monster sleep mechanic to include being awake but unaware of the player, and allowing rogues to exploit that.

Doesn't Ranger's NoTrack spell basically have the effect of making awake monsters not aware of the player?

A stealth level after Legendary that is Invisible?
BTW, who thinks that mushrooms of shadows need to last longer?
Maybe Rogues could get a +1 or +2 stealth bonus for lightweight armors. So armors with no to-hit penalty would give +2 stealth, armors with (-1) encumbrance would give +1 stealth and armors with (-2) encumbrance would give no stealth bonus. So soft leather armor of elvenkind <+2> would give +4 stealth to Rogues.

@Djabanete: so the spell equivalent of Quick Walk in Angband would be the new Angband mechanic: movement speed. We have haste self spell, why not, instead of haste self, Rogue gets +1 movement speed spell? (this would help differentiate from Ranger since Ranger gets haste self spell as well). Although I guess Druids have locked down these spells, but the difference here would be Rogue wouldn't have to make any sort of transformation in order to gain the movement speed.

If you really wanted to have fun you could give Rogue a final book spell (CL40 required) that costs 60sp that grants +2 movement speed and +2 stealth for a CL dependent duration (CL50 would get 75+1d75 turns, which is the =Tulkas activation duration). Otherwise they'd get an earlier +1 movement speed spell that costs 30SP.

[Estie]

I feel this has already gone past that point; how about Nick continues with his thing and PD maintains vanilla ?

[ewert]

I could see rangers getting a +move speed instead of the stealth, and give the stealth to rogues spellbooks. Or link it to the steal spell (so you get the stealth thingy after grabbing an item). I see fast movement more a ranger thing than rogue thing. Actually, just add the stealth function from the ranger spell to rogue phase door after lvlx for example.