Rogue

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Cheeki Breeki Sneaky Beaky!

Rogue is a character class found in Dungeons & Dragons and Pathfinder, although the general archetype (usually by different names) can be found in almost every RPG ever made. Rogues are sneaky, backstabbing, nimble adventurers, and they're just so useful you can't help but keep them around.

Rogues have a variety of skills that make them useful in various situations and, if they get a backstab, cause incredibly high damage, but they only have moderate hp. This may sound good, and they are pretty decent, but they're dead weight in a party with wizards, clerics, druids, erudites, or any other tier 1 (to tier 3 in case of Pathfinder) class. Similarly, they also become utterly fucking useless in combat when something with heavy fortification, an elemental, a construct, an ooze, a plant, or an undead show up. Pretty much, if it's immune to criticals, the rogue can only pout as he/she/it/hermaphrodite becomes a useless skill monkey, unless he/she/it/hermaphrodite starts diving into splatbooks looking for ways to bypass crit and sneak attack immunity. Most embarrassingly they can't sneak attack anything with concealment, which includes anything not standing in at least torch light.

Given the power of their sneak attacks, many builds revolve around turning invisible after performing an attack. This may sound pretty sweet, but said builds also often revolve around one specific kind of weapon (ice, radiant, etc.) and so a clever DM can simply not provide any of said weapon. Serves you right for min-maxing, I guess.

Their skillmonkeying is more useful in Pathfinder, where they now have a lot of exclusive skill uses that other classes used to be able to do well enough with the right buffs, and they get rogue talents that give them a little more unique flavor. Yet ultimately they are outdone by the Investigator in the skillmonkey/utility part. The Investigator hybrid class has an even bigger skill list, is more reliant on Int, can buff himself with alchemy and may add 1d6(later 1d8) to his skill/attack/save rolls at will. The rogues now also have the advantage of far fewer enemies having sneak-attack immunity. Nowadays it's mostly just elementals and oozes. Have a Japan-flavored alternate class in the ninja, which changes out some of those skill monkey powers for ki pool and general insane badassery. Each can crosstrain in the other's special abilities.

Arcane Trickster is Prestige class aimed as Rogues who uses casting to enhance sneakiness like a Gish uses magic to enhance smashing things. This contrasts a Bard who has casting and skill uses, but is not at all sneaky. Several attempts have been made to make this a base class. In 3.5 these include Spellthief, Psychic Rogue (detailed below), and potentially Beguiler, which differs in being a sneaky full caster instead of a rogue variant. There are several options for this in Pathfinder including the "Eldritch Scoundrel" archetype, which is roughly on par with a standard Arcane Trickster (unless you enter Arcane Trickster early with the Accomplished Sneak Attacker feat, then it comes out far ahead), Vivisectionist Alchemist and Investigator, plus Inquisitor for a divine variation. Arcane Trickser appears as a Paragon Path in 4E... which means you'll have no magic till 1/3rd of even the longest career is over. 5E makes "Arcane Trickster" one of the three core options Rogues can select as a specialty.

People have a bad tendency to misspell the name as Rouge, which, to be fair, does involve all the same letters, but they just can't find the G-spot.

The Rogue/Thief Divide

Back in Advanced Dungeons & Dragons, the term "Rogue" was used as an overarching category into which several classes slotted - equivalent to the terms "Warrior" (Fighter, Paladin, Ranger), "Wizard" (Mage, Abjurer, Conjurer, Diviner, Enchanter, Evoker, Illusionist, Necromancer, Transmuter), and "Priest" (Cleric, Druid). In those days, Rogue was a blanket term covering both the Thief, the class we now call the Rogue, and the Bard, as both of these classes shared the ability to pick locks and detect traps - it also picked up some setting-based variants, such as the Handler (a kender take on the rogue), and the Gypsy. However, the bard was so much less effective at that job that the category of Rogue and the class of Thief were pretty much synonymous with each other in the fandom.

Thus, when Wizards of the Coast took over and made D&D 3rd edition, the dropped the idea of class categories and just renamed the Thief into the Rogue, in part to give it a wider definition... But, you just can't keep something old-school down; the Thief returned as an Essentials style "simplified" version of the Rogue in 4th edition, and as a Skill Monkey subclass for the rogue in 5th edition.

Psychic Rogue

Introduced in a web article for 3.5, the Psychic Rogue is an Arcane Trickster in a can. In exchange for less sneak attack and fewer skill points per level, a psionic rogue gains the ability to manifest a small number of powers (up to 5th level at level 17) that help him be sneaky. While a simple alternation to the base Rogue, the Psychic Rogue had the hidden advantage that it was a psionic class, which offers some major advantages over an actual Arcane Trickster that are not explicitly stated in the class description. Firstly, Psionic powers are naturally silent and it's also relatively trivial to prevent them from being visually obvious. Secondly, since Psychic Rogue has a manifester level equal to their class level, Psionics makes it easy to learn powers from another list, and you can augment powers up to your manifester level (everyone misses this restriction and cries that psionics are broken) you can effectively get something close to a 9th level spell equivalent or two per day in exchange for blowing the rest of your manifesting. Thirdly you got access to [Psionic] feats like Obtain Psycrystal or Up the Walls.

Complete Psionic introduced the Lurk, which had the same concept of a sneaky manifester. However the Lurk never caught on thanks to the fact that Complete Psionic was a horrible mess Psionics fans pretend never existed while Psychic Rogue was legitimately free content that could be played in an otherwise SRD only game.

Rogues in 4th Edition

Rogues got a huge bump in 4th edition, mostly because the vast laundry list of creatures being immune to Sneak Attack was shredded and fed to a manticore. Sneak Attack, it was argued, was just a general term for any kind of specialized, precisely-aimed attack that did extra damage, and so most of the creatures that were immune to it were a case of taking realism to the point of stupidity. Yes, a skeleton doesn't have a liver to stab, but you can still stick a dagger through its knee or vertebrae and twist them apart. Most subsequent editions of the game held onto this change, including those specifically designed for butthurt 3.X fanboys pissed off at 4e.

The 4e Rogue is a Martial Striker - a Source & Role combination that it shares with the Ranger. Its focus is predominantly on mobile attacks, hitting a target and then moving out of range before they can strike back, in comparison to the Ranger's focus on either peppering foes with arrows or slicing them up in a flurry of blades. Whilst predominantly Dexterity focused, it has secondary class features allowing it to get more use out of Charisma or Strength as a secondary statistic. Properly built, the 4e Rogue is a veritable mincing machine of a class; it's actually possible to build a Paragon level Rogue who can inflict damage with every single action of a turn:

• Minor Action: Tumbling Strike or Low Slash
• Standard Action: Knockout
• Free Action: Two-weapon Opening Attack
• Move-to-Minor Action: Critical Opportuity
• Action Point Standard Action: Bloodbath or Deep Dagger Wound

The Essentials series of books also gave the Rogue a variant in the form of the Thief. This class pretty much focused entirely on their skill-monkey aspects with a bunch of utility powers that could be exploited at-will, though Sneak Attack still existed and they also had the 1/Encounter Backstab to add to both the hit and damage rolls. Thief also allows all MBAs to use Dex to hit and damage while also adding a bonus for all the basic Rogue weapons, sparing a whole feat's usage. Unfortunately, your choice in powers is cut quite short, as is the case with most Essentials classes.

The 4e Rogue is most infamous for having one of the most controversial, "blatantly gamist" powers, in the form of Bloody Path.

5th Edition

Rogues in 5e get a d8 hit die, lots of skills (not quite as many as a Bard, but with more powers to make them the more reliable skillmonkeys) and are much better in combat than their 3.5 predecessors. This stems mostly from the fact that their backstabs now trigger on advantage or an adjacent ally instead of only when the opponent is flatfooted, meaning that they have the potential to get sneak attacks almost every round. Also helping them out is the Cunning Action, which lets them use a bonus action every turn to hide or disengage from an enemy, making them very skilled at hit-and-run kidney shankings. Plus, as part of the ongoing 4e move away from this kind of thing, nothing in the game is immune to sneak attacks. At 3rd level, the rogue chooses between the Thief, a more skill-oriented path, the Assassin, which is essentially the PrC from 3.5, or the Arcane Trickster, who gets spells, cantrips, and a lot of skill with Mage Hand.

They're the only martial class in the game that doesn't get Extra Attack at any point, but the extra damage on a sneak attack more than makes up for it. Especially since they crit harder than just about anyone else in the game.

They can only sneak attack once a turn, and need their bonus actions to run away and hide, though, so while there's room for melee rogues this edition, two-weapon rogues are pretty well gone outside of very-niche builds (nonsense, rogues get free sneak attack so long as the double-team their enemies). Especially with how weak two-weapon fighting is without the Fighting Style option for it, that rogues don't get (also nonsense, getting a second chance at your sneak attack is more than worth it) .

The Sword Coast Adventurer's Guide adds the Swashbuckler (we Inigo Montoya now!) and Mastermind (brainy super-villain/detective type rogue) archetypes.

The Gothic Heroes UA Article adds the Inquisitive, which is similar to Pathfinder's Investigator, and is basically Sherlock Holmes with a little Van Helsing added in for flavor. Ear for Deceit and Eye for Deception makes them more adept at sensing when somebody is lying and at finding hidden creatures and objects. Insightful Fighting lets them make a Wisdom vs. Charisma check to gain the ability to launch Sneak Attacks against a creature without actually needing combat advantage to do so. Steady Eye increases their bonuses granted by Eye for Deception. Unerring Eye lets them intuitively sense when they are within of a shapechanged creature or an illusion. Finally, Eye for Weakness increases the Sneak Attack damage they do when they use Insightful Fighting by +2d6.

In a recent UA, they were given a new archetype, the Scout, a kind of rogue/ranger hybrid. It mostly boosts mobility and buffs allies, but does feature a pretty devastating damage capstone. Features include double proficiency in Nature and Survival (level 3), the ability to move half your speed as a reaction (level 3), a boost to movement speed (level 9), granting allies a bonus to Initiative if you manage to surprise enemies (level 13), and the ability to sneak attack two different targets each turn (level 17).

All four were reprinted, with minimal-to-no changes, in the Xanathar's Guide to Everything sourcebook.

The Classes of Pathfinder 1st Edition
Core Classes:	Barbarian - Bard - Cleric - Druid - Fighter - Monk Paladin - Ranger - Rogue - Sorcerer - Wizard
Advanced Player's Guide:	Alchemist - Antipaladin - Cavalier Inquisitor - Oracle - Summoner - Witch
Advanced Class Guide:	Arcanist - Bloodrager - Brawler - Hunter - Investigator Shaman - Skald - Slayer - Swashbuckler - Warpriest
Occult Adventures:	Kineticist - Medium - Mesmerist Occultist - Psychic - Spiritualist
Ultimate X:	Gunslinger - Magus - Ninja - Samurai - Shifter - Vigilante

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