3PP Spotlight - Legendary Rogues

This is my first attempt at a formal review of a roleplaying product.  As with any review, my personal biases and preferences of game style will color the review, so it’s probably a good idea to identify these.  As a GM, I tend to prefer products that evoke a strong flavor and mechanics which support that flavor.  This goes beyond mere mechanics; I like products that offer a leitmotif that extends beyond rules, one which can also suffuse the campaign world in a narrative way.  I also get jazzed by products that provide elegant solutions to otherwise complicated or ineffective rules in the Pathfinder RPG.  Rules systems which unify disparate concepts into a cohesive whole, which streamline the playing experience for both GMs and players are greatly appreciated by me.

As a player, I greatly prefer customization options and decision points that are built into the product.  If it is a new character class, I like having the ability to choose from a selection of options, rather than being shoehorned into a class ability that may or may not fit my character concept.  If it is a new rules subsystem, it should expand my ability to create interesting character concepts that effectively execute the concept during play, while not adding a large amount of complexity to the character management process.

Okay, with those caveats out of the way, let’s get on to my reviewed product: Legendary Rogues by Legendary Games. 

This product offers us a complete rebuild of the rogue class; it was published in 2015, after Paizo had offered us their rebuild of the rogue in Pathfinder Unchained.  Why all this rebuilding of one of the classic tropes of fantasy gaming?  Well, the prevailing opinion of the rogue class as originally published in the Pathfinder Core Rulebook is that it is underpowered with respect to the other 10 base classes in the Core Rulebook.  Initial complaints seemed to focus on the rogue’s opportunities to use her iconic sneak attack ability, her sub-par potential to be an effective DPR class, rogue talents being underpowered and subsequent class offerings from Paizo which rendered her skill mastery (another iconic rogue ability) second-rate.  Paizo Publishing answered these criticisms with the Unchained Rogue. 

The unchained rogue attempted to bring the rogue back into the general power-level of the other base classes.  They executed this design goal by introducing skill unlocks (abilities only a rogue could attempt given a specified number of skill ranks), and by granting the Weapon Finesse feat as 1^st level bonus feat.  This allows rogues to use DEX as their primary combat stat, reducing MAD and making them more effective combatants at early levels.  Rogue talents get a few additions, but generally remain about the same.

This is where Legendary Rogues steps in.  The book launches with an unfortunate gaffe: It welcomes us to Legendary Paladins in the title bar, which may cause some initial confusion for the reader.  This is the only instance of this error, however, and the balance of the book does reference the correct legendary rogue class and product.

The introduction gives us a brief summary of the product, and identifies the key concepts that will be introduced in the book, such as Skill Specialties, Avoidances, and Instincts.  It goes on to discuss how many Rogue Talents are redefined to align them better with similar abilities of other core classes. The rogue in combat is mentioned, and then the Legendary Rogue ties all of these concepts into a rebuild of the rogue class.

Skill specialties are addressed first.  These are packages of skills (usually 1 skill plus a situational use of a second skill) that grant a scaling untyped bonus equal to ½ the rogue’s class level.  Each skill specialty may only be selected once, and bonuses from multiple skill specialties don’t stack (nitpick: untyped bonuses in PF1 stack, so it may have been better to give these bonuses a type such as competence or insight).  Athletic agility grants a bonus on Climb checks and Acrobatic checks made to traverse narrow or uneven surfaces.  Imperceptible provides a bonus to stealth checks, and increases the miss chance for concealment.  I like this one a lot!  Information broker gives bonuses to Knowledge (local) checks and Diplomacy checks to Gather Information.  There is a total of 14 skill specialties provided, giving the legendary rogue a means of diversifying or specializing while still remaining the best skills-based character class.  Well done!

The supplement goes the extra mile by discussing skill unlocks from Pathfinder Unchained next.  It discusses ways that skill unlocks can be substituted for skill specialties, or how you can use both systems simultaneously, giving the player a wide variety of ways to achieve skill mastery.

Avoidances are next, which are ways that the legendary rogue can avoid harm.  Instead of the core rogue being forced to accept Trap Sense as a linear ability, the legendary rogue can choose an avoidance at 3^rd level and every three levels thereafter.  Avoidances include such abilities as Defensive Agility which grants a +1 Dodge bonus to AC when the rogue fights defensively or takes the Total Defense action, Elusive Moves which grants a +1 Dodge bonus to AC against attacks of opportunity and a +1 Dodge bonus to CMD to resist a Grapple combat maneuver, Missile Avoidance (+1 Dodge bonus against ranged attacks) and Poison Resistance (bonus to saves against poison, can be taken multiple times).  Trap Sense is included in the Avoidances category, but is but one option among eight possible choices.

Instincts are abilities that highlight a legendary rogue’s superb senses and instinctive awareness, modeled upon the Evasion and Uncanny Dodge abilities of the core rogue.  The legendary rogue may select an instinct at 2^nd and 4^th level, and at every four levels thereafter.  Options include the familiar Uncanny Dodge and Evasion abilities along with their improved versions, plus Instinctive Awareness (always act in a surprise round, even if unaware of attackers), Leap Aside (rogue can take a 5 foot step as an immediate reaction to an attack or AoE spell; resolution of attack is possibly affected as a result), and Celerity (roll twice for initiative, take preferred result).  10 such instincts are provided.

The next section tackles Rogue Talents as a class ability, and attempts to bring them up to a roughly equivalent power level of other similar class abilities such as a witch’s hexes or a magus’s arcana.  Several new rogue talents are listed and existing talents (such as Assault Leader) are upgraded from once per day to once per opponent.  This approach makes a lot of sense narratively; after all, why would a rogue only be able to execute a talent (most are extraordinary abilities) once, and then forget how to use them?!?  It makes far more sense for a rogue to use the ability on an opponent, who sees the ability and can defend against it once used, but a new opponent has no knowledge of this ability, and is vulnerable to it once as well.  Rogue talents are gained at 2^nd level and every two levels thereafter, for a total of 10 talents at 20^th level. A massive 93 total rogue talents are offered, roughly balanced between re-worked and new talents, providing a wide array of effective options for the legendary rogue to shine.

‘Rogues in combat’ is the next major section of Legendary Rogues.  It discusses how the core rogue tends to fall behind other martial classes in combat ability, and behind other ‘skillful’ classes such as the bard and the inquisitor in Saving Throws.  It goes on to propose ways to compensate for this deficiency, making the rogue a more effective combatant.  These solutions are codified into the Legendary Rogue class, which follows later in the book.

Legendary Rogues posits that without the Sneak Attack class ability, the rogue’s attacks are essentially the same as the NPC expert class, and then enumerates the various ways that Sneak Attack can be nullified in Pathfinder.  This section of the book discusses ways to make Sneak Attack more effective and applicable.  Most of these solutions are included with the Legendary Rogue class, which immediately follows.

The Legendary Rogue class gets d8 hp, 3/4 BAB progression, good Reflex saves and 8 + Int skill ranks per level.  Sneak attack +1d6 is gained at 1st level, and increases by 1d6 every odd level.  She gains a broad and deep group of class skills, and is proficient in all simple weapons plus the hand crossbow, longsword, rapier, sap, shortbow, short sword, and sword cane, as well as one of the following weapons: garrote, longbow, whip, or a single light or one-handed martial weapon. They are proficient with light armor and bucklers but not with other shields.  Rather than enumerate each class ability (which other reviewers have done with painstaking analysis), I’ll skip this and move on to observations, thoughts and conclusions.

This class offering does something really cool, something that I wish other publishers would pick up on: In addition to the class rebuild, the document offers numerous commentaries and sidebars about design goals and implementation.  The reader gets insight not just into how the class is reworked, but also why.  We get justification for the design decisions that were made for the class, giving us better insight into why this class is balanced with more current Pathfinder classes, and how it goes about doing so.  This is great; I wish more publishers would include such commentary.

I must mention one regret that I have about this product.  Files for Hero Labs are not offered (as a rule, Legendary Games does not create Hero Lab content to support its products), which for me creates an additional investment of time.  You see, I use Hero Labs character management software exclusively for my Pathfinder games, both as a GM and player.  I find it indispensable, given the vast number of variables that can affect a character’s statistics and abilities during play.  When I allow a third-party class into one of my campaigns, I insist that it is enabled for use with Hero Labs.  Consequently, the Hero Lab files must either be offered by the publisher (as with Kobold Press and Drop Dead Studios), or I must create the file myself.  Now, I am not a professional programmer.  My job isn’t even programming-adjacent.  Learning how to code in Hero Lab was purely a skill that I wanted to learn, and it has taken over two years for me to gain a basic proficiency in creating custom content through the Hero Lab Editor.  I have coded all of the class abilities for the Legendary Rogue into Hero Lab and am now working my way through the rogue talents.  If you are proficient in the Hero Lab editor and want to add the Legendary Rogue to your content, be aware that coding will take several dozen hours to complete, due to the sheer number of options and abilities included with the class.  On a difficulty scale, I would rate this a six out of 10.  The coding isn’t terribly hard, but the number of scripts is pretty large.

Legendary Rogues delivers the rogue class that I have always been hoping for, but never got.  This is the rogue that delivers on the class fantasy, giving me a robust toolkit with which I can build the kind of rogue that I envisioned, not some cobbled-together patchwork of archetypes that doesn’t quite realize my vision.  Matt Goodall and Jason Nelson have created the rogue that will hereinafter be the default rogue class in all of my future campaigns.  The sheer amount of customization offered by inherent skills, skill specialties, instincts and avoidances allow me to create virtually any rogue concept that I can conceive without the need to add archetypes.  Their design is impressive, their goals realized, and the final product is a glory to behold.  I love this book!  If Hero Lab files existed for it, Legendary Rogues would get a perfect ten out of ten from me.  Lacking the Hero Lab support, I still rate this at 9 out of 10, and highly recommend it as a wonderful replacement for the lackluster core rogue, and its slightly less lackluster cousin, the unchained rogue.

You can get this amazing product at DrivethruRPG here.  Do your game a huge favor, and get this book!  The rogue will no longer be the red-headed step-child of the Pathfinder RPG!

A copy of this review has been posted to the product page on DrivethruRPG, as well as the Amazon.com product page.

Hacking the rules: Monster lore, part 4

Let’s review what I’ve gone over so far:

Argument: The Pathfinder RPG rules for monster lore are counter-intuitive, and don’t deliver a satisfyingly realistic result.

·        The system of using Challenge Rating to set DC’s for monster lore using Knowledge skills is flawed.  Knowledge of a creature should be based on its prevalence in the campaign setting, not on how difficult it is to fight.

·        Obscure, corner-case monsters are as easy to identify as ubiquitous ones.  The Tarrasque should be easier to identify than a ningyo.

·        Creatures that appear in an environment other than their native one should be harder to identify.

·        Knowledge (local) should be able to identify monsters that are local, but not all Humanoids and Monstrous Humanoids.

·        A new Knowledge skill needs to be created that can be used to identify Humanoid and Monstrous Humanoid creatures, since no other 
Knowledge skill seems appropriate for the intended purpose.

What remains to be done is to set the DC’s based on a new formula that replaces Challenge Rating as the basis for calculating DC’s for Knowledge checks.  In creating this new formula, we want to account for the problems listed above, and try to solve them mechanically.  So, let’s re-introduce Frequency to the discussion.

I’ve already discussed how Frequency was a listing in monster stat blocks in earlier editions of Dungeons & Dragons, but it disappeared with the publication of 3^rd Edition, and has not made a return in the Pathfinder RPG.  Frequency wasn’t a particularly useful data point for players, but it gave the GM a reference to determine how often a monster could be encountered.  In fact, the 1^st edition Monster Manual actually listed specific percentages that a monster could be encountered based on its Frequency listing.  For the purposes of this exercise, however, Frequency by itself really isn’t relevant; I run adventure paths, and the Frequency of each monster that appears in that adventure path is 100%.  The monster is already included in the adventure, so the players are going to encounter it.  Frequency really doesn’t help a GM that already knows exactly what monsters are going to be encountered by the players.

BUT we’re not looking to establish population statistics for the flumphs in Golarion.  I don’t care how many flumphs are in the world, and what your chance of encountering one is, because I already know if a flumph is included in the adventure path.  The Frequency is either 100% or 0%.  Our real goal is to determine how much the characters know about those flumphs, and this is where Frequency is going to be a good tool to help us solve this equation.

Frequency in the early editions of the game was divided into four categories: Common, uncommon, rare and very rare.  Each category provided a percentage chance of the monster being encountered by a group of characters.  While Frequency doesn’t tell me specifically how to adjudicate Knowledge checks, I think I can steal it and use it as a framework upon which I will build my new monster lore system.  In fact, I think that Frequency is what will determine the initial Knowledge DC for that monster.  Common monsters should have a low DC, and very rare monsters should have a high DC, with uncommon and rare somewhere in the middle.  Here’s what I started with:

Frequency DC for Knowledge check

Common – DC 5

     Uncommon – DC 10
Rare – DC 20

   Very rare – DC 30

Maybe not perfect, but a good place to start testing.  So far, this goes a long way towards creating a system that bases Knowledge checks on Frequency, not Challenge Rating.  Now, all we need to do is decide what Frequency to assign to each monster.  I started digging to see if I could find some document or publication, however obscure, that help me assign Frequency.

Zilch.  Nada.  Bupkis.  Zero.  I found nothing in any Pathfinder rule book, third party publication or blog posting that addressed this topic.  Left without any aid from the internet, I had two choices: Determine Frequency by personal preference alone, or assign an arbitrary filter that could sort the monsters into Frequency categories.  Not liking the first option at all, I decided on the second. 

Most new editions of D20 games start with a critter book.  A bestiary or a monster manual or a tome of horrors or a necronomicon. Whatever they name it, it’s a collection of monsters that the characters can encounter.  And when a new edition of a D20 game is published, the very first critter book features monsters that are either iconic to fantasy role playing or are familiar to players through mythology and lore.  You will likely see gargoyles and medusae, wights and ghosts, chromatic and metallic dragons, iron and flesh golems, black puddings and ochre jellies, pegasi and ankhegs; all of these creatures have been around since the first edition of Dungeons & Dragons, and have permeated the fantasy RPG body of work for over forty years.  They are iconic.  We recognize them easily because we have seen them frequently during our years of gaming.  And because of that, I realized that I could determine Frequency by what Bestiary the monster is published in.

It’s an arbitrary decision, and not a perfect solution, but it is a metric fuckton better than pulling a frequency for every single monster out of my ass.  And it aligns with the goal of having recognizable monsters be, well, recognizable.  I started with the premise that only a select few monsters would be classified as Common.  These include things like zombies, skeletons, kobolds, trolls, ogres, orcs, gnolls, goblins, hobgoblins, bugbears and maybe a few more that I haven’t figured out yet.  Creatures with a Frequency of Common can be recognized with a DC 5 Knowledge check.  So far, so good.

Next, I decided that any creature published in the first Bestiary that has not already been classified as Common would get a Frequency of Uncommon.  Frost and fire giants, bulettes, chimerae, shadows, basilisks, cockatrices, cyclopes, vrock and glabrezu demons; all of them get the Uncommon designation, and can be identified with a DC 10 Knowledge check.  Now let’s check our solution with examples from the extreme poles.  We will use a troglodyte (CR 1) and an ancient gold dragon (CR 20) as our test subjects.  Under the old rules, the troglodyte could be identified with a DC 11 Knowledge (local) check, since troglodytes have the Humanoid type.  Under our proposed new rules, the same troglodyte could be identified with a DC 10 Knowledge (Humanoids) check.  Not much difference here.

But the rubber meets the road when we get our ancient gold dragon tied down for examination.  Old rules: DC 30 Arcana check.  New rules: DC 10 Arcana check.  Your character sees an enormous flying lizard, breathing fire and casting spells.  Its scales are gold.  Unless she has an Intelligence score of 4, she will know it’s a gold dragon.  It doesn’t matter if she’s a first level fighter or a 20th level wizard.  She knows a dragon when she sees one.This is another nice benefit of this change: We eliminate scaling DC’s for creatures like dragons and elementals dependent on their age or size category.  Have you ever encountered this scenario?

GM: You see an enormous flying lizard, breathing fire and casting spells.  Its scales are gold.

Player: I make a Knowledge (Arcana) check.  I get a 24.

GM: You don’t recognize the creature; the best you can determine is that it looks like a young gold dragon, only it’s much, much bigger.

And that’s all I have to say about that.  Next time, we’ll discuss rare and very rare creatures, how to classify them, and we’ll also jump into the topic of environment.