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Pathfinder’sremastered Player Core streamlines the experience for new rogue players to pick up the steam. The core of the class is unchanged, focusing on sneak attacks and skill usage. The versatility of the feats rogues can access allows them to slot into just about any team composition with only minor adjustments.
Inverting the stereotype of rogues as selfish players, The Pathfinder Rogue is almost entirely focused on team-play. They rely on the positioning of their allies to set up sneak attacks, support the team by inflicting harmful debuffs, and use their assorted skills to be indispensable in exploration and social encounters.
Rackets For Rogues
The rackets that form a rogue’s subclass are one of the most important decisions in creating one. You’ll want todecide before looking at attributes, ancestries and skillsas they can radically change how effectively you use each.
Stealth, thievery
Uses theirdexterity for weapon damage
Thief will appeal especially to the converts from fifth edition D&D, as it can entirely dedicate itself to a single attribute. Your dexterity does everything the thief wants to do, includingweapon damage that is normally scaled to strength. Focusing on the core concept of what people think the rogue should be makes it agood choice for your first rogue.
Takes more punishment and hits harder.
Strength, dexterity
Athletics
Can use asneak attack with a wider range of weapons
The Ruffian is the opposite of the thief. They trade away the rogue’s typical subtlety for afocus on strength. You wearheavier armour and carry bigger weapons, letting you survive the front lines as effectively as most martial classes.
Intelligence, dexterity
Arcana, society, occultism, nature
Usingknowledge checks against enemies makes them off-guardfor sneak attacks.
The mastermind is thebest team playeramong rogues. Recall Knowledge puts enemies off-guard, meaning that setting up your sneak attacksgives your entire team access to better information. You can recall what damage weaknesses an enemy has and relay this to the wizard, then throw in a sneak attack for good measure.
Talks fast, talks big, and stabs people with rapiers.
Charisma, dexterity
Deception, intimidation
Usesfeints and movementto set up easy sneak attacks
The upgrades they get for the feint action are great: Putting an enemy off-guard for an entire turn, or even two turns, makes themone of the most reliable sneak attackers. The book notes that a scoundrel doesn’t have to be a blue-collar criminal like a con artist, but can instead be a white-collar criminal like a lawyer.
Ancestries For A Rogue
Certain rackets will make more use of different ancestry skills, but certain options will always be consistently good for a rogue.
Goblin Scuttle, Very Sneaky, Very Very Sneaky
Any
Goblin Scuttle is an amazing feat for rogues. When an ally moves up next to you, you can thenstep into a flanking position as a reaction. Even if the enemy moves to break the flank, you’ve traded your reaction for an entire action andgiven your ally the off-guard bonusfor their attacks that turn.
Very Sneaky and Very Very Sneaky let goblins trivialise any stealth-centred encounter bynever breaking concealment.
Intimidating Glare, Orc Superstition, Pervasive Superstition, Spell Devourer
Ruffian, Scoundrel
Battle-ready Orcs gain the intimidating glare skill feat for free. Thisremoves the penalty to intimidation for not sharing a language, an important consideration when fighting non-humanoid enemies.
Orc superstition and its related feats give a nicebonus to spell resistance and another use for your reactions. Orcs make great ruffians due to their survivability and unarmed feats.
Step lively, halfling luck, dance underfoot,distracting shadows
Thief
Halflings gain plenty of good feats for a rogue. Step Lively is the inverse of goblin scuttle: When an enemy moves up you can reposition yourself around them. This can bothset up future flanks or negate them on yourself.
Distracting shadows is great for rogues that want to routinely hide, as you’ll no longer be at the mercy of the map for cover.
Nimble elf,ageless patience
Mastermind
Elves gain boosts to intelligence and dexterity that are perfect for a mastermind. Theflaw in constitutionmeans you’ll want to play it safer than other rogues. Masterminds do this as they can more easily sneak attack with ranged weapons.
Ageless patience is great for skill-focused roguesby negating critical failures on a one and giving a reliable +2 bonus when you can take your time at a check.
Skills And Feats For A Rogue
Skills And Skill Feats
The rogue gets an unrivalled number of skill increases and skill feats. You’ll easily be able to get multiple of your skills to legendary and take multiple of the legendary skill feats that other classes might get only one of.
Battle Cry, Intimidating Glare, Intimidating Prowess, Scare to Death
Ruffian
Pairing this with the class feat dread striker gives you a reliable source of sneak attacks against frightened foes. Once you gain the legendary feat Scare To Deathyou’ll be able to kill with a mean look.
Foil Senses, Swift Sneak, Quiet Allies, assurance
Stealth feats like foil senses mean the rogue won’t be caught with their pants down againstenemies designed to counter stealth. Special senses are too specific and rare to constantly plan against, but foil senses let you ignore them (even psychic ones, implying the foil senses feat includes a literal tinfoil hat.) Swift Sneak and Fleet mean you’ll be able tooutrun most enemies even while sneaking.
Knowledge skills (arcana, nature, occultism, religion)
Assurance, Automatic Knowledge
Automatic knowledge functionallygives you an extra action each turn,since you’ll be using recall knowledge whenever possible. It’s expensive to take as it needs to be relearned for each skill, but rogues gain enough skill feats to do that.
Specialty Crafting, Magical Crafting, Quick Repair, Alchemical Crafting
Crafting feats are good to have on any team. The rogue’s generous serving of skill increases and feats make them an obvious choice, especially for a mastermind who is already investing in intelligence.
Titan wrestler, Assurance
Ruffians don’t have the mastermind or scoundrel’s easy access to off-guard bonuses.You’ll want to trip enemies to set up sneak attacks, which can be done reliably with assurance against weaker enemies.
The assurance feat is a special case and is complex enough to warrant an explanation. It removes all modifiers, positive and negative, from a roll except for your skill proficiency and then treats the roll as a 10. If you can crunch out the numbers on a situation where you’llalways be able to succeed on the rollwith that (such as treat wounds checks or trip attempts against weaker enemies), assurance is spectacular. Mostchallenges that scale to level will resistan assurance check. Assurance on stealth means you’ll consistently be able touse it for your initiativeand place yourself near the top of the pile (setting up a surprise attack against most enemies).
Assurance removes negative modifiers as well as positive ones. A character with assurance in athletics can make a trip attempt thatignores the multi-attack penaltyor negative statuses.
Class Feats
Class feats can complement your skill feats or build on your racket abilities to use them more effectively.
Gain 2AC against an attack as a reaction.
Nimble dodge is a good choice for your first-level featif your racket does not offer other uses for your reaction. +2 AC against a single attack is weaker than reactive shield on a martial character since it only applies to one attack. The mastermind will instead want Clever Gambit, the ruffian Reactive Pursuit and the scoundrel You’re Next.
Frightened creatures are automatically off-guard to you.
This gives you anew way of landing sneak attacksthat the ruffian needs and empowers the intimidation skill they already want to invest in.
Striding less than half your speed does not trigger reactions.
Every rogue wants tomake good use of positioningand the mobility feat allows them to do this more effectively than a normal step action.
Analyse Weakness
Deal extra sneak attack damage to a creature you’ve recalled knowledge about.
Masterminds already want to be using recall knowledge actions, which flow naturally into an analyse weakness action followed by a single strike thatactivates the improved sneak attack.
Sly Disarm
Use thievery to make disarm attempts. Successful attempts put a target off-guard.
Anextra way to put targets off-guardis great for thieves and ruffians, but any rogue should have a high thievery skill they can use to disarm. The remastered ruleset has alsoimproved the base version of the disarm action, forcing them to use an action to readjust their grip.
Opportune Backstab
Use a reaction to strike a target that is hit by your ally in melee.
With a fighter or champion that can set you up, this effectively gives you anextra strike every turn at your full attack bonus.
Gang Up
You and your allies can flank an enemy without being on opposite sides.
It’s very easy for a rogue to end up in a dangerous position byoverextending in search of good flanking opportunities. Tumbling through enemies or scuttling around them is a good way to get surrounded yourself. Gang-up removes this weakness since you’ll be able tostay close to your team.
