Rogue Perk: Assassin of the Unnatural

[Trevor White]

What do Rogues absolutely hate? That's right, quests that are both full of non-sneak attackable monsters and don't have a lot of traps or locked doors to showcase their other skills!  I've found EfU to now be amazing fun for rogues thanks largely to things like the HP change meaning a bad roll on HP doesn't cause my PC to be made of wet tissue paper. But there's still the occasional long haul through constructs, undead, and for some reason, snakes.

So, Minor Perk to help combat rogues not feel like the third wheel when smashing some skeletons or golems.

Rogue Perk: Assassin of the Unnatural
Tired of monsters that lack kidneys to shiv, you learned to smear your weapons in unguents that snarl the joints of constructs, burn the plasm of oozes, and crumble the flesh of the walking dead.
+1d6 Physical Damage vs Constructs/Ooze/Undead
(Possibly these should be elemental damage of some form. I feel lower damage numbers but more powerful damage is a good balance here as you don't have to flank, but the damage output is still far, far lower than your many d6 of sneak attack.)

Yes, those are some nice damage bonuses for a L4 perk, but they're specifically targeted on the three monster types that always deny you your +1-5D6 of Sneak Attack damage. They're also of very limited PVP use.

Alternative Suggestion (Would need more scripting)
Alchemist's Fire and Acid Flasks last 4 turns on weapons, not 4 Rounds.
May apply Holy water to a weapon to grant it +1d4+1 Divine Damage to a weapon vs Undead for 4 Turns.
1 free Acid Flask/Holy Water/Alchemist Fire per rest.
The issue I have with that is it's harder to balance. It's a much bigger general buff because the damage bonuses work against everything, but it's a much smaller situational buff because you're probably got a flame weapon anyway if you're going up as a team against undead or oozes. I think it's much better off with a flat damage bonus vs the monsters you're otherwise useless against.
 


EDIT: Originally these were a flavourful and useful damage type vs each, to represent smearing your weapon in stuff that is damaging to each thing. In order to not sidetrack this with arguments over FR lore, or to make the damage appear too impressive, the default suggestion is now "physical damage" and I've removed the free item.

[Trevor White]

I still reckon it's minor. The numbers seem impressive at first glance, but all it really does is restore a small fraction of your lost sneak attack damage against three of the most common things that deny you your main offensive ability.  Most Minor Rogue Perks are 1-2 Feats worth of stuff, and I'm seeing this as "Substitute Sneak Attack: 1d6" The elemental damage types are there both for flavour and because it also gives you a fighting chance against damage resistance. Whereas normally, Sneak Attack just delivers so much damage in one go that some of it still gets through. It's a consolation prize that doesn't make you better than anyone else, just less bad than you were. Actually, thinking about it this should also be +1d6 Acid vs Plant. They are generally Crit Immune too. Eat weedkiller, dickheads. :P

Especially for a ranged rogue or finesse rogue, these are enemy types that have just denied you about 3/4 of your firepower, and thus your main value on a quest.  Lots of classes have search, many people cross class open lock, few have the continuous brutal damage of sneak attacks. No other class loses so much of their unique selling point, so often. You can summon or buff if you're a caster and your enemies have spell resistance. You can get a weapon buff if you're a Fighter and they have physical resistance. Or take Blind Fight to help with concealment. You can't restore your ability to sneak attack against zombies.  Even though my proposed damage bonus would work when you don't qualify for a sneak attack, most of the time when you can't land a sneak attack it's because they are hitting you back. That is not a happy place for most Rogues to be, with their d6 hit die and no shield.

I thought about 1d4, but really I think the numbers should be impressive enough that it's worth bringing you along as a damage dealer. The purpose of Perks is to encourage pure rogue builds, and one of the advantages of stepping out of Rogue is that Full AB, Weapon Specialisation, Barbarian Rage, Bard Song etc aren't dependent on the target being vulnerable to crits. Yes, it makes you very good at long-ranged attacks vs these three things, but nowhere near as nasty as you'd be if you could deliver your 20-foot range sneak attacks. So I believe it's a  minor perk. That way you could stack it onto a combat perk in order to help you be less of a one trick pony, or to really lean into that Van Helsing theme.  To lower the power, the free item should probably be be 1/reset not one a rest.

Comparing it to some of the combat-focused L8 Perks.
Thug: +1AB, +2 CON, 2/- DR turns you into a pseudo-tank and lets you at least hold some ground against the unbackstabbable. And also lets you kill anything else better, because +1 AB lets you land more hits full stop, especially on your 2nd attack. +3 Taunt lets you open up defences and compensate for your moderate AB.
Swashbuckler: +1AB, +1 AC, saves, additional stacking AB and AC power for tight spots.
Both of those make you more dangerous against everything.

[Nazey]

I agree with Eraamion.  I like the idea, but this feels like something that should be kit defining, not a minor perk that will become the no-brainer choice for every rogue build.

Also, I mean, 1d6 divine vs undead perma?  That's REALLY powerful, even if it is PvE oriented.  A lot of content is PvE and a lot of content is undead.  1d6 divine vs undead is incredible for literally anyone on this module.  I wouldn't put that on a minor perk at least

[SunrypeSlim]

I'd like this as +saves and a 1/rest Book of the Rogue (max. 1), as a level 8 perk. I would take it and use it.

[I love cats]

One of the key features of the rogue class is undesd ooze s and constructs being immune to sneak attacks. It makes a lot of sense for a rogue to just say "I don't want to even bother with these sorts or creatures."

[Trevor White]

Another way of saying that is "One of the key features of the rogue class is that it's  often completely bloody useless".  Which isn't EfU's fault, but it's poor game design on D&D's behalf. Because it excludes players from the fun for an arbitrary reason, and puts an IC figleaf over it. There's absolutely no fun in encouraging players to bail on quests because they're boring for your PC specifically. It's like if Goblins ignored Armor and Shield AC "Because they're small and sneaky".  Meaning anyone relying on Heavy Armour and a shield gets trashed by them. Or if entire quests regularly ran in regions that applied a -10 Charisma penalty just to make Sorcerers and Bards lose all their spells. We're based on an old version of D&D. Modern tabletop RPGs are much better at avoiding that trap of "Can we come up with a narrative reason to say 'no' to doing your fun thing".  No other class gets so completely dicked over by common enemy types. To the point I was playing a fullplate rogue back in EFU:A because "Smashing them over the head with 18 STR and a greatsword" works on everything.

To contrast, EfU has done amazing work in making offensive spellcasters a viable and entertaining PvE build, as I recall back in the EFU and EFUA days, they didn't really count for much compared to BUFFS PLEASE HASTE PLEASE. Largely due to a lot of Spell Resistant enemies, long quests, and the lack of the current spell rebalance and bonuses to taking Spell Focus and GSF. But even then, Fireballs McFireballs the Fire Sorcerer wasn't useless, just a bit underpowered. It was still fun to blow up encounters, even if it only did half the effect you wanted (damn nightriser SR). And a wizard could always just load up on buffs instead. However Rogues are still stuck with a huge proportion of quests and areas where they, and only they, are ineffective.

I'd still be OK with this perk if it just did Bludgeoning damage, or 1d4, but I think it's important to get it into perspective. It's absolutely supposed to be powerful because for most PCs sneak attack is 3-5 times MORE powerful than the suggested idea! If +1d6 is incredible, how OP do you think five times that damage is?  I felt that a low amount of DR-piercing damage was preferable to a higher amount of physical. Because that way you aren't one-shotting things while buffed up, but you still have an appreciable amount of damage that people want in their party. Bear in mind these are draft numbers based on my gut feeling.

So yes, this perk's strong. But unlike all the others, it doesn't stack. It'll help you against the Frustrating Bastard Enemies and give people a reason to let you come along. It won't give you stacking skill bonuses to let you be even more effective against lizardfolk or random bandits.  It's not a no-brainer because  things like stacking +stealth, Use Shield,  are all really good in every single scenario. This is situationally powerful, but still nowhere near as powerful as "having Sneak Attack". And let's be fair here, the DMs could have made undead, oozes etc super rare and we'd neve be having this conversation.

The core of it is "Rogues deserve a way to remain effective damage dealers against things they can't sneak attack, just like there are ways to counter SR/DR/Concealment". Along with the fact that frustrating enemies for other classes are nowhere near as common.  I'd have suggested "letting you do part of your sneak attack damage against non sneak attackable enemies", but that sounds like a lot of coding.  On most quests, people can get away with running over or heal past traps, and there don't seem to be many locked chests, at least of high DC. The rogue's party role is as the damage dealer. At L7, with a rapier or shortbow,  I get a solid 5d6 damage per sneak attack.  Most Rogues don't have high STR, so the STR bonus from an attack isn't going to be more than 1-2. As soon as we run into oozes, I'm down to 1d6. No I don't think that brutal traps are a good way to "balance" rogues. They're easy to trigger by accident, easy to metagame, and kind of force you to go stealth rogue. They're also tactically dull, especially on chests.

[Disorder]

I guess this is the typical sort of suggestion from those who play rogues and for one or another reason become annoyed/frustrated/upset/see some unfairness (Pick whatever of these you find the most fitting to your situation) with how rogue works against some racial types. While I can understand reason of the suggestion, please, do not forget that rogue is not useless against prevailing majority of other racial types. I perhaps wouldn't mind some "watered-down" version of your suggestion to be added as lvl 8 perk, but certainly not in the way you've suggested it.
I am especially curious where did the part about 1-6 divine dmg for some reason applied to rogue weapon came from? To me it ruins the basic dnd and efu concept. Divine energy comes from deities or with some blood gifts, which are granted by divine predecessors or strong affinity to higher planes.
Another thing is why do you ask for a damage augmentation vs oozes and not, for example, some extraordinary ability for a rogue to be able to use their hide ability?
Won't it also represent some oddly effective training these type of rogues somehow get? I think, it would.

[Trevor White]

As a Level 8 perk, this would be hopelessly situational. If I wanted to be more effective at smashing up undead, I would simply pick Thug or Swashbuckler. Because if I hit the enemy more, I hurt it more. And with either, if I can't sneak attack, I can at least stay alive more easily to continue hitting the enemy more. Simple as that, and both of those Perks work on every single form of enemy, meaning they also make you better at throwing out Sneak Attacks. 

The reason Rogue is frustrating is because no other class gets their main ability regularly disabled by minor enemies.  Yes, Sneak Attack works against most other things. But there is no common enemy type that disables divine casting. No common enemy type that disables barbarian rage.  No common enemy type that strips Fighters of their bonus feats. If there was, I wouldn't be making this suggestion because we'd all accept there are some places where our particular current PC's class is going to have a shitty day.

The only reason this issue exists is because NWN is based on old school D&D 3.5, with all its flaws. In particular, the 3.5-derived games Pathfinder RPG and Legend RPG both let you sneak attack vs undead and constructs. Legend lets you do it vs everything, because Legend wants you to use your stuff and be challenged as to the best way to use your stuff. Immunity to Sneak attack is, in game design terms, even more OP for the monsters than giving all undead Spell Immunity to all arcane damage spells. Even a heavily-offensive focused Sorcerer will have enough spell slots to just swap their tactics to buffs and continue to be a useful caster. There's not a secondary Rogue combat ability to swap to. Which is why EFU:A and its wall-to-wall Undead featured so many Rogue multiclasses compared to pure Rogues.

As I've stated, the weapon damage type was picked as "useful and thematic". I'm not concerned about what type it is as much as I am in having a way to not lock one class out of being useful in entire sections of the server. The narrative explanation I had I mind was "smearing your weapon in holy water, garlic etc as if it were a blade venom". I picked Divine because that's what holy water causes, and that's an easily-accessible substance.  In the same way that we don't look too deeply at how the Poisoner perk lets you magically summon spider venom, in the middle of an inn that suspiciously lacks giant spiders. Or where, exactly some of these Ranger Damage Bonuses are coming from for Favoured Enemy.  , I'm going to edit the suggestion to be Physical Damage because that will remove the chance to get side tracked into lore.

Why didn't I ask for Hide? Because this is a suggestion for a combat perk for combat characters, to keep them viable in combat. I've played several Rogues who didn;t even bother with H/MS, and the Perks system really supports that sort of thug build. I'm not looking at D&D 3.5 as The One True Way. EfU caught my eye again when I saw, for example just how much work had gone in to making sorcerers a really solid alternative to Wizard, and how that led to the Sorcerer population of the server having a great and diverse sort of fun. There's been a lot done to give pure Rogues a boost, and I applaud that. But they're still incredibly reliant on Sneak Attack for all their combat power. Without that, they're just like a Bard who forgot how to do magic. Except worse because they don't get the armour feats or Taunt.