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[scriver]

It's pretty sad you only get sbram attack with finesse weapons though. I want my half-orc rogue to sneak attack people in the head with a mace.

[Egan_BW]

There should totally be a feat for strength weapon sneak attacks.
Surprise greataxe to the face!

[Mephisto]

Is the spiked chain still a thing?

I mean, it's D&D. Your rogue is probably wearing some kind of chain armor anyway. Why not wield a chain from the shadows as well?


Semi-related, my favorite idea for a rogue is a big half-orc with 18 strength and mediocre dex. When asked how he can pickpocket, he does a demonstration by beating the asker over the head with a club and then rifling through their pockets.

[Rolan7]

In 3.5, by SRD not splat, you can make a rogue who gets fighter bonus feats instead of sneak attack.
Or a fighter who gets sneak attack instead of bonus feats.
I love the variant character classes page so much~

Despite the symmetry, these two options make very different and interesting classes IMHO:

The fighter with sneak attack is very tough, gets full BAB, and there's nothing stopping them from sneak attacking many times a round.  They even still qualify for feats like Greater Weapon Focus, as fighters, they just don't get extra feat slots to assign.  This makes for a very hardy character with very high full attack potential.  They can't hide well, but all they need is someone to flank the target (hello low-level summoning spells).

The rogue with fighter feats...  Actually uh, RAW, I don't think they qualify for Greater Weapon Focus etc.  So they get fighter bonus feats, but a significantly narrower selection.  They're still good at hiding and traps and such, but they're giving up sneak attack for stuff like Quick Draw or Rapid Shot.  Or things with STR or BAB requirements.  This kinda sucks, but I guess it lets you specialize in battlefield control feats rather than DPS.

[Criptfeind]

In 3.5, by SRD not splat, you can make a rogue who gets fighter bonus feats instead of sneak attack.

Parts of the SRD come from books outside of core. Idk if you'd call them splat books, but... They kinda are. So parts of the SRD kinda are splat.

[TalonisWolf]

My first (and sadly only) game of D&D I took part in two years ago was hilariously thrown off the rails, and it actually wasn't my fault. It's a rather long story, so I'll split it in three "chapters". Pre-Post Edit: Wow, this was longer than I thought.

Spoiler: And we started so well... (click to show/hide)

Fairly mundane start at first. A quest to kill some rabid wolves for a small village- we were worried that it was foreshadowing for werewolves, but we pooled resources to get some silver weapons. My Rogue grabbed a few wolf pelts, because the "Wolf Acolyte" thing under my avatar is there for a reason.

I'm sick for the second session and miss it. Turns out this was possibly the worst thing I could have done!

I come back to find that somehow, the village granary has been burnt down along with the village food stores and a decent chunk of the village, and no one would tell me what happened. Not even the NPC's in-game, beyond the fact that "a herd of wolves" attacked the village.

Given the GM, I suspect that the "herd of wolves" was the GM poking fun. Which in retrospect, was an early hint of his cheekiness. I gave in to their 'noodle incident' mentality and suggested we offer to escort the Village refugees to a nearby city, which they accepted graciously. Apparently, the fire was somehow the wolves fault. At this point, they revealed all the loot the "conveniently" scavenged from burnt ruins of the village, and I resolve to get better gear then them by any means.

Take a moment to consider what happened for them to get that gear.

Spoiler: Convoy (click to show/hide)

We escort the Village Refugees for a day, fight off more wolves, I get more pelts.

Then we stop for the night and I tie myself up in a tree to sleep without telling the others because they suddenly want my pelts, and I don't trust them to not take my stuff because I may have stole an enchanted dagger and some money from them. As the Rogue, they of course automatically blamed me (this was a hidden action that I slipped to the GM by slipping a message into his rulebook, but they didn't know that). Keep this in mind.

That night, more wolves come in. I go to help out, hiding until I can use the bonus from sneak attacks to strike then letting the others take the majority of the attention. By this time, the villagers recognize me as one of the people guarding them, so I decide to rob some people.

Eventually, someone walked in mid-theft and I end up hiding until I do a sneak attack to knock them out, after which I knock over a lamp 'accidently' to light the tent on fire to burn the evidence... and several other tents.All of which I blame on wolves:

"They burnt the village, didn't they? They must be bewitched or cursed!"

Roll to bluff, get a good roll, suddenly the entire party is being paid more to guard them. The GM, by this point, realizes that I wasn't the voice of reason unless it was convenient and made a vocal note to be the inconvenient voice of reason before ending that days session.

I'd made the worst mistake in D&D: attracting the GM's attention.

Spoiler: We Arrive at the City (click to show/hide)

Third session, we finally get to the city and think the mess is over... right up till the Captain of the City Guard refused to let the refugees in because they won't have enough food for the winter.

The GM is looking right at me as he says this, and I realize this his him being the "inconvenient voice of reasoning" and decide that this isn't going to go. My Rogue pointed out to the Captain that telling a hundred or so desperate, hungry and homeless villagers to go starve probably isn't going to win him any favors, and may result in trade being besieged by villagers-turned-bandits. Someone else suggests he split them up between different trade caravans so they aren't "his problem".

I sneak into the city, find a chimney sweep company, kill one of their employees to get their uniform and equipment, and rob some houses to disrupt the GM's train of thought while he's "negotiating" with the others... and tell him so mis way through to fluster him since I figure he's already going to be looking for the first chance to kill my rogue off.

Might as well win some goodwill with the rest of group and get a fresh start in one go, right?

One duel with nobility where I find out sabers beat daggers every time and a few bluffs later, I'm somehow still alive and much richer than I was before, I meet the party at the Inn by following rumours about the Villagers. I smile and ask what I 'missed'

The GM points out with relish to the rest of the group I'm still in "chimney sweep regalia".

My hearts sinks.

I quickly trick a drunkard into starting a bar fight by taking his beer "accidently" and taking a few hits, grab a room key and one of the other players bags, and lock myself upstairs until they brawl comes upstairs and breaks the door, jump out the window, and eventually die being mugged... for my pelts.

And that is how my first rogue died.

[Kadzar]

That all seems reasonable to me.

[MrRoboto75]

In 3.5, by SRD not splat, you can make a rogue who gets fighter bonus feats instead of sneak attack.

Parts of the SRD come from books outside of core. Idk if you'd call them splat books, but... They kinda are. So parts of the SRD kinda are splat.

SRD also includes Unearthed Arcana for some reason.

[scriver]

Well it was unearthed.

[Rolan7]

Our diplomatic mission kinda went south.  It has less to do with our party being neutral and or evil, and more that we were trying to convince very, VERY stupid animated clouds to stop being so stupid.  We ended up resorting to violence to back up our arguments, and uh
sorta destroyed the cloud they lived on with a sonic bomb...
Our airship is weird (This is a reboot of an old campaign I wasn't around for.  Fortunately I *like* bizarre in-jokes)

Our employers (we're privateers) were displeased.  "Fortunately" a player dropped out, so we blamed their character for everything.  This session opened with her being summarily executed, and us getting a bit of pay for trying to stop her.  (In actuality she was the only good character, and did basically nothing last session)

So far I've basically been trying to outfit a level 8 character with 79gp.  Magic and masterwork are out, but that's okay, I'm a spellcaster.  And the mundane item lists are actually a lot of fun.  I...

8gp Weatherized my robes (upgraded to cold-weather gear)
10gp Leather "armor" under said robes, since my class (Shugenja) allows all armor but considers it improper.
15gp "Buckler", also under robes, more an armored forearm sheath than an actual buckler
2gp 4 days of high-quality meals
10gp a platinum chip because meme
16gp a wizard's spell book and a holy symbol of Boccob, in order to confuse people.  Also my character is kinda a divine-arcane mesh, and was canonically confused about the source of his power.  (it's technically divine, from Touhou-style spell cards called ofuda).

Also our airship's captain is an Illithid and he just rode "a tenser's floating disk with handlebars" into The First Library of Boccob to inform me that the airship got stolen. 
Compared to our other GM, this campaign is very srs business and I'm having a good time, wealth-by-level be damned

Edit:  Fortunately the P.N.S Solaris offered us a ride.  P.N.S., Pelor's Navy Ship
heehee

[TalonisWolf]

That all seems reasonable to me.

Apparently he expected us to stay in the village to figure out whatever was behind all the wolf attacks, but he wasn't prepared for that level of destruction from our low leveled characters. He actually had to create new NPC's on the fly when we decided to escort the refugees, and dig out the map for the city that he hadn't expected to need for at least another week.

[Jimmy]

DM tip: If you're in trouble, give the players a magical mcguffin you can bring back into the story later.

In this case, I gave one of my players a magical book that played pornographic scenes of yourself with succubi, complete with sound, whenever you opened it. He had some fun roleplaying with the item, but the real kicker was a whammy hidden in the history of the book itself.

See, the dragon that kidnapped the group's cleric revealed in passing that the book was given to him as a gift by Nocticula after "a hundred year weekend" they'd spent together. Nocticula, of course, being the demon queen of succubi.

The player of the cleric, who hadn't yet finished building their backup, was given an NPC next session to play instead. The NPC in question was a noble knight who had been rescued by the cleric in a previous story arc, his crippled body made whole by the cleric's magic, and who swore to defend her with his life and basically just followed her around as a mini-cohort.

So now the player gets to roleplay out the noble knight's grief that he'd never confessed his love, how much he regrets leaving her even when she'd admitted wanting to stay of her own free will, and how badly he wished to rescue her.

AHA! I cry to myself as the DM, rubbing my hands together with glee.

Enter the magic porn book once more. Only this time, it's leaking smoke and hot to the touch. The owner of the book checks it, discovers abyssal words appearing in burning script on its pages, and of his own free will takes it to the party's language expert, who's comforting the heartbroken knight. The text is translated, in front of the knight:

"What price would you pay to rescue her?"

The knight grabs the book and gets a glimpse of seductive feminine eyes and a sharp-toothed lascivious smirk staring out from the book's pages, words whispered into his ear as if from someone standing right behind him how he could gain the power to slay the dragon if he wished.

Then the rest of the adventurers tackle him to the ground and rip the book out of his hands, screaming bloody murder about deals with demons.

Of course, there's a dream sequence that evening, where the knight gets visions of him and all his allies being slaughtered in combat against the dragon, then an identical dream where he single-handedly defeats the dragon using a longsword that blazes with holy power and a shield bearing the glowing holy symbol of the cleric's deity.

There then follows a great byplay where the knight, waking earlier than everyone else from his restless dreams, steals the book from another player of his own free will. I even give the knight and the other player skill rolls to determine whether the heist gets pulled off successfully.

I shit you not, the knight rolls a natural 20, the other player a natural 1.

With that kind of result, nobody at the table dares argue the outcome. Roleplay is one thing, but when the dice are rolled, the results are sacred. Fate decrees the knight gets the book, whereupon he absconds with proper haste and gets intimate with a demon lord.

I must say I think I gave an amazing portrayal of the queen of all succubi. Specifically, her offer to the noble knight to grant him weapons to slay the dragon, and a hundred years and a day of joy and happiness with his love, if he agreed to her pact. He rightly questions her about her motives, and she goes from seductive temptress to apocalyptic rage when she screams in fury about the dragon scorning her. Apparently it's not a great idea to use a gift given to you as a memento of love by the queen of the succubi as a distraction when you're making moves on somebody else.

The knight gets the offer: power and happiness, all in exchange for one simple price. Their firstborn child.

He takes the bait, hook, line and sinker.

The knight pulls a longsword and shield out of the book, the ones that appeared in his dream. An abyssal mark appears seared into his palm as he draws the sword, a drop of his blood falling and soaking into the book's page. Demonic laughter rings out and a resounding voice decrees the pact sealed.

The best part of all this is that I had absolutely no plan or idea before the session started that any of this would happen. I made up all of this flying by the seat of my pants the entire time, but the entire table played into the events exactly like I'd predicted they would, an amazing spot of luck with some dice rolls backed up the trickiest part, and by the end of the night everyone's looking at me like I'm the craftiest god-damned bastard of all time.

Great session, overall.

[Egan_BW]

Nat-20 DMing roll, right there.

[pikachu17]

My friend doesn't really like DnD, so I decided I'd play a simplified version of it.
Anyway, I started him as a knight of King Arthur, and sent him to kill some bandits in the Uristian Forest.
Highlights of the session include:
 My friend insisting that the half-elven stable hand must have skill in archery, and thus should accompany him on his quest.
 A bandit in the trees shooting another archer in the trees, sending the corpse down on a sword-bandit.
 My friend recruiting a drunken mercenary with the promise of gorilla brains.
 After the stable hand refused to give a free horse to the mercenary, my friend's cutting the stable hand's head off.
 After a second fight with the bandit, where he and the mercenary got shot, trying to intimidate the healer into free healing, failing, chasing after the fleeing healer, firing his longbow indiscriminately.
After the healer gave in, Lancelot got word of this, and demanded that my friend surrender.
Did my friend surrender? No. Did my friend flee from Lancelot, when Lancelot was on horseback, and my friend was not? Hell no.
Then, Lancelot rolled a natural 1, and was disarmed.

[Egan_BW]

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