Post/Author/DateTime	Post
#1 soren37 Feb 20, 2010 22:04:25	So I'm starting a campaign this weekend.  The party has three people with no NPCs mentioned so far.  So far, there's a Dwarf Fighter, a Favoured Soul, and me, the Gnome Wizard.  I decided to specialize in illusions and bar abjuration and conjuration.  After looking over my stats, I realized that I might be able to pull off a fairly good rogue as well.  I'm just wondering if my base stats would work for the class. STR- 10 (0) DEX- 16 (+3) CON- 14 (+2) INT- 17 (+3) WIS- 10 (+0) CHA- 10 (+0) Also, any tips to play the class well?
#2 humanmind Feb 21, 2010 0:23:59	If I were you I would forgo the Wizard/Rogue in favor of a beguiler (assuming you have access to PHB2). They cast spells like a sorcerer and have access to illusion and enchantment spells (plus a few others) and they have very similar skills of a rogue. They don't get sneak attack but they gain bonuses to spellcasting against flatfooted foes and abilities to achieve it. Masters of stealth, charm, and cunning, they are much better than a Wiz/rogue.
#3 gagnrath Feb 21, 2010 9:24:42	Wizard Rogues or the other way around work out very well if you plot out what you want to do in advance and decide the path they should take.   In most every reasonable build you will heavily favor either a rogue or a wizard before going into your prestaige class or carring it out to you get 9th level spells as a wizard.   Alot also depends on race because of this as keeping you from getting an exp penalty depends on having one of those as a favoured class.  With the gnome favoured class being Bard you can usually talk a DM into letting it go as a wizard.  The real downside of keeping them even is that at higher levels you don't really have the caster levels to be successful as the parties wizard if the group is 10th level and you are 5/5 same for rogue (though with a high int wizard you can compensate alot for the lower rogue levels with the int bonus skill points, you won't be as varied as a rogue but in the main skills you use you can be almost as good.  This is sorta why I strongly recommend being either a magic enhanced rogue with a couple (3 namely) levels of wizard to get you neat bonuses and spells to aid in roguing.  Or a wizard that uses lots of targeted spells to get sneak attack and have evasion the rogueishness is just an added charm.
#4 soren37 Feb 21, 2010 10:30:28	I'll see if I can get my hands on a copy of the PHB2, that beguiler class sounds quite interesting.  If I can't, then thank you both.  Hopefully it goes well and the DM doesn't screw us like he did last time.  (Druid with +1 DEX, +1 CHA and +3 WIS.  *shudder*)
#5 vampire_bat Feb 21, 2010 17:33:28	illusionist rogue if your dm runs illusions well doh brainfart. read title not the rest. excuse me
#6 itsme4eva1 Feb 21, 2010 18:11:52	Well going rogue would work. Just gotta use good combos and you really should not get rid of abjuration that is where many of your armor buffs to aid you will come from. If you are going rogue wizard i suggest you cast darkness then cast darkvision on self and you will be killing things with sneak attack the entire encounter if they don't have darkvision. Also I would suggest using transfiguration spell bulls strength and cat's grace on self when you gain access to it as this would make you even stronger and more lethal to the enemy.
#7 soren37 Feb 21, 2010 21:54:10	True.  Not to mention my party members would appreciate those if they needed it.
#8 brassbaboon Feb 21, 2010 22:49:16	A spell casting rogue is one of my favorite concepts in 3.5. I haven't tried to make it work in 4e yet, but I've done several variations in 3.5. I thought the spellthief would be a good class for that reason, but in reality the spellthief is woefully underpowered, and gets more underpowered as you go up in levels. I've currently got a 1st level sorcerer/4th level rogue who has purchased a couple pearls of power, a couple of wands and a rod of metamagic: lesser extend, and he is pretty unstoppable. Throw in a couple of scrolls and he's even more awesome. I don't think darkvision lets you see in magical darkness, but "Ebon eyes" does, so that's one of his tricks. He also uses "distract assailant" as a swift action and then uses two-weapon fighting to get two sneak attacks in one round. The pearls of power come in real handy to recast first level spells. One trick that's pretty nifty is to use zero level ray touch attacks to gain sneak attack damage. It's pretty nice doing 10 damage or so with a cantrip. Since you can use any wand or any scroll on the sorcerer/wizard spell list, you can do some pretty awesome things, like cast cat's grace and boost your AC and weapon finessed attack bonuses simultaneously. Of course you can also use a variety of spells which allow you to gain sneak attack on critters you normally can't sneak attack. I've tried a ranger/sorcerer too, and that's pretty cool also. Especially since at level 4 you gain access to the ranger spell list as well, and the pearls of power work just as well for them. At a little higher level, throw in a minor ring of spell storing and you can manufacture four or five critical bowshots a day. Manage to get those crits against your favored enemy and you're basically shooting a grenade launcher... One level of sorcerer is a pretty powerful diversion for a character to take...
#9 shadow_viper Feb 22, 2010 0:14:57	If you are going rogue wizard i suggest you cast darkness then cast darkvision on self and you will be killing things with sneak attack the entire encounter if they don't have darkvision. Except that Darkvision does not allow one to see through magical darkness.
#10 itsme4eva1 Feb 22, 2010 18:29:59	In 3.5 the darkness says that nothing about you not being able to see just that you will still have a miss chance. I have looked at the spell many times because I was trying to get my dm to allow me to multiclass rogue/wizard/shadow dancer so i would be pretty much jumping around the entire encounter just sneak attacking everything. It just says that even with darkvision you still have the 20% miss chance.