Shattered Kingdoms

As ardith pointed out how easily it is to circumvent circle stab, I here is an idea to make it more useful. Basically, they can circle stab anyone that has a 'side' available. Melee removes the 'front' side.

xxx
xyx
xyx The rogue could circle stab anyone that is x because there is a 'side' available for them to stab, same with:

xx
xx
xx

The downside of not doing the traditional circle stab is that it does only 8 or 9/10th's the damage. Lowering the damage to the traditional circle stab, a little, would still make it useful but not abusable.

You should probably cut the damage by more than that if you're going to implement this. At least a third and maybe by half. Circle stab seems to hit for about the same amount of damage as backstab.

Otherwise I rather like the idea, since everyone seems to think rogues need a buff, and this would make them more difficult to negate in group combat.

Opportunist: specify a group member. For the next round, when that group member successfully connects with an enemy using an active, targetted ability, and you are not in command lockout, you get a free circle stab attempt against the target.

I should have put my standard, the numbers are somewhat random just to show a direction.

It would be elite if circle stab and backstab weren't prevented by pcs, or NPCs standing behind someone.

Pipe dreams are wonderful.

Also, I am going to laugh hard when Tragonis comes back, rolls his rogue, then realizes they are horrible and deletes in shame.

I like this idea, but it's worth pointing out that you can't circle stab the guy in the center column in the front because his flanks and his back are not exposed.

Rogues should also get the tumble skill. If you ever come across someone that is smart enough to have a reach weapon and target the rogue in a 2nd rank then you have to hope the guy in front of you has rescue or you're going to either be fleeing, quaffing recall, or dying. A rogue that gets targeted is completely shut down from using his flanking attacks, and despite the fact that rogues get skills like disarm (wtf), and trip, there are usually very few opportunities for a rogue to use these skills.

You should also be able to peek into and steal out of containers. Only newbs really keep stuff in their inventories. If you're online, and there's a rogue on, this should be a real threat. Rogues should also have to ability to look at pcs without giving them the echo that they looked at them.

Right now, though, the only real bonus to playing a rogue is if you really, really hate storebought pets, and want to kill as many as you can.

That is why I marked him with a y, the y's couldn't be targeted with the exposed side attack.

You are absolutely correct about the lack of threats rogues are to most classes... well all classes.

I think the confusion is that muktar represented the group's formation as if you were the enemy and were glancing at them, and Ardith thought the formation was being represented as if you were a part of the group. The top row of x's and y's is actually the back row of the formation here.

I got confused at first, too.

Rogues just need a battle whip they can backstab/circle stab with, reach around ...

You're proposing a new rogue skill, "reach around"?