Shattered Kingdoms

Actually, expanding the idea in all the ways you suggest sound great to me.
I was envisioning at minimum a count, with a full success being similar to a 'look'.
If something like this was implemented, why not pair it with another skill.
harass - The rogue can draw the attention of an opponent to him or herself, if out of reach the opponent would redirect to the first rank in the column. (a taunt without secondary benefits)
This would allow a rogue to draw and redirect an opponents attention, allowing even a shaman to act as primary tank without needing to rescue.

As much as this is a standard for rogues in many games, I would think the reflex bonus should be a general ability for most adventurer classes.

Just to be clear, backstab and circle stab do less damage than they used to prior to the enhanced damage reduction. Even still, sure, a buffed and prepared rogue can dish out large amounts of damage.



There are more rogue weapons that can bypass stone skin than there used to be, but there are still not a great deal of them. Some non-standard damage types are more potent than they used to be, too, with some of the changes that went in in the last year with regard to innate racial magic resistance.



Perhaps there are too many sources of stone skin and mirror image.



I think divert has a lot of potential. It can even be used to set up bizarro formations with a rogue in the front rank diverting to other front rank characters, or second-rank characters against enemies with reach, allowing the rogue to use more of its skill set, or letting them go around with totally non-standard tactics like using a great sword in PvE just to do something different for no particularly good reason. It would also let rogues of more than just one cabal be far more useful in general. There are also interesting implications for mounted or mountable rogues. Basically, you could try things besides just spamming circle stabs for 30 minutes in PvE.

It also doesn't strike me as OP or potentially unbalancing, just something different and useful which could be unique to rogues. Some rogues may prefer to just keep spamming circle stabs, and that's fine, too.

Evade seems decent, just a little boring and vanilla. Kind of stereotypical rogue stuff. I agree it would help them in PvE and also wouldn't be unbalancing or OP.

How would you feel about this also being a racial skill for minotaurs? Minotaurs supposedly have sensitive hearing according to their help file. Would that be cool, or should it be unique to rogues?



That would turn a rogue into a battlefield commander, which doesn't seem entirely like their style. They would be able to redirect foes from anyone to anyone with two commands, which seems over-the-top for what they are. I'd personally rather keep the two abilities separated and unique, so that swashbucklers and rogues each bring their own distinct formation tactics to the table. All that said, a rogue already could turn a shaman into a primary tank with just divert in many types of formations.

There may be too many sources - I just don't think the main problem is availability, but rather how long the spells last? Mirror image on scrolls, staves and wands should maybe not last so long that you can sit around with it all the time. Perhaps make its duration the same as that of spirit aura, so that MI and SS is something you only use when you know it is needed? That would at least make surprise attacks somewhat more likely to be successful?

I like the idea of WHERE for Rogues if it weren't quite so accurate of real time location. Since it's based on the rogue's street smarts to find out where a person is, perhaps a WHERE command would give a semi-random NPC report of who last saw that character pass by. For example, if the character had visited Jemm recently, a WHERE would report "Jemm reports seeing character X go south at 5pm on such and such day." It wouldn't give an exact location but definitely would give a trail that the rogue could start trailing the victim IF they know the location of the NPC who is reporting to them. Maybe it would be a charisma-based save as to whether a given NPC would report so that a higher charisma would be needed for city guards and the like while a lower charisma would only get townsfolk and merchants. Just a thought.

Possibly so. I think in this specific circumstance though, these two buffs just do too much to neuter the rogue class in particular. On top of their other weaknesses. Against any other class in the game, these spells are helpful buffs but not to this degree.

Counterplay is a good thing, but not so much when you can effectively make this one class relatively easy to ignore with one or two very easy steps.

This "where" idea sounds oddly similar to an idea I pitched for the MC when they were lacking an ability. It was determined to be too OP then but now you want to give it to an entire class instead of just a cabal?

None of these suggestions will fix rogues for either PvE or PK.

In PvE, you either heal, tank or do repeatable, sustained damage. Rogues do repeatable, sustained damage, but so do mercenaries and barbarians. However, those classes can also tank and they are better equipped to absorb more of the splash, incidental and AoE damage from encounters in end game zones. Obviously, rogues are not ever going to be able to heal or tank (light armor) so the focus should be on damage. In most games, the light armor melee classes do more damage than the heavy armor melee classes.

Not on SK, though.

TLDR: Rogues need to be able to do more repeatable, sustained damage than heavy armor melee classes or they will never have a spot in my group (unless I'm feeling sorry for Mayra or need a door picked).

How about you make persuade work better and on pic's, put songs of sleep back the way it was, and give bards shield block to stop the squishy.

Part of the reason being a bard sucks is because of the damn lag time when you start and stop singing, oh and you can't order/ recite/ cast while doing your thing, can't quaff so you can't heal or word out. You are also the very first target in any skirmish. So, I would like those three things and I would quit ranting about bards sucking.

I don't remember this particular conversation or the exact pitch that was made. But there are definitely abilities that I would consider fitting for a specific class that would be OP when applied to a faction, because then ANY class can get access to it and also ONLY that faction would have access to it.

As for this specific ability, I don't find 'where' to be at all thematic. Finding the theme first often helps you determine the outline and limits of an ability. I would define this as 'streetwise' and require the rogue to find an intelligent humanoid in a room in order to use it. Each use would involve a bribe. If you fail the skill check, that person doesn't have any info and you wouldn't be able to use it on them again for some amount of time.

If the check succeeds, then what you get depends on how far away the target really is. If you are not even in the same kingdom, then you would be told they are somewhere 'in Uxmal'. Then you can travel to Uxmal and use it again and get an area such as 'in Necropolis'. And finally once in the Necropolis, you might be told 'at a broken street'. Each use would involve needing to find someone to ask, paying a bribe and then making your skill check.

That's my thoughts on how it might work. I don't think this is too powerful because it takes some amount of time to zero in on a location. And you may not even want to bother with the in-area check if the person is moving around a lot. Being limited to rogues makes them a more valuable asset for a PK team, but you could also use it to find NPCs which might be required for a quest and wandering around.