Complete scoundrel - a review

[josephbt]

Hello there. A couple of days ago i got my hands on a copy of Complete Scoundrel, i read and allready i hate it. Yet again, the good people at WotC decided to publish crap instead of a book that would be a good fluffy or crunchy read. So, for all of you who plan on buying this book, here's a review that will, if all goes well, change your mind.

INTRO

The book, like most rap albums, begins with an intro. You know how it goes. One layer of intro story, then a layer of “what's new”, and then a “what you need to play”. But this time they went one step ahead and wrote a “Resources” part where they suggest good reading and watching for those interested in scoundrels in popular fiction. The other RPG publishers have been doing it for 10-15 years, it was about time WotC poped their cherry.
The suggestions are all okay, except for one. In the Games part, somebody wrote that The Doom Trooper from Doom(duh) is a scoundrel. WTF? How the fvck did they figure that one? The guy gets wounded and radioactive, finds a shotgun and a chainsaw and starts the massacre. Where is the scoundrel part? In that impaled bunny at the end of Doom? Desdan, i know you're with me on this one.

MAKING A SCOUNDREL

The next chapter, “Scoundrels of All Types”, is actually there to give you a chance to forget about your daily life by making you laugh. It's choke-full of bad advice and weird lists. Advice so bad, that you're gonna wonder what game are they playing.
The first part is a list of atributes that define scoundrels, so let's see what makes a scoundrel. Scoundrels:

• 
  
• break the rules
  
• think on their feet
  
• know their enemies' weaknesses
  
• don't restrict themselves to laws and morals that bind them down
  
• avoid fair fights
  
• get dirty, ie. don't let others do their job
  
• apply themselves emotionaly
  
• rely on instinct
  
• are not all corupt
  

So, please, take a look at the list and tell me which one of those characteristics doesn't apply to any and all adventurers. Know their enemies' weaknesses? You don't say, dumbasses.
Then we get a division of scoundrels by their alignment. You are free to skip it, although it's funny. Batman is LG, Riddick from Planet of Darkness is CE by their criteria, which again confirms my beliefs that they, along with most of the players, have no clue what alignments mean.
In the next part of the chapter, they explain how each of the classes could be played as a scoundrel. The bit with fighter description is so hilarious that i'm gonna quote it whole:

“Fighters: What a sharp word can’t accomplish, a sharp blade probably can. Fighter scoundrels excel at finding the weaknesses in their enemies’ defenses, using the best fighting ground to make their stands, and setting up ambushes to finish a battle as swiftly and decisively as possible. Outside combat, their heavy armor, powerful weapons, and fierce reputations lend them presence and authority. A fighter scoundrel who uses these advantages might get what he wants without even unsheathing his weapon.”

And then when you stop laughin', they catch you flat-footed with this one:

“Rangers: Often loners and always deadly, rangers can survive in nearly any environment, vanish and reappear anywhere, and slay powerful creatures—sometimes with a single blow.“

Woohoo, that was a good laugh.
And finally, a whole segment about scoundrel archetypes and how to create them. If you read such a chapter in Complete Mage, then you've got a good idea how bad the advice given here is. I'm not going to repeat all of it, but am going to list a couple of feat suggestions and other random stuff that caught my eye.

• 
  
• Lucky Catch (page 79): Just in case that key Jump check fails by 5 or more. - that key Jump check?
  
• Regardless of your main class, a level or two of bard doesn’t hurt, and it can help a lot. - switch can and doesn't
  
• Spring Attack: For the aggressive scoundrel on the go, no feat is better than this. - nothing says aggresive more than “I hit you once then move away”
  
• Insightful (Complete Arcane): The read magic spell-like ability might not add much to an arcane scoundrel, but detect magic is handy and detect secret doors is one of the archetype’s more important spells. - once per day cantrips taken as a feat?
  
• Spell Hand (Complete Arcane): Mage hand and open/close are by far the most important 0-level spells for an arcane scoundrel. The addition of Tenser’s floating disk is icing on the cake. - icing on a butcake. See Insightful
  
• No matter how powerful you are, eventually you run out of spells or get into a situation in which you can’t use magic. When that happens, you need mundane skills to fall back on. Taking a couple of levels of rogue gives you much-needed skill points, as well as the life-saving evasion class feature. - because taking more levels of that spellcaster would simply be unheard of. Who needs more and better spells?
  
• Daring Outlaw (page 76): This feat makes mixing rogue and swashbuckler levels even more attractive. - it was attractive?
  
• In some cases, you must lie, steal, and even kill for the church, all of which probably violate your religion’s tenets. - noooo, usually you do those things to stay in the religion
  
• Combat Casting: The divine spellcasting classes are not known for their agility or speed, and thus they often end up in the middle of melee combat. Reduce the chances of your vital spells being disrupted. - cmon, at least suggest Skill Focus Concentration if you're gonna suggest shite
  
• As Charisma-based manifesters, the wilder and the lurk benefit from picking up a level in a class with Charisma-based skills; either rogue or bard is a good choice. - lurk is Int based. You actually work for WotC, you have access to their books, look it up. Also, bard again??
  
• The beastmaster is tailor-made for this archetype, while the animal lord provides another interesting option; both are from Complete Adventurer. - no comment

PRESTIGE CLASSES

As usual, it is a mish-mash of crapy and mostly lame abilities and prerequisites. Let's start.

Avenging executioner - +5 BAB and some skills to enter, gain good Fort and Ref and a crapy bab(noone knows why don't you get full BAB since it is a prereq). All of your abilities are based on frightening opponents with less HD than you have. Not an impressive class, but still a class that could play yoyo with some opponents. At least it's only 5 levels total.
Battle trickster - a fighter class 3 levels long(literally). Gain 2 tricks and one feat. Nothing to write home about, but no prerequisites so you might as well take it. Better than having more fighter levels.
Cloaked dancer - 5 level bard class. You dance and caper arround and do nothing. On top of everything else, you don't get full spellcasting. I know i'm going to be accused of being homofobic, but i don't want to play a guy that beguiles other guys with erotic dancing.
Combat trapsmith - if you played assassin from Diablo “, then you know what this class does. Yes, you set traps in the middle of combat. You have to spend some cash to do it and roll a check. Later you can do it without cash. So what do these traps do? Although i was hoping for some insta-gib effects, what i got was 1st and 2nd level wizzo spells. Entangle, trip, blind, glitterdust, web, sleep, stinking cloud. So why don't i play a wizzo and simply state that my spells look like traps? No one knows. Avoid this class like chlamydia.
Fortune's friend - again a 5 level class. You gain more options while using luck feats. Since those feats suck bigtime, guess what i'll say bout this class.
Grey guard - a real, full 10 levels, paladin class. Entry is organic, no fvcked up crap, your paladin abilities keep increasing the whole time(except for magical horsey). You gain some cute abilities like harming people with your lay on hands, and frightening them, and smiting anything, and gaining some skill bonuses. So it's all good? Of course not. Your most powerfull abilities are not mechanic, but roleplayerish.

• 
  
• Sacrament of Trust: Upon entering this prestige class, you take a vow of allegiance to your faith beyond that of any ordinary paladin. This vow grants you a measure of freedom to act on your cause’s behalf without fear of retribution should your duties require you to break your code of conduct. Dishonorable acts still cause you to lose both gray guard and paladin class features until you atone, but this infraction is considered much less severe than it would be for a paladin.
  Thus, whenever you seek to atone for deeds that you willingly commit in the name of your faith but that break your code of conduct, a cleric casting an atonement spell on your behalf does not expend 500 XP as is normally required. This reprieve applies only to acts intended to further the cause of righteousness and the gray guard’s faith. No XP cost applies to a gray guard atoning after beating a confession from a heretic, for example, but the cost would have to be paid for one who started a bar-room brawl.
  
• Sacrament of the True Faith: At 10th level, you gain your order’s full confidence. You are granted the freedom to act on behalf of your faith as you deem necessary. Thus, you never risk losing your class abilities in the pursuit of a just cause and never need to atone for violating your code of conduct.
  This trust does not grant you the freedom to act as violently or immorally as you wish, however. Release from your code of conduct depends on your acting as an exemplar of your order’s ideals. If you violate this trust by habitually acting in an immoral or corrupt manner, the leaders or deity of your faith might revoke their blessing and banish you from the ranks of the faithful (see Ex-Gray Guards, below).
  
• Code of Conduct: As a gray guard, you are held to the same code of conduct as a paladin. You must be of lawful good alignment and must never willingly commit an evil actYou must also pledge to respect legitimate authority, act with honor (not lying, cheating, using poison, and the like), aid the needy, and punish those who harm the innocent. If you contravene your code of conduct, you must atone for the transgression or lose all class abilities from both gray guard and paladin levelsAs you advance in the prestige class, this code becomes more flexible. However, its tenets still apply: You can never break your code without good reason.
  

There are so many wrong things in paragraphs written above, that i wouldn't know where to start.. I'll leave the discussion to others.
Magical trickster - as Battle trickster, but with spells. It's nifty but you do lose a spellcasting level. Could be usefull for some builds, but i'd rather have my spellcaster level.
Malconvoker - summons evil to battle evil. A 10 level class, but you lose one spellcaster level right away. Supposedly summons really good. Don't know, i didn't notice it. I'd rather play an Alienist.
Master of masks - it's a Chameleon, but without any good abilities. You have to be a bard to enter it, but then you don't get full spellcaster levels or bard BAB. You wear a mask that gives you once per day spells or some minor crap. 10 levels long, but only on paper.
Mountebank - Must have Deceitfull feat to enter and some skills, so that you can, by the time that you're 10th level, gain alter self, minor sneak attack and dimension door a couple of times a day. Seriously, 10 levels of bard do more than this class.
Psibond agent - psi crap. Next.
Spellwarp sniper - easy prerequisites, although you have to have a level of rogue. Full spellcaster levels, 5 levels long. Your main ability is spellwarping – turning spells into rays. Eventualy you can turn 5th lvl spells into rays. Or so i thought until i read the description again. Only spells with instantaneous duration, area effect, range greater than touch, are elligible. So lets flip through the olde PHB. Found any such spells? I did. Burning hands, fireball, lightning bolt, cone of cold and waves of fatigue. How may levels did i say it was long? 0? Okay.
Uncanny trickster - as Battle and Magical trickster, but for skillmonkeys. Get one new mechanic - +1 level of existing class features. Works on spellcaster levels also.

So there you go. More later.

[Zherog]

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[*]Daring Outlaw (page 76): This feat makes mixing rogue and swashbuckler levels even more attractive. - it was attractive?

Sure - for one level. It's like taking a level of fighter to use your bonus feat on Weapon Finesse, only it has better skills (and slightly better saves if I recall correctly).

[Judging__Eagle]

So, casters get a buff?

Seems so. Every time crappy non-caster stuff is released, it's really a super-stealth buff for casters.

Well, they've already said that they don't want to give out good feat and class advice to players as it stands.

In fact, one of the designers for Comp Mage said that she'd like to have put down that using div metamagiced persistant spells is good and effective, but it was "cut".

So, WoTC has a record of handing out bad advice; or NPCs that can't possibly meet the pre-reqs for the PrCs they are in.

[josephbt]

FEATS & SKILL TRICKS

As all Feats and Skills chapters in WotC book lately, it begins with some new mechanics. Only it isn't all new. It's like when they rewrote the “can attack the turn it comes into play” in M:TG into “haste”. Those feats where you lose some sneak attack dice to gain some irrelevant bonuses are now called Ambush feats.
Of all those feats, 10 in all, one is usefull, three could be usefull and the others get some sort of Arkturic award. The usefull one reduces SR by 5 for a mere 3d6 sacrificed for a whole minute. I personally like it. Could be usefull ones: confuse for one round – but give a save, give 50% misscast chance for verbal spells for 3 rounds – but you have to take Improved unarmed strike, lets you treat your opponent flat-footed in the next round – but only for the first attack and you sacrifice a lot of dice.
The Golden Asstastic Feat Award of Ambush Feats goes to Disemboweling Strike. They wasted a perfectly good name for the ability to lose a lot of sneak attack dice to deal d4 CON dmg to one opponent once per encounter. And you have to have Weapon focus. Jesus freakin sneakattacking Christ.

New are the Luck feats. They all do the same thing – they let you reroll one single roll to which that feat is tied. The rerolls are mostly swift, but sometimes are imediate actions or no actions. In order to reroll you have to spend a luck point, which is gained by taking a luck feat. Luck point can be spent on any luck feats you have. I won't write more about those feats, because they suck like an industrial vacuum cleaner.

I'm also not going to write about bardic feats. I don't think i have to explain why.

The general feats have:

• 
  
• stalker feats – stack fighter or monk levels with ninja levels for various purposes like ki pool or unarmed damage bonus or feats or AC bonus
  
• daring feats – stack fighter or rogue levels with swashbuckler levels for dodge bonus, grace bonus, sneak attack and feats
  
• swift feats – stack rogue or ranger levels with scout levels for purposes like skirmish
  
• trick feats – add more tricks to your tricks known pool
  
• spellthief and scout and ninja feats - who cares?
  

So are there any good feats of those 56? Yes, one. Savvy rogue. It lets you improve your rogue special abilities. So now your crippling strike can cripple stuff that is immune to sneak attack(cmon, lets see those golems now), defensive roll is 3/day, imp evasion and slippery mind is with a +2 to save, skill mastery is take 12, and opportunist can be used a number of times/round as you have AoOs. And they didn't stop there. The feat works on all rogue abilities that you have and on all those that you gain later. Good feat all around, if you ask me.

Skill tricks are also new. To learn a skill trick, you have to spend 2 skill points and have prequisites. You can know a number of skill tricks equal to half your level. They are usable once per combat encounter or once per minute for noncombat situations and are mostly irrelevant. Sorta sweet ones are:

• 
  
• Conceal Spellcasting – duh
  
• Easy Escape – gain big bonuses on Escape Artist check against Large or larger opponents
  
• Escape Attack – swiftly hit opponent if you escaped from that opponents grapple this turn. The opponent is flat-footed.
  
• Never Outnumbered – demoralize everyone within 10'. Could be used for juggling opponents.
  
• Quick Escape – use Escape Artist swiftly
  
• Swift Concentration – Use a swift action to concentrate on spells. Still can't cast while concentrating, though.

SPELLS

There some okay ones, but nothing, nothing at all, stands out. Mostly they are crap, but what were the odds of getting no “wow, thats good” spells? Some decent ones are:

• 
  
• Create Fetch – like simulacrum, but no skills or abilities of anykind
  
• Evacuation Rune – scribe a rune on something, then teleport to it freely within 24hrs
  
• Manifestation of the Deity – swiftly shake opponents
  
• Scry Location – like the name says
  
• Spell Theft – targeted dispel, you get the knowledge of all spell affecting target and get all the spells you dispel on yourself. Works only on beneficial spells
  
• Spore Field – increase DC of Balance checks by 5, makes terrain difficult and sickens people on it for one round. Great if you combine with Grease.

EQUIPMENT

Of course, more equipment is the key to all our problems. Can't solve a problem? Buy this. First we get to read about hidden compartments and how they work. Since we have detect magic to find important stuff, we don't care about hidden compartments. Next are the bayonet attachments that do nothing but let you make AoOs with ranged weapons to which they are afixed at -2 to hit. Onward to hidden blades. Did you know that you can buy a hidden blade and then draw it as a move action in order to attack with it with only a -2 penalty? Well, now you know.
None of alchemical items can repeat the glory of acid flask, and the poisons are mostly worthless. Except for Blasfemix(sounds like some drain cleaner fluid) which screws divine spellcasters a good deal and with a save DC of 22, it's not a thing to laugh at.
The magical items, like most of this chapter, don't impress me at all. Aspect mirror is a bloody GSM device! Cmon! A cell phone?? Thats all you came up with?. Pfff. There are some that could be usefull like Panic Button that you swiftly activate to gain some minor stuff like HP or bonus to saves or AC. Trinket of Trickery gives you a trick for free so you dont have to set those 2 skillpoints on fire. You can have only one unfortunately.
They also came up with some sort of hippy druid crap, like living items. I guess they watch too much Star Trek. None of the items does any sort of even remotely usefull stuff.

SCOUNDREL ADVENTURES

The last chapter is all about DMing scoundrels and some bland organisations and a couple of legendary locations. At the end of the chapter are some sample contacts and a 101 story hook. This chapter is sooo boring that i understand why it is at the end of the book. The editor knew that if he put it in the beggining, people would stop reading the moment they picked the book up. I'm not saying that he did his job well. I dabble a bit in editing(books), and i can say that this book could do with a chapter makeover if not content rewriting. First they tell you how to make a scoundrel and then, some 70 pages later, they explain the mechanics behind all those things they were talking about. Then they introduce 11 new prestige classes, which all do something with theese new mechanics, but we still don't know what these mechanics are. Bad editing, people. At least i didn't see any page XX stuff. I guess the only thing i liked about this book is the art. It is consistent with descriptions and generaly looks cool.

And thats it about this book. Comments are welcome.

[Judging__Eagle]

Hmm, of course.

But, we could rebuild those feats. Make them stronger, faster, tougher.

Like; make Disemboweling strike do 1 point of Con damage for each SA dice you give up?

Or 2 for every 3 dice? Maybe 3 for every 5 dice given up if you feel mean.

It's not a huge deal, but it's a decent guideline for rebuilding those feats.

[Cielingcat]

This review does not have enough profanity and hatred for my tastes.

[MrWaeseL]

So Savvy rogue improves all your rogue abilities? That seems insane by WotC standards.

[josephbt]

Cielingcat, it's simply crap. It can't inspire great hate or anger. Sometimes it's so bland that you yawn.

And as far as Savvy Rogue is concerned, i was amazed that got through editing. It's like Natural Spell, only for rogues.

[Cielingcat]

I think WotC realized they can't really stealth nerf Fighters any more, so they've settled for powering everyone else up.

[Username17]

The fact that Complete Scoundrel is a failure should honestly come as no surprise. It was a genuine attempt to do something that is completely impossible. The goal was to write a book about being more creative than your opponents. That's obvious, but it's also impractical.

See, if it's in a book, then it isn't ingenuity when yu use it. In fact, any of the tricks they write up in this books are by definition not tricks - they are actually just default rules. They are character abilities. When you have the ability to "Corner Perch" written on your character sheet... it's fvcking written on your character sheet. If you use that ability it isn't a fvcking surprise.

Everything that you wrote on your sheet when you made your character is essentially narrated to the audience as something your character does. If they subsequently do it, there's no suspense.

---

Had they wanted to actually make a book for ingenious activities and surprising trickery, what they would have had to do is to write a bunch of things that people could do without writing things on their character sheet. Yeah, if you can succeed at a climb check by more than 5, you can pull your hands free and totally pull some shit. If you want to take a -2 penalty to your bluff check for each enemy, go ahead and feint against multiple targets. What the fvck do I care?

Argh.

As is, they created 157 page waste of my god damned time.

-Username17

[Leress]

Fighter's got jack shit. They gave rogue pretty much everything except alchemical items, and they peed on the me for giving the same feats but with different names.
The Skill trick for me fall into "throw this to the NPCs (i.e. warrior, expert, adept)"

http://boards1.wizards.com/showthread.p ... st11456479