The Quintessential Rogue
Michael Mearls (edited by Anne Stokes)
Introduction:
This is the second entry from the Mongoose Publishing flavour of Builder books. Given my inordinate amount of seething hatred of how Wizard’s handled their own intellectual property one wonders why I stick my hand in the deep fryer of generic d20 stuff but I said I would give it a chance so here it goes.
The Quintessential Rogue is a mixed bag of rules and suggestions centered around things that involve, or presumably interest, rogues (and their players and GMs). The book is broken up into eighteen sections that could really be reorganized into broad categories: character creation, gadgets and tricks, and support/setting systems.
Character Creation
This part covers most of the first 50-odd pages of the book. In short order it covers the basics of any d20 book: prestige classes, feats, and skills. It also handles what should honestly be said are “kits” in the flavour of the old 2nd edition “Complete X” splatbooks that Mongoose is emulating (in format and even cover design). These “concepts” are kits (despite the repeated protestations of the author and Mongoose’s reps), something that straddles the fence between what Wizards called a ‘recipe’ (a no-rules listing of how to emulate a archetypical adventurer – like a swashbuckler, using only the existing rules without variation) and the variant/new base class. There is the generic ‘concept’ and the racially specific. Your mileage may vary but the concepts themselves are a mess – they do the ‘recipe’ portion of things relatively well, but the rules, bonuses and limitations that are slapped haphazardly on them bring back all the bad memories of the old ‘kits’ system (unbalanced bonuses/penalties, restrictions in areas that relatively unimportant and therefore not a drawback in any real sense of the word, etc). If you intend on using them then just use the inspirational stuff, junk the mechanics.
The prestige classes are actually much better than Wizards’ attempt with Song and Silence. Perhaps it is the more focused look at Rogues (although that is hardly a valid excuse) but we do get a much more diverse range of Prestige Classes here (despite their limited number). I personally liked the Deep Tracker (a scout with a knack for underground settings) and the Agent of the Crown (not just a boring spy). The prestige classes suffer the usual problems I’m now, unfortunately, getting used to in 3e products – they require some minor fiddling with progression rates for saves, hit dice, skills and such, and they aren’t exactly the unique concept, specialized or secret knowledge sources, and are rather generic in nature (the Deep Tracker instead of The Shining Ones, a group of elite deep gnome wanderers, or the generic ‘Crusading Footpad’ instead of ‘The Penitents of Saint Baldric”).
On the skill and feat side of things there is a lot of overlap with Song and Silence, but that’s somewhat unavoidable given the shared focus. The ‘new use’ section for class skills (and useful cross-class ones) is very welcome indeed – nothing ‘new’ as in rule-breaking but they do move beyond the rather strange limited scope provided for in the original, Core Rules 1 descriptions. The feats are a good mix, and are much more diverse than S&S. I like the wide variety, although I’m getting tired of d20 products inventing new unnecessary sub-categories for Feats. There are a couple that I am somewhat concerned about since they don’t seem that appropriate as feats per se (Guildmaster sits at the top of this list). In terms of scope the feats are comparable (and compatible) with other feats found elsewhere, the pre-reqs are not overly onerous nor terribly easy.
I almost forgot to mention that nestled in between the skills and the feats is a small, but incredibly helpful section on using normal equipment and gear in roguish activities. The advice is good for relatively unimaginative players or new players. The one drawback is its placement. It really should be next to the new equipment section.
Gadgets and Tricks
This section is split between “stuff for the character to use” and rules for things that the Core Rules do not provide for, like poison and traps. On the gear side the list is not terribly original, although the variant armor materials were interesting (although I’m not sure they were appropriate for a Rogues book). The magic items are similarly generic rogue – weapons that hide as rings on the finger, message arrows, and potions of treasure finding – there is a small list of magical locks which could prove infuriating as thief foils.
On the “trick” side we have poisons and traps. And here the art, which I haven’t mentioned yet due to its rather bland but inoffensive nature, goes into cheesecake overdrive. What is it about poison that screams ‘BREASTS’ in the mind of the artist I wonder? I can stand the skin-tight leather clad Angelina Jolie types for a while, but wandering around naked to show how evil and underhanded you are (for using poison) is somewhat troubling. The rules themselves are somewhat interesting – filling the vacuum in the existing rules. The trap section is less breast-heavy and also somewhat less useful as a toolkit, being more about minor variations on established traps (and giving them DCs for skills tests to set them up) than any real trap creation. They do include a section on “spell matrices” (basically programmed spell-casting traps) which is not really that necessary nor that well done (see previous rants on how altering/loosening existing item creation feats works much better than reinventing the wheel).
Laws of the Night
Whereas the other sections discussed Rogue-specific issues with the standard d20 rules we now move into entirely brand new systems to handle thieves’ guilds, reputation, town guards and such. First the placement of the Town Guard and Reputation sections is out of place – they should have come after the poison and trapmaking of the last section, and not before but that’s less of an issue. The reputation rules actually work quite well and I would like to see such a mechanic used for more than just Rogues – it works particularly well in terms of other more heroic characters. The town guard rules are lackluster but serviceable – more or less simple guidelines and advice on how “late medieval” fantasy guards would be organized, and rules given for their vigilance (i.e. how hard do they do their job and enforce the law). Tacked on at the bottom of a page is a small table giving punishments for various crimes by their type and severity.
Laws of the Night really starts with a discussion on the origins of your rogue and how that impacts their point of view, types of crimes, motivations, etc. A cutpurse born and raised in the gutter will likely be after different prey than a highborn aristocrat in it for the excitement and the girls. Then begins the rules and advice on guilds – how they integrate into society, what alternatives are their to the rather curious idea of a socially legitimate “Thieves’ Guild” (Explorer’s Societies, Spies, etc). The rules themselves break everything down into tables if you need to make everything mechanical – tables for size, membership, loyalty scores (how loyal are the guild members to each other and to the guildmasters), creating and maintaining these guilds and so on. The rules share a resemblance to the old Complete Thieves’ Handbook but seem to cover much more pertinent information, and the rules also covers post-creation guilds, generating plot hooks from various random events. There is almost enough here to play an Aria or Birthright-type game centering on the guilds themselves as player characters – and it wouldn’t take much to adapt the rules to fit other organizations (mercenary companies, wizard academies, etc).
The next chunk of rules covers designing a hideout for rogues of all stripes to hang out in. Here again things are a mix of choose and/or roll options – with mechanics for secrecy and discovery. A fiendish and formidable assassin’s guild probably doesn’t care and openly flaunts itself in a huge iron fortress, but the small guild in a major city is more likely to be a couple of safehouses and basements under legitimate merchants (fronts for the operations of the guild) and these thieves may care a bit more about keeping their secrets.
Finally we have the designer notes, something that most people breeze over but I like a lot. Michael Mearls does make some pointed comments about the lack of useable information for rogues in other books (although this has been dealt with since the publishing of this book) – in particular I think his comment about the overly complicated nature of traps in such things as Traps & Treachery is right on the money. Never having liked rogues in the past (preferring spellcasters myself) I found that after reading this I could go back and get more out of the book’s contents, seeing it through his eyes.
Conclusions
I think this book is a very serviceable addition to any d20 fantasy game. The art frankly should have been removed from the book and the layout could have been better but there are far worse products out there and content-wise this book is a solid toolkit.
Style: 3 (would have been a 4 if the art wasn’t a factor)
Substance: 4, with strong tendency to a 5 (personal issues about how prestige classes and recipes and feats work detracted somewhat).
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