the no-magic club

[Ahku]

Already there...

I have been running a 'Swashbuckler, Rogue, Shadow Dancer' and soon to be Weapon Master!

(Focusing on Rapier with Insightful Strike, Combat Insight)

~A

[Storm Munin]

Heavy armor rogue feinter, if enchanted items are allowed.

Else I doubt anything besides a monk or a MoA actually works.

[chad878262]

Have they actually fixed it so it's not broken the OTHER way?

IIRC, according to PnP Rogue/Assassin should only be capable of HiPSing in urban environments (IE blending into a crowd) while Rangers can HiPS in the wilderness.

That's actually wrong. From the DMG p.181:

"Hide in Plain Sight (Su):
At 8th level, an assassin can use the Hide skill even while being observed. As long as he is within 10 feet of some sort of shadow, an assassin can hide himself from view in the open without having anything to actually hide behind. He cannot, however, hide in his own shadow."

While in the Player's Handbook, it makes it clear for Rangers:

"Hide in Plain Sight (Ex):
While in any sort of natural terrain, a ranger of 17th level or higher can use the Hide skill even while being observed."

That means that the Ranger can hide even in a cave, not necessarily in the wilderness.

Regardless, the point was that Vanilla HiPS (which the server used to have) ws seriously broken with Rangers not able to HiPS at all, and the other class able to HiPS even when it shouldn't be possible. I know there's fixes/workarounds for some of the issues (IIRC, the exploit enabling HiPS in combat is hard-coded in the mechanics and can't be fixed) since then, but I've no idea if they've been implemented.

There was a bug where leveling as a ranger when you had assassin hips would cause range HiPS to override the assassin version, but that's been fixed. If camouflage works in an area so will ranger HiPS. SD/Assassin HiPS works everywhere.

[Ithilan]

F14/WM7/FB5/WD4 - just swallow your pride and use a shield. Still crits OFTEN for 100-110. Or lower the crit damage and increase AC by turned IPA off and turning ICE on.

Or Dwarven Defender

Or Wisdom Monk

Or any HiPS character

Or ....

This.. there are plenty of viable non magic builds.

I cant even begin to recall how many HIPS builds ive seen over the years, or dwarves for that matter that in best Toinus style just charge in and live by the "kill or be killed" motto.

But there is definately a trend regarding magic or UMD, which is understandable considering how most of the "end game" utilizes spells.

[Bobthehero]

I am a fan of pure melee characters, so that's what I play more often than not, the exception here is my MaA with a few levels of Blackguard, but that's it. I personally hate UMD, because its existence means that you can justify magic as being a requirement to survive most encounters, and I personally don't care for magic.