Kip up, Tumble and Hips

[RedLancer]

From what I can find, the ability to "kip up" is tied to class features (Thief Acrobat) and a feat in Complete Scoundrel; what's the justification for everyone with Acrobatics ranks getting it for free?

https://www.d20srd.org/srd/epic/skills.htm#tumble

Ah, the good ol' "We're not really epic characters but here's a select epic skill usage" gag.

[selhan]

Why it feels like some people never even seen the stats of a pure Hipster? lol

AC barely 40 buffed
AB looks much worse
Saves pfft might as well not even say they have any
HP look like they dying even after a rest
Lucky if they can even take 1-3 Solid crits some cases a simple hit for that matter depending who's swinging at their heads
And people want them to get knockdown easier? lol
Nearly every Hipster class will rp they hate magic, there a damn good reason so.
A Dex base "Sneak" without Epic Dodge , UMD is utterly terrible to try and play unless they tossing in Swash or duelist which will make attacks even more horrid
And when they do want to make sure they gonna land something, most cases they gotta reveal themselves anyways and have wards from every region of Faerun

Any plain sneak attacking build shouldn't be trying to face anything face to face to begin with.
Most that are anything better than mediocre put a whole lot of homework into the build, but they still had to give up something that hurts their feelings.
I will never consider hips to be Op, its the "Oh snap GTFO" button. Op is when a 300 dmg zerk hits you that flipped your entire HP pool 2x over lol

[tjhyland]

I agree 100%

[Garnet]

Agreed, rogue life is tuff! Not only are we required to have Epic Dodge to stay alive (I use that the term 'stay alive' loosely, because at 200HP its easy to get killed in 1 or 2 crits instantly..... It happens.... Rogue life ), but Epic Precision is literally -required- to play; otherwise, we do 0 Damage to many monsters because of Immunities and our 0 strength to overcome DR.

I've never really understood why there is so much dislike for rogues . We got burned on the addition of the "Stealth Icon", almost completely got wiped out from the suggestion to remove 'skill stacking' on gear, but.... here we are again trying to take stuff away something else... Its quite hard to play a rogue. We can't even dream of going to the higher level areas for loots without -a lot- of help; yet, there are plenty of classes that I see go to Skull Gorge, or the Pirates alone, and take on a whole army while the player behind the screen is half falling asleep. Its comical that they can run through at full speed mindless with little thought needed, but we aren't talking about 'bringing them down'. And to be clear, I'm not suggesting they need to be changed either-- everyone finds enjoyment playing the game in different ways....

I guess I don't really understand where these sort of requests are coming from... does it stem from a lost fight in PVP?

[Mork]

I guess I don't really understand where these sort of requests are coming from... does it stem from a lost fight in PVP?

Of course it does! It's how I noticed that you can knock someone down and get zero attack rolls on them before they'll do equivalent of 3 rounds of actions in 1 second! Hips OP - your bluff won't work on a Pally

[Garnet]

I don't think '1 fight against 1 person' should trigger a game-wide change that's going to affect all rogue players. Us rogues get demolished by that quicken-cast spells & Instant death magic as we have no will saves, we immediately die... Or horrid wilting, that one hurts! definitely been killed by it by another player . HIPs didn't even matter since they attacked first (justified RP led to it) and then they just shoot the ground-- don't even have to see us .

I think the examples for different match-ups of players fighting players are probably numerous where one side feels it was 'unfair' because of something another character did... A Paladin in the death-magic example above would of likely easily wont that fight.. rogues not a chance. Either way though, changing something to affect so many players I hope isn't viewed lightly.

[Deathgrowl]

there are plenty of classes that I see go to Skull Gorge, or the Pirates alone, and take on a whole army while the player behind the screen is half falling asleep.

Then the problem is those other classes. Rogue is fine. The high epic areas shouldn't be easily soloable by anyone.

I have a rogue16/whirling dervish4/shadowdancer10 that I have played for over a decade. I too greatly dislike the stealth icon as it kind of takes away immersion (but I agree with the reason for its implementation). But beyond that, even with my quite weak build, I can solo the Frost Giant King with barely any consumable use.

From a PvE perspective: A standard rogue20/assassin10 hits harder than basically anything else, and most mobs and even bosses on the server have AC low enough to be hit with several attacks in the rogue's first flurry (which means landing the sneak attacks). They also have two of the best defensive feats in the game: Epic Dodge and HIPS.

The only true competitor for sheer damage output is some archer builds.

So I disagree that rogue life is tough. Rogue life is fine. But I also disagree that HIPS is OP. HIPS is fine.

The problem lies elsewhere.

But as far as any suggestion here goes, I stand by my usual perspective: Fix PvE before doing anything about character build options. And as for PvP, no one should seriously care about these particular points. If both sides know how to use their build best, PvP is won by those willing to spend enough gold on heal potions.Very little else matters.