Community

Well bluff to get advantage is something that can be done anyway.
I'm pretty sure you can move and stealth, but in 5e that will probably impose disadvantage rather than a normal penalty.

As for the acrobatics, rolling every time an attack is made against you will annoy a lot of people, if you were to use that at least make it 1/round.

Overall this would probably be more fiddly than the current system and lead to a lot more complaints, especially if you create a rogue niche that only they can get out of skills.

Personally I'm still with the "give rogues advantage on trained skills" bandwagon, its simple and easy without giving away pure automatic successes. 

I don't know why the identity of this class is so focused on skills.

Fighters are all about coordination, tactical decisions and physical activities, and no one point that they should be the skill masters of something. They gain class features. This logic can also be applied to the other classes.

Just make rogues choose specific class features as they level, that can be used without any skill rules but are compatible. The rogue could also choose non skill related features and rely on normal skills.

Some of these skill related class features could be…
…Sense trap: passive roll when they are near a trap. Use special class modifier to detect and disable traps or automatic succes to disable trap by taking more time.
…Vigilance: use special class modifier to detect or search anything. Bonus against surprise.
…Infiltration: use special class modifier to open locks, stealth, or to use special forms of movement such as climbing, squeeze, or walking on a rope.
…Deception: use special class modifier to lie, disguise, mimic, forge documents, or detect if the deception works.
…Acrobatic stunts: use special class modifier to perform acrobatics or athletics, gain a climb speed and reduce damage from falling.
…Silver tongue: use special class modifier to influence others. May inflict the charmed or frightened condition on a target.

I think rogues need their own class features, and not special rules to use existing skill rules. With this kind of features, old fashioned rogues players don't even need to use the skill rules.

Sep 30, 2012 -- 9:09AM, Rhenny wrote:

The thief tradition in D&D is mostly based on thieving skills (move silently/hide in shadows (stealth), open locks, find and remove traps, pickpocket (slight of hand), etc. from Basic Days)...that's why this iteration (and other ones) make the thief a skill monkey. 
 

It was different back then. The Rogue was the only one with those skills (the ranger and bard had some but just a few). Those skills were really the Rogue's thing with back stab. Now everybody has access to skills, and there is nothing wrong with that, but the Rogue needs something else to really make skills his thing again. Skill mastery is just bland and not very memorable or iconic. 

Class features or class abilities that improve or give new options when using skills sounds like the way to go and in sink with what designers want to do (move away from sneak attack as the memorable element of the Rogue). 

Sep 30, 2012 -- 9:09AM, Rhenny wrote:

The thief tradition in D&D is mostly based on thieving skills (move silently/hide in shadows (stealth), open locks, find and remove traps, pickpocket (slight of hand), etc. from Basic Days)...that's why this iteration (and other ones) make the thief a skill monkey. 

I agree with Promitheas.  If they lower the "take 10" to "take 7" that means that the 1st level rogue can auto succeed on any moderate task.  I'd like them to lower it to "7" and I can live with "5" too (depending on how this scales with additional rogue levels)...also, I'd like to make the rogue roll anyway.  If he rolls a "1" DM throws in a complication.  In my games, even that small chance of failure raises the level of tension.  

My experience with rogues from thi era is :
• At most one backstab at the start of the fight
• Too low % on skills to rely on them before 6th level (and more for the skills waiting for the 2 stealth skills, find/remove trap and open lock to stop draining augmentation points/level).
So the group was finding ways to disable traps without the rogue at low levels, was keeping this habit later, as failing to disable a trap was very dangerous at any level.
Picking pocket was unreliable as the level of the target was a negative modifier. At low level, you were failing check, but almost never got noticed, and when you were really able to pick pocket, the chances that the interesting targets noticed you were too high to risk it.
I remember a lot of dual and multi fighter/rogues played (that said a lot about rangers), and some wizard/rogues, but very few pure rogues (2 or 3, and 2 of them played by beginers, mine being an attempt to prove that rogues could go without being favored by dm at magic items distribution).

Rogues were basically a way to acquire move silently, hide in shadows, Climb walls and Detect noise, or read languages for the wizard/rogues.
Backstab result was a multiplier on the weapon damage, x5 at 13th level (ridiculous) so it wasn't a goal to gain or upgrade it. Surprise was required, as well as beeing behind the target, and it was not usable during combat or against non humanoid creatures.

I have no doubt that players who took rogues as dual or multiclass would have taken simple skills if they had the choice.

Rogues in fantasy have archetypes, regardless of the skills involved. These archetypes should be accessible through class features.
Translating the rogue's luck or expertise through altering the use of normal skills is not enough. Take 10 or advantage have a lot of opponents.

I don't see how this:

Sep 30, 2012 -- 9:09AM, Rhenny wrote:

...that's why this iteration (and other ones) make the thief a skill monkey. 

...follows from this:

Sep 30, 2012 -- 9:09AM, Rhenny wrote:

The thief tradition in D&D is mostly based on thieving skills (move silently/hide in shadows (stealth), open locks, find and remove traps, pickpocket (slight of hand), etc. from Basic Days)

The fact that the 1E/2E Thief's skills were very narrowly focused on thiefy things argues against the notion that Thiefs/Rogues are gereralist "skill monkeys" with very broad skill sets. That's not at all how they operated in 1E/2E nor was it the case in 4E (they started with 6 trained skills rather than the normal 4 but that's as far as it went).

And as I have explained elsewhere, it doesn't make any sense to have Rogues be more skilled than other classes because most of them are people without much if any serious education, professional training or social graces. If anything Rogues should have less general skill aptitude by default and be more specialized.