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17 Rogue Feats $3.50
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17 Rogue Feats
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17 Rogue Feats
Publisher: The Le Games
by Timothy B. [Featured Reviewer]
Date Added: 03/05/2011 22:21:33

As with all the "17 Feats" titles from The Le Games, you get 17 feats for a particular class. This time Rogue feats. If you are playing a rogue then these could be very helpful/interesting. For d20 3.x era.



Rating:
[4 of 5 Stars!]
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17 Rogue Feats
Publisher: The Le Games
by Shane O. [Featured Reviewer]
Date Added: 05/05/2006 00:00:00

17 Rogue Feats is a sourcebook from The Le Games. The zipped file is just under 1.5 megabytes in size. The zipped file contains two PDFs, a Microsoft Word document, and a text file. The text file is just a readme file that briefly summarizes the contents of the zipped file. The other three files consist of a 647 Kb on-screen viewing PDF, a 794 Kb printable PDF, and a 50 Kb Word document of the product for ease of use.

The main file is eleven pages long, including a single page with the cover, credits, and (non-hyperlinked) table of contents, two pages with the OGL, and a page of ads, leaving seven pages of material. The printable PDF is ten pages long, with the same breakdown as the main file. Both the main file and, oddly, the printable file contain artwork, each having several black-and-white pieces, along with a few color pieces as well.

Despite its name, 17 Rogue Feats actually contains twenty feats altogether, nineteen of which are labeled as ?Rogue Only? (the last one is a general feat). The introduction notes that, when a rogue gains a level with sneak attack advancement, he may take one of these feats instead of increasing the sneak attack damage.

The majority of these feats offer skill bonuses of various sorts (most usually have a minor secondary effect as well): Street Savvy gives a +2 bonus to several skills when in an urban environment (doubled if it?s your home), Climb Master gives a +2 to Climb checks and lets you climb at full speed with a -10 penalty, etc. However, some of the feats also focus on things such as underlings, or even combat. Several feats here (a number of which stack) give you various followers as though you had Leadership. Two feats give your sneak attack special damage.

Altogether, 17 Rogue Feats is a good product that would have benefited from some more polishing. Most of these feats would have been better served by not limiting them only to rogues; the Great Lover feat, for example, seems odd to be limited in that capacity. Also, if you take all of the feats that grant you followers, you can quickly end up with a horde of servants that are several times greater than what you?d gain from the Leadership feat, which seems somewhat broken. 17 Rogue Feats will benefit any rogue character, but as with rogues themselves, GMs should keep an eye on how this gets put to use. <br><br> <b>LIKED</b>: The product offered a lot of creative bonuses to various skills in various circumstances. It also was quite amusing in subtle ways, such as noting that the Great Lover feat doesn't work on a woman you're married to.<br><br><b>DISLIKED</b>: It seemed unnecessary to limit almost all of the feats to rogues only. Also, a number of the feats that granted henchmen could be taken together, stacking their bonuses until a character has a veritable army. It was also rather odd how the printable version of this product kept the artwork and advertizing.<br><br><b>QUALITY</b>: Acceptable<br><br><b>VALUE</b>: Satisfied<br>



Rating:
[3 of 5 Stars!]
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17 Rogue Feats
Publisher: The Le Games
by Nathan C. [Featured Reviewer]
Date Added: 05/01/2006 00:00:00

Despite the humorous web ads promoting it, 17 Rogue Feats is another serious effort by Le Games to produce a supplement for both the dungeon master looking for a unique NPC and the player looking to add some spice to his current character.

Overview: 17 Rogue Feats is the 14th book in Le Games ?17? PDF series (that is if you do not include the lampooning 16 ? Magic Codpieces). For two bucks, you receive 20 variants feats for roguish classes?for those keeping count that is three more feats than the book advertises. Each feat is designed to add additional flavor and pizzazz to the your bland rogue without you having to result to prestige classes. The publication weighs in at 11 pages. Considering that there are 20 feats, that makes for some meaty feat descriptions, with only a few mild pieces of artwork taking up layout space.

As a Player: Feat books are usually an iffy buy from a player?s perspective taking into account the average character only gets 6 feats in his adventuring span. This reasoning is a primary motive for players to purchase class books instead of feat supplements. However, 17 Rogue Feats offers a quick fix by allowing you to replace any sneak attack gains with an additional feat from the book. This is a nifty little rule change that gives the player some added flexibility over the character.

Out of the 20 feats, I found only about 10 to 13 really beneficial for a player with only a handful of those good enough to replace some of the stronger roguish feats in many of the WOTC publications. However, as replacements for Sneak Attacks, the feats are more than suitable. A majority of the useful feats add mild skill bonuses to the character in a traditional rogue skill such as Hide, Diplomacy and Escape artist. The author probably knew that skill boosts alone are not very innovative, so most of these skill boosts are coupled with a corresponding new skill use. This can be real useful when fleshing out a an archetype if you?re looking to make his character more distinguished, whether its focusing in on his thieving skills, honing a better assassin, tailoring a better diplomat or training a better spy. There are several groups of feats that enhance the sneak attack ability, but I found these to be rather weak when compared to similar ones. As a player, I found the most useful feats to be Bargainer and Criminal Mastermind. The Bargainer boosts the Appraise skill whereas the Criminal Mastermind gives a lot of inspiration for that character whom likes to delve into the occasional (crime) opportunity.

As a Dungeon Master:

Again, feats are much more manageable than loading an NPC with two or three prestige classes to get the right flavor, and there is certainly enough flavor in most of these to enhance your creation. There are some feats in the book that appear to be geared towards those wanting to create a hierarchy among thieves, but they are so weak that I fail to see why I would not simply just a title for an NPC and use the feat or Sneak Attack choice for one of the more practical feats in the book. That aside there are still a few dazzling jewels for DMs.

As a Dungeon Master, I enjoy creating the type of unique NPCs that are both memorable and/or annoying enough to give my players a lasting impression. Two feats I will certainly use in my next game are Eye for Loot, an appraisal feat that allows a character to hone in on expensive items, and Internal Pouch, a feat that is bound to help out the excessively encumbered thief. .

The Iron Word:

17 Rogue Feat is a decent buy for those looking for quick rogue options. Though a quarter of the feats are very underwhelming, they are more than balanced by the others. It should be quite interesting to see other class feat books and how they finagle the rules to give players and dungeon masters more choice.
<br><br> <b>LIKED</b>: I liked the option of changing class abilities for minor to moderate feats. The more options you give a player the better the product will be. I also found a good three quarters of the book useful to developing distinct archetypes for rogues. <br><br><b>DISLIKED</b>: A quarter of the feats introduced a thief guide hierarchy that is better handled through role playing as opposed to wasting any slot. Outside of giving leadership, they offered nothing more to the player but a title and some followers. <br><br><b>QUALITY</b>: Acceptable<br><br><b>VALUE</b>: Very Satisfied<br>



Rating:
[4 of 5 Stars!]
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