Knives are the quintessential rogue favorites. Sharp, deadly, easy to hide. Even when better weapons present themselves, you can’t simply toss the concept of knives out the window.

Unless someone you don’t like is on the other side, that is.

Get to the point below with the Knife-Throwing rogue!

Rogue-KnifeThrower-v1

Or go directly to the PDF version!

 

Stabbing from a distance. It’s a dream, a beautiful, bloody dream. It takes skill though, and practice, and an absurdly large number of daggers (even for a rogue). But the benefits are there too, so… why not have a little fun?

Features:

• For starters, your Throwing Expertise ensures you don’t have to be picky. If it’s light, you can lift it, and you can throw it, that’s good enough!
• The real fun starts with Flurry of Knives. Don’t bother adding damage to a single strike, use that Sneak Attack to throw more knives.
• And, of course, Acrobatic Retrieval is a must. The retrieval is for all the knives you throw around constantly, and the acrobatics is because most of those knives will be embedded in someone angry with you for just having thrown a knife at them.
• Flick of the Wrist. That’s what the key is, it’s all in the wrists. That’s why people think daggers do weak damage. They have weak wrists!
• Have a weirder task to accomplish? Don’t worry, you can Count on the Throw to do whatever you need, as long as it involves throwing a knife into a weak spot or someone’s hand to disarm them.
• And finally, the Butcher’s Critical. (Completely unrelated to those freaky murder-rouges of the same name.) Knives, knives, and more knives galore!

Design Notes:

• A lot of people like throwing knives. It’s a bit odd, but it does lead to one of my favorite scenes which is the classic “how many more knives could they have?” scene while being disarmed.
• In any case, this subclass has had a few changes from its original version. The old one was good, but had too split a focus; it tried to give out utility when it should’ve been focused on damage.
• This version doesn’t dump all of the utility though, just most of it. In return, it gets the ability to make a psuedo-AoO (attack of opportunity) at range, which is pretty unique.
• I also improved Butcher’s Critical a bit, since it felt a bit lackluster before. It was never weak, but it was just a bit… boring. Now it still gives that raw power boost, but also a few extra chances to try to trigger it.
• All in all, I’m happy with this version. I like Flick of the Wrist and believe the damage it provides remains in-line with (or less than) default rogue damage. And it lets you throw knives. Those were my two goals, so I’m satisfied!

Let me know what you think!