Complete Scoundrel

Overall score:

Complete Scoundrel is the “Rogue” book that D&D fans have been waiting years for. Ever since 3.0 there have been things that people have wanted rule-wise to help out their Bards and Rogues, and now years later Wizards delivers. Finally there are combat trap options; finally there are poisons that aren't extremely expensive and yet useful; finally there are ways to do certain combat maneuvers (like swinging across something with a whip) that we’ve all wanted--I’m just surprised that it took this long. Of course the big question is: Was this worth the wait?

That really depends, after all Complete Scoundrel is just another class book, and you can read what I think about those in my Complete Mage review. That doesn’t stray too far from the basic tenet of these books which is “Lots of Feats and Prestige Classes”, but instead of the numerous spell thief various Prestige Classes we get in other books we get rogues who can change their powers based on what mask they're using, a dancer that can hypnotize, the classic Mountebank, and of course a combat trap user. That’s not to say there aren’t a few rogue/mage combos or rogue/paladin combos in Complete Scoundrel, but for the most part you’re actually getting some original classes that aren’t just a combo of two other classes or variation of another.

Of course the most anticipated part of Complete Scoundrel are the Skill Tricks, a sort of mini-feat you buy with skill points, that are this book's new addition to the rules like Complete Mage’s reserve feats.

At first this may seam a little over powering; after all, aren’t feats supposed to be very limited because of how much they add to a players power (well, some of them)? But Skill Tricks are very restrictive too, and can be only used once per encounter or day depending on the trick, but they allow for such things as ignoring attacks of opportunity when prone, running up walls and full movements up stairs.

Many of these things are something many players would like but don’t want to spend a feat on. Any class can take a Skill Trick as long as they meet the perquisites which are all skill rank based and there’s at least one or two Skill Trick that any class could find useful, however they're mostly meant for the classes with lots of skill points.

This wouldn’t be a D&D book if there weren’t lots of new spells, magic items, and prestige classes to take advantage of the new game feature introduced, so there’s plenty of additional ways to take advantage of Skill Tricks in the game, and they’re actually something that’s not that unbalancing--which is a rare occurrence in just about any RPG. If they weren’t limited to once per encounter for the combat Skill Tricks then there would be a strong chance that your Bard or Rogue could be getting away with a lot of stuff they shouldn’t be (like ignoring AC on a successful Spot check) and unbalance combats significantly.

Feats and Spells, on the other hand, are the usual mix of old, a slight variant with the occasional useful ability. There are a lot of “class X levels count as class Y levels” for certain abilities, lame bardic music feats (except the one that grants evasion for one round), and a lot of feats that replace sneak attack damage for other effects. Ambush feats as they’re called are a mix bag, while many rogues would gladly give up 2d6 damage to silence for a few rounds I can’t see why anyone would give up 5d6 damage to confuse for one round.

Spells are fairly lame too with the exception of Spell Thief or Siphon. I could easily see a DM banning Spell Thief, which is a new dispel magic spell that if you succeed on your dispel check that spell is then cast on you (it you’re a legal target for that spell).

Magic Items are just as lame. You really won’t find anything that stands out, but the alchemical and poisons are a different story. The writers seam to have taken the lead of many MMORPGs like WoW (which certainly wasn’t the first to have poisons that do these effects) and added poisons that impede spell casting and the return of Hit Point damaging effects.

This wouldn’t be a big deal except many of these poisons are cheap by D&D standards with many around 200-300gp per dose—which is still expensive considering what that gets you in the game—but it’s better the previous 2,000gp for similar effects. Several of the poisons actually have decent saving throws too as well as fairly low craft checks meaning that a low level rogue can actually make them (thus a third the cost, or less if you have feats or access to matierals) and a mid-level rogue would still find some of them useful.

Complete Scoundrel also includes more Magic Locations, which were introduced in Complete Mage. These locations are treated as treasure and have effects that range from permanent to single-use effects. I’m not quite sure I like the Magic Locations in Complete Scoundrel as much, mostly because they could be used for any class unlike the Complete Mage’s that were meant only for arcane classes. Also most of the effects are gain +2 to a skill or gain a new feat of a certain type while previous locations added to a class’s abilities.

Sadly missing from this book were more alternate class abilities that were introduced in the Players Handbook 2 and were also in Complete Mage. While the skill tricks do add a nice feature to round out that gray space between skills and feats they really don’t add new customization elements to any one class in general which alternate class abilities do add.

All and all I think Complete Scoundrel is the best Complete series book that Wizard’s has released since Complete Psionic years ago; Complete Adventurer should have been this book. However, it is just another book of mostly feats and prestige classes that lacks any new ways to customize your character, and while the feats are mostly bland, the new classes and skill tricks finally give what rogue players have been wanting for years. If you love rogues or bards this is a must-have book; for anyone else, though, you’ll find very little of use.

Discuss it in our forums.

Buy Complete Scoundrel at Amazon

Written by Spriggan on June 06th, 2007