Robot Viking

Billy Gibbs continues delving into Pathfinder products with this look at Super Genius Games’ Genius Guide to Subterfuge. Being sneaky isn’t just for rogues any more. By the way, if you produce third party Pathfinder products and would like Billy, our resident Pathfinder DM-in-Chief, to review some of them, send me an email (you’ll find it in the masthead at the upper right of this page).

Ever wanted to be sneaky in combat? I’m not talking stealth, I’m thinking more along the lines of tricky things that your opponent won’t suspect. Well, I’m here to tell you about Feats of Subterfuge from Super Genius games, where you can grab all sorts of tricky moves. Essentially a list of feats with a common, tricky, theme, there’s a lot of stuff here that makes itself obviously useful for rogues, and things that give other classes rogue-like abilities.

Bravado is a big winner thematically. Bravado let’s you use bluff instead of intimidate to demoralize foes, on the belief that you may not be scary, but those goblins don’t know that. If you’re big on the Bravado you may come to believe it yourself, and that Self Delusion will let you use your charisma instead of wisdom for will saves — because you may not be scary, but you don’t know that. Double Bluff is another great one in the same vein, allowing the player to bluff again after a failed bluff. That ought to lead to some interesting situations, especially if your players role-play along with their rolls.

“Did you see what happened here?”

“There was this lion, and it just mauled these people”

“How did it get out of the alleyway?”

“Uh. . . it was a flying lion? Anyway, I’m totally innocent, and in no way have murdered these people.”

For those of you who think yourselves better liars, there’s also the Subtle feat. This feat allows you to make certain non-combat actions of yours hard to spot, forcing any observers to have to make sense motive checks to notice you’re breaking out of your cuffs. My personal favorite use is to subtly scan a room for clues forcing people to notice me noticing clues.

On the more combat side of things, Sucker Punch lets monks get a little taste of sneak attack by stunning unaware foes. Cloak Fighting let’s you play Batman by using a cape to make yourself look like a bigger target than you are. Weapon Trickery is Weapon Finesse but with charisma instead of dexterity, making it awesome for paladins that have multi-classed into a bluff class skill, and could make sorcerers a force to be reckoned with in melee. Catch is a feat that provides rules for an action that every group has had someone try once: throwing an object at the opponent to distract them. I think this is awesomely awesome. It shows up in so many movies that I’m glad to have rules for it in an RPG.

Sidewinder hex fools opponents into thinking the spell is hitting one person, instead of the intended target. A successful bluff versus sense motive will see your real target suffer -2 penalties to saves and AC against the spell. This comes at the cost of damage though, so it may help to think of it as Power Attack for mages, with a really cool flavor

A lot of the feats listed in this book are flavorful ways of injecting variety into your roleplaying, but none of them are really a power gamer’s dream, except maybe Weapon Trickery. A sorcerer with a rapier would become a terrifying force with that. Super Genius acknowledges that the feats aren’t very powerful by suggesting that you give them to players as roleplaying rewards, possibly in lieu of a more monetary gain. This is a great way to give the players more options and let them test out things they may not have picked with their limited number of feats. Personally I’m going to remember that, and possibly give the feat to a player that initiates the action the feat represents just to reward creative thinking.

Anyway, there are more feats in this than I was able to cover here, including a truly interesting Trickster Mage feat that grants players limited access to some sneaky spells through a rather complicated system, and quite a few ways to be sneaky with spells and combat that would take all week to describe. I am in full support of this sneaky method to everything, and it ought to add some interesting spice with the non-combat feats.

Related posts:

1. Genius Guide to Templars Bridges the Gap Between Paladin and Cleric
2. Genius Guide to Archer Archetypes Lets You Create Superarchers
3. The Genius Guide to Godlings — Why Not Be Epic at 1st Level?
4. Acid, Stone and Iron: The Genius Guide to Earth Magic
5. Owen K.C. Stephens: RPG Super Genius