StreamOfTheSky
Adventurer
I decided to go through all of the talents in core and the APG and rate my opinion of their usefulness. I suppose this could be considered a short guide for picking out talents. One thing I assumed when reviewing them was that the talent would only be looked at by someone that could make good use of it -- Anything relating to poison being for Assassins or others with poison immunity (otherwise rogue's low fort save doesn't mix too well with poison...), only someone who uses disguises for anything related to that, etc... So just because something has 3 stars doesn't necessarily mean it could be useful to your Rogue. Ratings range from 1 to 4 stars.
[sblock]Assault Leader*: Even if you have another rogue to use this for, it’s still only once/day.
Befuddling Strike**: Only take it if you aren’t getting any other sneak attack talents before level 10.
Bleeding Attack***: Probably the best of the early sneak attack talents, especially if your DM lets it double as a means to keep tabs on a foe that goes invisible.
Camouflage*: Hmm.. Only helps in one type of terrain per day, can be fairly easily destroyed (it is hilarious that scorching ray doesn’t affect it, though), and all for a skill bonus barely better than skill focus until level 10? Pass.
Canny Observer**: Another situational +4 skill bonus, though this time it can never be “lost,” and used on a better skill.
Charmer*: It’s eventually more than once/day…
Coax Information*: Why doesn’t a Rogue with diplomacy already just use that to make someone friendly, or if he only has bluff use that to lie his way out of trouble? The name is completely misleading, I think.
Combat Swipe*: Steal is a crappy maneuver that has lots of overlap with disarm and doesn’t really get good until Greater Steal. And this trait does nothing to let you bypass the pre-reqs of that feat like it does for Improved Steal.
Combat Trick****: You get a feat! And you can choose it yourself!
Cunning Trigger***: If your DM lets you set up and choose the place of battle on a fairly regular basis, this can be both cool and powerful. Or use it in social situations with a Rube Goldberg device unnoticed, maybe.
Distracting Attack* or ****: Awful on you. Absolutely awesome on another PC or cohort that dips Rogue 2 for it. Actually one of the few easy ways left in PF for a ranged Rogue to reliably get sneak attack.
Expert Leaper**: In core PF, I don’t see this being useful at all. With 3E material allowed like Leap Attack and Tiger Claw maneuvers, it may find greater use.
Fast Fingers*: No, just no.
Fast Getaway**: Decent means of escaping someone with a better full attack than you, though if you’re nearing level 10 when considering this, you may want to hold out for
Entangling Blade instead.
Fast Picks*: In the right sort of game, any ability could be useful. But it’s not very likely.
Fast Stealth**: If the issue of travel speed comes up often in your games, being able to go into stealth mode all day long without slowing the party isn’t shabby.
Finesse Rogue****: Assuming you do melee and have a low strength, this feat is essential. You can actually snag it at level 1 in PF, but you may as well wait till level 2 for this talent, since you can only take Combat Trick once.
Guileful Polyglot*: Just put more ranks in Linguistics. Or be a Tengu and put more ranks in Linguistics.
Hard to Fool*: Were these once/day/5 levels weak dual-roll skill abilities meant for NPCs?
Honeyed Words**: This gets 2 stars because it’s a very important skill to certain rogues, and sometimes you REALLY can’t afford to fail the roll. Still not recommended.
Lasting Poison**: If you’re spamming cheap, weak poisons that only work when the foe rolls a 1 on his save anyway, this is doubling your investment for no real loss.
Ledge Walker*: A class with Uncanny Dodge doesn’t need “flatfooted protection.”
Major Magic***: I’m not sure if the Rogue has to choose one spell upon picking this ability and only use that, or he can choose different ones on the fly, but I assumed the latter. If the former, it’s 1 star.
Minor Magic**: As with Major Magic above, though this one’s weaker. Best use is probably Acid Splash on a surprise round generally. Or Prestidigitation in general.
Nimble Climber*: In other words, this reduces the DC to catch yourself while falling (but only as a result of badly failing to climb, not other possible situations where you just happen to be falling near a wall/ledge) by 10. Oh, it actually does nothing at all for you on a slope, either. And really, if you JUST failed the climb DC by 5 or more, are you really going to make it when the DC is 10 higher?
Offensive Defense*: You have better things to apply to your sneak attack and can only apply one.
Peerless Maneuver*: Just because PF made tumbling impossibly hard doesn’t make this talent useful. Get Fast Getaway instead.
Positioning Attack*: Doesn’t even get more uses/day with levels. This is clearly meant for NPCs.
Powerful Sneak*: It's a trap! Unless you're only hitting on a 19-20 or missing on a 1-2, this is simply not worth the attack penalty, and if you're in such a situation, you have other problems.
Quick Disable*: Still won’t limit the time to less than one round, so even for the uber situational “must disarm this trap during a fight” it’s marginally of benefit at best. Your DM knows how long it takes you to disarm a trap, if he doesn’t want to make disarming them practical for you, just let the Barbarian smash it.
Quick Disguise***: I don’t think making a disguise in 1-4 minutes instead of 10-30 will make a huge difference often, but the option of changing minor details only as a full round action certainly could be important lots of times.
Quick Trapsmith***: This seems like it would require a bag of holding to even be plausible, but if you have one, this has nice synergy with Cunning Trigger if your DM allows you to use your massive stealth check to spend several rounds laying down traps unnoticed, to use gradually (one swift action trigger per round) in the later combat. This is probably getting a better rating than it deserves due to coolness factor.
Resiliency*: Too limited and small for me to rate favorably, even if it has potential to be a life saver. Grabbing a bunch of crappy abilities that marginally boost your survival rate is how the 3E monk happened.
Rogue Crawl***: This could be handy in a lot of situations. It also can be useful for moving between points of cover while sniping, since you can fire crossbows while prone.
Slow Reactions***: Good for the tactical applications alone, not to mention the “save your ass” applications. Probably superior to Fast Getaway overall for that.
Snap Shot**: Sounds great at first, but in reality is very situational, aside from the ranged weapon limitation. If only you or your side, or if only the enemy side gets a surprise round, this talent does nothing at all. Only when some from each side (including you) get a surprise round will this be a factor. Even then, the benefit is only for that one round.
Sniper’s Eye*: Rogues should be able to ignore partial concealment for sneak attack without a talent! *angry* In any case, just get Shadow Strike feat, a Seeking weapon, or Improved Precise Shot rather than this.
Stand Up**: If you have nothing better to take, this is decent…
Strong Impression*: I find it very unlikely that a rogue’s strength bonus would be high enough to make this more useful than Skill Focus. Probably best for those dipping Thug Rogue, and even then not that spectacular.
Surprise Attack**: Smaller benefit than Snap Shot but also not limited to ranged weapons. Choose one or neither of these, not both.
Survivalist*: Not very good skills, and if you just want it to fit your archetype, dipping ranger, druid, or something else instead really isn’t so bad.
Swift Poison*: Why not just apply the poison out of combat?
Trap Spotter*: Whenever or not you're actively looking for traps, don’t be the lead person walking. Actually good advice for even when you are actively searching for traps.
Weapon Training****: Gives you the required feat for the Dazzling Display tree, a solid route to get melee sneak attack. In a PF-only game, it’s far from a bad feat in its own right, also.
Advanced Talents
Another Day*: It sounds awesome, but practically-speaking, not so much. Yet another one/day “save my ass” ability, except it leaves you staggered the next round. Which leaves you vulnerable to being beaten on more, which since you can only use this if an attack was about to drop you, probably means you’re doomed anyway.
Crippling Strike**: A solid, reliable choice, though you’ll probably kill the guy anyway long before you really enfeeble him.
Deadly Cocktail*: Unless PF drastically buffed poison DCs, this is reaching the level where the save DCs just plain aren’t useful anymore. So this advanced talent is effectively just as good as the regular talent lasting Poison IMHO.
Deadly Sneak*: It's an about even trade (not at level 10, but eventually...), but requires the worthless Powerful Sneak and is still limited only to full attacks.
Defensive Roll*: Once/day. On an attack that would drop you only. On physical attacks only. Only if aware of the attack (shouldn’t be an issue w/ Uncanny Dodge) and able to move. This is just garbage, sorry. Go look up the Barbarian’s Flesh Wound rage power if you still don’t think this is garbage.
Dispelling Attack***: Based on it targeting the lowest (caster?) level spell effect, I don’t think you get to check against other spell effects if you fail like an actual dispel magic. This is still a handy thing to chain on every attack you make, but it’s not “4 star caliber” to have a badly gimped 3rd level spell effect at level 10+, either.
Entanglement of Blades****: This is awesome, great way to force a foe to be less aggressive with you or settle with trading single attacks for your full attacks.
Fast Tumble**: Not using PF tumble at all is better for your health, but this is still decent if you want to be incredibly reckless.
Frugal Trapsmith*: It’s not a big cost reduction, even if you make traps often. If you have nothing better to spend an Advanced Talent on, just get a feat.
Feat****: Once you run out of cool talents to pick up, you can’t go wrong with another feat! In 3E you could take this multiple times, by RAW in PF you cannot.
Hunter’s Surprise*: Once/day, grr! By now you shouldn’t have much issue doing melee sneak attack, so this is useless. IF you can use it to sneak attack things usually immune, it gains some promise though I still don’t think it’s worth it.
Knock-Out Blow*: Way too limited, and the foe will likely make the save. A high level fighter can debilitate things much better with critical feats, just let him take care of this stuff.
Improved Evasion**: You probably only fail on a 1, but extra insurance is still nice.
Master of Disguise*: I thought advanced Talents would finally be done with lame one/day skill bonus abilities. Doesn’t even get the once/5 levels deal! Not just mechanically weak, it’s also flavorless and uninspired.
Opportunist***: Will likely lead to granting you at least 2-3 extra attacks every single combat, typically. Sounds worth it to me.
Redirect Attack*: Slightly better and more amusing than the other 1/day “save my ass” options, since it involves hurting someone else. Still much better for an NPC.
Skill Mastery***: A fine option, though sadly I don’t think it works with Use Magic Device. Even more sadly, Bard 19 makes this look like a joke by comparison.
Slippery Mind**: If your will save isn’t as horrific as most Rogues’ are, this is good. Until the Wizard can just start passing out Mind Blanks like candy.
Stealthy Sniper**: At this point, it gets a bonus star just for not being once/day. *sigh*
Thoughtful Reexamining*: That’s it, I quit![/sblock]
So, IMHO with the APG there are enough good talents to pick one for a Rogue all the way up to 20, and enough variety to have at least some tough choices along the way. At the same time, there's a LOT of garbage in there and "real options" are more limited than the massive list of talents would lead you to believe.
UPDATE! Ultimate Combat released new talents! TL;DR: They mostly suck, pretty much. If you want to know how and why they suck, read below!
[sblock]Black Market Connections*: If your DM is extremely by-the-book when it comes to buying items, add 1 star. But most DMs will either just let you buy level-appropriate stuff without issue already, or are alienated against the idea of "magic Walmart" and will not like you for taking this talent, either. Further, using the black market options has major, very open-ended consequences for rolling poorly. Avoid this.
Convincing Lie (minus ONE BILLION STARS): This talent is actually the single biggest stealth nerf to scoial rogues that I've ever seen. Most if not all DMs would have, before this was printed, agreed that you're not lying if you're saying what you think is correct. In other words, it's not lying to be misinformed. But this talent asserts that it IS lying, and the middle man NPC must roll bluff when reciting the lie you told him to others. No matter how high your Bluff mod is, it's never going to beat not having to make a bluff check. And that's assuming you're willing to pay this new tax in the first place, otherwise lies via a 3rd party is just plain unuseable now. In short, just by existing, this talent screws over rogues and bluffers of all stripes. Worst talent ever printed!
Deft Palm**: Like Hide in Plain Sight for hidden weapons. Decent. Wording could've clarified how it works better.
Esoteric Scholar*: Once per day, you get to fail a Knowledge check!
Firearm Training**: It's a feat. How useful it is depends on what guns are available in your game.
Getaway Artist**: Saves you a 1 level dip for class skills if you really needed Fly that badly. Also gives a small bonus to drive checks, which will probably only ever come up so the DM can reward you for taking this talent, if at all. I feel wrong making this 2 stars, but it's not as strictly bad as a lot of other things.
Grit**: Gives you two gun-related feats, but between this and Firearms training, why not just dip Gunsligner instead?
Hold Breath*: I feel wrong giving this one star, but I reserve negatives for things that literally make you worse. This talent quoted shold be the default retort whenever someone claims Rogue talents are awesome.
Iron Guts*: A lot of classes just get immunity, you get...pathetic save bonuses!
Ki Pool*: Wisdom is a low priority stat for Rogues, you will barely get use out of this, and it basically requires Ninja Tricks to be worthwhile at all. The half wis bonus to an existing ki pool might make Rogue 2 an interesting dip choice for ki-hungry monks, on the other hand (probably not)...
Ninja Trick***: Ninja Tricks are what Rogue Talents would look like if Paizo wanted Rogues to be competent. The only reason this isn't 4 stars is because you're pretty much disenfracnhised from the ki-based tricks, greatly limiting options. Some good tricks that don't use ki: Combat Trick ("cheat" the system to get 2 non-specified combat feats!
), Hidden Weapon (makes underhanded look pretty sad), Undetected Sabotage (this with Cunning Trigger and Combat Trapsmith would be fun to play), and Wall Climber (as it implies...).
Rope Master*: Too situational; climb goes obsolete pretty fast.
Strong Stroke*: The name makes me giggle, but I have a dirty mind. Too situational, and in an aquatic game, you'd be maxing swim anyway, and swim DCs are generally cake. Possibly 2-3 stars in an aquatic game, though.
Terrain Mastery*: Benefits are weak, and highly situational. If the entire campaign will be on the same kind of terrain (like...the Abyss) this can easily jump up in rating a lot, of course. Notably, gives Rogue the ability to enter Horizon Walker, which may or may not (again, less types of possible terrain to encounter, the better) be worth looking in to.
Underhanded*: Mediocre bonus to a very specific skill use, and...HOW are you drawing and attacking with a concealed weapon as a standard action (surprise round), anyway? It says a concealed weapon the foe didn't know about. So...you would have to draw it right before the DM threw down initiative, then? Usable cha mod times/day. So, not that many.
Wall Scramble*: Climb goes obsolete fast, and lotss of other classes can just get a friggin' climb speed...
Advanced Talents
Confounding Blades*: Update! My mistake, this uber sucks. Compare to the NOT advanced talent, Slow Reactions. SR works with ranged SA in addition to melee SA, and it is not asterisked (ie, "can only apply one of these to a sneak attack"), it's just always on. Neither can be said for confounding blades, not to mention it's the advanced talent! Otherwise, the two are identical. An utterly pathetic talent.
Familiar*: You get it 10 levels late and w/ a -4 level penalty to...what? Deliver your non-existent touch spells? Do the scouting for you? Share your non-existent buff spells? Requires two bad talents to acquire.
Getaway Master*: Maybe if you had decent combat skills, you wouldn't need to run away so much. And it doesn't matter what you're "driving" at level 10+. Teleport. Flying. Scrying. 'Nuff said.
Hard to Fool***: This is a rare "good" talent! Lets you save from stuff that didn't even allow a save in the first place! The downside is: your will save is crap, and once the wizard can pass out Mind Blanks (and as the rogue, you're either the first choice or 2nd after the melee brute) this becomes worthless.
Hide In Plain Sight* or ****: If you're in a normal game, this is too limited to be useful. Just prestige out for HiPS if you need it so badly. IF, however, you're in a specific module/homebrew campaign set entirely in the same terrain type (again, such as "The Abyss") this skyrockets in benefit!
Rumor Monger*: Something most DMs would've just let you do (due to lack of exact rules for it) with some roleplaying and Bluff and/or Diplomacy checks, now hard coded as a high level rogue talent...with limited uses per week (wtf?). Since this explicitly allows you to turn what you say into an accepted "fact," this isn't as horrendous as Convincing Lie and is probably actually a small boost from what you could normally accomplish through gossip and calumny. Still weaksauce.
Unwitting Ally**: A swift action buff to gain flanking. Very situational in use and limited to once per foe and might get shut off for an entire combat if you fail by 5+. It's still a pretty good pick up.
Weapon Snatcher**: This should not be an advanced talent and should come with Improved Disarm for free. *grumble*
[/sblock]
[sblock]Assault Leader*: Even if you have another rogue to use this for, it’s still only once/day.
Befuddling Strike**: Only take it if you aren’t getting any other sneak attack talents before level 10.
Bleeding Attack***: Probably the best of the early sneak attack talents, especially if your DM lets it double as a means to keep tabs on a foe that goes invisible.
Camouflage*: Hmm.. Only helps in one type of terrain per day, can be fairly easily destroyed (it is hilarious that scorching ray doesn’t affect it, though), and all for a skill bonus barely better than skill focus until level 10? Pass.
Canny Observer**: Another situational +4 skill bonus, though this time it can never be “lost,” and used on a better skill.
Charmer*: It’s eventually more than once/day…
Coax Information*: Why doesn’t a Rogue with diplomacy already just use that to make someone friendly, or if he only has bluff use that to lie his way out of trouble? The name is completely misleading, I think.
Combat Swipe*: Steal is a crappy maneuver that has lots of overlap with disarm and doesn’t really get good until Greater Steal. And this trait does nothing to let you bypass the pre-reqs of that feat like it does for Improved Steal.
Combat Trick****: You get a feat! And you can choose it yourself!
Cunning Trigger***: If your DM lets you set up and choose the place of battle on a fairly regular basis, this can be both cool and powerful. Or use it in social situations with a Rube Goldberg device unnoticed, maybe.
Distracting Attack* or ****: Awful on you. Absolutely awesome on another PC or cohort that dips Rogue 2 for it. Actually one of the few easy ways left in PF for a ranged Rogue to reliably get sneak attack.
Expert Leaper**: In core PF, I don’t see this being useful at all. With 3E material allowed like Leap Attack and Tiger Claw maneuvers, it may find greater use.
Fast Fingers*: No, just no.
Fast Getaway**: Decent means of escaping someone with a better full attack than you, though if you’re nearing level 10 when considering this, you may want to hold out for
Entangling Blade instead.
Fast Picks*: In the right sort of game, any ability could be useful. But it’s not very likely.
Fast Stealth**: If the issue of travel speed comes up often in your games, being able to go into stealth mode all day long without slowing the party isn’t shabby.
Finesse Rogue****: Assuming you do melee and have a low strength, this feat is essential. You can actually snag it at level 1 in PF, but you may as well wait till level 2 for this talent, since you can only take Combat Trick once.
Guileful Polyglot*: Just put more ranks in Linguistics. Or be a Tengu and put more ranks in Linguistics.
Hard to Fool*: Were these once/day/5 levels weak dual-roll skill abilities meant for NPCs?
Honeyed Words**: This gets 2 stars because it’s a very important skill to certain rogues, and sometimes you REALLY can’t afford to fail the roll. Still not recommended.
Lasting Poison**: If you’re spamming cheap, weak poisons that only work when the foe rolls a 1 on his save anyway, this is doubling your investment for no real loss.
Ledge Walker*: A class with Uncanny Dodge doesn’t need “flatfooted protection.”
Major Magic***: I’m not sure if the Rogue has to choose one spell upon picking this ability and only use that, or he can choose different ones on the fly, but I assumed the latter. If the former, it’s 1 star.
Minor Magic**: As with Major Magic above, though this one’s weaker. Best use is probably Acid Splash on a surprise round generally. Or Prestidigitation in general.
Nimble Climber*: In other words, this reduces the DC to catch yourself while falling (but only as a result of badly failing to climb, not other possible situations where you just happen to be falling near a wall/ledge) by 10. Oh, it actually does nothing at all for you on a slope, either. And really, if you JUST failed the climb DC by 5 or more, are you really going to make it when the DC is 10 higher?
Offensive Defense*: You have better things to apply to your sneak attack and can only apply one.
Peerless Maneuver*: Just because PF made tumbling impossibly hard doesn’t make this talent useful. Get Fast Getaway instead.
Positioning Attack*: Doesn’t even get more uses/day with levels. This is clearly meant for NPCs.
Powerful Sneak*: It's a trap! Unless you're only hitting on a 19-20 or missing on a 1-2, this is simply not worth the attack penalty, and if you're in such a situation, you have other problems.
Quick Disable*: Still won’t limit the time to less than one round, so even for the uber situational “must disarm this trap during a fight” it’s marginally of benefit at best. Your DM knows how long it takes you to disarm a trap, if he doesn’t want to make disarming them practical for you, just let the Barbarian smash it.
Quick Disguise***: I don’t think making a disguise in 1-4 minutes instead of 10-30 will make a huge difference often, but the option of changing minor details only as a full round action certainly could be important lots of times.
Quick Trapsmith***: This seems like it would require a bag of holding to even be plausible, but if you have one, this has nice synergy with Cunning Trigger if your DM allows you to use your massive stealth check to spend several rounds laying down traps unnoticed, to use gradually (one swift action trigger per round) in the later combat. This is probably getting a better rating than it deserves due to coolness factor.
Resiliency*: Too limited and small for me to rate favorably, even if it has potential to be a life saver. Grabbing a bunch of crappy abilities that marginally boost your survival rate is how the 3E monk happened.
Rogue Crawl***: This could be handy in a lot of situations. It also can be useful for moving between points of cover while sniping, since you can fire crossbows while prone.
Slow Reactions***: Good for the tactical applications alone, not to mention the “save your ass” applications. Probably superior to Fast Getaway overall for that.
Snap Shot**: Sounds great at first, but in reality is very situational, aside from the ranged weapon limitation. If only you or your side, or if only the enemy side gets a surprise round, this talent does nothing at all. Only when some from each side (including you) get a surprise round will this be a factor. Even then, the benefit is only for that one round.
Sniper’s Eye*: Rogues should be able to ignore partial concealment for sneak attack without a talent! *angry* In any case, just get Shadow Strike feat, a Seeking weapon, or Improved Precise Shot rather than this.
Stand Up**: If you have nothing better to take, this is decent…
Strong Impression*: I find it very unlikely that a rogue’s strength bonus would be high enough to make this more useful than Skill Focus. Probably best for those dipping Thug Rogue, and even then not that spectacular.
Surprise Attack**: Smaller benefit than Snap Shot but also not limited to ranged weapons. Choose one or neither of these, not both.
Survivalist*: Not very good skills, and if you just want it to fit your archetype, dipping ranger, druid, or something else instead really isn’t so bad.
Swift Poison*: Why not just apply the poison out of combat?
Trap Spotter*: Whenever or not you're actively looking for traps, don’t be the lead person walking. Actually good advice for even when you are actively searching for traps.
Weapon Training****: Gives you the required feat for the Dazzling Display tree, a solid route to get melee sneak attack. In a PF-only game, it’s far from a bad feat in its own right, also.
Advanced Talents
Another Day*: It sounds awesome, but practically-speaking, not so much. Yet another one/day “save my ass” ability, except it leaves you staggered the next round. Which leaves you vulnerable to being beaten on more, which since you can only use this if an attack was about to drop you, probably means you’re doomed anyway.
Crippling Strike**: A solid, reliable choice, though you’ll probably kill the guy anyway long before you really enfeeble him.
Deadly Cocktail*: Unless PF drastically buffed poison DCs, this is reaching the level where the save DCs just plain aren’t useful anymore. So this advanced talent is effectively just as good as the regular talent lasting Poison IMHO.
Deadly Sneak*: It's an about even trade (not at level 10, but eventually...), but requires the worthless Powerful Sneak and is still limited only to full attacks.
Defensive Roll*: Once/day. On an attack that would drop you only. On physical attacks only. Only if aware of the attack (shouldn’t be an issue w/ Uncanny Dodge) and able to move. This is just garbage, sorry. Go look up the Barbarian’s Flesh Wound rage power if you still don’t think this is garbage.
Dispelling Attack***: Based on it targeting the lowest (caster?) level spell effect, I don’t think you get to check against other spell effects if you fail like an actual dispel magic. This is still a handy thing to chain on every attack you make, but it’s not “4 star caliber” to have a badly gimped 3rd level spell effect at level 10+, either.
Entanglement of Blades****: This is awesome, great way to force a foe to be less aggressive with you or settle with trading single attacks for your full attacks.
Fast Tumble**: Not using PF tumble at all is better for your health, but this is still decent if you want to be incredibly reckless.
Frugal Trapsmith*: It’s not a big cost reduction, even if you make traps often. If you have nothing better to spend an Advanced Talent on, just get a feat.
Feat****: Once you run out of cool talents to pick up, you can’t go wrong with another feat! In 3E you could take this multiple times, by RAW in PF you cannot.
Hunter’s Surprise*: Once/day, grr! By now you shouldn’t have much issue doing melee sneak attack, so this is useless. IF you can use it to sneak attack things usually immune, it gains some promise though I still don’t think it’s worth it.
Knock-Out Blow*: Way too limited, and the foe will likely make the save. A high level fighter can debilitate things much better with critical feats, just let him take care of this stuff.
Improved Evasion**: You probably only fail on a 1, but extra insurance is still nice.
Master of Disguise*: I thought advanced Talents would finally be done with lame one/day skill bonus abilities. Doesn’t even get the once/5 levels deal! Not just mechanically weak, it’s also flavorless and uninspired.
Opportunist***: Will likely lead to granting you at least 2-3 extra attacks every single combat, typically. Sounds worth it to me.
Redirect Attack*: Slightly better and more amusing than the other 1/day “save my ass” options, since it involves hurting someone else. Still much better for an NPC.
Skill Mastery***: A fine option, though sadly I don’t think it works with Use Magic Device. Even more sadly, Bard 19 makes this look like a joke by comparison.
Slippery Mind**: If your will save isn’t as horrific as most Rogues’ are, this is good. Until the Wizard can just start passing out Mind Blanks like candy.
Stealthy Sniper**: At this point, it gets a bonus star just for not being once/day. *sigh*
Thoughtful Reexamining*: That’s it, I quit![/sblock]
So, IMHO with the APG there are enough good talents to pick one for a Rogue all the way up to 20, and enough variety to have at least some tough choices along the way. At the same time, there's a LOT of garbage in there and "real options" are more limited than the massive list of talents would lead you to believe.
UPDATE! Ultimate Combat released new talents! TL;DR: They mostly suck, pretty much. If you want to know how and why they suck, read below!
[sblock]Black Market Connections*: If your DM is extremely by-the-book when it comes to buying items, add 1 star. But most DMs will either just let you buy level-appropriate stuff without issue already, or are alienated against the idea of "magic Walmart" and will not like you for taking this talent, either. Further, using the black market options has major, very open-ended consequences for rolling poorly. Avoid this.
Convincing Lie (minus ONE BILLION STARS): This talent is actually the single biggest stealth nerf to scoial rogues that I've ever seen. Most if not all DMs would have, before this was printed, agreed that you're not lying if you're saying what you think is correct. In other words, it's not lying to be misinformed. But this talent asserts that it IS lying, and the middle man NPC must roll bluff when reciting the lie you told him to others. No matter how high your Bluff mod is, it's never going to beat not having to make a bluff check. And that's assuming you're willing to pay this new tax in the first place, otherwise lies via a 3rd party is just plain unuseable now. In short, just by existing, this talent screws over rogues and bluffers of all stripes. Worst talent ever printed!
Deft Palm**: Like Hide in Plain Sight for hidden weapons. Decent. Wording could've clarified how it works better.
Esoteric Scholar*: Once per day, you get to fail a Knowledge check!
Firearm Training**: It's a feat. How useful it is depends on what guns are available in your game.
Getaway Artist**: Saves you a 1 level dip for class skills if you really needed Fly that badly. Also gives a small bonus to drive checks, which will probably only ever come up so the DM can reward you for taking this talent, if at all. I feel wrong making this 2 stars, but it's not as strictly bad as a lot of other things.
Grit**: Gives you two gun-related feats, but between this and Firearms training, why not just dip Gunsligner instead?
Hold Breath*: I feel wrong giving this one star, but I reserve negatives for things that literally make you worse. This talent quoted shold be the default retort whenever someone claims Rogue talents are awesome.
Iron Guts*: A lot of classes just get immunity, you get...pathetic save bonuses!
Ki Pool*: Wisdom is a low priority stat for Rogues, you will barely get use out of this, and it basically requires Ninja Tricks to be worthwhile at all. The half wis bonus to an existing ki pool might make Rogue 2 an interesting dip choice for ki-hungry monks, on the other hand (probably not)...
Ninja Trick***: Ninja Tricks are what Rogue Talents would look like if Paizo wanted Rogues to be competent. The only reason this isn't 4 stars is because you're pretty much disenfracnhised from the ki-based tricks, greatly limiting options. Some good tricks that don't use ki: Combat Trick ("cheat" the system to get 2 non-specified combat feats!
), Hidden Weapon (makes underhanded look pretty sad), Undetected Sabotage (this with Cunning Trigger and Combat Trapsmith would be fun to play), and Wall Climber (as it implies...).Rope Master*: Too situational; climb goes obsolete pretty fast.
Strong Stroke*: The name makes me giggle, but I have a dirty mind. Too situational, and in an aquatic game, you'd be maxing swim anyway, and swim DCs are generally cake. Possibly 2-3 stars in an aquatic game, though.
Terrain Mastery*: Benefits are weak, and highly situational. If the entire campaign will be on the same kind of terrain (like...the Abyss) this can easily jump up in rating a lot, of course. Notably, gives Rogue the ability to enter Horizon Walker, which may or may not (again, less types of possible terrain to encounter, the better) be worth looking in to.
Underhanded*: Mediocre bonus to a very specific skill use, and...HOW are you drawing and attacking with a concealed weapon as a standard action (surprise round), anyway? It says a concealed weapon the foe didn't know about. So...you would have to draw it right before the DM threw down initiative, then? Usable cha mod times/day. So, not that many.
Wall Scramble*: Climb goes obsolete fast, and lotss of other classes can just get a friggin' climb speed...
Advanced Talents
Confounding Blades*: Update! My mistake, this uber sucks. Compare to the NOT advanced talent, Slow Reactions. SR works with ranged SA in addition to melee SA, and it is not asterisked (ie, "can only apply one of these to a sneak attack"), it's just always on. Neither can be said for confounding blades, not to mention it's the advanced talent! Otherwise, the two are identical. An utterly pathetic talent.
Familiar*: You get it 10 levels late and w/ a -4 level penalty to...what? Deliver your non-existent touch spells? Do the scouting for you? Share your non-existent buff spells? Requires two bad talents to acquire.
Getaway Master*: Maybe if you had decent combat skills, you wouldn't need to run away so much. And it doesn't matter what you're "driving" at level 10+. Teleport. Flying. Scrying. 'Nuff said.
Hard to Fool***: This is a rare "good" talent! Lets you save from stuff that didn't even allow a save in the first place! The downside is: your will save is crap, and once the wizard can pass out Mind Blanks (and as the rogue, you're either the first choice or 2nd after the melee brute) this becomes worthless.
Hide In Plain Sight* or ****: If you're in a normal game, this is too limited to be useful. Just prestige out for HiPS if you need it so badly. IF, however, you're in a specific module/homebrew campaign set entirely in the same terrain type (again, such as "The Abyss") this skyrockets in benefit!
Rumor Monger*: Something most DMs would've just let you do (due to lack of exact rules for it) with some roleplaying and Bluff and/or Diplomacy checks, now hard coded as a high level rogue talent...with limited uses per week (wtf?). Since this explicitly allows you to turn what you say into an accepted "fact," this isn't as horrendous as Convincing Lie and is probably actually a small boost from what you could normally accomplish through gossip and calumny. Still weaksauce.
Unwitting Ally**: A swift action buff to gain flanking. Very situational in use and limited to once per foe and might get shut off for an entire combat if you fail by 5+. It's still a pretty good pick up.
Weapon Snatcher**: This should not be an advanced talent and should come with Improved Disarm for free. *grumble*
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