Rogue-ing in the New Year – Midnight Strikers: Conduit (T-Minus 2 Days)

New Year’s is right around the corner and that means New Games. As you set up your new party of awesome, you might be looking to take on the iconic role of the rogue. Sometimes, you want something new. If the rogue role is something you enjoy or going to be taking on for the next game, there are some great third party options out there for filling the place of this shadowy damage dealer. With so much out there in the ocean of third party awesome we figured we could point out a few for you. Today we look at the conduit, a magic absorbing striker from Amora Game.

Midnight Striker – The Conduit

Like the umbra, the conduit isn’t as rogue-like as some of our other Midnight Strikers but the classes abilities to absorb magic effects preventing massive amounts of damage, re-channel the absorbed power into attacks and a suite of customize-able class features puts the class in the striker category and a determined player could fill the rogue’s role quite nicely. Here is the stack up against the benchmark rogue:

For Whom the Bell Tolls – (Conditional Damage Boost): Kiss me and I’ll kiss you back! Conduit’s damage boost is mostly dependent on absorbing spells and magical effects from enemies or “generous” allies. Rapid bolts allows you to launch as many bolts as your BAB allows. The “conduct pool” stays energized until used, so you might be able to take “donations” of remaining magic in your party when you rest but be careful as that your ability to defensively absorb requires you to have room in your pool. At 4th level you can instead create energy weapons and ammunition for more stable (if slightly less spectacular than your bolts) damage potential.

Midnight Moves – (Skill Use): Shadow puppet. Conduit gets very few of the rogues core skill set but does retain the iconic Use Magic Device. As noted before, trait selection could restore your favorites, but plan out some conduit powers first, you may not need them. It is worth noting that unlike many rogue-replacements, your conduit probably WANTS to trigger the magical trap to absorb its power. Additional powers allow invisibility, Charisma and Intelligence skill augmentation, and the ability to gain climb and swim speeds making many skills require minimal investments to match “rogue standard” levels.

Slippery Shadows – (Damage Mitigation): Get behind me, I’ll tank it. Conduit’s absorbing abilities offer complete immunity to many magical attacks. The energy can then be spent to gain deflection bonuses to AC. The deflective conduit power can be used to parry any targeted melee or ranged attack. Eventually, the class can even attempt to absorb area-of-effect attacks trumping evasion by sparing your whole party. Healing, temporary hit point boosts and eventual spell resistance top off the class as an a-list damage mitigator.

New Year’s Kiss – (Customize-able Advancement): A girl in every port. Conduit’s power selection is highly customize-able and includes options to imprint spells you have absorbed, boost skills, and customize energy weapons to match your current needs. The class is a cornucopia of choices both during advancement and while playing and meets or beats many rogue talent options.

Conduit scores high rogue-role marks for damage mitigation and customization, it might be the next striker you want to run! If not, the Midnight Strikers countdown continues tomorrow, Rogue-ing the New Year Midnight Strikers: The Shadow Assassin (T-Minus 1 Days).

Don’t forget ANY skilled character can benefit in mythic games from the Super-Genius mythic path from Mythic Paths of the Lost Spheres and you can get it on: RPGNow or Paizo or d20.pfsrd.com!