By Patrick Seymour, Staff Reviewer

Available at RPGNow.com

Initiative Round
17 Rogue Feats is one in a series of "17..." pdf d20 supplements from The Le Games. It is written by Tony DiGerolamo, edited by Wayne C. Tonjes with layout credited to The Le and custom images by Herb McGihon. As usual for The Le, there are portrait (for printing) and landscape (for on-screen) use as well as an rtf version for easy cut-and-paste operations. The pdf retails for $2.00.

This short work (10 pages) actually contains 20 feats with the focus mostly on thieving and thieves guilds. (Mr. DiGerolamo is the author of the Complete Mafia d20 game so this is not a surprising extension of his strengths). Along with the sorts of standard feats you'd expect- "Climb Master" which grants a +4 bonus to climb checks, "eye for loot" that grants a bonus to appraise checks and so on there are several interesting feats that should enrich thief-centric games.

For example, Gang leader grants you followers akin to the leadership feat and can be taken at rogue level two. Additional feats along the chain build you up to gang boss and ultimately gang lord (and control of a city-wide thieves' organization). There is also a similar feat (bandit king) that appears to be aimed at setting up bands of wilderness rogues but the mechanics are essentially identical to the gang leader feat. Clearly, something more should have been added to differentiate the concepts. The Street Personae feat lets you build an alter-ego "second life" that provides bonuses to disguise checks which improve the longer you maintain the persona.

There are also a number of feats that exchange uses of sneak attack to cause ability damage or inflict penalties to perception abilities (listen, spot, and search checks as well as to-hit). Two feats that look useful for non-thieving rogues are Great Lover and Gallantry which provide bonuses to diplomacy checks when dealing with members of the opposite sex.

Critical Hit
Most of these feats are flavorful additions to the rogue and will provide decent bonuses to the various skills that rogues find useful; at least those fulfilling the thief or "face man" roles. The gang leader chain provides a solid structure for thieves to build themselves a collection of followers starting at low-levels and building up as they progress, which makes sense for rogues.

Critical Fumble
A few feats seem somewhat out-of-synch with the RAW. I'm thinking of the Ambush Master feat here that grants a +4 bonus to hide checks AND +2 to your allies hide checks when carrying out an ambush you planned as well as providing to-hit bonuses against ambushed targets based on hitting their flanks or rear, particularly odd given that facing doesn't exist in standard d20 games.

A lot of the feats presented would be useful to other classes (especially bards) but are labeled as rogue only.

Coup de Grace
The included feats will help build more depth into campaigns focused on, or featuring, rogues and thieving. Given the variant rule presented of exchanging increases to sneak attack damage for additional feats, these can help build a more effective and fleshed out rogue.

Review Scores
Game Mechanics Rating: 12 (80%)
OGL Open Content Rating: 16 (100%)
Originality Rating: 14 (61%)
Playability Rating: 19 (86%)
Presentation Rating: 27 (84%)
Value Rating: 19 (79%)
Reviewer Opinion: 7 (70%)

Overall Total (Excludes OGL): 98 (78%)
Final Grade: B-