If you mean between the levels of 3 and 7 then yes. If you means at level 1 or 2 and 8 or up, no. And yes, if you only ever search for traps once that day, you are totally much better than a Rogue. No one cares.
...Disable Device and Search are both Int based at all levels. Since a Factotum will almost certainly have a higher Int than a comperable Rogue, their skills in those will be better at all levels, not just 3-7. What are you talking about? Furthermore, Factotums are better at Dex and Str based skills because of their level 3 ability at all levels, not just through level 7. The once a day bonus can be handy, but obviously only comes up once per day.
But yes, Factotums are just plain better than Rogues at finding traps. Not by much, but they are. At all levels.
No, I am correctly remembering that casting Charm Person is a mediocre ability if you are already capable of convincing people who are not your enemy to help you, and it really doesn't do anything to help you convince enemies because they make their save, and I don't think anyone actually playing a Factotum, AKA not you in your I have all spells memorized all the time world, would use their one fucking level 1 spell at levels 1-6 on charm person, and after level 6 it doesn't fucking matter because no one who matters will fail a save.
Why do you believe no one will fail a save? And do you never prepare your spells based on what you plan to do the next day? If I'm trying to get a wagon into a hostile town unsearched (because we've hidden our Fighter in it or something), I might very well prepare Charm Person so I can charm the head guard (who almost certainly doesn't have an unbeatable will save) and then use diplomacy on him while he's friendly (much lower DC) to make sure I get through (some coin in his hand will likely help too). Remember too that Charm Person is on humanoids only, who tend to be characters with class levels. Very often they have poor will saves.
Prepared casters can, in fact, prepare for situations. That's what they do.
1) Rogues don't care about immunity to SA either, because if you are a rogue, you have a way around that.
Nonsense, and this is someone who's played plenty of Rogues talking. Let's go into the immunity bypass methods, shall we?
1) Wands of Gravestrike. Problems: first of all, they cost a pretty penny for a low level Rogue, and only work on undead. You'll need a Wand of Razing Strike to deal with golems as well, and oozes and elementals still ignore you. Second of all, you need to be able to purchase them, and they're not always necessarily available (is there always a magic mart right next to the dungeon you're in? You can't make them like a Factotum could). Third, they take up a hand slot... there goes your ability to use TWF, and thus there goes about half your damage. You know, unless you planned on even more investment to be able to use them like that. Fourth, they may not even be legal in the rules. The DMG says using a magic item takes a standard action unless the casting time is longer than that, in which case it's the casting time. Gravestrike as a standard action is worthless (unless you're a Factotum). The Rules Compendium restated the second part of that rule without the first, but wasn't particularly clear whether it was supposed to be removing the first part or just didn't write it in (the Rules Compendium left out a lot, after all). Not to mention few people even have the Rules Compendium. So the wand might not be able to help you at all even if you do get it. And finally, it requires a DC 20 UMD check which you can't take 10 on, so even if all those other problems are avoided you still simply fail to be able to use the darn thing in your attacks sometimes until you can get a +19 to UMD.
Result? TOTALLY not worth it, even if you're able to use it at all, until much higher levels.
2) Truedeath Crystal. Like the Gravestrike wand, it only works on undead, so the other immunities (constructs, oozes, elementals) will still hose you. It certainly doesn't work with potion throwers, and in fact requires a +3 weapon to go on, so if you don't have a Cleric or Sorcerer or Wizard or something who wants to cast Greater Magic Weapon on you every day you're going to need to shell out a heck of a lot of money. It's 10kgp per crystal (two of them needed if you TWF) in addition to the rather high cost of +3 weapons. Very expensive, and it only gets rid of some of your immunity problems.
3) Penetrating Strike. You can sneak attack everything, but you do half as much damage. Yay for 2d6 damage at level 10. That really matters. That's totally worth putting your d6 HD lightly armored butt in the middle of the fray.
Or were you thinking of some other method of bypassing immunities? One that doesn't cost a ton or halve your damage or simply not work? Bueller? Bueller?
2) So now your Factotums get a free standard action more than the Rogue? Once again, Rogues design themselves to get SA every round, it's not like it's hard or anything.
No, both get free actions. Factotums get extra standard actions. But about this sneak attack every round issue, your potion thrower can't flank for sneak attack either. So he's going to need to either hide and then launch one big attack in the first round and hope that kills everything, or get a ring of blinking (yay gear dependancy) and have a permanent 20% miss chance on his own attacks. Yeah, awesome. It's too bad you don't have a super pumped up initiative or the ability to cast grease, eh?
3) They can use Extra dimensional spaces, there are no issues with Gravestike Wands except that they require either 1) dropping them, 2) a fancy wand chamber, 3) not attacking with your off hand and being like an archer rogue who targets touch AC for one round.
You can't have your potions in an extradimensional space if you plan to actually throw them in this combat. Retrieving from a Handy Haversack is a move action for example. So while some can be stored there, you've still got a lot of bombs on you. And Gravestrike... I suspect you've never actually used wands of Gravestrike, as you don't know about the many issues I outlined above.
4) You can make them. Yourself. You don't even have to buy them.
You still need the materials (which most DMs would say are likely explosive). You can't just randomly have them.
5) Energy Immunity? Really? That's your trump card? Show me an enemy with Energy Immunity Acid and Fire below CR 11.
All Demons have Fire and Acid resistance 10, for a start. Babaus are CR 6 for example with both of those resistances, so on what you call "enemies that really matter" that would really hurt (as you'd be level 4 or so at that point, doing around 3d6 damage). Dretches at CR 2 would be virtually immune to your attacks, as would CR 2 Quasits, unless your sneak attack is incredible at that level.
As far as full immunity, you know full well there's tons with one or the other, which means half your potions don't work, and that means running out of one kind of potion could easily happen. After all, it's not like DMs might throw a dungeon full of firey creatures at you, right? No, DMs only through completely random monsters at you!
Seriously, it's just one more issue with resistant enemies the Rogue now has to deal with.
6) You know what I've never seen in an actual game, a Factotum use Wraithstrike. Because whatever pathetic damage he could do in a round wasn't worth it.
Huh, I have, and the damage was pretty impressive, though more often they'd just use a touch attack spell (Shivering Touching a dragon is always funny). But as I recall, you hadn't actually seen a Factotum used in an actual game at all, last time we debated this. You were still claiming that the extra standard actions cost 8 inspiration points and all that. So you really can't say you've got that much experience. Me, I've seen even Factotums built intentionally around non combat do decent damage when they needed to.
Anyway, the point is this. I've played plenty of Rogues, Factotums, and Beguilers at this point (mostly because I love skillmonkeys, so I play those most often). The Factotum is quite simply the replacement for the Rogue, just like the Warblade is for the Fighter or the Crusader for the Knight and Paladin. And yes, it just works better. All the annoying little problems with Rogues (the inability to deal with Arcane Lock, the need for magical tools without the ability to create them, the sneak attack immunities, etc) are very nicely solved. Frankly, there's just no way someone who's played both Rogues and Factotums could claim the first is stronger than the second, unless they're completely incompetent with the Factotum.
And yes Kaelik, I did consider throwing flasks... long enough to realize how badly it works. So I didn't count it much, because it simply fails to work. I also didn't count the fact that Druids can dedicate themselves entirely to being healbots.
JaronK
