Indeed. Though since it seems like the Rogues are always able to go purchase Gravestrike wands (which I still think are a horribly solution that fails to work in most games, but that's another issue), clearly you've got plenty of time to prepare your specific attack spells (heck, at that rate a Wizard could research spells before these encounters). In which case the Factotum ought to win pretty much any battle (same goes for any prepared caster).
And I do hate that it's all straightforward "you walk into a room, here's an enemy" encounters. Yes, D&D deals with that a lot, but if you look at prepublished campaigns most of them have a significant portion of "you're in a town, talk to the people in the town and determine who's part of the evil cult. Also, make allies where needed." Really, the entire thing penalizes a lot of what creative and flexible classes do (adapt to situations and change their power set) by assuming everything's going to be hack and slash. Certainly a class like a Factotum who can become an expert once a day in Forgery to bring in special help due to a king's special order or make one important friend a day via Diplomacy does a lot of things in play that the SGT doesn't account for.
And I'm not a fan of any test that purports to test how classes work but includes built in house rules. At that point, you're testing the house rules, not the classes. The whole point with the tiers was to show where classes are before house rules, because that avoids having stupid situations like nerfing a T3 class into being much weaker while leaving T1s alone (if your house rules make sense balance wise, they should nerf the T1s more than the T2s, the T2s more than the T3s, etc). The entire Factotum argument is based on the concept that you're going to nerf the Factotum to make him weak, thus the class should be considered weak to begin with. That's missing the point on all kinds of levels.
I also still think potion thrower Rogues, especially ones that rely on UMD, are a terrible idea for anything but a one off duel. What's with the endless wands and consumables available whenever you need them? Does anyone here actually have DMs that let your Rogue move up, spot some undead, say "whoops, brb," run back to town, buy a wand of Gravestrike, then run back? Then when they see a Construct do they run and get a Wand of Razing Strike? Or do you just waste a bunch of money on these situational wands and then find that, oh darn, you're fighting plants? The assumption that you'll always have the wands you need approaches Giacomo Monk levels of unplayability. The moment you're relying entirely on consumables is the moment you know you're in trouble.
Of course, I've always been a skillmonkey player, and one who started with Rogues. I loved the concept of the Rogue but hated the implementation... constantly dealing with undead or constructs or elementals or other immunes, being far too weak on defense to stand a chance, etc. Then the Factotum came out and fixed all the problems. The Factotum is to the Rogue what the Warblade is to the Fighter (not quite as dramatic, of course). So having anyone claim the Rogue is the better class is laughable.
Still, if you're building a Factotum just for same game tests and know the enemies, you might as well use the same trick. Go with a Rod of Defiance and Lyre of Building, and blow up all the undead encounters in a single one shot TKO. Sneak and snipe kill the, well, everything else, since nothing there has long range detection. You're not a Rogue... you don't need to get within 30'. From 300 feet out you can just use a bow + Knowledge Devotion (poison optional) to take them out. They're at -30 to spot from that range, so you just win.
JaronK
