Apart from attacking form the back there doesn't seem a lot of point to rogues.. no lock picking or trap disabling... Starting to think I'd have been better off with another mage?

Thoughts??

I had my rogue on the front. I used skill points in Dodge and Daggers only. He ended up dying the least amount of times in my party, because his evasion was really high, as well as accuracy which meant a lot of hits. Also, one of the best weapons in the game (in my opinion), is a dagger. Which only rogues can use.

I saved the back row for mages, and it was a smart move because then I was able to hit enemies with poison and fire damage.

In my opinion the fighter class is the most useless in the game, not that I think fighter is useless. Personally I would recommend 2 rogues in most peoples party compositions.

The main "gimmick" of rogues in this game seems to be that they excel at fighting from protected positions through use of missile/throwing/dagger weapons and backstab/criticals. While fighters are front line defenders and skirmishers rogues fill the niche of back line warriors. Don't underestimate backstab for double/triple damage. I use an air mage in my party for invisibilty which means I can initiate a fight against almost everything with a triple damage backstab from my rogue in the back row.

The final trait in assassination makes all backstabs instant kills.

An unlisted damage bonus is granted per investment into weapon skills, so a swords fighter with high dex can still do great damage, wear full valor plate and have excellent evasion. I had a lizardman swords fighter that had 76/52 protection/evasion at the end of the game.

I have tried (and loved) the strength throw rogue. Doing more damage with double throw than a mage is great, you get faster cooldown without the need to invest in a secondary skill so your damage just goes up... and up.

I am currently trying a strength dagger rogue with earmarks on all the tombs of wisdom, I hope to get triple strike (daggers) and 50% shorter cooldowns (assassination). You can stunlock enemies.

From what i can tell after 8 hours of play this game is very similar to dungeon master also for the party composition, which means the best combo is 2 mages back, and 2 ranged front with good evasion or defensive capabilities, into specific for this game it seems its better to have 2 rogues front (forget the melee skills), or anyway 2 chars that can excel at ranged, as 99% of fights will be done moving and keeping the mobs out of range, so the melee classes/specs are surely the worse.
In theory the best dps is doable with 4 mages, but at start i imagine it could be very hard to survive, not sure if its even possible, as mages need some skillup to become effective.

Atm im playing with 1 warrior (skilled for defence/tank), 1 rogue(skilled for ranged/evasion), 1 fire mage, 1 ice mage, i am at level 6 (the dungeon level) and i think it should be possible to go to the end with this party, anyway i dont think im playing with the best one.

My human unarmed fist fighter is pretty effective.