D&D 5E Building a better Rogue

Paul Smart · Jul 28, 2017

Hi, everyone.

Let's talk Rogues. What works for them? What would you change and why? How can they be improved?

I would love to hear everyone's thoughts. Also, let's keep it civil.

nswanson27 · Jul 28, 2017

Paul Smart said:
Hi, everyone.

Let's talk Rogues. What works for them? What would you change and why? How can they be improved?

I would love to hear everyone's thoughts. Also, let's keep it civil.

I think rogues is already a pretty solid class. I might tweak some of the seldom-used features of some of the sub-classes (assassin's disguise and poison, for example).

BookBarbarian · Jul 28, 2017

nswanson27 said:
I think rogues is already a pretty solid class. I might tweak some of the seldom-used features of some of the sub-classes (assassin's disguise and poison, for example).

Yup. I agree with this. On the whole the class is really solidly designed, Just a few things like the high level assassin features seem a little lackluster. I would have liked to see more expanded Poisoner abilities on the class.

Remathilis · Jul 28, 2017

Paul Smart said:
Hi, everyone.

Let's talk Rogues. What works for them? What would you change and why? How can they be improved?

I would love to hear everyone's thoughts. Also, let's keep it civil.

I'd say improve their ability to stealth, but this post is nearly invisible using any of the Legacy forum colors, so that seems well covered.

nswanson27 · Jul 28, 2017

I might mention one more: Get rid of having initiative order being a factor on whether or not assassins get crit damage (surprise rules + assassinate).

pming · Jul 28, 2017

Hiya!

IME, the effectiveness of a Rogue is primarily based on how smart the player is. I have one player who LOVES to play thieves...but she absolutely sucks at it. It's amazing to just watch her make decisions on how to overcome something "rogue'ish", because they are almost always..."bad". I have another player who prefers wizard-types, but plays Rogues on occasion. He plays them almost too well. He uses "the campaign world" far more than he uses any specific rogue ability. He builds contacts, he has custom equipment designed, he seeks out mundane items to help him pull off a heist/job/whatever, etc. In a dungeon, he does the same thing, but uses his abilities more (obviously) to help do all that stuff that makes trying to infiltrate a thieves guild so dang dangerous! (setting up traps/deadfalls, covering trails or confusing them, etc).

So, as I said, in my experience the capabilities and success of a Rogue is VERY much up to the Player and not the abilities written on the sheet. YMMV.

^_^

Paul L. Ming

The Crimson Binome · Jul 28, 2017

The biggest problem with the class - and there aren't many - is how unintuitively the whole sneak attack ability works. It would make more sense as its own action, rather than a rider that applies once per turn on a successful attack. Give advantage on the attack roll when dual-wielding, if you think that's a balance issue.

TheCosmicKid · Jul 29, 2017

nswanson27 said:
I might mention one more: Get rid of having initiative order being a factor on whether or not assassins get crit damage (surprise rules + assassinate).

I think that's more a consequence of the slightly counterintuitive official interpretation of the surprise rules than anything to do with the assassin per se. I just run it as: surprised creatures remain surprised for the full duration of the surprise round.

TheCosmicKid · Jul 29, 2017

Saelorn said:
The biggest problem with the class - and there aren't many - is how unintuitively the whole sneak attack ability works. It would make more sense as its own action, rather than a rider that applies once per turn on a successful attack. Give advantage on the attack roll when dual-wielding, if you think that's a balance issue.

I think it might be nice if the conditions for sneak attack could be cleaned up a little, the way the conditions for opportunity attacks were cleaned up in 5E. Stuff like never being able to get sneak attack if you have disadvantage, while making a certain amount of sense, is sometimes a nuisance to remember and probably not worth the word count. It just feels more like a 3E rule than a 5E rule.

The Crimson Binome · Jul 29, 2017

TheCosmicKid said:
I think it might be nice if the conditions for sneak attack could be cleaned up a little, the way the conditions for opportunity attacks were cleaned up in 5E. Stuff like never being able to get sneak attack if you have disadvantage, while making a certain amount of sense, is sometimes a nuisance to remember and probably not worth the word count. It just feels more like a 3E rule than a 5E rule.

This whole edition feels like that in a lot of places, not because of any specific rule, but because you can tell that they hadn't iterated enough on the design to make everything flow together. It reminds me a lot of going back to read the 3E rulebook, after having read 3.5E.

D&D 5E Building a better Rogue

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The Crimson Binome

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