Unfortunately your reply comes across as "I'm not seeing it since I'm playing so well" which implies things about my position I'd rather not focus on. Basically, you come across as arguing why I'm wrong.
Since you invited me to your thread, let's leave it at that. I'm sure you didn't invite me only to pick a fight.
Have a nice day
None of that is my intent. I should have been clearer, but I was trying to invite you to provide some sort of analysis of the numbers showing the sort of incredible damage deficit you're seeing, because we can't really get anywhere if we don't even have a common starting point. It may be that the difference between our games means that a single subclass or variant feature can't provide a strong DPR lurker experience for both of us that is balanced in both our games, or it may be that we aren't as far apart as it seems. I've no clue which it is, as of right now.
Suggestion
Create a feat
« killer instinct. »
You can use your sneak attack with any kind of weapon including unarmed attack or improvised weapon.
You can sneak more than once per turn but after the first use you deal only half your usual number of dice.
I'd rather not put class specific feats into the game, but that might be a simple way to build a subclasses primary feature.
I keep struggling to find ways of offering useful suggestions, but the ideas just aren't meshing. The idea of making a rogue just to boost it's already formidable damage is just a weak source of inspiration.
That isn't the piont of the thread, which I've explained multiple times. It isn't presented as the point of the thread in the OP. The point is to make a rogue that isn't 90% out of combat focused, for rogue players in combat heavy campaigns. None of my suggestions make a rogue that is entirely combat focused, either. It's still the most out of combat capable non-spellcaster in the game, even with all my preliminary suggestions turned on.
If the thing I didn't suggest doesn't spark inspiration, maybe the things I did say will. Like, "skull cracking leg breaker", "scary enforcer that frightens and has advantage in and out of combat against frightened creatures", or "brutally efficient killer who [mechanical shorthand for using a wider set of weapons to kill things with underhanded tactics]".
A lot of the mechanical ideas I threw out in the OP are damage related, because that is the deficit
mechanically for players that want to play rogues in more combat focused games. They aren't wrong about DnD. The game won't blow up in their faces if the skill god class is 10% more combat focused.
A Strength rogue is interesting, but does run afoul into barbarian multiclassing territory.
I assume you mean that it will work as a multiclass build. OK? I don't think that's inherently broken, so let's talk about how to make it work. What pitfalls are you actually anticipating there?
And, really, there's very little stopping you from making a Strength rogue already. You can take rapier and hit with it off strength. The problem is Dex is just better than Strength, boosting AC, the most useful save in the game, initiative, and a robust skill list. Especially while limited to light armour.
A Str focused rogue is always going to be MAD as heck, and thus inoptimal.
And is there something wrong, in your view, with options that make a Str focused rogue not fall behind other rogues? Not being facetious or rhetorical.
When considering a Str rogue, it feels less like it should be about extra damage and more about being tough and intimidating. The thug or brute.
Using Str instead of Charisma for Intimidation. Being able to frighten foes. Demoralize on a hit. Being able to take a hit and resist some damage. That said, being able to sneak attack with clubs and maces (possibly adding it's Str bonus as extra damage with those weapons), might also be nice; this last bit would give a small spike of damage, but it'd almost be offset by the smaller damage dice of the d6 mace vs a couple d8 rapiers and the fact the class needs another decent Ability Score.
So, you agree with the bulk of my suggestions on building an enforcer rogue. I wouldn't limit it to staves and clubs, but rather include longswords (still less damage than two rapiers, comparable to two shortswords), spears, handaxes, and probably a couple others.
Still musing on the idea of a "Master Thrower" rogue build, that focuses on hurlling lots of daggers. Or stones for halflings, or axes for dwarves. Just lots of projectiles.
as long as "for halflings/dwarves" you don't mean only for them, yeah. Agreed.
Again, likely as simple as allowing them to draw a weapon with the action used to throw it, and throwing an extra off-hand dagger whenever they take the Attack action. This could/should work with the existing two-weapon fighting rules where you can make a bonus off-hand attack, so the rogue can huck three daggers or two and disengage or do another stupid rogue trick. Maybe also knocking up the range of thrown weapons.
We agree on most of that, though I think it's simpler to just let them treat thrown weapons as ranged weapons, and I don't think you can give them both that and extra attacks, unless the extra attack is their capstone. Still, this is getting somewhere.
I could also see this being an overall ranged rogue, with a choice at level 3 between getting bow goodies or thrown weapon goodies, and a second level 3 feature that applies regardless, that ignores disadvantage on ranged attacks while in melee. A bit like the totem barbarian, mechanically.
(But this likely wouldn't bring the rogue up above the maximum DPR of a greatweapon fighter with feats. But would make the rogues average damage higher by reducing the chances of misses).
However, higher level features for a "master thrower" subclass feel like they should be focused around trick shots more than damage.
Looking at a lot of the other rogue subclasses, the capstone needs to have strong combat power, not just utility, but I'm fine with just about any expression of that, as long as it's a significant boost, on part with what Theif, Arcane Trickster, and Swashbuckler, get. Or on par with what Assassin gets in games that actually allow the assassin to play how a player who chooses the assassin in order to play a lethal killer wants it to play.
Kinda. But right in the OP you talk about dropping Expertise for more damage.
I explicitly don't do that. I suggest shifting Expertise to be half about skills and half about combat.
I can't support that design where you get to pick-and-choose what pillar your options support.
It'd be equally terrible if you could drop all your combat powers for social and exploratory options.
I agree. I don't understand why you keep making this counter argument to an argument I've never made.
Sneak attack was backstab before 3e, which did require sneaking.
I remember having massive minotaur rogue barbarians "sneak attacking" with greataxes in 3e, and it was always silly. I'd rather avoid that returning.
There's also not a lot of flavour behind the "rogue" with a giant two-handed glaive. What's the story there?
Respectfully, I don't care at all, and I will never care
at all, about tradition. Ever. AFAIC, the fact that it used to be backstab is completely irrelevant to a discussion about how it should work now.
Beyond that, it's moot, anyway. It already very much is not backstab. That ship sailed 20 years ago. It's gone. It made port in the OSR archipelago, where it is very welcome and loved and well cared for. IMO, we are better of without it.
Having said all that, what's the story with any weapon?
Most importantly, why do you keep using greataxes when I've already reiterated that greataxes aren't even on the table? If you've the same problem with glaives on a rogue, use that, since it was one of my examples in the OP. It'd difficult for me to want to engage with your point when you make it by hyperbolising with the use of an example that I've already said isn't on the table.
Plus, what's the benefit of granting rogues longswords? They can already use rapiers, which are comparable in damage.
Restrictions require greater need than allowance, IMO. What is the benefit of not allowing them?
I can't think of a way to phrase it without explicitly calling out the feats, which would be awkward. 9/quote] In a reply to someone else, I adressed this. Something along the lines of (and don't nitpick my wording, please, because I'm not going to bother trying to write it out like actual rules text right now) "when you use a [class feature] weapon to make an attack with Sneak Attack, you cannot also benefit from any feature that requires a two handed weapon, heavy weapon, or a reach weapon." I don't actually think there is any need whatsoever to keep rogues away from PAM, but for the sake of moving things forward, I included it.
I meant that, like 4e, some of the flavour of names hangs very loose on the bones of class features.
You can easily take the swashbuckler and rename its abilities and play it very differently. There's nothing that says you have to maintain the flavour of the subclass for your character.
So I don't see much need for a brand new subclass that is the swashbuckler only it's "about ruthless efficacy rather than flair and panache" when it takes 10 seconds to just tweak the swashbuckler.
Fancy Footwork becomes Quick Retreat and Rakish Audacity becomes Cruel Confidence. Elegant Maneuver becomes Maximum Effort.
The only real problem is Panache. But it's a 5-second fix to swap Persuasion for Intimidation and have charmed creatures not regard you as a "friendly acquaintance" but are instead "cowed into servility".
That would do none of the things I've talked about wanting such a class to do. The actual mechanics of those features don't lend themselves at all to what I'm talking about. Why would such a class get a charisma bonus of all things to initiative? At most, you could perhaps change it to another stat, but why bother?
Why is it slippery and difficult to pin down by shutting down opportunity attacks? Why isn't it knocking down it's enemies instead, or blinding them, or forcing them back, or using a reaction to make their missed attack deal half damage to a creature within 5ft of the rogue as the rogue swaps places with the attacker? or any number of other things that actually support the archetype?
Sure, if I were trying to play this character in a campaign tomorrow, and didn't like the flavor of the swashbuckler, I could kludge a workable solution out of it. That isn't what this thread is about, though.
Which feels more like it should just be an optimization guide. "Here's how you build a kickass rogue".
I guess I don't see the point, really.
The rogue is good at damage. Really good. It's not number #1, but there has to be a second place. There's no way to get perfect parity between all the classes, and designing something explicitly to slip it into the #1 slot is just pure unfiltered power creep.
Because if you do that for the rogue, why not also then do it for the ranger or the warlock or the barbarian. But then the rogue's not #1 anymore so you need to boost it as well.
And we've come back to the beginning. Why even bother with the first post in this thread, if you literally don't even see the point in the basic premise of the thread? You aren't going to convince me with a dismissive quip that I'm wrong about DnD, so what did you hope to achieve?
I and many others disagree with the idea that the rogue is in the top tier or damage dealers, much less second place. The stuff about warlocks and whatever is pure hyperbolic distraction.
And here I was thinking that you'd come around to actually wanting to engage with the premise of the thread.
