D&D 5E Building a better Rogue

[Helldritch]

Tldr: WotC have no answer to the question why my rogue should enter melee, and they really should

Yep, there is one. The optional rule of flanking and positioning. If you use that one, the rogues suddenly feel an urge to go melee. Two rogues in a flanking position are deadly. Add in a battle master with at least 2 attacks and these two rogues will backstab the poor target a total of four times. This can be done as soon as level 5.

Of course if you don't use these optional rules, WotC has nothing to goad your rogues into melee.

 

[TheCosmicKid]

If you're challenging the quality of David and Leigh Eddings, then you need to seriously reconsider your position.

Hahaha! What, is that supposed to intimidate me? You might as well have huffily invoked the name of Stephenie Meyer. You poor, deprived soul. Does explain a lot, though.

As regards the subject of this thread, you might try reading Zelazny and Leiber. They both have backgrounds in fencing and know how swordfights work. Poul Anderson, too, I believe (start with his essay "On Thud and Blunder"). Not that actual experience is a requirement; good research serves as well. I don't know if you've seen pictures of George R. R. Martin, but he's... clearly more comfortable in a library than a gym. Point is, there is fantasy fiction -- plenty of it -- that is rooted in richly textured verisimilitude rather than lazily repeated cliché.

I am merely stating a causal relationship between the loss of quality and the lost audience. If 5E is doing well, then it's not because they brought that audience back. Their marketing strategy certainly appears to be a strong appeal to new players and lapsed players. There has been roughly zero effort to bring back the audience that actually cares about the integrity of the model.

You're defining "quality" to mean "catering specifically to my niche interests at the expense of everyone else". A more reasonable definition of "quality" would be something like "a game that lots of people can play and enjoy". I dislike sushi, but I'm not about to start calling the nearby sushi restaurant, a popular and critically acclaimed local institution, "low quality" because it doesn't serve me ribeye steak.

The ridiculous and inconsistent parts are whenever they break from the model for gamist reasons.

You're advocating a vision in which Strength-based attacks mean fighters just swing wildly at opponents and hope to cause injury by being strong enough. That's not the game breaking from its model; that's you imposing a model upon the game. And you know full well that it's a silly model, but you're defending it anyway, for no other reason I can discern than unwillingness to accept that in translating a few integers and die rolls into a plausible narrative, the application of imagination may be required.

PS: Even if everything else you say is true, what you're complaining about isn't "gamism", it's "narrativism".

 

[Tony Vargas]

Instead a melee rogue should gain a significant DPS advantage - both over ranged rogues, but also better than melee warriors.

5e is designed with cross-pillar balance in mind. Now, there are many reasons to consider this bad design, but it's the design we have, and it's a long de-facto D&D tradition (even if the terminology is comparatively new), so I'm not going to challenge it, ATM. The rogue has definite advantages in the exploration pillar, and can easily be exceptional in the social pillar, as well - Expertise is versatile and potent in that way, even if it's not flexible once you've chosen the skills it applies to, nor is it the only thing the rogue has going for him outside the combat pillar. So, in that paradigm, the rogue is hands-down better that the fighter in two out of three pillars, the fighter gets to be marginally superior to the rogue in the remaining one. If that doesn't sound fair, just assume that, it pre-supposes that D&D is more about combat, or that combat is more important in some sense. D&D does devote a lot of rules to combat, and combats are more detailed and engaging in their resolution than picking a lock. FWIW.

Because otherwise, why enter melee with such bad AC and HP?

Just do 'do your bit,' I guess.
Ranged is broadly superior to melee in 5e, anyway, just across the board. I don't think the rogue, specifically, needs to see that addressed, certainly not with a DPR power-up, and certainly not with the explicit intent of toppling the fighter's already tenuous & technical 'best at fighting' crown.

Tldr: WotC have no answer to the question why my rogue should enter melee, and they really should

I'm not sure there an answer to why he should even leave home and go adventuring in the first place.

 

[The Crimson Binome]

Hahaha! What, is that supposed to intimidate me? You might as well have huffily invoked the name of Stephenie Meyer. You poor, deprived soul. Does explain a lot, though.

I can hardly think of more esteemed masters of the genre. It seems you prefer a different genre, though, which does explain a lot. Likewise, Stephanie Meyer has her fans, and her genre of choice features little shared audience with either of ours. Just because you don't like it doesn't make it bad, though. (Stephanie Meyer may be considered a poor writer for other reasons, but it's nothing to do with her popularity.)

You're defining "quality" to mean "catering specifically to my niche interests at the expense of everyone else". A more reasonable definition of "quality" would be something like "a game that lots of people can play and enjoy".

The quality of an RPG is the integrity of its underlying model. Whether or not it's popular is irrelevant, unless you want to suggest that Stephanie Meyer produces books of higher quality than either Eddings or Leiber.

Even if everything else you say is true, what you're complaining about isn't "gamism", it's "narrativism".

To use the common parlance, my complaints are when they promote Gamist objectives too strongly above Simulationist ones. The Simulationist ideal is a strong correlation between what is happening within the narrative and the game mechanics which reflect that narrative. Narrativism, to contrast, is when things happen within the game mechanics in order to actively direct the narrative - the game mechanics make something happen because it would be more dramatic or scary or funny, rather than because it is the logical course of events given the causal nature of reality.

To be certain, there is a definite need within any RPG to sacrifice some of the integrity of the model in order to make the game playable. A pure Simulation doesn't lend itself toward Games that are interesting to play. It is easily possible to go too far with Gamist concessions, such that you sacrifice too much integrity of the model, and the remaining model no longer has useful meaning within the narrative. Taken to an extreme, that's how you end up with 4E, with its policy of infinitely mutable narrative. It is unclear whether or not 5E has sacrificed so much that it cannot be salvaged, but its theoretical openness to house ruling means that it may yet be redeemed.

 

[CapnZapp]

5e is designed with cross-pillar balance in mind. Now, there are many reasons to consider this bad design, but it's the design we have, and it's a long de-facto D&D tradition (even if the terminology is comparatively new), so I'm not going to challenge it, ATM. The rogue has definite advantages in the exploration pillar, and can easily be exceptional in the social pillar, as well - Expertise is versatile and potent in that way, even if it's not flexible once you've chosen the skills it applies to, nor is it the only thing the rogue has going for him outside the combat pillar. So, in that paradigm, the rogue is hands-down better that the fighter in two out of three pillars, the fighter gets to be marginally superior to the rogue in the remaining one. If that doesn't sound fair, just assume that, it pre-supposes that D&D is more about combat, or that combat is more important in some sense. D&D does devote a lot of rules to combat, and combats are more detailed and engaging in their resolution than picking a lock. FWIW.

Just do 'do your bit,' I guess.

Not sure why you felt the need to explain the obvious. Nothing you say change what I said.

Ranged is broadly superior to melee in 5e, anyway, just across the board. I don't think the rogue, specifically, needs to see that addressed, certainly not with a DPR power-up, and certainly not with the explicit intent of toppling the fighter's already tenuous & technical 'best at fighting' crown.

I'm not sure there an answer to why he should even leave home and go adventuring in the first place.

In order for any rational gamer to create a melee rogue over a ranged one, there needs to be an incentive that isn't there now.

This incentive probably needs to be quite large, given the Rogue's overall squishiness. I suggest "better DPS than even the fighter". In fact, I have a hard time seeing any other option that really entices the rogue to enter risky melee, but if you have something more constructive than "certainly not with a DPR power-up", feel free to share.

Then you misinterpret that as "better than the fighter" - I said nothing of the sort. This melee rogue can still not replace or outshine the fighter, because of what I just said: its general squishiness. Unlike you, I'm not worried about toppling any fighter crowns, since my players create lots of fighters (or at least take 2-6 levels of fighter for their mc concepts). Besides, I quite like the cultivation of "striker" and "tank" concepts, and fighters are popular in many games where they do middling damage but are excellent at protecting their party.

In combat heavy games (which I assume is the D&D default, regardless of what you say) the current rogue falls by the wayside compared to mainly paladins, fighters and barbarians. The only way to play a rogue that isn't a liability to his party is to play a ranged one, and still, it's a lot of work for not-very-impressive DPS anyhow. I'm sure there's a market for not-really-combat-centric-at-all thieves, and I'm not trying to remove that option. What I am trying to do, however, is find a way for a rogue to make sense in the default (combat-heavy) game, and particularly the melee build at that.

Unlike you, I don't think "since ranged is so much better than melee we might as well give up". I fully believe a very sharp striker has its place among the D&D builds. There is no reason to relativize or generalize this to be a general "ranged vs melee" issue. That does not mean I don't acknowledge that issue. All it means is that I can well discuss the addition of glass cannon melee rogue in the game (as a solution to the "melee rogue deficiency" problem) completely separately from the ranged superiority discussion. And in fact, I have. Remember us discussing the eleven (?) individual lightened/removed restrictions on ranged combat WotC has made, probably with one hand not knowing what the other did?

Anyway, enough with having to defend my proposal.

What would be much more worthwhile to me is to take the discussion to the next level. How do you improve your survivability as this "melee rogue" build? What can your party members do to help? And most importantly, even if we do accomplish the best DPS in the game, is that enough to justify the extra burden on the party, or do this "melee rogue" need even more?

 

[Tony Vargas]

Not sure why you felt the need to explain the obvious.

In combat heavy games the current rogue falls by the wayside compared to mainly paladins, fighters and barbarians. The only way to play a rogue that isn't a liability to his party is to play a ranged one, and still, it's a lot of work for not-very-impressive DPS anyhow.

Playing a class focused outside of combat in a combat-heavy game is a challenge, not as great a challenge as playing a fighter or barbarian in a heavily-out-of-combat focused game, but that's just the way the game is designed, and we've already established that fact is obvious.

In order for any rational gamer to create a melee rogue over a ranged one, there needs to be an incentive that isn't there now.
I don't think "since ranged is so much better than melee we might as well give up".

Neither do I, I just think the solution to a perceived problem with the ranged and melee builds of the rogue builds lies in balancing ranged & melee a little better. That'd be an improvement across the board, rather than a bandaid that applies only to the melee rogue.

3.x & earlier editions have all sorts of limitations on ranged attackers, check some of those out for ideas. Reduce rates of fire. Make SA harder to apply at range - 3.x required the target be w/in 30', for instance.

Besides, I quite like the cultivation of "striker" and "tank" concepts.

You have an up-hill battle pounding 5e into those boxes, but it's certainly do-able. You'd want to re-focus the fighter as a "tank," removing or changing the function of Extra Attack/Action Surge to make them less DPR-dedicated, adding some sort of effective aggro mechanism (marking from the DMG is inadequate), and beefing up its toughness. Compared to that, tweaking the melee rogue into a "striker" isn't much of a challenge.

 

[CapnZapp]

3.x & earlier editions have all sorts of limitations on ranged attackers, check some of those out for ideas.

That's rich. You know I have started several threads on this subject and enumerated not less than eleven things 5e did to empower ranged.

Can we separate the discussions now?

I'm fine discussing "how to improve melee at the expense of ranged" - only there are much better threads than "building a better rogue" to do that.

 

[Tony Vargas]

That's rich. You know I have started several threads on this subject and enumerated not less than eleven things 5e did to empower ranged.

I'm fine discussing "how to improve melee at the expense of ranged" - only there are much better threads than "building a better rogue" to do that.

Seems at the heart of ranged rogue vs melee rogue.

 

[Remathilis]

Hit points, yes.
you don't really need an ability for that, just a DM who conveniently narrates success instead of calling for a check when it really matters
CHA
OK, not sure what to make of that one (Something about like Rage?), but is a 20 after ASIs close enough?

Which are all things the current 5e fighter has. Problem solved.

In seriousness, the only thing a fighter really needs is something to do outside of combat. Right now, He is dominant in the combat columns, but could use some work in the exploration and/or social columns. I'm fairly certain that can be done without killing the rogue in the process. The bigger problem is Combat + Exploration is the dominion of the Ranger class, while Combat + Social is where Paladin hangs and where a hypothetical Knight/Warlord archetype lives. Though I could easily see a few more subclasses that beef the fighter up in terms of exploration (though probably not to the level of ranger) or social (though again, not a replacement for a warlord), neither of which would keep the rogue (who is king of exploration, minor in social and/or combat) from being viable.

 

[Tony Vargas]

In seriousness, the only thing a fighter really needs is something to do outside of combat. Right now, He is dominant in the combat columns,

Not really, no. The Fighter has a clear role (tanky DPR) in combat, and the distinction of being 'best at fighting' (with weapons, without magic), which is a matter of differentiation, not dominance.

And, while the fighter is potent in the combat pillar, it is not particularly versatile, even within it.

It is tougher than the rogue, and doesn't hang it's DPR, on SA (with SA every round, the Rogues DPR is competative). And, 5e 'balances' that by making the Rogue superior to the fighter in the other two pillars.

That's not really necessary, most classes can be quite effective in all three pillars. The non-casting sub-classes of the fighter, rogue and barbarian are still designed as if they needed cross-pillar 'balancing' and niche-protection to keep them balanced along-side heavily limited casters, even though said limitations are long gone, and, to differentiate themselves, in concept, event though there are now backgrounds for that.

but could use some work in the exploration and/or social columns. I'm fairly certain that can be done without killing the rogue in the process

The fighter and rogue are different enough in combat, that they could remain differetiated, even were they some how rendered indistinguishable outside it. So, yeah, not a concern. The rogue, unlike the fighter, has gained steadily as the game evolved, and hasn't lost much beyond the flexibility/peak power of dailies in 5e, and no longer needs the niche protection that would demand it's strict superiority outside of combat.

A class in 5e doesn't lock up a concept the way it did in the early days, but some of the classes are still blinkered as if that were still meant to be the case.

If the fighter and rogue - and barbarian - were all brought up to par in each pillar, they might have very similar capabilities, but that wouldn't necessitate the demise of two of them, anymore than it had required 5e to do away with all but one or two caster classes.

It wouldn't necessitate that demise, they could all stick around for 'in a past PH'/someone's-favorite-class purposes, but consolidating them would only make the game simpler and more playable, were it not for such backward-looking considerations.

My comments about the original thief being a mistake, and the combined abilities of fighter and rogue not being overpowering were a single class to have them were on the evolution of the game, not a definite plan to change it.

The bigger problem is Combat + Exploration is the dominion of the Ranger class, while Combat + Social is where Paladin hangs and where a hypothetical Knight/Warlord archetype lives.

What you're implying, there, is that the game only has room for three classes: a Combat + Exploration class, a Combat + Social class, and presumably, a Social + Exploration class.

Obviously, that is nonsense.