Anyone else tired of the miserly begrudging Rogue design of 5E?

[Tony Vargas]

Hold the phone! ... Just what does "correct play" mean?

In his case, "absolute system mastery," in your case "No feats or MC, 0-15 encounter/days, etc..."

 

[CapnZapp]

I think the fundamental conflict on that is opportunity cost. For any of the casters to have a high-damage combat build they generally have to give up a lot of their other options, this hurts less for the big three classes that can rechoose spells each day but still exists.

A bard who goes all-in on damage probably stops healing or inspiring teammates as much, using their dice and buff spells on themselves, and still won't be good at it compared to a real combat class.

A sorcerer is a bit more obvious because they have so little for features beyond spells. If they pick for combat focus they give up almost all of their potential utility out of combat, and are probably hosed if something is resistant or immune to fire.

The martial classes are limited because they don't have a big pool of features to pick from to determine their focus, it is chosen to a large extent at class selection.

A fighter is good at fighting because his base AND subclass features are all aimed toward combat, the same reason he is never going to be as useful outside of combat as a rogue, bard or ranger.

A rogue will often be a bit behind the fighter in straight-up combat because the out-of-combat part is baked into the base class features so you can't give those up for more fighting like you can in some other classes. Much like the bard they can't really go for a true 'combat build' because their utility comes from a part of the class you can't exchange for combat options.

Many people see this as a feature. Your class determines your outlook. A fighter will focus on main combat in some form. A rogue will be utility with a strong dose of (common) situational damage. A ranger will have more utility than a fighter (especially in the wilds) but will have fewer combat options.

Other perspectives see it as a bug, where all classes should have the option of ditching more of the utility aspect of their class to focus primarily on combat, instead of having the mix dictated by class choice. In this specific example it would probably involve ditching the skill focus of the rogue to up their combat gimmick of sneak attack.



I do suspect the Great Weapon Master feat in particular was built to help strength fighters and barbarians not get completely left behind by rogues and other DEX heavy builds shot got accuracy, damage, initiative, defense, and some useful skills from one stat.
I also think people really underestimate the potential impact of that -25% chance to hit that comes with those feats against less mookish opponents, but I have limited experience to say for sure so do not wish to imply it is anything but theory and a gut feeling.

To me that reads more like a wish list of how the game should work, than how it actually does work.

Casters are not "hosed" because they choose to focus on combat. It is a class strength, not drawback, that they can be good at what the player wants to be good at.

You use many words but as far as I can see you really never refute my basic accusation: that the Rogue is especially bad at focusing on combat.

So let's talk about that. How successful do you think my suggested changes are in fixing this?

 

[CapnZapp]

If you argue that a rogue should be as good as any other class in combat, then the converse also applies: all classes should be as useful as a rogue out of combat.

No, since combat is by far the most important pillar.

I'm okay with one class being "simple" in that it does only this pillar well. I'm okay with Fighters being a non-optimal choice in heavy social or exploratory campaigns.

But more importantly, don't change the subject, thank you. This thread is about Rogues in combat, not everything else.

 

[CapnZapp]

Personally. I don't see why someone who just wants to smack things round the head shouldn't just play a Barbarian. Choose a class that suits your playstyle, don't choose a class and then try and change it to suit your playstyle.

I really don't think this thread is for you then. Good luck in your gaming!

 

[CapnZapp]

...and, given a fairly diverse set of spell choices, most classes can be reasonably good in each pillar.

You're not answering the central issue.

Why is one class especially bad at this, or rather, why are anyone okay with the byzantine manner in which the Rogue must act in a friendly simple game like this?

 

[CapnZapp]

I don't really see it like that.
The Rogue isn't a tank, but it has 2nd-best AC and HP, and class abilities that allow it to avoid damage and/or reduce it effectively. Its generally the most squishy of the martials, but tougher than most of the casters. Not glass by any means.
Its offensive capabilities aren't as high as DPR-focused fighters for example, but are consistently good and certainly don't embarrass it in combat. Over the course of a day, it tends to edge out the casters in damage done. It doesn't have massive nova: its not a cannon. But when the wizards and sorcerors are down to cantrips, and the barbarian is out of rages, the rogue is still stabbing away consistently.

And what it loses in combat capability compared to fighters, it massively gains compared to them in out of combat capabilities.

Of course this isn't helpful to your game, which is high-combat, but concentrated into few encounters. The rogue isn't going to be able to catch up with the casters if the casters aren't going to run out of high-end spell slots, and the rogue's out of combat supremacy doesn't help if there isn't out of combat moments for it to shine.
Add to that that the rogue player prefers not to optimise, but the players that their performance is being compared to like to optimise a lot, and ts not surprising that there is a perceived discrepancy in performance.
Maybe rather than a dice pool, just tweak the Assassin's ability: Once per short rest, you can turn a successful normal sneak attack into an automatic critical hit. Or something similar.

Mostly because I don't regard the rogue as a combat-focused class. It can hold its own, but it is emphasised much more towards out of combat capabilities. The same character concept could be expressed by a dex-based fighter if combat focus over out of combat capability is the preference.

Oh. Absolutely.
But remember that this isn't a general fix for a general issue. Its intended to fix the issue with your player's rogue in your game, compared with your other players.
Its a houserule that isn't going to be applied to any other games outside yours, so its behaviour outside the idiosyncrasies of your game isn't a problem.

Sorry but now you're wilfully ignoring the question posed in the very thread title.

I am not interested in you reducing the issue to my table.

If I answered rule and balance questions with a focus that narrow, I could just rubber-stamp "do whatever, it's only your table" and be done with it.

So if you don't have any generally applicable feedback I'll say thanks but no thanks.

 

[Ilbranteloth]

This really, REALLY has nothing to do with when you started playing. Honest. Look at all those 1e modules. Towers of orcs for killing. Combat has ALWAYS been a huge part of the game. Maybe not for you, but, please, try not to project your experience onto others.

That was exactly my point. Don't project YOUR experiences on others either. Not everybody has a combat heavy game. That's what the OP did, and I responded specifically to that projection.

I certainly won't disagree that the current design might not work well for all combat-heavy games. But there are many threads like this that make an assumption that there is something broken with the game, when the real point is that in that particular person's game, there's a problem. Every game is different. Saying, "hey, I find the rogue problematic in our combat-heavy game, and more specifically the way we play that game. Is anybody having the same problem? Any suggestions on how to adjust it?"

That's fine. But he ended with "Let's be honest - D&D is a combat heavy game." No, it's not. At least not always.

The time playing I think is important only because the focus on combat and other things has shifted quite a bit over the editions. If you started with 4e, then you're probably playing a fairly combat heavy game. But even then, not always.

So I totally agree with you, and presented my projection as a counter-projection to the original projection.

 

[Ilbranteloth]

Thank you.

All of you arguing the Rogue is fine because there's little combat in your games...

Since combat is not paramount in your games, your games would not break by giving the Rogue some extra DPR oomph.

And since that would unbreak my Rogue, the conclusion is clear: a more generous Rogue design would benefit everybody

(Again, since I'm talking games with "all options on", the one argument I will concede is that any such bump probably should rely on feats or multiclassing, so it remains unavailable for "options off" games)

Although in a game that is not as focused on combat, the rogue is often a central character through the non-combat encounters. So bumping them up to be as good as the others in combat unbalances those games.

Another option would be to look at the other options and consider reducing the damage of others. 5e combat is often very quick, over in a matter of a few rounds. Bumping up the damage output of the rogue would probably shorten it more.

 

[Rossbert]

To me that reads more like a wish list of how the game should work, than how it actually does work.

Casters are not "hosed" because they choose to focus on combat. It is a class strength, not drawback, that they can be good at what the player wants to be good at.

You use many words but as far as I can see you really never refute my basic accusation: that the Rogue is especially bad at focusing on combat.

So let's talk about that. How successful do you think my suggested changes are in fixing this?

I didn't refute it because that was my point. It is fundamentally unable to fully focus on combat because it is written specifically not to.

The hosed part was because fire sorcerers tend to be the damage build. If you something can't be hurt by fiee most of their attacks are meaningless.

Backstab dice feel like you wanted to play a paladin, which is actually a fairly good example of a burst heavy damage precise strike could look, so may not be a bad starting point

I think the easiest thing is to just make sneak attack the class' whole gimmick. I think one of the design principles was that each level brings a new thing (new class feature, class feature improvement, ASI, new level of spells). So if it is your goal pull some class features you don't like and add a sneak attack die there. While at it you should probably put in extra attack somewhere between 6 and 10 so they can have as many as three chances to get the sneak attack damage off.

Probably avoid pulling too many of the defensive abilities, but then you will not have as many places to put in more dice. You still need to be aware this keeps the rogue an accurate, sustained damage source, not a burst and going overboard will swing it the opposite way because the rogue will reliably be putting out this damage since they won't miss as much as a great weapon fighter and it only takes one hit out of two or three to do all the damage, instead of needing to hit with multiple attacks.

It has the advantage of being easy to implement, frees up the subclasses to add other directions and if you wanted to, it allows for an easy way to consistently add more dice if you wanted to swap out subclass features too. In addition it is very easy to tweak as desired by just altering how many abilities you switch.

It makes it less rogue-like but boosts the damage in approximately a fair way comparatively for this type of campaign.

On the first hand, if you can list what things this player really needs to make it be a 'rogue' to them, it might be worth looking at a major overhaul using the paladin, ranger, or warlock as a base mechanic.


PS: I keep finding this thread (title especially) humorous personally because just about a month ago I was thinking that the rogue class was given way too much and I wished other classes had stuff to let them keep up.

 

[Tony Vargas]

Backstab dice feel like you wanted to play a paladin,

That's s tad ironic...