D&D 5E Building a better Rogue

[Immoralkickass]

Base Rogue is really solid, but the subclasses have some duds. Some of the notable ones are:

Fast Hands (Thief) - Who the hell do those stuff in combat? Suggestion: Gain advantage on all Sleight of Hand checks

Second-story work (Thief) - Incredibly lame feature, probably worse than Champion Fighter's version. Suggestion: Gain advantage on all Acrobatics check.

Infiltration Expertise (Assassin) - What is this nonsense? 7 days to create a new identity that can't even be an existing identity, yet people are guaranteed to believe it. Why would they not be suspicious of a person they have not met before? Its no surprise most players claim this feature to be the hardest to use, mainly due to the ridiculous prep time. Most adventure modules simply don't have downtime that long for this to even be considered. In homebrew campaigns, well 7 days is a long time, lots of things may change during 7 days. This is the closest you'd get to emulating Agent 47's shenanigans, while also making your party members bored to death with your solo espionage stuff. Suggestion: reduce prep time to one long rest.

Imposter (Assassin) - With proficiency in Disguise Kit at Lv3, if you still don't have the Actor feat, what have you been doing? This feature comes too late at Lv13. Also, you have to be a real creep to constantly observe a person for 3 hours. Who's counting? Not me. Just let the Rogue mimic him already.

 

[Aldarc]

A few changes I would like to make:
1) Make ranged roguery less desirable. Or make it a specific sub-class. Rogues should be stabby.

I know that this is a matter of preference, but I disagree with this idea, as ranged rogues have become a common trope in the current fantasy genre. Neither melee nor ranged should be privileged for rogue. The beauty of the rogue archetype, IMHO, is its versatility of playstyle. As Gladius also says, this probably has more to do with 5E favoring ranged rather than an issue with the rogue itself.

2) Create a reason to make daggers preferable (at least in some way) to short swords. (Oh, and delete rapiers from the game. Thanks.) Greyhawk Initiative with the optional "roll your weapon's damage die" rule would do this, for example.

I know we love the aesthetic of rogues using daggers, but in combat this is kinda absurd. You carry daggers because they are the "everyman" sidearm of self-defense. Daggers are cheap and inconspicuous. They can be used to stab and kill up close in an abandoned alley, a hussling street, or in a crowded party. They are also great for delivering poison. But in combat? Maybe as an offhand defensive weapon. But as your sole weapon when fighting an ogre? That's just crazy talk. However, one possibility for differentiating daggers, short swords, and rapiers (as well as other weapons) would be to reinstitute critical ranges, such that a dagger could go critical on a 19-20, though perhaps only in the hands of a rogue.

3) Make the effectiveness of stealth less dependent upon DM interpretation. The biggest buzz kill for rogue pleasure is a DM who simply doesn't like what he (or she) views as "unrealistic" stealth, and therefore basically never lets you sneak around. Magical fireballs? Sure. Martial healing? Sure. Sneaking up behind somebody locked in desperate combat with your ally? Never.

Here, I agree.

The rogue is already awesome. Every level you get useful new abilities. Except for AT spells, all of your abilities are always on and ready to be used. They are a little less awesome if your DM won't let you use sneak attack on AoO if you already used sneak attack on your turn. (I don't know why this is an issue for some DM's, when they are the ones moving the monsters, but apparently it is.) If I could change one thing, it would be the restriction on wizard schools for AT spells. The 1/3 spell progression is already limiting enough. Having a lower save DC than the typical wizard also affects your spell selection. Just let the AT pick whatever spells they want. (Same for EK!) Conjuration and transmutation schools seem just as rogue-ish as enchantment and illusion with an excellent assortment of infiltration and escape spells: Alter Self, Misty Step, Gaseous Form, Find Familiar, Fog Cloud, Fly, Spider Climb, Levitate, Dimension Door, Polymorph.

I would also potentially alter the AT such that cantrips can be used in conjunction with Sneak Attack, and not just the ones that require a melee attack.

 

[Cap'n Kobold]

I like the Rogue: its an interesting and varied class.

The only adjustment that I've made is houseruling away the Finesse requirement for Sneak Attack.

 

[guachi]

The rogue is already awesome. Every level you get useful new abilities. Except for AT spells, all of your abilities are always on and ready to be used. They are a little less awesome if your DM won't let you use sneak attack on AoO if you already used sneak attack on your turn. (I don't know why this is an issue for some DM's, when they are the ones moving the monsters, but apparently it is.)

I've seen some DMs and players who add more to the rule "once per turn" than is really there. It doesn't mean "once per round" or "once per turn on your turn" or that 's what the rule would have said. There are other abilities and effects that say just that. A reasonable DM (or player) would say "yes, I misunderstood the rule". A bad DM will refuse to admit he's wrong.

The alternative is the DM does know the rule but thinks Rogue's are just too powerful. Which is not something I've ever seriously seen argued. Fun, effective, versatile - sure. But not over powered. Such a ruling also probably negates the fun the Battlemaster ability to give an attack to someone else..

 

[Tony Vargas]

Let's talk Rogues.
I would love to hear everyone's thoughts.

So the Rogue's an interesting, IMHO ironic, success story. The Thief started out in Greyhawk, the first new class in the game after the original 3. It introduced 'special' abilities, skills really, using % resolution, to do things that players up to then had simply been playing through, like searching for traps or sneaking around.

It was, in retrospect, a pretty terrible idea. It created this niche that justified an underpowered class that /seemed/ kinda cool, was set up to be a thorn in the side to the party, and played out as pretty crappy. It was the original 'Timmeh Card.'

The Thief languished for decades, it's rehabilitation started with a name-change, to 'Rogue,' so at least dishonesty and stealing from your own party was no longer so clearly implied. 3.x took some big steps to make the Rogue viable - Sneak Attack more broadly useful than Backstab, tons of skill points in a system that strongly favored full-investment in specific skills - but sadly took them in a system that did nothing to curb caster power, so Rogues were still stuck in Tier 5, and still desultorily niche-protected by the Trapfinding feature. 4e balanced the classes a lot better, and brought Rogues into the fold as Strikers, making SA almost universally applicable/dependable, it also dropped the niche protection - the Rogue was a very good out-of-combat class, but not so much so that no one else could do it's job if the party didn't have one. 5e's more or less stayed that course, the Rogue can still count on SA to boost it's damage, and, though it /does/ have an extra boost in the skill department, Expertise, it shares it with the bard, and none of its skills are off-limits to other classes.

So the Rogue is in longer a black mark against the system.

But, at the same time, it was never necessary in the first place. The problem is, if anything, clearer with the Fighter than the Rogue, at this point, as the fighter has come nearly full circle back to being a multi-attacking DPR beatstick Fighter, while the Rogue, in spite of re-claiming the name with a sub-class, has not returned to being a fragile/weak stealthy trap-finding own-party-ripping-off Thief. Neither does a good job at evoking heroes from myth/legend/genre, because those heroes usually encompass /both/ the fighter's general badassness and the rogue's cunning, agility, and skill - not to mention a lot of charisma on top of that, typically.

The game could have merged the Fighter and Rogue into a single class, benefiting from every feature* ever given to either in any edition, and still not 'broken' anything relative to 5e's other classes.














* excepting multi-class stand-in features like the EK & AT.

 

[merwins]

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).

From a simplification perspective, this is admirable. Except for two reasons.

1) They created the Alert feat to nerf Assassins.

This is one of those cases where I say that if they wanted to make a kindler gentler DnD, why even bother paying lip service to the Assassin subclass? Unlike all the other classes, where the character simply does what they're known for, the assassin has to WORK to do what they're known for.

In the designer's defense, it has to be that way. But that aspect of the feat is pretty horrid.

2) Surprise rules are super simple, but they kinda suck. I get what the designers were going for, but I'm not really happy about the phrasing of the rules and their implementation at the table. There's a lot of micromanagement involved.

Conceptually, I'm good with the status quo:
In first moments of a conflict, the assassin is particularly deadly against anyone who is slower OR doesn't notice them.
This is in addition to being able to striking opponents opportunistically, like any other thief (adjacent ally or with advantage).

 

[nswanson27]

From a simplification perspective, this is admirable. Except for two reasons.

1) They created the Alert feat to nerf Assassins.

This is one of those cases where I say that if they wanted to make a kindler gentler DnD, why even bother paying lip service to the Assassin subclass? Unlike all the other classes, where the character simply does what they're known for, the assassin has to WORK to do what they're known for.

In the designer's defense, it has to be that way. But that aspect of the feat is pretty horrid.

2) Surprise rules are super simple, but they kinda suck. I get what the designers were going for, but I'm not really happy about the phrasing of the rules and their implementation at the table. There's a lot of micromanagement involved.

Conceptually, I'm good with the status quo:
In first moments of a conflict, the assassin is particularly deadly against anyone who is slower OR doesn't notice them.
This is in addition to being able to striking opponents opportunistically, like any other thief (adjacent ally or with advantage).

That's an interesting fix - either stealth or beat initiative. I like it.

 

[merwins]

That's an interesting fix - either stealth or beat initiative. I like it.

It's not a fix. It's RAW.
I just translated it into conversational English.

 

[Guest 6801328]

1) They created the Alert feat to nerf Assassins.

Are you suggesting that DMs are supposed to give Feats to NPCs in order to nerf their player characters, or that players are supposed to take Alert in order to defend against NPC assassins?

Or are you talking about PvP? (In which case I'm highly skeptical that WotC inserted a Feat to address a perceived imbalance.)

 

[merwins]

Are you suggesting that DMs are supposed to give Feats to NPCs in order to nerf their player characters, or that players are supposed to take Alert in order to defend against NPC assassins?

Or are you talking about PvP? (In which case I'm highly skeptical that WotC inserted a Feat to address a perceived imbalance.)

Neither. I'm just bitter at the existence of the feats that have complicated my life as a DM, and assigning deliberate malice as a motivation of the game designers.

Because my players have specific combinations of feats and skills, I go through incredible contortions to enable my NPCs to do simple non-malicious things that further my story within the rules.

Yeah, it's my own fault for not just handwaving as the GM. But I want to be able to say, "I did it BY THE RULES."