D&D 5E 'Once per turn'

[Psikerlord#]

My inclination is to only allow SA damage once per round. But who knows, perhaps the devs intended that moving away from a rogue was supposed to be a very dangerous maneuver. I suppose I can kinda accept if fluff wise.... exposing your back to the rogue ought to be a bad plan. Still, balance wise, a little concerning...?

 

[1of3]

By the interpretation that each creature's turn counts towards the rule that you can only do something on A turn, a rogue could get three sneak attacks per round. Does that really seem right to you?

Yes. It does. Rogues are out there to kill you. Hard.

 

[MerricB]

My inclination is to only allow SA damage once per round. But who knows, perhaps the devs intended that moving away from a rogue was supposed to be a very dangerous maneuver. I suppose I can kinda accept if fluff wise.... exposing your back to the rogue ought to be a bad plan. Still, balance wise, a little concerning...?

Not really. It's exactly how it worked in 4E.

There are basically two situations where the rogue gets to attack on other creature's turns:

* The creature provokes an Attack of Opportunity by moving away without Disengaging. This is likely rare, and I'm fine with the rogue being good at punishing monsters for moving.
* Another character gives up their action to allow the rogue to attack. In this case, the action economy remains the same - it's just been judged that it's more worth the rogue acting again rather than the character whose turn it is.

Here's the definition of round and turn from the basic rules:
"The game organizes the chaos of combat into a cycle of rounds and turns. A round represents about 6 seconds in the game world. During a round, each participant in a battle takes a turn. The order of turns is determined at the beginning of a combat encounter, when everyone rolls initiative. Once everyone has taken a turn, the fight continues to the next round if neither side has defeated the other."

Turn seems pretty well defined - it's actually the definition of round that is vague.

Cheers!

 

[Scorpio616]

Still, balance wise, a little concerning...?

By the interpretation that each creature's turn counts towards the rule that you can only do something on A turn, a rogue could get three sneak attacks per round. Does that really seem right to you?

It would be fine as long as there were not any ways to force foes to provoke Opportunity Attacks. But this just makes Command:Flee that much stronger depending on how the DM interprets the "directly harmful" clause.

You also don’t provoke an opportunity attack when you teleport or when someone or something moves you without using your movement, action, or reaction.

Command The spell has no effect if the target is undead, if it doesn’t understand your language, or if your command is directly harmful to it.

Command: Flee. The target spends its turn moving away from you by the fastest available means.

 

[Psikerlord#]

Not really. It's exactly how it worked in 4E.

There are basically two situations where the rogue gets to attack on other creature's turns:

* The creature provokes an Attack of Opportunity by moving away without Disengaging. This is likely rare, and I'm fine with the rogue being good at punishing monsters for moving.
* Another character gives up their action to allow the rogue to attack. In this case, the action economy remains the same - it's just been judged that it's more worth the rogue acting again rather than the character whose turn it is.

Here's the definition of round and turn from the basic rules:
"The game organizes the chaos of combat into a cycle of rounds and turns. A round represents about 6 seconds in the game world. During a round, each participant in a battle takes a turn. The order of turns is determined at the beginning of a combat encounter, when everyone rolls initiative. Once everyone has taken a turn, the fight continues to the next round if neither side has defeated the other."

Turn seems pretty well defined - it's actually the definition of round that is vague.

Cheers!

Yeah i just find it a little annoying that the rogue is better at punishing with OA's than the standard fighter is (without sentinel). I dont think they need that, balance wise, but it's no biggie.

 

[Piratecat]

By the interpretation that each creature's turn counts towards the rule that you can only do something on A turn, a rogue could get three two sneak attacks per round. Does that really seem right to you?

EDIT: I meant to say twice, not three times. Sleepy head.

It does, yes. The rogue's big downside in regular combat is that they only get one attack a round usually, so if they miss, they're doing no sneak attack damage. That makes them more swingy than (say) the fighter. Balance-wise, my suspicion is that the extra chance to do sneak attack damage when triggered by good PC tactics/bad monster tactics, combined with their average chance of hitting and sneak attacking, works out to just about the right amount of damage output. We're running it this way in our campaigns, so I'll report back if it seems weird or overpowered.

 

[Li Shenron]

Is it just me, or is a rule of this importance, should it have been defined better in the PHB? I mean, it's potentially confusing, and that slows game play, trying to sort it out.

Yes, it confused me too in the past.

Turn seems pretty well defined - it's actually the definition of round that is vague.

They probably overlooked the explanation because in the mind of someone who has played the game for years some things feel like they can't be misunderstood.

I guess it's just the same old "round" as before, so that for instance if you have a spell with "duration 1 round" it means it will last until the beginning of your next turn, not just until the end of the last turn in the current initiative round.

As for sneak attack, IIRC in 3e there was no limit to how many times in a round, thus it doesn't feel wrong to me at all if a Rogue can do multiple sneak attacks in one round.