Rogue Design goals . L&L May 7th

[erf_beto]

If they build something like the 4e assassin striker mechanic into the rogue as an alternative class feature (the one where you accumulate damage dice before attacking), I'm sure we can have a rogue sneaking around without attacking and still keep his DPR.
I say alternative, because I don't think all rogues should be strikers...

 

[Steely_Dan]

I say alternative, because I don't think all rogues should be strikers...

Well as it sounds like Roles as we know them in 4th Ed will not be in 5th Ed, you might be pleased.

And it sounds like Assassin will be its own class (a complex one).

 

[hemera]

I'm with it, except for the whole biding your time for a surprise attack bit. Too many bad memories of the 2e thief's backstab being totally useless. People fighting back to the wall, or back to back was so common, you'd think everyone in the world had cast protection from backstab 10' radius.

 

[grimslade]

Standard caveat, proof-eating all that better idea after the 24th.
I like the design goals. Spikey damage, skill monkey. Not being a hairy footed sexy god of war is not a bad thing.
A rogue can sneak in, let the wizard and fighter open up, and drop the healer. Nice. Burst then fade, if you can't fade... Haaaalllppp! It's a return to 1e, or mimicking video games, whichever you prefer.
As more of the L&L come out, 'the fighter, fights' gets reinforced more and more. A wire fu ninja taking on a mob of guards is a fighter with an appropriate theme and background. A ninja as mystic invisible assassin, sneaking into the stronghold, killing the daimyo and stealing the ancestral family sword, is a rogue. The classes have become better dance partners, less toe stepping.
I am intrigued by the thought of a burst model of damage for the rogue. The hints dropped early on of the wizard and fighter being balanced in damage output asymmetrically, fighter every round, while the wiz casts fireball on the third round, makes me think that the rogue will be able to duck in and out of combat a bit to build up to a big hit every couple of rounds.
Come on 5/24!

 

[Klaus]

I have no problem with the rogue fighting dirty. That helps differentiate the rogue from other, agility/Dexterity-based builds, like the swashbuckler or the scout/ranger/hunter/whatshisname. This is really not dissimilar from how the rogue is built in 4e, where you're only really effective if you have combat advantage.

 

[Mattachine]

Auto-success can also be a way to balance utility spells that trumped other classes in older editions.

Overall, I liked the direction this article seems to be moving the rogue.

 

[DEFCON 1]

The fact that there have been many, many people who have said that the Fighter and Rogue should just be combined into a single 'Martial Class' is a pretty good indication that the Rogue's sphere of influence has become too intermixed with the Fighter as time has gone on.

If we want the Rogue/Thief to be its own class... setting up a new paradigm for what it does that is substantially different than the Fighter and his mechanics is a necessary thing. Otherwise, we might as well have stayed with the Martial class / Divine class / Arcane class triumvirate, rather than the Fighter/Rogue/Cleric/Wizard "Big Four".

On top of that, as GX.Sigma pointed out... there might very well be a good chance that the Fighter and his associated martial combat mechanics could become the basis for the "lightly armored swashbuckler" duelist type, rather than the Rogue filling that niche. Especially if the Fighter no longer has to use STR as its combat ability score, but could choose to use DEX or CON instead.

 

[Dausuul]

I don't like the emphasis on sneaky backstabbing at all...

I want rogues to head more towards flashy combat acrobat / "ninja as portrayed in media and anime." Fast moving, skirmishing, and able to effortlessless maneuver past the front lines to get to softer or more important targets.

If rogues support sneaky backstabbing at all, it will be a welcome change from 3E and 4E. The damage bonus from sneak attack is too small to justify the time and effort involved in using stealth tactics, when you can just flank with the fighter and get the same bonus every single round.

I think rogues will have plenty of acrobatic tricks at their disposal. I don't think those tricks will enable them to leap into the middle of a fight and emerge unscathed, nor should they. That's fighter territory. I hope the fighter class will be versatile enough to encompass Xena and d'Artagnan as well as Lancelot.

 

[seregil]

I have played Rogues as my main class since I started playing long ago.

I have always viewed rogues as more akin to light infantry (in the modern sense) or commandos.

If fighters are the line infantry, designed to fight toe to toe with the enemy, rogues are the recon forces that scout the edges, the commandos that hit fast and hard behind the lines, the saboteurs that disrupt the enemy behind the lines etc.

Rogues and fighters both are martial classes, but the rogue simply is not trained and equipped to go one on one against the fighter in a straight up fight.

Doesn't mean he's a coward. In fact, in a way, he is braver, because he goes behind the lines alone or in small groups and if he gets caught, that's it. There is no way out.

His forte is improvisation and deviousness.

I like the write up by Mearls and, while I dislike the idea that rogues are so good that they somehow 'transcends' mere mortal skill (it smells of 4e like game balance kludge), I'll wait and see what form that takes.

 

[Mengu]

A bit of #1 concerns me: "If a rogue can't attack from behind or with some other key advantage, he or she might be better off withdrawing or remaining out of sight until the opportunity for a surprise attack presents itself." This just fails the 4e action economy lesson. A character is *almost never* better off not attacking. You can't have a two weapon ranger attacking twice a round, and a rogue attacking once every other round, and balance those two against each other.

#2, not sure I totally agree with this either. Why can't a ranger be a better swimmer than a rogue? Why can't a fighter be a better mountaineer than a rogue? How does the rogue gain better knowledge of nature than the Druid, or better arcana than the wizard? The rogue is better at thievery than everyone else, sure I'll buy that, but not every skill.

#3, is a good thing. They should keep literary rogue characters and their deeds in mind, when building the class. It's also kind of a given.

#4... Whatever... It's all fluff. The numbers on the paper are not about the routine. They are about those stressful situations. In every edition of D&D, I've had skilled characters succeed at trivial stuff without rolls. This doesn't need to be a design goal, just a sentence in the DMG.