D&D 5E Can an elf rogue be a decent archer in (Basic) D&D 5th edition?

[Sadras]

I've mentioned versatility so many times in this thread that it's not funny. Fighters have it, Rogues don't. This is why I am saying Rogues need more DPR. They lack versatility, and are one-trick ponies in combat, but the Fighter is better at that trick, by and large (not all Rogues even have Assassinate, either, note).

With regards to Damage:
I hear what you are saying but increasing the DPR, by perhaps upping sneak attack damage, shouldn't make them any less of a 1-trick pony in your eyes.
Considering that for the first 10-levels (which are the most played) it appears that Rogues out-perform Fighters in the damage department, if I'm reading @Dausuul 's posts correctly, I'm surprised we don't have players complaining more about Fighters here. Essentially you are really arguing about the last 6 or so levels which I find "meh!" to be honest. No disrespect.

[Edited - Definitely misread the spreadsheet.]

 

[Ruin Explorer]

With regards to Damage:
I hear what you are saying but increasing the DPR, by perhaps upping sneak attack damage, shouldn't make them any less of a 1-trick pony in your eyes. Considering that for the first 10-levels (which are the most played) it appears that Rogues out-perform Fighters in the damage department, if I'm reading @Dausuul 's posts correctly, I'm surprised we don't have players complaining more about Fighters here. Essentially you are really arguing about the last 6 or so levels which I find "meh!" to be honest. No disrespect.

Stopping you right there - you are not reading Dasuul's posts correctly. Rogues are better from levels 1-4. 5-10 Fighters are better.

Even on the "10 level average", Rogues are behind, at best reaching 89%, but you've somehow read this as them being ahead?

So the rest of your posted is based on this rather surprising misreading. May want to edit or delete it.

 

[Sadras]

Stopping you right there - you are not reading Dasuul's posts correctly. Rogues are better from levels 1-4. 5-10 Fighters are better.

Even on the "10 level average", Rogues are behind, at best reaching 89%, but you've somehow read this as them being ahead?

So the rest of your posted is based on this rather surprising misreading. May want to edit or delete it.

True. Edited. It might be interesting then to see how other classes fair in combat with regards to damage only. I mean I doubt they will all be the same. But you do realise we are measuring only 1 aspect of combat and that is DPR - not defense or ability to hit. I haven't run the numbers (and probably shouldn't lol).

Personally I can live with an 89% average for the first 10 levels, I agree with you that the fluctuations are significant, but I imagine it is quite difficult to balance them out over each level or even smooth them. I don't know if I would prefer that either - I like the diversity of the classes. They need to feel vastly different.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

True. Edited. It might be interesting then to see how other classes fair in combat with regards to damage only. I mean I doubt they will all be the same. But you do realise we are measuring only 1 aspect of combat and that is DPR - not defense or ability to hit. I haven't run the numbers (and probably shouldn't lol).

Yeah, but no-one is disputing that Rogues have lower ACs, lower HP, less control, and, depending on spec, equal or lower chance to hit. So that's pretty much definitely worse.

I do want to see how Monks, Barbarians, Rangers etc. fit in, in practice.

Personally I can live with an 89% average for the first 10 levels, I agree with you that the fluctuations are significant, but I imagine it is quite difficult to balance them out over each level or even smooth them. I don't know if I would prefer that either - I like the diversity of the classes. They need to feel vastly different.

I can live with 89% too, but I feel it's a bit too "best case", because it's actually the result of some assumptions in the favour of the Rogue (no magic items, 100% SA use, etc.), and pretty much none in favour of the Fighter.

I think this very particular issue would be easy to balance attractively, personally - a few more SA dice post-5 could bring DPR very close without making the Rogue too bonkers. I hope that's what I'll actually see in July. If not there's always House Rules!

 

[Dausuul]

Keep in mind that the rogue's defenses are different from the fighter's. The fighter's defenses are straightforward: High AC and lots of hit points. No matter what the opposition, the fighter can step out front and say "Bring it on," and proceed to take all kinds of heat.

The rogue has decent AC--not the equal of a fighter in plate, but a class with Dex as its primary stat is never going to do badly in the AC department. In hit points, of course, the fighter has a big advantage, partly due to bigger hit dice and partly due to a likely-higher Con score. (The fighter can almost always put her second-highest stat in Con, whereas rogues usually have other priorities.)

However, the rogue's main defenses are Cunning Action and Evasion*. Both of these make you very good at defending yourself from a single powerful foe. Cunning Action lets you skip back out of reach without consequence, taking advantage of your ability to switch off between melee and range. Evasion lets you halve the damage of one of that foe's attacks. Taken together, these have the effect of lowering your profile as a target. You don't do any more damage than the fighter, you're hard to get to, and you never seem to take much damage, so why chase you?

Of course, Cunning Action and Evasion work far less well against a mob. But your damage is all single-target spike damage, so the mob has little incentive to go after you--it's much more concerned with your wizard pal.

None of this is to suggest that rogues are the equals of fighters in combat. They are nothing of the kind. Fighters have better damage, less blow-through, and much less situational defenses. But rogues don't need to be the equals of fighters, they just need to be able to contribute effectively and survive while doing it. I believe 80-90% of fighter damage output fulfills the first requirement, and Cunning Action and Evasion fulfill the second. As soon as the battle is over and the party resumes sneaking through a dungeon full of traps and sentries, the fighter fades way, way back, while the rogue becomes a star.

[size=-2]*You don't get Evasion until 5th level, of course. But I don't think it's a coincidence that 5th just happens to be the level when fighters surge ahead of rogues in damage output.[/size]

 

[Sadras]

I do want to see how Monks, Barbarians, Rangers etc. fit in, in practice... (snip)
...If not there's always House Rules!

Our barbarian is doing a crazy amount of damage and as for House Rules we have quite a few as it is - I can't begin to explain how I appreciate how flexible 5e is.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

As soon as the battle is over and the party resumes sneaking through a dungeon full of traps and sentries, the fighter fades way, way back, while the rogue becomes a star.

Honestly this worries me a bit - it seems like Fighters and Barbarians don't get any second/third pillar abilities at all, whereas they should probably have something unique to each class.

 

[Dausuul]

Honestly this worries me a bit - it seems like Fighters and Barbarians don't get any second/third pillar abilities at all, whereas they should probably have something unique to each class.

Barbarians aren't entirely without options in that regard. If you follow the Path of the Totem Warrior, you can get some movement and skill boosts. Still, I agree that they would benefit from being able to go farther toward the "wilderness warrior" end of the "wilderness warrior/berserker" spectrum. Maybe WotC was worried about stepping too much on the ranger's toes.

Fighters get zilch, of course, unless they use some of their bonus feats to diversify. That seems intentional. WotC evidently decided not to mandate minimum competency in the noncombat pillars; if you're the type of player whose only interest is carnage and wreckage--and there are quite a few such--you can play a fighter, put all your feats into boosting your fighting prowess, and lumber silently along in the party's wake until you hear the magic words "Roll initiative."

I'm not sure I'd have gone that way, but the noncombat pillars have always posed a design challenge.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

Fighters get zilch, of course, unless they use some of their bonus feats to diversify. That seems intentional. WotC evidently decided not to mandate minimum competency in the noncombat pillars; if you're the type of player whose only interest is carnage and wreckage--and there are quite a few such--you can play a fighter, put all your feats into boosting your fighting prowess, and lumber silently along in the party's wake until you hear the magic words "Roll initiative."

Problem is, even those guys like things like Intimidate and door-kicking, in my long and extensive experience of them, which Fighters have no particular proficiency for, so that doesn't quite work.

I'm not sure I'd have gone that way, but the noncombat pillars have always posed a design challenge.

Indeed. A challenge WotC have been curiously terrible at dealing with - even in 4E, where the solutions were very easy. It seems they've failed it worse than 4E, here, as of October anyway.

 

[Mistwell]

I've mentioned versatility so many times in this thread that it's not funny. Fighters have it, Rogues don't. This is why I am saying Rogues need more DPR. They lack versatility, and are one-trick ponies in combat, but the Fighter is better at that trick, by and large (not all Rogues even have Assassinate, either, note).



That is an utterly awful example on so many levels

With regard to rogues not being versatile in combat... (sorry for the long response, but I think it gets to the heart of my difficulty with your view on this).

The rogue is the one character that has the most maneuverability in the entire game. They can go where others cannot, they can move in and strike and withdraw in ways others cannot, they wear the lightest armor so can utilize their full move speed. They have extremely high skills allowing them to do 'tricks' that others cannot. The idea that they are the ones lacking in versatility simply strikes me as an extraordinary claim from anyone actually currently playing a rogue in a 5e playtest.

In my experience, 5e is a game much 'looser' than 3e or 4e (for lack of a better term). Combat isn't as regimented. Actions are much more fluid, more open ended, with a much wider range of things to do because of a lack of specific rules covering such things. I know the natural tendency is to think rules assist such things, but I'd argue they constrain people to naturally only try to do things specified as being a rule, or appearing on a lengthy character sheet.

There tends to be a lot more swinging on chandeliers, knocking over book cases, tossing slippery objects or liquids on the ground, pulling ropes taunt to trip, running up to high ground, hiding behind statues, and that sort of more-unusual stuff. Stuff people did as a routine in 1e and 2e, but tended to get away from in 3e and 4e unless there was a rule about it, usually on their character sheet. It was tendency only of course, as some people did them still, nonetheless it was a trend to focus more on your character sheet and what was written there, in 3e and 4e - because there was so much there on that sheet to absorb, and so many specific rules to consider. That trend seems to have ended with 5e, at least during the playtest.

In my experience no class gained as much from moving away from a character-sheet-focus than the rogue. They have great speed, they have abilities to move, take an action, and move again in a way nobody else can (and it was done in a way that they don't need to look at the sheet or the rule, because it's a unified simple type ability). They can do such things next to a creature or away from them. They can hide in ways others cannot. And they have significantly greater skills to make the kinds of checks usually involved with unusual 'tricks' like I described above.

In my experience, the 5e rogues are the most versatile in combat, of any of the classes.

So I am going to ask a serious question - RE, have you played a rogue in the game since the last package came out? And if so, what was your actual experience playing them?

Or, is your complaint instead mostly theoretical in nature, where if it cannot show up easily in rather simplified math that cannot account well for the complexities of a more open-ended combat system, then you don't count it?