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

[The Hitcher]

@pemerton: I'm not in the business of telling people what their subjective experience is. I think it's great that people are being imaginative and experimental within the 4E system (and having fun doing it), but I but think the system tends to discourage it. Note that I've specifically been talking about the combat system. I'm far less concerned about the out-of-combat action resolution, and in fact I think it's most likely better than any that came before. However, I do feel that those systems are vastly overshadowed by the combat mechanics, which is what most of the page-count and (in my experience) game time is taken up with. (To the point where most of the Powers don't even make sense outside the context of a battlemat.)

In regards to your preference for the out-of-combat mechanics of 4E over the 5E playtest, I honestly don't see a great deal of difference between the two. I wouldn't be surprised if we see an optional Skill Challenge system in the DMG. But generally speaking, a check is a check in either edition. I think you may be surprised by how much discussion and how many options there are around check resolution in the core books. Mearls has talked about optionally making use of storygame mechanics (like "fail forward", for example), and I'd expect some discussion of these kinds of options in the DMG. D&D will never be Burning Wheel (a game which I adore, by the way), but I expect that it won't be hard to bring a few rules in to strongly encourage story-making play.

some would argue you missed the "spirit of p. 42"

@Sadras: Good call! Majoru's play seems to be affected by the core systems in the same way as mine was, except that it doesn't seem to bother him/her. Which is fine - different people have different fun. But my expectation is that more people end up playing this way than the way Ruin Explorer and permerton's groups play. No way to prove that conclusively, unfortunately.

@Ruin Explorer: That wasn't the conclusion that I (and a number of others) came to. Yes, an archer rogue is going to be inferior pound-for-pound during ordinary combat rounds, but their stealth skills mean they can get the drop on sentries or stragglers and take them out (potentially in a single shot). If you look at their effectiveness outside the bounds of the 4E-style enclosed encounter, a rogue should easily hold their own.

 

[Sadras]

[MENTION=5143]Majoru Oakheart[/MENTION] - I was teasing with the quoted part of my tease referring to another poster. I perhaps should have used a smiley face.

 

[The Hitcher]

@pemerton: On the issue of the tiers of play indicating appropriate actions for the players to take: this is not really something I've given much thought to, because I'm not really a fan of "superhero" D&D - I prefer a grittier game, which 5E seems to suit better. Perhaps 4E will continue to be a better fit for you more if you're into high-powered play. Or perhaps the issue will be addressed in the 5E DMG - they have said that there will be guides to modding the game to make it closer in style to each of the previous editions. Impossible to say at this point which aspects of similarity/difference will be covered and which won't.

 

[Sadras]

@pemerton thanks, I remember reading those examples. From this post, the alignment thread and the DMing style thread you started I have a much better understanding of your DMing style and why 4e works so well for you and your group.
How do you rule on characters trying to do something different with their powers, alter them in some small way which would seem logical that they could do given the given narrative of the power. Do you just allow it? Have them roll to alter it? Perhaps cost a surge?

D&Dnext seems to me - at least from the playtest documents - to be much closer to 3E in its approach to DC-setting.

Yes, I understand now. We have distinct approaches. You challenge the group based on character-levels whereas the challenges I set are also affected by in-game fiction.

 

[Majoru Oakheart]

In the paragon example, the dwarven thrower artefact Whelm was being reforged as Overwhelm - a mordenkrad. To help with the reforging (in mechanical terms, in order to try and bring the skill challenge to a successful resolution) the player declared that he wanted his PC (a mid-paragon fighter/cleric of Moradin) to put his hands into the forge and hold the hammer steady so the artificers could grab it with their tongs. (Mechanically, this was resolved as an Endurance check.)

Page 28 of the PHB says this about paragon tier:

In the paragon tier, your character is a shining example of heroism, set well apart from the masses. . . You are able to travel more quickly from place to place, perhaps on a hippogriff mount or using a spell to grant your party flight. In combat, you might fly or even teleport short distances. Death becomes a surmountable obstacle, and the fate of a nation or even the world might hang in the balance as you undertake momentous quests.​

Yeah, I definitely did not read that section as prescriptive. I thought that entire section on Tiers was to be read as "Keep in mind that when you get to these levels, you'll have feats, class features, powers, PPs, and rituals that well let you do all sorts of extremely powerful things. DMs, you should expect PCs to have the ability to do some of these things. However, if you don't have a rule that tells you that you can do it, you are still a normal human in all other aspects."

Even at Paragon Tier, if someone said, "I'd like to hold on to a hammer inside a forge" I'd say, "Are you immune to fire using some power or feat? No? Alright, your hands nearly melt off as you take...let's say 3d10 points of fire damage. If you'd like to hold on despite the pain you can make a hard Endurance check for your level. You'll keep taking the damage each round you hold it, however."

I read the section as "This is what MIGHT be possible for people at this level" and not "This is always possible for people at this level if they ask nicely".

 

[Majoru Oakheart]

[MENTION=5143]Majoru Oakheart[/MENTION] - I was teasing with the quoted part of my tease referring to another poster. I perhaps should have used a smiley face.

Yeah, I wasn't certain. So I figured I'd head off those complaints before anyone even raised them. Plus, I felt it was a good springboard to bring up a couple of points I felt were important to the conversation.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

@Ruin Explorer: That wasn't the conclusion that I (and a number of others) came to. Yes, an archer rogue is going to be inferior pound-for-pound during ordinary combat rounds, but their stealth skills mean they can get the drop on sentries or stragglers and take them out (potentially in a single shot). If you look at their effectiveness outside the bounds of the 4E-style enclosed encounter, a rogue should easily hold their own.[/COLOR]

The topic is purely about Rogue archers, not Rogues in general. Archer Rogues are inferior at doing damage during combat after level 4, by anywhere between 11% and 31% (or a bit more if we factor in overkill and occasional lack of SA). They also have less on-paper survivability (a great deal less, even with Evasion factored in) and control, but as Mistwell points out, if the player is crafty enough and DM agreeable, they may find it easier to pull off spectacular improvised not-on-paper actions, and to prevent themselves being a viable target at all by hiding. That's non-quantifiable, and doesn't directly relate to archery, by and large.

The repeated assertions about being better at killing sentries are in error post-level-4, repeating them does not change that. Due to high stealth skills, Rogue archers may have an easier time approaching sentries, but must get within 30ft to use SA/Assasination. Assuming both are using longbows (as we must, for the Rogue is specifically an Elf, and the Fighter would be silly not to), then the Fighter only needs to get within 150ft. If the Fighter also has the Archery Master Feat, he only needs to get within 600ft. The Rogue must still get to 30ft, regardless of whether he has that Feat (though it is still helpful for ignoring cover etc.). So the Fighter's Stealth check will be much easier, if he even has to make a check at all.

If the terrain is such that you literally cannot take a shot from more 30ft away, that definitely helps the Rogue, but an Archer Fighter wearing armour which doesn't Disadvantage Stealth and with the Stealth skill will have a good chance to be fine.

The Rogue will use Assassinate (for we assume he is an Assassin Rogue), and SA, because why wouldn't you, and has one attack roll (at Advantage, though, thankfully), where, if he misses, the sentry is probably screaming bloody murder, if not, hopefully he's dead, but it depends very much on what level he is.

If there are two guards, the Rogue is screwed, sadly, unless they can't see each other, and the DM kindly rules that your attack killed one without causing a commotion (so this relies largely on DM co-operation and player persuasiveness).

The Fighter will use his normal attack action (with Advantage), so gets 2-4 attacks (depending on level - I'm assuming above 4 because I don't contest this below that) and then, if the target(s) are still standing, he uses Action Surge to get another attack action (which gives him the same number of attacks again), still at Advantage. On average, all this together will inflict more damage than even a successful Assassinate - and if the enemies are very weak, he may be able to kill more than one guard before they can react, something the Rogue cannot do unless the DM allows him to by co-operating.

The sum total of this is that the Rogue has a certain chance to kill a single opponent, and that's cool, but the Fighter has a greater chance to kill the same opponent (all things considered), and can potentially kill or injure further targets.

If you want I can show all the math and so on - you can pick a level, I'm not doing a spreadsheet!

Now, if you want to say "Well, what if the Rogue sneaks up and pushes a boulder on top of them or something?". Well, sure, but that's outside the scope of the original question, which was specifically about how good Archer Rogues were, because archery is in no way involved. Improvised actions might well benefit either - they depend more on the personality and creativity of the players, and the co-operation level of the DM. An adversarial DM will cut improvised stuff to minimal effectiveness, a highly collaborative one might boost it to the point where it's silly to use actual abilities! (which is probably fine).

If we were to change the question to "can a Rogue be a decent sniper in 5E?" the answer is a resounding: NO! Rogue damage only works within 30ft. If you want to snipe in 5E, you want to be a Fighter.

If you want to be a very deadly ranged Rogue, you don't actually want to be an archer, either, you want to have Throwing Weapon Mastery (the Feat), because it lets you dual-wield throw, which means that if either of your attacks lands, you get your Assassinate-SA, and which brings you closer to the Fighter (but as you have Advantage it's not as big a factor as if you didn't).

I'm not sure what you mean re: stragglers - if you mean fleeing enemies, then no, a Rogue isn't better, indeed he's much worse off, because of the 30ft requirement (which many fleeing enemies will be beyond), whereas if you mean picking off the guy at the back of a column or whatever without alerting the rest, then that's a matter of DM co-operation again.

As for which is the better CHARACTER, over the whole adventure or whatever? Obviously there is no way to say. I'd be unsurprised if the Rogue came out ahead in a lot of adventures as a CHARACTER, looking at all three "pillars" and so on, but as an archer? He's inferior even in his area of speciality, after level 5 (before that he is superior).

EDIT - If you want me to run the math for you, I need the following parameters - the level of PCs, who/what the sentry or sentries are (pref. from the October bestiary), and the general encounter scenario.

I will likely provide alternate scenarios, of course, but I'm not even going to get into this unless there is interest!

LATER EDIT - I'm wrong re: 30ft, they removed that! Yay!

 

[Ruin Explorer]

@pemerton: On the issue of the tiers of play indicating appropriate actions for the players to take: this is not really something I've given much thought to, because I'm not really a fan of "superhero" D&D - I prefer a grittier game, which 5E seems to suit better. Perhaps 4E will continue to be a better fit for you more if you're into high-powered play. Or perhaps the issue will be addressed in the 5E DMG - they have said that there will be guides to modding the game to make it closer in style to each of the previous editions. Impossible to say at this point which aspects of similarity/difference will be covered and which won't.

I don't think anyone is denying 5E potentially suits the "grittier" game better, equally hopefully no-one is denying that 4E is perhaps the only modern edition of D&D that really handled high-level adventuring well (as opposed to "play" - RC D&D was probably the best at high-level play outside of adventuring, imo). It's certainly the only one I've seen where all the players were like "Woo, yeah, keep going! MOAR LEVELS!" much past 13 (the Wizard tended to keep saying that in previous editions, but the other players tended to be going "Let's start a fresh new campaign! "), except RC D&D.

Largely this is because 4E's math only breaks down a little at higher levels, and the gameplay stays basically similar, whereas in previous editions, party dynamics and the nature of encounters change vastly.

From a rules perspective, 5E looks to be closer to 4E than any other edition, here, in that all characters keep getting serious abilities as they level up past 10, and casters get more spells, but nowhere near as many more as they previously got.

So 5E has a shot at being decent for high-level play, a solid one, I'd say. I'll wait and see before declaring it awesome at it, but I think a lot of people are more pessimistic than me about that.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

@pemerton: I'm not in the business of telling people what their subjective experience is. I think it's great that people are being imaginative and experimental within the 4E system (and having fun doing it), but I but think the system tends to discourage it. Note that I've specifically been talking about the combat system. I'm far less concerned about the out-of-combat action resolution, and in fact I think it's most likely better than any that came before. However, I do feel that those systems are vastly overshadowed by the combat mechanics, which is what most of the page-count and (in my experience) game time is taken up with. (To the point where most of the Powers don't even make sense outside the context of a battlemat.)

I feel like it's the DM's job to make powers make sense outside the context of a battlemat, personally, but I think as we've discussed, I differ from many DMs on this, who apparently what, throw their hands up in frustration? (I dunno what they do, I guess).

As for the rest, the funny thing is, I don't strictly disagree, but it's relative - experimental and imaginative, that is. What I've seen, and I'm not alone in this (just go ask RPG.net if you want), is that players going from 3.XE to 4E became more experimental and imaginative, despite the things you say work against that.

I believe the reason for this is extremely simple and it's been stated by multiple people in this thread (possibly even you? I can't remember) - 3.XE's rules were so broad in scope and so detailed that they covered a really huge variety of actions - it was very hard to perform a typical adventuring action that wasn't covered by 3.XE's rules, if you looked for the rules, and usually what those rules amounted to was "make between two and six (no hyperbole this time) d20-based skill, stat or attack roll checks to see if you can do this one thing" - or worse, the very rare "you explicitly cannot do this without a feat" obviously, given the nature of probability, it was thus very hard to succeed at improvised stuff in 3.XE.

So what I've been trying to say, whilst being yelled at (from my perspective ) by a variety of people is not "OMG 4E IS THA BESTEST FOR IMPROV ACTIONS LOSERZ!", but rather "4E sure was better for improv actions than 3.XE!". Do people even disagree with that? The only argument I've seen against is "In 3.XE your non-improv actions blew so hard that improv seemed good by comparison!", which I get, but it's kind of tangential to what I was saying.

With 5E, okay, let's be real, there are two basic, likely, scenarios for how good it is at improv actions:

1) No real guidelines, it is exactly as good as your DM wants it to be, and may well vary strongly from player to player, depending on how persuasive they are. This is the 2E situation. I will be honest - I do not like this, because I don't like it, as a DM, when I'm being asked to make this kind of judgment call all the time, and as my group loves improv actions, that's what I'll be doing!

or

2) Some guidelines, which are obviously not in the playtest, and probably won't appear until the DMG (though, like Mistwell, I hope they appear in the PHB in some form), which are in no way "hard rules", but merely suggestions, and good, detailed ones with lots of nice ideas - and which give a DM something to work from.

If they are the latter, it is certainly possible 5E will be better at improv stuff than 4E. That'd be great. I just don't think it's a sure thing. It is, however, a sure thing that it will be better at it than 3.XE/PF (assuming the goal is that adventurers frequently succeed at improv actions, not hilariously fail!).

The third scenario is an unknown unknown, I think, but I can't speculate on that.

Finally, just let me mention that my contention that 4E encouraged non-AEDU play is not reliant on p.42, and I've pointed this out several times (from the start, in fact), it's just that people want to argue about p.42 specifically - what I am saying, though, is that 4E encouraged it through a great deal of DM advice, both in DMG1, and DMG2. I'd have to look in the PHB to see if it was encouraged there, but from my group, the fact that the PHB had less general rules in it clearly encouraged players. You mentioned the "hundreds of pages" of "tactical rules" in 4E. There are not "hundreds of pages", let's be clear, of tactical rules. 4E has far fewer "tactical rules" and general rules that get involved in combat than 3.XE. Just wanted to note that, not to argue about it, btw

 

[Uller]

My group is starting to think up of characters to use with the Basic Starter Set when it comes out in July. One player wants to play an elven archer, but the missing spot in the party is the rogue. Based on what we know so far, does it seem feasible for an elven rogue to be a decent archer in combat?

RE, I can't speak for the OP but to me it seems you are answering a question that is not being asked. Is it feasible for an elven rogue to be a decent archer? Not uber archer sniper extraordinaire...decent. yes is the answer. He wont be as good an archer as he could be as a fighter. But he will be decent. He will still tend to outclass the non-fighters when spells arent involved and can do all the rogue sorts of things wonderfully well. If the player in question wants to be like Legolas in the last hobbit movie then you are correct. Play a fighter.

But how is this for survivability? Last night our assassin triggered an encounter with 12 wights. She faced attacks from 4 of them before she could act and came away relatively unscathed because of evasion. It was fun watching her decide when to us it. Once safely away she killed on wight every round.

The next encounter was with a water elemental. It never attacked her because of cunning action. Instead it very nearly killed the barbarian and the monk on 2 consecutive critical hits. The monk went from 22 to 0 on a hit for 32 damage. The rogue would have been able to use evasion to shake it off.

All night she and the barbarian were competing on damage done and kills.

Sometimes she even opted to use her bow and did quite well. She had tons of fun all evening...which is the point isnt it? To me, the question is "can you have fun playing an elf rogue as an archer?" I think you can.

I know...dpr and all that...