Anyone else tired of the miserly begrudging Rogue design of 5E?

[Salthorae]

The design of the 5E Rogue class is not generous.

In games without feats, and where every adventure day is 8 encounters long, then maybe, just maybe, can the Rogue hold his own in the combat department.

But in games with feats the fighter get upwards of 35 or more damage a round, along with a host of other tricks. That's 10d6! There is no feat to meaningfully increase sneak attack damage.

And in games where the Sorcerer can cast a Fireball together with two Firebolts each combat (for something like 8d6+3d10+3d10+10 damage) the Rogue's so-called "alpha strike" looks just sad.

But the design is not only too stingy with damage. It is poor and counter-intuitive. There is no burst/nova capability. Correct play requires absolute system mastery, to gain two sneak attacks in as many rounds as humanly possible. The Assassinate ability is just mean to the Rogue player, enclosed in so many requirements it basically never happens in games where the party consensus is that solo raids are boring for the rest of the players; much more fun if everybody joins in to the combat simultaneously!

Sure the Rogue has its uses outside of combat, but let's be honest - D&D is a combat-heavy game, and there needs to be a straightforward way to build a Rogue that is competitive in combat.

Assassinate works easily... you have advantage on anyone who hasn't gone in the initiative order yet, so you're guaranteed Sneak Attack against something unless you go after all enemies. The auto crit part is separate from that, and getting surprise isn't that hard, they just need to not be aware of you. Some in the combat maybe surprised while others aren't.

If you get both and attack with two short swords then you're doing 8-10d6+Dex on that first round (because all hits are Crits with assassinate not just the first & depending on level) , then you move and hide or just move and start attacking the things the fighter is hitting so you still get sneak attack. The higher level and more sneak attack that get doubled the more deadly.

Rogue isn't supposed to be a front line fighter. That is why there is a Fighter. They are a supplement to the fighter in combat, but Fighters can't do hardly anything out of combat, they are a one trick pony really. And Fighters get to take all that damage that the Rogue just evades or dodges, because you can sneak attack at range! Or attack, disengage and move out of melee range, then move back in next round.

Take alertness or mobility, those are both going to help you in combat get sneak attacks. Alertness increases your chances to Assassinate. Mobility means you don't waste your Bonus Action disengaging and can use it to attack, move and hide, then attack from hiding for more sneak attack.

It is much easier in 5e to get sneak attack dice on most all attacks (even against Constructs and Undead now!) than any previous edition. Yes a Rogue isn't dealing the fighter damage every round, they're not a fighter.

If you're disappointed by the Rogue' damage output and the other gems that they offer don't appeal to you, then don't play a Rogue, play a melee class instead. But a complaint about a rogues consistent damage output is just wanting to have your cake and eat it too. Make up your own fighter "thug" subclass that gives some sneak attack damage with light/finesse weapons so you can have the fighter attacks but get some sneak attack too and see if DMs will allow it. I probably would.

I love Rogues and have played 3 or 4 different subclasses and am DM'ing a party where 3 of the character are either assassins or have Rogue levels. They shine where they shine and they do a decent job in combat, but they should never be mistaken for front line fighters in terms of damage output or soaked.

 

[DEFCON 1]

Didn't you already make a thread asking about ways to get more Sneak Attacks for your rogue player? What happened? I could have sworn there were like over a dozen different ideas thrown about to increase Rogue damage. Did nothing anyone suggest actually make your rogue player happy?

Or do you just want everyone who gave their suggestions in the other thread to retype them here so you won't have to read the other long thread over again?

 

[Blue]

If you evaluate the rogue one dimensional about the amount of damage they do, I can see your frustration.

If you include their other combat abilities, especially mobility and to be able to deliver that damage where it will do the most good, and well as their damage avoidance features, and then roll in their expertise (heh) in other pillars of play, you've got a much more robust character.

That purely martial "at-will" characters are not the master of the nova seems to be a design choice. The fact that the design choice also requires 6-8 combats per day in order to balance the three resource models is ... unfortunate.

Where I agree is that there the feats for enhancing combat damage are very uneven, favoring two specific styles (two handed and archers) foremost, and favoring those with Extra Attack over those without it like the rogue. I'd like to see more balanced options across that field.

 

[Jester David]

If your table is doubling up on the DPR role, the rogue will fall behind. But that’s the nature of the beast: there will always being someone at the bottom. If you buff the rogue then we’ll start talking about the warlock or sorcerer...

And, as stated, the rogue gets a lot of useful stuff other than dealing damage. D&D is a combat heavy game, but it's not a combat ONLY game.
And if you've every had an adventure come to an abrupt halt with a locked door, the rogue doesn't seem underpowered.

 

[CapnZapp]

I've been disenchanted with it since it was the Thief.

You could fold every toy the rogue ever got in any edition of D&D into a fighter with every toy it had ever had, and it still wouldn't rise any higher than Class Tier 3.

What I don't get is the notion that half your level in extra d6's is somehow a dangerous amount of extra damage.

It's not. At 10th level it's +18 damage. On top of weak base damage, so really, it's only +15 damage.

That's not gonna "assassinate" anything level appropriate. In 1E maybe, but not in 5E where everybody has huge bags of hit points. You probably can't oneshot even a CR 1 critter at 10th level.

Why do people treat sneak attack as something dangerously close to unbalanced, when nobody has any problems giving out feats, multiclassing and items to fighters and sorcerers?

 

[CapnZapp]

It is different from a fighter. It does things different than the fighter. It is different from a sorcerer. It does things different than a sorcerer. If all you want is combat damage, then play a fighter or a sorcerer.

No.

I want to play a rogue in combat.

 

[TwoSix]

The issue isn't so much rogues, the issue is with other martials getting Extra Attack, and then the feats that synergize well with it.

Now, granted, it's easier to much easier to fix just rogues than to fix every other martial class, but the doesn't change the fact that the rogue design is great. It gets a fantastic bonus action option and reaction option by level 5, with no feats required. Sneak attack is exactly how damage should scale. (It should be once per round to discourage fishing for extra attacks, of course.) My only wish for rogue is that its 2nd subclass feature came earlier than level 9 (which is way too late for a second subclass feature), and that Reliable Talent came earlier, somewhere between 7 and 9.

 

[mellored]

The rogues "alpha-strike" is to take a bow, shoot, and cunningly dash away. Take the mobile feat and be an aarakocra just to be rediculous. It doesn't matter if the rogue only does 1d8+dex if the enemy can't attack you.


The big issue IMO, is the rogue doesn't play well with the rest of the party. Never has.

 

[Dausuul]

What I don't get is the notion that half your level in extra d6's is somehow a dangerous amount of extra damage.

It's not. At 10th level it's +18 damage. On top of weak base damage, so really, it's only +15 damage.

That's not gonna "assassinate" anything level appropriate. In 1E maybe, but not in 5E where everybody has huge bags of hit points. You probably can't oneshot even a CR 1 critter at 10th level.

Why do people treat sneak attack as something dangerously close to unbalanced, when nobody has any problems giving out feats, multiclassing and items to fighters and sorcerers?

I could flip that logic around on you: Why is it so all-fired important to give the rogue another half their level in extra d6s? Why is that bit of extra damage such a big deal?

The class is what it is. If what you want is to hand out some extra Sneak Attack dice to rogues in your game, what are you talking to us for? You don't need our permission. Just do it. (And if you're a player, then it's your DM you need to convince, not anyone here.)

If what you want is for us to agree that the class design is stingy and underpowered, then the burden of proof is on you, not us; and I'm not impressed with your case for that claim, for all the reasons that I and other people have stated.

 

[CapnZapp]

If your table is doubling up on the DPR role, the rogue will fall behind. But that’s the nature of the beast: there will always being someone at the bottom.

Sorry that's just a argument.

I want a rogue that too can "double up on the DPR". Then you can choose to not do that, that's fine.

But why should there be one class that's alone in prevented from being great in combat.

The Sorcerer and Warlock have problems, but there are at least one DPR build for each class. Sure it sucks you need to play a Red Dragon Sorcerer to gain excellent combat power (that is, it sucks that if you want to play another kind of Sorq your damage will suffer.

But at least the option is there. For the Rogue that option simply does not exist.

And don't get me started on the Assassin. If it helps you, consider all the suggested changes I present above to only apply to the Assassin.

At least then there's a way to play a Rogue that pulls his own weight in combat.