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

[CapnZapp]

Let’s be honest: D&D is a combat focused game. You can’t argue that. And you’d be stupid to try. You can stay away from combat if you want, but you can’t pretend it isn’t designed around a pretty damned cool combat engine.

Angry GMs words.

Of course the Rogue should work within this context, and I think the current design is miserly as in ungenerous and I think it is begrudging as in suspecting: "don't know about handing out more to the Rogue, didn't that class get a godly amount of sneak d6's back when the PHB was first created, back when the classes were just made and the feats chapter wasn't even finalized...?"

Except this pile of d6 can't be embiggened by most traditional means.

"Here you are little rogue, here's a couple of d6, now go play with the big boys".

Rogues have few synergy effects with multiclassing. There are no Rogue feats that increase DPR. Straight-forward magic weapons gel much worse for a single-attack class than an attack-five-times-a-round class.

It's almost like Rogues are supposed to be happy with their meager pile of d6, except everyone else gets the toys later on to completely overshadow them. Throughout the lifetime of the edition, they're constantly reminded how great sneak attack is, and everybody is forgetting that by now everyone else has surpassed them.

All that's left to Rogues are going deep into mechanical meta issues to scrounge up a second sneak attack. Which is deeply deeply unsatisfying. "WHY can I make a second sneak three seconds later, but I can't do it myself, I have to wait for the Kobold's turn?" I'm not usually much for explaining crunch by fluff, but here I'm flabbergasted - so many forumists that are dead set against simplifying and removing a very very odd mechanical circumstance.

And when I suggest to simply add the two "half dice" sneaks together, everybody gangs up on me for daring to question the holy sanctity of the impeccable Rogue class design. Without even stopping to actually analyze my proposal.

Sigh.

 

[AaronOfBarbaria]

Maybe stop playing the victim, stop wildly misrepresenting everyone's statements if they don't immediately agree with you, stop using hyperbole and other word choice that tries to paint a problem you are having as one that is inherent to the subject matter (by which I mean that you say things in a way that reads as "this bit of the book can't work well" rather than "this bit of the book doesn't work well at my table"), and stop accusing anyone that doesn't have the same problems you are having of things like thinking the game in question is literally perfect, and you'll find the resulting conversation stays more focused on your actual problem and the actual solutions rather than all the distracting junk you have chosen to sew all throughout the conversation even though you don't want anyone to respond to it?

 

[Pauln6]

Angry GMs words.

Of course the Rogue should work within this context, and I think the current design is miserly as in ungenerous and I think it is begrudging as in suspecting: "don't know about handing out more to the Rogue, didn't that class get a godly amount of sneak d6's back when the PHB was first created, back when the classes were just made and the feats chapter wasn't even finalized...?"

Except this pile of d6 can't be embiggened by most traditional means.

"Here you are little rogue, here's a couple of d6, now go play with the big boys".

Rogues have few synergy effects with multiclassing. There are no Rogue feats that increase DPR. Straight-forward magic weapons gel much worse for a single-attack class than an attack-five-times-a-round class.

It's almost like Rogues are supposed to be happy with their meager pile of d6, except everyone else gets the toys later on to completely overshadow them. Throughout the lifetime of the edition, they're constantly reminded how great sneak attack is, and everybody is forgetting that by now everyone else has surpassed them.

All that's left to Rogues are going deep into mechanical meta issues to scrounge up a second sneak attack. Which is deeply deeply unsatisfying. "WHY can I make a second sneak three seconds later, but I can't do it myself, I have to wait for the Kobold's turn?" I'm not usually much for explaining crunch by fluff, but here I'm flabbergasted - so many forumists that are dead set against simplifying and removing a very very odd mechanical circumstance.

And when I suggest to simply add the two "half dice" sneaks together, everybody gangs up on me for daring to question the holy sanctity of the impeccable Rogue class design. Without even stopping to actually analyze my proposal.

Sigh.

I think it's important not to be myopic and focus on only one solution i.e. Changing the Base class. A single class rogue is not supposed to be damage king because they are not 4e strikers (and even there, their other talents meant they were not top of damage dealing) and they are more versatile than pure damage dealers. A fighter rogue multiclass can help increase base damage output. That's as it should be. A more damage dealing rogue can be built as a pure dex fighter with a criminal background. That is also as intended. So-called system mastery is just a way of tweaking builds in a direction. I can also make my Rogue even better out of combat if I want to.

I stress again, carry out a test to see how much damage actually matters to killing the monster. The gap may be smaller than everyone thinks.

Magic items with extra damage will help, as will ones that help maximising ways to gain advantage to increase the chance of a critical. A Rogue's dagger that increases critical range, adds extra sneak dice, increases the size of critical dice, or can grant advantage, or a dagger of venom might all be good ways to go.

 

[Zardnaar]

Make a feat that grants extra dice on the SA or upgrades them to a d8.

 

[CapnZapp]

Maybe stop playing the victim, stop wildly misrepresenting everyone's statements if they don't immediately agree with you, stop using hyperbole and other word choice that tries to paint a problem you are having as one that is inherent to the subject matter (by which I mean that you say things in a way that reads as "this bit of the book can't work well" rather than "this bit of the book doesn't work well at my table"), and stop accusing anyone that doesn't have the same problems you are having of things like thinking the game in question is literally perfect, and you'll find the resulting conversation stays more focused on your actual problem and the actual solutions rather than all the distracting junk you have chosen to sew all throughout the conversation even though you don't want anyone to respond to it?

Maybe if you stop focusing on the messenger and instead respond to my message...?

 

[CapnZapp]

I think it's important not to be myopic and focus on only one solution i.e. Changing the Base class. A single class rogue is not supposed to be damage king because they are not 4e strikers (and even there, their other talents meant they were not top of damage dealing) and they are more versatile than pure damage dealers. A fighter rogue multiclass can help increase base damage output. That's as it should be. A more damage dealing rogue can be built as a pure dex fighter with a criminal background. That is also as intended. So-called system mastery is just a way of tweaking builds in a direction. I can also make my Rogue even better out of combat if I want to.

I stress again, carry out a test to see how much damage actually matters to killing the monster. The gap may be smaller than everyone thinks.

Magic items with extra damage will help, as will ones that help maximising ways to gain advantage to increase the chance of a critical. A Rogue's dagger that increases critical range, adds extra sneak dice, increases the size of critical dice, or can grant advantage, or a dagger of venom might all be good ways to go.

Damage king? Really? Talk about strawman.

Let me reassure you the Rogue would come nowhere near the damage crown with my suggestions (that you keep ignoring) and that the difference per RAW just may be LARGER than you think.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

Maybe if you stop focusing on the messenger and instead respond to my message...?

The medium is the message.

 

[AaronOfBarbaria]

Maybe if you stop focusing on the messenger and instead respond to my message...?

The medium is the message.

What Paul said.

Because of all the unhelpful, unnecessary, and yet ever-present blech included, I can't even be sure what the "message" really is.

If you don't find my suggestion of altering the way you choose to communicate in order to alter the responses you receive helpful, that's on you - I can't force you not to create the situations you "sigh" about being in, I can only say "Hey, horse, here's some water." and see what happens.

 

[Pauln6]

Damage king? Really? Talk about strawman.

Let me reassure you the Rogue would come nowhere near the damage crown with my suggestions (that you keep ignoring) and that the difference per RAW just may be LARGER than you think.

I can only say that when I ran the test, the difference was less than I thought but we have no single classed rogues so I'm not in a position to run the test to address your issue, only you can do that. In our test, the cleric came out lowest most often, except for a fight with mooks and a firestorm, where he came out top.

If you already know your changes will fix your issue then you don't need validation from us. We're only saying it's not an issue that we're seeing so here are some alternative possible solutions.

 

[CapnZapp]

What Paul said.

Because of all the unhelpful, unnecessary, and yet ever-present blech included, I can't even be sure what the "message" really is.

Read my second post in this thread. (I think it's post #4)

To me, the message is crystal clear: what do you think about changing the base class to one "full" sneak a round instead of two "half" ones?

Are there any unforeseen consequences I've missed? Any loopholes or abusive combos I need to patch up?