D&D 5E TCoE - Rogue's Steady Aim

[Guest 6801328]

You cant move on the turn you use steady aim.

Yeah since I posted I went and actually read the entry. Bummer.

 

[Dausuul]

I get either 22.5 or 22.9 for dual wielding, depending on if you're assuming sneak is applied to the first attack if both hit and one crits, or if you always apply sneak to the crit. Doesn't make much difference, either in how you handle a hit and a crit, or in the overall analysis.

Ah - you are correct, my numbers were off, although my actual mistake was forgetting to subtract out the base d6 weapon damage from Sneak Attack. I was using 5d6 instead of 4d6. Adjusting for that, I get 21.38. Unless I made another mistake somewhere...

For the base weapon damage, with a 65% chance to hit (60% regular hit, 5% crit):

Main hand damage: 1d6+5 (8.5) on a normal hit, 2d6+5 (12) on a crit --> 5.7 DPR
Off-hand damage: 1d6 (3.5) on a normal hit, 2d6 (7) on a crit --> 2.45 DPR
Total: 8.15 DPR from weapons

The Sneak Attack damage is a little trickier. I assume that the rogue's attacks are sequential and they will drop Sneak Attack on the first attack that hits (instead of holding out for a crit on attack #2, which would be, uh, poor strategy). So:

Hit on first attack: 60% chance
Crit on first attack: 5% chance
Miss on first attack: 35% chance
-- Miss on first attack, hit on second: 35% x 60% = 21% chance
-- Miss on first attack, crit on second: 35% x 5% = 1.75% chance

Adding these up, there's an 81% (60 + 21) chance to get a regular Sneak Attack, and a 6.75% (5 + 1.75) chance to get a crit. Regular Sneak Attack damage is 4d6 (14), crit damage is 8d6 (28).

(14 x 0.81) + (28 x 0.0675) = 11.34 + 1.89 = 13.23 DPR from Sneak Attack

8.15 weapon DPR + 13.23 Sneak Attack DPR = 21.38 total DPR

The real impact of elven accuracy isn't in increasing DPR by a lot (it's a modest to small bump), but in dramatically reducing the number of times you miss. Also, average DPR hides the fact that elven accuracy does create crits almost three times more often over a normal attack, and that 40 average damage is a nice spike when it happens.

It's fun when it happens, but not sure it's actually better tactically. A single attack, with big random damage spikes, loses more damage to overkill than multiple attacks with more consistent damage... I think. That's another batch of number-crunching and I have to work tomorrow. (And I just had to go back and fix yet another error where I doubled 14 and got 27, so clearly it is time to knock off for the evening.)

 

[ChaosOS]

Here's what people are missing out on. Rogues are semi-notorious for having one of the biggest gaps between subclass features, namely because level 5 is Uncanny Dodge, level 6 is Expertise part 2, and level 7 is evasion (4 and 8 are ASIs, 3 and 9 are subclass features). It also pushes a lot of people to Arcane Trickster because at least ATs keep getting spell progression to make levels more interesting. I would've liked to see some alternate class features for any of 4, 5, and 6 as legitimate alternate class features to help differentiate one level 7 rogue from another, where everyone else has gotten a second round of subclass features to make them feel different. I'm not sure what those would be, but I'd like to see something. Maybe alternatives to evasion could be similar style effects for Constitution or Wisdom saves, so you can pick which type of save you specialize in being better against?

 

[JiffyPopTart]

I think there's a reward for the melee rogue: the possibility to land an out-of-turn sneak attack through an AoO or an ally's features is more probable than for ranged rogues. And with the mix of defensive features (uncanny dodge, evasion etc) and having Dex as a main (almost) mono-stat means that rogues arent that much of a glass canon in 5e.

I think the biggest reward for a melee rogue is the fact that the enemy can't focus as much damage on one target.

In my campaign a player did the always succeed at my hide roll stealth sneak attack rogue character. I just ignored him in combat and laid into the melee characters who would end the battle KOed or dead with the rogue and wizard sitting at full HP.

Sneak Attack aside, I think the rogues best ability is to use a reaction to halve one incoming damage. This gives them barbarian like damage resistance against a single big hit opponent keeping them fighting longer than their HP and armor might indicate. This also spreads the damage around better per battle and helps the party over the course of the adventuring day.

 

[Charlaquin]

I think the biggest reward for a melee rogue is the fact that the enemy can't focus as much damage on one target.

In my campaign a player did the always succeed at my hide roll stealth sneak attack rogue character. I just ignored him in combat and laid into the melee characters who would end the battle KOed or dead with the rogue and wizard sitting at full HP.

Sneak Attack aside, I think the rogues best ability is to use a reaction to halve one incoming damage. This gives them barbarian like damage resistance against a single big hit opponent keeping them fighting longer than their HP and armor might indicate. This also spreads the damage around better per battle and helps the party over the course of the adventuring day.

You make a strong case.

 

[Benjamin Olson]

I wonder if some DM will venture into allowing Tasha features piece by piece?

I think for a while they will, because every DM is not going to immediately buy and fully digest this book to make an informed opinion about it. Ultimately I think most will find that the features added either replace things in a reasonably balanced way or are straight adds of features that are more conveniences than huge power boosts.

In many cases I consider the added features conveniences for the DM as much as the players, in providing a structure for changing out skills or cantrips rather than having to negotiate such business ad hoc or in this case by allowing the DM to tell the Rogue who wants to litigate hiding that they can just stay where they are and use their new Steady Aim ability.

 

[Guest 6801328]

It's fun when it happens, but not sure it's actually better tactically.

Sure, and I'll take fun over perfect tactical optimization any day.

 

[NotAYakk]

It's fun when it happens, but not sure it's actually better tactically. A single attack, with big random damage spikes, loses more damage to overkill than multiple attacks with more consistent damage... I think. That's another batch of number-crunching and I have to work tomorrow. (And I just had to go back and fix yet another error where I doubled 14 and got 27, so clearly it is time to knock off for the evening.)

On average, you lose half of the damage of the killing blow.

If you have a 40% chance to get the killing blow, and you swing 5 times for roughly equal damage, then the overkill damage costs you 0.2 of a swing.

If you have a 40% chance to get the killing blow, and you swing 10 times for roughly equal damage, then the overkill damage costs you 0.1 of a swing.

Rogues, even TWF ones, have uneven damage; the chance a given blow kills something is roughly proportional to its damage. So if you have a primary swing and a secondary one that contributes about 20% of your damage, and you have a 40% chance to get a killing blow, then the primary has a 32% and secondary has an 8%. If you go about 5 rounds before a kill, that is 0.16 of a primary swing wasted and 0.04 of a secondary swing.

So the "one big hit" has 4% expected blowthrough in a 5ish round fight, while a 80/20 split has 2.7% expected blowthrough.

This is a 1.3% "real" DPR boost to the "two tap" compared to the one tap situation.

Now this is a pretty tough monster, and a rogue that is doing 40% of the party's damage (at least towards the last round; "alpha strikers" are unlikely to finish this big monster, so at-will damage rogues will efficiently be the killing damage more than their total contribution).

Take a monster that the rogue has a 40% chance of landing a killing blow, and gets on average 1 attack on. Then "big blow" loses 20% DPR and the 80/20 split loses 13.6% DPR, an 8% DPR "real" DPR advantage to the 80/20 split.

(of course, in this limit, tactical target choice starts mattering. If you have ogres that you know have around 50 HP and someone did 49 damage to it, you don't use your bit hit on it, and you instead attack the unwounded one next to it with the big hit.)

 

[Gammadoodler]

The piece I never see in these ranged vs. melee damage comparisons is how the incremental attacks that a ranged character gets to make that a melee character cannot make as a result of being at range.

I realize this is likely impossible due to variation in encounter design, and rogues have better tools than most to close the gap and get into melee, but these tools have costs (bonus action dash or disengage means no off-hand attack, just off the top). How many lost attack opportunities does it take before the ranged rogue pulls ahead of our TWF rogue before giving our ranged rogue advantage on-demand? Because a TWF rogue does not actually get 2 attacks every round in real play.

 

[NotAYakk]

The piece I never see in these ranged vs. melee damage comparisons is how the incremental attacks that a ranged character gets to make that a melee character cannot make as a result of being at range.

I realize this is likely impossible due to variation in encounter design, and rogues have better tools than most to close the gap and get into melee, but these tools have costs (bonus action dash or disengage means no off-hand attack, just off the top). How many lost attack opportunities does it take before the ranged rogue pulls ahead of our TWF rogue before giving our ranged rogue advantage on-demand? Because a TWF rogue does not actually get 2 attacks every round in real play.

In theory, the same holds when a ranged character is in melee.

They either have to lose attacks, or attack at disadvantage.

This depends on the DM being aggressive about engaging ranged PCs, naturally.