D&D (2024) Rogue's Been in an Awkward Place, And This Survey Might Be Our Last Chance to Let WotC Know.

[UngeheuerLich]

Yes, but... you could just Vex with dual hand crossbows from a distance, with better odds of landing a hit/crit.

Edit: Ah, Rogues don't get proficiency with hand crossbows now. So Fighter1 dip is called for, because Archery remains a ridiculous fighting style.

And never get the chance to attack on a rection.

 

[fluffybunbunkittens]

And never get the chance to attack on a rection.

I wish. Haste to ready, or Commander's Strike work just fine at range.

 

[Willie the Duck]

As long as we agree this has been emphatically proven to be not-a-concern.

I do not know what you mean by this.

Relying on hiding has the (huge) problem that stealth is one of those things that are extremely DM and campaign specific. The culprit is official stealth rules that are vague enough that some groups read awesomeness into them while others simply ignore them and basically run the game with no stealth.

Right, that ties again with my previous point about what skills do being more important than the specific numbers rogues get (vs. anyone else).

Yes. Remove the entire "once a turn" thing. Make it "once a round" and open up the possibility of adding more dice. (And obviously the bonus needs to be proportional to the amount of sneak damage you already do. +2d6 is broken at level 1 but nothing special at level 20, for instance. And no, I didn't experience the d20 Craven feat nonsense but... wow)

Either that or give every Rogue a vanilla way to experience two sneaks per round, without having to rely on external factors (such as items or hoping foes trigger opportunity attacks). Ideally without overloading the Rogue's reaction, which is incredibly well used as it is.

There'd be any number of ways to do it, none of which I'd want to weigh in in a vacuum (so we'd need to know what changes around it).

I don't mind ways to spend sneak dice on other things, unless that offering is used as pretext to not offer a build path that focuses on more damage at the expense of everything else.

I think it would be fine if there wasn't a 'more damage' path, so long as there is a subclass that matches what swashbuckler did for the 2014 rogue -- make sneak attack more readily invokable, more safely, with fewer action types take to perform the attack and then retreat. Again, I'd need to see it in context of the other changes to know what I'd make of it.

 

[UngeheuerLich]

I wish. Haste to ready, or Commander's Strike work just fine at range.

But less options than on melee. Also do they not soak damage for the casters.

In the beginning of 5e, I DMed a group that had no frontline, because everyone was so clever not to be in melee...

... so everyone was frontline and the problem solved itself.

 

[Gorck]

I was curious myself, so let me take a quick look at 5th level (which to me tends to be a very common level for my games and where a lot of the classes "fully come online").

Not optimizing for damage too much, lets look at a Thief Rogue, a Champion Fighter, and a Bear Totem Barbarian....some standard fare.

All classes will have 18 in their main stat. I'll assume 60% chance to hit + 5% chance to normally crit (though there are things here that modify that). So 65% to hit in total.

Fighter has Dueling Mastery and Sap on a longsword with improved critical.

Rogue goes with a Rapier/Scimitar (Vex/Nick). I'll assume steady aim for the first attack advantage, than check vex for adv on the second attack. the rogue will be near someone so its all sneak attack. The Nick will allow us to TWF each round even with the bonus action spent on steady aim.

Barbarian goes with rage, reckless attack, greatsword with graze. (interesting note btw, I just realized that Graze damage gets rage damage applied to it, as you are still doing damage with that weapon).

So the fighter represents a bit more of a defensive build, with the barb a more offensive.

I ran it through a sim with 100k runs to help with the vex and sneak attack parts that can be a bit tricky to do in math:

Level 5 DPR, 18 in main stat
Barbarian: 25.6
Fighter: 14.6
Rogue: 22.3

So take that as you will.

How do these numbers look when comparing just the base class, instead of including the subclasses? (In case a particular subclass is imbalanced and distorting the numbers)

 

[fluffybunbunkittens]

Also do they not soak damage for the casters.

This is a valid point, but in the other direction. It's not casters who matter, the ranged Rogue is not soaking damage for the frontline. Casters are fine, but taking an extra pool of hitpoints away from the frontline makes the others there suffer more.

In the beginning of 5e, I DMed a group that had no frontline, because everyone was so clever not to be in melee...
... so everyone was frontline and the problem solved itself.

Fair. It's not like having a frontline does much, because one reaction does not control anything, but it really is down to the GM to show that everyone should have some frontline capability when critters run in to eat their face.

 

[fluffybunbunkittens]

How do these numbers look when comparing just the base class, instead of including the subclasses? (In case a particular subclass is imbalanced and distorting the numbers)

You can drop Champion DPS by 5%, and that is all that changes (and his numbers aren't relevant anyway, because the choice to go sword and shield put him out of the DPS race). The subclasses are doing nothing here.

 

[UngeheuerLich]

Fair. It's not like having a frontline does much, because one reaction does not control anything, but it really is down to the GM to show that everyone should have some frontline capability when critters run in to eat their face.

Ok. Technically not. But 2 reactions and a body helps in chokepoints even more. This is where caster's battlefield controll comes into play.

Also, if you play intelligent foes and the caster is smart enough not to draw too obvious aggro (excuse the mmorpg talk), it is hard to justify ignoring the big guys on the front. Especially if they can also turn around and whack you for a lot of damage on top of the opportunity attacks.

A good team gives only bad options for the enemy.

 

[Mistwell]

How do these numbers look when comparing just the base class, instead of including the subclasses? (In case a particular subclass is imbalanced and distorting the numbers)

I mean he picked arguable the weakest subclass for that analysis. I think Assassin is now the DPR king without shenanigans it used to require.

 

[Vikingkingq]

And who then determines if one side is "wrong"? What, do we have some outside "Game Balancer" source that we can bring in to look at how both sides are and make a ruling on which side is right? No. Of course not.

Presumably, we determine by looking to see who's getting the math right, no?