D&D 5E [5E] A Rogue "unnerf" - Extra Attack

[Nevvur]

Additional thoughts...

The standard rules provide a great way to give rogues Extra Attack called multiclassing. It's a steep investment for Extra Attack, but then maybe that's a clue the developers are trying to tell us something?

 

[Zardnaar]

Rogues after level 8 mcing into fighter or hunter ranger is very good.

 

[Esker]

In a game about fighting, you'd think there would be at least one subclass for the player who wants to play the true glass cannon - with truly stellar DPR to compensate for being such a fragile frontliner character.

Except the rogue isn't that fragile. They aren't the biggest cannon, but they aren't particularly glass either.

The crucial point is a lack of a feat to correspond to the fighter's -5/+10 feats.

In particular it's their inability to combine the +10 from sharpshooter with multiple attacks with some sort of mechanism to mitigate the -5. They can hide for advantage on one attack and hit decently often, especially if they have elven accuracy, but they're not in the same league as a battlemaster with action surge and precision attack.

Why not make it relatively simple to get your two sneaks per combat round? That's the approach of almost everything else in 5E.

If you give them a way to reliably get a second sneak attack every round, then they do end up outclassing fighters. It's really only certain fighter builds with the right subclass and feats that consistently out-DPR the rogue with one sneak attack.

As a baseline, with no feats at levels 5, 11 and 20 (when the fighter gets another attack) and assuming matched to-hit, the greatsword fighter is doing 22, 36, and 48 damage times to-hit per turn (not factoring in action surge or GWF style, nor crits) whereas the rapier rogue is doing 19, 29.5, and 43.5 times to-hit. But give the rogue booming blade, and that goes up to 23.5, 38.5, and 61.5 (more if they can induce movement).

Now add in action surge and a couple of feats. Assume a 60% base chance to hit if you take ASIs at 4 and 8, give the fighter PAM and GWM at 1 and 4, and give the rogue magic initiate (wizard) for a familiar (or just be an AT) and elven accuracy at 4 and 8. Then assume 7 combat turns per short rest, so the fighter is doubling their damage every 7 rounds, for a DPR multiplier of 1.14, and assume the rogue gets advantage 3/4 of the time.

Now the fighter does
28.5 x 0.55 x 1.14 = 17.9 at level 5
79 x 0.35 x 1.14 = 31.6 at level 11
99.5 x 0.35 x 1.14 = 39.8 at level 20.

The rogue does
22.5 x (3/4 * 0.80 + 1/4 * 0.55) = 16.6 at level 5
39.5 x (3/4 * 0.94 + 1/4 * 0.60) = 32.0 at level 11
58 x (3/4 * 0.94 + 1/4 * 0.60) = 47.7 at level 20.

That's biased a bit in both directions, against the rogue because we didn't factor in crits and we assumed that targets hit by booming blade never moved, and against the fighter because we assumed they never had advantage and didn't factor in GWF style, but it's probably close enough to demonstrate that in terms of melee DPR, even with feats, the base class rogue is competitive with the base class fighter for on-turn damage. It's a different story when it comes to the Battlemaster, since precision attack can make a surprisingly huge difference when coupled with -5/+10 feats. And it's worse for the rogue at range, between the impact of archery style for the fighter and the relatively poor value proposition of SS for a rogue (on top of the loss of booming blade). But the point is that if you wanted to boost the rogue's damage output to match the fighter, it'd be about giving them some more subclass/feat options they can take in conjunction with existing mechanisms to aggressively optimize for damage, not about boosting the base class.

 

[DND_Reborn]

Yeah, regardless of what I did, I would never allow more than one sneak attack per turn. An occasional second one per round isn't too bad, but not all the time.

 

[Zardnaar]

Ranged rogue us assassin plus CBE. Apart from that ranged rogues a bit meh.

They don't suck that's a great weapon fighter having to switch to a bow or throw a single javelin.

People still underestimate Dex, utility, ranged, non combat and Rogues are Dex based.

 

[Esker]

Ranged rogue us assassin plus CBE. Apart from that ranged rogues a bit meh.

They don't suck that's a great weapon fighter having to switch to a bow or throw a single javelin.

People still underestimate Dex, utility, ranged, non combat and Rogues are Dex based.

I have the ranged assassin with CBE and Alert a little behind the melee rogue I worked out above in the first round alone by mid tier-2 if they don't get surprise. I'm assuming 60% chance of advantage before you get Alert and 80% after. Considering that they'll have a tough time getting advantage on both shots after that first round, I'm not seeing this as a particularly strong DPR rogue build unless the DM is pretty liberal with surprise or the party is super stealthy. But maybe you can show some numbers that say otherwise?

 

[Ashrym]

High level thieves can get 3 sneak attacks in the first round of combat, btw. Thief's reflexes will allow for 2 the first round of combat. The benefit over assassinate is the damage can be split between 2 opponents that route.

The 3rd sneak attack comes from a reaction and is easy at that level given a number of abilities that cause opponents to flee.

 

[Blue]

I like the idea of giving rogues a different way to more reliably get SA, so they can use Cunning Action more often, but I don't really think Extra Attack is the best way. Not sure what would be a better (simple!) solution, though.

How about changing SA so it needs to be declared before the attack, but it does half damage on a miss like the majority of leveled spells.

As a side note, even if wielding two weapons, you literally can not declare your bonus action to attack until you have made your Attack action and therefore know if you hit or missed. If you've already delivered your SA damage, Cunning Action vs. a chance for a small bit more damage is a much more compelling place to use Cunning Action.

 

[Zardnaar]

Rogues struggle when players think it's a good idea to use cunning action running around with a short bow achieving SFA.

 

[Ashrym]

How about changing SA so it needs to be declared before the attack, but it does half damage on a miss like the majority of leveled spells.

As a side note, even if wielding two weapons, you literally can not declare your bonus action to attack until you have made your Attack action and therefore know if you hit or missed. If you've already delivered your SA damage, Cunning Action vs. a chance for a small bit more damage is a much more compelling place to use Cunning Action.

I'm not a fan of damage on a miss for sneak attack. It seems to go against the flavor of the ability (maybe I'm too old school there) and spells are still a finite resource. Cantrips are the at-will attacks and they don't do half damage on a miss. That seems like a more relevant comparison.

I am, however, open to suggestions on feats or special attacks or combat maneuvers that could do damage on a miss as a limited resource.

Pointing out that a rogue can see if sneak attack lands before declaring the bonus action is an excellent point.