D&D 5E Can an elf rogue be a decent archer in (Basic) D&D 5th edition?

[UngeheuerLich]

If not the averages, what should we be looking at?
...

Difficult to say.

There are so many factors in actual combat, that there is no easy metric besides playtesting.

Generally lower average damage can be mitigated by higher spike damage. Lower area damage can be mitigated by higher single target damage. Lower damage can also be mitigated by durability/staying power, or abilities to let you apply the damage on your conditions (usually mobility).
Versality and specialization are also opposed positions, and both can be useful. Neither should be underestimated.

My general feeling is, that versality should be one thing to look at. The other thing would be identifying the key ability of a particular character and finding out, how likely it is that he can use it effectively.

Example: A heavily armed and armored fighter with a melee weapon can theoretically deal infinite damage. If a flying archer attacks him, there is nothing he can do to win the fight.

 

[Uller]

Exactly.

Assume +4 mods and 60% chance to hit. A 5th level assassin using his assasinate ability has ~97% chance to hit and do around 22 damage and a 70% chance to hit twice for about 35 damage (max(4d6)+2d6+4). To match that the fighter must hit twice to get to 22 damage and three times to get to 35. It's around a 75% and 30% chance respectively if he uses action surge. At 20th level with deadly strike the assassin has about a 50% chance of exceeding 100 damage (assuming the target will fail its save half the time) To match that the fighter must score 4 critical hits. Want to sneak up on a foe and have a good chance of quietly dispatching him? Assassin. Want constant great dpr? Fighter.

 

[Dausuul]

Exactly.

Assume +4 mods and 60% chance to hit. A 5th level assassin using his assasinate ability has ~97% chance to hit and do around 22 damage and a 70% chance to hit twice for about 35 damage (max(4d6)+2d6+4). To match that the fighter must hit twice to get to 22 damage and three times to get to 35. It's around a 75% and 30% chance respectively if he uses action surge. At 20th level with deadly strike the assassin has about a 50% chance of exceeding 100 damage (assuming the target will fail its save half the time) To match that the fighter must score 4 critical hits. Want to sneak up on a foe and have a good chance of quietly dispatching him? Assassin. Want constant great dpr? Fighter.

Using your assumptions, the assassin averages a shade over 31 damage. Quite solid. But the fighter at 5th level, using Action Surge, averages over 36 damage. Breaking it down:

On each of the fighter's attacks:
40% chance of a miss: 4 damage (Great Weapon Style)
50% chance of a hit: 2d6+4 = 11 damage
10% chance of a crit: 1d6+16 = 19.5 damage

Add that all up, and you get 1.6 + 5.5 + 1.95 = 9.05 damage per attack. Multiply by 4 (two actions, at two attacks per action) and you get 36.2. Not only that, but the fighter's damage can be split up to 4 ways, allowing the fighter to take out several weak targets instead of one strong one.

 

[PinkRose]

I've learned a few things from this thread.

1. Rogue Archers seem to work just fine.

2. The Ignore button (for people that just want to argue) still works just fine.

3. Not telling people I'm also testing D&D works just fine.
I'll let Cybit answer questions that he can't answer.

 

[Uller]

... Multiply by 4 (two actions, at two attacks per action) and you get 36.2. Not only that, but the fighter's damage can be split up to 4 ways, allowing the fighter to take out several weak targets instead of one strong one.

I see where we've gone off the rails...IIRC, WotC issued a clarification: Nothing can ever give you more than one additional attack per turn. So Action Surge, Flurry of Blows, etc can only give you one extra attack, not a full round's worth of attacks.


Which leads back to the earlier point: We haven't seen the final version of the rules. Likely the fighter will be the king of DPR and rogues will be able to do very good damage in a narrower range of circumstances depending on type of rogue.

 

[Dausuul]

I see where we've gone off the rails...IIRC, WotC issued a clarification: Nothing can ever give you more than one additional attack per turn. So Action Surge, Flurry of Blows, etc can only give you one extra attack, not a full round's worth of attacks.

Since Extra Attack very explicitly gives you two extra attacks per turn starting at level 11, and Flurry of Blows just as explicitly lets you spend a ki point to get a third attack, this can't be right. Got a link?

I'm guessing it's a limit of one additional action per turn, not one extra attack.

 

[Cybit]

I've learned a few things from this thread.

1. Rogue Archers seem to work just fine.

2. The Ignore button (for people that just want to argue) still works just fine.

3. Not telling people I'm also testing D&D works just fine.
I'll let Cybit answer questions that he can't answer.

4. All this talk about rogue archer DPR made me go back through the rules just to see I wasn't messing anything up, and I found I've been doing Assassinate wrong. >_> <_< (It's even scarier than I thought). <sigh> my Rogue player is going to yell at me when he finds out what I have been messing up.

5. I also have spent the last 30 minutes building DPR spreadsheets for 5E. Yep. Too much time on my hands apparently.

At this point I'm also now very intrigued at how the final product shapes out.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

My general feeling is, that versality should be one thing to look at. The other thing would be identifying the key ability of a particular character and finding out, how likely it is that he can use it effectively.

I've mentioned versatility so many times in this thread that it's not funny. Fighters have it, Rogues don't. This is why I am saying Rogues need more DPR. They lack versatility, and are one-trick ponies in combat, but the Fighter is better at that trick, by and large (not all Rogues even have Assassinate, either, note).

Example: A heavily armed and armored fighter with a melee weapon can theoretically deal infinite damage. If a flying archer attacks him, there is nothing he can do to win the fight.

That is an utterly awful example on so many levels

 

[Blackwarder]

I've mentioned versatility so many times in this thread that it's not funny. Fighters have it, Rogues don't. This is why I am saying Rogues need more DPR. They lack versatility, and are one-trick ponies in combat, but the Fighter is better at that trick, by and large (not all Rogues even have Assassinate, either, note).

Versatility shouldn't be measured only in combat, fighters and warrior types are superior in combat and the fighter should reign supreme but the thief is more versatile in all three pillars of the game.

At least IMX.

Warder

 

[Ruin Explorer]

Versatility shouldn't be measured only in combat, fighters and warrior types are superior in combat and the fighter should reign supreme but the thief is more versatile in all three pillars of the game.

At least IMX.

Warder

The issue is, for the Fighter to "reign supreme" in combat, he doesn't necessarily need to do more DPR than the Rogue (equal would be fine). His versatility in combat is more than enough (imo) - he is already vastly tougher, far more able to control the combat, and generally more of a multi-tool. Similarly, the Rogue's versatility outside of combat doesn't mean Bards, Wizards, Clerics and so on shouldn't be allowed to out-do him in a specific area.

EDIT - Also, on-topic, the thread here is about "being a decent archer", not out-of-combat performance, so that's irrelevant to this discussion. I don't think anyone has said "Rogues are worthless in general" (quote if so please). What has been said is "Rogues not only lack the survivability and control of Fighters (as one might expect), but also do significantly* lower DPR after level 4, on average, even in a Surprise round", which means that we are back to a somewhat 2E/3E-style situation, where the Rogue "just bad at fighting" (post level 4 and speaking relatively!).

* = Obviously "significantly" is to some extent subjective, and indeed different "specs" of Rogue are closer or further from Fighters, but all are behind post-4.

Also, there has been one big unchallenged assumption in this thread - that Rogues will always be able to get SA. I find that interesting, because even in 4E, even with feats like Lone Hunter or whatever it's called, I see rounds where no SA is possible (or where it's suicidal) from time to time. If we wanted to be a bit more real, we'd probably want to factor that in, and that also favours the Fighter.

Anyway, coming back to the original OP's question, whether one could pick an Elf Rogue and make them a decent archer, I think all the discussion and math and so on shows that, by the October playtest rules, they'd be great up to level 4, but after that, they'd be falling pretty far behind a Fighter, and would also be behind a dual-wield Rogue (at all levels - though they'd be more survivable, potentially, due to not being melee). Further, whether your DM handed out magic items would make a pretty big difference - no magic items and the Rogue stays surprisingly close to the Fighter, as Dasuul showed. If you keep getting better magic weapons, though, the Fighter pulls much further ahead (static bonuses!).

In the end the question as of the October playtest is: are you willing to do less damage, be easier to kill, and have less ways to mess with your opponents in order to have more skills and so on outside combat? Because that's the Fighter vs Rogue decision with archery.

It's a pity you can't dual-wield throwing weapons, movie-style, because that would be a good way to be ranged and stay closer to the Fighter, DPR-wise. It's also a pity that you can't, under certain conditions, Assassinate more than one enemy - the ol' "two guards on the door" is thus 100% protection again those guards being murdered without the alarm being raised (barring Silence spells and the like which mean you wouldn't need a Rogue at all!).