D&D 5E Cleric and Rogue Fixes

[Remathilis]

Heya WotC!

I got two issues with the classes as is. They're minor, and shouldn't take more than a few minutes to fix.

Cleric and Deity

I can't see, for the life of me, why "deity" is better than domains. Effectively, they're the same thing (a few minor powers and a list of spells) yet choosing a "deity" seems more intrusive. The big concern I have it mapping all the archetypes to existing deities, and that it assumes "Gods" exist and that a cleric has to worship one (something Basic D&D, Ravenloft, Eberron, Dark Sun, and those who do not use/want deities but still want clerics know isn't always so). Really, its a simple matter of renaming the domains Sun, Healing, War, Trickery, and then adding a few more (Death, Fire, Ocean, Moon, Earth, Law, etc).

Rogues and Sneak Attack

Right now, SA is equal to a fighter ability to do damage, but a rogue has to go through an extra step to make it work. I debated how to fix this. I don't want rogue's doing MEGADAMAGE but I think rogues should get a reward for setting up as SA. Then it hit me: Essentials "Thief" fixed this already.

A Rogue can take SA as a maneuver as written, but it should ONLY work when flanking a foe (or when there are overwhelming odds in his favor). Then, there should be another (free?) maneuver called "Backstab" It only works when you have surprise, but it either adds additional dice or raises to the next highest die.

OS players can take just Backstab to recreate that "1 big blow" feel of yore, and newer players can add SA to recreate that DPS feel of 3e/4e rogues.

Rogue and HD

While we're at it, raise a rogue to d8 HD. He's apparently supposed to be in melee like a cleric, so there is no point giving him the "wizard" HD anymore. It fits the agile combatant to be a bit more resilient.

 

[VinylTap]

I think the trick to fixing the rogue is giving him lots of good reasons to not use his SA dice for damage. Give him great abilities and he'll be too useful not to take along.

Maybe up the damage, if its every-other-turn, but give him a lot of abilities that grant advantage next turn AND do something useful like debuff a mob. This would go a long way to fix the cleric as well. Less damage but great utility.

 

[Kraydak]

Re-rename the Rogue to Thief, and include the Rogue as an official Fighter/Thief multi-class template. An explicitly combat-mediocre class (actually, the Cleric and Wizard should also be combat-mediocre) pushes DMs into writing more elaborate adventures.

 

[UngeheuerLich]

I do agree, that with a d6 hd wizard, the rogue should be d8

 

[Howndawg]

Agree with you on the cleric. I liked deities at first, but after thinking about it, realized it did not mesh well with all settings. A domain could represent a deity, but could also represent an aspect of a deity, a group of deities, or the goals of a holy order.

An idea for sneak attack would be to give the rogue sneak attack as a class ability; however, he gains dice at a much slower rate. At 1st level, he gets one die equal to his ED when he sneak attacks. He gets a second die at sixth level and so on. If he has the SA maneuver, he can add extra die to the sneak attack. This means rogues do more damage an the sneak attack than fighters do with their normal attacks, but not exhorbitantly so.

 

[mlund]

The d8 HD Rogue works for me.

I'd like to see the Rogue get a bonus when attacking with advantage to the effect of being able roll his Expertise Dice pool for Sneak Attack without actually expending the dice. So his maximum damage doesn't go up, but he can use the Expertise Dice on additional maneuvers AND deal extra damage due to getting the drop on you.

Then all he needs are the crippling hoser maneuvers like Hamstring and Blind to get added in.

- Marty Lund

 

[kerleth]

I would like to point out some good reasons for deity instead of domain.
1) 3rd edition used a domain system. Sometimes a few of the spells didn't quite fit (such as a death deity who didn't like undead and sought to return them to their eternal rest as one obvious example). So you end up with the death, undeath, and repose domains. Having a rule that says "when choosing the blah blah domain for this deity replace the spells at 3rd, 5th, and 8th level with...." is essentially the same thing as a deity domain.
2) It may be less complex for a player. Rather than picking a diety than picking one or two domains, you just pick the deity.
3) It unifies the clergy of a single deity more.

For the record I would be happy with either. My issue with the cleric is that I think the previous version made your choice of deity/domain more important. It allowed you to differentiate between those of different faiths and play a wider range of characters without having to make suboptimal choices for roleplaying reasons. The current one just feels too much like an armored wizard with a different spell list. Of course, making them feel different is not all on cleric design, but on the wizard as well.