How do you handle Rogue (Assassins)?

[Fast_Jimmy]

I've had one assassin in my home game and one in my AL game. The one in my AL game talked with players at the table to setup a few assassinate attempts. The player has worked to have the highest initiative, and thus can utilize the assassinate feature. The player at my home game was not feeling like the assassinate feature was well balanced with the features from other classes. We worked together and came up with some house rules to help the class work well in a dungeon delve. These rules help with the class to work in a dungeon that is well lit to dark. It also allowed the group to work together and not require the rogue to sneak ahead of the barbarian and paladin to gain the benefit of the features. We played to level 10 with the rogue assassin character, and thus those rules have been play tested. The player didn't feel like they were too powerful and had fun making decisions on when to utilize the assassinate resource. We didn't use the poison features I put into the class, so those were not play tested.

Assassin level 3
Bonus Proficiencies: Same as PH: proficiency with disguise and poisoner's kit.
Assassinate: If the character makes an attack at a creature that does not perceive it and the character does not have disadvantage then the hit is considered a critical hit. The assassin can use this feature four times per day. You regain all spent assassinates when you finish a short or long rest. You gain one additional use of this feature at levels 7 and 10. You gain two additional uses of this feature at level 18. This is in addition to the text for assassinate.
Poison Specialist: An assassin selects 1 favored poison type from: ingestd, inhaled, contact, or injury. When you make an intelligence or wisdom check related to the favored poison type your proficiency bonus is doubled if you are using a skill you are proficient in. While traveling or during down time you may forage for poison ingredients per the Poisoner's Kit Homebrew by making an Intelligence (Poisoners Kit) roll DC 15. Success results in 1d4+Intelligence bonus ingredients gathered.

Assassin lvl 9
Poison Expertise: Creatures have disadvantage on saves against poisons you craft.
Infiltration Expertise: Same text as per PH.

Assassin lvl 13
The assassin can cast the Invisibility spell as an action without needing material components. The assassin can cast this a number of times equal to their Intelligence bonus. They regain used spells after a long rest.
Impostor: Same text as per PH.

Assassin lvl 15
Relentless Assassin: Starting at level 15, when you roll initiative and have no uses of Assassinate remaining, you regain one use of it.

The design of these features is based on the battlemaster fighter. The barbarian and paladin players did not indicate they felt like the assassin was doing too much damage and overshadowing them in that role.

I like most of these changes...

Quick point of order - Level 15 is not the Subclass capstone for Rogues, but rather Level 17.

Also, I think 4 times per Short Rest is a LOT of opportunities. At that point, why not just make it every encounter? You can probably count on one hand the number of instances where a party has the Rogue go first before their intended target more than four times in one session before a Short Rest occurs.

I'd tie it to a Short Rest, but leave it 1, maybe bump it up to 2 or 3 at higher levels. If only to avoid munchkin people going Rogue 3 for Paladin/Battle Master crit builds (at least, more than they already do).

 

[Majoru Oakheart]

I think the key here is that Assassinate is not meant to be used that often.

In theory, the entire group has to make a Stealth check vs the Passive Perception of the enemies. If any of them fail, the enemy isn't surprised.

Now, the DM can rule that if the rest of the party is far enough back, they can't be heard at all and don't have to make the check. Exactly how FAR back they need to be will be up to the DM.

So, if the party sticks together, it's likely someone fails and therefore the PCs don't get surprise and the Assassinate ability can't be used.

If the party splits up, it might be a round or two before the rest of the party can join in the battle at all. Since the Rogue is visible after they first attack, then it's very likely to end in the Rogue's death.

So, the key thing here, I think is to make sure that, as the DM, you declare enough distance before the other people can't be heard. If you say that it's still POSSIBLE to hear the rest of the party at a distance of, say, 200 feet down the hallway, they still need to make Stealth checks to avoid ruining the Rogue's surprise if they are only hanging 30 feet back.

I found that when I declared a big enough distance that it would take more than one round for the rest of the party to get there, the Rogue decided it was better to have their allies nearby than get their Assassinate ability.

 

[ClaytonCross]

It not just a rogue issue. I have a warlock scout of the Old One staying 20ft ahead of the group to use Devil's Sight to look a head in the dark and Awakened Mind to talk to our leader with out yelling back to him. Moving 20ft ahead lets me be a scout and If I trigger a trap or something it normally keeps the party out of AoE damage. The other side to that it that 20ft is close enough that If I get ambushed or trigger and encounter we can put the team on the board and I don't die waiting for them to show up. I tend to move back on my first turn and them forward allowing them to shield me after I get jumped.

 

[Saeviomagy]

The solution is to make stealth easier in a way that doesn't increase the number of assassinates, but does improve the party's time.

If the assassin can stealth around near the party and communicate in whispers, then your problem goes away. Either adjudicate surprise differently (make surprise a thing that you 'have' against a foe instead of a condition that effects you. Which has other useful effects, such as allowing distractions, traps, negotiations with sudden betrayals etc etc) OR do group stealth checks and point out to your assassin that potentially granting the entire party a surprise round (by being an all-but guaranteed success on the group test) will outweigh the times that he loses assassinate because his fellows are a bit noisy.

 

[SmokeyCriminal]

Just have the first attack the Rouge makes on the first round of combat always have Advantage and always triggers Sneak Attack and a Crit.

Quick, simple, feels Assassin-y, and no longer encourages the player behaviour of splitting away from the party.

 

[Fast_Jimmy]

I think the key here is that Assassinate is not meant to be used that often.

In theory, the entire group has to make a Stealth check vs the Passive Perception of the enemies. If any of them fail, the enemy isn't surprised.

Now, the DM can rule that if the rest of the party is far enough back, they can't be heard at all and don't have to make the check. Exactly how FAR back they need to be will be up to the DM.

So, if the party sticks together, it's likely someone fails and therefore the PCs don't get surprise and the Assassinate ability can't be used.

If the party splits up, it might be a round or two before the rest of the party can join in the battle at all. Since the Rogue is visible after they first attack, then it's very likely to end in the Rogue's death.

So, the key thing here, I think is to make sure that, as the DM, you declare enough distance before the other people can't be heard. If you say that it's still POSSIBLE to hear the rest of the party at a distance of, say, 200 feet down the hallway, they still need to make Stealth checks to avoid ruining the Rogue's surprise if they are only hanging 30 feet back.

I found that when I declared a big enough distance that it would take more than one round for the rest of the party to get there, the Rogue decided it was better to have their allies nearby than get their Assassinate ability.

But that makes the Assassin one of the worst subclasses in the entire PHB, maybe the entire game.

If Assassinate can never happen because it is too hard, too cumbersome to pull off or too risky for the Rogue to even try, then its a useless ability. Infiltration Expertise and Impostor are some of the most Fluff, campaign/DM dependent material in all of 5e. And the Level 17 feature, Death Strike, requires the exact same impossible conditions as Assassinate does.

Two features that will never work and two features that are pretty useless means you may as well take no Rogue subclass over taking Assassin. Which, to me, says Assassin needs the fix, not the game's rules.

 

[Swarmkeeper]

Yes. Or as one or two others have stated, find something interesting for the rest of the party to do while this is happening. The OP is not starting that Assassinate needs tinkering. They are wondering how to engage the others. (That is how I read it).

Let's list some things that the rest of the party could be doing...

Right? It doesn’t seem that hard to come up with something...

The party finds a way to communicate with the stealthy assassin - telepathy, a wizard’s familiar, a Druid in wild shape form as a tiny stealthy beast.

The rest of the party might hear activity behind them that they need to investigate.

A random encounter might befall the rest of the party.

Etc etc. If you as DM are letting the rest of the party twiddle their thumbs every time the assassin, thief, monk, whoever, is sneaking ahead, you need to do more brainstorming on how to share the spotlight in the campaign.

 

[cooperjer]

I like most of these changes...

Quick point of order - Level 15 is not the Subclass capstone for Rogues, but rather Level 17.

Also, I think 4 times per Short Rest is a LOT of opportunities. At that point, why not just make it every encounter? You can probably count on one hand the number of instances where a party has the Rogue go first before their intended target more than four times in one session before a Short Rest occurs.

I'd tie it to a Short Rest, but leave it 1, maybe bump it up to 2 or 3 at higher levels. If only to avoid munchkin people going Rogue 3 for Paladin/Battle Master crit builds (at least, more than they already do).

With respect to 4 times per short or long rest the group I have doesn't take short rests but maybe once per 8 hour day. This depends on how comfortable they feel in the dungeon and what benefits are gained by the classes in play. In addition, the combats I've been running usually last between 5 and 7 rounds from level 5 to level 10. Therefore, in actual use, in my game the character went through about 25 to 30 rounds of combat or 4 - 6 encounters per day and they might have one short rest. Keep in mind these numbers are from my memory in a game about 9 months ago.

Giving the assassin character the ability to use their feature and not tie it to surprise was critical to making the feature versatile enough to work well in a dungeon. This particular dungeon was Thunderspire Labyrinth converted to 5e. I recall the character did scout ahead in some cases, but then setup a position and allowed the barbarian and paladin to enter the room and draw the initial combat. Then the assassin struck from her hiding position.

One of the interpretations of surprise I felt was the relative perception of the NPC. If the assassin bolts down the hall after taking a shot or after taking damage what does the NPC perceive? Would the NPC think the character is running because they are outmatched/out numbered or would the NPC think the assassin is pulling back to a more strategic position? One of these two leads the NPC to think the assassin is no longer a threat. I feel that if the NPC does not consider the assassin character a threat, then an attack from the assassin is considered a surprise. Part of the performance of the assassin character in combat could deceive NPCs in to thinking the character is not a threat and thus trigger the assassin feature in the class. These are how I logically explained the assassin in my game gaining so many assassinate attacks in a combat.

 

[DeanP]

I'm not sure why there's a problem with assassinate. It confers two benefits. The first is a condition of acting before a foe. "advantage on attack rolls against any creature that hasn’t taken a turn in the combat yet." You obtain this by virtue of acting before an opponent in the initiative order. It does not require an assassin to scout ahead, and by virtue of gaining advantage, the assassin gains the benefit of his or her sneak attack damage. That's a pretty awesome trigger to one's sneak attack dice. It doesn't require the rogue to run solo either. Only the second element of the assassinate ability requires surprise "In addition, any hit you score against
a creature that is surprised is a critical hit." Absolutely excellent, true, but again, a party can achieve surprise by setting up ambushes, which can be collective activity, and not exclusive to an assassin running solo. Even if surprise occurs infrequently, I think the trigger of advantage and a regular use of sneak attack damage more than makes up for it.

 

[StormbringerAUS]

There will also be times that character's skills make not help as much and therefor it will be their turn to wait till the others finish. Each of the classes/archetypes tend to have their moments in the Sun the trick is making sure its not the same players over and over.

I usually find my players are interested in what the others do and know if their is a strategy that one of them prefers they are happen to orchestrate events to bring this about, though of course not always.

Having a character scouting ahead, even if not looking for a chance to assassinate is not that uncommon, if approaching a camp, hearing a noise, or what ever the situation might be. From my experience there is usually one or two other characters than can join in, Druids, other Rogues, Bards, Rangers in some circumstances eve Elves, Halflings or Gnomes might get some bonuses to do this. So it is be no means one player doing things while the others sit about (OP's group may not work this way).

So look for ways that other party members might be able to join in.