How do you handle Rogue (Assassins)?

[Krachek]

The problem is the same with all character that scout in front of the party.
The DM has to manage it and dont take too much time in it.
Assassinate is fun, but you are also in the front line for traps and monsters in ambush.

 

[Yunru]

Regarding having a character scout ahead: Usually my party's Rogue will only be between 30 and 60 feet ahead of the party. Far enough to not be affected by the party's noise, but not so far that reinforcements can't arrive within a turn.

 

[Krachek]

And don't forget, if you scout ahead in the dark using darkvision, your perception checks are made at disadvantage....

 

[Majoru Oakheart]

If you played a Thief and didn't use Fast Hands, I'd question your imagination. You have caltrops, ball bearings, animals traps, acid, alchemist's fire, holy water... all from the PHB and all great to use as a Bonus Action. You can devote entire builds to using this feature in every round of every combat.

There's a lot of debate as to what counts as a "Use an Object" action. LOTS of debate. Most people believe that throwing Alchemist's Fire or Holy Water is an Attack Action, since it requires an attack roll. Most of the DMs in my area rule it that way, including me, so I wouldn't try to use those.

The rest of those things are also somewhat debatable if they are "use an object" or not. Either way, most of them have nearly no effect on the combat and just slow things down so I don't bother

Also, if we're going to compare PHB Rogue subclasses... why not compare Assassin to Arcane Trickster? At level 3, while the Assassin gets an ability they can use maybe a handful of times in any campaign, Arcane Trickster gets three cantrips and access to the Wizard spell list, one of the best in the game, while ALSO getting the ability to pick locks and disarm traps from a distance of 30 feet.

How many D&D campaigns involve picking locks + disarming traps and would greatly benefit from an awesomely safe distance for both? I'd say all of them.

The picking of locks at 30 feet generally isn't all that useful. Most traps go off when you open a door, not when you pick its lock so there's often VERY little reason to need to pick a lock from 30 feet away. At best, it's a cute roleplaying thing.

Spells are handy, and yes, are likely more powerful than the other features...though not much more.

If your party rolls well on Stealth, if you roll well on Initiative AND if you don't miss... oh, also, if your party is fully on board with changing their entire encounter approach so that you can bend the campaign to use your class ability, as well. And assuming your DM allows the type of scouting/sneaking ahead that would be required and assuming the encounter would even allow the party to be hidden (a Big Bad, a target you'd MOST want to get an opening-round Crit on, might be fully aware of the party for their planned monologue, as an example).

Yep, those are the conditions required. In my experience it means getting an assassination off once in every 10 combats or so if the Rogue tries. I have been nice to people before and allowed the group to make a group stealth check to sneak up on enemies. So if 50% of them succeed in stealth, they can get the surprise which I find is a little more fair and has stopped a lot of arguing over "Your stealth sucks! You need to stand 100 feet behind us at all times!"

However, even with RAW it isn't all that difficult to sneak up on enemies if you try. Even someone with +0 Stealth and Disadvantage still beats the average PP of 10 or 11 about 30% of the time. Rogues generally have a good Dex and tend to go before monsters a majority of the time.

So, if the entire party says "We're sneaking constantly", you should still see an assassination happen about 10% of the time.

The rest of the ability where they get advantage against things they go before in initiative happens almost every combat.

 

[Mistwell]

If the rogue's stealth beats the opponent's perception by 5 or more, then just let the rogue have one bonus surprise round (and only the rogue) and then continue combat as normal for the entire party.

 

[Yunru]

The only real use I've found for Fast Hands is with the Healer feat.

 

[pogre]

And don't forget, if you scout ahead in the dark using darkvision, your perception checks are made at disadvantage....

That's an excellent reminder! Something I am sure I have overlooked many times.

 

[Fast_Jimmy]

There's a lot of debate as to what counts as a "Use an Object" action. LOTS of debate. Most people believe that throwing Alchemist's Fire or Holy Water is an Attack Action, since it requires an attack roll. Most of the DMs in my area rule it that way, including me, so I wouldn't try to use those.

The rest of those things are also somewhat debatable if they are "use an object" or not. Either way, most of them have nearly no effect on the combat and just slow things down so I don't bother

No effect? Caltrops can seriosuly hamper movement, ball bearings can cause an enemy to fall Prone (delicious Advantage for a Rogue's Sneak Attack), animal traps can essentially work as a Grapple without having to actually have someone Grappling... LOTS of great uses of items, even from the "controversial" Attack ones, which I think is a really lame cop out to ensure no one ever uses items, ever.

The picking of locks at 30 feet generally isn't all that useful. Most traps go off when you open a door, not when you pick its lock so there's often VERY little reason to need to pick a lock from 30 feet away. At best, it's a cute roleplaying thing.

Except when the chest that is being lockpicked is secretly trapped as well, avoiding most chances of death.

Also, what in the world makes you think you can't open doors with Mage Hand? An Arcane Trickster would forever have this invisible hand up since its a cantrip and doesn't require Concentration. Every door opened, every tripwire disarmed, every chest picked... all done by magic invisible hand. That's hardly useless.

Spells are handy, and yes, are likely more powerful than the other features...though not much more.

Yes, yes... spells are BARELY more helpful than the Assassin's Level 7 and 13 abilities to look and sound like other people. If only there weren't a Level 1 spell the Arcane Trickster can get that would allow them to Disguise their Self...

Yep, those are the conditions required. In my experience it means getting an assassination off once in every 10 combats or so if the Rogue tries. I have been nice to people before and allowed the group to make a group stealth check to sneak up on enemies. So if 50% of them succeed in stealth, they can get the surprise which I find is a little more fair and has stopped a lot of arguing over "Your stealth sucks! You need to stand 100 feet behind us at all times!"

However, even with RAW it isn't all that difficult to sneak up on enemies if you try. Even someone with +0 Stealth and Disadvantage still beats the average PP of 10 or 11 about 30% of the time. Rogues generally have a good Dex and tend to go before monsters a majority of the time.

So, if the entire party says "We're sneaking constantly", you should still see an assassination happen about 10% of the time.

The rest of the ability where they get advantage against things they go before in initiative happens almost every combat.

Except in combats were the enemies roll higher in Initiative. Even with a +5 Dex, that's going to be 30-40% of combats. With Alert, that's less so, but we are now talking about requiring Feats in addition to all of the above requirements. Is it impossible? No, of course not.

But does it make the entire subclass, THE ENTIRE SUBCLASS, insanely dependent on DM, campaign and party support? Yes. Yes it does. We are talking about Assassinate, but look at all the other Assassin abilities - not a solid, reliable one in the mix. Its a trap subclass that people can feel tricked with. If you run a WotC module and try to use any of the abilities of the Assassin, you will be sorely disappointed in how little, if at all, they show up.

Should AL modules be the ultimate measuring stick of every subclass? No, but they are very indicative of most campaigns and tables, dungeon diving and combat over intrigue and sneaking in the shadows. The assassin is a subclass for a certain campaign/table and nothing more... but with a minor change to make Assassinate more reliable, it could be a predictable, quantifiable subclass that the player can control outside of circumstances completely outside their control (DM, party and campaign setting).

Fix Assassinate to be simple and easy to use (not by changing Surprise but by changing Assassinate) and the entire subclass can no longer be a source of confusion and frustration.

 

[Fast_Jimmy]

The only real use I've found for Fast Hands is with the Healer feat.

Caltrops? Ball Bearings? Hunting Traps? Oil? Manacles? Applying Poison to a weapon?

Arguably, a Thief would make a better poison assassin than the Assassin would.

 

[Majoru Oakheart]

Not at all. As soon as the player declares they're casting fireball, combat starts. Decide surprise (was anyone aware of a threat?) and roll initiative.

Of course you are aware of a threat, there's someone standing in front of you casting a fireball spell. That seems like a threat to me.

It doesn't matter what they were doing BEFORE they became a threat. They are a threat now and you are aware of them.

Unless you mean that you have to be aware they are threatening towards you even before they do anything threatening. Doesn't that mean that both sides are always surprised?

"You see Orcs with Greataxes in the room. They turn around and attack you. You are surprised."

"No we aren't, we were aware of the threats!"

"Were you? There were a bunch of Orcs in the room. You don't KNOW they are going to attack you, they might have been friendly."

"But you just said they charged towards us and attacked."

"Sure, but before they had done that, you were unaware of any threat, so you were surprised. But then again, they were unaware that you were a threat either, so they are surprised as well."

The only way any of this makes sense is if Surprise only happens when you are unseen and unheard...i.e. Hidden. Which is what the sentence before that one in the PHB says, that you must be hidden to get surprise.

Here's a summary of the 4e stealth and surprise rules:

1. You can become Hidden by making a successful Stealth vs Passive Perception check. If you are unaware of your opponents you are surprised.

2. In order to Hide you must have full cover or concealment. To continuing hiding you must have at least partial cover or concealment. If you ever have no cover, you stop hiding immediately and everyone can see you.

3. If anyone is surprised, the first round of combat is a surprise round and anyone unaware of their opponents cannot act during it. Anyone who is not surprised can only take one action or a move during the surprise round but not both.

Sound familiar? They are identical other than 2 major changes: Surprise ends at the end of people's first action except the end of the round and the other people only getting to either take an action or a move. The only other thing that was changed was that the language was changed to be less "rules text" and more natural English. This means they changed the word "opponents" to "threat" to sound less like a game. But the meaning of it didn't change. If you are unaware of the people attacking you, you are surprised.

It should be noted that during the first "beta" release of the D&D Next rules that became 5e, the stealth/surprise section was literally copied and pasted from the 4e rulebook and each version after that had a couple of words modified one way or another.

It wasn't until quite a few versions that they eventually removed the idea of a Surprise Round from the rules and changed it to what we have now.

It should also be noted that nothing in the actual book says that Surprise ends at the end of your first Turn. It says if you are surprised you can't take Reactions until the end of your first Turn. The book never says that Surprise ends at the same time you can take Reactions again. The designers have clarified that Surprise ends at the same time, but that isn't actually written there.

There's a reason for that. Surprise ended at the end of the First Round until near the very end of the beta testing of the rules and was listed in a different section, which is why it vanished when that section was removed.

What doesn't happen is "oh they have time to react, roll initiative."

The entire point of surprise lasting only until your turn is that there is no time to reassess threats before your turn.

No, there's no in game rationale for why surprise ends during your first action. As I said above, it is a bug that is a side effect of removing the idea of "rounds" from the game.

If the Assassin goes to stab the player one of two things happen:
The player rolls higher on initiative, sees the glint of steel and has time to recover from being surprised.
The player rolls lower on initiative and is caught by surprise.

So, what happens if someone is hidden, they are completely unseen and unheard?

My example from the marketplace: "I'm walking through the marketplace and looking at apples. A Rogue is hiding nearby. They made their Stealth check so I neither see nor hear them or any of their equipment. They roll lower than me in initiative. I take my first turn. I'm no longer surprised, but since I haven't seen nor heard them, I didn't stop being surprised because I saw a glint of metal or heard something and had time to react to it. I'm not not even aware that there's someone out there trying to kill me."

That's the definition of surprise according to the book, the person attacking has successfully hid from me and I'm unaware of a threat. The "bug" comes in because I really SHOULDN'T recover from being surprised just because I rolled higher in initiative, I'm still unaware of any enemies. But the bug slipped in there when they remove the surprise round late in the testing of 5e. It's small enough they aren't going to fix it.

Which is a large difference from "Someone in front of me pulls a hidden weapon and attacks". I'm perfectly aware someone is trying to kill me when my turn comes up in initiative. Which means I'm not surprised.