D&D (2024) Maybe this is a bit late, but let's talk about Rogue's Niche, and What Rogue Should Be.

[aco175]

Take away feats in the game. Or, maybe just the ones that are the must have DPR feats like polearm mastery, sharpshooter, and great weapon mastery. This will bring the fighter damage back down and make it in line with the rogue. I'm looking forward to see if these change in the new books.

Another thing you can do is give rogues the flanking option. This will allow them to hit with the backstab more of the time and rise the DPR if that is what you need. It brings them more into the combat and less of a shooter. Although the aim ability already takes most of this into play.

 

[GrimCo]

Rogue is probably most versatile and adaptive non caster class in the game. They are solid in combat ( SA, cunning action, uncanny dodge, evasion), have best skill selection, have expertise (double prof). Reliable talent is where rogue shines. With that, you can't fail DC 15-20 skill checks. Even without subclass, rogue has lot's going on for it self.

 

[CreamCloud0]

Take away feats in the game. Or, maybe just the ones that are the must have DPR feats like polearm mastery, sharpshooter, and great weapon mastery. This will bring the fighter damage back down and make it in line with the rogue. I'm looking forward to see if these change in the new books.

why on earth would we want to do this though??? i read this in the same way i would've read 'let's take away the fighter's martial weapon and heavy armour proficiencies', martial's damage is pretty bad and fighter is already low on the totem pole, if we want to improve the rogue then do that, don't drag other classes down.

 

[tetrasodium]

why on earth would we want to do this though???

I ran a no feats game for a while (pre-xge iirc) with the intention of using bits of them for magic items and hope of encouraging build diversity. The end result was that everyone made the usual feat based builds seen all the time and just kept demanding the important bits ofgwm/gwf/pam/crossbow expert/sharpshooter/etc

i read this in the same way i would've read 'let's take away the fighter's martial weapon and heavy armour proficiencies', martial's damage is pretty bad and fighter is already low on the totem pole, if we want to improve the rogue then do that, don't drag other classes down.

It did not improve the game but made clear than some "I would... but" bluffs being made at the table were just that.

 

[Reynard]

If I could go back in time and change one thing re: D&D, it would be to erase the notion of Roles. Not because they are necessarily bad or wrong, but becasue they ended up driving design in a way that I find highly unsatisfying. And worst of all was turning the thief into a cuisinart killing machine. Ugh.

 

[CreamCloud0]

I ran a no feats game for a while (pre-xge iirc) with the intention of using bits of them for magic items and hope of encouraging build diversity. The end result was that everyone made the usual feat based builds seen all the time and just kept demanding the important bits ofgwm/gwf/pam/crossbow expert/sharpshooter/etc

this only implies to me that we should make these feats more easilly accessible then with less cost to aquire, if these abilities are seen as so essential for builds we should bake them into the core budget so people can actually pick more interesting feats when provided with the opportunity to

It did not improve the game but made clear than some "I would... but" bluffs being made at the table were just that.

if i'm understanding what you did correctly then you didn't really remove those feats you just changed the nature of how they were aquired, to me it's not really surprising the players didn't change their builds either, not to mention that outside of those feats weapon damage builds are kind of underwhelming.

 

[Soulknife_Infiltrator]

Because the 5e Rogue is not a Martial.

The 4e Rogue is a Martial warrior.
The 5e Rogue is a skill monkey.

...And they aren't a competent skill monkey in 5.5 either anymore. The "skill monkey" role is bad in 5.5e since everyone has been good at skills, and the skill system only allows player to succeed or failed a check. It makes no difference between passing a check with a 30 or with a 15.

 

[tetrasodium]

this only implies to me that we should make these feats more easilly accessible then with less cost to aquire, if these abilities are seen as so essential for builds we should bake them into the core budget so people can actually pick more interesting feats when provided with the opportunity to

No I think that the design problem goes beyond the feats themselves. The root cause lies in decisions like changing from +ability score at certain levels and +feat at others shifting to feat or ASI a pick one thing while getting rid of feat chain prereqs & pretending that the work of balancing feats can simply be fobbed off by declaring them "optional"

if i'm understanding what you did correctly then you didn't really remove those feats you just changed the nature of how they were aquired, to me it's not really surprising the players didn't change their builds either, not to mention that outside of those feats weapon damage builds are kind of underwhelming.

You are not understanding correctly. The trouble was that the other feats were trash & it was not possible to make new novel combinations Instead of having some feats that were awful for this need we just have this situation where a lot of feats are awful for every need thanks to an effort to design around the misrepresentation of a prior design.

 

[Minigiant]

...And they aren't a competent skill monkey in 5.5 either anymore. The "skill monkey" role is bad in 5.5e since everyone has been good at skills, and the skill system only allows player to succeed or failed a check. It makes no difference between passing a check with a 30 or with a 15.

I think the issue is that many DMs don't have ideas on multiple obstacles with different DCs.

Only classes with the Expertise class feature are good at multiple skill checks on the same PCs.

The skill monkey is bad if you only call for the same 4 checks or only call for DC10 or DC15 checks.

Which can happen in a combat heavy game where few skill checks are made. It's kinda like a bard in a low social game or a fighter in an mostly social game.

The Rogue's strength is when the DC calls for a lot of different checks and sometime a few hard ones. Their Out of Combat power is balanced with its Combat power.

The Rogue's combat power is narrow in use because the exploration and social power is wide in use.

 

[Stormonu]

If D&D had a skill system that was worth a damn, we wouldn't be having a problem with the Rogue and Bard in their current roles.

I'm rather tired of listening to how effective in combat everyone "must" be in the game. It's time to pay attention to the whole experience, not just the combat mini-game.