James Gasik
We don't talk about Pun-Pun
The reality is that Dex should have always been the "to hit" stat. Strength "to hit" only makes sense (to me? I can't be the only one) when you think about punching through armor, but AC is this bizarre hybrid of armor and non-armor defenses mashed up together like Frankenstein's creature.The funny thing is in the original first two editions Dex was the week stat and strength was the god that.
3e boosted the numbers on initiative, AC, and ranged attack bonus from Dex. And they gave it range damaged bonus and a gated way to get Dex into melee.
The funny part is none of this really helped swashbucklers, duelist, and two wielders. Melee Dex fighting sucks unless you're exploiting a class feature. Fair DEX based Melee is bad You had to cheat it with sneak attack or martial arts.
None of that matches the fiction of dreaded pirate captains, deadly samurai in robes, noble fencers, brave half naked gladiators, business suit blademasters, or assassin guild hitters.
But that makes Strength fairly weak, and so it was given this larger share of the pie. Which keeps running into "but what about the agile, skilled, but not strong archetype?". Thing is, it really doesn't exist. Swordsmen of any caliber are going to need to be strong, because even swinging a 2 pound piece of metal around like mad takes a toll on you. Anyone who climbs for a living has great upper body and gripping strength. The slender, weak, artful dodger is largely fictional, and it's perfectly legitimate to imagine a Rogue as being quite strong.
The issue is, most people thing Strength = bulk, and looking at any professional athlete, you realize that's not true. A man who can throw a javelin 98.4 meters is 6' 1" 190 lbs., while the man who can lift 1,185 pounds is just as tall, but has an extra 110 pounds of muscle.
The muscles being used for various athletic feats vary, but the idea that none of these swashbuckler duelist samurai would be physically weak is ridiculous.
But D&Disms aren't going anywhere, the game will continue to support little Halfling girls who barely top 3' in height with 20 Dex with level of Monk being just as hard to hit and nearly as damaging as 8' 6" Goliath Barbarians.
Based on this, I don't see any real advantage to placing the Rogue in a category where they have to be inferior warriors just because they focus more on skills than heavy weapons and armor- they already lack the staying power of a Fighter who can recover from life-threatening injuries by napping for a few hours and just using their Second Wind, lol, no healing surges required!
Would I prefer that any good fighting character have to invest in Strength and Dexterity? Absolutely. But that's not where D&D is, nor is it likely to be where it's going, when you can become a magical swordsman by using Charisma to wield a weapon you manifested from the aether a few seconds ago.
If we can let bards, wizards, and warlocks become reasonable melee combatants, there's no reason the rogue needs to be a second stringer the way they were in editions past.