[playtest 2] Distressed by rogue damage

[Neonchameleon]

The big worry is the Thug. Who can easily get CA every turn at little or no loss.

 

[Ultimatecalibur]

A 5th level rogue's sneak attack bonus is 6d6. That's 6-36 damage; 21 damage on average. And that's just sneak attack damage, it's even more when you include their weapon and Dex. A rogue with 17 Dex and a 1d6 weapon will deal an average of 27.5 total damage. I assume you got those low-looking numbers by factoring in missed attacks to get an average damage per round. The thing is, everyone can miss, and i can assure you the average DPR of other classes is much less than the rogue's, since they do far less damage when they hit. So whether you compare damage on hit or average damage per round, the rogue is still way ahead of everyone else.

Yes it is an average of 27.5 damage per hit with Sneak Attack, but that is not damage per round which is important. If you check the current damage output of a 5th level Fighter with 17 Str it is 18.5 per hit if using a Greatsword and 12.025 damage per round verses a target with AC 15(a target the Fighter can hit 65% of the time).

The Rogue's chance hit a target with AC 15 is .84% if they have Advantage and 60% if they don't.

Hiding + Sneak Attack takes 2 rounds to perform and Hiding is not guaranteed to be successful. Hiding is only 97.5% successful verses a target with a Wisdom of 10.
(27.5 * .84 * .975 + 6.5 * .60 * .025)/2 = 11.31 per round.

The Archer Specialty's Sniper feat + Sneak Attack takes 2 rounds to perform and always works if using a ranged attack.
(27.5 * .84)/2 = 11.55 per round

A 5th level Fighter with Knock Down and 17 Str has a 65% chance of knocking a target prone but gives up 4.5 damage to do so. That means that a Rogue that makes attacks every turn, 65% of the melee attacks will have advantage and 35% will not.
27.5 * .84 * .65 + 6.5 * .60 * .35 = 16.38 with - 4.5 damage from the Fighter. A net total of 11.88 per round.

Thug Tactics requires two allies that have the target in reach to pull off and the Rogue does not have Advantage so hits less often.
27.5 * .60 = 16.5 per round.

In 3.x, a rogue's sneak attack bonus dealt about half as much damage as a wizard or sorcerer's highest level spell (typically 1d6/caster level). Now, a rogue's sneak attack bonus is often going to be more damage than a wizard's highest level spell, according to the examples we've been given. For example, fireball, a spell obtained at 5th level, deals 5d6 damage, 1d6 less than a rogue's sneak attack bonus at that level, and the rogue's sneak attack just keeps going up and up and up. That's a problem. Rogues should not be inflicting as much damage as a wizard's top daily spells every single round, even if it is only against a single target.

You left out that the Rogue in 3.X can apply that damage to every attack as long a the target was denied their Dex bonus or was Flanked. A 5th level Rogue in 3.X was dealing +3d6 damage per hit; with multiple attacks that could get to some serious damage.

 

[Falling Icicle]

You left out that the Rogue in 3.X can apply that damage to every attack as long a the target was denied their Dex bonus or was Flanked. A 5th level Rogue in 3.X was dealing +3d6 damage per hit; with multiple attacks that could get to some serious damage.

There's no way a 5th level rogue could have multiple attacks in 3.x, unless he was fighting with two weapons, which came with penalties.

 

[Ellington]

There's no way a 5th level rogue could have multiple attacks in 3.x, unless he was fighting with two weapons, which came with penalties.

The benefits by war outweighed the penalties. There's also haste. So yeah, a flanking rogue could have 3 attacks at 3d6 each as opposed to the 5d6 once per round we have now.

Anyways, I don't think the sneak attack damage is that bad, but I do wish they'd try and design so that you'd need a round to set it up first. I'm not a fan of thug tactics.

 

[Chris_Nightwing]

I think the big problem is that the Fighter now gets bonus damage every round if they want it - we're not seeing the whole chart but that scales up pretty nicely.

What do you offer the Rogue in return? The idea appears to be MORE damage LESS often. However, by defining advantage as the way in which this extra damage is achieved, hundreds of other things change LESS often to ALWAYS.

I don't want Rogues always getting extra damage - that just makes them Fighters, without tricks at that. If their defining feature is sudden, devastating damage then another mechanic, not advantage, should be used to determine when they get it. If we want this to happen every other round, why not give them a 'focus' like ability - in the first round they pick a target to focus on, and they have to trick them, hide from them, in some way specifically get the edge on them - something greater than advantage. In the second round, they make their attack, it ought to have advantage built in but the key point is that the extra damage comes from being focused on that target.

Something like this would mean changing Thug Tactics so that in a round where an enemy is in melee with two allies you spot a chink in their armour, and the next round you take advantage of it. Hiding would do similarly - it's not about the advantage you gain on the attack, it's about having that round in which the enemy is unaware of you and you can study them. Obviously surprise would give you this focus, but simply knocking an enemy on the floor wouldn't.

 

[Ultimatecalibur]

Anyways, I don't think the sneak attack damage is that bad, but I do wish they'd try and design so that you'd need a round to set it up first. I'm not a fan of thug tactics.

Thug Tactics does seem to be where the actual problem lies. The designers maybe underestimating the ease of having the target in reach of 2 allies, but at the same time we may be overestimating it.

That said, making Thug Tactics only grant half SA damage unless the Rogue has Advantage maybe more balanced.

 

[KidSnide]

I like these sneak attack numbers if the designers can manage to keep rogues to getting advantage every other round. But I'm skeptical about that. Between Thug Tactics and the fighter's Knockdown ability, it seems likely that by 5th level, many rogues will be getting sneak attack way more often than not.

Maybe sneak attack shouldn't be usable on two consecutive rounds? (Or, on the same target on two consecutive rounds?) After all, it's a sneak attack. Who gets to surprise someone twice in 12 seconds?

Or, as a third alternative, maybe rogues should get an awesome sneak attack bonus once per encounter, and then have to resort to a less effective (but still good) "dirty fighting" ability that depends on advantage alone?

-KS

 

[Salamandyr]

I'm withholding judgement until I see it in game. In our last playtest, the rogue generally got to make a sneak attack every other round and the powerful sneak attack made that a good option. He stayed engaged since each round he wasn't attacking he was devising ways to make skill checks to gain advantage. So each round he was still rolling dice.

Thug tactics sounds like it may be better on paper than at the table. If somebody's getting whomped on by 3 PC's, odds are he was going down fast anyway.

It looks to me like they did lower damage, but on the monster side.

 

[VinylTap]

I feel like a common game design tactic is to err on the side of too much damage then too little. Its much easier to scale the damage back then to guess at how much you should increase it. This is probably the case here.

I think people are right, the damage listed now is far too easy to abuse by crafty players, although it seems like a good amount for casual players.

A common complaint in Pathfinder is how difficult it can, occasionally, be to get a flank on an opponent. Position is sometimes a tricky thing, and can have a devastating effect on a rogue's damage output. Thug Combat feels like its an early attempt to address this concern, but while the rogue is a good step in the right direction, it hardly seems like a polished class at this point.

 

[Uller]

I also have some concerns with the Rogue Sneak Attack implementation. I'm guessing it's going to change to make it more interesting with something similar to Fighter CS. What I don't want to see for either one is some ridiculous number of dice to be rolled for damage. Is the plan really to give a rogue a d6 per level? So at 10th level the rogue player is rolling 11d6 every other round for damage? Seems a bit much.

In the 1e days it seemed like a thief player had to work for and take risks to achieve a 'backstab'. I'm not opposed to the 4e implementations but with 4e essentials it seems like we entered a mode where a thief could get his SA damage on pretty much every attack or choose to forgo it for some other advantage using his tricks. That's fine (just like CS really) but, to me, the thing that makes a rogue interesting to play is having to be devious and the sense of achievement when it works (I once had a theif player deliver the killing blow to an enemy mage with a well earned backstab...he declared "that was so exciting I'm shaking!")

One thing I wonder (and I've only played two sessions of playtest so I haven't had an opportunity to try this). Is it reasonable for the DM to break the Stealth/Sneak Attack/Stealth/... cycle by simply having any potential targets of a SA move or act so that the thief is no longer hidden? For example, if the halfling thief slips behind a small table to 'hide' the monsters probably saw him go there...so kick the table over. If he hid behind a column move to where the monster has line of site, etc. If intelligent monsters can break SA with good tactics, I'm fine with it.