D&D 5E Rogue Starting Feat

[Flamestrike]

Remember that "Aim" means sacrificing doing anything else on your turn, which means, from an actual play experience standpoint, waiting for it to come all the way around to make one shot (with advantage) and then do literally nothing else with the class that usually gets to do something else.

I like it on Scout Rogues because you can use half your movement (as a reaction) to back off when the enemy ends its turn next to you.

It competes with Uncanny dodge from 5th level, but there are plenty of times where the free 20' move as a reaction is totally a better option than half damage from 1 attack.

The familiar goes on the familiar's turn. You roll separate initiatives.

Ah, true. Thats even worse.

 

[FrogReaver]

Me too.

that was sometimes too easy. 600ft assassinate from forest. Expertise in stealth&perception. fun times.

Yep. Same basic build as mine. I even gave mine low Con so I could have pretty good Charisma too. I wanted to be good at deception/persuasion along with Stealth and Perception.

Honestly the low Con probably helped offset some of the DM Rage I'm sure the DM was feeling. I mean it's really hard find fault with a player for playing an 8 Con character as methodically careful.

 

[Weiley31]

One word. Familiar. The game the DM runs is high magic so a ring of spell storing would be reasonable to rent for an hour. Have the Bard cast Find Familiar into it and have myself cast it and now I have a pet owl familiar. The Bard has Ritual Caster.

And then give it Warlock levels for fly-by agonized Eldritch Blasting.

The fact that it wears a dapper top hat and monacle means its CHA score is autoset to where that is viable.

 

[Guest 6801328]

Heck I would be sorely tempted to take 3 levels of Fighter (Champion) for action surge, archery fighting style and 19-20 crit range. With constant 'trivantage' you should be scoring a hell of a lot of critical hits (double sneak attack dice). Maybe 5 levels if Extra attack is something you're keen on.

We ran the numbers on this in another thread recently. The expanded crit range does not make up for the loss of 1 or 2 extra sneak attack dice until much higher levels. So if you're purely optimizing you should postpone taking those fighter levels until very high level.

On the other hand, it's fun to roll all those dice when you do crit, so if you don't care about pure optimization go for it.

 

[Flamestrike]

We ran the numbers on this in another thread recently. The expanded crit range does not make up for the loss of 1 or 2 extra sneak attack dice until much higher levels. So if you're purely optimizing you should postpone taking those fighter levels until very high level.

On the other hand, it's fun to roll all those dice when you do crit, so if you don't care about pure optimization go for it.

Did you run the numbers with tri-vantage and a 19-20 crit range and sneak attack?

 

[Guest 6801328]

Did you run the numbers with tri-vantage and a 19-20 crit range and sneak attack?

Yeah it was specifically for that scenario (Swashbuckler with Elven Accuracy and Sneak Attack).

Basically the expanded crit range gives you a 13% increased chance of critting. Which means 13% of your average damage has to be greater than the average damage you would have gotten from 1d6 (when your rogue level is odd) or 2d6 (when your rogue level is even). 3.5 / 0.13 = 27, double that for 2d6.

Assuming a 1d6 non-magic weapon (to make life easier) even at Rogue 10 you are doing 7d6 + 5 = 29 average damage. So increased crit range just barely beats the extra die you would have gotten from sneak attack. But then you add one rogue level, and suddenly the crit range falls way behind.

So let's try a +2 magic rapier and booming blade: and level 16 rogue (7d6 sneak attack). You do 2d8 + 8d6 + 7 = 44 average damage. 13% of that is still only 5.72; but one more rogue level would have given you +2d6 or 7.

EDIT: Oops, I blew the logic. You don't count additional damage from Dex and magic weapon because that doesn't get increased by crit. That makes increased crit range even worse.

 

[TwoSix]

Yeah it was specifically for that scenario (Swashbuckler with Elven Accuracy and Sneak Attack).

Basically the expanded crit range gives you a 13% increased chance of critting. Which means 13% of your average damage has to be greater than the average damage you would have gotten from 1d6 (when your rogue level is odd) or 2d6 (when your rogue level is even). 3.5 / 0.13 = 27, double that for 2d6.

Assuming a 1d6 non-magic weapon (to make life easier) even at Rogue 10 you are doing 7d6 + 5 = 29 average damage. So increased crit range just barely beats the extra die you would have gotten from sneak attack. But then you add one rogue level, and suddenly the crit range falls way behind.

So let's try a +2 magic rapier and booming blade: and level 16 rogue (7d6 sneak attack). You do 2d8 + 8d6 + 7 = 44 average damage. 13% of that is still only 5.72; but one more rogue level would have given you +2d6 or 7.

EDIT: Oops, I blew the logic. You don't count additional damage from Dex and magic weapon because that doesn't get increased by crit. That makes increased crit range even worse.

Thinking about it a little further, though, Champion 3 does give 2 other things that narrow the gap. Taking Dueling Fighting Style gives +2 damage to each attack, which is about half of a sneak attack die with a 14.7% crit range. And Action Surge is going to allow for one extra sneak attack per short rest by readying an action (or by allowing another attack on the rare occurrence of a miss).

 

[Flamestrike]

Yeah it was specifically for that scenario (Swashbuckler with Elven Accuracy and Sneak Attack).

Basically the expanded crit range gives you a 13% increased chance of critting. Which means 13% of your average damage has to be greater than the average damage you would have gotten from 1d6 (when your rogue level is odd) or 2d6 (when your rogue level is even). 3.5 / 0.13 = 27, double that for 2d6.

Assuming a 1d6 non-magic weapon (to make life easier) even at Rogue 10 you are doing 7d6 + 5 = 29 average damage. So increased crit range just barely beats the extra die you would have gotten from sneak attack. But then you add one rogue level, and suddenly the crit range falls way behind.

So let's try a +2 magic rapier and booming blade: and level 16 rogue (7d6 sneak attack). You do 2d8 + 8d6 + 7 = 44 average damage. 13% of that is still only 5.72; but one more rogue level would have given you +2d6 or 7.

EDIT: Oops, I blew the logic. You don't count additional damage from Dex and magic weapon because that doesn't get increased by crit. That makes increased crit range even worse.

Swashbuckler doesnt have a 19-20 crit range.

You're rocking a 26 percent chance of critting with tri-vantage and 19-20 crit.

 

[TwoSix]

Swashbuckler doesnt have a 19-20 crit range.

You're rocking a 26 percent chance of critting with tri-vantage and 19-20 crit.

27.1%, actually. But the 13% comes from the fact that your normal chance of critting with tri-vantage is 14.7%. So Champion turns 12.4% (27.1% - 14.7% = 12.4%, which Elfcrusher rounded to 13%) of your attacks with tri-vantage into crits.

 

[Guest 6801328]

Thinking about it a little further, though, Champion 3 does give 2 other things that narrow the gap. Taking Dueling Fighting Style gives +2 damage to each attack, which is about half of a sneak attack die with a 14.7% crit range. And Action Surge is going to allow for one extra sneak attack per short rest by readying an action (or by allowing another attack on the rare occurrence of a miss).

But that +2 isn't doubled on a crit. And even when I (erroneously) included +Dex and +2 for a magic weapon, it didn't move the needle much.