D&D (2024) Rogue's Been in an Awkward Place, And This Survey Might Be Our Last Chance to Let WotC Know.

[CapnZapp]

Almost every class I have ever played has at least 3 levels of Rogue. One of our players played a single classed Rogue for the first time last year and was genuinely shocked at how good they were to play.

Not disputing this but noting how that doesn't mean the arguments to allow more sneak damage are invalid.

It just means lots of people like skills and versatility.

Those wanting to play a rogue as a glass cannon remain shafted.

 

[Charlaquin]

The rogue does respectable, but not spectacular, damage per round, consistently and at no resource cost. They also have a lot of ability to hinder targets in various ways between weapon masteries, cunning strike, and some other subclass-dependent options such as the thief’s fast hands or the arcane trickster’s mage hand ledgermain and limited spell access. These options generally come at a small cost to DPR, so they will be situational, but valuable in the appropriate situations. Out of combat, they have more skills and higher bonuses to those skills than other classes, plus reliable talent coming at 7th level, so even with games typically ending before 11th, you’re still likely to have access to it for at least a few levels.

Exactly how “good” that all looks to anyone will be subjective, and likely dependent on frequency of encounters and typical frequency, difficulty, and consequences for failure on, ability checks. But I think it’s a pretty specific campaign where that suite of abilities doesn’t bring pretty decent value to the party. The pure rogue is never going to be a spectacular damage dealer, and it’s never going to give you a free win on exploration or social challenges. But I think it will be rare that a group is unhappy to have a rogue in the party. They can contribute pretty well to just about any challenge, and never have to expend limited resources to do so. That’s a solid niche in my opinion.

Also, I don’t think we should overlook the value of good gameplay feel. The rogue always has multiple options for things to do with their action and bonus action, and now also has multiple options for ways to hinder a target on a hit. That feels good and fun for a lot of players, which is why the rogue polls so well, even if it’s not topping the charts in terms of pure numbers. They will frequently have the highest bonus on a variety of checks, and so will frequently be called upon to take point in exploration and social challenges. And they have the ability to specialize to get a really high bonus on a particular skill, which also feels cool to be able to do.

The rogue is in a fine place.

 

[CapnZapp]

But the rogue does do reasonable damage. We’ve shown it with some casual math, we have looked at treantmonks for more optimized builds. The rogue is not top dog by any means, but they do alright and come with all that extra flexibility on top

So remove all that extra flexibility and give us top dog damage?

 

[CapnZapp]

The rogue is in a fine place.

The rogue could be in more fine places than one.

 

[Charlaquin]

The rogue could be in more fine places than one.

So could any martial class. For better or worse, the designers seem to want non-casters to have pretty specific play patterns. If the rogue’s play pattern isn’t to one’s liking, one can always play a different class, or use multiclassing to assemble a set of features that better suits the play patterns one wants.

 

[CapnZapp]

I'd argue that increaseing sneak attack by one extra d6 at level 5 and/or 11 would not hurt though. Would bring them exactly im the middle. Or slightly above.

I'm not looking for a solution where ALL rogues do more damage, because I'm not bitching "rogues don't do enough damage".

I'm bitching "SOME rogues don't do enough damage". The ones that are willing to focus on damage.

So give us a damage focus. Don't give us a free bonus. That's not a choice to "focus".

As a thought experiment:

How would a rogue class look like if it got a sneak die every level?

If we begin by assuming this rogue would be willing to give up everything else, would that be viable?

Remember, in the end it's "only" damage. Dealing damage isn't what derails campaigns.

I would suspect that a 20d6 Rogue wouldn't be much out of place at 20th level. If we additionally say sneak damage is once a round and not once a turn, the class shouldn't have to give up much at all.

 

[CapnZapp]

So could any martial class. For better or worse, the designers seem to want non-casters to have pretty specific play patterns. If the rogue’s play pattern isn’t to one’s liking, one can always play a different class, or use multiclassing to assemble a set of features that better suits the play patterns one wants.

Which different class or multiclass would that be?

 

[CapnZapp]

Yup. This has been a problem with Rogues and it seems like it's going to get worse. You'd expect them to benefit from magic items and party synergy, but they actually benefit significantly less than other martials, to the point where if those are handed out equally, they fall far behind.

It's possible WotC could be partially fixing this "off screen" as it were by designing new magic items which synergize with Rogues better, but they'd have to be Rogue-specific, and even then, I suspect they'd benefit things like Rogue-Fighter more than an actual single-class Rogue.

Will there finally be items that modify sneak attacks and sneak damage?

I'm fine with these items benefiting any character that can sneak attack; no need to single out the rogue class specifically.

 

[Stalker0]

Which different class or multiclass would that be?

Fighter. 2 levels of fighter with your rogue give you:

• Longbows for more damage with sneak attack
• Action Surge
• Second Wind
• The new tactical mind, so you can be even more skill monkey on a couple of checks.
• Gain TWF style to boost that style, or archery if your going more ranged.

There you go. that will boost your attacks and damage if you want to focus more on that.

 

[CapnZapp]

also, returning to 3,9,13,17 subclass levels was also very bad decision.

If every subclass starts at the same level and gets their chief abilities at the same level, that makes it easier to allow cross-class subclassing, which is a good thing

If they then split each subclass into two parts so you could switch subclass halfway on your path to level 20 that'd be wicked sweet awesome.

Anything that enriches the build variety is good. Anything that adds major build choices to a double-digit level is good. Since it makes high level play more relevant it's double good!

If you could play Gloomstalker or Eldritch Knight on top of a Rogue or Warlock chassi (and not just on a Ranger and Fighter chassi, respectively) that would massively increase the build variety in the game. If on top of that you could switch to the Path of World Tree subclass at, say, level 12, we would approach 3E levels of charbuild goodness