D&D 5E TCoE - Rogue's Steady Aim

[Don Durito]

Care to elaborate for those of us who are a little leery of the feature?

Basically what's been said already in this thread and what Crawford says in the video.

The rogue only keeps up mathematically if they can sneak attack every round.

I think this is a patch because there is little agreement about how stealth should work and it potentially prevents ranged rogues from getting to to use their class feature.

It potentially makes rogues more boring - but I think they're the dullest combat class anyway.

The issue is it's poor design to make the rogue have to be clever just to make par. If sneak attack were supposed to be hard to get, then it really should be much stronger than it is (although that would be difficult to balance - because there's a good chance someone would find a way to make it work every round).

 

[Xeviat]

Basically what's been said already in this thread and what Crawford says in the video.

The rogue only keeps up mathematically if they can sneak attack every round.

Not just sneak attack every round, but with two chances to hit.

At 20th, just to show the extremes, a greatsword fighter has 4 attacks at 2d6*+5 (13.33), or 53.33 damage. A TWFing Rogue has 1d6+5, 1d6, and 10d6 sneak attack, or 47. The rogue only keeps up because of the accuracy spike. And that's without magic weapons, where the fighter gets x4 and the rogue only gets x2 (and needs two separate items, where the fighter could stack a belt of giant strength).

And this is without the fighter's action surge and subclass abilities. Most rogue subclass abilities don't add a lot of damage, and stroke of luck is a small bonus when spread across an entire short rest's worth of battles (in a round where you miss with both attacks, it's definitely great!).

 

[Guest 6801328]

One thing this does is make the naked rapier (i.e. no offhand) archetype more compelling. Especially for elves and half-elves. A single attack with automatic triple advantage may not math out as great as a fully optimized fighter, but I'd still have fun playing it.

I don't have the text in front of me: does it work with Booming Blade (which technically isn't an attack action)?

 

[Don Durito]

That elven accuracy feat really needs to die!

 

[Charlaquin]

Basically what's been said already in this thread and what Crawford says in the video.

The rogue only keeps up mathematically if they can sneak attack every round.

I think this is a patch because there is little agreement about how stealth should work and it potentially prevents ranged rogues from getting to to use their class feature.

It potentially makes rogues more boring - but I think they're the dullest combat class anyway.

The issue is it's poor design to make the rogue have to be clever just to make par. If sneak attack were supposed to be hard to get, then it really should be much stronger than it is (although that would be difficult to balance - because there's a good chance someone would find a way to make it work every round).

Gotcha. I agree with that assessment, it’s just that... I feel like ranged rogues should fall behind slightly. Only slightly, mind you. But the safety that comes with being away from the melee should come at a cost. That cost being that you need a source of cover or obscuration to make your stealth check to hide, and there’s a (slight) risk you won’t roll high enough on the check. But yeah, it should be possible for rogues to be able to do this with their bonus action nearly every turn. Steady Aim may foolproof this for DMs, but at the cost of making ranged rogues both offensively and defensively superior to melee rogues. I’d rather the designers just explain the math than introduce a fix that subtly shifts the balance in favor of ranged combat.

 

[Charlaquin]

One thing this does is make the naked rapier (i.e. no offhand) archetype more compelling. Especially for elves and half-elves. A single attack with automatic triple advantage may not math out as great as a fully optimized fighter, but I'd still have fun playing it.

I don't have the text in front of me: does it work with Booming Blade (which technically isn't an attack action)?

Should work. It says you give yourself advantage on “your next attack roll on the current turn” no mention of the Attack action.

 

[Guest 6801328]

Should work. It says you give yourself advantage on “your next attack roll on the current turn” no mention of the Attack action.

Huh.

Too bad using Booming Blade every single round just feels so...cheesy.

But an elven Swashbuckler with Elven Accuracy and Booming Blade could dance in, attack with triple advantage (15% chance of crit, including the initial damage from BB at levels 5+), then skip away, daring the target to follow.

 

[Don Durito]

Gotcha. I agree with that assessment, it’s just that... I feel like ranged rogues should fall behind slightly. Only slightly, mind you. But the safety that comes with being away from the melee should come at a cost. That cost being that you need a source of cover or obscuration to make your stealth check to hide, and there’s a (slight) risk you won’t roll high enough on the check. But yeah, it should be possible for rogues to be able to do this with their bonus action nearly every turn. Steady Aim may foolproof this for DMs, but at the cost of making ranged rogues both offensively and defensively superior to melee rogues. I’d rather the designers just explain the math than introduce a fix that subtly shifts the balance in favor of ranged combat.

Well yeah.

As I said earlier in the thread, not allowing the feature because it's OP would be mistaken; not allowing it because you don't want to encourage Rogues to be ranged is a reasonable decision.

This is the sort of thing they should be pointing out in a sidebar or something.

 

[Guest 6801328]

This is the sort of thing they should be pointing out in a sidebar or something.

Imagine if WotC provided helpful commentary in a sidebar. Not everybody runs to Enworld to theorycraft these things out.

 

[Tales and Chronicles]

Gotcha. I agree with that assessment, it’s just that... I feel like ranged rogues should fall behind slightly. Only slightly, mind you. But the safety that comes with being away from the melee should come at a cost. That cost being that you need a source of cover or obscuration to make your stealth check to hide, and there’s a (slight) risk you won’t roll high enough on the check. But yeah, it should be possible for rogues to be able to do this with their bonus action nearly every turn. Steady Aim may foolproof this for DMs, but at the cost of making ranged rogues both offensively and defensively superior to melee rogues. I’d rather the designers just explain the math than introduce a fix that subtly shifts the balance in favor of ranged combat.

I think there's a reward for the melee rogue: the possibility to land an out-of-turn sneak attack through an AoO or an ally's features is more probable than for ranged rogues. And with the mix of defensive features (uncanny dodge, evasion etc) and having Dex as a main (almost) mono-stat means that rogues arent that much of a glass canon in 5e.