D&D 5E The Limping Rogue

[Shieldhaven]

Chris_Nightwing -

They do, kinda. They don't tell you what you're allowed to buy, but they give you exclusive lists of benefits, with at-wills, signature or domain spells, and so on. It only makes sense that they'd have to structure the fighter and rogue options a bit differently to accommodate their "always-on" style - that is, they refresh all of their options at the top of every round.

Personally, I think that if they're not going to go with the 3.x and 4e (and WoW, and so on) vision of the rogue as a melee DPS monster, then I'd like to see the rogue focus on skill use and such as a means of being a melee or ranged debuffer. They might add to this the ability to "store up" expertise dice from round to round on a target, preparing for that single devastating strike.

Listening to Mearls and Crawford talk about various classes just now has been, for me, a good reminder that they're still at an early stage of their development process, and it's still completely okay if an iteration falls apart. The poll-responding community is reasonably united in its particular reactions, positive and negative, and I know they're right because they agree with me. (Ahem.)

Haven

 

[DEFCON 1]

I don't get why they have premade packages for the Fighter and Rogue telling you which skills and maneuvers you get at which level. Why do they do this, yet let Wizards and Clerics off the hook? I don't see a premade package telling you which spells you learn.

Let it be free choice or a set progression that has real meaning, rather than pretending the packages are useful.

The pre-made packages are there for one important reason as far as I can tell...

It's to give your group of maneuvers or feats a cohesive identity and attributable Story.

We've already seen in 3E and 4E what happens when you have feats that just get taken at random in any order you want. For most players they become nothing more than purely numerical advancement. There's no fluff connected to the choices. It simply becomes "what do I need to take to make my character more effective? Oh yes, this feat, this feat, this feat and this feat." Nevermind that none of those feats might actually say something about the character who choose them... all that mattered was that they were the most useful choices to take.

Having Specialties helps that in two ways... one, it gives more of a descriptive identity to your PC, because you now have a bunch of feats all around a set theme. And that Speciality has a Story that you can use to help describe your character. You're a Shield Specialist. That tells you something about your character and helps you get into who your character is and what he does. And second... the set Specialities help reduce the urge of taking "numerically superior" options that a more open system like 3E and 4E allow. The DM can say "you must take a Speciality and can't trade out" or "You can trade out a single feat for another, but that's all". So you're less likely to see the player who goes right down the line taking Weapon Expertise, Superior Weapon Proficiency, the defense booster feats, etc. etc. etc. because those are the "feats you have to take for an effective character", but do nothing to help illustrate who that character is.

And as far as the Clerics and Wizards are concerned... don't be surprised if the specific deities/domains and specific wizard traditions DO in fact silo off into smaller available spell lists for each of those builds, sometime down the line. They've already talked about that kind of thing... it's probably still on their whiteboard to include a couple packages down the line.

 

[Kobold Stew]

This is a little obscure, but consider this section from Backgrounds and Skills:

If your character already has training in a skill and gains training in that skill again (for example, a skill granted by both the character’s class and background), you instead choose a different skill in which your character becomes trained.

This is a good point -- and you are right. It doesn't stop the fact that Disable device becomes a rogue-specific skill: only rogues are proficient with the tools, and the tools are worthless without the skill.

Further, the mechanics presented encourage you to choose it for your rogue. So even if you get to choose skills to eliminate redundancies, the choice is not an unencumbered one.

 

[Kobold Stew]

In reference to your point #3... I don't think any rogue will ever be just CHA-based... because all weapon combat ability uses STR or DEX. You won't ever see any class that uses CHA for their weapon attacks. Now sure... you might have a scheme that is much more CHA primary with far back DEX secondary... but the DEX will still have to be there for the weapons.

I think this misses the point -- I wasn't talking about attacks at all. Sure the rogue will need to have some combat abilities (likely building off strength or dex), but there isn't a build that allows any sort of build that isn't dependent on dec. That's a regression form the last playtest, where a credible Strength build is there out of the box.

For an edition that is touting the virtues of flexibility, they are taking it away. The Face (diplomat, con artist) is an iconic rogue build that isn't being supported. I want the option, and for it not to be penalized mechanically.

You say you want the choices given to provide a cohesive story. The story from these choices is less diverse than what we had before. A descriptive identity, but missing the fun of playing a rogue (for at least some of us.)