D&D 5E The Thug, A Subclass for Strength Rogues

[GreenTengu]

This doesn't work at all.

I think you lack the understanding of the basic mechanics of the game that would lead you to making something like this.

First-- Dexterity does not contribute solely to damage for the Rogue. It is also key to the class's armor class, improves initiative to allow them to act first and the key skills that a Rogue is expected to use (chiefly the all-important Stealth that allows you to even get opportunity attacks in the first place).

Giving the class access to 1-handed non finesse weapons does nothing. Finesse weapons are exactly identical to normal weapons in terms of damage output except that they allow you to completely ignore Strength and just use your Dexterity stat alone. So having access to those weapons doesn't give anyone any incentive to use them because, as I noted already, one's AC, initiative and important skills.

Next, Medium armor? Nope. Doesn't cut it. Medium armor is absolute trash. Even if you buy the feat to invest being extra good with Medium Armor, it is still utterly inferior to the other choices. In fact-- to get your maximum possible AC with medium armor, you STILL need a Dexterity score of 14. When you initially make your character, you only get so many points to spend or certain scores with your array. Later one can increase their scores and increasing the highest score is no more costly than increasing a lower one.

So you can have a character with 20 Dexterity and 10 Strength and thus get a +5 to your initiative, AC17, +5 bonus to hit dealing 1d8+5 damage with the main hand and 1d6+5 damage with the off hand and gets a +5 bonus to stealth in order to score those opportunity attacks.

OR you can have a character with 14 Dexterity and 16 Strength and thus get +2 to your initiative, AC16, +3 bonus to hit dealing 1d8+3 damage with main hand and 1d6+3 damage with the offhand and has only a +2 bonus to Stealth WITH DISADVANTAGE in order to score those opportunity attacks.

Even before we look at the abilities, this Strength based character even granted access to the other martial weapons and medium armor is a complete and utter failure compared to the straight Dexterity Rogue and no amount of feats you buy or attributes you increase (remembering that BOTH get to buy them) will ever make them come remotely close to being balanced.


But that isn't the end of it. You decided to build your abilities COMPLETELY around grapple and shove? Clearly you don't know what those abilities do.

Grapple just locks you and a particular target in place. Neither you nor the target can do any damage towards one another or do anything to reduce one's hit points closer to 0. In fact, it just leaves you both vulnerable to outside attacks. Unless you are outnumbering your enemies, which in D&D is practically never going to happen, it is NEVER worth grappling a target. And in order to get out the target need only beat you on a Strength or Dexterity check.

Pushing... unless you are in the equally super rare situation of there being a cliff or something to push the target over and you happen to be facing just right to do it? Well, it forces them prone which means that until they stand up they will be at a disadvantage on attack rolls and attack rolls against them will have advantage which sounds good EXCEPT.... on their turn they can just stand right up as a free action without incurring any sort of AoO or anything. And their next turn will always happen before your next turn unless you are dealing with a wonky initiative system... and it is quite possible that their initiative will come directly after yours and thus none of your allies would even be able to take advantage of it.

Oh, and in both of these cases you are going to be at a disadvantage if you are facing any creature bigger than you. Which in D&D happens all the time.

In other words, your alternative abilities are things just allow the character to do things that have next to no effect outside of situations that are virtually never going to be encountered instead of the universally effective ability to deal considerable damage which ALWAYS brings one closer to victory over any opponent of any size.

And just a reminder-- not only is this a worse, less useful, stupider ability... But because the character has a lower bonus and disadvantage on even getting the chance to use this ability at all.

The only decent thing you have her is the Coercive Presence which just ends up sucking because it is an effect based on a THIRD attribute as though expecting the character to invest in the dump stat in order to make themselves worse than normal wasn't bad enough to begin with, you expect them to invest in a third attribute in order to utilize one of this subclass abilities.


Seriously dude-- I dig what you were aiming to do here, but you desperately need to go back to the drawing board and start completely from scratch because you have failed to make a fun or balanced class in all respects here.

 

[Immoralkickass]

Grapple just locks you and a particular target in place. Neither you nor the target can do any damage towards one another or do anything to reduce one's hit points closer to 0. In fact, it just leaves you both vulnerable to outside attacks. Unless you are outnumbering your enemies, which in D&D is practically never going to happen, it is NEVER worth grappling a target. And in order to get out the target need only beat you on a Strength or Dexterity check.

Most of your points are quite sound, but this one is simply not true. The only effect of 'Grappled' is that the victim's speed becomes 0 and cannot benefit from bonuses to speed, nothing is stopping them from hitting each other, or doing anything else.

Also, you underestimate the effect of Prone. All your allies get advantage on melee attacks against it, and it costs the target half movement to get up.

 

[UngeheuerLich]

[MENTION=6777454]TheHobgoblin[/MENTION]

You are wrong in many ways.
Str 16, Dex 14 and medium armor is exactly as good as 16 dex and light armor. AC 15. At least for point buy you won't have better AC. You still manage 14 Con and 12 wis so you are more than ok from an optimizing point of view.

Dex 14 and stealth expertise will be nearly as good as 16 Dex. You also have str for athletics which is quite undervalued.

 

[Hillsy7]

Most of your points are quite sound, but this one is simply not true. The only effect of 'Grappled' is that the victim's speed becomes 0 and cannot benefit from bonuses to speed, nothing is stopping them from hitting each other, or doing anything else.

Also, you underestimate the effect of Prone. All your allies get advantage on melee attacks against it, and it costs the target half movement to get up.

Correct. Couple this with the Tavern Brawler feat, and a grappling rogue with a bonkers Athletics score (Expertise, man!) can sneak attack, grab, drop (via Shove) and pin almost anything (Because of opposed rolls, your chances are increased depending on the opponents Athletics, which many Monsters do not have as a skill). At which point the opponent always attacks with disadvantage, and the rogue attacks with advantage (sneak attack) AND can use uncanny dodge to half damage AND the monster cannot escape without a grapple check/shove contest which eats the action and is unlikely to succeed.

Like I said you can roll out the maths and have a level 9 Grappling Rogue solo a CR 8 Frost giant for the resource cost of 1 enlarge potion/spell (And that's only so they can actually grapple something that large) and 1 healing spell depending on how the rolls go (Frost giant makes 2 attacks against an AC17 Rogue with a +9. 48% chance of 1 hit and 12 damage, 18% of 2 hits and 37 damage....averaging out to 12.5 Damage per turn)

To put that in perspective - a level 9 Rogue (with 18 STR, 14 CON, 14 DEX and a +1 Sword & Breastplate) with 1 attack can drop a Huge creature with 23 Strength, 140 HP, twice as many attacks, a +9 to hit, and a weapon that does 3d12+4, assuming he wins the first grapple check (Which he does about 77% of the time thanks to advantage from enlarge). If he doesn't, he might need a decent heal spell.

That's bonkers, and that's already before any archetype bonuses to grappling specifically for a grappling archetype.

See The Grappler's Manual for more details

 

[Imaculata]

Wouldn't some sort of ability to better utilize improvised weapons be fitting of a thug? I can imagine a thug being an expert tavern brawler. A guy who kicks over tables and smashes enemies over the head with whatever happens to be in reach. I also think it would be interesting to have a class that encourages interaction with the environment.

 

[Kobold Stew]

This doesn't work at all.

I think you lack the understanding of the basic mechanics of the game that would lead you to making something like this.
<snip>
Seriously dude-- I dig what you were aiming to do here, but you desperately need to go back to the drawing board and start completely from scratch because you have failed to make a fun or balanced class in all respects here.

I find this post needlessly aggressive, and not constructive.

The point of the proposal s to improve the viability of a non-DEX rogue. At the moment, there is no good way to build a non-dex rogue, and this proposal makes for a better one than any of the existing subclasses.

You spend your time arguing that a character with 20 in their prime stat is more effective than one with 16. *eyeroll*. At least have the courtesy of making an honest comparison. Take away two feats, and a +1 in the prime stat, and there's still 2 points difference; and that's assuming other things are the same, which they wouldn't be.

Dexterity is too powerful in the game, and a dex-based class is weakened when you build something else. There's another thread on the first page where that point has been made, but that's irrelevant here.

Some people are tired of dexterity's dominance, and are willing to play something different. For them (and I'm one of them), that's fun. This build supports that, and (commendably) doesn't do so in a way that is overpowered.

 

[clutchbone]

This doesn't work at all.
I think you lack the understanding of the basic mechanics of the game that would lead you to making something like this.

• Thank you for taking the time to review my Thug! I know there's a lot to cover, so let’s get started.

First-- Dexterity does not contribute solely to damage for the Rogue. It is also key to the class's armor class, improves initiative to allow them to act first and the key skills that a Rogue is expected to use (chiefly the all-important Stealth that allows you to even get opportunity attacks in the first place).

• By Opportunity Attacks, I assume you meant Sneak Attacks?
• Will a Strength Rogue be worse at stealth checks than a Dex Rogue? Yes.
• Will a Strength Rogue be better at stealth checks than any other class? Also yes.
  • With Stealth Expertise and 14 dex, an 8th level rogue has the same +8 stealth modifier as a monk or ranger with 20 dex.
  • With Stealth Expertise, 14 dex, and Reliable Talent, an 11th level rogue has a +10 stealth modifier and a minimum d20 roll of 10. An 11th level monk or ranger with 20 dex has a +9 modifier.

Giving the class access to 1-handed non finesse weapons does nothing. Finesse weapons are exactly identical to normal weapons in terms of damage output except that they allow you to completely ignore Strength and just use your Dexterity stat alone. So having access to those weapons doesn't give anyone any incentive to use them because, as I noted already, one's AC, initiative and important skills.

• It’s an image thing. I like the look of a burly Thug smacking a mace into his palm threateningly.
• It gets kind of boring when 9/10 melee rogues use the same weapon, a rapier.
• It means you can utilize a slightly larger pool of magic weapons.
• I said “non-heavy/non-two-handed”, not “one-handed”, so you could get +1 damage if you went versatile with a longsword.

Next, Medium armor? Nope. Doesn’t cut it. Medium armor is absolute trash. Even if you buy the feat to invest being extra good with Medium Armor, it is still utterly inferior to the other choices. In fact—to get your maximum possible AC with medium armor, you STILL need a Dexterity score of 14. When you initially make your character, you only get so many points to spend or certain scores with your array. Later one can increase their scores and increasing the highest score is no more costly than increasing a lower one.

• It is not difficult to have 14 in a secondary stat.

So you can have a character with 20 Dexterity and 10 Strength and thus get a +5 to your initiative, AC17, +5 bonus to hit dealing 1d8+5 damage with the main hand and 1d6+5 damage with the off hand and gets a +5 bonus to stealth in order to score those opportunity attacks.
OR you can have a character with 14 Dexterity and 16 Strength and thus get +2 to your initiative, AC16, +3 bonus to hit dealing 1d8+3 damage with main hand and 1d6+3 damage with the offhand and has only a +2 bonus to Stealth WITH DISADVANTAGE in order to score those opportunity attacks.

• Why doesn’t the Strength Rogue in your example have 20 Strength? At 1st level, you’ll have something similar to a spread like 16 14 14 8 12 12 (half-orc), so I’m confused why you’re comparing an 8th level rogue (min level to get 20 dex) to a 1st level rogue?
• That rogue will have +2 Dex bonus to Stealth on top of a doubled proficiency bonus.Later on, Reliable Talent pretty much cancels out the threat of disadvantage, so that half plate starts looking pretty good.

Even before we look at the abilities, this Strength based character even granted access to the other martial weapons and medium armor is a complete and utter failure compared to the straight Dexterity Rogue and no amount of feats you buy or attributes you increase (remembering that BOTH get to buy them) will ever make them come remotely close to being balanced.
But that isn't the end of it. You decided to build your abilities COMPLETELY around grapple and shove? Clearly you don't know what those abilities do.
Grapple just locks you and a particular target in place. Neither you nor the target can do any damage towards one another or do anything to reduce one's hit points closer to 0. In fact, it just leaves you both vulnerable to outside attacks. Unless you are outnumbering your enemies, which in D&D is practically never going to happen, it is NEVER worth grappling a target. And in order to get out the target need only beat you on a Strength or Dexterity check.

• A Grappled creature’s speed becomes 0. They are not locked in place. You can move the grappled creature with you when you move with no contested check.
• Grappling creatures can attack each other. A character with extra attack can even substitute one of its attacks for a grapple.
• Maintaining a grapple doesn’t cost anything, so you’re free to attack on following turns, or knock them prone without breaking the grapple.
• To escape, monsters need to beat your strength (athletics) check, one that benefits from Expertise and Reliable Talent so you have the edge on them. If they do, great! They just wasted their action, possibly over multiple turns.
• In your D&D experience, you “practically never” outnumber your opponent? How many Iron Golems does your group usually fight at once?

Pushing... unless you are in the equally super rare situation of there being a cliff or something to push the target over and you happen to be facing just right to do it? Well, it forces them prone which means that until they stand up they will be at a disadvantage on attack rolls and attack rolls against them will have advantage which sounds good EXCEPT.... on their turn they can just stand right up as a free action without incurring any sort of AoO or anything. And their next turn will always happen before your next turn unless you are dealing with a wonky initiative system... and it is quite possible that their initiative will come directly after yours and thus none of your allies would even be able to take advantage of it.

• Standing from prone costs half your speed. You can’t stand up from prone if your speed is 0.
• In my experience, it’s quite fun shoving creatures into Blade Barriers, Walls of Fire, and Evards’ Black Tentacles, but cliffs work too.
• Positioning for optimal shoving is easy. Opportunity Attacks only trigger when you leave their reach, not when you walk around them within their reach.

Oh, and in both of these cases you are going to be at a disadvantage if you are facing any creature bigger than you. Which in D&D happens all the time.

• Creatures that you grapple or shove must be more than one size larger than you, but they do not get any mechanical advantages, other than >20 strength scores (which you still beat on athletics rolls with Expertise). A high level Thug can out-grapple everything from a camel to a solar.
• If you want to get nasty and headlock something huge, befriend a wizard. Enlarge/Reduce is a 2nd level spell.

In other words, your alternative abilities are things just allow the character to do things that have next to no effect outside of situations that are virtually never going to be encountered instead of the universally effective ability to deal considerable damage which ALWAYS brings one closer to victory over any opponent of any size.
And just a reminder-- not only is this a worse, less useful, stupider ability... But because the character has a lower bonus and disadvantage on even getting the chance to use this ability at all.
The only decent thing you have her is the Coercive Presence which just ends up sucking because it is an effect based on a THIRD attribute as though expecting the character to invest in the dump stat in order to make themselves worse than normal wasn't bad enough to begin with, you expect them to invest in a third attribute in order to utilize one of this subclass abilities.

• Once again, Expertise & Reliable Talent.
• Also, this was mechanically modeled after the Swashbuckler’s Panache and the Mastermind’s Soul of Deceit, official rogue subclass features based on charisma skills vs insight.

Seriously dude-- I dig what you were aiming to do here, but you desperately need to go back to the drawing board and start completely from scratch because you have failed to make a fun or balanced class in all respects here.

Personally, I like the idea of grappling a minotaur, knocking him prone while maintaining that grapple, Sneak Attacking him with advantage a few times while he struggles and fails to break free and stand up, then (if he’s still alive) dragging him 60 feet across the ground before chucking him into my buddy’s cloudkill spell.

But hey, to each his own.

 

[clutchbone]

Wouldn't some sort of ability to better utilize improvised weapons be fitting of a thug? I can imagine a thug being an expert tavern brawler. A guy who kicks over tables and smashes enemies over the head with whatever happens to be in reach. I also think it would be interesting to have a class that encourages interaction with the environment.

I really liked this concept, but didn't know how to make it work in a way that wouldn't reduce the value of Tavern Brawler.

Also thought about an alternate version of the Dungeoncrasher fighter from 3.5 Edition, dealing damage when you push people into objects, but I couldn't make it work. Deal Sneak Attack dice when you successfully shove someone into an obstacle? Probably too powerful, even for a 17th level feature. Too easy for a rogue with Expertise and Reliable Talent.

You could always show your DM pg. 147 of the PHB ("At the DM ’s option, a character proficient with a weapon can use a similar object as if it were that weapon and use his or her proficiency bonus") to Sneak Attack with a broken bottle or whatever.

 

[BookBarbarian]

So you can have a character with 20 Dexterity and 10 Strength and thus get a +5 to your initiative, AC17, +5 bonus to hit dealing 1d8+5 damage with the main hand and 1d6+5 damage with the off hand and gets a +5 bonus to stealth in order to score those opportunity attacks.

How is the Rogue getting that+5 damage to the offhand attack without the TWF fighting style? Also how does it have a d8 in the main hand and a d6 in the off-hand? It would need the dual Wielder feat to TWF with a d8 weapon. Does it have the Dual wielder feat? if so, why does't it have a d8 in the offhand?

 

[TwoSix]

Also thought about an alternate version of the Dungeoncrasher fighter from 3.5 Edition, dealing damage when you push people into objects, but I couldn't make it work. Deal Sneak Attack dice when you successfully shove someone into an obstacle? Probably too powerful, even for a 17th level feature. Too easy for a rogue with Expertise and Reliable Talent.

I can't say I agree that SA dice on a shove into an obstacle would be overpowered. It doesn't seem any more damaging than assassin's opening round, or using Booming Blade combined with SA. You sacrifice weapon damage to gain reliability in a situation of moderate frequency (solid obstacles within 10'). Considering you're already sacrificing by using Strength as a primary over Dex, a little offensive boost seems deserved. If anything, I'd like to see that ability a little easier, because knocking dudes out by shoving them into a wall is a pretty great thematic for a thug.