Thief + to hit crazy?

[sigfile]

Accuracy and DPR go hand-in-hand. A discussion centered on whether-or-not a class is broken because of its accuracy will end up using DPR as a benchmark. The thief is no more absurdly accurate than a standard rogue.

KarinsDad - your numbers aren't right. A first level PHB-only rogue with CA 80% of the time has DPR very much in-line with a first level thief with 100% CA. There's no arms race... at least, not within the rogue class.

I suspect it's the ease with which the thief gets combat advantage (and thus improved accuracy and sneak attack) at range that's the source of a lot of concern. That's not without a cost. A thief that doesn't wade in to the fight and actually *flank* a foe denies combat advantage to another party member (and the chance to use Acrobat's Trick for additional damage). A thief that lets the defender soak up all the damage is wasting his healing surges. A thief that never makes himself a tempting target is wasting his defender's retaliation techniques.

 

[Prestidigitalis]

I suspect it's the ease with which the thief gets combat advantage (and thus improved accuracy and sneak attack) at range that's the source of a lot of concern. That's not without a cost. A thief that doesn't wade in to the fight and actually *flank* a foe denies combat advantage to another party member (and the chance to use Acrobat's Trick for additional damage). A thief that lets the defender soak up all the damage is wasting his healing surges. A thief that never makes himself a tempting target is wasting his defender's retaliation techniques.

You raise a valid point that I have been considering for a while. I have two answers to it.

1. There is probably going to be one more melee character in the party. That character can team with the defender and get full benefit of the defender's retaliation techniques.

2. The Thief can start the combat at range and then close to melee once the crowd has been thinned. A Thief beaten up by two enemies is in much less danger than one surrounded by four.

If the party has just one defender and the Thief for melee... Well, I guess the Thief will get pressed into melee one way or the other. But in that case the rest of the party can use their advantage of ranged focus fire to quickly whittle down the enemies to make the neighborhood safer. It will help if the ranged attackers have a way to suppress the enemies' attacks, or if the defender has ways to deflect damage from the Thief, e.g. the Knight's Shield Block power.

 

[UngeheuerLich]

Keep in mind, that a dazed thief has a hard time doing anything.

A prone thief also can do no fancy thiefs tricks.

So there are two not uncommon status effects that really reduces a thiefs efficiency greatly.

 

[Mengu]

Keep in mind, that a dazed thief has a hard time doing anything.

A prone thief also can do no fancy thiefs tricks.

So there are two not uncommon status effects that really reduces a thiefs efficiency greatly.

Superior Will and Agile Recovery or Acrobat Boots can mitigate those. I guess this goes with the "defense is DPR" argument...

 

[Nemesis Destiny]

Keep in mind, that a dazed thief has a hard time doing anything.

A prone thief also can do no fancy thiefs tricks.

So there are two not uncommon status effects that really reduces a thiefs efficiency greatly.

Low Crawl (PH3) allows a character to shift while prone, so some of the Thief's Tricks would still be available.

 

[Prestidigitalis]

Superior Will and Agile Recovery or Acrobat Boots can mitigate those. I guess this goes with the "defense is DPR" argument...

Yes to both.

I am quite taken with the archetype of the Escape Artist -- the Rogue or Thief who simply cannot be pinned down, who escapes restraints, grabs, magical effects, etc. with ease and aplomb. Throw in high speed and you have a character who thrives on the fringes of combat -- a wil'o'wisp who teases and taunts, draws the enemy away from endangered foes and into untenable situations. Many of the Thief's utility powers -- Agile Footwork, Cunning Escape, Acrobat's Escape, Fading Retreat, Slip From the Grasp -- make this concept easy to implement.

Truly, it is for these things, plus the movement-based Tricks, that I love the Thief, not for the DPR.

 

[Stalker0]

The real trouble with thieves and rogues isn't their damage or hitting power, it's the fact that they wear leathers and have low hitpoints and insist on getting stuck into the middle of combat.

Completely True. While rogues gain a lot of to hit bonuses and damage, they pay for it with very low defenses.

The rogues in my group (there have been 2) are always the ones getting the crap kicked out of them.

 

[Victim]

You raise a valid point that I have been considering for a while. I have two answers to it.

1. There is probably going to be one more melee character in the party. That character can team with the defender and get full benefit of the defender's retaliation techniques.

Against monsters without area attacks, having more characters in melee tends to spread the extra risk not covered by the defender out over more characters. Let's consider the reverse situation - the Thief is only other character in melee. In this case, we can expect the rogue to get pounded without taking extra defensive measures. Alternatively, the party's back line ranged characters pays the price for the lack of melee (or not so much if there's an infernal warlock, or something). There are fewer up front targets, so focus fire comes easily, and few characters in melee don't block flanking positions, charge lines, etc.

OTOH, if besides the rogue running around behind the front monsters, there's also a barbarian charging in with a badge of the berserker, and then a melee leader also getting stuck in, then each melee character tends to be somewhat safer against individually targeted melee attacks. But that type of party tends to hit fairly hard by auras, close bursts, and such.

People no longer think that 20 DPR for a not too optimized PC is too much at first level anymore. If a PC had that much DPR 2 years ago, people would have been screaming that it was broken. Now, it's ho hum. Part of the status quo.

When does the arms race end?

'm not aware significant changes in DPR per tier benchmarks for a while.

I don't think there's any doubt that say casually optimized characters now are more powerful now than release. OTOH, I think a lot of power creep is basically from AV and PHB 2, and since then it's been much more limited. Of course, one thing that you might be overlooking is that many of the more egregiously overpowered options have been weakened via rules updates. So on the whole, it doesn't seem like things are spiraling out of control.

On one hand, I kind of miss the idea that you could spend more than half your feats on whatever you wanted without really impacting combat power much. OTOH, like half the characters in the PHB had no feats really geared for them.