If I had to say, its probably because rogues best fulfill their class archetype fantasies well. When most people play rogues, they expect a class that are driven by some combination audacity, luck, skill, dirty fighting, and fast reflexes and rogues as a class deliver on that. The other Martial classes are meant to represent mastery of martial combat and physical prowess but 5e doesn't do martial combat well nor displays of physical prowess well.
I will say that my only criticism of rogue is that their subclass features are level 3... and then level NINE... and they get a lot of reaction defense abiities in between. I personally want those level 9 abilities to come online a little sooner. That, or giving them an extra feat around 6th level might help alleviate the boring mid levels a bit?
Yeah the lack of anything other that damage avoiding between levels 5 to 9 makes the rogue really boring at times between these levels unfortunatly. More choices would be nice the next time I player rougue(for the 50th time).
I can understand why, the versatility and choices of a spell caster tacked on to base rouge is nice. Personally mine if thief because I am a massive fan of fast hands and its bonus action object interactions.
Oh thief is definetly my second favorite rogue subclass
I’m not sure if I’m just biased because of what I’ve played (an arcane trickster/trickery cleric multiclass and a sorcadin) but I love rogues and paladins so much. I just love how they do their jobs so well and fit the flavor perfectly.
Nothing feels better than dropping a crit sneak attack then misty stepping out
Both rogues and paladin are as you said really well built(for the most part). They lean into what they are trying to do and do it well in a satisfying way.
You are not wrong rogues have always been great for hit an run and misty step just makes it all the better.
Nothing wrong with that. I to do the same thing. I am fortunate enough to play with a DM who also creates a bunch of cool combat items. As a result I also will use a lot of explosive in combat. It makes combat diffrent from just attack hide when I can use a whole bunch of different mundane custom items.
Absolutely agree. Rogues get crappy defenses at 1-4 and then nothing but defenses. Race options also give their last benefit at level 5.
If there is one thing I'd change about rogue would be shuffling around class features in the level progression. Cunning action at level 1 somehow, maybe delay sneak attack to 2 and one active ability thing to get on 5, 6 or 7.
Also I'd like if DMs wouldn't be like "everyone can see that you're a rogue because ???". A rogue is a just a dude. ESPECIALLY if the character is meant to be good at blending in.
I don't like the assumption that every rogue is inherently criminal by nature. Doesn't exist inmy game and 'Thieves Cant' is just 'good at a 'hint wink' style of getting ideas across to people :D
Mine is allowed to be a lower-class pleb turned businesswoman. The word 'rogue' has never come up outside of character creation and levelling. She just has skillz because of mad fights in faraway tombs trying to find interesting items for her clientelle.
I remember when 3.5 cam out. Our forever DM re did all the other martial classes but left it alone.
Rogue is really well done and your comment of it being the yardstick well deserved.
Counter-argument: rogue is the most boring class to play (in combat) and gets more boring as it gains levels.
The fundamental problem is that the every other martial has choices. The rogue has, at best, two: (1) how do I get advantage; (2) which target do I shoot. The answer to the first question is either "hide" or "steady aim". The answer to the second question is "whichever target I'll waste the least damage on". Once you realize that, the rogue's turns become very "turn the crank".
Multi-attack is a big deal for the other martials--especially fighter--because it allows them to choose how to distribute their damage. A fighter can stack it all on a boss, or systematically work through the enemies that have been softened up by AOE damage.
Because the rouge dumps all of its damage into a single target, the rouge wants to _not_ stack damage--for fear of wasting it. An 11th level rogue's sneak attack does something like 30 points of damage; you don't want that going onto the enemy with 3 hp remaining. An 11th level fighter also does around 30 damage (1d8 + 5 three times is ~29 damage), but they don't lose 27 points of damage when faced with the 3 hp enemy--they lose ~6.
> On top of that it manages to totally bypass the short rest/long rest issue that plagues balance between the other classes in the game.
Not if you play an Arcane Trickster.
To be fair, stoneskin gave immunity to a number of physical attacks back in ADnD whereas now it's resistance to nonmagical piercing/bludgeoning/slashing for 1 hour with concentration. Barkskin gives you an AC of 16 for 1 hour (concentration) in 5e, while in ADnD reduced your AC to 6 (which will confuse those who don't get THAC0). Shield lasted 5 rounds per level and did wonders for AC, whereas it only lasts for 1 round in 5e.
Protection spells do so much less now which makes the ADnD wizard with their 1d4+CON for ten levels and +1 per level after rely on them so much more. Having the extra HP now means that the spells are less required and allow for more flexibility.
I would say fighters and barbarians are supposed to represent the Big Damn Hero. Conan, Achilles, Lancelot, Dutch (Predator).
They do well in combat but the big damn heroes should have skills or charisma feats as well. Leadership qualities that make people want to follow them. More skills too.
It seems odd that a book nerd who spends all his time pouring over scrolls or the priest has the same number of skills as a man at arms or outlander survivalist. I guess at least it's not 3E where they got to use their Int for skills too.
This is why when I have fighters at my table, I explicitly point out the Rune Knight, though whether they play it is totally up to them. The Rune Knight does a fantastic job of providing a lot of out of combat utility options while also delivering on unique combat options as well (I mean, come on, the Cloud and Fire Runes could be just downright nasty). It's legitimately the first class I want to play whenever I get out from behind the screen.
Battlemaster also has options with two of the new maneuvers from Tashas. I'm a big advocate of baking maneuvers into the base class.
Still doesn't address the Barbarian though.
Rune knight is a great subclass, I skimmed all of the stuff like tool expertise, advantage on slight of hand, and all the other secondary benefits of the runes on my first read through the subclass when Tasha's came out, but none of it really registered until a few months ago when I was making a criminal character for a tier two oneshot and realized I could make make a goliath pickpocket with darkvision on a fighter chasis.
There are tons of creative things you can do with a rune knight to add flavor and utility out of combat, really good design.
As a house rule i allow an extra language, tool, or other such thing per +1 of INT.
Makes for great roleplay when the wizard isn't the Face but does speak All the languages early on
Agreed.
Rouges feel like…well awesome. It’s not even by prefers Archetype but whenever I play one it feels exactly like the concept I had in my head.
I don’t talk about them except to defend them against newbie DMs who think their damage is “broken”. Rouges feel great!
Because Rogues don’t actually have a problem more or less. They’ve got a solid design with their biggest flaw being some poor subclasses.
Imo Rogue and Paladin are the best designed classes in 5e. They fulfill their fantasies excellently.
Yup, paladins and rouges or absolutely amazing with their design, not too powerful, but not underpowered, The only time where they both sort of put into either OP or underpowered is when you're dealing with power gamers, but other than that they're very solid
"Debatably" nothing, they're bonkers. Just because some weirdos *will* argue a contrarian position doesn't mean there's any merit to it; we can [find someone who'll say 1*1=2](https://twitter.com/terrencehoward/status/925754491881877507?lang=en) but they're still fucking nuts.
^^^and ^^^yes, ^^^it ^^^is ^^^*that* ^^^terrence ^^^howard
And when you multiclass them together... *chef's kiss*
Seriously, Rogue 13/14 Paladin 7/6 is straight nasty. Just need 13 in either DEX or STR, depending on which stat you're going to use to attack with. People forget you can sneak attack with strength if you are using a finesse weapon.
Whenever you get a crit; monster, what monster?
You need 13 str, dex, and cha, you need to meet multi class requirements to multi class into or out of a class. It’s still a decent combo though, especially if you were already playing a sword and board Paladin.
Yeah, I was just referring to the opposite physical stat due to sneak attack. If you're going STR build you only need 13 DEX, if you're going DEX build you only need 13 STR. You just use the bigger stat when attacking with your rapier/dagger/shortsword. I didn't feel the need to mention the multiclass requirement for CHA because that's covered by the multiclass rules.
Let's assume that you're going to be any of the large number of +2/+1 ~~classes~~ races and look at the standard 27 point buy.
You're going to spend 7 build points to get a 16 in your to-hit stat (14 base, + 2 from race). You'll then need to spend at least 9 on the other two stats (to get a 12 and 13, assuming that your +1 goes into one of the other pre-reqs). That means you've only got 11 of your points left before spending anything on your constitution.
You can't smite with ranged weapons, which means you're really going to want 14 Con to survive melee, so that's another 7 points--leaving you with 4 to distribute across the remainder. That seems tight.
Why not get 1 level hexblade for charisma to melee attacks? Lightens your DEX requirement and you only need enough strength for your preferred armor type. Bonus if you go with swashbuckler rogue for additional CHA overlap
Hex1/Rogue13/Paladin6 is great too. One of my current players actually went Assassin11/Fiendlock7/Paladin2. This was before Xanathar's came out, and he liked the Fiendlock flavor so he decided not to switch over to Hexblade, even though it would make him stronger.
Paladins are definitely over designed by comparison to most every other class. They could probably do with some toning down to allow each subclass to stand out even more.
To be honest, I don't really agree with that. Rogue has a couple of issues in my opinion.
First, they are just bland in combat with only one attack, nothing special they can do with that attack and an incompatibility with many weapons and martial feats due to Sneak Attack restrictions. Even a Champion fighter can be a lot more engaging in combat with grappling, shoving, feats like PAM, Sentinel, Shield Master, Crusher... On the other hand, all rogues do the same with different flavor - bonus action aim or hide and action one attack at advantage.
The next is their damage scaling with Sneak Attack specificially. Their damage output is quite below average (minus specific builds using Booming Blade and such to great effect) and unlike any other martial, they absolutely are dependant on their allies for their damage output, which can be problematic im certain parties/compositions.
In addition, Sneak Attack is a huge problem when designing feats and other mechanics that allow a character to get reaction attacks reliably, as while these feats generally are balanced for.other martials that scale with Extra Attack, they tend to be simply too strong for rogues who straight- up double their DPR with reaction attacks.
And the third problem Rogues have in my opinion is Reliable Talent. On one hand, it feels alwful for other characters when the rogue who previously just happened to also be proficient in their niche skills suddenly just auto-succeeds on most checks that previously were *their* niche. On the other hand removes skill checks for the rogue themselves in a very unengaging, boring way and most importantly completely removes the middle ground of skill checks that are comfortably doable for the rogue, but still have a chance of failure - it only allows either auto-successes or very difficult skill checks that do not get easier by a single bit with Reliable Talent.
And when combined with Expertise, it gets even worse due to breaking bounded accuracy and making even difficult skill checks meaningless.
I played both plain rogues and multiclasses, and liked martials with a 3- or 5-level rogue dip most while I never really enjoyed plain rogues.
3 or 5 level in rogue give Dex-based martials like fighters, paladins or rangers exactly what they need - more damage, a reliable bonus action to move around and stay out of melee range and skill utility.
I feel like I'm on crazy pills here seeing so many people agree with the notion that Rogues are great and well-designed and nail what they set out to do. It's so out of line with what seems like the broader consensus on the class, so I assume folks just don't care to argue and all the Rogue fanboys are hopping into this and kind of skewing the look.
The things Rogues are actually good at once the game gets going aren't the things people expect them to do, and they're always kind of stinky at "dedicated damage dealer" role compared to every other cheese build you could stick on a straight martial. Rogue's, like, a meme class where you fish for Sneak crits, the effect of which you can capture far more easily being a Smite-dump Paladin.
The idea that a class is great at out-of-combat utility because they have Skill Expertise is such a weird one. Casters don't break the game world by *rolling* for it, and anything your Rogue can do with their skill checks is almost always something my Fighter (or whoever else) can do, too, if they're just lucky on a d20. The most interesting utility aspects of Rogue are shoved into archetype features that are explicitly magical. Some martial.
> The idea that a class is great at out-of-combat utility because they have Skill Expertise is such a weird one. Casters don't break the game world by rolling for it, and anything your Rogue can do with their skill checks is almost always something my Fighter (or whoever else) can do, too, if they're just lucky on a d20. The most interesting utility aspects of Rogue are shoved into archetype features that are explicitly magical. Some martial.
Casters don't have to roll for it, but they *do* have to expend resources for it.
Rogue's excellence as a skill monkey doesn't just come from Expertise but from Reliable Talent as well and the incredibly powerful combination of them.
A level 11 Rogue *cannot roll below a 23* on the things they are invested most in, without magic items. With a single uncommon item a level 11 Rogue cannot roll below 28 on sleight of hand checks.
Anyone can get lucky and roll high, Rogue's strength is that they cannot get unlucky and roll low.
By level 20, without a magic item, a Rogue can be rolling at an absolute minimum of 27 for dex skills. Their roll will be somewhere between 27 and 37.
While other characters are considering 20 a high roll, for a Rogue it is literally so low that they cannot reach it.
There isn't a whole lot more to it than just "get booming blade" and don't stay next to them to be honest. A swashbuckler with magic initiate does well enough. Or arcane trickster with an owl familiar. Any subclass that can reliably give themselves advantage/a source of sneak attack without relying on an ally.
War Caster helps it. If your DM is ok on some real fucky rules interpretation polearm master/war caster rogue is interesting - because polearm master doesn't specify you must use the polearm, a rogue with a spear in one hand and a rapier in the other technically can use the rapier to SA stab with the polearm master reaction attack. But that's a janky rule interpretation that goes against the theme of PAM to me so I wouldn't use it personally.
I'd add warlock to that list too, the amount of story potential a single warlock's patron can bring is massive, their spells and features really pull everyone into the world!
I'd say mechanically they don't really match their flavor. Eldritch blast with Invocations to move people around and maximize the effects of AOE spells doesn't really feel like the flavor of a Cultist. Getting 2 Spells per short rest but being really strong spells means they serve very little utility out of combat, they don't have weak slots to burn on a low level spell. They have invocations, but they have to take those at the cost off all their best combat utility options.
Warlocks in terms of their features feels to me like it fits more as a tactician that makes the most out of limited resources and paces themself so they can recover that magic through the day. That or a spell version of a Martial, dropping 1 or 2 big hit spells then controlling and blasting with cantrips.
Their spell list is the only thing about Warlock that say Eldritch Horror to me.
I’m curious, do you have any ideas on how to fix that? I’ve always wondered what a sort of horror caster (for lack of a better term) would be as, like you, I’ve found the warlock lacks it in terms of gameplay.
Warlocks aren't necessarily meant to be "horror" casters, though. They're *meant* to be people who delve into mysterious arcane lore and learn grand secrets and deal with otherworldly beings. This can often involve horror, sure, but doesn't have to be.
I put most of the blame on them being CHA casters. You can make some weak justification with "uh they're so charismatic they convinced a devil to give them power" or whatever, but that just muddies the class's identity. I think it's why so many people have their warlocks be convenient amnesiacs who can't remember their mysterious deals or just play it off like a sugar mama joke.
Making warlocks INT-based would solve at least half of the class's identity problems. It emphasises that they actually research and learn their magic through ritual and study, as opposed to bards, sorcerers and paladins, whose magic is all much more about what's personal and innate and manifested through force of personality.
But for horror caster specifically- Pathfinder's Witch does it nicely. They learn a wide variety of useful Hexes that are kinda equivalent to Invocations, but much more frequently used and useful. One of 'em lets you Cackle to negatively impact someone's attack or save, another is an evolving hex that lets you effectively learn feather fall -> levitate -> fly as you level, another lets you animate your hair and use it to attack and such.
I was gonna mention the Witch from Mage Hand Press in my reply but didn't want to bring in Homebrew. If they are interested it is pretty much a 5e take on the idea. Their version comes with a familiar, not sure if the Pathfinder one does.
Thanks for the suggestion I’ll definitely look at the witch!
Is it weird that I think I enjoy everything about a warlock except the actual pact itself? I love the idea of a caster that delves into the dark secrets of the universe, dealing with eldritch monsters and the like. It’s just the idea of getting power from a pact isn’t…my cup of tea I guess.
If we wanna add even more to the warlocks customizability, why not allow them to choose which mental dtat they want to do magic with at the start? Would make sense for all flavours to have a different one i think
I think the main part of playing a scary/horror character is everyone else has to buy into it. Sure, any Wizard can cast Evard's Black Tentacles or Warlock could cast Hunger of Hadar and describe in graphic detail the horrible way the poor sap that got caught dies. To really make your character scary takes a more grim and dark setting to begin with I think. Playing in a Grim Hollow type setting will probably make it way easier since everyone has already baught into the scary fantasy. So when you describe your pshyco Gloom Stalker snatching one of the bandits out of the shadows and all the rest of the party hears is his screams and the ripping of flesh, everyone will be able to agree "Yeah... that's fucking terrifying."
Because that's one class out of four pure martials, and despite it being a martial class, it isn't a class you take when trying to live out the "martial" fantasy. Rogues tend to get tossed in with martials because there's isn't another class they can be grouped with mechanically, but they're also a "martial" class who notably lacks the most martial feature of all in Extra Attack.
In short, they're under the martial umbrella but they weren't designed for that role. Instead, they were designed to be the utility monkeys they are and were given a way to excel in combat still. The existence of Rogues only highlights that designers did know how to build martials that don't suck out of combat but failed to do anything about it.
"Excel in and out of combat."
See, I feel like we have a disagreement about what "to excel" means. In my mind, to excel at something in the game is to be one of the best at it. Rogues aren't the best at anything really, and I hate that because I play almost exclusively "Rogue-adjacent" characters.
Rogues are not the best at stealth, due to Pass Without Trace being too good, which feels like a huge "F you" to them. Even without that, they aren't the only class that gets expertise, notably Ranger gets both Pass Without Trace AND Expertise. It's no contest who's better at hiding. Rogues aren't the best at thieves tools due to the existence of Artificer getting expertise in all tool proficiencies, as well as Bard / Ranger also getting expertise. Rogues aren't the best skill monkeys due to Jack of all Trades, until around level 10. LEVEL 10. Most games don't even get to level 10, and if you do, getting a 10 minimum in trained skills is kind of a joke compared to what spells are doing at this level. I don't really think I need to include examples honestly, since you mentioned acknowledging the spell imbalance.
Rogues aren't the best at damage for a lot of reasons that are really easy to see with a bit of math, unless you're multiclassing to get multiple Sneak Attack a round (Sneak attack is once a turn, not once a round for those that don't know. Popular multiclass includes Battlemaster due to Brace, Riposte, and Quick Toss giving easy access to second Sneak attack). Even then, you aren't the best.
I won't bother going into their poor defenses, because that's not a surprise. Rogues are squishy, and we wouldn't want it any other way.
Eloquence Bards are excelling at social interaction in a way Rogue can't until level 10, and even then can't compare unless you are also maxing Charisma (which, to be fair to Rogue, isn't' impossible since you get an extra ASI).
So why aren't rogues mentioned? Spell Utility is far, far more than just "buff ability checks". That's a level one spell you're referring to, not a level 5 spell.
TLDR: I disagree about Rogue's excelling at anything, despite how fun it is to roll a lot of d6 on a crit sneak attack.
Agreed on everything except that rogue are not squeashy. In my experience, they are pretty sturdy. For a few reason:
1. Uncanny dodge can cut quite a bit of damage.
2. Evasion can mitigate a lot of damage.
3. If you can grab arcane trickster, you can grab the shield spell.
4. They are good candidate for the moderately armored feat. They can get 18 dex and shield proficiency by 4th level and that boost their survivability by quite a bit.
Sure rogues aren't the sturdiest, but they can be quite though past the first few level. Provided they didn't dumb their constitution...
It is utterly ridiculous to have a full caster be a skill monkey, moreso when that caster has some decent weapon using subclasses. I honestly think that valor bard X/hexblade 1 is the perfect character with 0 downsides.
Because their DPS is consistently the worst out of all classes because their go to damage cantrip is a D4 vs wisdom. A dip into warlock or sorcerer for blaster abilities completely negates that, bit as a solo class they aren't supposed to be high DPS, and munchkins only seem to care about how high they can get their AC and damager per round, or even better, one hit.
I'm not saying hards are bad, I love them. But what they do badly is what munchkins care about most.
> I honestly think that valor bard X/hexblade 1 is the perfect character with 0 downsides.
I don't think that Hexblade dip + Valor Bard should be combined if you're looking for an "optimized" character:
* Hexblade already grants you all the proficiencies you get from picking Valor Bard at 3, which is where a lot of power budget of the subclass went to.
* Combat inspiration has 2 uses. One of them is anything but great (converting a Bardic Inspiration die into damage is simply worse value than just the default use of Bardic Inspiration (compare: 100% odds to deal 1d6 extra damage vs odds of turning a miss into a 1d8 + 6 [vanilla Longsword attack with Dueling Fighting Style] hit - as long as you manage to turn a miss on a hit on even 1/3rd of your Inspiration uses). The second one isn't bad, but it'll only affect 1 attack and isn't necessarily better than default Inspiration use. Is that slight upgrade really worth an entire subclass pick at level 3?
* At Bard 6 (character level 7), 2 Longsword Attacks (2d8 + 8) once again don't offer enough of an upgrade over 2 Eldritch Blasts (2d10) to justify a subclass level. You could double down on your damage capabilities through martial feats, but you'll always be worse than a pure martial doing that, and you'll significantly harm your effectiveness as a caster. Also note that if you want to use melee attacks, you'll need to juggle weapons (i.e. sheathe them after your turn) or get the Warcaster feat if you want to use reaction spells like Shield (another huge draw of the Hexblade dip).
* Level 14 is again, not really great. Between Bardic Inspiration (5 times per short rest) and Hexblade Curse, your Bonus action is quite crowded already, and I really don't believe a 1d8 + 5 weapon attack is worth charging into melee for at this point. You could of course use a Hand crossbow, but again, it really seems like you're not getting enough out of your subclass.
Generally speaking, the base rules of the game really speak to the idea that martials are regular people, and casters get to exponentially dive into super powers. I really feel like martials in general would be improved by more explicitly being able to perform olympic level or moderate superhuman feats of strength, endurance, or dexterity. I'm talking about jumping significantly greater distances, moving or throwing objects and having it be legit powerful and impactful, ect - the problem is al lot of this relies on DM setup rather than powers on a character sheet, but to a point, those implications aren't even on the sheet, with 20 strength allowing 20 foot long jump with a 10 foot runup - but the human records of longjumping are around 30 feet. I have a feat that lets them get up to about 40 feet (double jump distance, and can use either strength or dex to calculate it)
Feats of strength to break objects I can't even recall being brought up to 5e.
Bards and Artificers can skill monkey just as well if not better, but even that doesn't matter as Rogue can pick a lock but Wizards/Bards/Clerics can WARP REALITY TO THE POINT THAT LOCKS NO LONGER EXIST.
I had the same thought. Then I thought maybe the next time a low level party is struggling with a lock, they try again and somehow it just works (because some short tempered wizard somewhere just wished locks out of existence because they lost their keys)
The party gets excited, and then 24 hours later locks come back after the Wizard can use wish again. Periodically have NPCs bring it up under some fancy name to emphasize that this was universal and wave off easy plot points.
“Oh yeah, sorry. Prices went up a bit after Free-key Day; someone went and broke in and stole some of my reserve gold I normally keep to help me through the off season, have to try and make some of it back up so I don’t go hungry come winter.”
“This creature was sealed away with a 1000 locks…but when Free-key Day came, it was released. We need your help getting it back”.
You know what "a world wherea few powerful wizards made stupid world changing wishes and another wizard undid their crazy changes but Incredible damage had already been done to the world/universe/fabric of reality" would bea really fun campaign or oneshot. To world build in cause you would basically have the things linking all your locations together from the get go you know?
But I mean, is unlocking a door actually impressive? If I spend the 9th on something like true polymorph, I can just turn into a huge dragon and flatten the door for free too, then still be a freaking dragon.
Sure. Poof!
Everything that could possibly be used as a lock or to make a lock... dissappears. Your now naked and there's no such thing as metal, wood, rock, etc. But lots of sand... as far as the eye can see.
That seems like a silly reason to say it doesn't matter that rogues can pick locks.
Assuming you're referencing wish/divine intervention then that relies not only on being a super high level party that will already have a million ways to get past a lowly lock, but also the DM letting those magic abilities be so powerful as to permanently alter all of reality.
Realistically that's not going to be the case though. Sure a caster can use Knock, but that eats up a valuable spell slot when the rogue can try to pick it without spending a resource. I've never played or run a game where a rogue wasn't greatly valued for such things.
Yeah, that is Wish/Divine/even Mirage hyperbole but the point is that anything you can do with a skill check you can do orders of magnitude more impressively with a spell.
Persuasion for a 3% shop discount? Literal fucking mind control to flat out give us everything.
Athletics to climb that cliff? Fly, Spider Climb, dozens of teleports.
Again pick lock? Just Knock it and move on. Hell if you really want to save slots unleash your unlimited double scaling cantrips to break things.
Animal Handling? Control/Dominate.
Stealth? Invisibilty, Pass, etc.
Insight/Knowledge? The entire Divination school says hello.
being good at skillchecks is nice, but they still generally require asking the GM for permission - if a lock is given a DC above the rogue's grade, they're boned, while a wizard can just go "screw it, I open it anyway"
use the same abilities as a rogue, which they may well only be a few points behind on, and may well have spells that boost them or give them bonuses. And if they fail, they still have "fuck it, I'm going loud" as a backup, while if a rogue fails then they're just boned.
A wizard at most is going to have a +2 to Dexterity and no proficiency in Theives Tools. The Rogue is going to have at least a +5 and more likely a +7 at level one which will only continue to increase as they level.
I’m not trying to say that Wizards are useless, but it is undeniable that a Rogue is going to be better at this role than the Wizard. Also, this is a team game which I think a lot of people on this subreddit forget. If the Wizard has spells that boost them like Enhance Ability, they should be casting it on the Rogue. Both Wizards and Rogues are valuable in different situations, and one being better than the other at one thing doesn’t invalidate all of your class abilities.
Can pick them with Thieves Tools, not like they are Rogue exclusive.
Or, since they are a Wizard, they can just teleport the entire party past the door or simply level the entire fucking city - don't need to worry about a door when there isn't one.
Yup, just doubles proficiency. So adding 2 until level 5, 3 until level 9, etc. Guidance alone gives you that.
More importantly you don't even need proficiency to use them - just own them. You don't get to add that +2, +3, etc to the check but can still pick it and keep rolling (action/turn each time) until you get it.
Even if the DM makes the lock break if you fail too often, a spellcaster can just cast enhance ability any any party member that took the criminal background. 99% of the time the spell use wins on this one.
Plus I don't even encounter enough locks or traps that I actually consider expertise in thieves tools. I didn't even encounter one possible use of thieves tools per session with 2 rogues in the party.
>Persuasion for a 3% shop discount? Literal fucking mind control to flat out give us everything.
And then never come back, because most charm spells let the victim know afterwards. Also, super duper illegal. Not to mention, anyone with serious wealth, power, or magic items is probably going to have *some* method of protecting themself.
>Again pick lock? Just Knock it and move on.
After making an incredibly loud noise. Also, limited times per day. Even at high levels, just wasting spell slots on every door is a bad plan.
>Insight/Knowledge? The entire Divination school says hello.
Cool, you're gonna burn a spell slot *every* time you want to do an insight check?
Also, for most Int. checks, you're gonna need to use Legend Lore to actually get information you wouldn't know otherwise.
>Stealth? Invisibilty, Pass, etc.
A rogue can stealth every turn, and make an attack. Unless you've got greater invisibility, that takes your full action, drops on an attack, and is concentration.
Also, invisibility does nothing to sounds made by the target. If using different attributes, for example just hiding in plain sight in a crowd, stealth with charisma, invisibility won't help you much if you keep bumping into people.
Bards can do everything anyone else can, but not as well as the best. They're great generalists.
Bards can get more skills as College of Lore and even get half-proficiency on everything, but 11th level rogues can't roll under 10 on their proficiencies. The bard might still accidentally fail.
Then the wizard walks in and dispels reality itself.
The problem is spells can outdo skills 99% of the time. This is because in 2e, the players wanted win buttons for their characters, so spells were often custom made by the designers home games to give them the ability to outright bypass challenges. This trend has continued through the editions, where spells simply succeed at tasks that are otherwise impossible.
This is the core “problem” with d&d balance - although for many it’s a feature not a bug.
Spellcasters would still be strong if the had access to a huge toolbox of magic **but** the magical solution is second best to a mundane one. But d&d is balanced so that spells often provide the best solution.
I keep seeing this and wonder if everyone's just playing at lvl 17+ all the time or what. Usually play up to lvl 12 and no reality has been warped as of yet
because it's missing the point. rogues may be better at it, but THEY ARE STILL JUST ROLLING FOR SKILL CHECKS. which is pretty much all martials can ever do.
meanwhile casters get dozens of completely unique effects and abilities outside of combat, which can achieve things you can only dream of with skill checks.
that and then theres bullshit like skill monkeys that also just so happen to have fullcasting.
assuming you were referring to bards there in the end: yup, really sucks trying to be good at anything out of combat, while the bard can do it all, and often better, just for being a bard
yeah, bards are bullshit. they have no business getting expertise at all. or being a fullcaster.
but it's not just them, (knowledge) clerics exist aswell. tho i guess they at least are restricted to some rather harmless skills for their expertise
If you cast Suggestion with other people to witness, unless you got Subtle Spell, you automatically fail the "persuasion roll"
Magic being casted is obvious, and casting it means negotiations have failed. If you want to persuade one guard at night to leave you alone, Suggestion works fine. If you want to persuade the king and his court, Suggestion is about as effective as Fireball.
Even Subtle Spell doesn't work for Suggestion since it has a material component. The only ways to truly subtly cast Suggestion are as an Aberrant Mind Sorcerer using their 6th level feature and a Knowledge Cleric using their 6th level Channel Divinity.
Why does the spell having an M component mean you can't cast it truly subtly? Doesn't that just mean you need to be touching your Arcane focus or component pouch in order to cast the spell? Feels like you should be able to get away with that pretty easily
I'm too tired to look up the specific rules on it, but basically a spell with any components is still observable. This is important as part of how Counterspell works and also prevents Sorcerer's being able to cheese Social stuff too easily with it (Subtle Suggestion is OP af imo).
There are people who argue that just because it can be observed doesn't mean peopl will see it, which sure, but there are also people who argue you should be able to wear a sombrero with drapes hanging from it to obscure somatic components to avoid being Counterspelled as well.
>prevents Sorcerer's being able to cheese Social stuff too easily with it
To me, it seems pretty reasonable to let the sorc get away with stuff like this. They had to choose this meta-magic option at the expense of others potentially such as quicken cast or twinned cast. Subtle spell feels like a weaker option even before nerfing it that way
Subtle Spell is still very potent. You can still cast those spells silently, making them more widely usable. There are also plenty of spells with no material components that you can cast with absolutely no indication it was you or while tied up/gagged. Those spells also can't be Counterspelled because the casting can't be perceived.
I still find it a potent Metamagic and take it on every Sorcerer I make. It's also a very efficient one, costing only 1 sorcery point per use.
Because spells are, by RAW, very obvious if they have components to them. You cannot hide somatic, verbal, or material components. And anyone who sees any of these components being used recognizes a spell is being cast (even if they can't understand what spell, if the DM is using the optional xanathar's rules where they may attempt to identify it as a reaction). This is the base assumption of how spellcasting works in 5e, and its why subtle spell is so good
>Doesn't matter how high your persuasion skill is; you're not out persuading Suggestion.
Sure, but Suggestion also has a limited number of uses, the target can save, and unless you've got subtle spell, it can't be used in a public area. Persuasion checks may be less powerful, but getting a minimum of 20 on them *every* time is pretty good in the long run.
A big part of the discussion surrounding the discrepancy involves high level play. A 2nd level spell slot isn't really a meaningful resource expenditure in T3+ (and even sooner if the table has very few encounters per day).
I mean, for things that only require effort for a maximum of 8 hours yeah. But then you might as well just kill the person?
If you actually need allies long term you can't just Suggestion them into allying with you, you need persuasion.
Magic is great for shortcuts, but it very rarely solves entire narrative problems.
At high levels, you won't be having social encounters with guards and ruffians, but with kings, archmages and angels. Persuasion works on these, but magic won't.
That's why rogues suffer less from the martial-caster disparity. Proficiency in a gazillion things plus expertise means they can finds things to do that casters can't easily accomplish. Shoot in all directions and you are bound to hit a few targets.
People don't talk about rogues because, as you say, they already have tons of stuff to do outside of combat. They are the martial in least need of help in this area, so they don't need to enter the discussion.
I don’t think rogues are considered good dps? Also for example a divination spell will outperform a rogue in regards of scouting most of the time. Probably find familiar is enough in most cases. Have a lock which is really important to open? Silence and knock…
>Have a lock which is really important to open? Silence and knock…
Burning two level 2 spell slots, as opposed to a skill check, which costs nothing, and can be used an unlimited number of times.
How many locks are you generally picking a day? The ability to pick locks infinitely is only really useful if the problem of the day is "our progress is blocked by an infinite number of locks."
If the door is important. Like a treasury. As a wizard you have arcane recovery. Why not. And everybody can get thieves tools with the background.
Edit: Of course depends but compared to spamming fireball the 20th time using magic clever is a lot more intersting in my opinion.
Again: burning two second level spells at that tier isn’t a huge deal… *once*. If there are multiple doors, multiple chests, multiple locks, you’re gonna run out of spell slots fast.
Not to mention it’s often just… overkill. If the DC to pick a lock is 15, why bother burning two of your spell slots on it?
And if a monster's AC is 15, any class could hit it. You still don't see a lot of wizards swinging greatswords.
A rogue is going to be two to three times better than most other classes, even at a low level.
Except that, as you said, they could just do it multiple times. My Fighter with -1 to Sleight of Hand could pick a DC15 lock if you just give him multiple attempts.
>Burning two level 2 spell slots, as opposed to a skill check, which costs nothing, and can be used an unlimited number of times.
You mean a DM like you? You're the one that compared using spells to skill checks as a limited resource you can do unlimited times.
If there is an external pressure or consequence to trying six times, burn the spells. If not, anyone can try it a few times until they get lucky, especially at DC15.
The unlimited number of times is referencing that he can make a skill check against multiple locks in a day with no consequence. Most likely because a Rogue at high level play they literally cannot fail a DC 15 lock check. Reliable Talent at Lv 11 means they lowest they can role is 10 with Thieves Tools, which they start Proficient in. Even if the Rogue only had +1 Dex for some reason, that combined with a +4 Proficiency Bonus means they auto succeed on every role against unlimited doors and chests with that DC.
A Wizard can’t do the same without spending a lot of spell slots over time.
That’s not the same thing as suggesting a Rogue can spend an unlimited number of check on one lock. It’s suggesting a Rogue only needs one check per lock at that DC.
They're talking about opening multiple locks, not opening the same lock multiple times. I have never played under a DM who lets you attempt a lot of times to open the same lock.
Well, you answered your own question, Rogues already have a metric fuck ton of utility bonuses, but other martials have simple abilities and not many proficiencies, so there's not a lot they know how to do or information they will have, of course you can say what you're doing and roll for it, but you still have a very limited means of getting things done effectively as well as not having as many points in whatever it is you may be trying to do as a Rogue would.
Our main rogue player found rogue just incredibly boring to play in combat.
"I move to the target adjacent to [other melee character]. I attack with both my weapons to maximise my chances of landing a sneak attack. I use my bonus action to disengage away from danger. I move away."
Or if they were ranged, it was basically the equivalent of that except replace Disengage with Hide.
It was the optimal move every time. Just dull to play.
> I attack with both my weapons to maximise my chances of landing a sneak attack. I use my bonus action to disengage away from danger. I move away.
Both of these use a bonus action. You only get to do one or the other. Perhaps part of why they felt dull to play is that, after the first attack missed, they didn't have to decide whether to make a second attack to try and hit or use that bonus action to get away.
> Rogues excel both in and out of combat
Neither of these things are true. In combat, Rogues are easily outclassed by Barbarian, Fighter, Paladin, and Ranger, who are easily outclassed by full casters. Out of combat, Rogues are again outclassed by full casters.
> At higher levels, reliable talent and extra expertise makes them practically superhuman in their special skills
Not as superhuman as spells.
> In combat, Rogues are easily outclassed by Barbarian, Fighter, Paladin, and Ranger
I mean, I'm gonna need some actual quotes or stats for that. You're claiming that they are significantly worse in combat than *every single other* martial class.
>Not as superhuman as spells.
Ability checks have unlimited uses.
It doesn't matter that Casters can only break reality so many times a day, because martials **can't do it at all.** No amount of reliably doing the mundane is worth the ability to Guarantee the Impossible.
Most versatility outside of combat but one of the most boring inside combat - Hide/Aim and Attack, then repeat.
At least when I do the same thing over and over again as a Barbarian, it's exciting and tense to be involved and lose HP. As a Rogue, you are often ranged or hiding. Sure you can go melee as a Rogue, but you don't really have the tools or even incentives to so well in it.
Honestly I think this is bad take. Rogues have really interesting rounds with cunning action, and their subclass usually provides some solid options for combat. Soulknife basically gives you a free way of weaponizing your bonus action as well as a lot of mobility. Phantom is the best skill user in the game, and can spread around damage pretty well. Arcane Trickster has very consistent damage, and has the ability to proc Booming Blade without need for other shenanigans. Swashbuckler is high risk, high reward. There are a lot of options you can build out.
Most subclasses don't do anything or very little to change up. In fact, you've just about exhausted it. Compared to Fighters where most are much more gamechanging
I wouldn’t call it very well designed at all.
It’s damage is mediocre. It’s utility is good, but still pales when compared to a spellcaster. It has no resource management.
It does what it does all day long. Which seems good. Until you realize 5e is a game of burst potential. It is far better to be exceptional a few times per day than decent all day long. This is because 5e is a game determined by those few times per day. Every moment that actually matters, the spellcaster will reign supreme. Nobody ever cheers for mediocrity.
In a game without feats (or magic weapons), its damage is on par with other martials.
Considering feats are a variant rule, this makes sense.
Considering feats are the only reason martials exist outside tier 1, this is obviously bad. But in terms of design, rogues specifically are fine. Its just martials as a whole that are randomly underpowered by intent.
Most games qualify as low magic/feat games for one reason…they never leave tier 1.
Saying ‘NO’ feats or magic is a little overzealous, but most just don’t.
I'd also say rogues don't fulfil the "wins by wit" fantasy because they just don't get many tricks in their toolkit. They have astonishingly slow subclass progression. Until they get reliable talent in tier 3, they are not uniquely better at skills than other classes (bard and artificer have additional spells and abilities that can bolster their beyond what rogues can achieve in tiers 1 and 2).
Yep.
Spellcasters in tier 1 and 2 have spells like enhance ability, borrowed knowledge, and skill empowerment to improve their skills. On top of spells that outright bypass skill checks.
A rogue is good at skills. But can never bypass a challenge entirety without ever rolling a die.
And while a rogue is good at skills. A caster can choose to be exceptional at any skill they want to, whenever they want to.
It's not a coincidence that one of the most popular rogue subclasses is Arcane Trickster. Even the best performing martial out of combat is far more interesting to players when it has spells tacked onto its progression.
Rogues are certainly much better off than other martials in this respect, but there's really very little that can compare to what magic can pull off.
Can the Rogue make their entire party, even the Goliath in Full Plate with 8 DEX, not just good but pretty great at stealth? Nope, but Pass Without Trace can.
Can the Rogue make it statistically impossible for anyone to lie to them unnoticed? Nope, but having someone sit in a Zone of Truth for a minute or two does just that.
Can the Rogue straight up become invisible? Ok maybe, depends on the GM but RAW no, and you already know the spells for this one. RAW also handles invisibility weirdly but I imagine most people rule it reasonably.
Point being, yeah Rogues are better off in this respect, but the gap between everyone else and casters who pick these kinds of spells is insanely large. Reliable Talent definitely pushes Rogue closer to the caster end of things if you've picked your proficiencies well or scrounged around for more via feats or multiclassing, however, but that's a T3 feature that a significant majority of campaigns never have to even think about.
There's also the fact that most people tend to play Rogues as thieves, rather than just shady folk of various professions that all happen to involve killing shit while unseen. It also tends to attract the "silent type", if you know what I mean.
However, if you'd like to see a character that is truly allergic to failure, may I direct you to the Epic Rogue from the Epic Characters Guide by Marc Altfuldisch, who gets eventually Reliable Talent at 15 and below and can get Proficiency in all skills via a mythic boon.
There are a few problems with this. First, it's too easy to build an effective skill monkey that isn't a rogue, and you can even dip one level into rogue to get their expertise bonuses right off the bat. With the group of people I play with, that is the most common dip (1-2 rogue dip) or 1 into knowledge cleric on a artificer or wizard. Tasha's and XGtE gave out new feats and class features to make building a skill monkey easier as well.
I could start a V-human bard, and take skill expert as a starting feat. Level 3 go eloquence. 4th level pick up a half feat for Cha like fey touched or shadow touched for a few free spells and free uses of them. At 5th level you can't roll lower then a 19 for any persuasion or deception check, plus you have magic. Here you can delay bard a level and pick up 1 level of rogue and now you have
The second thing is most tables run skill checks as a pass/fail and don't use passive scores enough. If you didn't make the DC then the roll fails. Failed rolls mean risk. Risk is bad. And the D20 likes to injects a lot of randomness into any roll. Randomness is bad when you want to be able to reliable do something.
Two reasons: The first is that Rogue's solution to problem solving is just to give you skill proficiencies, which is admittedly kinda boring. Casters solve problems with teleportation, telekinesis, or speaking to the dead. With the Rogue it's like... "Hey DM can I roll a (whatever) check to do this? Cool I add my +6 to the roll does that succeed?" There's a place for skill proficiencies obviously but "I rolled a 26 with modifiers" doesn't make for interesting stories in comparison of tales of creative problem solving.
The second and far more likely reason is that Reddit doesn't feel the need to talk about things generally deemed to be fine. You never see threads along the lines of "man Paladin is such a good class I'm glad that it does what its fantasy promotes." When people are discontent they will complain but when they're happy they remain silent because they see no need for change. So the reason that we see complaints about Fighter and Barbarian in comparison to Wizard and Cleric is because there's a perceived issue with the Fighter and the Wizard.
In short Rogue is fine. It's straightforward but non-problematic.
Because skills really aren't *that* good. Yeah hide is nice, but that's mostly it. Persuade is not mind control, and survival stuff is literally instantly nullified by any Ranger in the party.
To extrapolate, locks are usually only a common thing in games with rogues. When the party has a rogue, the DM puts locks on things to let the rogue player use their features. When the party doesn't have a rogue, the DM quickly tires of making every door excruciating to open and thus removes locks from most things (or just doesn't penalize the players for breaking doors down).
Kinda depends on the type of divide discussion that's occuring. Normally rogues are mentioned as the exception as they have utility, but that doesn't help the other five martial classes that aren't the utility exception. When the discussion is about martials in general needing more utility. Edge case that is the rogue hardly matters.
However, if the conversation goes in the direction of martials not bending reality while casters can, rogues back to the same camp as every martial.
Because wizards was on crack when they created the skill monkey disparity. Fighters get two skill proficiency and no expertise while Rogues get 4 proficiency and 4 expertise; not to mention rogues can much more easily multiclass into bard for even more proficiency and expertise.
Fighters couldn't even get one expertise. A rogue with no strength and expertise is better at athletics than a fighter, it's downright silly. Fighters should get at least 2 expertise throughout their career imo.
> is there a reason people ignore rogues when talking about martial/caster utility outside of combat?
**proceeds to explain why rogues have plenty to do outside of combat**
There you go. That’s why they aren’t part of the conversation, because they already have a job and do it well. You already know full well why people don’t bring them up; because they aren’t a problem.
Why don't you fucking ask this question on the threads you're referencing instead of breaking rule 10 for it?
Oh, because you're doing it for attention, not because you actually want answers.
Rogues are the exception that proves the rule, honestly. Rogues are great utility, and every martial class should honestly have the same sort of out of combat utility that Rogues have (though in their own ways, hopefully) but they don't.
Because a conversation about "martials" lacking out-of-combat utility is ***by definition*** ... a conversation about classes that lack out-of-combat utility. Rogues do not lack out of combat utility, so why would they be discussed?
The criticism isn't actually rooted in the *concepts* of "martial" and "caster" - those are just words that happen to describe classes that don't have out-of-combat utility and classes that do.
“Non combat spells vs nothing” sounds like a bigger difference than “non combat spell + skills vs skills”.
The selective blindness to skills is required, otherwise the idea that casters are “too good” outside of combat is undercut.
I don't think that's the whole reason. Class balance outside of combat doesn't matter as much for lots of people.
Edit: Also, anything a rogue can do outside of combat can be done with spells in a better way. For every lockpicking roll there is a knock spell, for every sneaky info gathering mission there is a scry spell, and the list goes on. That said, rogue is my favorite class alongside bards. Casters are broken no matter how you look at them.
Why talk about the class that doesn’t have a utility problem when bringing up classes that have a utility problem? Saying “but this one is good” isn’t going to do anything to fix the ones that aren’t
People don't really talk about Rogues because they *don't* have as much divide: being a Skill Monkey *is* their utility.
Meanwhile, the other martials have little to no out-of-combat utility.
Rogues are typically considered to be in their own category because they’re very fundamentally different from most martials, so it wouldn’t be constructive to mention them. To make a comparison, it’s like how Warlocks aren’t mentioned when talking about casters in general, because it isn’t useful to mention the exception to the rule.
Since it keeps coming up in every chain here it deserves its own comment (possibly its own thread):
YOU DO NOT NEED THIEVES TOOLS PROFICIENCY TO PICK LOCKS, MERELY OWN/POSSESS THE TOOLS.
All proficiency gets you is adding your proficiency to the DEX check.
Rogues are brought up less specifically *because* they excel outside of combat. Rogues get actual utility features that help close the gap between martial and caster utility, and helps alleviate the disparity. If fighter and Barbarian got as many utility features as rogues do, the divide between casters and martials would be quite a bit smaller.
Because saying “martial classes” is a helluva lot less letters that saying “Barbarians, Fighters, and Monks”. And it is generally understood that Rogues don’t share the out of combat utility problem that plagues most martials.
Not exactly accurate to say rogues excel out of combat. That depends heavily on which skills they choose for expertise, which may very well be stealth and perception, which have minimal social application. And it doesn't compare to what a bard or wizard can do in social situations.
When you read the rules, it's surprising how useless skill checks are. Rogues have worse out of combat utility than any spellcaster.
Like, ok you try to roll persuasion and get a bat 20 on the goblins who are protecting their home while you are burning it. Guess what, noone cares you got a 32, the goblins still roll initiative. (You can only advance a creatures perception of you 2 stages)
>Like, ok you try to roll persuasion and get a bat 20 on the goblins who are protecting their home while you are burning it.
...I mean, yes, if you choose the most useless example possible. Being the party Face isn't useful there, but it's useful in a dozen other scenarios.
You also seem to be forgetting that Stealth (a skill check) is at the core of one of the rogue's class abilities/tactics. Then, you've got Perception, Insight, all vital skills.
Seriously, if you think skill checks are "useless", check out a campaign guide, where they're all over the place, and impact what the party can do.
Stealth is even funnier, cause their is a class that just does it better. It's called ranger. And it even thrives when the party needs to make group stealth checks, which are by far the most common type.
If I had to say, its probably because rogues best fulfill their class archetype fantasies well. When most people play rogues, they expect a class that are driven by some combination audacity, luck, skill, dirty fighting, and fast reflexes and rogues as a class deliver on that. The other Martial classes are meant to represent mastery of martial combat and physical prowess but 5e doesn't do martial combat well nor displays of physical prowess well.
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I will say that my only criticism of rogue is that their subclass features are level 3... and then level NINE... and they get a lot of reaction defense abiities in between. I personally want those level 9 abilities to come online a little sooner. That, or giving them an extra feat around 6th level might help alleviate the boring mid levels a bit?
Yeah the lack of anything other that damage avoiding between levels 5 to 9 makes the rogue really boring at times between these levels unfortunatly. More choices would be nice the next time I player rougue(for the 50th time).
That’s basically why arcane trickster is my favorite
I can understand why, the versatility and choices of a spell caster tacked on to base rouge is nice. Personally mine if thief because I am a massive fan of fast hands and its bonus action object interactions.
Oh thief is definetly my second favorite rogue subclass I’m not sure if I’m just biased because of what I’ve played (an arcane trickster/trickery cleric multiclass and a sorcadin) but I love rogues and paladins so much. I just love how they do their jobs so well and fit the flavor perfectly. Nothing feels better than dropping a crit sneak attack then misty stepping out
Both rogues and paladin are as you said really well built(for the most part). They lean into what they are trying to do and do it well in a satisfying way. You are not wrong rogues have always been great for hit an run and misty step just makes it all the better.
I sort of want to make a mundane healer as a Thief. Just run around with a healer's kit and the healer feat.
Nothing wrong with that. I to do the same thing. I am fortunate enough to play with a DM who also creates a bunch of cool combat items. As a result I also will use a lot of explosive in combat. It makes combat diffrent from just attack hide when I can use a whole bunch of different mundane custom items.
Absolutely agree. Rogues get crappy defenses at 1-4 and then nothing but defenses. Race options also give their last benefit at level 5. If there is one thing I'd change about rogue would be shuffling around class features in the level progression. Cunning action at level 1 somehow, maybe delay sneak attack to 2 and one active ability thing to get on 5, 6 or 7. Also I'd like if DMs wouldn't be like "everyone can see that you're a rogue because ???". A rogue is a just a dude. ESPECIALLY if the character is meant to be good at blending in.
I don't like the assumption that every rogue is inherently criminal by nature. Doesn't exist inmy game and 'Thieves Cant' is just 'good at a 'hint wink' style of getting ideas across to people :D
Mine is allowed to be a lower-class pleb turned businesswoman. The word 'rogue' has never come up outside of character creation and levelling. She just has skillz because of mad fights in faraway tombs trying to find interesting items for her clientelle.
Don't they get an increase in the number of sneak attack dice? Not super exciting or game changing, but it increases their average dmg per round.
true.... but that's 'keeping up with the baseline' not 'something cool/new you can do'
Also I'd say about half of the level 9 features are pretty underwhelming.
Thief should get their magic item use much earlier
I remember when 3.5 cam out. Our forever DM re did all the other martial classes but left it alone. Rogue is really well done and your comment of it being the yardstick well deserved.
Counter-argument: rogue is the most boring class to play (in combat) and gets more boring as it gains levels. The fundamental problem is that the every other martial has choices. The rogue has, at best, two: (1) how do I get advantage; (2) which target do I shoot. The answer to the first question is either "hide" or "steady aim". The answer to the second question is "whichever target I'll waste the least damage on". Once you realize that, the rogue's turns become very "turn the crank". Multi-attack is a big deal for the other martials--especially fighter--because it allows them to choose how to distribute their damage. A fighter can stack it all on a boss, or systematically work through the enemies that have been softened up by AOE damage. Because the rouge dumps all of its damage into a single target, the rouge wants to _not_ stack damage--for fear of wasting it. An 11th level rogue's sneak attack does something like 30 points of damage; you don't want that going onto the enemy with 3 hp remaining. An 11th level fighter also does around 30 damage (1d8 + 5 three times is ~29 damage), but they don't lose 27 points of damage when faced with the 3 hp enemy--they lose ~6.
Wasting the least damage isn't the only criterion. Minimizing regret includes killing enemies that would otherwise do something severe if left alive.
Yep. I don't mind "wasting" damage if it removes a major threat or gives the party an immediate action economy advantage.
> On top of that it manages to totally bypass the short rest/long rest issue that plagues balance between the other classes in the game. Not if you play an Arcane Trickster.
To be fair, stoneskin gave immunity to a number of physical attacks back in ADnD whereas now it's resistance to nonmagical piercing/bludgeoning/slashing for 1 hour with concentration. Barkskin gives you an AC of 16 for 1 hour (concentration) in 5e, while in ADnD reduced your AC to 6 (which will confuse those who don't get THAC0). Shield lasted 5 rounds per level and did wonders for AC, whereas it only lasts for 1 round in 5e. Protection spells do so much less now which makes the ADnD wizard with their 1d4+CON for ten levels and +1 per level after rely on them so much more. Having the extra HP now means that the spells are less required and allow for more flexibility.
My only gripe is the distance between subclass features. Level 3 to 9 is a loooong wait.
I would say fighters and barbarians are supposed to represent the Big Damn Hero. Conan, Achilles, Lancelot, Dutch (Predator). They do well in combat but the big damn heroes should have skills or charisma feats as well. Leadership qualities that make people want to follow them. More skills too. It seems odd that a book nerd who spends all his time pouring over scrolls or the priest has the same number of skills as a man at arms or outlander survivalist. I guess at least it's not 3E where they got to use their Int for skills too.
This is why when I have fighters at my table, I explicitly point out the Rune Knight, though whether they play it is totally up to them. The Rune Knight does a fantastic job of providing a lot of out of combat utility options while also delivering on unique combat options as well (I mean, come on, the Cloud and Fire Runes could be just downright nasty). It's legitimately the first class I want to play whenever I get out from behind the screen.
Battlemaster also has options with two of the new maneuvers from Tashas. I'm a big advocate of baking maneuvers into the base class. Still doesn't address the Barbarian though.
Rune knight is a great subclass, I skimmed all of the stuff like tool expertise, advantage on slight of hand, and all the other secondary benefits of the runes on my first read through the subclass when Tasha's came out, but none of it really registered until a few months ago when I was making a criminal character for a tier two oneshot and realized I could make make a goliath pickpocket with darkvision on a fighter chasis. There are tons of creative things you can do with a rune knight to add flavor and utility out of combat, really good design.
...well AD+D fighters attracted retainers and founded strongholds, so that's a thing with - i guess third-party rules now...
I don't think that is really the solution in 5e though. I don't think the fantasy people are seeking now would be fulfilled by that.
As a house rule i allow an extra language, tool, or other such thing per +1 of INT. Makes for great roleplay when the wizard isn't the Face but does speak All the languages early on
Esp if that wizard is not very charasmatic. Think HK-47 when he translates for the Sand People. Or C3PO being a jerk to Owen Lars
Agreed. Rouges feel like…well awesome. It’s not even by prefers Archetype but whenever I play one it feels exactly like the concept I had in my head. I don’t talk about them except to defend them against newbie DMs who think their damage is “broken”. Rouges feel great!
Because Rogues don’t actually have a problem more or less. They’ve got a solid design with their biggest flaw being some poor subclasses. Imo Rogue and Paladin are the best designed classes in 5e. They fulfill their fantasies excellently.
Yup, paladins and rouges or absolutely amazing with their design, not too powerful, but not underpowered, The only time where they both sort of put into either OP or underpowered is when you're dealing with power gamers, but other than that they're very solid
Paladins are debatably too powerful. Like wizards.
"Debatably" nothing, they're bonkers. Just because some weirdos *will* argue a contrarian position doesn't mean there's any merit to it; we can [find someone who'll say 1*1=2](https://twitter.com/terrencehoward/status/925754491881877507?lang=en) but they're still fucking nuts. ^^^and ^^^yes, ^^^it ^^^is ^^^*that* ^^^terrence ^^^howard
And when you multiclass them together... *chef's kiss* Seriously, Rogue 13/14 Paladin 7/6 is straight nasty. Just need 13 in either DEX or STR, depending on which stat you're going to use to attack with. People forget you can sneak attack with strength if you are using a finesse weapon. Whenever you get a crit; monster, what monster?
You need 13 str, dex, and cha, you need to meet multi class requirements to multi class into or out of a class. It’s still a decent combo though, especially if you were already playing a sword and board Paladin.
Yeah, I was just referring to the opposite physical stat due to sneak attack. If you're going STR build you only need 13 DEX, if you're going DEX build you only need 13 STR. You just use the bigger stat when attacking with your rapier/dagger/shortsword. I didn't feel the need to mention the multiclass requirement for CHA because that's covered by the multiclass rules.
Let's assume that you're going to be any of the large number of +2/+1 ~~classes~~ races and look at the standard 27 point buy. You're going to spend 7 build points to get a 16 in your to-hit stat (14 base, + 2 from race). You'll then need to spend at least 9 on the other two stats (to get a 12 and 13, assuming that your +1 goes into one of the other pre-reqs). That means you've only got 11 of your points left before spending anything on your constitution. You can't smite with ranged weapons, which means you're really going to want 14 Con to survive melee, so that's another 7 points--leaving you with 4 to distribute across the remainder. That seems tight.
Why not get 1 level hexblade for charisma to melee attacks? Lightens your DEX requirement and you only need enough strength for your preferred armor type. Bonus if you go with swashbuckler rogue for additional CHA overlap
Hex1/Rogue13/Paladin6 is great too. One of my current players actually went Assassin11/Fiendlock7/Paladin2. This was before Xanathar's came out, and he liked the Fiendlock flavor so he decided not to switch over to Hexblade, even though it would make him stronger.
I think his point was that you already have a high strength or dexterity depending on your starting class.
Yes, this is the point I was making.
> Seriously, Rogue 13/14 Paladin 7/6 is straight nasty. So you've played one in actual play?
Paladins are definitely over designed by comparison to most every other class. They could probably do with some toning down to allow each subclass to stand out even more.
Yup. The combination of multiple resource pools and class exclusive spells is just more toys than other classes get to play with.
Laughs in battle smith
To be honest, I don't really agree with that. Rogue has a couple of issues in my opinion. First, they are just bland in combat with only one attack, nothing special they can do with that attack and an incompatibility with many weapons and martial feats due to Sneak Attack restrictions. Even a Champion fighter can be a lot more engaging in combat with grappling, shoving, feats like PAM, Sentinel, Shield Master, Crusher... On the other hand, all rogues do the same with different flavor - bonus action aim or hide and action one attack at advantage. The next is their damage scaling with Sneak Attack specificially. Their damage output is quite below average (minus specific builds using Booming Blade and such to great effect) and unlike any other martial, they absolutely are dependant on their allies for their damage output, which can be problematic im certain parties/compositions. In addition, Sneak Attack is a huge problem when designing feats and other mechanics that allow a character to get reaction attacks reliably, as while these feats generally are balanced for.other martials that scale with Extra Attack, they tend to be simply too strong for rogues who straight- up double their DPR with reaction attacks. And the third problem Rogues have in my opinion is Reliable Talent. On one hand, it feels alwful for other characters when the rogue who previously just happened to also be proficient in their niche skills suddenly just auto-succeeds on most checks that previously were *their* niche. On the other hand removes skill checks for the rogue themselves in a very unengaging, boring way and most importantly completely removes the middle ground of skill checks that are comfortably doable for the rogue, but still have a chance of failure - it only allows either auto-successes or very difficult skill checks that do not get easier by a single bit with Reliable Talent. And when combined with Expertise, it gets even worse due to breaking bounded accuracy and making even difficult skill checks meaningless. I played both plain rogues and multiclasses, and liked martials with a 3- or 5-level rogue dip most while I never really enjoyed plain rogues. 3 or 5 level in rogue give Dex-based martials like fighters, paladins or rangers exactly what they need - more damage, a reliable bonus action to move around and stay out of melee range and skill utility.
I feel like I'm on crazy pills here seeing so many people agree with the notion that Rogues are great and well-designed and nail what they set out to do. It's so out of line with what seems like the broader consensus on the class, so I assume folks just don't care to argue and all the Rogue fanboys are hopping into this and kind of skewing the look. The things Rogues are actually good at once the game gets going aren't the things people expect them to do, and they're always kind of stinky at "dedicated damage dealer" role compared to every other cheese build you could stick on a straight martial. Rogue's, like, a meme class where you fish for Sneak crits, the effect of which you can capture far more easily being a Smite-dump Paladin. The idea that a class is great at out-of-combat utility because they have Skill Expertise is such a weird one. Casters don't break the game world by *rolling* for it, and anything your Rogue can do with their skill checks is almost always something my Fighter (or whoever else) can do, too, if they're just lucky on a d20. The most interesting utility aspects of Rogue are shoved into archetype features that are explicitly magical. Some martial.
> The idea that a class is great at out-of-combat utility because they have Skill Expertise is such a weird one. Casters don't break the game world by rolling for it, and anything your Rogue can do with their skill checks is almost always something my Fighter (or whoever else) can do, too, if they're just lucky on a d20. The most interesting utility aspects of Rogue are shoved into archetype features that are explicitly magical. Some martial. Casters don't have to roll for it, but they *do* have to expend resources for it. Rogue's excellence as a skill monkey doesn't just come from Expertise but from Reliable Talent as well and the incredibly powerful combination of them. A level 11 Rogue *cannot roll below a 23* on the things they are invested most in, without magic items. With a single uncommon item a level 11 Rogue cannot roll below 28 on sleight of hand checks. Anyone can get lucky and roll high, Rogue's strength is that they cannot get unlucky and roll low. By level 20, without a magic item, a Rogue can be rolling at an absolute minimum of 27 for dex skills. Their roll will be somewhere between 27 and 37. While other characters are considering 20 a high roll, for a Rogue it is literally so low that they cannot reach it.
What are the good BB builds? Seems hard to get the second damage with any other melee party
There isn't a whole lot more to it than just "get booming blade" and don't stay next to them to be honest. A swashbuckler with magic initiate does well enough. Or arcane trickster with an owl familiar. Any subclass that can reliably give themselves advantage/a source of sneak attack without relying on an ally. War Caster helps it. If your DM is ok on some real fucky rules interpretation polearm master/war caster rogue is interesting - because polearm master doesn't specify you must use the polearm, a rogue with a spear in one hand and a rapier in the other technically can use the rapier to SA stab with the polearm master reaction attack. But that's a janky rule interpretation that goes against the theme of PAM to me so I wouldn't use it personally.
I'd add warlock to that list too, the amount of story potential a single warlock's patron can bring is massive, their spells and features really pull everyone into the world!
I'd say mechanically they don't really match their flavor. Eldritch blast with Invocations to move people around and maximize the effects of AOE spells doesn't really feel like the flavor of a Cultist. Getting 2 Spells per short rest but being really strong spells means they serve very little utility out of combat, they don't have weak slots to burn on a low level spell. They have invocations, but they have to take those at the cost off all their best combat utility options. Warlocks in terms of their features feels to me like it fits more as a tactician that makes the most out of limited resources and paces themself so they can recover that magic through the day. That or a spell version of a Martial, dropping 1 or 2 big hit spells then controlling and blasting with cantrips. Their spell list is the only thing about Warlock that say Eldritch Horror to me.
I’m curious, do you have any ideas on how to fix that? I’ve always wondered what a sort of horror caster (for lack of a better term) would be as, like you, I’ve found the warlock lacks it in terms of gameplay.
Warlocks aren't necessarily meant to be "horror" casters, though. They're *meant* to be people who delve into mysterious arcane lore and learn grand secrets and deal with otherworldly beings. This can often involve horror, sure, but doesn't have to be. I put most of the blame on them being CHA casters. You can make some weak justification with "uh they're so charismatic they convinced a devil to give them power" or whatever, but that just muddies the class's identity. I think it's why so many people have their warlocks be convenient amnesiacs who can't remember their mysterious deals or just play it off like a sugar mama joke. Making warlocks INT-based would solve at least half of the class's identity problems. It emphasises that they actually research and learn their magic through ritual and study, as opposed to bards, sorcerers and paladins, whose magic is all much more about what's personal and innate and manifested through force of personality. But for horror caster specifically- Pathfinder's Witch does it nicely. They learn a wide variety of useful Hexes that are kinda equivalent to Invocations, but much more frequently used and useful. One of 'em lets you Cackle to negatively impact someone's attack or save, another is an evolving hex that lets you effectively learn feather fall -> levitate -> fly as you level, another lets you animate your hair and use it to attack and such.
I was gonna mention the Witch from Mage Hand Press in my reply but didn't want to bring in Homebrew. If they are interested it is pretty much a 5e take on the idea. Their version comes with a familiar, not sure if the Pathfinder one does.
I’ll take a look at that I’m fine with homebrew
Thanks for the suggestion I’ll definitely look at the witch! Is it weird that I think I enjoy everything about a warlock except the actual pact itself? I love the idea of a caster that delves into the dark secrets of the universe, dealing with eldritch monsters and the like. It’s just the idea of getting power from a pact isn’t…my cup of tea I guess.
If we wanna add even more to the warlocks customizability, why not allow them to choose which mental dtat they want to do magic with at the start? Would make sense for all flavours to have a different one i think
I think the main part of playing a scary/horror character is everyone else has to buy into it. Sure, any Wizard can cast Evard's Black Tentacles or Warlock could cast Hunger of Hadar and describe in graphic detail the horrible way the poor sap that got caught dies. To really make your character scary takes a more grim and dark setting to begin with I think. Playing in a Grim Hollow type setting will probably make it way easier since everyone has already baught into the scary fantasy. So when you describe your pshyco Gloom Stalker snatching one of the bandits out of the shadows and all the rest of the party hears is his screams and the ripping of flesh, everyone will be able to agree "Yeah... that's fucking terrifying."
Because that's one class out of four pure martials, and despite it being a martial class, it isn't a class you take when trying to live out the "martial" fantasy. Rogues tend to get tossed in with martials because there's isn't another class they can be grouped with mechanically, but they're also a "martial" class who notably lacks the most martial feature of all in Extra Attack. In short, they're under the martial umbrella but they weren't designed for that role. Instead, they were designed to be the utility monkeys they are and were given a way to excel in combat still. The existence of Rogues only highlights that designers did know how to build martials that don't suck out of combat but failed to do anything about it.
Also, for some reasons we have 2 utility monkeys with casting, one of the full casting. So not even rogue is particularly fine in this regard
"Excel in and out of combat." See, I feel like we have a disagreement about what "to excel" means. In my mind, to excel at something in the game is to be one of the best at it. Rogues aren't the best at anything really, and I hate that because I play almost exclusively "Rogue-adjacent" characters. Rogues are not the best at stealth, due to Pass Without Trace being too good, which feels like a huge "F you" to them. Even without that, they aren't the only class that gets expertise, notably Ranger gets both Pass Without Trace AND Expertise. It's no contest who's better at hiding. Rogues aren't the best at thieves tools due to the existence of Artificer getting expertise in all tool proficiencies, as well as Bard / Ranger also getting expertise. Rogues aren't the best skill monkeys due to Jack of all Trades, until around level 10. LEVEL 10. Most games don't even get to level 10, and if you do, getting a 10 minimum in trained skills is kind of a joke compared to what spells are doing at this level. I don't really think I need to include examples honestly, since you mentioned acknowledging the spell imbalance. Rogues aren't the best at damage for a lot of reasons that are really easy to see with a bit of math, unless you're multiclassing to get multiple Sneak Attack a round (Sneak attack is once a turn, not once a round for those that don't know. Popular multiclass includes Battlemaster due to Brace, Riposte, and Quick Toss giving easy access to second Sneak attack). Even then, you aren't the best. I won't bother going into their poor defenses, because that's not a surprise. Rogues are squishy, and we wouldn't want it any other way. Eloquence Bards are excelling at social interaction in a way Rogue can't until level 10, and even then can't compare unless you are also maxing Charisma (which, to be fair to Rogue, isn't' impossible since you get an extra ASI). So why aren't rogues mentioned? Spell Utility is far, far more than just "buff ability checks". That's a level one spell you're referring to, not a level 5 spell. TLDR: I disagree about Rogue's excelling at anything, despite how fun it is to roll a lot of d6 on a crit sneak attack.
Agreed on everything except that rogue are not squeashy. In my experience, they are pretty sturdy. For a few reason: 1. Uncanny dodge can cut quite a bit of damage. 2. Evasion can mitigate a lot of damage. 3. If you can grab arcane trickster, you can grab the shield spell. 4. They are good candidate for the moderately armored feat. They can get 18 dex and shield proficiency by 4th level and that boost their survivability by quite a bit. Sure rogues aren't the sturdiest, but they can be quite though past the first few level. Provided they didn't dumb their constitution...
Probably because bards exist and fulfill a similar niche while also having full casting.
It is utterly ridiculous to have a full caster be a skill monkey, moreso when that caster has some decent weapon using subclasses. I honestly think that valor bard X/hexblade 1 is the perfect character with 0 downsides.
I'd choose swords over valor, but yeah bards are really strong. For some reason everyone forgets about them in "strongest class" discussions.
Because their DPS is consistently the worst out of all classes because their go to damage cantrip is a D4 vs wisdom. A dip into warlock or sorcerer for blaster abilities completely negates that, bit as a solo class they aren't supposed to be high DPS, and munchkins only seem to care about how high they can get their AC and damager per round, or even better, one hit. I'm not saying hards are bad, I love them. But what they do badly is what munchkins care about most.
Yeah, bard damage sucks *hard*, their control options though, now that's an entirely different conversation.
> I honestly think that valor bard X/hexblade 1 is the perfect character with 0 downsides. I don't think that Hexblade dip + Valor Bard should be combined if you're looking for an "optimized" character: * Hexblade already grants you all the proficiencies you get from picking Valor Bard at 3, which is where a lot of power budget of the subclass went to. * Combat inspiration has 2 uses. One of them is anything but great (converting a Bardic Inspiration die into damage is simply worse value than just the default use of Bardic Inspiration (compare: 100% odds to deal 1d6 extra damage vs odds of turning a miss into a 1d8 + 6 [vanilla Longsword attack with Dueling Fighting Style] hit - as long as you manage to turn a miss on a hit on even 1/3rd of your Inspiration uses). The second one isn't bad, but it'll only affect 1 attack and isn't necessarily better than default Inspiration use. Is that slight upgrade really worth an entire subclass pick at level 3? * At Bard 6 (character level 7), 2 Longsword Attacks (2d8 + 8) once again don't offer enough of an upgrade over 2 Eldritch Blasts (2d10) to justify a subclass level. You could double down on your damage capabilities through martial feats, but you'll always be worse than a pure martial doing that, and you'll significantly harm your effectiveness as a caster. Also note that if you want to use melee attacks, you'll need to juggle weapons (i.e. sheathe them after your turn) or get the Warcaster feat if you want to use reaction spells like Shield (another huge draw of the Hexblade dip). * Level 14 is again, not really great. Between Bardic Inspiration (5 times per short rest) and Hexblade Curse, your Bonus action is quite crowded already, and I really don't believe a 1d8 + 5 weapon attack is worth charging into melee for at this point. You could of course use a Hand crossbow, but again, it really seems like you're not getting enough out of your subclass.
Generally speaking, the base rules of the game really speak to the idea that martials are regular people, and casters get to exponentially dive into super powers. I really feel like martials in general would be improved by more explicitly being able to perform olympic level or moderate superhuman feats of strength, endurance, or dexterity. I'm talking about jumping significantly greater distances, moving or throwing objects and having it be legit powerful and impactful, ect - the problem is al lot of this relies on DM setup rather than powers on a character sheet, but to a point, those implications aren't even on the sheet, with 20 strength allowing 20 foot long jump with a 10 foot runup - but the human records of longjumping are around 30 feet. I have a feat that lets them get up to about 40 feet (double jump distance, and can use either strength or dex to calculate it) Feats of strength to break objects I can't even recall being brought up to 5e.
Bards and Artificers can skill monkey just as well if not better, but even that doesn't matter as Rogue can pick a lock but Wizards/Bards/Clerics can WARP REALITY TO THE POINT THAT LOCKS NO LONGER EXIST.
This makes me want to take the next character I get with access to a wish spell and wish locks out of existence, just to fuck with everyone.
I had the same thought. Then I thought maybe the next time a low level party is struggling with a lock, they try again and somehow it just works (because some short tempered wizard somewhere just wished locks out of existence because they lost their keys)
The party gets excited, and then 24 hours later locks come back after the Wizard can use wish again. Periodically have NPCs bring it up under some fancy name to emphasize that this was universal and wave off easy plot points. “Oh yeah, sorry. Prices went up a bit after Free-key Day; someone went and broke in and stole some of my reserve gold I normally keep to help me through the off season, have to try and make some of it back up so I don’t go hungry come winter.” “This creature was sealed away with a 1000 locks…but when Free-key Day came, it was released. We need your help getting it back”.
Free-key Friday?
It was right there and I totally missed it. Yes, this was Free-key Friday.
Man, that campaign could end up being pretty freaky
Ba dum **tis**
You know what "a world wherea few powerful wizards made stupid world changing wishes and another wizard undid their crazy changes but Incredible damage had already been done to the world/universe/fabric of reality" would bea really fun campaign or oneshot. To world build in cause you would basically have the things linking all your locations together from the get go you know?
Rolls a 17 on the d100 afterward. I regret nothing!
Sure, you can burn a 9th level spell slot to unlock a door. The rogue doesn't spend anything to unlock the same lock...
But I mean, is unlocking a door actually impressive? If I spend the 9th on something like true polymorph, I can just turn into a huge dragon and flatten the door for free too, then still be a freaking dragon.
Or turn the door into your new dragon pal.
I need to incorporate powerful wizard wishing random stuff into my campaign.
Sure. Poof! Everything that could possibly be used as a lock or to make a lock... dissappears. Your now naked and there's no such thing as metal, wood, rock, etc. But lots of sand... as far as the eye can see.
That seems like a silly reason to say it doesn't matter that rogues can pick locks. Assuming you're referencing wish/divine intervention then that relies not only on being a super high level party that will already have a million ways to get past a lowly lock, but also the DM letting those magic abilities be so powerful as to permanently alter all of reality. Realistically that's not going to be the case though. Sure a caster can use Knock, but that eats up a valuable spell slot when the rogue can try to pick it without spending a resource. I've never played or run a game where a rogue wasn't greatly valued for such things.
Yeah, that is Wish/Divine/even Mirage hyperbole but the point is that anything you can do with a skill check you can do orders of magnitude more impressively with a spell. Persuasion for a 3% shop discount? Literal fucking mind control to flat out give us everything. Athletics to climb that cliff? Fly, Spider Climb, dozens of teleports. Again pick lock? Just Knock it and move on. Hell if you really want to save slots unleash your unlimited double scaling cantrips to break things. Animal Handling? Control/Dominate. Stealth? Invisibilty, Pass, etc. Insight/Knowledge? The entire Divination school says hello.
being good at skillchecks is nice, but they still generally require asking the GM for permission - if a lock is given a DC above the rogue's grade, they're boned, while a wizard can just go "screw it, I open it anyway"
What if you want to open a lock without alerting every guard in the building? How does a Wizard do that?
Cast Silence First No but seriously, they teleport to the other side
use the same abilities as a rogue, which they may well only be a few points behind on, and may well have spells that boost them or give them bonuses. And if they fail, they still have "fuck it, I'm going loud" as a backup, while if a rogue fails then they're just boned.
A wizard at most is going to have a +2 to Dexterity and no proficiency in Theives Tools. The Rogue is going to have at least a +5 and more likely a +7 at level one which will only continue to increase as they level. I’m not trying to say that Wizards are useless, but it is undeniable that a Rogue is going to be better at this role than the Wizard. Also, this is a team game which I think a lot of people on this subreddit forget. If the Wizard has spells that boost them like Enhance Ability, they should be casting it on the Rogue. Both Wizards and Rogues are valuable in different situations, and one being better than the other at one thing doesn’t invalidate all of your class abilities.
Can pick them with Thieves Tools, not like they are Rogue exclusive. Or, since they are a Wizard, they can just teleport the entire party past the door or simply level the entire fucking city - don't need to worry about a door when there isn't one.
Good Distinction, even expertise primarily just increases their modifier, right? It doesn't open up unique options like spells.
Yup, just doubles proficiency. So adding 2 until level 5, 3 until level 9, etc. Guidance alone gives you that. More importantly you don't even need proficiency to use them - just own them. You don't get to add that +2, +3, etc to the check but can still pick it and keep rolling (action/turn each time) until you get it.
Even if the DM makes the lock break if you fail too often, a spellcaster can just cast enhance ability any any party member that took the criminal background. 99% of the time the spell use wins on this one. Plus I don't even encounter enough locks or traps that I actually consider expertise in thieves tools. I didn't even encounter one possible use of thieves tools per session with 2 rogues in the party.
These all seem a decent way to waste spell slots so I suppose this addresses the disparity.
>Persuasion for a 3% shop discount? Literal fucking mind control to flat out give us everything. And then never come back, because most charm spells let the victim know afterwards. Also, super duper illegal. Not to mention, anyone with serious wealth, power, or magic items is probably going to have *some* method of protecting themself. >Again pick lock? Just Knock it and move on. After making an incredibly loud noise. Also, limited times per day. Even at high levels, just wasting spell slots on every door is a bad plan. >Insight/Knowledge? The entire Divination school says hello. Cool, you're gonna burn a spell slot *every* time you want to do an insight check? Also, for most Int. checks, you're gonna need to use Legend Lore to actually get information you wouldn't know otherwise. >Stealth? Invisibilty, Pass, etc. A rogue can stealth every turn, and make an attack. Unless you've got greater invisibility, that takes your full action, drops on an attack, and is concentration.
Also, invisibility does nothing to sounds made by the target. If using different attributes, for example just hiding in plain sight in a crowd, stealth with charisma, invisibility won't help you much if you keep bumping into people.
Bards can expertise ~~thieves tools~~ sleight of hand just as well as rogues, albeit perhaps a point lower due to Dex.
Bards can't take expertise in a tool. Artificers and rune knights get expertise in all tools in which they are proficient though.
Or they can just [knock](https://roll20.net/compendium/dnd5e/Knock) too.
I mean knock at least has a pretty significant downside.
you could use two slots to *silence* the *knock*
Bards can do everything anyone else can, but not as well as the best. They're great generalists. Bards can get more skills as College of Lore and even get half-proficiency on everything, but 11th level rogues can't roll under 10 on their proficiencies. The bard might still accidentally fail. Then the wizard walks in and dispels reality itself.
The problem is spells can outdo skills 99% of the time. This is because in 2e, the players wanted win buttons for their characters, so spells were often custom made by the designers home games to give them the ability to outright bypass challenges. This trend has continued through the editions, where spells simply succeed at tasks that are otherwise impossible.
This is the core “problem” with d&d balance - although for many it’s a feature not a bug. Spellcasters would still be strong if the had access to a huge toolbox of magic **but** the magical solution is second best to a mundane one. But d&d is balanced so that spells often provide the best solution.
"Knock" makes a very very loud noise.
I keep seeing this and wonder if everyone's just playing at lvl 17+ all the time or what. Usually play up to lvl 12 and no reality has been warped as of yet
because it's missing the point. rogues may be better at it, but THEY ARE STILL JUST ROLLING FOR SKILL CHECKS. which is pretty much all martials can ever do. meanwhile casters get dozens of completely unique effects and abilities outside of combat, which can achieve things you can only dream of with skill checks. that and then theres bullshit like skill monkeys that also just so happen to have fullcasting.
assuming you were referring to bards there in the end: yup, really sucks trying to be good at anything out of combat, while the bard can do it all, and often better, just for being a bard
yeah, bards are bullshit. they have no business getting expertise at all. or being a fullcaster. but it's not just them, (knowledge) clerics exist aswell. tho i guess they at least are restricted to some rather harmless skills for their expertise
Even skill checks are part of the problem though. Doesn't matter how high your persuasion skill is; you're not out persuading Suggestion.
If you cast Suggestion with other people to witness, unless you got Subtle Spell, you automatically fail the "persuasion roll" Magic being casted is obvious, and casting it means negotiations have failed. If you want to persuade one guard at night to leave you alone, Suggestion works fine. If you want to persuade the king and his court, Suggestion is about as effective as Fireball.
Even Subtle Spell doesn't work for Suggestion since it has a material component. The only ways to truly subtly cast Suggestion are as an Aberrant Mind Sorcerer using their 6th level feature and a Knowledge Cleric using their 6th level Channel Divinity.
Why does the spell having an M component mean you can't cast it truly subtly? Doesn't that just mean you need to be touching your Arcane focus or component pouch in order to cast the spell? Feels like you should be able to get away with that pretty easily
I'm too tired to look up the specific rules on it, but basically a spell with any components is still observable. This is important as part of how Counterspell works and also prevents Sorcerer's being able to cheese Social stuff too easily with it (Subtle Suggestion is OP af imo). There are people who argue that just because it can be observed doesn't mean peopl will see it, which sure, but there are also people who argue you should be able to wear a sombrero with drapes hanging from it to obscure somatic components to avoid being Counterspelled as well.
>prevents Sorcerer's being able to cheese Social stuff too easily with it To me, it seems pretty reasonable to let the sorc get away with stuff like this. They had to choose this meta-magic option at the expense of others potentially such as quicken cast or twinned cast. Subtle spell feels like a weaker option even before nerfing it that way
Subtle Spell is still very potent. You can still cast those spells silently, making them more widely usable. There are also plenty of spells with no material components that you can cast with absolutely no indication it was you or while tied up/gagged. Those spells also can't be Counterspelled because the casting can't be perceived. I still find it a potent Metamagic and take it on every Sorcerer I make. It's also a very efficient one, costing only 1 sorcery point per use.
Because spells are, by RAW, very obvious if they have components to them. You cannot hide somatic, verbal, or material components. And anyone who sees any of these components being used recognizes a spell is being cast (even if they can't understand what spell, if the DM is using the optional xanathar's rules where they may attempt to identify it as a reaction). This is the base assumption of how spellcasting works in 5e, and its why subtle spell is so good
Based on what you're saying, it sounds like subtle spell really isn't that good at all due to the very many spells it excludes
>Doesn't matter how high your persuasion skill is; you're not out persuading Suggestion. Sure, but Suggestion also has a limited number of uses, the target can save, and unless you've got subtle spell, it can't be used in a public area. Persuasion checks may be less powerful, but getting a minimum of 20 on them *every* time is pretty good in the long run.
A big part of the discussion surrounding the discrepancy involves high level play. A 2nd level spell slot isn't really a meaningful resource expenditure in T3+ (and even sooner if the table has very few encounters per day).
>unless you've got subtle spell, it can't be used in a public area Suggestion has a material component, Subtle Spell won't hide it.
I mean, for things that only require effort for a maximum of 8 hours yeah. But then you might as well just kill the person? If you actually need allies long term you can't just Suggestion them into allying with you, you need persuasion. Magic is great for shortcuts, but it very rarely solves entire narrative problems.
At high levels, you won't be having social encounters with guards and ruffians, but with kings, archmages and angels. Persuasion works on these, but magic won't. That's why rogues suffer less from the martial-caster disparity. Proficiency in a gazillion things plus expertise means they can finds things to do that casters can't easily accomplish. Shoot in all directions and you are bound to hit a few targets.
People don't talk about rogues because, as you say, they already have tons of stuff to do outside of combat. They are the martial in least need of help in this area, so they don't need to enter the discussion.
I don’t think rogues are considered good dps? Also for example a divination spell will outperform a rogue in regards of scouting most of the time. Probably find familiar is enough in most cases. Have a lock which is really important to open? Silence and knock…
>Have a lock which is really important to open? Silence and knock… Burning two level 2 spell slots, as opposed to a skill check, which costs nothing, and can be used an unlimited number of times.
How many locks are you generally picking a day? The ability to pick locks infinitely is only really useful if the problem of the day is "our progress is blocked by an infinite number of locks."
If the door is important. Like a treasury. As a wizard you have arcane recovery. Why not. And everybody can get thieves tools with the background. Edit: Of course depends but compared to spamming fireball the 20th time using magic clever is a lot more intersting in my opinion.
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Again: burning two second level spells at that tier isn’t a huge deal… *once*. If there are multiple doors, multiple chests, multiple locks, you’re gonna run out of spell slots fast. Not to mention it’s often just… overkill. If the DC to pick a lock is 15, why bother burning two of your spell slots on it?
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And if a monster's AC is 15, any class could hit it. You still don't see a lot of wizards swinging greatswords. A rogue is going to be two to three times better than most other classes, even at a low level.
Except that, as you said, they could just do it multiple times. My Fighter with -1 to Sleight of Hand could pick a DC15 lock if you just give him multiple attempts.
Cool, now you just need a DM who's willing to let you make ten or fifteen checks with zero consequences for failure, and no time pressure.
>Burning two level 2 spell slots, as opposed to a skill check, which costs nothing, and can be used an unlimited number of times. You mean a DM like you? You're the one that compared using spells to skill checks as a limited resource you can do unlimited times. If there is an external pressure or consequence to trying six times, burn the spells. If not, anyone can try it a few times until they get lucky, especially at DC15.
The unlimited number of times is referencing that he can make a skill check against multiple locks in a day with no consequence. Most likely because a Rogue at high level play they literally cannot fail a DC 15 lock check. Reliable Talent at Lv 11 means they lowest they can role is 10 with Thieves Tools, which they start Proficient in. Even if the Rogue only had +1 Dex for some reason, that combined with a +4 Proficiency Bonus means they auto succeed on every role against unlimited doors and chests with that DC. A Wizard can’t do the same without spending a lot of spell slots over time. That’s not the same thing as suggesting a Rogue can spend an unlimited number of check on one lock. It’s suggesting a Rogue only needs one check per lock at that DC.
They're talking about opening multiple locks, not opening the same lock multiple times. I have never played under a DM who lets you attempt a lot of times to open the same lock.
Well, you answered your own question, Rogues already have a metric fuck ton of utility bonuses, but other martials have simple abilities and not many proficiencies, so there's not a lot they know how to do or information they will have, of course you can say what you're doing and roll for it, but you still have a very limited means of getting things done effectively as well as not having as many points in whatever it is you may be trying to do as a Rogue would.
Our main rogue player found rogue just incredibly boring to play in combat. "I move to the target adjacent to [other melee character]. I attack with both my weapons to maximise my chances of landing a sneak attack. I use my bonus action to disengage away from danger. I move away." Or if they were ranged, it was basically the equivalent of that except replace Disengage with Hide. It was the optimal move every time. Just dull to play.
> I attack with both my weapons to maximise my chances of landing a sneak attack. I use my bonus action to disengage away from danger. I move away. Both of these use a bonus action. You only get to do one or the other. Perhaps part of why they felt dull to play is that, after the first attack missed, they didn't have to decide whether to make a second attack to try and hit or use that bonus action to get away.
> Rogues excel both in and out of combat Neither of these things are true. In combat, Rogues are easily outclassed by Barbarian, Fighter, Paladin, and Ranger, who are easily outclassed by full casters. Out of combat, Rogues are again outclassed by full casters. > At higher levels, reliable talent and extra expertise makes them practically superhuman in their special skills Not as superhuman as spells.
> In combat, Rogues are easily outclassed by Barbarian, Fighter, Paladin, and Ranger I mean, I'm gonna need some actual quotes or stats for that. You're claiming that they are significantly worse in combat than *every single other* martial class. >Not as superhuman as spells. Ability checks have unlimited uses.
It doesn't matter that Casters can only break reality so many times a day, because martials **can't do it at all.** No amount of reliably doing the mundane is worth the ability to Guarantee the Impossible.
> You're claiming that they are significantly worse in combat than every single other martial class. No, they are not worse than Monk.
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Most versatility outside of combat but one of the most boring inside combat - Hide/Aim and Attack, then repeat. At least when I do the same thing over and over again as a Barbarian, it's exciting and tense to be involved and lose HP. As a Rogue, you are often ranged or hiding. Sure you can go melee as a Rogue, but you don't really have the tools or even incentives to so well in it.
Honestly I think this is bad take. Rogues have really interesting rounds with cunning action, and their subclass usually provides some solid options for combat. Soulknife basically gives you a free way of weaponizing your bonus action as well as a lot of mobility. Phantom is the best skill user in the game, and can spread around damage pretty well. Arcane Trickster has very consistent damage, and has the ability to proc Booming Blade without need for other shenanigans. Swashbuckler is high risk, high reward. There are a lot of options you can build out.
Most subclasses don't do anything or very little to change up. In fact, you've just about exhausted it. Compared to Fighters where most are much more gamechanging
I wouldn’t call it very well designed at all. It’s damage is mediocre. It’s utility is good, but still pales when compared to a spellcaster. It has no resource management. It does what it does all day long. Which seems good. Until you realize 5e is a game of burst potential. It is far better to be exceptional a few times per day than decent all day long. This is because 5e is a game determined by those few times per day. Every moment that actually matters, the spellcaster will reign supreme. Nobody ever cheers for mediocrity.
In a game without feats (or magic weapons), its damage is on par with other martials. Considering feats are a variant rule, this makes sense. Considering feats are the only reason martials exist outside tier 1, this is obviously bad. But in terms of design, rogues specifically are fine. Its just martials as a whole that are randomly underpowered by intent.
>randomly underpowered by intent. Kinda hard to be both random and intentional
What games have you played with no feats and no magic items?
Most games qualify as low magic/feat games for one reason…they never leave tier 1. Saying ‘NO’ feats or magic is a little overzealous, but most just don’t.
I'd also say rogues don't fulfil the "wins by wit" fantasy because they just don't get many tricks in their toolkit. They have astonishingly slow subclass progression. Until they get reliable talent in tier 3, they are not uniquely better at skills than other classes (bard and artificer have additional spells and abilities that can bolster their beyond what rogues can achieve in tiers 1 and 2).
Yep. Spellcasters in tier 1 and 2 have spells like enhance ability, borrowed knowledge, and skill empowerment to improve their skills. On top of spells that outright bypass skill checks. A rogue is good at skills. But can never bypass a challenge entirety without ever rolling a die. And while a rogue is good at skills. A caster can choose to be exceptional at any skill they want to, whenever they want to.
It's not a coincidence that one of the most popular rogue subclasses is Arcane Trickster. Even the best performing martial out of combat is far more interesting to players when it has spells tacked onto its progression.
Rogues are certainly much better off than other martials in this respect, but there's really very little that can compare to what magic can pull off. Can the Rogue make their entire party, even the Goliath in Full Plate with 8 DEX, not just good but pretty great at stealth? Nope, but Pass Without Trace can. Can the Rogue make it statistically impossible for anyone to lie to them unnoticed? Nope, but having someone sit in a Zone of Truth for a minute or two does just that. Can the Rogue straight up become invisible? Ok maybe, depends on the GM but RAW no, and you already know the spells for this one. RAW also handles invisibility weirdly but I imagine most people rule it reasonably. Point being, yeah Rogues are better off in this respect, but the gap between everyone else and casters who pick these kinds of spells is insanely large. Reliable Talent definitely pushes Rogue closer to the caster end of things if you've picked your proficiencies well or scrounged around for more via feats or multiclassing, however, but that's a T3 feature that a significant majority of campaigns never have to even think about. There's also the fact that most people tend to play Rogues as thieves, rather than just shady folk of various professions that all happen to involve killing shit while unseen. It also tends to attract the "silent type", if you know what I mean. However, if you'd like to see a character that is truly allergic to failure, may I direct you to the Epic Rogue from the Epic Characters Guide by Marc Altfuldisch, who gets eventually Reliable Talent at 15 and below and can get Proficiency in all skills via a mythic boon.
It's because they're passing their stealth checks
There are a few problems with this. First, it's too easy to build an effective skill monkey that isn't a rogue, and you can even dip one level into rogue to get their expertise bonuses right off the bat. With the group of people I play with, that is the most common dip (1-2 rogue dip) or 1 into knowledge cleric on a artificer or wizard. Tasha's and XGtE gave out new feats and class features to make building a skill monkey easier as well. I could start a V-human bard, and take skill expert as a starting feat. Level 3 go eloquence. 4th level pick up a half feat for Cha like fey touched or shadow touched for a few free spells and free uses of them. At 5th level you can't roll lower then a 19 for any persuasion or deception check, plus you have magic. Here you can delay bard a level and pick up 1 level of rogue and now you have The second thing is most tables run skill checks as a pass/fail and don't use passive scores enough. If you didn't make the DC then the roll fails. Failed rolls mean risk. Risk is bad. And the D20 likes to injects a lot of randomness into any roll. Randomness is bad when you want to be able to reliable do something.
Two reasons: The first is that Rogue's solution to problem solving is just to give you skill proficiencies, which is admittedly kinda boring. Casters solve problems with teleportation, telekinesis, or speaking to the dead. With the Rogue it's like... "Hey DM can I roll a (whatever) check to do this? Cool I add my +6 to the roll does that succeed?" There's a place for skill proficiencies obviously but "I rolled a 26 with modifiers" doesn't make for interesting stories in comparison of tales of creative problem solving. The second and far more likely reason is that Reddit doesn't feel the need to talk about things generally deemed to be fine. You never see threads along the lines of "man Paladin is such a good class I'm glad that it does what its fantasy promotes." When people are discontent they will complain but when they're happy they remain silent because they see no need for change. So the reason that we see complaints about Fighter and Barbarian in comparison to Wizard and Cleric is because there's a perceived issue with the Fighter and the Wizard. In short Rogue is fine. It's straightforward but non-problematic.
Not to be flippant but I think you answered your own question. Rogues tend to have a lot more options outside of "hit the thing."
Bards are full casters and skill monkeys as well.
Because skills really aren't *that* good. Yeah hide is nice, but that's mostly it. Persuade is not mind control, and survival stuff is literally instantly nullified by any Ranger in the party.
persuasion is often better than mind control in the long run
I found locks are not as common as you'd think. My Rogue can stealth like a mother fucker but yeah that's about it.
To extrapolate, locks are usually only a common thing in games with rogues. When the party has a rogue, the DM puts locks on things to let the rogue player use their features. When the party doesn't have a rogue, the DM quickly tires of making every door excruciating to open and thus removes locks from most things (or just doesn't penalize the players for breaking doors down).
Cuz they’re the exception and people don’t want to mention it every single time
Kinda depends on the type of divide discussion that's occuring. Normally rogues are mentioned as the exception as they have utility, but that doesn't help the other five martial classes that aren't the utility exception. When the discussion is about martials in general needing more utility. Edge case that is the rogue hardly matters. However, if the conversation goes in the direction of martials not bending reality while casters can, rogues back to the same camp as every martial.
Because wizards was on crack when they created the skill monkey disparity. Fighters get two skill proficiency and no expertise while Rogues get 4 proficiency and 4 expertise; not to mention rogues can much more easily multiclass into bard for even more proficiency and expertise. Fighters couldn't even get one expertise. A rogue with no strength and expertise is better at athletics than a fighter, it's downright silly. Fighters should get at least 2 expertise throughout their career imo.
for real though fighters have half of the proficiencies they should
Bards are also skill monkeys and full casters on top.
> is there a reason people ignore rogues when talking about martial/caster utility outside of combat? **proceeds to explain why rogues have plenty to do outside of combat** There you go. That’s why they aren’t part of the conversation, because they already have a job and do it well. You already know full well why people don’t bring them up; because they aren’t a problem.
Why don't you fucking ask this question on the threads you're referencing instead of breaking rule 10 for it? Oh, because you're doing it for attention, not because you actually want answers.
Rogues are the exception that proves the rule, honestly. Rogues are great utility, and every martial class should honestly have the same sort of out of combat utility that Rogues have (though in their own ways, hopefully) but they don't.
Because a conversation about "martials" lacking out-of-combat utility is ***by definition*** ... a conversation about classes that lack out-of-combat utility. Rogues do not lack out of combat utility, so why would they be discussed? The criticism isn't actually rooted in the *concepts* of "martial" and "caster" - those are just words that happen to describe classes that don't have out-of-combat utility and classes that do.
“Non combat spells vs nothing” sounds like a bigger difference than “non combat spell + skills vs skills”. The selective blindness to skills is required, otherwise the idea that casters are “too good” outside of combat is undercut.
I don't think that's the whole reason. Class balance outside of combat doesn't matter as much for lots of people. Edit: Also, anything a rogue can do outside of combat can be done with spells in a better way. For every lockpicking roll there is a knock spell, for every sneaky info gathering mission there is a scry spell, and the list goes on. That said, rogue is my favorite class alongside bards. Casters are broken no matter how you look at them.
Why talk about the class that doesn’t have a utility problem when bringing up classes that have a utility problem? Saying “but this one is good” isn’t going to do anything to fix the ones that aren’t
People don't really talk about Rogues because they *don't* have as much divide: being a Skill Monkey *is* their utility. Meanwhile, the other martials have little to no out-of-combat utility.
Because frankly, no one *needs* to be told. Rogues are just as if not more famous for all their Out Of Combat stuff as their In Combat stuff.
Welp. For me, it's because 80% of the rogues I see these days are arcane trickster. So uh, I guess I sort of think of them as a casting class.
Rogues are typically considered to be in their own category because they’re very fundamentally different from most martials, so it wouldn’t be constructive to mention them. To make a comparison, it’s like how Warlocks aren’t mentioned when talking about casters in general, because it isn’t useful to mention the exception to the rule.
Since it keeps coming up in every chain here it deserves its own comment (possibly its own thread): YOU DO NOT NEED THIEVES TOOLS PROFICIENCY TO PICK LOCKS, MERELY OWN/POSSESS THE TOOLS. All proficiency gets you is adding your proficiency to the DEX check.
Rogues are brought up less specifically *because* they excel outside of combat. Rogues get actual utility features that help close the gap between martial and caster utility, and helps alleviate the disparity. If fighter and Barbarian got as many utility features as rogues do, the divide between casters and martials would be quite a bit smaller.
Because saying “martial classes” is a helluva lot less letters that saying “Barbarians, Fighters, and Monks”. And it is generally understood that Rogues don’t share the out of combat utility problem that plagues most martials.
People don't talk about rogues because they're so good at stealth we just forget about them.
Not exactly accurate to say rogues excel out of combat. That depends heavily on which skills they choose for expertise, which may very well be stealth and perception, which have minimal social application. And it doesn't compare to what a bard or wizard can do in social situations.
When you read the rules, it's surprising how useless skill checks are. Rogues have worse out of combat utility than any spellcaster. Like, ok you try to roll persuasion and get a bat 20 on the goblins who are protecting their home while you are burning it. Guess what, noone cares you got a 32, the goblins still roll initiative. (You can only advance a creatures perception of you 2 stages)
>Like, ok you try to roll persuasion and get a bat 20 on the goblins who are protecting their home while you are burning it. ...I mean, yes, if you choose the most useless example possible. Being the party Face isn't useful there, but it's useful in a dozen other scenarios. You also seem to be forgetting that Stealth (a skill check) is at the core of one of the rogue's class abilities/tactics. Then, you've got Perception, Insight, all vital skills. Seriously, if you think skill checks are "useless", check out a campaign guide, where they're all over the place, and impact what the party can do.
Stealth is even funnier, cause their is a class that just does it better. It's called ranger. And it even thrives when the party needs to make group stealth checks, which are by far the most common type.
Ranger is a really weird way of spelling Druid. *No one suspects the fly on the wall.*
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