DM nerfing my rogue abilities.

This post is really about me complaining about a DM. I’m not really looking for any advice. Sorry for the length of this thing. I just want to ***** about this situation.

I have been in a campaign playing a soul knife rogue. I attack from a distance, using my bonus action to hide. Whenever possible, I hide behind 100% cover. My typical turn is move-attack-move-hide. Using this strategy, I don’t get targeted on attacks a lot. I try to hide in places where AOE attacks won’t effect me. I would argue that this is effective because our healers don’t have to worry about keeping me alive and can concentrate on our front line people.

I joined the campaign at level 2. I managed to make it up to level 5 without taking any damage. It was the third or fourth session at fifth level before I finally took any damage. I mentioned this at the table, because I was proud I’d been able to go that long without taking any damage. Some of that was luck, but most of that was me being smart about how I behaved in combat. A couple times enemies tried to hit me and simply rolled poorly.

When the DM heard my comment, he was upset. I didn’t realize it at the time. In our most recent session, we started out with a battle in a tavern, where I simply didn’t have any opportunity to hide. I was surrounded and couldn’t get free to get away. We ultimately found out that we were being targeted by several hags (we’d killed their sister earlier). We fled the town we were in and ultimately headed into the swamp where one of the hags lived. Our party consisted of a fighter, a paladin, a cleric, and my rogue. I said I’d scout out in front of us about 25 feet, using my stealth to avoid detection. I rolled a 23 or 24 on my stealth, so I figured we were good to go. Soon, several will-o-wisps began to converge on my character. I didn’t think too much of it at the time. We realized that if I stayed within 5 feet of the other party members, they’d leave us alone.

We then ran into a combat encounter with a three-headed dog. When I went to hide among some trees and bushes, the DM had me surrounded by will-o-wisps almost immediately. He wouldn’t even let me try and hide from them. If I moved back to within five feet of the party, they would go away, but then one of the dog heads would hit us with a breath weapon (it only used the breath weapon when I was grouped with the other party members).

We had another encounter where the same thing happened. If I tried to move away from the rest of the party to hide, I’d be immediately surrounded by will-o-wisps. The DM even side I couldn’t hide from them. And, as soon as I returned to the safety of the party, we’d get attacked with AOE attacks. Needless to say, I got knocked down to 0 hit points before we ever reached the hag’s hideout.

Outside of the hag’s house, combat started. I asked if there was something to hide behind in one area, and the DM said yes. I moved over there to hide, and instantly, four zombies popped out of the ground surrounding me. I was able to get away, and ultimately got inside the house. Immediately, a hell hound moved to attack me. It had to take an attack of opportunity from our paladin to attack me. This was the third time that happened during this session. I should mention that I had only been able to deal sneak attack damage once up to this point. In most of our battles, I’d found myself surrounded, unable to hide, with none of my allies within five feet of any of the people I was fighting. There was no need for any of the monsters to view me as a threat at that point. I was dealing between 5 and 10 points of damage per turn.

I was finally able to find places to hide inside the house, dealing sneak attack damage for only the second time all night and killing the hell hound. We were able to kill the hag. The parties healers had exhausted all of their healing keeping me alive, so when our fighter went down near the end of the fight all we had left was one healing potion.

After the battle was over the DM told me that he thought I’d been skating through the previous sessions without really trying, so he decided to make the entire day all about making sure I couldn’t hide (and couldn’t get sneak attack damage off). He then said he was planning on doing the same thing again in the future. He clearly has no idea how to play a rogue. The first time I used uncanny dodge, he said that sounds kind of sketchy. I had to pull out the player’s handbook and show him the wording.

I should point out that in previous battles, I was more than pulling my weight, including taking down a couple strong bosses with sneak attack damage and keeping the number of enemies surrounding our front line people to a minimum. But, the DM acted like I hadn’t been contributing during combat, and tried to take away my best rogue abilities (stealth, disengage, and sneak attack damage) to make me “think strategically.”

I had no strategy during that session because he made it clear he was forcing me to be a front line fighter, and to stay in melee combat throughout the fight. I should note that will-o-wisps have a passive perception of 12, and nothing in their stat block suggests they have an ability to detect hidden creatures beyond that passive perception.

Fair gripe ...
Some people like to win more than others. A good DM is actually a good ST (StoryTeller) as that is the core role, to tell the story, not to win.

My Rogue has Dex20, 13th level, expertise and a luckstone. so that is +16 onto stealth. Reliable talent means minimum roll is 26. Except for our DM who has a 1 as an auto fail ... sometimes house rules catch ya out and burst ya bubble.

First and foremost talk to your DM. Ask them if your character is frustrating them and also explain your recent dissatisfaction with the inability to access your rogue's most basic gameplay loop of "move - hide - attack - move". See if you can find a middle ground so that your character isn't constantly harried every encounter. You also might have to concede that the DM is just not comfortable with designing encounters for the rogue. While it might be less interesting to you, see if the DM would be more comfortable with you playing a fighter instead, as they seemed overwhelmed by the rogue. Mention to them that if they're going to make hiding impossible and constantly force you to the front lines, then you might as well have the armor class, hit dice and associated fighter features (like Second Wind) which are designed for that. While you won't be able to perfectly mimic everything the Soul Knife rogue does, there is the Psi Warrior subclass for fighter as well as feats like Telepathy (and Telekinesis) that offer psionic flavor. 

As far the rogue it is an interesting class. Ostensibly it isn't particularly strong past tier 1 or tier 2 or in a party where character optimization is a more popular mode of play. However at lower levels, where you are now, the rogue's hallmark features come online much sooner and they suddenly have a more dynamic gameplay loop while a class like the fighter is still waiting to pick up feats and a second attack to become a more robust martial character. At level 2 rogues pick up their most basic gameplay loop which you are using now and they get an additional damage die via Sneak Attack before martials and casters pick up anything extra. When nearly every 5X Edition class falls into the typical static combat scenario of "Stand still and punch/shoot until someone's dead" the rogue (and monk) introduces the novel idea of moving during combat. And as silly as that seems it's actually a lot to handle for unseasoned DMs. As you've also noted rogues can get much higher stealth checks than the rest of the party, meaning some monsters might just be incapable of finding a hiding rogue This might be overwhelming for some DMs who have come to expect static encounters, where to them it is fair for everyone to "take their lumps" i.e. have HP loss, Hit Dice loss or resource expenditure such as spell slots, limited use class features etc. Seeing the rogue skate by unfazed by the challenging combat could lead to bad feelings.

Every rogue player has had to turn to their injured, drained party and say "Oh I don't need a short rest. I'm ready to go to the next encounter. I didn't lose any resources" and get the stink eye from everyone. It's just the nature of the class sometimes, but it also shouldn't be every time a combat ends.

Something a DM can do to fairly prevent that is to use the rules as written in 5E to better challenge a rogue (or any class) rather than creating house rules that arbitrarily target a specific player who they see as "abusing the system". Here are some tips you can freely share or use as point of reference in your discussion with your DM on how to best continue the campaign so that no one feels unfairly targeted. 

1. Readied Actions. Creatures might not be able to find the party's rogue in combat because the DM rather not spend a monster's action on the Search Action or risk not rolling a high enough perception checks (thus completely wasting the action). However a creature after the first round should a least be AWARE a rogue is in the fray and start using Readied Actions. Readied Actions allow a creature to set up an "If X then Y" scenario using their action and reaction. Example: As the DM my cultist sets up the trigger "When the Rogue appears, this cultist will cast Firebolt". It uses the Cultist's reaction, which had nothing but Op Attacks to use on anyway, and is better than wasting its entire turn on using the Search action. It circumvents the "rogue always being hidden" dilemma. This works because the Invisible condition ends (in 5.5E) and a creature comes out of hiding after attacking in vanilla 5E. 

2. Varied enemy types per encounter. An encounter populated solely by a single creature or single type of creature is very limited even if less taxing for DM. Simple ways to vary an encounter include - not having all melee monsters and including some range attackers (or vice versa). Other examples include creature with special movement abilities. In 5.5E Goblins and even the Will o Wisp can hide or turn invisible as a Bonus Action not unlike a Rogue. This allows them to more freely move throughout the battle, creating a more dynamic encounter, and set up their own attacks against frequently hidden classes like the rogue. This is no different than have a creature with Counterspell in a combat. It just takes a little more forethought.

3. Creatures with special senses. At lower levels you aren't going to find innate Truesight on many creatures or come across spellasters that can use that spell, but a DM can still throw in creatures with Blindsight or Tremorsense to occasionally trip up characters that frequently hide. Including a creature or two that can use these special sense (or have other unique sense like the Web Walker feature on spider monsters) can be a great way to limit the effectiveness of the rogue's basic gameplay loop. At least for a time until the party deals with that creature.

4. Combing things in moderation. If every combat has a varied group of creatures with Blindsight readying actions to specifically target the rogue or the wizard it's going to generate a lot of very similar, grating encounters that become unfun for the whole table. But if every few encounters you have a spellcaster that has a Bat familiar or pet (CR 0) with them calling out the hidden rogue to its master it creates a more dynamic scenario. In that scenario the rogue (or their party) know they need to find and destroy that Bat familiar first so that the rogue can more freely act. This is also a more organic combat scenario than randomly having will-o'-wisps pop out of the trees to harry the rogue and arbitrarily prevent them from ever using their class features ( also the wisp scenario probably greatly inflates the CR math for the encounter, but I digress). This also works for every class in the game. While not always possible a DM should strive to have most encounters challenge some party members more than others. Occasionally a room is just going to have a Anti-Magic Field and the party wizard is going to have to think outside of the their spellbook and be resoruceful. Some encounters are going to have creatures with auras that hinder melee attackers and the fighter and barbican are going to have to think outside of the Great Weapon Master builds etc. This ensure that sometimes a player feels really good blasting away at monsters and other times is trying to figure out how to solve a problem they can't just blow up immediately.

I'm not sure if any of this will help in the long run since that's how I as the DM would handle the situation and I'm not your DM, but I still think the best solution is talking with your DM and see if you can find a middle ground so that you can have the thrills of playing a sneaky psychic rogue, but also not overwhelm the DM or overshadow the party.

The thing is, that’s what rogues are suppose to be good at, and no offense to them, but they aren’t much good at anything else, at least compared to other classes.

My point is I understand your frustration.