The rules for stealth in combat are super ambiguous. It's more or less up to the DM how hiding in combat works.
Melee rogues can't attack, disengage, and hide in the same round. Well I guess swashbucklers more or less could. But that's why they don't typically get advantage from hiding after a possible surprise round.
The rules for stealth in combat are super ambiguous. It's more or less up to the DM how hiding in combat works.
Melee rogues can't attack, disengage, and hide in the same round. Well I guess swashbucklers more or less could. But that's why they don't typically get advantage from hiding after a possible surprise round.
Also swashbucklers are like purpose built for being out in the open mixing it up. They can disengage after attacking for free and move to where they want to draw the person.
Would seem odd to go hide then but I guess you could.
There are races that manage to hide from their surroundings.
Examples are:
Wood Elf with Mask of the Wild. You can attempt to hide even when you are only lightly obscured by foliage, heavy rain, falling snow, mist, and other natural phenomena.
Deep Gnome with Stone Camouflage You have advantage on Dexterity (Stealth) checks to hide in rocky terrain.
Lightfoot Halfling Naturally Stealthy You can attempt to hide even when you are obscured only by a creature that is at least one size larger than you.
The goal of hiding is not to become invisible to everyone but only to an enemy and this means attacking him in blind spots. you could use the halfling's lability to attack an enemy using another enemy's space close to him. Then simply use ninja-like products to distract the enemy and disappear before his eyes. However, there are many ways to hide in combat, just be persuasive with your GM.
There are races that manage to hide from their surroundings.
Examples are:
Wood Elf with Mask of the Wild. You can attempt to hide even when you are only lightly obscured by foliage, heavy rain, falling snow, mist, and other natural phenomena.
Deep Gnome with Stone Camouflage You have advantage on Dexterity (Stealth) checks to hide in rocky terrain.
Lightfoot Halfling Naturally Stealthy You can attempt to hide even when you are obscured only by a creature that is at least one size larger than you.
The goal of hiding is not to become invisible to everyone but only to an enemy and this means attacking him in blind spots. you could use the halfling's lability to attack an enemy using another enemy's space close to him. Then simply use ninja-like products to distract the enemy and disappear before his eyes. However, there are many ways to hide in combat, just be persuasive with your DM.
I think the main GM of my current Group's mind would break if I told them that i was going to use a smoke bomb and the replacement jutsu in the middle of D&D combat.
You could take 3 warrior levels and become an Echo Knight. So with the "manifest Echo" power you could use the replacement jutsu in the middle of D&D combat.
Manifest Echo
At 3rd level, you can use a bonus action to magically manifest an echo of yourself in an unoccupied space you can see within 15 feet of you. This echo is a magical, translucent, gray image of you that lasts until it is destroyed, until you dismiss it as a bonus action, until you manifest another echo, or until you're incapacitated.
Your echo has AC 14 + your proficiency bonus, 1 hit point, and immunity to all conditions. If it has to make a saving throw, it uses your saving throw bonus for the roll. It is the same size as you, and it occupies its space. On your turn, you can mentally command the echo to move up to 30 feet in any direction (no action required). If your echo is ever more than 30 feet from you at the end of your turn, it is destroyed.
As a bonus action, you can teleport, magically swapping places with your echo at a cost of 15 feet of your movement, regardless of the distance between the two of you.
When you take the Attack action on your turn, any attack you make with that action can originate from your space or the echo's space. You make this choice for each attack.
When a creature that you can see within 5 feet of your echo moves at least 5 feet away from it, you can use your reaction to make an opportunity attack against that creature as if you were in the echo's space.
I disagree with the basic assumptions you are making. I am currently playing an Arcane Trickster in a campaign, and here are my observations from actual play:
I am able to generate advantage almost every single turn thanks to (a) the new Steady Aim ability from Tasha's Cauldron of Everything, (b) the Help Action from my familiar, and (c) bonus action Hide. In fact, the only other class that even comes close in terms of generating advantage is the Barbarian, but I can do it without any of the penalties associated with Reckless Attack. You should recompute your numbers assuming advantage every turn instead of your so-called "generous 10%".
Booming Blade and Green Flame Blade provide an additional bump to my damage in addition to some much-needed control.
I have run the numbers myself, and find that my Arcane Trickster has DPR that is above the baseline at every level from 1 to 20, where the baseline is represented by a warlock who specializes in Eldritch Blast by picking up Agonizing Blast at level 2 and using the Hex spell on every attack (this is the baseline established by well-known character optimizer Treantmonk in his Treantmonk's Temple YouTube channel, which you should check out).
Does a Rogue do the most damage out of all the martial character classes? No.
Does it remain competitive in terms of DPR at every single level of play? Yes.
In short, you are trying to fix something that isn't broken, particularly now after the addition of the Steady Aim ability from Tasha's Cauldron.
I disagree with the basic assumptions you are making. I am currently playing an Arcane Trickster in a campaign, and here are my observations from actual play:
I am able to generate advantage almost every single turn thanks to (a) the new Steady Aim ability from Tasha's Cauldron of Everything, (b) the Help Action from my familiar, and (c) bonus action Hide. In fact, the only other class that even comes close in terms of generating advantage is the Barbarian, but I can do it without any of the penalties associated with Reckless Attack. You should recompute your numbers assuming advantage every turn instead of your so-called "generous 10%".
Booming Blade and Green Flame Blade provide an additional bump to my damage in addition to some much-needed control.
I have run the numbers myself, and find that my Arcane Trickster has DPR that is above the baseline at every level from 1 to 20, where the baseline is represented by a warlock who specializes in Eldritch Blast by picking up Agonizing Blast at level 2 and using the Hex spell on every attack (this is the baseline established by well-known character optimizer Treantmonk in his Treantmonk's Temple YouTube channel, which you should check out).
Does a Rogue do the most damage out of all the martial character classes? No.
Does it remain competitive in terms of DPR at every single level of play? Yes.
In short, you are trying to fix something that isn't broken, particularly now after the addition of the Steady Aim ability from Tasha's Cauldron.
Honestly. From what i know about the way TreantMonk approaches some things. I'm surprised he set himself such a low baseline. So that is interesting to hear along with your own personal experiences and resourcefulness.
I disagree with the basic assumptions you are making. I am currently playing an Arcane Trickster in a campaign, and here are my observations from actual play:
I am able to generate advantage almost every single turn thanks to (a) the new Steady Aim ability from Tasha's Cauldron of Everything, (b) the Help Action from my familiar, and (c) bonus action Hide. In fact, the only other class that even comes close in terms of generating advantage is the Barbarian, but I can do it without any of the penalties associated with Reckless Attack. You should recompute your numbers assuming advantage every turn instead of your so-called "generous 10%".
Booming Blade and Green Flame Blade provide an additional bump to my damage in addition to some much-needed control.
I have run the numbers myself, and find that my Arcane Trickster has DPR that is above the baseline at every level from 1 to 20, where the baseline is represented by a warlock who specializes in Eldritch Blast by picking up Agonizing Blast at level 2 and using the Hex spell on every attack (this is the baseline established by well-known character optimizer Treantmonk in his Treantmonk's Temple YouTube channel, which you should check out).
Does a Rogue do the most damage out of all the martial character classes? No.
Does it remain competitive in terms of DPR at every single level of play? Yes.
In short, you are trying to fix something that isn't broken, particularly now with the addition of the Steady Aim ability.
I've said multiple times since the release of Tasha's that aim fixed my issues with the rogue. This thread is pretty old.
Yeah, these posts about how great rogues are with the Optional Aim Feature is literally just confirming the OP.
The OP stated that to compete with other classes rogue needs some way to get a lot of advantage outside of hiding, in this case Flanking. TCoE one-upped the OP by not just granting what OP wanted, but better in the form of Aim, which is 100% advantage all the time regardless of party members.
So stating that the OP is wrong that rogue needs flanking because rogues can keep up using this even better feature just added is kind of proving the point.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
if I edit a message, most of the time it's because of grammar. The rest of the time I'll put "Edit:" at the bottom.
Yeah, these posts about how great rogues are with the Optional Aim Feature is literally just confirming the OP.
The OP stated that to compete with other classes rogue needs some way to get a lot of advantage outside of hiding, in this case Flanking. TCoE one-upped the OP by not just granting what OP wanted, but better in the form of Aim, which is 100% advantage all the time regardless of party members.
So stating that the OP is wrong that rogue needs flanking because rogues can keep up using this even better feature just added is kind of proving the point.
Not really. Flanking is an optional rule and for good reason. It trivializes how easy it is to gain advantage, discourages the use of other spells and features which might grant advantage, and even encourages dogpiling. Or worse, a dreaded "conga line" of combatants. And before we get ahead of ourselves, even Steady Aim is an optional rule. That said, it's more likely to see use as it's AL-legal. Flanking isn't.
It isn't a big deal if the rogue cannot get advantage, or some other bonus, regularly for their attack roll. Most classes can't on their own, which means they're all on even footing in that regard. But you're rarely playing alone. And there are always good uses for the Bonus Action. An arcane trickster has 6 (really 5) spells available to them. A thief can use it to toss an acid (vial) or alchemist's fire (flask), or to stabilize someone with a healer's kit. They can even restore hit points; if they have the Healer feat. Most roguish archetypes get some extra use for their Bonus Action; some sooner than later. And that's to say nothing of any feats they might also take, like Crossbow Expert.
The barbarian has come up a few times in this conversation, but people, I think, keep missing the point of the feature. Barbarians already hit hard, but Reckless Attacks turns them into something else. It pulls double-duty: making them scary threats that hit often for lots of damage while also making them attractive targets. Their at-will advantage is a double-edged sword. And we don't hold the lack of at-will advantage against other classes, so it shouldn't be part of the equation here.
If advantage is not consistently a part of the equation for rogues, from a purely mathematical perspective, they do bad damage. Their average damage output was the worst among martial classes by a fair amount. The only decent way to play a rogue was duel wielding due to the multiple opportunities for sneak attack. Flanking would have fixed single weapon melee rogues and given a small buff to dual wielding rogues but left Archer rogues in still bad territory. Aim fixed all rogues. I want to emphasize this again, this isn't my opinion. This is what doing a probability analysis showed me. I'm guessing the game designers looked at the same math when they decided to integrate aim into the rogue kit. Like the barbarian's reckless attack, it has trade-offs and is a very important feature from Tasha's.
If advantage is not consistently a part of the equation for rogues, from a purely mathematical perspective, they do bad damage. Their average damage output was the worst among martial classes by a fair amount. The only decent way to play a rogue was duel wielding due to the multiple opportunities for sneak attack. Flanking would have fixed single weapon melee rogues and given a small buff to dual wielding rogues but left Archer rogues in still bad territory. Aim fixed all rogues. I want to emphasize this again, this isn't my opinion. This is what doing a probability analysis showed me. I'm guessing the game designers looked at the same math when they decided to integrate aim into the rogue kit. Like the barbarian's reckless attack, it has trade-offs and is a very important feature from Tasha's.
You haven't shown us any math, so we have no idea what numbers you're working with. You're asking everyone here to take what you have to say on faith and virtually everyone disagrees with you. You need to earn that trust.
And until you do, everything you've spouted is your opinion. For crying out loud, we don't even know if your math is correct.
Not really. Flanking is an optional rule and for good reason. It trivializes how easy it is to gain advantage, discourages the use of other spells and features which might grant advantage, and even encourages dogpiling. Or worse, a dreaded "conga line" of combatants. And before we get ahead of ourselves, even Steady Aim is an optional rule. That said, it's more likely to see use as it's AL-legal. Flanking isn't.
The point I was trying to make was probably hindered by the snark, so sorry about that.
I didn't mean to comment on the whole debate on rogue's DPS, because I'm not qualified enough for that. I just commented solely on people using TCoE's Aim as a excuse why rogues can keep up without flanking being a mote point since Aim is (generally-speaking) better than flanking. That is all.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
if I edit a message, most of the time it's because of grammar. The rest of the time I'll put "Edit:" at the bottom.
If advantage is not consistently a part of the equation for rogues, from a purely mathematical perspective, they do bad damage. Their average damage output was the worst among martial classes by a fair amount. The only decent way to play a rogue was duel wielding due to the multiple opportunities for sneak attack. Flanking would have fixed single weapon melee rogues and given a small buff to dual wielding rogues but left Archer rogues in still bad territory. Aim fixed all rogues. I want to emphasize this again, this isn't my opinion. This is what doing a probability analysis showed me. I'm guessing the game designers looked at the same math when they decided to integrate aim into the rogue kit. Like the barbarian's reckless attack, it has trade-offs and is a very important feature from Tasha's.
You haven't shown us any math, so we have no idea what numbers you're working with. You're asking everyone here to take what you have to say on faith and virtually everyone disagrees with you. You need to earn that trust.
And until you do, everything you've spouted is your opinion. For crying out loud, we don't even know if your math is correct.
Not only that but We know that rogues can land hits extremely well without flanking and keep their sneak attack damage. Even without dual wielding which are the two primary components of their damage and nobody has shown that it is significantly lesser or how simply hitting a bit more suddenly changes that fact completely. But having their math and numbers would indeed help with that.
If advantage is not consistently a part of the equation for rogues, from a purely mathematical perspective, they do bad damage. Their average damage output was the worst among martial classes by a fair amount. The only decent way to play a rogue was duel wielding due to the multiple opportunities for sneak attack. Flanking would have fixed single weapon melee rogues and given a small buff to dual wielding rogues but left Archer rogues in still bad territory. Aim fixed all rogues. I want to emphasize this again, this isn't my opinion. This is what doing a probability analysis showed me. I'm guessing the game designers looked at the same math when they decided to integrate aim into the rogue kit. Like the barbarian's reckless attack, it has trade-offs and is a very important feature from Tasha's.
You haven't shown us any math, so we have no idea what numbers you're working with. You're asking everyone here to take what you have to say on faith and virtually everyone disagrees with you. You need to earn that trust.
And until you do, everything you've spouted is your opinion. For crying out loud, we don't even know if your math is correct.
That's fair. However, I doubt that I could teach statistical analysis and probability modeling over the internet. Even if I could or you knew what I was talking about, I don't think I could show the work in a forum nor do I really care to. That's way too much effort into proving something that WotC already fixed and I don't really care that much if you believe me. It's not an issue anymore and this 2 year old thread should probably just be allowed to die.
That aside, you shouldn't need a probability model to at least see how dual wielding is a huge benefit due to added opportunity for dealing Sneak Attack Damage. But seeing as how even that is questioned... let's consider a level 7 example at a 50% chance to hit and completely ignore criticals to make this math stupid easy:
Rogue w/ a Short Bow: (1d6 + 4 + 4d6) * .5 = 10.75 average
Rogue w/ 2 Short Swords: (1d6+4) * .5 + 1d6 * .5 + 4d6 * .75 = 16 average
The difference evens out if you just give the short bow Rogue Aim. 16.125 average. This is way overly simplistic but it's a good example of why on demand advantage is important. Maybe cunning action hide could do that for the bow rogue but it's pretty DM dependent. Either way, again, WotC saw it as something needing fixing. I think we can all just celebrate that it's an option and use it if we like it or ignore it if we don't.
What I find most annoying about all of that is the condescension. As if you're the only person here who understands statistics or how to calculate these things.
The on-demand advantage isn't that important, and it always comes with a cost. That cost has to be balanced against every other option available. It's also not something every class or character needs. You're playing in a group. Learn to cooperate.
And if you really, really need to actually do all these breakdowns to have fun...I'm sorry, but that sucks the fun right out of actually rolling dice and playing the game. Learn to get out of your own head and think about everyone else you're supposed to be playing with.
What I find most annoying about all of that is the condescension. As if you're the only person here who understands statistics or how to calculate these things.
Sorry, that wasn't my intent. But if you're disagreeing with me based on math it's likely that you don't know how to calculate these things with the same level of precision that I do. If you're also a data scientist then my bad.
The on-demand advantage isn't that important, and it always comes with a cost. That cost has to be balanced against every other option available. It's also not something every class or character needs. You're playing in a group. Learn to cooperate.
You're assuming there are other methods available which won't be true in every party composition. If there are other methods of gaining advantage available by virtue of the group, it's likely that every martial class will have access to that advantage and rogues will still be at a disadvantage when it comes to average damage output.
And if you really, really need to actually do all these breakdowns to have fun...I'm sorry, but that sucks the fun right out of actually rolling dice and playing the game. Learn to get out of your own head and think about everyone else you're supposed to be playing with.
I'm playing a monk right now. Far from an optimal class or build and on the low side of damage output. I'm still having fun. I also like numbers and figuring things out. It's fun for me between sessions to dig into the mechanics like this. I never do this at the table or even think about it. I might say something like, "Ugh! 2 nat 1's rolling at advantage?! 1 in 400 chance!" I'd never fault anyone for making sub optimal decisions and honestly I rarely do.
If this type of thing isn't fun for you then why are you here? Why are you making an argument disputing a claim I made 2 years go? What do you care if I enjoy these dives into mechanics and mathematics of the game? To be honest, you're the one now being condescending.
What I find most annoying about all of that is the condescension. As if you're the only person here who understands statistics or how to calculate these things.
Sorry, that wasn't my intent. But if you're disagreeing with me based on math it's likely that you don't know how to calculate these things with the same level of precision that I do. If you're also a data scientist then my bad.
This, right here, is why you should cease with the pretentiousness.
You don't need to be a data scientist to figure out the probability of something happening. Most of us who played 3rd edition figured this stuff out 20 years ago when spreadsheets were practically required. I was in high school back then. It's not complicated. The only thing holding the rogue back, in your eyes, is their all-or-nothing attack roll. But that's just the trade-off of their versatility. If you're always using your Bonus Action for a second attack, sometimes at the cost of a feat, then you're not using it for all of the other cool things available to you. And if everyone has advantage, the rogue will always still be behind; judging by your math. But the reality is, when they hit, they're, on average, hitting for just as much damage as others if not more.
The game, naturally skews more in favor of those with Extra Attack once you start adding feats to the mix. Great Weapon Master and Sharpshooter increase DPR by substantial margins, even after making allowances for the -5 to-hit penalty.
But, for the sake of argument, let's say you're right and rogues are always subpar because they don't have multiple attacks. What's your solution to "balance" things? And, if the damage output were balanced, what would be the incentive to play other classes? Fighters, for example, are only really good at one thing: fighting. If the rogue were now dealing just as much damage on average, even factoring in the fighter's possible 4 attacks, why would anyone play a fighter when they can be just as effective as a rogue?
Your theoretical work, fractioning off damage dealt based on to-hit chances, is cute. But it doesn't matter one iota once the dice start rolling. I know that sounds counterintuitive, because all of your math is based on the probability of die outcomes, but it's true. The flow of a battle can be so random that it makes what happens from turn-to-turn, round-to-round, impossible to accurately predict. And no amount of data analysis, on spreadsheets or otherwise, can account for all of that.
But, for the sake of argument, let's say you're right and rogues are always subpar because they don't have multiple attacks. What's your solution to "balance" things? And, if the damage output were balanced, what would be the incentive to play other classes? Fighters, for example, are only really good at one thing: fighting. If the rogue were now dealing just as much damage on average, even factoring in the fighter's possible 4 attacks, why would anyone play a fighter when they can be just as effective as a rogue?
Can't speak for Lehrer, but WotC sure did have a solution.
Yeah, these posts about how great rogues are with the Optional Aim Feature is literally just confirming the OP.
The OP stated that to compete with other classes rogue needs some way to get a lot of advantage outside of hiding, in this case Flanking. TCoE one-upped the OP by not just granting what OP wanted, but better in the form of Aim, which is 100% advantage all the time regardless of party members.
So stating that the OP is wrong that rogue needs flanking because rogues can keep up using this even better feature just added is kind of proving the point.
4yulming4 hit the nail right on the head.
So I guess WotC did agree that the rogue needed some other way to enable sneak attack. Doesn't matter what the rest of us think. This thread should be left to die unless you want to argue WotC published Steady Aim for no reason whatsoever Jounichi.
The rules for stealth in combat are super ambiguous. It's more or less up to the DM how hiding in combat works.
Melee rogues can't attack, disengage, and hide in the same round. Well I guess swashbucklers more or less could. But that's why they don't typically get advantage from hiding after a possible surprise round.
Also swashbucklers are like purpose built for being out in the open mixing it up. They can disengage after attacking for free and move to where they want to draw the person.
Would seem odd to go hide then but I guess you could.
There are races that manage to hide from their surroundings.
Examples are:
Wood Elf with Mask of the Wild. You can attempt to hide even when you are only lightly obscured by foliage, heavy rain, falling snow, mist, and other natural phenomena.
Deep Gnome with Stone Camouflage You have advantage on Dexterity (Stealth) checks to hide in rocky terrain.
Lightfoot Halfling Naturally Stealthy You can attempt to hide even when you are obscured only by a creature that is at least one size larger than you.
The goal of hiding is not to become invisible to everyone but only to an enemy and this means attacking him in blind spots. you could use the halfling's lability to attack an enemy using another enemy's space close to him. Then simply use ninja-like products to distract the enemy and disappear before his eyes. However, there are many ways to hide in combat, just be persuasive with your GM.
I think the main GM of my current Group's mind would break if I told them that i was going to use a smoke bomb and the replacement jutsu in the middle of D&D combat.
You could take 3 warrior levels and become an Echo Knight. So with the "manifest Echo" power you could use the replacement jutsu in the middle of D&D combat.
Manifest Echo
At 3rd level, you can use a bonus action to magically manifest an echo of yourself in an unoccupied space you can see within 15 feet of you. This echo is a magical, translucent, gray image of you that lasts until it is destroyed, until you dismiss it as a bonus action, until you manifest another echo, or until you're incapacitated.
Your echo has AC 14 + your proficiency bonus, 1 hit point, and immunity to all conditions. If it has to make a saving throw, it uses your saving throw bonus for the roll. It is the same size as you, and it occupies its space. On your turn, you can mentally command the echo to move up to 30 feet in any direction (no action required). If your echo is ever more than 30 feet from you at the end of your turn, it is destroyed.
I disagree with the basic assumptions you are making. I am currently playing an Arcane Trickster in a campaign, and here are my observations from actual play:
Does a Rogue do the most damage out of all the martial character classes? No.
Does it remain competitive in terms of DPR at every single level of play? Yes.
In short, you are trying to fix something that isn't broken, particularly now after the addition of the Steady Aim ability from Tasha's Cauldron.
Honestly. From what i know about the way TreantMonk approaches some things. I'm surprised he set himself such a low baseline. So that is interesting to hear along with your own personal experiences and resourcefulness.
I've said multiple times since the release of Tasha's that aim fixed my issues with the rogue. This thread is pretty old.
Yeah, these posts about how great rogues are with the Optional Aim Feature is literally just confirming the OP.
The OP stated that to compete with other classes rogue needs some way to get a lot of advantage outside of hiding, in this case Flanking. TCoE one-upped the OP by not just granting what OP wanted, but better in the form of Aim, which is 100% advantage all the time regardless of party members.
So stating that the OP is wrong that rogue needs flanking because rogues can keep up using this even better feature just added is kind of proving the point.
if I edit a message, most of the time it's because of grammar. The rest of the time I'll put "Edit:" at the bottom.
Not really. Flanking is an optional rule and for good reason. It trivializes how easy it is to gain advantage, discourages the use of other spells and features which might grant advantage, and even encourages dogpiling. Or worse, a dreaded "conga line" of combatants. And before we get ahead of ourselves, even Steady Aim is an optional rule. That said, it's more likely to see use as it's AL-legal. Flanking isn't.
It isn't a big deal if the rogue cannot get advantage, or some other bonus, regularly for their attack roll. Most classes can't on their own, which means they're all on even footing in that regard. But you're rarely playing alone. And there are always good uses for the Bonus Action. An arcane trickster has 6 (really 5) spells available to them. A thief can use it to toss an acid (vial) or alchemist's fire (flask), or to stabilize someone with a healer's kit. They can even restore hit points; if they have the Healer feat. Most roguish archetypes get some extra use for their Bonus Action; some sooner than later. And that's to say nothing of any feats they might also take, like Crossbow Expert.
The barbarian has come up a few times in this conversation, but people, I think, keep missing the point of the feature. Barbarians already hit hard, but Reckless Attacks turns them into something else. It pulls double-duty: making them scary threats that hit often for lots of damage while also making them attractive targets. Their at-will advantage is a double-edged sword. And we don't hold the lack of at-will advantage against other classes, so it shouldn't be part of the equation here.
If advantage is not consistently a part of the equation for rogues, from a purely mathematical perspective, they do bad damage. Their average damage output was the worst among martial classes by a fair amount. The only decent way to play a rogue was duel wielding due to the multiple opportunities for sneak attack. Flanking would have fixed single weapon melee rogues and given a small buff to dual wielding rogues but left Archer rogues in still bad territory. Aim fixed all rogues. I want to emphasize this again, this isn't my opinion. This is what doing a probability analysis showed me. I'm guessing the game designers looked at the same math when they decided to integrate aim into the rogue kit. Like the barbarian's reckless attack, it has trade-offs and is a very important feature from Tasha's.
You haven't shown us any math, so we have no idea what numbers you're working with. You're asking everyone here to take what you have to say on faith and virtually everyone disagrees with you. You need to earn that trust.
And until you do, everything you've spouted is your opinion. For crying out loud, we don't even know if your math is correct.
The point I was trying to make was probably hindered by the snark, so sorry about that.
I didn't mean to comment on the whole debate on rogue's DPS, because I'm not qualified enough for that. I just commented solely on people using TCoE's Aim as a excuse why rogues can keep up without flanking being a mote point since Aim is (generally-speaking) better than flanking. That is all.
if I edit a message, most of the time it's because of grammar. The rest of the time I'll put "Edit:" at the bottom.
Not only that but We know that rogues can land hits extremely well without flanking and keep their sneak attack damage. Even without dual wielding which are the two primary components of their damage and nobody has shown that it is significantly lesser or how simply hitting a bit more suddenly changes that fact completely. But having their math and numbers would indeed help with that.
That's fair. However, I doubt that I could teach statistical analysis and probability modeling over the internet. Even if I could or you knew what I was talking about, I don't think I could show the work in a forum nor do I really care to. That's way too much effort into proving something that WotC already fixed and I don't really care that much if you believe me. It's not an issue anymore and this 2 year old thread should probably just be allowed to die.
That aside, you shouldn't need a probability model to at least see how dual wielding is a huge benefit due to added opportunity for dealing Sneak Attack Damage. But seeing as how even that is questioned... let's consider a level 7 example at a 50% chance to hit and completely ignore criticals to make this math stupid easy:
The difference evens out if you just give the short bow Rogue Aim. 16.125 average. This is way overly simplistic but it's a good example of why on demand advantage is important. Maybe cunning action hide could do that for the bow rogue but it's pretty DM dependent. Either way, again, WotC saw it as something needing fixing. I think we can all just celebrate that it's an option and use it if we like it or ignore it if we don't.
What I find most annoying about all of that is the condescension. As if you're the only person here who understands statistics or how to calculate these things.
The on-demand advantage isn't that important, and it always comes with a cost. That cost has to be balanced against every other option available. It's also not something every class or character needs. You're playing in a group. Learn to cooperate.
And if you really, really need to actually do all these breakdowns to have fun...I'm sorry, but that sucks the fun right out of actually rolling dice and playing the game. Learn to get out of your own head and think about everyone else you're supposed to be playing with.
Sorry, that wasn't my intent. But if you're disagreeing with me based on math it's likely that you don't know how to calculate these things with the same level of precision that I do. If you're also a data scientist then my bad.
You're assuming there are other methods available which won't be true in every party composition. If there are other methods of gaining advantage available by virtue of the group, it's likely that every martial class will have access to that advantage and rogues will still be at a disadvantage when it comes to average damage output.
I'm playing a monk right now. Far from an optimal class or build and on the low side of damage output. I'm still having fun. I also like numbers and figuring things out. It's fun for me between sessions to dig into the mechanics like this. I never do this at the table or even think about it. I might say something like, "Ugh! 2 nat 1's rolling at advantage?! 1 in 400 chance!" I'd never fault anyone for making sub optimal decisions and honestly I rarely do.
If this type of thing isn't fun for you then why are you here? Why are you making an argument disputing a claim I made 2 years go? What do you care if I enjoy these dives into mechanics and mathematics of the game? To be honest, you're the one now being condescending.
This, right here, is why you should cease with the pretentiousness.
You don't need to be a data scientist to figure out the probability of something happening. Most of us who played 3rd edition figured this stuff out 20 years ago when spreadsheets were practically required. I was in high school back then. It's not complicated. The only thing holding the rogue back, in your eyes, is their all-or-nothing attack roll. But that's just the trade-off of their versatility. If you're always using your Bonus Action for a second attack, sometimes at the cost of a feat, then you're not using it for all of the other cool things available to you. And if everyone has advantage, the rogue will always still be behind; judging by your math. But the reality is, when they hit, they're, on average, hitting for just as much damage as others if not more.
The game, naturally skews more in favor of those with Extra Attack once you start adding feats to the mix. Great Weapon Master and Sharpshooter increase DPR by substantial margins, even after making allowances for the -5 to-hit penalty.
But, for the sake of argument, let's say you're right and rogues are always subpar because they don't have multiple attacks. What's your solution to "balance" things? And, if the damage output were balanced, what would be the incentive to play other classes? Fighters, for example, are only really good at one thing: fighting. If the rogue were now dealing just as much damage on average, even factoring in the fighter's possible 4 attacks, why would anyone play a fighter when they can be just as effective as a rogue?
Your theoretical work, fractioning off damage dealt based on to-hit chances, is cute. But it doesn't matter one iota once the dice start rolling. I know that sounds counterintuitive, because all of your math is based on the probability of die outcomes, but it's true. The flow of a battle can be so random that it makes what happens from turn-to-turn, round-to-round, impossible to accurately predict. And no amount of data analysis, on spreadsheets or otherwise, can account for all of that.
Can't speak for Lehrer, but WotC sure did have a solution.
4yulming4 hit the nail right on the head.
So I guess WotC did agree that the rogue needed some other way to enable sneak attack. Doesn't matter what the rest of us think. This thread should be left to die unless you want to argue WotC published Steady Aim for no reason whatsoever Jounichi.
My solution was what I brought up in the title of the thread. WotC came up with a better option for sure!