hi guys I’m playing a level 3 rogue and I’m using rapiers at the moment but I want to go into the assassin tree and notoriously ya know rogues have daggers or shortswords of such but they just seem to do less damage that a rapier so I’m not too sure why would you have anything but that?
Flavor and utility. Yes a rapier has the best damage die, but considering most of your damage comes from sneak attack you're not gimping yourself too badly by making a choice for flavor.
Also circumstances may change from a white room theorycrafting max DPR combat encounter. Daggers can be thrown if you have a faster enemy trying to kite you, or easily concealed on your person to assassinate somebody at a no weapons allowed dinner party.
Rapier: Great choice because it's 1d8+DEX and Finesse. So if you plan on doing a single attack a turn then it's perfect. It's 1 attack a turn and if you miss you do 0 damage.
Short Swords: Great choice if you plan on two-weapon fighting. 1d6+DEX and 1d6 a turn. If both attacks hit you deal more damage on average then a rapier. In addition it gives you 2 attacks a turn so 2 chances to Sneak Attack for a slightly smaller die. Hedging your bets for any damage instead of going for max damage.
Daggers get all the two weapon fighting benefits of Short Swords, and you can throw them. It's better to get an attack or two at 20 feet, then not attack even if it's 1d4+DEX. This is often the backup weapon for a Rapier Rogue. Since you get 1 free "draw" a turn, if you can't make it into melee, you can draw and throw a dagger 20' instead of not attacking.
Light Crossbow. It's 1d8+DEX ranged 80'. This is a great weapon, but it suffers from not being compatible with Bracers of Archery and in a module magical crossbows are basically non-existent.
Hand Crossbow. 1d6+DEX with a god awful range of 30' means it's practically a melee weapon. Requires 2 feats to be good (Crossbow Expert and Sharpshooter), but then you can attack twice a turn for 2 chances at Sneak Attack instead of 1, and with Sharp Shooter you can do that out to 120'. Also finding a magical hand crossbow in a module is almost impossible unless the module has Drow.
Shortbow. It's 1d6+DEX out to 80'. Inferior to a Light Crossbow in every way until you get Bracers of Archery and it now does 1d6+2+DEX or magical short bows are more common then magical crossbows in modules.
Longbow: why Elf Rogue is so common. 1d8+DEX out to 150'. In modules magical longbows practically fall from the sky. It's superior to the Light Crossbow in every way and works with Bracers of Archery, you just need to pick Elf as your race which isn't hard when they get +2 Dex, Perception as a skill, and Darkvision.
hmm okay thanks everyone! i've been using the rapier to get 1 shot in and the bonus action to bounce outta there, i think im gunna try and get some shortswords so i can have that two weapon fighting opportunity instead of the slightly higher damage
Your strategy of stab and bounce is sound. Two-weapon fighting is overrated. However, when dual-wielding you could still bounce and only make a second attack if the first missed and you need the hit. I’m still of the preference to bounce lol.
very good advice on elf rogues with longbow. They are the best in my opinion. With elven accuracy you should be hiding everyturn to have advantage (provided DM follows RAW).
Your strategy of stab and bounce is sound. Two-weapon fighting is overrated. However, when dual-wielding you could still bounce and only make a second attack if the first missed and you need the hit. I’m still of the preference to bounce lol.
very good advice on elf rogues with longbow. They are the best in my opinion. With elven accuracy you should be hiding everyturn to have advantage (provided DM follows RAW).
Two weapon fighting is not at all overrated. If you can hide every single turn (which you probably should not be able to do in most cases), then yeah the Elvin Advantage archer rogue does good damage. That requires a DM that interprets the rules pretty liberally. RAW leaves a lot of stealth up to the DM. Most DMs won't let you hide if you just shot an arrow at a guy in a well lit room and then tried to hide behind a barrel. Also, your stealth is not guaranteed to succeed. Even if your DM always lets you hide and even if you always succeed, your damage is about the same as a rogue just attacking with two short swords. You're obviously less likely to take damage though. However, as your hiding success rate decreases, the damage of the archer also falls fairly quickly.
Example scenarios:
At level 20 with no magic weapons against 20 AC target, you maxed Dexterity:
Long Bow attack with Elvin Advantage = 45.8 Average Damage per round
Long Bow attack without Elvin Advantage = 28.7 Average Damage per round
2 Short Swords normal attack = 41.6 Average Damage per round
At level 5 with no magic Items against 16 AC target, your dexterity modifier at +4:
Long Bow attack with Elvin Advantage = 18.4 Average Damage per round
Long Bow attack without Elvin Advantage = 12.2 Average Damage per round
2 Short Swords normal attack = 17.8 Average Damage per round
These numbers are fairly linear across different levels and target ACs.
Sorry, I didn't actually answer the OPs question. From a mathematical perspective, the best weapon for the early game rogue is a double bladed scimitar assuming you take the revenant blade feat. Without taking feats, it's two short swords.
The reason is that if you attack with two weapons, your damage potential increases by a lot. Think of it like this. If you have a 50% chance of hitting something, your average weapon damage with a rapier is 2.25 and your average sneak attack damage at level 3 is 3.5. If your chance of hitting something is 50%, but you're attacking with two short swords, your average weapon damage with your short swords is 2.625 and your average sneak attack damage is 5.25. You also get the added benefit of having another chance of rolling critical damage. The total damage, accounting for critical hits, ability modifiers and everything else, is 7.8 average damage per round for the rapier, and 12 average damage per round for the two short swords. It's not even close at this low a level.
The secret lies in attacking twice which you cannot do with two rapiers unless you take the Dual Wielder feat. Two-weapon fighting allows you to attack with your off hand weapon as a bonus action if you are wielding weapons that have the light property. Dual Weidler allows you to ignore the part about the light property. Short swords are light. Rapiers are not. So in order for you to attack with two rapiers, you'd need the feat. This means you couldn't be doing it until level 4 unless you're a variant human. If you do have the feat, the average damage per round is 13.1 with two rapiers.
If you are taking a feat though, revenant blade feat is a lot better. It requires you to be an elf and so you'd need to be level 4. You get 2d4 damage instead of 1d8 for rapiers (an average damage increase of .5 per swing) but you also get to add your ability modifier to the second attack. That's where the real damage increase comes in at this level. If your level increases to 4, two short swords is doing 13.7, one rapier is doing 9.1, two rapiers with the feat is doing 14.9, and the revenant blade rogue is doing... 17.7. You also get +1 AC. It's honestly a pretty ridiculous feat but it's RAW and RAI.
If you're running an assassin, I'd recommend dual wielding daggers and carrying a bunch of darts. Daggers and darts are much easier to conceal on someone's person than shortswords, rapiers and bows. Most of a rogue's damage comes from sneak attack, so the smaller damage die isn't an issue. You also have proficiency with a poisoner's kit; go harvest some venom off of a friendly druid's giant poisonous snake form or a wizard's poisonous snake familiar.
My gripe is that blowguns are considered martial weapons and rogues and monks don't get that proficiency. They're tiny, easy to conceal and encourage using poisons; by themselves they do almost no damage. It's a stealth weapon, not one someone carries to a battlefield.
Also considder how large a rapier is, it is very hard to conceal.
edit: what the dude above me said ;)
If your Rogue has something like a 6 in Intelligence and an 18 in Dexterity, you can role play him as trying to do Sleight of Hand checks to hide his rapier when he tries to sneak his weapon into places where it isn't allowed. It'll make for some fun roleplaying opportunities to have a Rogue that thinks he can Sleight of Hand hide his rapier (not everything is about min-maxing). There's one guy in my D&D group that thinks that his +6 in Sleight of Hand means that he can get away with almost anything that requires a Sleight of Hand roll, regardless of the difficulty. I'm still not sure if he's intentionally roleplaying his character to be stupid, or if he himself doesn't understand what +6 Sleight of Hand means.
Besides flavor. You can’t dual wield rapiers without the dual wielding feat. Which is why players use daggers and short swords. I personally like having a dagger and lock pick hidden on my person in case of emergency. You can also conceal a dagger and attack with it when someone’s guard is down. In combat dual wielding lets you take two attacks which gives an extra shot at hitting a target with sneak attack if first attack misses and dual wielding with shortsword and dagger gives you the option of throwing a weapon if you can’t reach. Shortbow, Hand crossbow, and longbow if you can gain access to it are great options to snipe your opponent from a distance. Honestly it’s all about playstyle. I used a whip with my Arcane trickster by having booming blade and spell sniper I could use the whip to cast the spell and get sneak attack with reach and stay out of melee with the target or run away.
hi guys I’m playing a level 3 rogue and I’m using rapiers at the moment but I want to go into the assassin tree and notoriously ya know rogues have daggers or shortswords of such but they just seem to do less damage that a rapier so I’m not too sure why would you have anything but that?
Flavor and utility. Yes a rapier has the best damage die, but considering most of your damage comes from sneak attack you're not gimping yourself too badly by making a choice for flavor.
Also circumstances may change from a white room theorycrafting max DPR combat encounter. Daggers can be thrown if you have a faster enemy trying to kite you, or easily concealed on your person to assassinate somebody at a no weapons allowed dinner party.
Rapier: Great choice because it's 1d8+DEX and Finesse. So if you plan on doing a single attack a turn then it's perfect. It's 1 attack a turn and if you miss you do 0 damage.
Short Swords: Great choice if you plan on two-weapon fighting. 1d6+DEX and 1d6 a turn. If both attacks hit you deal more damage on average then a rapier. In addition it gives you 2 attacks a turn so 2 chances to Sneak Attack for a slightly smaller die. Hedging your bets for any damage instead of going for max damage.
Daggers get all the two weapon fighting benefits of Short Swords, and you can throw them. It's better to get an attack or two at 20 feet, then not attack even if it's 1d4+DEX. This is often the backup weapon for a Rapier Rogue. Since you get 1 free "draw" a turn, if you can't make it into melee, you can draw and throw a dagger 20' instead of not attacking.
Light Crossbow. It's 1d8+DEX ranged 80'. This is a great weapon, but it suffers from not being compatible with Bracers of Archery and in a module magical crossbows are basically non-existent.
Hand Crossbow. 1d6+DEX with a god awful range of 30' means it's practically a melee weapon. Requires 2 feats to be good (Crossbow Expert and Sharpshooter), but then you can attack twice a turn for 2 chances at Sneak Attack instead of 1, and with Sharp Shooter you can do that out to 120'. Also finding a magical hand crossbow in a module is almost impossible unless the module has Drow.
Shortbow. It's 1d6+DEX out to 80'. Inferior to a Light Crossbow in every way until you get Bracers of Archery and it now does 1d6+2+DEX or magical short bows are more common then magical crossbows in modules.
Longbow: why Elf Rogue is so common. 1d8+DEX out to 150'. In modules magical longbows practically fall from the sky. It's superior to the Light Crossbow in every way and works with Bracers of Archery, you just need to pick Elf as your race which isn't hard when they get +2 Dex, Perception as a skill, and Darkvision.
hmm okay thanks everyone! i've been using the rapier to get 1 shot in and the bonus action to bounce outta there, i think im gunna try and get some shortswords so i can have that two weapon fighting opportunity instead of the slightly higher damage
Your strategy of stab and bounce is sound. Two-weapon fighting is overrated. However, when dual-wielding you could still bounce and only make a second attack if the first missed and you need the hit. I’m still of the preference to bounce lol.
very good advice on elf rogues with longbow. They are the best in my opinion. With elven accuracy you should be hiding everyturn to have advantage (provided DM follows RAW).
Two weapon fighting is not at all overrated. If you can hide every single turn (which you probably should not be able to do in most cases), then yeah the Elvin Advantage archer rogue does good damage. That requires a DM that interprets the rules pretty liberally. RAW leaves a lot of stealth up to the DM. Most DMs won't let you hide if you just shot an arrow at a guy in a well lit room and then tried to hide behind a barrel. Also, your stealth is not guaranteed to succeed. Even if your DM always lets you hide and even if you always succeed, your damage is about the same as a rogue just attacking with two short swords. You're obviously less likely to take damage though. However, as your hiding success rate decreases, the damage of the archer also falls fairly quickly.
Example scenarios:
These numbers are fairly linear across different levels and target ACs.
Sorry, I didn't actually answer the OPs question. From a mathematical perspective, the best weapon for the early game rogue is a double bladed scimitar assuming you take the revenant blade feat. Without taking feats, it's two short swords.
The reason is that if you attack with two weapons, your damage potential increases by a lot. Think of it like this. If you have a 50% chance of hitting something, your average weapon damage with a rapier is 2.25 and your average sneak attack damage at level 3 is 3.5. If your chance of hitting something is 50%, but you're attacking with two short swords, your average weapon damage with your short swords is 2.625 and your average sneak attack damage is 5.25. You also get the added benefit of having another chance of rolling critical damage. The total damage, accounting for critical hits, ability modifiers and everything else, is 7.8 average damage per round for the rapier, and 12 average damage per round for the two short swords. It's not even close at this low a level.
The secret lies in attacking twice which you cannot do with two rapiers unless you take the Dual Wielder feat. Two-weapon fighting allows you to attack with your off hand weapon as a bonus action if you are wielding weapons that have the light property. Dual Weidler allows you to ignore the part about the light property. Short swords are light. Rapiers are not. So in order for you to attack with two rapiers, you'd need the feat. This means you couldn't be doing it until level 4 unless you're a variant human. If you do have the feat, the average damage per round is 13.1 with two rapiers.
If you are taking a feat though, revenant blade feat is a lot better. It requires you to be an elf and so you'd need to be level 4. You get 2d4 damage instead of 1d8 for rapiers (an average damage increase of .5 per swing) but you also get to add your ability modifier to the second attack. That's where the real damage increase comes in at this level. If your level increases to 4, two short swords is doing 13.7, one rapier is doing 9.1, two rapiers with the feat is doing 14.9, and the revenant blade rogue is doing... 17.7. You also get +1 AC. It's honestly a pretty ridiculous feat but it's RAW and RAI.
Human rouge shortbow 4 daggers and a short sword
If you're running an assassin, I'd recommend dual wielding daggers and carrying a bunch of darts. Daggers and darts are much easier to conceal on someone's person than shortswords, rapiers and bows. Most of a rogue's damage comes from sneak attack, so the smaller damage die isn't an issue. You also have proficiency with a poisoner's kit; go harvest some venom off of a friendly druid's giant poisonous snake form or a wizard's poisonous snake familiar.
My gripe is that blowguns are considered martial weapons and rogues and monks don't get that proficiency. They're tiny, easy to conceal and encourage using poisons; by themselves they do almost no damage. It's a stealth weapon, not one someone carries to a battlefield.
Also considder how large a rapier is, it is very hard to conceal.
edit: what the dude above me said ;)
If your Rogue has something like a 6 in Intelligence and an 18 in Dexterity, you can role play him as trying to do Sleight of Hand checks to hide his rapier when he tries to sneak his weapon into places where it isn't allowed. It'll make for some fun roleplaying opportunities to have a Rogue that thinks he can Sleight of Hand hide his rapier (not everything is about min-maxing). There's one guy in my D&D group that thinks that his +6 in Sleight of Hand means that he can get away with almost anything that requires a Sleight of Hand roll, regardless of the difficulty. I'm still not sure if he's intentionally roleplaying his character to be stupid, or if he himself doesn't understand what +6 Sleight of Hand means.
Besides flavor. You can’t dual wield rapiers without the dual wielding feat. Which is why players use daggers and short swords. I personally like having a dagger and lock pick hidden on my person in case of emergency. You can also conceal a dagger and attack with it when someone’s guard is down. In combat dual wielding lets you take two attacks which gives an extra shot at hitting a target with sneak attack if first attack misses and dual wielding with shortsword and dagger gives you the option of throwing a weapon if you can’t reach. Shortbow, Hand crossbow, and longbow if you can gain access to it are great options to snipe your opponent from a distance. Honestly it’s all about playstyle. I used a whip with my Arcane trickster by having booming blade and spell sniper I could use the whip to cast the spell and get sneak attack with reach and stay out of melee with the target or run away.
Your secret is safe with my indifference - Percy
If you don’t have dual wielder you can’t use a rapier and shortsword when two weapon fighting both weapons have to be light.
Your secret is safe with my indifference - Percy