I've recently seen some talk about some of the subclasses and races being too OP, and wanted to see if someone maybe had a list with short explanations as to why they're overpowered?
I don’t think anything is OP the problem is more some subclasses are a bit underwhelming when you actually look at them.
Others may well disagree but as a dm you can use creative tactics, monsters and environment to make any encounter dangerous to the players. One party I DM for have learnt that sending the totem Barbarian forward as a tank is only useful if the squishy back line isn’t going to be ambushed from behind, or that if the Barbarian can’t fly, then he is going to look really stupid stood there flailing a sword around at the flying dragon.
My biggest issue is players taking the more interesting subclasses and finding once they are in them that, they are actually pretty boring. The wild Magic Barbarian for instance, I know that my player who just got to level 3 is going to find it quirky for the first few combats, but will then start getting bored at how little impact his subclass has in the battlefield. Which is a shame because narratively the story behind his character having it is amazing, so I am starting to review homebrewing some tweaks to the table to make it a bit more punchy.
It's a small thing, but I've found the eloquence bard to be really broken. I have a level 3 bard in my party who minimum gets an 18 on any persuasion or deception rolls. Like its just a social thing, but it means that any social exchange reliant on rolls is just broken.
In my experience, you're not going to find a single thing that a majority of people agree is overpowered. Some people say it about one thing, others bring up cases where its very much weak. Example - Order of Scribes Wizard. Some people find the ability to replace energy type overpowered. Other people, such as myself, find it vastly underpowered. It all depends on how much the GM relies on elemental resistances (which, in my experience, is a low amount).
The closest thing to something consistently being called overpowered are the flying races. And, even then? Its debatable.
It's a small thing, but I've found the eloquence bard to be really broken. I have a level 3 bard in my party who minimum gets an 18 on any persuasion or deception rolls. Like its just a social thing, but it means that any social exchange reliant on rolls is just broken.
I never make social interactions purely about the roles, if the player doesn’t ask the right questions or engage in the right way then it doesn’t matter what their stats are. Also your key NPCs can have equally high social attributes to roll off against your bard.
Another alternative is group roles, you should be doing it already for stealth rolls (the whole party is sneaking through the castle so get everyone to roll and take the average meaning if 1 rolls a one but the rest roll high they still manage to sneak through).
Well I do that for deception rolls, the hard might be doing the talking, but all the other players are giving off body language, generally In this situation I work it 2 ways, either get all the other players to roll deception, if they do badly the bard rolls with disadvantage. Or I mentally set a lower DC for anyone not speaking.
Hexblade is broken from the standpoint that a single level dip lets you use Charisma instead of Strength or Dex for another class like Paladin.
Why would a paladin not want a high dex or strength anyway? Charisma is not a key stat when building a paladin and, if like me you prevent multiclassing as a DM until level 5 that’s a lot of early game that they will be suffering eyehole waiting.
It's mostly specific multiclass combinations that I see being considered either overpowered, or at the very least game breaking.
Hexadin is considered one of the most powerful subclass combinations for the reasons stated above. Hexblade is already a really powerful subclass on its own, but it pairs really well with Paladin. Although there is something funny about a Paladin with terrible strength, since it so goes against the traditional image of hte class.
"Coffeelock" is probably the other one that gets decried the most... that's a combination Warlock/Sorcerer which uses an invocation or some other feature to make themselves no longer require sleep to avoid exhaustion. This means they can take multiple short rests at night instead, which creates warlock spell slots, which they can convert to sorcerer points, then back into spell slots. It basically lets them bank an obscene number of Sorcery Points, since I believe there's no cap on how many sorcery points a Sorcerer can have at a given time.
As for Races...
Aarakocra is probably the most obvious one, since they can just straight up fly right at level 1 at zero cost. It's not as difficult to deal with as some people make it seem, but it does for the DM to think differently and potentially do some extra work. If you're running players through any of the pre-written adventures it can trivialize some of the challenges in those, since they're largely written under the assumption that players can't just fly at will.
Yuan-Ti Purebloods are also pretty front-loaded with great stuff... they're outright immune to poison, and have advantage on all saving throws against magic of any kind.
Speaking of Poison Immunities, Grungs are surprisingly pretty good. They're immune to poison, and are also poisonous to touch, and they can inflict the poisoned condition on enemies by grappling them and can apply poison to their own weapons as part of the attack action. They're also amphibious and can jump extra far, but those aren't too overdone. They're a bit balanced, though, because they're one of very few races that doesn't speak Common by default and they need to regularly immerse themselves in water or suffer exhaustion.
The various Dragonmark races are pretty much all not particularly well balanced. They all give pretty big bonuses and add to the spell lists of any caster class. From what I've heard, they're meant to be balanced by the fact that, in the Eberron setting, having a Dragon Mark is essentially a huge target on your back for various groups, but if you don't include that in the game there's basically no cost for them.
This one isn't really considered unbalanced by most, but I personally think Goblins are a tad overpowered. They essentially start with a Rogue's second level ability to disengage or hide as a bonus action, which can be crazy helpful when given to non-Rogue classes. It's kind of funny to me that Goblin Rogues are so popular, since I personally think it just creates a huge redundancy in major features.
Anyway, 5e isn't super tightly balanced in general. I think the fact that it's not a competitive game by default is a big contributor... there's no need to carefully balance every player class and race against the others, since players aren't really meant to fight one another on the regular.
As others have said, Hexblade is near the top of the list, but only if it is used as a MC dip for 2 levels. I have tried to play a pure Hexblade, and while it is OP at low levels, it averages out at higher levels.
I have also found Conquest Paladin mixed with the Fallen Aasimar race is a bad joke. Then we get into Grave Cleric, Tempest Cleric (max Lightning / Thunder damage with Channel Divinity is insane), and of course, the new flavour of the month: Twilight Cleric. And of course, any Artificer subclass in a scarce magic setting.
Anyway, 5e isn't super tightly balanced in general.
And note that it was not the intent of the designers to make it so, they learnt their lessons from previous editions, where 3e showed that it was impossible with the standard D&D paradigm and 4e confirming that the only way to do it was to redesign the game so completely from the bottom up and restrict it so much that it became a failure.
Well, 4e isn't the only way you could redesign it, but in the end, if you want to balance D&D you have to either reconsider your paradigm for a what martial classes are, or you have to rethink your paradigm for what spellcasting classes are, because each set is roughly balanced against others in that same set, but one operates on a scale of competent normals, one operates on a scale of superpowers. While 4e did boost martial classes somewhat, it nerfed spellcasters far more; it's certainly possible to instead boost martial classes and maybe that would be more accepted.
The problem I have with them is their Long Limbed racial trait. Just an extra 5 feet of range. It seems trivial enough at first glance, but when you look at it for a while... Just how far away can they be and still make a Sneak Attack? Take a simple example. A Bugbear Rogue armed with a Rapier. Rogues are built to use Dex, Bugbears get one extra point in that, good to go. If you let them roll their scores that lets them sneak attack, at first level; 1D8 + 2D6 + dex. 8 to 25 with a 20 dex. On a crit that's 2D8 + 4D6 + dex. 11 to 45. From 10 feet away.
I'm really not comfortable with any of the races outside the Player's Handbook, and I'm a little iffy about some of them.
A high elf with a longbow can sneak attack from 150 feet away.
And with Sharpshooter, can do so from 600'. A general problem with melee vs ranged in D&D is that the game is balanced for dungeons where range doesn't matter because your line of sight is maybe 60', at an outdoor engagement range of 300' a melee character might as well make popcorn for all the good they're going to do.
"Yeah, my point was that being able to sneak attack at 10 feet was not actually as huge of a thing as it was being made out to be."
It isn't a huge deal. It's just... kinda iffy. I don't much like the idea. Having the Bugbear Rogue standing behind the party tank, stabbing at will and getting a sneak attack does not amuse me. Using a Reach weapon for added humor still doesn't make me laugh. It's a minor gripe. Bugbear innate Sneak Attack only applies on the first turn of combat I think... I don't believe it would stack with the Rogue Sneak Attack. Now *that* would be OP.
Ranged weapons are a whole different world of problems for me. Arakokra top the list of OP Races at that point. Flight at low levels isn't necessarily overpowered, but it does make for extra work. I like running outdoor adventures where environmental hazards make things a challenge. I like to make finding the location with the good loot difficult. Were it not, wouldn't it have been plundered ages ago? So a bird flying around avoids a lot of problems, be it a familiar or an Arakokra.
For subclasses, it's Hexblade. I'm firmly in the I-Don't-Like-Hexblades camp. They get too many goodies at first level. Subclass benefits shouldn't kick in until after you have selected the subclass, at 3rd level. The Hexblade is pretty much tops on the list of stuff to take a level or two in before getting serious.
"Yeah, my point was that being able to sneak attack at 10 feet was not actually as huge of a thing as it was being made out to be."
It isn't a huge deal. It's just... kinda iffy. I don't much like the idea. Having the Bugbear Rogue standing behind the party tank, stabbing at will and getting a sneak attack does not amuse me. Using a Reach weapon for added humor still doesn't make me laugh. It's a minor gripe. Bugbear innate Sneak Attack only applies on the first turn of combat I think... I don't believe it would stack with the Rogue Sneak Attack. Now *that* would be OP.
Ranged weapons are a whole different world of problems for me. Arakokra top the list of OP Races at that point. Flight at low levels isn't necessarily overpowered, but it does make for extra work. I like running outdoor adventures where environmental hazards make things a challenge. I like to make finding the location with the good loot difficult. Were it not, wouldn't it have been plundered ages ago? So a bird flying around avoids a lot of problems, be it a familiar or an Arakokra.
For subclasses, it's Hexblade. I'm firmly in the I-Don't-Like-Hexblades camp. They get too many goodies at first level. Subclass benefits shouldn't kick in until after you have selected the subclass, at 3rd level. The Hexblade is pretty much tops on the list of stuff to take a level or two in before getting serious.
I agree that Bugbears don't belong as a playable species in the game. I believe most of the ones opened up by this relaxation of the rules should not be allowed though. As for Reach and Sneak Attack, I have a Halfling Scout Rogue who took 1 level of Fighter, for several reasons, but one was the fact that I can now use a Whip, which is Reach and Finesse, and qualifies for Sneak Attack. So your argument about 10 foot Sneak Attacks is not that strong.
Now, where you should be going with your arguments is where a Bugbear with a level of Fighter (or Hexblade, which should never be allowed as part of an MC'ed char) employs a Whip, and can now Sneak Attack at 15 feet. Now, that 15 feet range does not work on an Opportunity Attack, since an OA is not on your turn. But it is still lethal. Few creatures have a 15 foot reach, so a Bugbear Rogue never has to use Disengage to stay out of Opportunity Attack range, and can use Cunning Action to Dash. Bugbear starts 45 feet away from target, Moves in 30, Sneak Attack, then uses Cunning Action to Dash back to the 45 foot distance.
I agree that Bugbears don't belong as a playable species in the game. I believe most of the ones opened up by this relaxation of the rules should not be allowed though. As for Reach and Sneak Attack, I have a Halfling Scout Rogue who took 1 level of Fighter, for several reasons, but one was the fact that I can now use a Whip, which is Reach and Finesse, and qualifies for Sneak Attack. So your argument about 10 foot Sneak Attacks is not that strong.
Ha! The Whip! You haven't gotten to the real terror of a whip in the hands of a Bugbear. 10 foot reach, so far, so good. How long exactly is a whip? The wonderful whip that Indiana Jones made so famous and that I believe is the reason they got dropped into the game in the first place? Ten feet long? Longer? So yeah, sneak attack from 20 feet away. It is starting to get to the point where that Bugbear can just keep moving out of range and attacking. All. Day. Long.
Thorn Whip has a range of 30 feet. It's a cantrip, and I bet you anything someone will get a DM to let them play a Bugbear Hexblade with Thorn Whip. Since a Bugbear's reach is 10 feet, do they get to hit things 40 feet away? Do they get to sneak attack with it?
I agree that Bugbears don't belong as a playable species in the game. I believe most of the ones opened up by this relaxation of the rules should not be allowed though. As for Reach and Sneak Attack, I have a Halfling Scout Rogue who took 1 level of Fighter, for several reasons, but one was the fact that I can now use a Whip, which is Reach and Finesse, and qualifies for Sneak Attack. So your argument about 10 foot Sneak Attacks is not that strong.
Ha! The Whip! You haven't gotten to the real terror of a whip in the hands of a Bugbear. 10 foot reach, so far, so good. How long exactly is a whip? The wonderful whip that Indiana Jones made so famous and that I believe is the reason they got dropped into the game in the first place? Ten feet long? Longer? So yeah, sneak attack from 20 feet away. It is starting to get to the point where that Bugbear can just keep moving out of range and attacking. All. Day. Long.
Thorn Whip has a range of 30 feet. It's a cantrip, and I bet you anything someone will get a DM to let them play a Bugbear Hexblade with Thorn Whip. Since a Bugbear's reach is 10 feet, do they get to hit things 40 feet away? Do they get to sneak attack with it?
Nah, won't work. The Whip is specifically a Reach Weapon = 10 feet. And Thornwhip does not qualify for Sneak Attack. Plus Thornwhip has a hard 30 foot range, no more. If the DM starts allowing longer ranges, oh man, the DM has no clue what they are doing.
Bugbears get an extra five feet of reach. Not ten feet. So they can hit you with a whip or a halberd at 15 feet, not twenty. And they can Thorn Whip you at 35.
And again, any rogue can use a ranged weapon to deliver sneak attacks out to the weapon's short range. Or its long range if they take Sharpshooter. So bugbears getting an extra five feet of melee sneak attack is really, really not worth getting excited over. Because they're not actually able to do anything that any other rogue couldn't.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Find your own truth, choose your enemies carefully, and never deal with a dragon.
"Canon" is what's factual to D&D lore. "Cannon" is what you're going to be shot with if you keep getting the word wrong.
To post a comment, please login or register a new account.
I've recently seen some talk about some of the subclasses and races being too OP, and wanted to see if someone maybe had a list with short explanations as to why they're overpowered?
Published Subclasses
I don’t think anything is OP the problem is more some subclasses are a bit underwhelming when you actually look at them.
Others may well disagree but as a dm you can use creative tactics, monsters and environment to make any encounter dangerous to the players. One party I DM for have learnt that sending the totem Barbarian forward as a tank is only useful if the squishy back line isn’t going to be ambushed from behind, or that if the Barbarian can’t fly, then he is going to look really stupid stood there flailing a sword around at the flying dragon.
My biggest issue is players taking the more interesting subclasses and finding once they are in them that, they are actually pretty boring. The wild Magic Barbarian for instance, I know that my player who just got to level 3 is going to find it quirky for the first few combats, but will then start getting bored at how little impact his subclass has in the battlefield. Which is a shame because narratively the story behind his character having it is amazing, so I am starting to review homebrewing some tweaks to the table to make it a bit more punchy.
It's a small thing, but I've found the eloquence bard to be really broken. I have a level 3 bard in my party who minimum gets an 18 on any persuasion or deception rolls. Like its just a social thing, but it means that any social exchange reliant on rolls is just broken.
Hexblade is broken from the standpoint that a single level dip lets you use Charisma instead of Strength or Dex for another class like Paladin.
Find your own truth, choose your enemies carefully, and never deal with a dragon.
"Canon" is what's factual to D&D lore. "Cannon" is what you're going to be shot with if you keep getting the word wrong.
In my experience, you're not going to find a single thing that a majority of people agree is overpowered. Some people say it about one thing, others bring up cases where its very much weak. Example - Order of Scribes Wizard. Some people find the ability to replace energy type overpowered. Other people, such as myself, find it vastly underpowered. It all depends on how much the GM relies on elemental resistances (which, in my experience, is a low amount).
The closest thing to something consistently being called overpowered are the flying races. And, even then? Its debatable.
I never make social interactions purely about the roles, if the player doesn’t ask the right questions or engage in the right way then it doesn’t matter what their stats are. Also your key NPCs can have equally high social attributes to roll off against your bard.
Another alternative is group roles, you should be doing it already for stealth rolls (the whole party is sneaking through the castle so get everyone to roll and take the average meaning if 1 rolls a one but the rest roll high they still manage to sneak through).
Well I do that for deception rolls, the hard might be doing the talking, but all the other players are giving off body language, generally In this situation I work it 2 ways, either get all the other players to roll deception, if they do badly the bard rolls with disadvantage. Or I mentally set a lower DC for anyone not speaking.
Why would a paladin not want a high dex or strength anyway? Charisma is not a key stat when building a paladin and, if like me you prevent multiclassing as a DM until level 5 that’s a lot of early game that they will be suffering eyehole waiting.
The Hexblade dip turns Paladins from MAD to SAD. At that point they can ignore their strength score because they'll be using charisma for everything.
Find your own truth, choose your enemies carefully, and never deal with a dragon.
"Canon" is what's factual to D&D lore. "Cannon" is what you're going to be shot with if you keep getting the word wrong.
It's mostly specific multiclass combinations that I see being considered either overpowered, or at the very least game breaking.
Hexadin is considered one of the most powerful subclass combinations for the reasons stated above. Hexblade is already a really powerful subclass on its own, but it pairs really well with Paladin. Although there is something funny about a Paladin with terrible strength, since it so goes against the traditional image of hte class.
"Coffeelock" is probably the other one that gets decried the most... that's a combination Warlock/Sorcerer which uses an invocation or some other feature to make themselves no longer require sleep to avoid exhaustion. This means they can take multiple short rests at night instead, which creates warlock spell slots, which they can convert to sorcerer points, then back into spell slots. It basically lets them bank an obscene number of Sorcery Points, since I believe there's no cap on how many sorcery points a Sorcerer can have at a given time.
As for Races...
Aarakocra is probably the most obvious one, since they can just straight up fly right at level 1 at zero cost. It's not as difficult to deal with as some people make it seem, but it does for the DM to think differently and potentially do some extra work. If you're running players through any of the pre-written adventures it can trivialize some of the challenges in those, since they're largely written under the assumption that players can't just fly at will.
Yuan-Ti Purebloods are also pretty front-loaded with great stuff... they're outright immune to poison, and have advantage on all saving throws against magic of any kind.
Speaking of Poison Immunities, Grungs are surprisingly pretty good. They're immune to poison, and are also poisonous to touch, and they can inflict the poisoned condition on enemies by grappling them and can apply poison to their own weapons as part of the attack action. They're also amphibious and can jump extra far, but those aren't too overdone. They're a bit balanced, though, because they're one of very few races that doesn't speak Common by default and they need to regularly immerse themselves in water or suffer exhaustion.
The various Dragonmark races are pretty much all not particularly well balanced. They all give pretty big bonuses and add to the spell lists of any caster class. From what I've heard, they're meant to be balanced by the fact that, in the Eberron setting, having a Dragon Mark is essentially a huge target on your back for various groups, but if you don't include that in the game there's basically no cost for them.
This one isn't really considered unbalanced by most, but I personally think Goblins are a tad overpowered. They essentially start with a Rogue's second level ability to disengage or hide as a bonus action, which can be crazy helpful when given to non-Rogue classes. It's kind of funny to me that Goblin Rogues are so popular, since I personally think it just creates a huge redundancy in major features.
Anyway, 5e isn't super tightly balanced in general. I think the fact that it's not a competitive game by default is a big contributor... there's no need to carefully balance every player class and race against the others, since players aren't really meant to fight one another on the regular.
Watch Crits for Breakfast, an adults-only RP-Heavy Roll20 Livestream at twitch.tv/afterdisbooty
And now you too can play with the amazing art and assets we use in Roll20 for our campaign at Hazel's Emporium
As others have said, Hexblade is near the top of the list, but only if it is used as a MC dip for 2 levels. I have tried to play a pure Hexblade, and while it is OP at low levels, it averages out at higher levels.
I have also found Conquest Paladin mixed with the Fallen Aasimar race is a bad joke. Then we get into Grave Cleric, Tempest Cleric (max Lightning / Thunder damage with Channel Divinity is insane), and of course, the new flavour of the month: Twilight Cleric. And of course, any Artificer subclass in a scarce magic setting.
Well, 4e isn't the only way you could redesign it, but in the end, if you want to balance D&D you have to either reconsider your paradigm for a what martial classes are, or you have to rethink your paradigm for what spellcasting classes are, because each set is roughly balanced against others in that same set, but one operates on a scale of competent normals, one operates on a scale of superpowers. While 4e did boost martial classes somewhat, it nerfed spellcasters far more; it's certainly possible to instead boost martial classes and maybe that would be more accepted.
Race: Bugbear
The problem I have with them is their Long Limbed racial trait. Just an extra 5 feet of range. It seems trivial enough at first glance, but when you look at it for a while... Just how far away can they be and still make a Sneak Attack? Take a simple example. A Bugbear Rogue armed with a Rapier. Rogues are built to use Dex, Bugbears get one extra point in that, good to go. If you let them roll their scores that lets them sneak attack, at first level; 1D8 + 2D6 + dex. 8 to 25 with a 20 dex. On a crit that's 2D8 + 4D6 + dex. 11 to 45. From 10 feet away.
I'm really not comfortable with any of the races outside the Player's Handbook, and I'm a little iffy about some of them.
<Insert clever signature here>
A high elf with a longbow can sneak attack from 150 feet away.
Find your own truth, choose your enemies carefully, and never deal with a dragon.
"Canon" is what's factual to D&D lore. "Cannon" is what you're going to be shot with if you keep getting the word wrong.
And with Sharpshooter, can do so from 600'. A general problem with melee vs ranged in D&D is that the game is balanced for dungeons where range doesn't matter because your line of sight is maybe 60', at an outdoor engagement range of 300' a melee character might as well make popcorn for all the good they're going to do.
Yeah, my point was that being able to sneak attack at 10 feet was not actually as huge of a thing as it was being made out to be.
Find your own truth, choose your enemies carefully, and never deal with a dragon.
"Canon" is what's factual to D&D lore. "Cannon" is what you're going to be shot with if you keep getting the word wrong.
"Yeah, my point was that being able to sneak attack at 10 feet was not actually as huge of a thing as it was being made out to be."
It isn't a huge deal. It's just... kinda iffy. I don't much like the idea. Having the Bugbear Rogue standing behind the party tank, stabbing at will and getting a sneak attack does not amuse me. Using a Reach weapon for added humor still doesn't make me laugh. It's a minor gripe. Bugbear innate Sneak Attack only applies on the first turn of combat I think... I don't believe it would stack with the Rogue Sneak Attack. Now *that* would be OP.
Ranged weapons are a whole different world of problems for me. Arakokra top the list of OP Races at that point. Flight at low levels isn't necessarily overpowered, but it does make for extra work. I like running outdoor adventures where environmental hazards make things a challenge. I like to make finding the location with the good loot difficult. Were it not, wouldn't it have been plundered ages ago? So a bird flying around avoids a lot of problems, be it a familiar or an Arakokra.
For subclasses, it's Hexblade. I'm firmly in the I-Don't-Like-Hexblades camp. They get too many goodies at first level. Subclass benefits shouldn't kick in until after you have selected the subclass, at 3rd level. The Hexblade is pretty much tops on the list of stuff to take a level or two in before getting serious.
<Insert clever signature here>
I agree that Bugbears don't belong as a playable species in the game. I believe most of the ones opened up by this relaxation of the rules should not be allowed though. As for Reach and Sneak Attack, I have a Halfling Scout Rogue who took 1 level of Fighter, for several reasons, but one was the fact that I can now use a Whip, which is Reach and Finesse, and qualifies for Sneak Attack. So your argument about 10 foot Sneak Attacks is not that strong.
Now, where you should be going with your arguments is where a Bugbear with a level of Fighter (or Hexblade, which should never be allowed as part of an MC'ed char) employs a Whip, and can now Sneak Attack at 15 feet. Now, that 15 feet range does not work on an Opportunity Attack, since an OA is not on your turn. But it is still lethal. Few creatures have a 15 foot reach, so a Bugbear Rogue never has to use Disengage to stay out of Opportunity Attack range, and can use Cunning Action to Dash. Bugbear starts 45 feet away from target, Moves in 30, Sneak Attack, then uses Cunning Action to Dash back to the 45 foot distance.
Ha! The Whip! You haven't gotten to the real terror of a whip in the hands of a Bugbear. 10 foot reach, so far, so good. How long exactly is a whip? The wonderful whip that Indiana Jones made so famous and that I believe is the reason they got dropped into the game in the first place? Ten feet long? Longer? So yeah, sneak attack from 20 feet away. It is starting to get to the point where that Bugbear can just keep moving out of range and attacking. All. Day. Long.
Thorn Whip has a range of 30 feet. It's a cantrip, and I bet you anything someone will get a DM to let them play a Bugbear Hexblade with Thorn Whip. Since a Bugbear's reach is 10 feet, do they get to hit things 40 feet away? Do they get to sneak attack with it?
<Insert clever signature here>
Nah, won't work. The Whip is specifically a Reach Weapon = 10 feet. And Thornwhip does not qualify for Sneak Attack. Plus Thornwhip has a hard 30 foot range, no more. If the DM starts allowing longer ranges, oh man, the DM has no clue what they are doing.
Read the actual rules.
Bugbears get an extra five feet of reach. Not ten feet. So they can hit you with a whip or a halberd at 15 feet, not twenty. And they can Thorn Whip you at 35.
And again, any rogue can use a ranged weapon to deliver sneak attacks out to the weapon's short range. Or its long range if they take Sharpshooter. So bugbears getting an extra five feet of melee sneak attack is really, really not worth getting excited over. Because they're not actually able to do anything that any other rogue couldn't.
Find your own truth, choose your enemies carefully, and never deal with a dragon.
"Canon" is what's factual to D&D lore. "Cannon" is what you're going to be shot with if you keep getting the word wrong.