Monstrous Compendium Vol. 1: Spelljammer Creatures
Frozen Sick
D&D Beyond Basic Rules
Basic Rules (2014)
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Monstrous Compendium Vol. 1: Spelljammer CreaturesFrozen SickD&D Beyond Basic RulesBasic Rules (2014)Sign in to view your library & saved favorites.
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Yes it nerfed the rogue - by returning the rogue to the slip in, nova damage slip away before you get hammered skirmishers they should be. Rogues (imo) were never supposed to be 2 nova strike / round combatants. We ( DnD players) found a loophole and have been using it and now they closed it. This change effectively returns them to the second line. Used properly they will still do significant damage and alter the path of a combat or end it early.
Wisea$$ DM and Player since 1979.
I must say, I agree with Wi1dBi11. I'd also like to add one thing on: This is not a major nerf, rogues have no in-built abilities to make attacks on other players turns, so this ability wasn't used much in play anyways. So rogues have lost something they rarely used, and now they act in combat much more like rogues were supposed to act. Maybe it's just me, but I actually like this change.
BoringBard's long and tedious posts somehow manage to enrapture audiences. How? Because he used Charm Person, the #1 bard spell!
He/him pronouns. Call me Bard. PROUD NERD!
Ever wanted to talk about your parties' worst mistakes? Do so HERE. What's your favorite class, why? Share & explain
HERE.I think it's a good change. Since sneak attack is a 'all eggs in one basket' mechanic instead, letting rogues get a second one in is a bit of a balancing issue. A rogue basically gets two full turns of damage in if they get a second sneak attack in, be it from opportunity attacks, or help from a team mate like commander's strike maneuver etc.
I do think rogues need something else. But that something else isn't doubling down on sneak attack to give them two a round instead of one. While sneak attack does continue to scale up as you level rogue, IMO all the interesting rogue stuff comes in the first few levels, at least in the base class. Once you have cunning action there isn't a lot there to entice me to keep leveling rogue other than bringing up my sneak attack dice.
That's not to say they have no 'useful' features. You get evasion, reliable talent, these are all very good, but IMO not very interesting. Uncanny dodge is a nice defensive reaction at level 5, but evasion, while really good, is a passive that doesn't really change how you play turn to turn much. Reliable talent is powerful but kind of saps some of the fun out of the game IMO when it makes rolling for your best couple of skills with expertise largely a formality except against super high DCs. Granted these are just my thoughts after playing rogue to level 12, I may be in the minority on these.
I feel like they could use a little something extra to add a bit more to their turns in combat aside from 'get sneak attack damage in.'
I would still say if you are going to take something away to at least compensate something for it. I would have preferred for that part of the wording to not change at all as now it makes it useless to use the ready action or for arcane tricksters to take the blade cantrips.
Lets say it is rarely used, what that means is it took away their ability to rarely shine in combat. I'm not sure that is a good thing. The idea though that rogues can't sneak attack when people run way without disengaging, sneak attack with a readied ambush, seems off and if they rarely got it from order cleric, haste or a weird sentinel build etc the loss of it when I think it was clearly intended(ready/AoOs) seems a bigger problem than it solved. And even if in this case it was good over all, what did they gain in return for it a class that even when they could get reaction sneak attacks off was on the weaker end of classes. Well nothing and heck their one sub class presented was nerfed as well.
They have skills to shine out of combat, woo with backgrounds and class choices anyone who wants to be sneaky can be, expertise I mean that is okay but the DCs for sneaking etc aren't really that high the die mechanic design is around having a fairly narrow range of differences in bonuses.(I think its kind of bad design as it over emphasizes the d20 roll as the determiner of skill) So what exactly are rogues getting. All they have is job satisfaction in that people like the idea behind being a rogue. The mechanics just aren't up to snuff though.
Allow rogues to sneak attack with any weapon attack, when they add arcane trickster let them sneak attack with magic attacks as well. Expand sneak attack to a handful of moves to provide alternate effects beyond just meh damage some of which don't need an ally/advantage give them something, don't just take away.
This already was one of the mechanically weaker classes, and all they did is take away from it when bard one of the mechanically powerful classes at worst stayed even but maybe got a buff overall and ranger definitely got a buff mechanically though lost thematic elements. So fine take away this "exploit" but give more than you took away as it was a weaker class.
Huh. I've heard about nothing past rogue level 5 before being dull, but this is the first I've heards of saying level 2, though I can see it.
From what I understand, being able to reliably hit sneak attacks on off turns is a consistantly used method on the min-maxer circles. This is just 1dnd closing abused loopholes from what I understand. Its why we can't have nice things.
Though, if you really want it, complain in the survey. Its a test to see how married people are to the idea of it.
Yeah, Sneak Attacking every turn may be cool, but it was used more to break the game than it was so people could actually have fun with a bit of extra damage. I mean, i can see why you think the change is annoying, but it was needed and sure, I'd love to see more cool things added to rogue. Though it's not like they lost much to be replaced, again, this ability was almost only commonly used by min-maxers, and for the average player, it was just a cool little thing you can do on OA's, so getting rid of it isn't removing anything really important from rogue and WotC does not have to compensate by adding more really important/cool things to rogue instead. Though I'm not opposed to making rogues cooler, only to people who wanted to keep Sneak Attack as is.
BoringBard's long and tedious posts somehow manage to enrapture audiences. How? Because he used Charm Person, the #1 bard spell!
He/him pronouns. Call me Bard. PROUD NERD!
Ever wanted to talk about your parties' worst mistakes? Do so HERE. What's your favorite class, why? Share & explain
HERE.The level it happens at will vary but basically all martials have this problem. They get things at various levels evasion, or a extra critical die etc but nothing really big to make you want to stay there on a mechanical level. The one other optimizer at our table hasn't shown up since kid 2, so I aggressively under optimize to not disrupt the table dynamics and I'd happily stick with rogue for 20 levels or even monk which man monk is bad. But I know its mechanically a bad choice to stay there but I'd rather not make the game less fun for the other players, though I usually DM so I have to under optimize the enemies instead.
It is why I so wish they had stuck with their initial design in the old next play test but just improved it. All martials effectively worked off a sneak attack mechanic which eventually scaled to d12s but you could chose maneuvers other than damage. It got scrapped as damage was the obvious better maneuver every round it was either damage or trip all or nothing. What I wanted them to do is have it just be damage, you didn't pick the damage maneuver it was just the default you hit for weapon damage + x but they could give up dice of damage for maneuvers, so at 5th level its hit for a bonus 3d8 you can just do that or hit for 2d8 and spend 1d8 on a trip. Add in cool higher cost abilities as they leveled like have a stun cost 3 dice, a paralyze 5 dice, a death blow 7 dice, all enemies in reach 2 dice, let people mix and match so a stun all within reach is minus 5dice which cool moves you got would vary by class. But the everything must be basic for non casters mantra won out.
How in the world can anyone say that GWM got boosted? Yes, now it's a 1/2 feat the but extra damage is effectively cut in half or more (from +10 to +PB) and can only occur on one hit per turn. So potentially +50 damage in a turn (4 attacks + bonus attack) to +6 total. That is a HUGE nerf and not ANYWHERE near made up for by a +1 STR. For the record though, I do support a NERF to GWF, SS, and XBOX Master feats as they needed to be brought in-line with other fighting styles for balance sake. I'm not sure it needed to be this extreme though. Will have to play to see just how strong/weak it feels compared to TWF now that TWF has also been buffed. Also GWM no longer applies to attacks not on your turn...so even less potential damage per round than current.
PAM also got a nerf in that Reactive Strike no longer counts as an Opportunity Attack. So 10' Reach PAM+Sentinel no longer potentially stops a creature outside of their melee range. The loss of use of Spear/Staff+Shield+PAM is also a non-insignificant nerf as spear fighters were already sub-par otherwise. The +1 STR helps offset those losses; everyone will have their own opinion on whether it's a fair trade though.
Sentinel is the only one of these that did effectively get a buff on it's own; but overall looses a little bit of shine when taking away it's synergy with the other feats.
As I said before, I'm fine and agree that GWM, and SS needed nerfs. Static +10 damage to every hit was just TOO powerful overall and were far and away the ONLY options for people going for optimal DPR numbers. XBOW Master was only a problem when combined with the SS +10 damage, so with SS changed it no longer is an issue (same with the PAM Bonus Action and GWM symmetry).
For rogue builds yes min-maxer circles try to get it often like arcane trickster casting mirror image and having the sentinel feat so every attack that targets a image(a target other than you) triggers an AoS. It is still not generally peak min/max, though with phantom it can be at high levels. And while there is nothing wrong with closing loopholes you shouldn't do it in a way that closes options for people who aren't exploiting loopholes. Like seriously you can't sneak attack when readying an attack for a ambush, you can't sneak attack when someone just tries to run away. Two scenarios where the rogue the class built on exploiting opportunities and openings should shine but now sucks more than every other martial.
Comparative to other martial options the +10 damage was too much, but compared to full casters it was fine and without it they look weak compared to full casters. They need to just make power attacking a normal combat maneuver. Something like with two handed weapons you can for every -1 to hit can do +2 damage up to a max of X, for one handed weapons the same but a lower max. If they want add a feat that makes it better somehow. So that whatever your weapon you use you are doing okay in damage. Or some other option that just brings martials in line with casters. But neither the ranger nor rogue show that happening.
It was mainly a hedge against two weapon style I think though at high enough levels 2 sneak attacks even if 3 dice are dropped to get a 2nd attack through being a fighter etc would be worth it.
But yes once per round would work better than this so at least it works with a readied ambush or attacks of opportunity if you haven't got one yet. They still need something as they were probably the 2nd or 3rd worst class in the game mechanically.
It's what 4th edition did. It meant having something like a warlord to grant out of turn attacks was handy because there was a chance you missed on your turn, but wasn't the overwhelming damage increase it is in 5e.
The change to sneak attack is consistent with other decisions in 5e, though -- extra attack only works on your turn (making readying the attack action terrible), readying spells is also terrible (eats the spell slot even if not used, requires concentration).
I'm a bit mystified why they made polearm master better, though. Sure, it's no longer an opportunity attack so it doesn't interact with abilities that boost opportunity attacks (though it also doesn't interact with abilities that prevent opportunity attacks, so that's kind of net neutral), and you can't use it with a spear or staff (the polearm mastery/dueling/shield setups were kinda silly), but it didn't lose anything else and it became a half feat.
Even when compared to casters optimized GWF and SS martial classes are generally doing more DPR through a typical adventuring day than casters are simply due to it costing 0 resources. Spellcasters really only shine in DPR if they are able to hit 3+ creatures routinely with AoE damage. In the majority of situations like that, minions are generally wiped out in one or two castings and the 2nd half of the fight frequently becomes single-target focused to finish off the "boss"). Full casters benefits come more from diversity of what they can do than sheer DPR/Nova numbers. There is a reason that the highest sustained damage optimized characters in-game tend to be SS/XBM Fighters or GWM/PAM Fighters. With how easy it is to get advantage to offset the -5 to hit (or effective -3 if you consider Archery FS) and a +4 Ability Bonus that is a rather reliable minimum of 15 x 5 (75) damage per turn (60 if you assume ~75-80% hit chance) every round all day.
Also, we don't yet know what they are going to be doing to spellcaster damage in the future. By seeing the way things are looking, I would not be surprised to see WOTC looking to reduce overall damage output across the board in general. The lower and less spikey damage output is overall, the easier it is to "balance" combat encounters, especially for new DMs. We'll have to wait and see the details for spellcasters to truly know how GWF/SS nerfs effect martial vs spellcaster balance.
To me I saw it as a way to be more of a up front rogue instead of the playing it as a slip in and out rogue. It gave you more options as it was a threat you can use on your enemies and force them to use their action to disengage. It gave you more freedom to play your rogue anyway you wanted. Much how you could play the arcana domain cleric as a range or up front fighter depending on how you built it, but I guess some people are stuck with the mentality that there is only one way to play as a rogue and that is to slip in and out.
DPR isn't everything and was usually considered the weakest option a full caster could do in combat. Part of that was because you knew your martial would be knocking out great DPR so you focusing on crowd control etc was just a better action for the team. But GWM etc let the martial at least have one niche, highest sustained damage in combat and even with that most still considered full casters the better classes.
And yeah sure we don't know what they will do to full casters. But all I have to playtest these changes against is the current spell casters.
The "problem" with PAM currently (if you consider it one) though isn't PAM itself, but how it interacts with GWM and Sentinel. If you look at PAM on it's own it wasn't problematic. I can agree that it didn't NEED the +1 STR added to it; but considering EVERY 4th level feat is a 1/2 feat, that means they would have needed to make it a 8th level or higher feat (assuming ALL feats aren't going to be 1/2 feats now).
Also, I don't agree that PAM+Shield+Spear+Dueling was "silly" at all. It's a VERY effective fighting style and very balanced. Makes for a great front line combat controller. When combined with Battlemaster Maneuvers and/or Paladin Smites/Improved Divine Smite features puts out consistent damage while defending the rest of the party.
Um... yes it was. Getting both a bonus action attack and a reaction attack, both of which add all of your damage bonuses and are quite easy to qualify for, is a huge damage increase.
My general opinion of GWM and PAM in 5e was that they were overpowered but made strength builds viable (I had more issues with SS).