Resourcelessness is a thing, but it is not an "infinity". A ten-times-per-day ability is effectively resourceless. A four-times-per-rest ability is, also, pretty much resourceless. The very few very rare situations that would make it more valuable do not compare favorably to the reverse.
Barbarian 3 - 1 additional class skill and can use strength while raging on Acrobatics, Intimidation, Perception, Stealth and Survival.
So 5 total proficiencies and ability to use strength on a couple of checks WHILE raging, which they have 3 of at level 3, which is not going to last sneaking around an entire dungeon/forest/etc and is a resource most barbarians will want to use on combat
Rogue gets
Rogue 1 - Proficiency: 4 class skills + Thieves tools + 2 background skills + 1 background tool; Expertise: 2 skills in which you are proficient
Rogue 6 - Expertise: 2 skills in which you are proficient
Rogue 7 - Reliable talent
So.... Barbarian has to expand a highly limited and valuable resource to compete in 5 skills, 2 of which are Dexterity (Stealth and Acrobatics), 2 of which are Wisdom (Perception & Survival) and the last which is Charisma (Intimidation). The biggest boon is going to be to intimidation, you can now try to intimidate to avoid a battle and if it fails, you still got your rage while after a battle. Perception might be good in dungeon but you'll lose it if you short rest and you certainly can't use it for keeping guard/patrol/etc since those take longer than 30 minutes normally. Acrobatics and Athletics overlap a lot, Barbarian already has good Athletics and Survival is also only good for short term, like a beast flees from the battlefield since again, you need to burn the rages. Stealth is limited in the same way.
Meanwhile the rogue, you benefit from there being two more dexterity checks then strength, having 2 skill proficiencies and 2 expertise from level 1, as well as having a tool proficiency, at level 6 you get another 2 expertise and at level 7 you basically can never fail any skill check you have proficiency for. So yes, at level 7 you leave Barbarian in the dust, since you left Barbarian in the dust from level 1, and they got a stop gap at level 3 which barely bridges the gap given it's heavy resource usage.
Now you say any but Monk, so how does that work for Fighter?
Fighter gets 2 class skills and 2 background skills at level 1 and that is it, nothing else
What about Paladin? well Paladin gets the exact same as Fighter... erm... maybe you mean that Paladin now gets ritual spells? That is a really long list.... 4 spells, 1 of which is Ceremony and another which is Purify food and drink. So it leaves Detect Magic, and Detect Poison and Disease... a paladin might be able to detect a magical trap/rune but not a mundane one. Rituals still take 10 minutes too cast too, which as detect magic lasts 10 minutes would mean the paladin would need to constantly be ritual casting to keep it up. Now a Paladin could get the guidance cantrip, via a feat or the blessed warrior fighting style, nobody uses the latter and rogue has access to the very same feat (magic initiate).
Rogue vs. Bard is technically more even you could call it either way.
Bard 2: Expertise: 2 skills with which you are proficient, half-proficiency: all skills
Bard 9: Expertise: 2 skills
Yes Bard gets half-proficiency in all skills, it a lot but often leaves it behind other classes that are more likely to take them, a Bard is not going to compete as well in stealth as a Rogue or as well in Arcana as a Wizard, it's a stop gap for where you have nobody covering those skills that a bard can do a better job. Bard gets expertise later than rogue and never gets anything to match reliable talent. Bard does get access to ritual spells, which do add a lot, but that all goes back to martial/caster imbalance anyway.
How about Ranger?
Ranger is the other expert class....
Ranger 1: 3 class skills + 2 background skills + 1 background tool, Expertise: 1 skill in which you are proficent
Ranger 9: Expertise: 1 skill in which you are proficent
Ranger gets 2 less skill proficiencies and 2 less expertise, admittedly Ranger does get better ritual spells than Paladin and also gets the spell pass without trace, making the entire party do well at stealth, even a paladin might be able to pass a stealth check if you're lucky. But overall it's still relatively equal.
This is before going into other casters, which again, yes ritual spell casting is overpowered but they in fact have less skills than rogue. But basically, at skills, Rogue wins hands down, ritual casting does take away from it a bit and goes back to spellcasters being overpowered but Rogue's only real competition is Bard and Ranger, which is what it should be. Rogue should have competition, not every party should have too choose to have a Rogue because they are so far a head nothing else compares. A ranger or bard that picks up thieves tools from background or feat should be able to cover most of what rogue covers.
1st off, I think people need to acknowledge that skills are not equally as valuable on average as other feats. everyone could take skilled, and skill expert, but people only do this once they have everything else they want, from defense, offense utility, then comes skills.
Next
barb gets advantage(from rage)and best stat on 5 skills. advantage + proficiency is equal to 5.5 bonus when expertise is +4. at level 5 its 6.5 versus 6. So barb gets advantage, and best stat on 6 skills at level 3 while raging, which is a higher bonus than rogue. it stays a higher bonus until proficiency is 4. Rage lasts 10 minutes. This is a long time in dnd 5e. its 100 turns. yes, you could usually explore everywhere in a dungeon in 100 turns. More likely they will perceive, track, stealth and ambush a group. since combat is usually about 30 seconds, they can easily do this for 2 encounters, probably 3 encounters, the issue would actually be the group wanting to rest first.
They now get back one rage per short rest.
note, at level 18 barb can replace their d20 roll with their strength score. This effectively makes it almost impossible to fail these 6 rolls
rogue doesn't get its second expertise till 6. its only at 7 that rogue starts to take of with reliable talent.
versus fighter; fighter has proficiency in 4 skills baseline, usually more with sub, but regardless tactical mind is on average +5.5 this means they have a bigger boost than expertise to a failed skill. (even without proficiency) Yes it uses second wind, but you can decide to use if the roll fails, and it only expends second wind if it actually changes the result. This means you can swing big at no risk. Need a 8 to pass? sure roll it, if you don't get an 8 you used nothing.
You get back second wind on short rest. so fighter on skills with proficiency can get +7.5 (to 11.5 at lvl17) to failed checks while rogue only gets +4. Once again it isnt until reliable talent that they can surpass this.
Ranger gets expertise, deft explorer nature, and survival advantage, and a spell that gives them advantage to certain abilities for an hour. this is available to 7/13 classes. advantage is roughly equal to +3.5 min. expertise+advantage is better than expertise. proficiency+advantage is better than expertise until proficiency 4, which is level 9. Once again its only reliable talent causing rogue to compete here.
Also note, reliable talent doesnt help you for anything beyond 9+check bonus. so if you got +6 and it needs 16, it has no effect. got +8 need a 20? no effect. Basically you can't fail below average rolls. but it doesnt help you on average or higher rolls at all.
This means for harder rolls? the fighter actually is better than the rogue until 17, the barb is better till 9, and beyond on skills that aren't the rogue's main stat. (str, wis, chr) The democratization also makes bards BI a bigger deal. because its likely some one else can benefit, even when rogue comes up short.
All of this is actually very good, the person who can pass the more difficult checks will tend to be a class thats focused on those abilities. The bard is the best helper. And each has a different way they apply their bonuses and its application.
but it means rogue isnt the skill god. They are good at easy things and dex things, and for hard things, someone else is probably better. However, this means their skills functionality is not nearly as big a deal as before.
which makes skills justifying their weak damage, a weak argument.
I think a lot of players just are averse to change, even when it makes sense.
The floor damage, combat utility and skill use of most martials are raised in 2024, but somehow the rogue should keep the same damage and skill strength? never mind its damage wasn't great in 2014?
there is no good reason for this. This UA is the balance patch. They need to get it right
1st off, I think people need to acknowledge that skills are not equally as valuable on average as other feats. everyone could take skilled, and skill expert, but people only do this once they have everything else they want, from defense, offense utility, then comes skills.
All classes get 5 feats, except Fighter and Rogue who both get more, 7 and 6 respectfully. Ultimately tho, most classes are not skill monkey classes, these feats do not even bridge half the gap in skills between a fighter and a rogue, you fundamentally can't convert a fighter into a skill monkey just by taking three more skills or getting 1 expertise, the gap between fighter and rogue is far too large here. Fighter is a combat orientated class, it's no surprise the more commonly taken feats are combat orientated, I have seen Rogues and even Bards take skilled and observant tho, I think you're a bit in anecdotal territory here of you not having witnessed people doing it and mistaking that with being how everybody else plays.
barb gets advantage(from rage)and best stat on 5 skills. advantage + proficiency is equal to 5.5 bonus when expertise is +4. at level 5 its 6.5 versus 6. So barb gets advantage, and best stat on 6 skills at level 3 while raging, which is a higher bonus than rogue. it stays a higher bonus until proficiency is 4. Rage lasts 10 minutes. This is a long time in dnd 5e. its 100 turns. yes, you could usually explore everywhere in a dungeon in 100 turns. More likely they will perceive, track, stealth and ambush a group. since combat is usually about 30 seconds, they can easily do this for 2 encounters, probably 3 encounters, the issue would actually be the group wanting to rest first.
They now get back one rage per short rest.
note, at level 18 barb can replace their d20 roll with their strength score. This effectively makes it almost impossible to fail these 6 rolls
Ok, they get advantage, again, for 10 minutes, you can't stealth around most dungeons in 30 minutes and you certain can't fight after. Advantage is not a +5.5 bonus, dunno where you pulled that number from, most would say it's near a +5 but in truth it is less than a +5, probably more than a +4. Most DMs are not going to DM a dungeon so the party gets through it in 5 minutes, it's more likely to be around 10 minutes+ for a room when you include encounters, investigation checks, rituals (i.e. identify, detect magic, etc), even with short rests a Barbarian will not have enough rages for taking most medium sized or larger dungeons on in a day.
Generally, I think the rules are a little lackluster about how long dungeon exploration actually takes but it is clearly going to vary table to table. This said, yes a Barbarian can recover 1 rage during a short rest, but they can't rage during a short rest and even if they could, to keep up perception during that period would burn 6 rages, 6 of them! Crazy, no. Same goes for long rest, barbarian isn't going to get perception during their long rest shift from rage. Oh great, Barbarian can replace the tests at level 18, that level that rarely comes up, is at the end game and Rogue has been basically auto passing 6 different skills for the past 11 levels!
versus fighter; fighter has proficiency in 4 skills baseline, usually more with sub, but regardless tactical mind is on average +5.5 this means they have a bigger boost than expertise to a failed skill. (even without proficiency) Yes it uses second wind, but you can decide to use if the roll fails, and it only expends second wind if it actually changes the result. This means you can swing big at no risk. Need a 8 to pass? sure roll it, if you don't get an 8 you used nothing.
You get back second wind on short rest. so fighter on skills with proficiency can get +7.5 (to 11.5 at lvl17) to failed checks while rogue only gets +4. Once again it isnt until reliable talent that they can surpass this.
Fighter gets 2 uses of Second wind at level 3, it recharges only 1 use per short rest, so with 2 short rests, that is 4 skill checks, that is not many uses and that is Fighters main method of HP recovery in battle, you really don't want to be using this on any old perception, investigation, survival or survival check. You might use it on a stealth check but most rogues will have stealth expertise which is worth more than just re-rolling a failed stealth check. Fighter is not going to be able to replace a rogue with this feature.
You also didn't address Paladin here I notice, like did you just give up on that one? Paladin is literally the bottom of skill checks, the worst class, worse even than Monk, so yea.
Ranger gets expertise, deft explorer nature, and survival advantage, and a spell that gives them advantage to certain abilities for an hour. this is available to 7/13 classes. advantage is roughly equal to +3.5 min. expertise+advantage is better than expertise. proficiency+advantage is better than expertise until proficiency 4, which is level 9. Once again its only reliable talent causing rogue to compete here.
Also note, reliable talent doesnt help you for anything beyond 9+check bonus. so if you got +6 and it needs 16, it has no effect. got +8 need a 20? no effect. Basically you can't fail below average rolls. but it doesnt help you on average or higher rolls at all.
This means for harder rolls? the fighter actually is better than the rogue until 17, the barb is better till 9, and beyond on skills that aren't the rogue's main stat. (str, wis, chr) The democratization also makes bards BI a bigger deal. because its likely some one else can benefit, even when rogue comes up short.
Yes, Ranger gets a lot, because they are one of the alternative options in the expert classes. But fundamentally Ranger just gets less expertise by a lot, so they focus on survival, sure.
Reliable talent only helps when you roll a 9 or less sure, but in most skills rogue has the likelihood of needing a 20+ is quiet rare however at level 9, you're probably pushing above a +8 in those, maybe even a +10. If you take expertise in Stealth (which is a waste), you'd have DEX+Prof*2 minimum which at level 10 would likely be 5+4+4+10 on the worst roll possible, that is 23 (which is why expertise in stealth is a waste, most creatures do not have a passive perception above 15). At level 13, that'd be 5+5+5+10 or 25, basically failing most skill checks from level 9 on-wards is rare and if you really want to boost it have an ally give you guidance or take magic initiate and give it to yourself. Reliable Talent isn't 100% guaranteed to never fail a check but is so close to that point, it's mostly irrelevant, nothing any other class gets is close to compete with it.
Again, I see this as you underestimating the value of resources in dungeons, fighter is not beating rogue in practice and no matter how much you infer that they could, will that make a difference. The "advantage" is not going to match up to expertise and fighter has less skills to begin with, let alone not even having a tool proficiency to speak of, which big note... Reliable Talent applies to tools, nothing Fighter or Barbarian has here applies to tools and for Rogues, Thieves tools is a pretty big proficiency used in a significant amount of checks.
All of this is actually very good, the person who can pass the more difficult checks will tend to be a class thats focused on those abilities. The bard is the best helper. And each has a different way they apply their bonuses and its application.
but it means rogue isnt the skill god. They are good at easy things and dex things, and for hard things, someone else is probably better. However, this means their skills functionality is not nearly as big a deal as before.
which makes skills justifying their weak damage, a weak argument.
I think a lot of players just are averse to change, even when it makes sense.
The floor damage, combat utility and skill use of most martials are raised in 2024, but somehow the rogue should keep the same damage and skill strength? never mind its damage wasn't great in 2014?
there is no good reason for this. This UA is the balance patch. They need to get it right
Bard is the best helper, yes, it's literally the most support class out of all supports. And yes, Rogue should NOT be a skill god, that'd be insane and is just showing you're not listening as people repeatedly keep telling you, Rogue is already too good, not too bad. If Rogue was as good in combat as a fighter, nobody would play fighter and to that same degree, Rogue being so far a head on skills in 5E made them a way too played class, way to popular because they literally were seen as required by many groups, as such Rogue needed balancing to pull it back so that other classes like Ranger and Bard can compete more comprehensively against them for the skilled expert. The Balance patch needed to weaken rogue, not strengthen it.
Ok, they get advantage, again, for 10 minutes, you can't stealth around most dungeons in 30 minutes and you certain can't fight after. Advantage is not a +5.5 bonus, dunno where you pulled that number from, most would say it's near a +5 but in truth it is less than a +5, probably more than a +4.
And advantage isn't even that big a deal. The Help action grants advantage, if the rogue really needed it (which they don't, because expertise and higher Dex) they could Magic Initiate -> Find Familiar for a scouting buddy or something at level 1.
for barb I said advantage + proficiency is 5.5 at level 3. thats 2.0 from proficiency and 3.5 minimum roll from advantage. together thats 5.5 at this point rogue gets proficiency *2 with expertise which is 4.
this means rogue is literally better at stealth, perception, survival than rogue. The main point of exploration in a dungeon is finding and choosing the next group to ambush. They don't need to do this during short rests, they do it when the group is ready.
30 minutes to explore? how? I already told you 10 minutes is 100 turns in 5e. (each round is 6 seconds) Is the DM just making the barb waste time for no reason? you can move 30-60 feet a round. thats 3000ft, or 6000 if you are dashing. this dungeon is half a mile big? I don't think thats a dungeon. Especially to find the next 2 or 3 monster groups. You should definitely be able to find a group, tell your friends and ambush them in 10 minutes. the encounter itself usually lasts 30 seconds.
And it is not true that everyone rogue will only play rogue if it damage was improved(no one is saying it should be best) or that people are mostly driven by a desire to be good at skills.
people mostly play classes based on fantasy, I played monk for years, and I knew it was subpar. I played rogue, and I wasn't focused on skills.
there is no data that suggest skill use is the primary reason players select a class, or even damage. The balancing of the game is about making sure classes are fun, and competitive with other people in the party. I'm saying, in the 2024 world, rogues will notice that others are capable with skills, and eventually will notice their damage isn't great. Rogue players have already started to realize, thats why this thread exists, and its not just here, there are multiple on reddit. Thats rogue players saying they are not satisfied.
there is a bunch of people telling them you should be satisfied. I think if you want to make 2024 rogue better, you need to figure out why they are dissatisfied, and resolve it in some fashion. It makes the game better. The second UA rogue was better than the first because they listened, the 2nd monk was better because they listened. fighter has improved etc.
the only reason they should not do something about player feedback is if its game breaking, rogue being better than current UA rogue is far from game breaking.
Ok, they get advantage, again, for 10 minutes, you can't stealth around most dungeons in 30 minutes and you certain can't fight after. Advantage is not a +5.5 bonus, dunno where you pulled that number from, most would say it's near a +5 but in truth it is less than a +5, probably more than a +4.
And advantage isn't even that big a deal. The Help action grants advantage, if the rogue really needed it (which they don't, because expertise and higher Dex) they could Magic Initiate -> Find Familiar for a scouting buddy or something at level 1.
most dms require some type of proficiency to help with skill checks, and/or it needs to make sense that a person/creature helping you would actually help. So familiars are not an auto advantage button on skills. they can generally help with attacks.
expertise at level 1=+4 avg roll =14.5
advantage+proficiency at level 3=+5.32 avg roll =15.82
proficency+tactical mind at level 2=+7.5 avg roll =18
expertise+advantage at level 2=+7.32=17.82
this is not word salad its basic math.
and yeah people can take feats to make it easier to get advantage, just like they can take a feat which gives them expertise.
Skill expert. gives expertise in a skill, proficiency in a skill, and an ability score bonus of your choice.
surprisingly, people seem to choose dmg, defense, or utility over this feat fairly often.
for barb I said advantage + proficiency is 5.5 at level 3. thats 2.0 from proficiency and 3.5 minimum roll from advantage. together thats 5.5 at this point rogue gets proficiency *2 with expertise which is 4.
this means rogue is literally better at stealth, perception, survival than rogue. The main point of exploration in a dungeon is finding and choosing the next group to ambush. They don't need to do this during short rests, they do it when the group is ready.
Rogue is better than Rogue? wha? think you mean Barb but anyway Barbarian can only stealth for 10 minutes with a rage for this, which isn't great. It's very resource dependent on a resource that Barbarian wants to preserve for battle, if barbarian is literally going to sacrifice rages for it then they are massively weakening their battle capacity.
30 minutes to explore? how? I already told you 10 minutes is 100 turns in 5e. (each round is 6 seconds) Is the DM just making the barb waste time for no reason? you can move 30-60 feet a round. thats 3000ft, or 6000 if you are dashing. this dungeon is half a mile big? I don't think thats a dungeon. Especially to find the next 2 or 3 monster groups. You should definitely be able to find a group, tell your friends and ambush them in 10 minutes. the encounter itself usually lasts 30 seconds.
It's not for no reason, First off, you're out of combat but still using combat speeds, you should be using the Travel Pace slow (you can not stealth with normal or fast), that limits to a maximum of 200 foot a minute. Second off I have no idea what you imagine characters are meant to be like, combat is meant to be intense and characters move more rapidly, they are exerting themselves and even if they do not stop to rest they need to catch their breath after combat. Further too this, you have things like checking for loot, checking for traps, you have skinning animals, taking items, appraising items, none of this stuff takes 0 seconds. If DM is acting like you instantly search a room as 0 seconds, then it'd definitely be broken, fundamentally a lot of this stuff is left to the DM, the rules do not give specific times to most of these common actions, so again, this falls back to table to table differences.
And it is not true that everyone rogue will only play rogue if it damage was improved(no one is saying it should be best) or that people are mostly driven by a desire to be good at skills.
people mostly play classes based on fantasy, I played monk for years, and I knew it was subpar. I played rogue, and I wasn't focused on skills.
You can't compare 5E to Baldur's Gate 3, Baldur's Gate 3 is a great game but it is not strictly balanced like 5E, it also implements it's own systems and abilities, such as gaining a power to turn a hit into a critical hit. But further too this, people like to lead a party having the origin characters, those are:
Asterion (Rogue)
Gale (Wizard)
Laezel (Fighter)
Karlach (Barbarian)
Shadowheart (Cleric)
Wyll (Warlock)
Notably there are no Paladins or Sorcerers, which are also Charisma characters, with Charisma being popular for a party lead type character. Yet despite this, Rogue is still the 4th most popular class, with a Rogue origin character right there. Yes there is a Paladin Companion you can get, in Act 2, two separate druids and a ranger... but point stands, many points of bias in BG3 that would influence this.
Now if we look at the other graph, the subclasses one, 11% of character are rogue, the following classes have 7%, Bard, Monk, Sorcerer, Paladin & Ranger, then you have Druid... at 6%. Almost twice the amount of people play a Rogue over a druid, over 50% more play a Rogue over a Paladin or a Sorcerer. The only class with more than Rogue is Fighter, surprisingly the Champion Fighter, I could say much about it but it'd all be opinion. Champion fighter is a strong choice, not the strongest for fighter but not a bad one either, it is good for fast rapid play.
there is no data that suggest skill use is the primary reason players select a class, or even damage. The balancing of the game is about making sure classes are fun, and competitive with other people in the party. I'm saying, in the 2024 world, rogues will notice that others are capable with skills, and eventually will notice their damage isn't great. Rogue players have already started to realize, thats why this thread exists, and its not just here, there are multiple on reddit. Thats rogue players saying they are not satisfied.
there is a bunch of people telling them you should be satisfied. I think if you want to make 2024 rogue better, you need to figure out why they are dissatisfied, and resolve it in some fashion. It makes the game better. The second UA rogue was better than the first because they listened, the 2nd monk was better because they listened. fighter has improved etc.
the only reason they should not do something about player feedback is if its game breaking, rogue being better than current UA rogue is far from game breaking.
People aren't going to notice because those classes you cite are literally burning their resources and in most games, they will not do these things you're implying that they will. Further too that, Rogue's damage has time and time again been proven to be better than you've been making out and I don't think it's even worth going over numbers again because it's just you trying to argue a bunch of often incorrect numbers.
Rogue is not at the same level as Fighter or Barbarian but they are not that far behind on damage, those two classes are very combat orientated and Rogue still out-does them in skills, you can argue that for a few levels barbarian might be able to stealth better for a temporary period of time, but you do it by ignoring issues with that like how a barbarian can't rage patrol during a long rest, how they don't have thieves tool proficiency or how Rogue is more free to spec a third ASI over barbarian, as a Barbarian you want High Strength, High Con and 14 Dexterity for medium armour, or max dexterity if unarmored... (yea go medium...) As a rogue, to perform well, you can go Dexterity, Consitution and then choose intelligence, wisdom or charisma and suffer no ill effects from doing so, Strength is basically a dump stat with no skills while Intelligence improves 5 different skills, Wisdom improves 5 different skills & Charisma improves 4 different skills.
Further too this, Arcane Trickster goes well with Intelligence, Swashbuckler goes well with Charisma & Wisdom gives you Wisdom saving throws which tend to be a pretty good saving throw. Rogue has more choice in how it builds while Barbarian, if you don't get that 14 Dexterity, you're gunna suffer for it, you already get advantage against you if you reckless attack, having a 0 or negative dexterity modifier is going to mean taking vastly too many hits to be using reckless attack and even without using it, you're taking a significant amount of damage. Worse yet, the best medium armour piece for Barbarian, gives disadvantage with Stealth... so the optimal barbarian is using a piece of armour which would nullify the advantage of the strength check..........
Also, where are you getting any idea there is a massive amount of people saying they aren't happy with Rogue? WotC literally have surveys for this and I don't think they've published the numbers yet. Soo.... where? This thread is mostly just yourself arguing that Rogue is in this position.
But it gets back to a point, the thing about classes being fun is they also need to not take fun away from other classes, and Rogue is, I would say the worst offender for taking fun away from other classes in just how it gets roleplayed... not entirely a fault of the design (but partly is), the design really does need to not do the same and rob fun from other classes and there isn't really a way to buff Rogue that doesn't just inherently make other classes less fun. In many dungeons rogue gets to go ahead or at least steal the limelight cas they have the stealth, they have thieves tools, perception, etc. Barbarian even with Rage isn't going to be able to compensate for it all. now I am not saying other classes don't have similar issues, they do, like Charisma classes and literally any time any NPC opens their mouth, or the wizard and any time there is a potential ritual to be cast, but in Dungeon, Rogue tends to be able to steal far more than any other class.
Ok, they get advantage, again, for 10 minutes, you can't stealth around most dungeons in 30 minutes and you certain can't fight after. Advantage is not a +5.5 bonus, dunno where you pulled that number from, most would say it's near a +5 but in truth it is less than a +5, probably more than a +4.
And advantage isn't even that big a deal. The Help action grants advantage, if the rogue really needed it (which they don't, because expertise and higher Dex) they could Magic Initiate -> Find Familiar for a scouting buddy or something at level 1.
most dms require some type of proficiency to help with skill checks, and/or it needs to make sense that a person/creature helping you would actually help. So familiars are not an auto advantage button on skills. they can generally help with attacks.
expertise at level 1=+4 avg roll =14.5
advantage+proficiency at level 3=+5.32 avg roll =15.82
proficency+tactical mind at level 2=+7.5 avg roll =18
expertise+advantage at level 2=+7.32=17.82
Tactical Mind is extremely limited in number of uses and is a trade-off from other uses. So just like action surge is to damage it's a nova-ability. Whereas expertise is every time. Tactical mind also doesn't scale, so 2nd level is the height of its power, since you care so much about level 20, Tactical Mind is less of a boost than Expertise is on an individual check at level 20.
Also, I've seen many players choose skill expert over damage feats. Martials often don't but that's because if a player wants to be a weapon user and be good at skills they play a Rogue. If they aren't playing a Rogue, they generally don't care about being good at skills, they care about smashing face. So they take face-smashing feats.
for barb I said advantage + proficiency is 5.5 at level 3. thats 2.0 from proficiency and 3.5 minimum roll from advantage. together thats 5.5 at this point rogue gets proficiency *2 with expertise which is 4.
this means rogue is literally better at stealth, perception, survival than rogue. The main point of exploration in a dungeon is finding and choosing the next group to ambush. They don't need to do this during short rests, they do it when the group is ready.
30 minutes to explore? how? I already told you 10 minutes is 100 turns in 5e. (each round is 6 seconds) Is the DM just making the barb waste time for no reason? you can move 30-60 feet a round. thats 3000ft, or 6000 if you are dashing. this dungeon is half a mile big? I don't think thats a dungeon. Especially to find the next 2 or 3 monster groups. You should definitely be able to find a group, tell your friends and ambush them in 10 minutes. the encounter itself usually lasts 30 seconds.
So... I take it you never play in dungeons with puzzles or traps then... that's rather unusual. Most dungeons I've played in (or run) the players spend more than 10 minutes IRL solving a puzzle or dealing with traps in between combats, and that's before we consider using ritual spells.
most dms require some type of proficiency to help with skill checks, and/or it needs to make sense that a person/creature helping you would actually help.
for barb I said advantage + proficiency is 5.5 at level 3. thats 2.0 from proficiency and 3.5 minimum roll from advantage. together thats 5.5 at this point rogue gets proficiency *2 with expertise which is 4.
this means rogue is literally better at stealth, perception, survival than rogue. The main point of exploration in a dungeon is finding and choosing the next group to ambush. They don't need to do this during short rests, they do it when the group is ready.
Rogue is better than Rogue? wha? think you mean Barb but anyway Barbarian can only stealth for 10 minutes with a rage for this, which isn't great. It's very resource dependent on a resource that Barbarian wants to preserve for battle, if barbarian is literally going to sacrifice rages for it then they are massively weakening their battle capacity.
30 minutes to explore? how? I already told you 10 minutes is 100 turns in 5e. (each round is 6 seconds) Is the DM just making the barb waste time for no reason? you can move 30-60 feet a round. thats 3000ft, or 6000 if you are dashing. this dungeon is half a mile big? I don't think thats a dungeon. Especially to find the next 2 or 3 monster groups. You should definitely be able to find a group, tell your friends and ambush them in 10 minutes. the encounter itself usually lasts 30 seconds.
It's not for no reason, First off, you're out of combat but still using combat speeds, you should be using the Travel Pace slow (you can not stealth with normal or fast), that limits to a maximum of 200 foot a minute. Second off I have no idea what you imagine characters are meant to be like, combat is meant to be intense and characters move more rapidly, they are exerting themselves and even if they do not stop to rest they need to catch their breath after combat. Further too this, you have things like checking for loot, checking for traps, you have skinning animals, taking items, appraising items, none of this stuff takes 0 seconds. If DM is acting like you instantly search a room as 0 seconds, then it'd definitely be broken, fundamentally a lot of this stuff is left to the DM, the rules do not give specific times to most of these common actions, so again, this falls back to table to table differences.
And it is not true that everyone rogue will only play rogue if it damage was improved(no one is saying it should be best) or that people are mostly driven by a desire to be good at skills.
people mostly play classes based on fantasy, I played monk for years, and I knew it was subpar. I played rogue, and I wasn't focused on skills.
You can't compare 5E to Baldur's Gate 3, Baldur's Gate 3 is a great game but it is not strictly balanced like 5E, it also implements it's own systems and abilities, such as gaining a power to turn a hit into a critical hit. But further too this, people like to lead a party having the origin characters, those are:
Asterion (Rogue)
Gale (Wizard)
Laezel (Fighter)
Karlach (Barbarian)
Shadowheart (Cleric)
Wyll (Warlock)
Notably there are no Paladins or Sorcerers, which are also Charisma characters, with Charisma being popular for a party lead type character. Yet despite this, Rogue is still the 4th most popular class, with a Rogue origin character right there. Yes there is a Paladin Companion you can get, in Act 2, two separate druids and a ranger... but point stands, many points of bias in BG3 that would influence this.
Now if we look at the other graph, the subclasses one, 11% of character are rogue, the following classes have 7%, Bard, Monk, Sorcerer, Paladin & Ranger, then you have Druid... at 6%. Almost twice the amount of people play a Rogue over a druid, over 50% more play a Rogue over a Paladin or a Sorcerer. The only class with more than Rogue is Fighter, surprisingly the Champion Fighter, I could say much about it but it'd all be opinion. Champion fighter is a strong choice, not the strongest for fighter but not a bad one either, it is good for fast rapid play.
there is no data that suggest skill use is the primary reason players select a class, or even damage. The balancing of the game is about making sure classes are fun, and competitive with other people in the party. I'm saying, in the 2024 world, rogues will notice that others are capable with skills, and eventually will notice their damage isn't great. Rogue players have already started to realize, thats why this thread exists, and its not just here, there are multiple on reddit. Thats rogue players saying they are not satisfied.
there is a bunch of people telling them you should be satisfied. I think if you want to make 2024 rogue better, you need to figure out why they are dissatisfied, and resolve it in some fashion. It makes the game better. The second UA rogue was better than the first because they listened, the 2nd monk was better because they listened. fighter has improved etc.
the only reason they should not do something about player feedback is if its game breaking, rogue being better than current UA rogue is far from game breaking.
People aren't going to notice because those classes you cite are literally burning their resources and in most games, they will not do these things you're implying that they will. Further too that, Rogue's damage has time and time again been proven to be better than you've been making out and I don't think it's even worth going over numbers again because it's just you trying to argue a bunch of often incorrect numbers.
Rogue is not at the same level as Fighter or Barbarian but they are not that far behind on damage, those two classes are very combat orientated and Rogue still out-does them in skills, you can argue that for a few levels barbarian might be able to stealth better for a temporary period of time, but you do it by ignoring issues with that like how a barbarian can't rage patrol during a long rest, how they don't have thieves tool proficiency or how Rogue is more free to spec a third ASI over barbarian, as a Barbarian you want High Strength, High Con and 14 Dexterity for medium armour, or max dexterity if unarmored... (yea go medium...) As a rogue, to perform well, you can go Dexterity, Consitution and then choose intelligence, wisdom or charisma and suffer no ill effects from doing so, Strength is basically a dump stat with no skills while Intelligence improves 5 different skills, Wisdom improves 5 different skills & Charisma improves 4 different skills.
Further too this, Arcane Trickster goes well with Intelligence, Swashbuckler goes well with Charisma & Wisdom gives you Wisdom saving throws which tend to be a pretty good saving throw. Rogue has more choice in how it builds while Barbarian, if you don't get that 14 Dexterity, you're gunna suffer for it, you already get advantage against you if you reckless attack, having a 0 or negative dexterity modifier is going to mean taking vastly too many hits to be using reckless attack and even without using it, you're taking a significant amount of damage. Worse yet, the best medium armour piece for Barbarian, gives disadvantage with Stealth... so the optimal barbarian is using a piece of armour which would nullify the advantage of the strength check..........
Also, where are you getting any idea there is a massive amount of people saying they aren't happy with Rogue? WotC literally have surveys for this and I don't think they've published the numbers yet. Soo.... where? This thread is mostly just yourself arguing that Rogue is in this position.
But it gets back to a point, the thing about classes being fun is they also need to not take fun away from other classes, and Rogue is, I would say the worst offender for taking fun away from other classes in just how it gets roleplayed... not entirely a fault of the design (but partly is), the design really does need to not do the same and rob fun from other classes and there isn't really a way to buff Rogue that doesn't just inherently make other classes less fun. In many dungeons rogue gets to go ahead or at least steal the limelight cas they have the stealth, they have thieves tools, perception, etc. Barbarian even with Rage isn't going to be able to compensate for it all. now I am not saying other classes don't have similar issues, they do, like Charisma classes and literally any time any NPC opens their mouth, or the wizard and any time there is a potential ritual to be cast, but in Dungeon, Rogue tends to be able to steal far more than any other class.
people like the build/abilities of rogue, but now that they see the full picture(other classes), many are saying they need something more compared to 2024 classes, this forum is generally 5-10 talking heads, but I've been seeing this pop up now in multiple places. Reddit one dnd has like 3 threads on how to fill this perceived gap.
I don't think classes being OK takes away other classes fun. if rogue was more like 15% lower than barb/fighter/monk that would be fine. As far as the rogue dominating exploration, think thats one of the reasons they made people better at skills, and as a DM I would avoid long solo periods of play for any character. I don't generally do 30 irl minutes of rogue exploring while people SR. SR is generally off camera and done. When some one explores the others are ready maybe a safe distance away not to cause noise.
for barb I said advantage + proficiency is 5.5 at level 3. thats 2.0 from proficiency and 3.5 minimum roll from advantage. together thats 5.5 at this point rogue gets proficiency *2 with expertise which is 4.
this means rogue is literally better at stealth, perception, survival than rogue. The main point of exploration in a dungeon is finding and choosing the next group to ambush. They don't need to do this during short rests, they do it when the group is ready.
30 minutes to explore? how? I already told you 10 minutes is 100 turns in 5e. (each round is 6 seconds) Is the DM just making the barb waste time for no reason? you can move 30-60 feet a round. thats 3000ft, or 6000 if you are dashing. this dungeon is half a mile big? I don't think thats a dungeon. Especially to find the next 2 or 3 monster groups. You should definitely be able to find a group, tell your friends and ambush them in 10 minutes. the encounter itself usually lasts 30 seconds.
So... I take it you never play in dungeons with puzzles or traps then... that's rather unusual. Most dungeons I've played in (or run) the players spend more than 10 minutes IRL solving a puzzle or dealing with traps in between combats, and that's before we consider using ritual spells.
Your DM counts IRL time for rounds? Sheesh.
Just make the enemy bleed and chat the DM up, and then remind them that the bad guy died lol.
Ok, they get advantage, again, for 10 minutes, you can't stealth around most dungeons in 30 minutes and you certain can't fight after. Advantage is not a +5.5 bonus, dunno where you pulled that number from, most would say it's near a +5 but in truth it is less than a +5, probably more than a +4.
And advantage isn't even that big a deal. The Help action grants advantage, if the rogue really needed it (which they don't, because expertise and higher Dex) they could Magic Initiate -> Find Familiar for a scouting buddy or something at level 1.
most dms require some type of proficiency to help with skill checks, and/or it needs to make sense that a person/creature helping you would actually help. So familiars are not an auto advantage button on skills. they can generally help with attacks.
expertise at level 1=+4 avg roll =14.5
advantage+proficiency at level 3=+5.32 avg roll =15.82
proficency+tactical mind at level 2=+7.5 avg roll =18
expertise+advantage at level 2=+7.32=17.82
Tactical Mind is extremely limited in number of uses and is a trade-off from other uses. So just like action surge is to damage it's a nova-ability. Whereas expertise is every time. Tactical mind also doesn't scale, so 2nd level is the height of its power, since you care so much about level 20, Tactical Mind is less of a boost than Expertise is on an individual check at level 20.
Also, I've seen many players choose skill expert over damage feats. Martials often don't but that's because if a player wants to be a weapon user and be good at skills they play a Rogue. If they aren't playing a Rogue, they generally don't care about being good at skills, they care about smashing face. So they take face-smashing feats.
yes, at 20, they beat tactical mind by .5 points. tactical mind works on any skill, not just the 2+2 gained at level 1 and 6. And this resource is only expended if it actually changes a failed roll. So its never wasted. One returns per SR. And, if the fighter wishes, they can use one of their 7 feats to get expertise and outshine them.
But yes its a shared resource, a choice, and less spammable, thats good, it has specific use cases and playstyle. But it means the thief is not the only one who can make important skill checks.
Also I never said 20 is the most important, I said ignoring everything outside of 3-9 in review of class design is a poor metric for evaluating said class design.
the point is not that all classes are or should be exactly the same, the point is things have changed. Almost all martials have raised their damage floor, almost all martials have increased their versatility, Most martials have strong OoC use cases now. Rogue staying with the same damage and the same OoC from 2014 puts them relatively further behind than previous. And now people are noticing, this is the time to investigate and possibly rectify this issue.
people like the build/abilities of rogue, but now that they see the full picture(other classes), many are saying they need something more compared to 2024 classes, this forum is generally 5-10 talking heads, but I've been seeing this pop up now in multiple places. Reddit one dnd has like 3 threads on how to fill this perceived gap.
I don't think classes being OK takes away other classes fun. if rogue was more like 15% lower than barb/fighter/monk that would be fine. As far as the rogue dominating exploration, think thats one of the reasons they made people better at skills, and as a DM I would avoid long solo periods of play for any character. I don't generally do 30 irl minutes of rogue exploring while people SR. SR is generally off camera and done. When some one explores the others are ready maybe a safe distance away not to cause noise.
Ok, but reddit is no better a source, so until the survey results are in, really can't say that, that many people really are seeing an issue with it. Unless something is spectacularly bad there will always be a vocal minority saying they want more. I personally don't see any issue in the changes or in regards to where Rogue is, and I suspect we will see in the Survey results a high amount of satisfaction for Rogue. Ultimately Wizards have that data and will decide to do what they want based off of what they have got back from the Surveys but I don't think forums or reddit is anyway a good way to gauge the community since most people that are happy with it will remain silent.
As for the class itself, Rogue does actively take fun away from other classes in many campaigns, since again, it's parties being like "checking for traps", "pick the lock", going stealth and scouting a head. Rogue does have a tendency to get a lot of limelight while in a dungeon, and so Rogue really doesn't need the same level of limelight in battle against the Fighter or the Barbarian who have basically had nothing to do all dungeon and little to do back in town.
I feel like people bringing up that Tactical Mind shares its resource with the Fighter's self-heal are forgetting that Second Wind is actually a rather unreliable and poorly-scaling source of healing. d10 + Fighter level can whiff easily and is quickly outpaced beyond early levels, especially when Tactical Mind doesn't cost anything at all if it doesn't help you pass the check.
While Second Wind might not be the most consistent heal, it is still a VERY good feature, more so given it's a bonus action and fighters rarely have anything to do with their bonus action unless they are using two weapon fighting. Recovering any health at basically any point while in combat can be the difference between going down and staying up, if you get two short rests a day, this feature beats lay on hands on average, which people insist is powerful for Paladin.
Level 1 fighter: 4*(1+1d10) = ~26 HP (lay on hands 5HP)
Level 5 Fighter: 5*(3+1d10) = ~42.5HP (lay on hands 25HP)
Level 10 Fighter 6*(10+1d10) = ~93HP (Lay on hands 50HP)
Level 15 Fighter 6*(15+1d10) = ~123HP (Lay on hands 75HP)
Level 20 Fighter 6*(20+1d10) = ~153HP (Lay on hands 100HP).
Even at 1 short rest it beats Lay on hands at every level, it is only with no short rests where lay on hands might heal more. Obviously lay on hands has more uses for healing (healing others and removing certain conditions), but on a sheer HP vs HP, Second Wind is ahead and it scales very well given it literally scales to fighter's level and gets more charges. Admittedly, you can only expend 1 charge at a time but if you're not using bonus actions, you can do that 2/3 rounds in a row and it's going to recover a lot still.
At level 5, you get Tactical Shift, when you expend a charge of second wind as a bonus action, you can move up to half your speed without provoking an Opportunity Attack. So basically fighter can move around the battlefield far more freely and heals significantly more. The easiest way to expend a charge as a bonus action, is the self-healing.
You're not going to push tactical mind on to every failed perception check, since you're going to lose more than a few points of that lovely healing, more so at later levels. Perhaps the feature should still consume the resource on a failure, the no failure part of Tactical Mind is the only part I think really poses any sort of actual issue since most of the time the healing effect actually is going to be the better usage.
people like the build/abilities of rogue, but now that they see the full picture(other classes), many are saying they need something more compared to 2024 classes, this forum is generally 5-10 talking heads, but I've been seeing this pop up now in multiple places. Reddit one dnd has like 3 threads on how to fill this perceived gap.
I don't think classes being OK takes away other classes fun. if rogue was more like 15% lower than barb/fighter/monk that would be fine. As far as the rogue dominating exploration, think thats one of the reasons they made people better at skills, and as a DM I would avoid long solo periods of play for any character. I don't generally do 30 irl minutes of rogue exploring while people SR. SR is generally off camera and done. When some one explores the others are ready maybe a safe distance away not to cause noise.
Ok, but reddit is no better a source, so until the survey results are in, really can't say that, that many people really are seeing an issue with it. Unless something is spectacularly bad there will always be a vocal minority saying they want more. I personally don't see any issue in the changes or in regards to where Rogue is, and I suspect we will see in the Survey results a high amount of satisfaction for Rogue. Ultimately Wizards have that data and will decide to do what they want based off of what they have got back from the Surveys but I don't think forums or reddit is anyway a good way to gauge the community since most people that are happy with it will remain silent.
As for the class itself, Rogue does actively take fun away from other classes in many campaigns, since again, it's parties being like "checking for traps", "pick the lock", going stealth and scouting a head. Rogue does have a tendency to get a lot of limelight while in a dungeon, and so Rogue really doesn't need the same level of limelight in battle against the Fighter or the Barbarian who have basically had nothing to do all dungeon and little to do back in town.
I feel like people bringing up that Tactical Mind shares its resource with the Fighter's self-heal are forgetting that Second Wind is actually a rather unreliable and poorly-scaling source of healing. d10 + Fighter level can whiff easily and is quickly outpaced beyond early levels, especially when Tactical Mind doesn't cost anything at all if it doesn't help you pass the check.
While Second Wind might not be the most consistent heal, it is still a VERY good feature, more so given it's a bonus action and fighters rarely have anything to do with their bonus action unless they are using two weapon fighting. Recovering any health at basically any point while in combat can be the difference between going down and staying up, if you get two short rests a day, this feature beats lay on hands on average, which people insist is powerful for Paladin.
Level 1 fighter: 4*(1+1d10) = ~26 HP (lay on hands 5HP)
Level 5 Fighter: 5*(3+1d10) = ~42.5HP (lay on hands 25HP)
Level 10 Fighter 6*(10+1d10) = ~93HP (Lay on hands 50HP)
Level 15 Fighter 6*(15+1d10) = ~123HP (Lay on hands 75HP)
Level 20 Fighter 6*(20+1d10) = ~153HP (Lay on hands 100HP).
Even at 1 short rest it beats Lay on hands at every level, it is only with no short rests where lay on hands might heal more. Obviously lay on hands has more uses for healing (healing others and removing certain conditions), but on a sheer HP vs HP, Second Wind is ahead and it scales very well given it literally scales to fighter's level and gets more charges. Admittedly, you can only expend 1 charge at a time but if you're not using bonus actions, you can do that 2/3 rounds in a row and it's going to recover a lot still.
At level 5, you get Tactical Shift, when you expend a charge of second wind as a bonus action, you can move up to half your speed without provoking an Opportunity Attack. So basically fighter can move around the battlefield far more freely and heals significantly more. The easiest way to expend a charge as a bonus action, is the self-healing.
You're not going to push tactical mind on to every failed perception check, since you're going to lose more than a few points of that lovely healing, more so at later levels. Perhaps the feature should still consume the resource on a failure, the no failure part of Tactical Mind is the only part I think really poses any sort of actual issue since most of the time the healing effect actually is going to be the better usage.
don't nerf tactical mind to make some other class feel better about itself. its already balanced by its opportunity cost.
Make the class feel better about itself by better playing to its fantasy, and being fun/useful. The 2014 skill design was always flawed, martials, more than any other need to use skills well due to being mostly non magical. And without special features, using skills is mostly random for most of the leveling curve. No one was ever 'good' at anything except thief and bard. Which goes against the fantasy of a barbarian, fighter, and even ranger. Part of the rogue promise/fantasy was always setting up a powerful attack by catching enemies unaware, or outhinking them. They are relatively worse at that, they can fix them by making them relatively better at that, or possibly some other mechanic that plays to the fantasy/trope.
they abandoned the concept of class groups so that the classes aren't defined by expert/warrior/mage/priest mostly because those archetypes don't fit well with the game design of achieving fantasy/tropes. As well the fact that the game needs to work with any set of four players. Its not designed to require/expect certain classes to be there.
Rogue is no longer god of scouting, and now multiple people can group up for ambushes. opening locks is their specialty, and thats fine. In the past, your perspective may have been accurate, but now, it'll mostly be because the party wants to play a certain way. Also, heavy scouting(separate from group) is far from a necessity. For many groups its not even worth it.
And I don't think they will tell anything from survey feedback about rogue unless they do a new rogue survey. the only way to comment on old features is via write in, and that takes being highly motivated. They specifically said not to worry about balance (numbers) so not worry about numbers, rogue is great. But if you compare numbers to other classes and other onednd abilities, thats where the issues lie. they couldn't really know that before we saw most of the class picture. Hopefully they are already aware of this, and have some tweaks.
don't nerf tactical mind to make some other class feel better about itself. its already balanced by its opportunity cost.
Make the class feel better about itself by better playing to its fantasy, and being fun/useful. The 2014 skill design was always flawed, martials, more than any other need to use skills well due to being mostly non magical. And without special features, using skills is mostly random for most of the leveling curve. No one was ever 'good' at anything except thief and bard. Which goes against the fantasy of a barbarian, fighter, and even ranger. Part of the rogue promise/fantasy was always setting up a powerful attack by catching enemies unaware, or outhinking them. They are relatively worse at that, they can fix them by making them relatively better at that, or possibly some other mechanic that plays to the fantasy/trope.
they abandoned the concept of class groups so that the classes aren't defined by expert/warrior/mage/priest mostly because those archetypes don't fit well with the game design of achieving fantasy/tropes. As well the fact that the game needs to work with any set of four players. Its not designed to require/expect certain classes to be there.
Rogue is no longer god of scouting, and now multiple people can group up for ambushes. opening locks is their specialty, and thats fine. In the past, your perspective may have been accurate, but now, it'll mostly be because the party wants to play a certain way. Also, heavy scouting(separate from group) is far from a necessity. For many groups its not even worth it.
And I don't think they will tell anything from survey feedback about rogue unless they do a new rogue survey. the only way to comment on old features is via write in, and that takes being highly motivated. They specifically said not to worry about balance (numbers) so not worry about numbers, rogue is great. But if you compare numbers to other classes and other onednd abilities, thats where the issues lie. they couldn't really know that before we saw most of the class picture. Hopefully they are already aware of this, and have some tweaks.
You can't really say not to pay attention to numbers when you're the one that has been saying Rogue is less fun because the numbers are lower than fighter and barbarian, which is still actually a doubtful thing to begin with.
Rogue is still able to take enemies by surprise, there is literally a subclass specialized in doing exactly that, the Assassin. There are also traps, Rogues can lay traps and lure hostile creatures into them, there is literally a whole section of Xanathar's dedicated to traps, which goes back a few pages when I said, Rogue can do damage before the encounter even starts.
Class groups may have been dropped but they never did require that a party has one of each, just that those groups were better and those class groups did help in expressing that there are alternatives to Rogues. Rogue never should have been a scouting god in 5E, Ranger is literally the tracking/hunting class that should have even Rogue beat in scouting but Rangers aren't the lock pickers or trap disarmers which is a part of why Ranger originally failed so spectacularly to begin with. Scouting is not always being separate from the party, it can be as much as just being 10 foot in front of the party, at which point you're still the person controlling things, doing the trap checks, looking around corners, etc.
Overall, Rogue won't get bad survey results, because the Rogue class itself is fine and people won't be complaining that Barbarian or Fighter are broken OP either with their features because they do not encroach on to Rogue anywhere near as much as you're over exaggerating them too, since they do cost vital resources.
don't nerf tactical mind to make some other class feel better about itself. its already balanced by its opportunity cost.
Make the class feel better about itself by better playing to its fantasy, and being fun/useful. The 2014 skill design was always flawed, martials, more than any other need to use skills well due to being mostly non magical. And without special features, using skills is mostly random for most of the leveling curve. No one was ever 'good' at anything except thief and bard. Which goes against the fantasy of a barbarian, fighter, and even ranger. Part of the rogue promise/fantasy was always setting up a powerful attack by catching enemies unaware, or outhinking them. They are relatively worse at that, they can fix them by making them relatively better at that, or possibly some other mechanic that plays to the fantasy/trope.
they abandoned the concept of class groups so that the classes aren't defined by expert/warrior/mage/priest mostly because those archetypes don't fit well with the game design of achieving fantasy/tropes. As well the fact that the game needs to work with any set of four players. Its not designed to require/expect certain classes to be there.
Rogue is no longer god of scouting, and now multiple people can group up for ambushes. opening locks is their specialty, and thats fine. In the past, your perspective may have been accurate, but now, it'll mostly be because the party wants to play a certain way. Also, heavy scouting(separate from group) is far from a necessity. For many groups its not even worth it.
And I don't think they will tell anything from survey feedback about rogue unless they do a new rogue survey. the only way to comment on old features is via write in, and that takes being highly motivated. They specifically said not to worry about balance (numbers) so not worry about numbers, rogue is great. But if you compare numbers to other classes and other onednd abilities, thats where the issues lie. they couldn't really know that before we saw most of the class picture. Hopefully they are already aware of this, and have some tweaks.
You can't really say not to pay attention to numbers when you're the one that has been saying Rogue is less fun because the numbers are lower than fighter and barbarian, which is still actually a doubtful thing to begin with.
Rogue is still able to take enemies by surprise, there is literally a subclass specialized in doing exactly that, the Assassin. There are also traps, Rogues can lay traps and lure hostile creatures into them, there is literally a whole section of Xanathar's dedicated to traps, which goes back a few pages when I said, Rogue can do damage before the encounter even starts.
Class groups may have been dropped but they never did require that a party has one of each, just that those groups were better and those class groups did help in expressing that there are alternatives to Rogues. Rogue never should have been a scouting god in 5E, Ranger is literally the tracking/hunting class that should have even Rogue beat in scouting but Rangers aren't the lock pickers or trap disarmers which is a part of why Ranger originally failed so spectacularly to begin with. Scouting is not always being separate from the party, it can be as much as just being 10 foot in front of the party, at which point you're still the person controlling things, doing the trap checks, looking around corners, etc.
Overall, Rogue won't get bad survey results, because the Rogue class itself is fine and people won't be complaining that Barbarian or Fighter are broken OP either with their features because they do not encroach on to Rogue anywhere near as much as you're over exaggerating them too, since they do cost vital resources.
my fault let me clarify;
I'm not saying I dont worry about numbers, I'm saying that was the instruction of WOTC. I personally think, numbers will effect feedback. So when people commented on rogue, it was mostly just how good the features seem. They also didnt know what many classes final form will be. But now, they said classes are close to complete. So you can have a better idea of where things stand, barring changes.
Assassin is ehhhh currently. at 17 it may become an assassin but under that, its a bit anemic. Everyone can use traps, but traps are mostly bad due to never scaling. Likewise poisons, unless the DM will allow rare powerful poisons, and poisons also have monster immunity to deal with.
like I said, i'm far from the only one with an issue. I didnt create this thread, I'm just more inclined to debate the issue. There are Bunch of unconnected people, and their reasoning and number are valid. If they make changes, it won't be based on the current surveys, because the current surveys have no question about rogue.
And I'm not approaching this from an 'encroachment' mindset. I don't think other classes are too good and need to be weakened. Most of the changes make sense and fit the fantasy. A barbarian, stalking their prey like wild animals makes a lot of sense. Fighters using tactics/learning to be better at skills makes sense. Rogue currently is almost fine, its damage is just undertuned relative to other classes. Or it could have some other new mechanic I haven't thought of that can make it lag less in combat
basically this is the type of thing number crunchers will notice first, reg players will notice it as they play campaigns. I tested the rogue thief, it was fun to try to use traps and object interactions, but reality was its damage was questionable.
we showed some simplified calculations of t1 and t2 rogue, but the gap continues to be very large later on. I think I can make a build on any class that steps on rogue in damage.
the thing is, they can't patch this stuff later. This will always represent the baseline rogue experience, and, if bard still gets access to a decent spell list, it will be the lowest dps in a class by a noticeable margin. (unless they get off turn play off) I don't know if its a good idea for rogue to need to be half fighter, or a have a BM buddy to be on par.
and especially if they create better monsters, and more t3 and t4 monsters/content as they claimed they are planning via MM and DMG.
for barb I said advantage + proficiency is 5.5 at level 3. thats 2.0 from proficiency and 3.5 minimum roll from advantage. together thats 5.5 at this point rogue gets proficiency *2 with expertise which is 4.
this means rogue is literally better at stealth, perception, survival than rogue. The main point of exploration in a dungeon is finding and choosing the next group to ambush. They don't need to do this during short rests, they do it when the group is ready.
30 minutes to explore? how? I already told you 10 minutes is 100 turns in 5e. (each round is 6 seconds) Is the DM just making the barb waste time for no reason? you can move 30-60 feet a round. thats 3000ft, or 6000 if you are dashing. this dungeon is half a mile big? I don't think thats a dungeon. Especially to find the next 2 or 3 monster groups. You should definitely be able to find a group, tell your friends and ambush them in 10 minutes. the encounter itself usually lasts 30 seconds.
So... I take it you never play in dungeons with puzzles or traps then... that's rather unusual. Most dungeons I've played in (or run) the players spend more than 10 minutes IRL solving a puzzle or dealing with traps in between combats, and that's before we consider using ritual spells.
Your DM counts IRL time for rounds? Sheesh.
Just make the enemy bleed and chat the DM up, and then remind them that the bad guy died lol.
Absolutely. If the party yaks for 10 minutes about their plan then that time is gone in-game as the player's characters stand around yaking for 10 minutes. Though it only applies outside of combat. Inside of combat if you take too long to make decide what to do, you get bumped down a place in initiative and the next person gets to act.
You're not going to push tactical mind on to every failed perception check, since you're going to lose more than a few points of that lovely healing, more so at later levels. Perhaps the feature should still consume the resource on a failure, the no failure part of Tactical Mind is the only part I think really poses any sort of actual issue since most of the time the healing effect actually is going to be the better usage.
Agreed. Tactical Mind should expend a use regardless of success or failure, but otherwise is totally fine because of opportunity costs.
I'm not saying I dont worry about numbers, I'm saying that was the instruction of WOTC. I personally think, numbers will effect feedback. So when people commented on rogue, it was mostly just how good the features seem. They also didnt know what many classes final form will be. But now, they said classes are close to complete. So you can have a better idea of where things stand, barring changes.
Assassin is ehhhh currently. at 17 it may become an assassin but under that, its a bit anemic. Everyone can use traps, but traps are mostly bad due to never scaling. Likewise poisons, unless the DM will allow rare powerful poisons, and poisons also have monster immunity to deal with.
like I said, i'm far from the only one with an issue. I didnt create this thread, I'm just more inclined to debate the issue. There are Bunch of unconnected people, and their reasoning and number are valid. If they make changes, it won't be based on the current surveys, because the current surveys have no question about rogue.
And I'm not approaching this from an 'encroachment' mindset. I don't think other classes are too good and need to be weakened. Most of the changes make sense and fit the fantasy. A barbarian, stalking their prey like wild animals makes a lot of sense. Fighters using tactics/learning to be better at skills makes sense. Rogue currently is almost fine, its damage is just undertuned relative to other classes. Or it could have some other new mechanic I haven't thought of that can make it lag less in combat
basically this is the type of thing number crunchers will notice first, reg players will notice it as they play campaigns. I tested the rogue thief, it was fun to try to use traps and object interactions, but reality was its damage was questionable.
we showed some simplified calculations of t1 and t2 rogue, but the gap continues to be very large later on. I think I can make a build on any class that steps on rogue in damage.
the thing is, they can't patch this stuff later. This will always represent the baseline rogue experience, and, if bard still gets access to a decent spell list, it will be the lowest dps in a class by a noticeable margin. (unless they get off turn play off) I don't know if its a good idea for rogue to need to be half fighter, or a have a BM buddy to be on par.
and especially if they create better monsters, and more t3 and t4 monsters/content as they claimed they are planning via MM and DMG.
Yes, any class can use traps, dunno why you'd think it'd be Rogue exclusive, they aren't the highest damage but they are effective, more so in choke points. A hunting trap basically reduces a creature to 0 movement until a strength check is passed, causing basically a blockage in the choke point is strong.
Assassin gives you advantage on initiative, advantage on attacks against any creature that hasn't had a moved yet (on 1st round) and adds your level to the sneak attack damage on the first round, it's a lot of extra damage and when mixed with the surprised condition. The fact they even are looking at removing the auto critical hit you use to be able to get, should be telling of just how well Assassin was doing with surprise, if Rogue was really in a poor position, you'd be seeing a lot more people complaining about that since a guaranteed critical hit would add more than rogue level, in damage.
The numbers have mostly not been valid, I've even pointed out before where you've made some bad assumptions, like only using a single weapon on a rogue, or completely ignoring the Arcane Trickster subclass. You also made assumptions like a barbarian can reckless attack every round of every combat, like there is no issue with doing that when a barbarian that reckless attacks that much is going to fold in combat, it also works on assumptions that melee based martial are always in melee range. All rogues can work in melee or medium range (~30 foot) and have very little impact on their damage, as long as rogue gets their sneak attack off.
Poisons in 5E are weak damage outside of Purple Worm Poison and Wyvern Poison, sure, the poisoned condition is not weak just a lot of immune creatures. The UA has literally added the Cunning Strike option to poison which switches 1d6 sneak attack damage (~3.5) to inflict the poisoned condition, which against vulnerable creatures gives them disadvantage on ability checks and attack rolls, all you need for this is to have a poisoner's kit on you (you don't even need poisoner's proficiency), so against all creatures not immune to the poisoned condition, rogue is now very much more effective. An assassin at level 13 gets to add 2d6 poison damage and ignores poison resistance (but not immunity). Yes poison has a lot of immunity, it's about 1/4th of all monsters (undead, fiends, elementals & constructions mostly), but on the flip side that is about 3/4ths it works against and as you aren't specifically speccing into poison, it's good on those that aren't immune. Most the time poison sucks because you actually have to spec specifically into it but rogue's cunning strike option is merely one option among many.
Overall, I believe rogue is in a really good spot and I really don't see any valid justification that indicates any actual issue for Rogue at all, it's mostly people just complaining that other classes can now expand vital resources to temporarily infringe on rogue's territory for a very short duration of time, most of the time being not worthwhile options or just make playing the game without NEEDING a rogue, more viable. Rogue is in my opinion still in a position where it's impact on a party is still too high, you get thieves' tool proficiency (the most used toolkit in the game), you get a very healthy access to skills, which you can get expertise in which is permanently active, and the complaint is that Barbarian can maybe sneak half-way around a dungeon, cas in 99% of tables, DMs are not going to go at the weird speeds you implied as if characters permanently in battle and that they instantly scan a room, get through doors and bypass all traps and remembering that two of these activities barbarian gets nothing in (thieves' tools) and your fighter is burning second winds on picking locks and disarming traps...
It's just way too out there to think that all the ability checks and actions a rogue takes can be replaced by these new features, it really can't and for a strength based fighter, they are going to be at a huge disadvantage, and still at a disadvantage on normal skill check. Yes a fighter can add a 1d10 to a failed check, but if that is a stealth check they got a 9 on (6(die)+3(prof)+0(dex)), it's still far behind the rogue that got a 20 (10(reliable talent)+6+4) at level 7, so for strength based fighter, they don't even have a chance and if they take disadvantage on top from armour... too far behind, a dex based fighter is a little better but then a dex based fighter is more in the realms as an alternative to a rogue or ranger and not the front-line tank like a str based fighter/paladin/barbarian. If anything this thread seems more to be complaining that other martial classes that aren't rogue, can have at least some fun when there isn't a rogue about.
Resourcelessness is a thing, but it is not an "infinity". A ten-times-per-day ability is effectively resourceless. A four-times-per-rest ability is, also, pretty much resourceless. The very few very rare situations that would make it more valuable do not compare favorably to the reverse.
1st off, I think people need to acknowledge that skills are not equally as valuable on average as other feats. everyone could take skilled, and skill expert, but people only do this once they have everything else they want, from defense, offense utility, then comes skills.
Next
barb gets advantage(from rage) and best stat on 5 skills. advantage + proficiency is equal to 5.5 bonus when expertise is +4. at level 5 its 6.5 versus 6. So barb gets advantage, and best stat on 6 skills at level 3 while raging, which is a higher bonus than rogue. it stays a higher bonus until proficiency is 4. Rage lasts 10 minutes. This is a long time in dnd 5e. its 100 turns. yes, you could usually explore everywhere in a dungeon in 100 turns. More likely they will perceive, track, stealth and ambush a group. since combat is usually about 30 seconds, they can easily do this for 2 encounters, probably 3 encounters, the issue would actually be the group wanting to rest first.
They now get back one rage per short rest.
note, at level 18 barb can replace their d20 roll with their strength score. This effectively makes it almost impossible to fail these 6 rolls
rogue doesn't get its second expertise till 6. its only at 7 that rogue starts to take of with reliable talent.
versus fighter; fighter has proficiency in 4 skills baseline, usually more with sub, but regardless tactical mind is on average +5.5 this means they have a bigger boost than expertise to a failed skill. (even without proficiency) Yes it uses second wind, but you can decide to use if the roll fails, and it only expends second wind if it actually changes the result. This means you can swing big at no risk. Need a 8 to pass? sure roll it, if you don't get an 8 you used nothing.
You get back second wind on short rest. so fighter on skills with proficiency can get +7.5 (to 11.5 at lvl17) to failed checks while rogue only gets +4. Once again it isnt until reliable talent that they can surpass this.
Ranger gets expertise, deft explorer nature, and survival advantage, and a spell that gives them advantage to certain abilities for an hour. this is available to 7/13 classes. advantage is roughly equal to +3.5 min. expertise+advantage is better than expertise. proficiency+advantage is better than expertise until proficiency 4, which is level 9. Once again its only reliable talent causing rogue to compete here.
Also note, reliable talent doesnt help you for anything beyond 9+check bonus. so if you got +6 and it needs 16, it has no effect. got +8 need a 20? no effect. Basically you can't fail below average rolls. but it doesnt help you on average or higher rolls at all.
This means for harder rolls? the fighter actually is better than the rogue until 17, the barb is better till 9, and beyond on skills that aren't the rogue's main stat. (str, wis, chr) The democratization also makes bards BI a bigger deal. because its likely some one else can benefit, even when rogue comes up short.
All of this is actually very good, the person who can pass the more difficult checks will tend to be a class thats focused on those abilities. The bard is the best helper. And each has a different way they apply their bonuses and its application.
but it means rogue isnt the skill god. They are good at easy things and dex things, and for hard things, someone else is probably better. However, this means their skills functionality is not nearly as big a deal as before.
which makes skills justifying their weak damage, a weak argument.
I think a lot of players just are averse to change, even when it makes sense.
The floor damage, combat utility and skill use of most martials are raised in 2024, but somehow the rogue should keep the same damage and skill strength? never mind its damage wasn't great in 2014?
there is no good reason for this. This UA is the balance patch. They need to get it right
All classes get 5 feats, except Fighter and Rogue who both get more, 7 and 6 respectfully. Ultimately tho, most classes are not skill monkey classes, these feats do not even bridge half the gap in skills between a fighter and a rogue, you fundamentally can't convert a fighter into a skill monkey just by taking three more skills or getting 1 expertise, the gap between fighter and rogue is far too large here. Fighter is a combat orientated class, it's no surprise the more commonly taken feats are combat orientated, I have seen Rogues and even Bards take skilled and observant tho, I think you're a bit in anecdotal territory here of you not having witnessed people doing it and mistaking that with being how everybody else plays.
Ok, they get advantage, again, for 10 minutes, you can't stealth around most dungeons in 30 minutes and you certain can't fight after. Advantage is not a +5.5 bonus, dunno where you pulled that number from, most would say it's near a +5 but in truth it is less than a +5, probably more than a +4. Most DMs are not going to DM a dungeon so the party gets through it in 5 minutes, it's more likely to be around 10 minutes+ for a room when you include encounters, investigation checks, rituals (i.e. identify, detect magic, etc), even with short rests a Barbarian will not have enough rages for taking most medium sized or larger dungeons on in a day.
Generally, I think the rules are a little lackluster about how long dungeon exploration actually takes but it is clearly going to vary table to table. This said, yes a Barbarian can recover 1 rage during a short rest, but they can't rage during a short rest and even if they could, to keep up perception during that period would burn 6 rages, 6 of them! Crazy, no. Same goes for long rest, barbarian isn't going to get perception during their long rest shift from rage. Oh great, Barbarian can replace the tests at level 18, that level that rarely comes up, is at the end game and Rogue has been basically auto passing 6 different skills for the past 11 levels!
Fighter gets 2 uses of Second wind at level 3, it recharges only 1 use per short rest, so with 2 short rests, that is 4 skill checks, that is not many uses and that is Fighters main method of HP recovery in battle, you really don't want to be using this on any old perception, investigation, survival or survival check. You might use it on a stealth check but most rogues will have stealth expertise which is worth more than just re-rolling a failed stealth check. Fighter is not going to be able to replace a rogue with this feature.
You also didn't address Paladin here I notice, like did you just give up on that one? Paladin is literally the bottom of skill checks, the worst class, worse even than Monk, so yea.
Yes, Ranger gets a lot, because they are one of the alternative options in the expert classes. But fundamentally Ranger just gets less expertise by a lot, so they focus on survival, sure.
Reliable talent only helps when you roll a 9 or less sure, but in most skills rogue has the likelihood of needing a 20+ is quiet rare however at level 9, you're probably pushing above a +8 in those, maybe even a +10. If you take expertise in Stealth (which is a waste), you'd have DEX+Prof*2 minimum which at level 10 would likely be 5+4+4+10 on the worst roll possible, that is 23 (which is why expertise in stealth is a waste, most creatures do not have a passive perception above 15). At level 13, that'd be 5+5+5+10 or 25, basically failing most skill checks from level 9 on-wards is rare and if you really want to boost it have an ally give you guidance or take magic initiate and give it to yourself. Reliable Talent isn't 100% guaranteed to never fail a check but is so close to that point, it's mostly irrelevant, nothing any other class gets is close to compete with it.
Again, I see this as you underestimating the value of resources in dungeons, fighter is not beating rogue in practice and no matter how much you infer that they could, will that make a difference. The "advantage" is not going to match up to expertise and fighter has less skills to begin with, let alone not even having a tool proficiency to speak of, which big note... Reliable Talent applies to tools, nothing Fighter or Barbarian has here applies to tools and for Rogues, Thieves tools is a pretty big proficiency used in a significant amount of checks.
Bard is the best helper, yes, it's literally the most support class out of all supports. And yes, Rogue should NOT be a skill god, that'd be insane and is just showing you're not listening as people repeatedly keep telling you, Rogue is already too good, not too bad. If Rogue was as good in combat as a fighter, nobody would play fighter and to that same degree, Rogue being so far a head on skills in 5E made them a way too played class, way to popular because they literally were seen as required by many groups, as such Rogue needed balancing to pull it back so that other classes like Ranger and Bard can compete more comprehensively against them for the skilled expert. The Balance patch needed to weaken rogue, not strengthen it.
Yes before 7. They get Expertise at 1st level. None of your word salad arguments to the contrary change that.
And advantage isn't even that big a deal. The Help action grants advantage, if the rogue really needed it (which they don't, because expertise and higher Dex) they could Magic Initiate -> Find Familiar for a scouting buddy or something at level 1.
for barb I said advantage + proficiency is 5.5 at level 3. thats 2.0 from proficiency and 3.5 minimum roll from advantage. together thats 5.5 at this point rogue gets proficiency *2 with expertise which is 4.
this means rogue is literally better at stealth, perception, survival than rogue. The main point of exploration in a dungeon is finding and choosing the next group to ambush. They don't need to do this during short rests, they do it when the group is ready.
30 minutes to explore? how? I already told you 10 minutes is 100 turns in 5e. (each round is 6 seconds) Is the DM just making the barb waste time for no reason? you can move 30-60 feet a round. thats 3000ft, or 6000 if you are dashing. this dungeon is half a mile big? I don't think thats a dungeon. Especially to find the next 2 or 3 monster groups. You should definitely be able to find a group, tell your friends and ambush them in 10 minutes. the encounter itself usually lasts 30 seconds.
And it is not true that everyone rogue will only play rogue if it damage was improved(no one is saying it should be best) or that people are mostly driven by a desire to be good at skills.
people mostly play classes based on fantasy, I played monk for years, and I knew it was subpar. I played rogue, and I wasn't focused on skills.
https://static.wixstatic.com/media/ffd5a4_5ecb0cbdf50d4889a9a0a179c8845fc3~mv2.jpg/v1/fill/w_961,h_491,al_c,q_85,enc_auto/ffd5a4_5ecb0cbdf50d4889a9a0a179c8845fc3~mv2.jpg
https://www.themarysue.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/08/Baldurs-Gate-3-Week-1-Stats-Race-Class.jpg?w=1200&resize=1920,821
there is no data that suggest skill use is the primary reason players select a class, or even damage. The balancing of the game is about making sure classes are fun, and competitive with other people in the party. I'm saying, in the 2024 world, rogues will notice that others are capable with skills, and eventually will notice their damage isn't great. Rogue players have already started to realize, thats why this thread exists, and its not just here, there are multiple on reddit. Thats rogue players saying they are not satisfied.
there is a bunch of people telling them you should be satisfied. I think if you want to make 2024 rogue better, you need to figure out why they are dissatisfied, and resolve it in some fashion. It makes the game better. The second UA rogue was better than the first because they listened, the 2nd monk was better because they listened. fighter has improved etc.
the only reason they should not do something about player feedback is if its game breaking, rogue being better than current UA rogue is far from game breaking.
most dms require some type of proficiency to help with skill checks, and/or it needs to make sense that a person/creature helping you would actually help. So familiars are not an auto advantage button on skills. they can generally help with attacks.
expertise at level 1=+4 avg roll =14.5
advantage+proficiency at level 3=+5.32 avg roll =15.82
proficency+tactical mind at level 2=+7.5 avg roll =18
expertise+advantage at level 2=+7.32=17.82
this is not word salad its basic math.
and yeah people can take feats to make it easier to get advantage, just like they can take a feat which gives them expertise.
Skill expert. gives expertise in a skill, proficiency in a skill, and an ability score bonus of your choice.
surprisingly, people seem to choose dmg, defense, or utility over this feat fairly often.
Rogue is better than Rogue? wha? think you mean Barb but anyway Barbarian can only stealth for 10 minutes with a rage for this, which isn't great. It's very resource dependent on a resource that Barbarian wants to preserve for battle, if barbarian is literally going to sacrifice rages for it then they are massively weakening their battle capacity.
It's not for no reason, First off, you're out of combat but still using combat speeds, you should be using the Travel Pace slow (you can not stealth with normal or fast), that limits to a maximum of 200 foot a minute. Second off I have no idea what you imagine characters are meant to be like, combat is meant to be intense and characters move more rapidly, they are exerting themselves and even if they do not stop to rest they need to catch their breath after combat. Further too this, you have things like checking for loot, checking for traps, you have skinning animals, taking items, appraising items, none of this stuff takes 0 seconds. If DM is acting like you instantly search a room as 0 seconds, then it'd definitely be broken, fundamentally a lot of this stuff is left to the DM, the rules do not give specific times to most of these common actions, so again, this falls back to table to table differences.
You can't compare 5E to Baldur's Gate 3, Baldur's Gate 3 is a great game but it is not strictly balanced like 5E, it also implements it's own systems and abilities, such as gaining a power to turn a hit into a critical hit. But further too this, people like to lead a party having the origin characters, those are:
Asterion (Rogue)
Gale (Wizard)
Laezel (Fighter)
Karlach (Barbarian)
Shadowheart (Cleric)
Wyll (Warlock)
Notably there are no Paladins or Sorcerers, which are also Charisma characters, with Charisma being popular for a party lead type character. Yet despite this, Rogue is still the 4th most popular class, with a Rogue origin character right there. Yes there is a Paladin Companion you can get, in Act 2, two separate druids and a ranger... but point stands, many points of bias in BG3 that would influence this.
Now if we look at the other graph, the subclasses one, 11% of character are rogue, the following classes have 7%, Bard, Monk, Sorcerer, Paladin & Ranger, then you have Druid... at 6%. Almost twice the amount of people play a Rogue over a druid, over 50% more play a Rogue over a Paladin or a Sorcerer. The only class with more than Rogue is Fighter, surprisingly the Champion Fighter, I could say much about it but it'd all be opinion. Champion fighter is a strong choice, not the strongest for fighter but not a bad one either, it is good for fast rapid play.
But let's look at party composition too: https://www.sageadvice.eu/top-party-composition-by-campaign-dndbeyond/
Party of 3... Rogue appears in 6 of the 10 most common compositions.
Party of 4... Rogue appears in ALL 10 most common compositions
Party of 5... Rogue appears in 7 of the 10 most common compositions
yea... Rogue appears an insane amount... more than even fighter, in the most common compositions.
People aren't going to notice because those classes you cite are literally burning their resources and in most games, they will not do these things you're implying that they will. Further too that, Rogue's damage has time and time again been proven to be better than you've been making out and I don't think it's even worth going over numbers again because it's just you trying to argue a bunch of often incorrect numbers.
Rogue is not at the same level as Fighter or Barbarian but they are not that far behind on damage, those two classes are very combat orientated and Rogue still out-does them in skills, you can argue that for a few levels barbarian might be able to stealth better for a temporary period of time, but you do it by ignoring issues with that like how a barbarian can't rage patrol during a long rest, how they don't have thieves tool proficiency or how Rogue is more free to spec a third ASI over barbarian, as a Barbarian you want High Strength, High Con and 14 Dexterity for medium armour, or max dexterity if unarmored... (yea go medium...) As a rogue, to perform well, you can go Dexterity, Consitution and then choose intelligence, wisdom or charisma and suffer no ill effects from doing so, Strength is basically a dump stat with no skills while Intelligence improves 5 different skills, Wisdom improves 5 different skills & Charisma improves 4 different skills.
Further too this, Arcane Trickster goes well with Intelligence, Swashbuckler goes well with Charisma & Wisdom gives you Wisdom saving throws which tend to be a pretty good saving throw. Rogue has more choice in how it builds while Barbarian, if you don't get that 14 Dexterity, you're gunna suffer for it, you already get advantage against you if you reckless attack, having a 0 or negative dexterity modifier is going to mean taking vastly too many hits to be using reckless attack and even without using it, you're taking a significant amount of damage. Worse yet, the best medium armour piece for Barbarian, gives disadvantage with Stealth... so the optimal barbarian is using a piece of armour which would nullify the advantage of the strength check..........
Also, where are you getting any idea there is a massive amount of people saying they aren't happy with Rogue? WotC literally have surveys for this and I don't think they've published the numbers yet. Soo.... where? This thread is mostly just yourself arguing that Rogue is in this position.
But it gets back to a point, the thing about classes being fun is they also need to not take fun away from other classes, and Rogue is, I would say the worst offender for taking fun away from other classes in just how it gets roleplayed... not entirely a fault of the design (but partly is), the design really does need to not do the same and rob fun from other classes and there isn't really a way to buff Rogue that doesn't just inherently make other classes less fun. In many dungeons rogue gets to go ahead or at least steal the limelight cas they have the stealth, they have thieves tools, perception, etc. Barbarian even with Rage isn't going to be able to compensate for it all. now I am not saying other classes don't have similar issues, they do, like Charisma classes and literally any time any NPC opens their mouth, or the wizard and any time there is a potential ritual to be cast, but in Dungeon, Rogue tends to be able to steal far more than any other class.
Tactical Mind is extremely limited in number of uses and is a trade-off from other uses. So just like action surge is to damage it's a nova-ability. Whereas expertise is every time. Tactical mind also doesn't scale, so 2nd level is the height of its power, since you care so much about level 20, Tactical Mind is less of a boost than Expertise is on an individual check at level 20.
Also, I've seen many players choose skill expert over damage feats. Martials often don't but that's because if a player wants to be a weapon user and be good at skills they play a Rogue. If they aren't playing a Rogue, they generally don't care about being good at skills, they care about smashing face. So they take face-smashing feats.
So... I take it you never play in dungeons with puzzles or traps then... that's rather unusual. Most dungeons I've played in (or run) the players spend more than 10 minutes IRL solving a puzzle or dealing with traps in between combats, and that's before we consider using ritual spells.
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people like the build/abilities of rogue, but now that they see the full picture(other classes), many are saying they need something more compared to 2024 classes, this forum is generally 5-10 talking heads, but I've been seeing this pop up now in multiple places. Reddit one dnd has like 3 threads on how to fill this perceived gap.
I don't think classes being OK takes away other classes fun. if rogue was more like 15% lower than barb/fighter/monk that would be fine. As far as the rogue dominating exploration, think thats one of the reasons they made people better at skills, and as a DM I would avoid long solo periods of play for any character. I don't generally do 30 irl minutes of rogue exploring while people SR. SR is generally off camera and done. When some one explores the others are ready maybe a safe distance away not to cause noise.
Your DM counts IRL time for rounds? Sheesh.
Just make the enemy bleed and chat the DM up, and then remind them that the bad guy died lol.
yes, at 20, they beat tactical mind by .5 points. tactical mind works on any skill, not just the 2+2 gained at level 1 and 6. And this resource is only expended if it actually changes a failed roll. So its never wasted. One returns per SR. And, if the fighter wishes, they can use one of their 7 feats to get expertise and outshine them.
But yes its a shared resource, a choice, and less spammable, thats good, it has specific use cases and playstyle. But it means the thief is not the only one who can make important skill checks.
Also I never said 20 is the most important, I said ignoring everything outside of 3-9 in review of class design is a poor metric for evaluating said class design.
the point is not that all classes are or should be exactly the same, the point is things have changed. Almost all martials have raised their damage floor, almost all martials have increased their versatility, Most martials have strong OoC use cases now. Rogue staying with the same damage and the same OoC from 2014 puts them relatively further behind than previous. And now people are noticing, this is the time to investigate and possibly rectify this issue.
Ok, but reddit is no better a source, so until the survey results are in, really can't say that, that many people really are seeing an issue with it. Unless something is spectacularly bad there will always be a vocal minority saying they want more. I personally don't see any issue in the changes or in regards to where Rogue is, and I suspect we will see in the Survey results a high amount of satisfaction for Rogue. Ultimately Wizards have that data and will decide to do what they want based off of what they have got back from the Surveys but I don't think forums or reddit is anyway a good way to gauge the community since most people that are happy with it will remain silent.
As for the class itself, Rogue does actively take fun away from other classes in many campaigns, since again, it's parties being like "checking for traps", "pick the lock", going stealth and scouting a head. Rogue does have a tendency to get a lot of limelight while in a dungeon, and so Rogue really doesn't need the same level of limelight in battle against the Fighter or the Barbarian who have basically had nothing to do all dungeon and little to do back in town.
While Second Wind might not be the most consistent heal, it is still a VERY good feature, more so given it's a bonus action and fighters rarely have anything to do with their bonus action unless they are using two weapon fighting. Recovering any health at basically any point while in combat can be the difference between going down and staying up, if you get two short rests a day, this feature beats lay on hands on average, which people insist is powerful for Paladin.
Level 1 fighter: 4*(1+1d10) = ~26 HP (lay on hands 5HP)
Level 5 Fighter: 5*(3+1d10) = ~42.5HP (lay on hands 25HP)
Level 10 Fighter 6*(10+1d10) = ~93HP (Lay on hands 50HP)
Level 15 Fighter 6*(15+1d10) = ~123HP (Lay on hands 75HP)
Level 20 Fighter 6*(20+1d10) = ~153HP (Lay on hands 100HP).
Even at 1 short rest it beats Lay on hands at every level, it is only with no short rests where lay on hands might heal more. Obviously lay on hands has more uses for healing (healing others and removing certain conditions), but on a sheer HP vs HP, Second Wind is ahead and it scales very well given it literally scales to fighter's level and gets more charges. Admittedly, you can only expend 1 charge at a time but if you're not using bonus actions, you can do that 2/3 rounds in a row and it's going to recover a lot still.
At level 5, you get Tactical Shift, when you expend a charge of second wind as a bonus action, you can move up to half your speed without provoking an Opportunity Attack. So basically fighter can move around the battlefield far more freely and heals significantly more. The easiest way to expend a charge as a bonus action, is the self-healing.
You're not going to push tactical mind on to every failed perception check, since you're going to lose more than a few points of that lovely healing, more so at later levels. Perhaps the feature should still consume the resource on a failure, the no failure part of Tactical Mind is the only part I think really poses any sort of actual issue since most of the time the healing effect actually is going to be the better usage.
don't nerf tactical mind to make some other class feel better about itself. its already balanced by its opportunity cost.
Make the class feel better about itself by better playing to its fantasy, and being fun/useful. The 2014 skill design was always flawed, martials, more than any other need to use skills well due to being mostly non magical. And without special features, using skills is mostly random for most of the leveling curve. No one was ever 'good' at anything except thief and bard. Which goes against the fantasy of a barbarian, fighter, and even ranger. Part of the rogue promise/fantasy was always setting up a powerful attack by catching enemies unaware, or outhinking them. They are relatively worse at that, they can fix them by making them relatively better at that, or possibly some other mechanic that plays to the fantasy/trope.
they abandoned the concept of class groups so that the classes aren't defined by expert/warrior/mage/priest mostly because those archetypes don't fit well with the game design of achieving fantasy/tropes. As well the fact that the game needs to work with any set of four players. Its not designed to require/expect certain classes to be there.
Rogue is no longer god of scouting, and now multiple people can group up for ambushes. opening locks is their specialty, and thats fine. In the past, your perspective may have been accurate, but now, it'll mostly be because the party wants to play a certain way. Also, heavy scouting(separate from group) is far from a necessity. For many groups its not even worth it.
And I don't think they will tell anything from survey feedback about rogue unless they do a new rogue survey. the only way to comment on old features is via write in, and that takes being highly motivated. They specifically said not to worry about balance (numbers) so not worry about numbers, rogue is great. But if you compare numbers to other classes and other onednd abilities, thats where the issues lie. they couldn't really know that before we saw most of the class picture. Hopefully they are already aware of this, and have some tweaks.
You can't really say not to pay attention to numbers when you're the one that has been saying Rogue is less fun because the numbers are lower than fighter and barbarian, which is still actually a doubtful thing to begin with.
Rogue is still able to take enemies by surprise, there is literally a subclass specialized in doing exactly that, the Assassin. There are also traps, Rogues can lay traps and lure hostile creatures into them, there is literally a whole section of Xanathar's dedicated to traps, which goes back a few pages when I said, Rogue can do damage before the encounter even starts.
Class groups may have been dropped but they never did require that a party has one of each, just that those groups were better and those class groups did help in expressing that there are alternatives to Rogues. Rogue never should have been a scouting god in 5E, Ranger is literally the tracking/hunting class that should have even Rogue beat in scouting but Rangers aren't the lock pickers or trap disarmers which is a part of why Ranger originally failed so spectacularly to begin with. Scouting is not always being separate from the party, it can be as much as just being 10 foot in front of the party, at which point you're still the person controlling things, doing the trap checks, looking around corners, etc.
Overall, Rogue won't get bad survey results, because the Rogue class itself is fine and people won't be complaining that Barbarian or Fighter are broken OP either with their features because they do not encroach on to Rogue anywhere near as much as you're over exaggerating them too, since they do cost vital resources.
my fault let me clarify;
I'm not saying I dont worry about numbers, I'm saying that was the instruction of WOTC. I personally think, numbers will effect feedback. So when people commented on rogue, it was mostly just how good the features seem. They also didnt know what many classes final form will be. But now, they said classes are close to complete. So you can have a better idea of where things stand, barring changes.
Assassin is ehhhh currently. at 17 it may become an assassin but under that, its a bit anemic. Everyone can use traps, but traps are mostly bad due to never scaling. Likewise poisons, unless the DM will allow rare powerful poisons, and poisons also have monster immunity to deal with.
like I said, i'm far from the only one with an issue. I didnt create this thread, I'm just more inclined to debate the issue. There are Bunch of unconnected people, and their reasoning and number are valid. If they make changes, it won't be based on the current surveys, because the current surveys have no question about rogue.
And I'm not approaching this from an 'encroachment' mindset. I don't think other classes are too good and need to be weakened. Most of the changes make sense and fit the fantasy. A barbarian, stalking their prey like wild animals makes a lot of sense. Fighters using tactics/learning to be better at skills makes sense. Rogue currently is almost fine, its damage is just undertuned relative to other classes. Or it could have some other new mechanic I haven't thought of that can make it lag less in combat
basically this is the type of thing number crunchers will notice first, reg players will notice it as they play campaigns. I tested the rogue thief, it was fun to try to use traps and object interactions, but reality was its damage was questionable.
we showed some simplified calculations of t1 and t2 rogue, but the gap continues to be very large later on. I think I can make a build on any class that steps on rogue in damage.
the thing is, they can't patch this stuff later. This will always represent the baseline rogue experience, and, if bard still gets access to a decent spell list, it will be the lowest dps in a class by a noticeable margin. (unless they get off turn play off) I don't know if its a good idea for rogue to need to be half fighter, or a have a BM buddy to be on par.
and especially if they create better monsters, and more t3 and t4 monsters/content as they claimed they are planning via MM and DMG.
Absolutely. If the party yaks for 10 minutes about their plan then that time is gone in-game as the player's characters stand around yaking for 10 minutes. Though it only applies outside of combat. Inside of combat if you take too long to make decide what to do, you get bumped down a place in initiative and the next person gets to act.
Agreed. Tactical Mind should expend a use regardless of success or failure, but otherwise is totally fine because of opportunity costs.
Yes, any class can use traps, dunno why you'd think it'd be Rogue exclusive, they aren't the highest damage but they are effective, more so in choke points. A hunting trap basically reduces a creature to 0 movement until a strength check is passed, causing basically a blockage in the choke point is strong.
Assassin gives you advantage on initiative, advantage on attacks against any creature that hasn't had a moved yet (on 1st round) and adds your level to the sneak attack damage on the first round, it's a lot of extra damage and when mixed with the surprised condition. The fact they even are looking at removing the auto critical hit you use to be able to get, should be telling of just how well Assassin was doing with surprise, if Rogue was really in a poor position, you'd be seeing a lot more people complaining about that since a guaranteed critical hit would add more than rogue level, in damage.
The numbers have mostly not been valid, I've even pointed out before where you've made some bad assumptions, like only using a single weapon on a rogue, or completely ignoring the Arcane Trickster subclass. You also made assumptions like a barbarian can reckless attack every round of every combat, like there is no issue with doing that when a barbarian that reckless attacks that much is going to fold in combat, it also works on assumptions that melee based martial are always in melee range. All rogues can work in melee or medium range (~30 foot) and have very little impact on their damage, as long as rogue gets their sneak attack off.
Poisons in 5E are weak damage outside of Purple Worm Poison and Wyvern Poison, sure, the poisoned condition is not weak just a lot of immune creatures. The UA has literally added the Cunning Strike option to poison which switches 1d6 sneak attack damage (~3.5) to inflict the poisoned condition, which against vulnerable creatures gives them disadvantage on ability checks and attack rolls, all you need for this is to have a poisoner's kit on you (you don't even need poisoner's proficiency), so against all creatures not immune to the poisoned condition, rogue is now very much more effective. An assassin at level 13 gets to add 2d6 poison damage and ignores poison resistance (but not immunity). Yes poison has a lot of immunity, it's about 1/4th of all monsters (undead, fiends, elementals & constructions mostly), but on the flip side that is about 3/4ths it works against and as you aren't specifically speccing into poison, it's good on those that aren't immune. Most the time poison sucks because you actually have to spec specifically into it but rogue's cunning strike option is merely one option among many.
Overall, I believe rogue is in a really good spot and I really don't see any valid justification that indicates any actual issue for Rogue at all, it's mostly people just complaining that other classes can now expand vital resources to temporarily infringe on rogue's territory for a very short duration of time, most of the time being not worthwhile options or just make playing the game without NEEDING a rogue, more viable. Rogue is in my opinion still in a position where it's impact on a party is still too high, you get thieves' tool proficiency (the most used toolkit in the game), you get a very healthy access to skills, which you can get expertise in which is permanently active, and the complaint is that Barbarian can maybe sneak half-way around a dungeon, cas in 99% of tables, DMs are not going to go at the weird speeds you implied as if characters permanently in battle and that they instantly scan a room, get through doors and bypass all traps and remembering that two of these activities barbarian gets nothing in (thieves' tools) and your fighter is burning second winds on picking locks and disarming traps...
It's just way too out there to think that all the ability checks and actions a rogue takes can be replaced by these new features, it really can't and for a strength based fighter, they are going to be at a huge disadvantage, and still at a disadvantage on normal skill check. Yes a fighter can add a 1d10 to a failed check, but if that is a stealth check they got a 9 on (6(die)+3(prof)+0(dex)), it's still far behind the rogue that got a 20 (10(reliable talent)+6+4) at level 7, so for strength based fighter, they don't even have a chance and if they take disadvantage on top from armour... too far behind, a dex based fighter is a little better but then a dex based fighter is more in the realms as an alternative to a rogue or ranger and not the front-line tank like a str based fighter/paladin/barbarian. If anything this thread seems more to be complaining that other martial classes that aren't rogue, can have at least some fun when there isn't a rogue about.