What drives a poor reputation for the Rogue class?

[Witty Username]

That's how it worked in 3E, and it wasn't that useful, partly because it was faster to just kill things with damage, especially since being good with poisons is also often coupled with Sneak Attack. There are cases where ability damage or other effects are useful, but they're either weird (use a blowgun to do minimum damage to inflict sleep poison to kidnap someone, meaning you're deactivating your Sneak Attack feature) or super super super niche (put an injested Wisdom damage poison in the soup served at the meal the guy is eating at so he'll be more susceptible to the Charm you're going to use later).

I don't know about you, but Con damage was absolutely terrifying.
The issue with poisons is they didn't have much in the way of meaningful DCs. Most characters on both DM and PC side ended up out scaling them in the before times. Now days though with bounded accuracy, DC 15 poisons for effects would be all kinds of situationaly useful.

What I would do for the One D&D rogue, restore auto crits to Assassinate.
Have infiltration expert come with a number of pre made identities that can be switched out as well as being able to freely mimic other people.
Envenom weapons, improved poison is fine but I would also add the ability to add cunning strike affects as poisons for a cost of time/money. Like say 25 gp and 1 hour to create a poison for cunning strikes, to allow more freedom combining effects and getting a damage increase for prep time. And sharing, give that fighter trip and daze poisons for shadow buffing.

[Dork_Forge]

Some general things

- Power and relevance can be correlated but are not the same thing. You can argue that Infiltration Expertise etc. are not very relevant to some games, that does not mean that the feature is not powerful at what it is aiming to achieve.

- I'm confused why some people are pointing at the 7 days thing. That just signals that it is a downtime ability, which are usually measured in weeks. Given that you're creating an entire fake identity, that hardly seems unreasonable. If the complaint is that it takes too long to be useful, I have no idea why the default assumption is that the Assassin is waiting until it's needed to make it. There's zero reason why an Assassin shouldn't have multiple identities established ahead of time (obv. post level up and downtime) to whip out as necessary. For some reason some folks have an easier time assuming a Wizard is doing stupid amounts of prep with costly components they'd have to source, than an Assassin using a core feature proactively?

- You can say that the Assassin should have more features at those given levels than just what they do get. That's fine, that's something I did earlier in the thread, that does not mean the existing features are bad or should be wholesale replaced.

- Actor is not just better than Imposter. Actor only covers speech, Imposter covers speech, writing, and behaviour. Imposter specifically calls out autosuccess against casual observers. If your goal is to pretend to be a person, Imposter is just flat-out better than Actor, except in the very narrow circumstance that you must do it with only one minute of observation.

- As for no one playing this kind of game or it being so niche/uncommon, one of my more recent games I described to the group as 'kingmaker' where they work for a shadowy organisation and operate discreetly. The Assassin's 9th and 13th level features would have thrived in it. Heck, in my longest running game, there's plenty of times that they would have been useful, and that's a more traditional kind of game in a lot of ways.

The Assassin's flaws beyond 3rd level are simply being incomplete, though the significant powercreep of 5e has made it seem more problematic. (And yes, it is power creep for the most part across the board.)

The 3.5 comparison is a bit more complicated than just that. 3.5 didn't limit the number of times you could sneak attack per round. If you were flanking with a foe, you'd get sneak damage every time you hit. With the right feats (Two-Weapon Fighting feat tree and the Craven feat), those numbers would add up quickly - if you hit. Rogues had a lower Base Attack Bonus than most melee classes, so they connected less often.

In 3.5, it was trickier to get Sneak Attack to apply to ranged combat. You needed to get your target in a position where they were denied their dex bonus to AC. Again, you could do it, but you had to jump through a whole lot of hoops to do so. (Sniping rules were ... complicated).

The other big difference is that in 3.5, there were whole classes of enemy that were flat-out immune to Sneak Attack, Undead and Constructs being the most notable. There were ways to overcome that (like Weapon Crystals), but they were added on in splatbooks and not used in every campaign. So if you were fighting a necromancer's horde, the Rogue would often be plinking away with 1d6's and feeling useless, when the rest of the melee classes were using Power Attack to deal a whole lot more.

Thank you for taking the time to explain it, as someone that never played before 5e I find the detailed explanation of the nuances of 3.5 very useful and appreciate it.

That said, good golly does that sound like a terrible time comparatively to now. Probably doesn't feel like that back then, but I'm glad I started in 5e!

[Schwann145]

If HP is more than just meat, then poison doing damage makes sense - it lowers the capacity of the combatant to remain in combat, which is represented as HP. Let's take sarin gas - you get a whiff of that, and you can get pain, difficulty breathing, loss of muscle control, cramps, coughing, convulsions, loss of consciousness, paralysis, and more, up to death. Some of those would be best represented as conditions, some would be best represented as HP loss (I'm thinking pain most specifically).

The problem is that HP damage that doesn't take you to zero is meaningless, while the entire point of poison is to be debilitating. If there is zero effective debilitation (because it's just HP damage) then the poison basically didn't work.

DM: "The Rogue hits you and deals X damage and Y poison damage. You immediately feel an incredibly intense pain start spreading throughout your body, worse than anything else you've ever felt."
Player: "Oh wow, that sounds pretty bad. What does that mean for my character though?"
DM: "Essentially nothing. Your turn."

[QuickLyRaiNbow]

I don't know about you, but Con damage was absolutely terrifying.

Yes, it was. It just didn't apply to many NPCs, and many others had high Con saves, making it difficult to start that particular train rolling. By the time something failed enough Con saves to die... it was probably already dead. Scary as hell when aimed at players, though.

The issue with poisons is they didn't have much in the way of meaningful DCs. Most characters on both DM and PC side ended up out scaling them in the before times. Now days though with bounded accuracy, DC 15 poisons for effects would be all kinds of situationaly useful.

They slowed down combat, too. In order to effectively get poisons to work, you had to hit a lot. That meant rolling a lot of d20s to attack, then making the DM roll a lot of d20s for saves.

[Darth Credence]

The problem is that HP damage that doesn't take you to zero is meaningless, while the entire point of poison is to be debilitating. If there is zero effective debilitation (because it's just HP damage) then the poison basically didn't work.

DM: "The Rogue hits you and deals X damage and Y poison damage. You immediately feel an incredibly intense pain start spreading throughout your body, worse than anything else you've ever felt."
Player: "Oh wow, that sounds pretty bad. What does that mean for my character though?"
DM: "Essentially nothing. Your turn."

Yes. That is why I concluded that comment with "So, I'm on the side of poison should absolutely have more effects, but HP damage is still appropriate to reflect some effects of poison."

I would even follow that up with being on the side that there should be HP thresholds where something gets worse for the character at those levels. It would be a much different game if you had penalties to AC, or attack rolls, or something when you hit 75%, 50%, and 25% of total HP.

[Kane0]

Re: Poison, love the traction that it's getting 4 pages after I suggested it...

My sympathies.

Anyways, how about poisons that reduce the target's prof bonus.

[QuickLyRaiNbow]

My sympathies.

Anyways, how about poisons that reduce the target's prof bonus.

I like it, but it's a little... book-keeping-y. It works well against players, but I think it'd be a bit fiddly against NPCs, where it's often not stated what their proficiency bonus is or what it applies to. The DM would have to back-calculate the bonus and where it applies before it could take effect.

[Theodoxus]

The problem is that HP damage that doesn't take you to zero is meaningless, while the entire point of poison is to be debilitating. If there is zero effective debilitation (because it's just HP damage) then the poison basically didn't work.

I tried using that argument about cunning strike in general. If you're exchanging HP reducing sneak dice for condition inducing sneak dice, you're bypassing the Rogue's best condition maker: death. Apparently the 5E+ version of sneak attack differentiation is better than the 3.5E+ version, for reasons. /shrug.

I would even follow that up with being on the side that there should be HP thresholds where something gets worse for the character at those levels. It would be a much different game if you had penalties to AC, or attack rolls, or something when you hit 75%, 50%, and 25% of total HP.

Anyways, how about poisons that reduce the target's prof bonus.

The problem I see with both these ideas is that you're effectively asking the players, and more importantly, the DM to make pretty drastic, if temporary, changes to the combat capabilities of NPCs and PCs on the fly. In a CRPG, no biggie. At the table top, it's essentially 'unleveling' in the middle of combat. Doable? Yes. Fun? I doubt it - albeit, table specific, of course.

On a related, but a bit less rage inducing on the player side option, what about all poisons deal HP Maximum damage instead of HP damage - kind of a 'reverse THP' deal. This would effectively be 'I'm getting worse/feeling sick' without affecting combat efficiency that requires rewriting temporary character sheets. At the very least, it would represent Con loss without BEING Con loss...

[Skrum]

Yes. That is why I concluded that comment with "So, I'm on the side of poison should absolutely have more effects, but HP damage is still appropriate to reflect some effects of poison."

Just from watching how people react to it at the table I play at, yah know what's terrifying and poison-appropriate? Damage over time. Take 1 damage at the beginning of each turn. Take 1d6 at the beginning of each turn. Take 2d10 at the beginning of each turn. Now it actually feels like poison, and the player is spooked because 1) they're taking damage every turn, and 2) that interacts in particularly unfavorable ways with death saves.

And yes, rider effects. That is exactly what poison should be able. Failed your save, and now you have disadvantage on ability checks and move at half speed. And take 1d6 damage at the beginning of every turn.

I would even follow that up with being on the side that there should be HP thresholds where something gets worse for the character at those levels. It would be a much different game if you had penalties to AC, or attack rolls, or something when you hit 75%, 50%, and 25% of total HP.

If DND wasn't DnD, I'd be more in favor of this. But for these kind of "death spiral" rules to be used, the game has to be WAY more deadly than DND is generally known for, and also have a way different attitude towards combat. DND is heroic rock em sock em robots. Characters can throw themselves into battle and beat the odds because they're that good. If barbs and fighters get worse at doing their job as they're doing their job, the game entirely changes. Characters don't fight melee, if they can avoid it. They carefully plan unfair encounters, and use bows (ideally) and pikes (if they have to). Not saying that's bad, it's just not DND.

[Dr.Samurai]

Some general things

- Power and relevance can be correlated but are not the same thing. You can argue that Infiltration Expertise etc. are not very relevant to some games, that does not mean that the feature is not powerful at what it is aiming to achieve.

- I'm confused why some people are pointing at the 7 days thing. That just signals that it is a downtime ability, which are usually measured in weeks. Given that you're creating an entire fake identity, that hardly seems unreasonable. If the complaint is that it takes too long to be useful, I have no idea why the default assumption is that the Assassin is waiting until it's needed to make it. There's zero reason why an Assassin shouldn't have multiple identities established ahead of time (obv. post level up and downtime) to whip out as necessary. For some reason some folks have an easier time assuming a Wizard is doing stupid amounts of prep with costly components they'd have to source, than an Assassin using a core feature proactively?

- You can say that the Assassin should have more features at those given levels than just what they do get. That's fine, that's something I did earlier in the thread, that does not mean the existing features are bad or should be wholesale replaced.

- Actor is not just better than Imposter. Actor only covers speech, Imposter covers speech, writing, and behaviour. Imposter specifically calls out autosuccess against casual observers. If your goal is to pretend to be a person, Imposter is just flat-out better than Actor, except in the very narrow circumstance that you must do it with only one minute of observation.

- As for no one playing this kind of game or it being so niche/uncommon, one of my more recent games I described to the group as 'kingmaker' where they work for a shadowy organisation and operate discreetly. The Assassin's 9th and 13th level features would have thrived in it. Heck, in my longest running game, there's plenty of times that they would have been useful, and that's a more traditional kind of game in a lot of ways.

The Assassin's flaws beyond 3rd level are simply being incomplete, though the significant powercreep of 5e has made it seem more problematic. (And yes, it is power creep for the most part across the board.)

I agree with all of this.

Thank you for taking the time to explain it, as someone that never played before 5e I find the detailed explanation of the nuances of 3.5 very useful and appreciate it.

That said, good golly does that sound like a terrible time comparatively to now. Probably doesn't feel like that back then, but I'm glad I started in 5e!

As someone that started in 3.0, it wasn't that bad! I actually like that different monsters required different approaches, and the flat-footed mechanic.

5e is way too simple for my tastes. I do appreciate how steam-lined it is, but I think we can find a healthier mix of the two.

Just from watching how people react to it at the table I play at, yah know what's terrifying and poison-appropriate? Damage over time. Take 1 damage at the beginning of each turn. Take 1d6 at the beginning of each turn. Take 2d10 at the beginning of each turn. Now it actually feels like poison, and the player is spooked because 1) they're taking damage every turn, and 2) that interacts in particularly unfavorable ways with death saves.

And yes, rider effects. That is exactly what poison should be able. Failed your save, and now you have disadvantage on ability checks and move at half speed. And take 1d6 damage at the beginning of every turn.

Agreed. And I could see poisons with conditions over time as well. Could start off with Deafened/Blinded, then Slowed, then Incapacitated? Or something like that. Kind of like how Petrification works now.

But I generally agree it has to be supported; more poisons, how to craft them or harvest them or purchase them (all actually), and also how to interact with the DC. Spellcasters have plenty of ways to stack their DC bonuses through magic items, but there aren't really ways to increase an Assassin's Death Strike, or other martial classes features (monk now has one though).

[Kane0]

I like it, but it's a little... book-keeping-y. It works well against players, but I think it'd be a bit fiddly against NPCs, where it's often not stated what their proficiency bonus is or what it applies to. The DM would have to back-calculate the bonus and where it applies before it could take effect.

Or better yet, piggyback off of 2024 exhaustion. Straight -1 to -9 on all your rolls until you just die at ten stacks.

I tried using that argument about cunning strike in general. If you're exchanging HP reducing sneak dice for condition inducing sneak dice, you're bypassing the Rogue's best condition maker: death. Apparently the 5E+ version of sneak attack differentiation is better than the 3.5E+ version, for reasons. /shrug.

They really could have just had the rider added to the sneak attack rather than needing to trade damage for it.

Which is what im doing.

[Schwann145]

Yes. That is why I concluded that comment with "So, I'm on the side of poison should absolutely have more effects, but HP damage is still appropriate to reflect some effects of poison."

I would even follow that up with being on the side that there should be HP thresholds where something gets worse for the character at those levels. It would be a much different game if you had penalties to AC, or attack rolls, or something when you hit 75%, 50%, and 25% of total HP.

Indeed; I agree with your overall points. Sorry I wasn't making that clear.
I just wanted to point out the one flaw that stood out to me in the logic.

I like it, but it's a little... book-keeping-y.

I don't think there's any solution to any D&D problem that won't be. But then, I've never understood players' allergic reaction to writing things down or reading the rules.

And yes, rider effects. That is exactly what poison should be able. Failed your save, and now you have disadvantage on ability checks and move at half speed. And take 1d6 damage at the beginning of every turn.

As someone who is massively disappointed in 5e's poison rules/options, I'm in big favor of this (assuming the duration is reasonable and you don't just get a free save every round to end it - something 5e does far too often, IMO.)

If DND wasn't DnD, I'd be more in favor of this. But for these kind of "death spiral" rules to be used, the game has to be WAY more deadly than DND is generally known for, and also have a way different attitude towards combat. DND is heroic rock em sock em robots. Characters can throw themselves into battle and beat the odds because they're that good. If barbs and fighters get worse at doing their job as they're doing their job, the game entirely changes. Characters don't fight melee, if they can avoid it. They carefully plan unfair encounters, and use bows (ideally) and pikes (if they have to). Not saying that's bad, it's just not DND.

To be fair, D&D being "safe/nonlethal" is relatively new. The bigger part of the game's history was much more deadly than 4e and 5e.
I'd be happy to return to some lethality; it would do wonders for my suspension of disbelief.

As someone that started in 3.0, it wasn't that bad! I actually like that different monsters required different approaches, and the flat-footed mechanic.

5e is way too simple for my tastes. I do appreciate how steam-lined it is, but I think we can find a healthier mix of the two.

Agreed! It's like they heard, "we don't like being overwhelmed with small numbers to keep track of," and said, "okay, cool; we've removed 99.9% of all math bonuses and replaced it entirely with the easiest setting possible in Advantage/Disadvantage! That's what you wanted, right?"
No! I didn't want to go from "too much" to "waaay too simple!"

[Psyren]

- Power and relevance can be correlated but are not the same thing. You can argue that Infiltration Expertise etc. are not very relevant to some games, that does not mean that the feature is not powerful at what it is aiming to achieve.

Not being relevant to some most games is indeed sufficient justification for a label of "bad feature," especially if that's all you get at a given level.

- I'm confused why some people are pointing at the 7 days thing. That just signals that it is a downtime ability, which are usually measured in weeks.

I'm fine with abilities that interact with the Downtime system. The problem is that such abilities are inherently situational, because 7 days Downtime is not something you can even count on getting in a given campaign, let alone 7 days of Downtime that coincide with some kind of infiltration need. So if this ability needs to stay, it should be a ribbon like Thieves' Cant that is acquired alongside something more consistently applicable that actually aligns with the subclass' power budget.

- You can say that the Assassin should have more features at those given levels than just what they do get. That's fine, that's something I did earlier in the thread, that does not mean the existing features are bad or should be wholesale replaced.

That is what it means to me, and evidently the designers too after having polled the community.

[Dork_Forge]

Not being relevant to some most games is indeed sufficient justification for a label of "bad feature," especially if that's all you get at a given level.



I'm fine with abilities that interact with the Downtime system. The problem is that such abilities are inherently situational, because 7 days Downtime is not something you can even count on getting in a given campaign, let alone 7 days of Downtime that coincide with some kind of infiltration need. So if this ability needs to stay, it should be a ribbon like Thieves' Cant that is acquired alongside something more consistently applicable that actually aligns with the subclass' power budget.



That is what it means to me, and evidently the designers too after having polled the community.

The summary of this is basically 'they need more than just those features at those levels' (apart from what seems to be the mandatory 2024 mentions), which is what I have consistently said about the Assassin.

Yes, at 9 and 13 they need something else on top of those things. That does not mean the features they do get are bad.

As for the 'not all campaigns get that downtime thing', so? Not all games give scrolls and books for Wizards to learn, not all games will feature anywhere near enough combat to value combat features the same, not all games feature scouting opportunities or give the space to use mobility. The features make sense for an assassin, the features themselves are powerful at their intended aim. The features themselves are not the issue.

That doesn't matter, everyone plays the game differently and several people (inc. myself) have piped up with personal experience that those games do exist. Just give Assassins a decent combat feature at those levels and people probably wouldn't care about the other features relevance anymore.

[Pex]

I personally do not object to improving poison use to add degenerative effects. However, I can see it now presuming as a given it is done there will be DMs out there complaining how easy it is to remove poison such as Lesser Restoration and Lay On Hands. They'll cry "What's the point of having poison if it's just a one action spell away from being cured the PC isn't affected at all?" DMs complain about that now with diseases and curses. They'll at least demand the Pathfinder(1E) solution where the relevant remove affliction spell is not an autosuccess. You need to roll a caster level check against the DC of the affliction. Whether that's a good idea or not is a matter of personal taste. I say it's not because as it is now the healing PC is still using up his action and resources to do it. It's already fair. Let the bad guys have their own healing resources and actions to use them instead of having every monster be resistant/immune to poison so that PCs can actually use poison too.

[sithlordnergal]

LOL

Your argument of "yeah, but playing as a bunch of lolrandom morons (no judgement) means infiltration is almost impossible" might not hold as much water as you might think. Really go back and read what you wrote there...one player literally saying "we're the baddies!" out loud and another, knowing there's a chance of literal chaos being unleashed any time they cast a spell, casting a spell at a time when the very last thing the party needs is to unleash chaos...can you see why self-sabotage is not the counter argument you appear to claim it is?

By the same token, Pass Without Trace isn't a very good party stealth tool because the Barbarian keeps standing in plain sight.

But its still something to consider when you have an ability that is very much a lone wolf kind of deal in a party oriented game. You're almost never going to be alone, and the rest of the party's antics are out of your hands. And those antics can very easily cause all that hard work and that ability to swiftly become useless.

Now, I do admit I used extreme examples there...though maybe not extreme as you might think since I was the Wild Magic Sorcerer in that particular example. And I'd happily roll those odds again as that class again, no matter how important infiltration, stealth, and subtly is since I enjoy the class and will gladly take the risks that come with the potential rewards.

Its kind of like the "If you are traveling alone, you can move stealthily at a normal pace." portion of Natural Explorer. Absolutely useless because when are you, a player, ever going to realistically be traveling alone for an hour or more in your favored terrain. When are, the Assassin Rogue, realistically, going to be able to make sure one of your party members doesn't screw everything up, either by accident or on purpose?


As for your Pass Without Trace and Barbarian comparison, I'd say that comparison isn't very good. Because yes, the Barbarian can stand in the open. You can all remain hidden as the Barbarian is forced to solo the consequences of their actions and dies. Its not as easy to keep up a false identity when one of the parts you added to your false identity decides to break out of their given role. I feel like people might be suspicious if the Lady-In-Waiting of this Noble you've only just met starts doing very adventurer-esque things.

In a game where the party is a goofy parade of rare and exotic races and classes, using features and spells that make them stand out of a crowd, yeah, an infiltration and espionage focused character is going to spend a lot of time pinching thr bridge of their nose and visiting herbalists and alchemists for tonics for their migraines. Notoriety and reputation is easy to gather when you're the exception to the norm; there's a reason celebrities seem larger than life. Power, importance and position don't necessarily go hand in hand with celebrity though, even in a world with mass media, let alone one without. Some of the most influential people in the real world are faceless suits or uniforms and The Winter Soldier, while we're told is supposed to be one of the the Marvel universe's premier spys, is practically a poster boy for "hey look at that obvious and easily identified person standing out from a crowd by having a massive fight in a public place with little to no regard for preserving his cover".

And guess what, by level 9 the party probably is a goofy parade of rare classes with features and abilities that make them stand out of a crowd. Spell casters with 5th level spells generally aren't considered to be very common. Most Fighters don't know a bunch of special combat maneuvers, or have the ability to summon a copy of themselves as an echo, or grow to the size of an ogre and use giant rune magic to protect their allies. Even if you were to remain perfectly stealthy and perfectly unknown, you'd still have a reputation that would be passed around. And that reputation alone is enough to use a Legend Lore and Scrying spell.

[Psyren]

The summary of this is basically 'they need more than just those features at those levels' (apart from what seems to be the mandatory 2024 mentions), which is what I have consistently said about the Assassin.

Yes, at 9 and 13 they need something else on top of those things. That does not mean the features they do get are bad.

As for the 'not all campaigns get that downtime thing', so? Not all games give scrolls and books for Wizards to learn, not all games will feature anywhere near enough combat to value combat features the same, not all games feature scouting opportunities or give the space to use mobility. The features make sense for an assassin, the features themselves are powerful at their intended aim. The features themselves are not the issue.

That doesn't matter, everyone plays the game differently and several people (inc. myself) have piped up with personal experience that those games do exist. Just give Assassins a decent combat feature at those levels and people probably wouldn't care about the other features relevance anymore.

Wizards get plenty of spells even in campaigns without scrolls and enemy spellbooks. Other rogues get features that work in campaigns without downtime. This is a deficiency of the Assassin subclass.

I'm happy for you that you enjoy it. No Pinkertons will come to your house and confiscate your 2014 PHB, it's not going anywhere. But I understand and appreciate why the designers are revisiting the subclass, that's all I'm saying.

[Kane0]

The 2024 assassin playtest did have the poison weapons thing, which itself kinda pinched half of the Poisoner feat. Merged the infiltration stuff too, now if only they came around a bit earlier so they were more relevant in those tiers of play...

[Dr.Samurai]

But its still something to consider when you have an ability that is very much a lone wolf kind of deal in a party oriented game. You're almost never going to be alone, and the rest of the party's antics are out of your hands. And those antics can very easily cause all that hard work and that ability to swiftly become useless.

This kind of thinking leads to just straight button combat features that don't expand too far into the narrative. Much has been made about the Soulknife's level 9 feature vs the Assassin's. But the soulknife gets to boost his attack roll, and do a mini teleport. So to your point, no ally in your party can fubar these features. When you use them, they just work. That's nice.

I find the Assassin's feature MUCH more interesting and fun. People are talking about "getting by" without assassin. I have played the game for years without a feature that lets me add a die roll to my attack roll, or teleport as a bonus action. I can get by just fine without either.

If all we want are neat little feature packages like that, the game is going to get stale and boring real quick. I mean... in some sense it already has. This edition has become extremely cooky cutter in it's late stage.

Now, I do admit I used extreme examples there...though maybe not extreme as you might think since I was the Wild Magic Sorcerer in that particular example. And I'd happily roll those odds again as that class again, no matter how important infiltration, stealth, and subtly is since I enjoy the class and will gladly take the risks that come with the potential rewards.

Both things can be true.

What I would agree with is that sometimes a player in the group may prioritize something other than Stealth and cause the stealth attempt to fail. I can agree with this. I did this once myself because I wanted to frighten the people at the bottom of the stairs. So I rolled a decapitated giant's head down the stairs as a vanguard to our arrival. That meant we couldn't sneak down and ambush them, and up until then we had been sneaky (we ambushed the giant whose head was chopped off). However, apart from that one example in almost two years of playing this particular campaign, I honor the group's desire to use Pass Without Trace and stealth.

But what you seem to be saying is that it will almost always be the case that someone will interfere with the infiltration, to the point that it makes the feature not good. And I don't agree with that at all, and I think if one player is dominating the playstyle of the group completely like that, that's probably a problem. Doesn't have to be, some table dynamics are like that. But I certainly wouldn't want to be playing to the same player's tune over and over and over again, to the point that other people don't get to shine and use their features as well.

Its kind of like the "If you are traveling alone, you can move stealthily at a normal pace." portion of Natural Explorer. Absolutely useless because when are you, a player, ever going to realistically be traveling alone for an hour or more in your favored terrain.

Well, maybe the whole day if your group is playing a hexcrawl or something.

When are, the Assassin Rogue, realistically, going to be able to make sure one of your party members doesn't screw everything up, either by accident or on purpose?

This seems to me more like a player/table issue than a class issue. Like there is certainly an assumption in this thread that the assassin will be totally at odds with the table playstyle, which is not necessarily true, as evidenced by some of the comments in this thread.

And guess what, by level 9 the party probably is a goofy parade of rare classes with features and abilities that make them stand out of a crowd. Spell casters with 5th level spells generally aren't considered to be very common. Most Fighters don't know a bunch of special combat maneuvers, or have the ability to summon a copy of themselves as an echo, or grow to the size of an ogre and use giant rune magic to protect their allies. Even if you were to remain perfectly stealthy and perfectly unknown, you'd still have a reputation that would be passed around. And that reputation alone is enough to use a Legend Lore and Scrying spell.

If these spellcasters aren't very common, then how many people are actually casting Legend Lore and Scrying?

[Witty Username]

That said, good golly does that sound like a terrible time comparatively to now. Probably doesn't feel like that back then, but I'm glad I started in 5e!

Eh, it wasn't all that bad. Enemies that couldn't be sneak attacked were pretty easy to identify (the rule of thumb was enemies without a traditional anatomy: undead, constructs and oozes).
Also sneak attack wasn't expected every turn, the rogue attack line was comparable to say monk without it, so you could get multiple attacks a turn, in exchange it was easier to outright blender enemies with sneak attack.
And the thing I still stand by, no arbitrary weapon restrictions. Axes, clubs, saps, longswords, garrote wire, wine bottles etc. were all valid weapons for sneak attacks because it was considered a tactics thing.

[JellyPooga]

But its still something to consider when you have an ability that is very much a lone wolf kind of deal in a party oriented game. You're almost never going to be alone, and the rest of the party's antics are out of your hands. And those antics can very easily cause all that hard work and that ability to swiftly become useless.

I feel confident in saying that your parties "antics" are 100% a player problem. That's not to say there isn't an important discussion to be had about the tone and style of the game you're all playing and that's a Session Zero thing, but if the table has agreed, even in an otherwise fairly relaxed game, that this section of the game is a little more serious, social and political than your usual "dungeon fun", then I absolutely feel justified in calling out anyone for throwing a spanner in the works, just as much as I would pointing blame at the PvP'er stabbing me in the back in the middle of a PvE combat, or the thief that steals everyones gear and gold when he's supposed to be on watch.

If I can't trust a player or their character to act appropriately to a scenario, that's a problem that has nothing to do with what an ability in the game does or the kind of scenarios it applies to.

[LudicSavant]

Eh, it wasn't all that bad. Enemies that couldn't be sneak attacked were pretty easy to identify (the rule of thumb was enemies without a traditional anatomy: undead, constructs and oozes).
Also sneak attack wasn't expected every turn, the rogue attack line was comparable to say monk without it, so you could get multiple attacks a turn, in exchange it was easier to outright blender enemies with sneak attack.
And the thing I still stand by, no arbitrary weapon restrictions. Axes, clubs, saps, longswords, garrote wire, wine bottles etc. were all valid weapons for sneak attacks because it was considered a tactics thing.

Yeah, IIRC Rogues had some half-decent options that weren't Sneak Attack in 3rd (UMD was a much bigger feature then, among other things). As far as martials went, they were better off than many of the core ones, at least.

[QuickLyRaiNbow]

Or better yet, piggyback off of 2024 exhaustion. Straight -1 to -9 on all your rolls until you just die at ten stacks.

Yeah, I think I prefer that.

I don't think there's any solution to any D&D problem that won't be. But then, I've never understood players' allergic reaction to writing things down or reading the rules.

The problem isn't players writing things down, the problem would be the DM having to figure out what the proficiency bonus is for every enemy as part of their prep and where it applies. Proficiency bonus is a player-facing thing; it's not part of NPC stat blocks. A poison that decreases proficiency bonuses is easy for a DM to use against players but very annoying for players to use against the challenges the DM puts in their way. That's already how poisons work generally. Flat debuffs, whether to particular checks (all Dex checks) or all checks generally as with Kane0's exhaustion idea, would be much easier for the DM to track.

Yeah, IIRC Rogues had some half-decent options that weren't Sneak Attack in 3rd (UMD was a much bigger feature then, among other things). As far as martials went, they were better off than many of the core ones, at least.

Yeah, Use Magic Device was one of them. Spellcasting was the most important thing, so any class feature that made you more like a spellcaster was a great class feature. The other thing was the Feat Rogue variant, which was along with Lion Totem/Whirling Frenzy barbarian, probably the most commonly used variant class for non-casters. (For those who didn't play 3E, Feat Rogue traded the Sneak Attack feature away entirely for bonus feats at levels 1, 2 and every even level after. Feats were a much bigger part of 3E than 5E. Lion Totem was a barbarian variant that gave up some stuff -- mostly unimportant stuff, but I don't remember exactly what (because it wasn't that important) -- for Pounce, an ability that let you make all your attacks after moving. Most classes could only make a single attack if they moved more than 5' in a round. Whirling Frenzy traded Rage for a pseudo-haste effect. At high-op tables, effective melee characters basically focused on either battlefield control, which needed lots of feats, or charging from enemy to enemy making lots of high-damage attacks, sort of like 5E's Polearm Mastery/Sentinel combo and GWM respectively.)

[Blatant Beast]

Yes, at 9 and 13 they need something else on top of those things. That does not mean the features they do get are bad.

This strikes me as an unnecessary, and not particularly helpful formulation. You acknowledge the features are lacking, and require further buttressing. The thread zeitgeist has seemingly reached an accord in acknowledging that the Assassin subclass has a series of narrow abilities, with specific and narrow activation requirements, and perhaps that is just not great design.

Just give Assassins a decent combat feature at those levels and people probably wouldn't care about the other features relevance anymore.

Which means the features you would define as "not bad, but lacking", are more what the D&D Community calls "ribbons".

[Dr.Samurai]

I don't see it the way you're describing it Blatant Beast.

Other rogues get a combat and non-combat feature at level 9; Swashbucklers get Panache, Phantoms get Tokens of the Departed, Soulknives get Homing Strikes and Psychic Teleportation.

Saying that Assassin can or should get a combat feature at level 9 is not saying Infiltration Expertise is lacking.

And you seem fixated on calling it a "ribbon", which is sort of irrelevant. Either you think the feature provides some powerful out of combat utility, or you don't. That will be true if we call it a ribbon, useless, a feature, etc. The labels don't matter. If I had a choice between only getting a powerful out of combat feature, or a powerful out of combat feature AND a combat feature, I'll choose the latter all day every day. Who wouldn't?

[Psyren]

Adding to "all rogues had UMD back then," the big thing 3.5 had that 5e definitely doesn't is WBL, i.e. an expected treasure value for the party that was intended to be spent on magic items with meticulously defined prices and availability by settlement size. We see this design very clearly in OotS with Haley in Tinkertown.

[KorvinStarmast]

Yes, at 9 and 13 they need something else on top of those things. That does not mean the features they do get are bad.

OK. What do you think of my suggestion that at level 9 the Assassin gets to cast nondetection (3rd level) once per long rest. (Totem Barbarian, another martial, gets to cast Commune with Nature (5th) as a ritual).

Adding to "all rogues had UMD back then," the big thing 3.5 had that 5e definitely doesn't is WBL,

For which I am grateful.

[Psyren]

For which I am grateful.

I definitely am too! Just pointing that out as it's a major design difference between the two that at least partially explained why the rogue chassis was worse back then.

[stoutstien]

OK. What do you think of my suggestion that at level 9 the Assassin gets to cast nondetection (3rd level) once per long rest. (Totem Barbarian, another martial, gets to cast Commune with Nature (5th) as a ritual).

I'm not overly fond of just slapping spell on everything as a fix. Not only does it reinforce the idea that all cool options are spells, it lazy and the power budget is all over the place.

Then you have the same issue you have with racial spells regarding components.

[KorvinStarmast]

I'm not overly fond of just slapping spell on everything as a fix. Not only does it reinforce the idea that all cool options are spells, it lazy and the power budget is all over the place.

If you go to the original post I made on this a few pages back, I pointed out that
you can make it a feature,
another Martial Character has a level 5 spell as a feature that is thematic at about that level.

An assassin who can disappear (for up to 8 hours) even from magical detection begins to address the complaints about upper Tier 2 and Lower Tier 3 foes ... who have all kinds of ways to see otherwise locate the assassin as currently written.

No, it is not just slapping a spell on the Assassin, it is adding a very thematic ability that fits into the challenges at that level and beyond, something which was already done in the PHB for the Barbarian at a similar level: 10 versus 9.

And it need not even be the spell precisely; present it as a feature.

They Can't Find You. (The eminence gris, fit to a T).