What drives a poor reputation for the Rogue class?

[Pex]

Oh yeah, preaching to the choir. Barb in particular is horrible for this; I can't possibly imagine going higher than barb 8 (and even that is only for the ASI; the last meaningful feature is feral instincts at 7...and even that is only situationally worthwhile). Barb 8 fighter (anything) 4 is for all intents and purposes strictly better than barb 12.

The only thing I can think of is these classes were made very early in the design cycle when bounded accuracy was more front and center. I can see some level of reasoning where classes are "complete" after 6-8, and then features are tapered off in an intentional attempt at more logarithmic scaling. Spellcasters don't do this of course...but they don't not do it either. High level spells are far more limited in use; even a 20th level wizard only gets to cast 4 spells of 7th level and higher.

If this was the thought process, they of course failed in some pretty obvious ways; starting with full casters who still scale to a very high degree, but also with monster hit point bloat. Character damage scales very oddly and randomly across the classes, but monster hit points smoothly get higher and higher and higher, meaning of course that the classes that aren't fighter or paladin do relatively less damage (rogue scales too but not well enough, and they suffer from not getting a lot from magic weapons).

5e core combat system is very good. The classes, more of a mixed bag.

Skrum pointed out that Rogue is a good dip for martials. I'll add that it's also a good dip for casters. In my BG2 game, we've had a Rogue 2/Wizard X NPC for a while. Sure, she has Fireball a couple of levels later (and I think delayed 3rd level spells are the only ones that truly matter), but there is a ton of utility for a caster in BA Disengage and BA Dash in terms of resource-free battlefield mobility. Being able to grab a shortbow and do 2d6+3 (avg 10.5) damage thanks to sneak attack also ties with most cantrips, or beats them once you add a +1 shortbow and some magic ammo (acid arrows +1d6 damage).

That fades out around level 11 when cantrip damage dice go up again, but for a low tier game... I would consider a rogue 2/caster X if it made sense for the character I was playing.

Found this out on my own. Played a (bear) barbarian until level 8. I went sword & shield for Shield Master. I noticed my offense ability was waning against the bad guys so went to fighter 4 (battlemaster) for more offense power and tactics. Afterwards it was rogue all the way, and I didn't even care about sneak attack still using a long sword. Cunning Action and Thief for climbing and Use Object with Cunning Action was the bomb. Expertise Athletics fulfilled my goal as strongest man in the world. Evasion and Uncanny Dodge stacked with my barbarian resistances I was nearly unkillable. It was only when sneak attack reached 3d6 did I consider its worth and got a magical short sword to use sometimes. At 17th level I single handedly hogtied a t-rex. It was glorious.

Any excuse to talk about my barbarian. I loved playing him so much. I miss that game.

[Just to Browse]

These arguments are getting weird, man.

Well this is just your experience. Actually, I'm arguing that this is a general rule. That's why I use the generic "you" in my original reply to you.

Vibing is when people make optimal plays? It sounds like you're confusing "a DM playing optimally, a PC also playing optimally" with "the DM is vibing with the player". Strangebloke in the gauntlet isn't didn't set anything up for Nuke, didn't intentionally try to feature Nuke, didn't read from the same playbook as Nuke, didn't make the game work to the nuke's favor, etc. They just played optimally.

Again, I think there may be some play inexperience here, especially with this comment RE:dashing. You're looking at a result (a clay golem being ineffective overall) and assuming it comes from the DM doing stuff to feature their wizard, instead of the wizard player just being... good at D&D combat.

Why does JTB keep telling me he's not defending Ludic? You keep bringing up arguments about ludic while quoting me. If you don't want to be reminded that ludic & I are different people, I recommend replying to ludic underneath the quotes from ludic instead of the quotes from me

Clarifying how JTB's games go.

• Characters sometimes defeat Deadly+ encounters without resources? Rarely but sometimes. More frequently, one character is out of resources while another isn't.
• Then how are they perfectly challenged all the time? I don't even know what "perfectly challenged" means, but characters without resources aren't out of options, they just have narrow options (like a rogue!). They lose a lot more HP towards the end of the day, they rely on allies who still have resources left, they take half-victories, and sometimes they outright fail at their objectives.
• How do they always make it? They don't.
• Why are you confident they will always be all right no matter what? I'm not. I'm not absolutely totally completely 100% guaranteed confident they'll handle everything, but the frequency at which a flexible character doesn't have an approach to a situation is so low (compared to inflexible classes like the rogue who usually need some help) that I'm not worried about it.

Confirming RE: anti-magic rooms. Your description sounds right, I think. Sometimes the PCs are in scenarios with anti-magic tech of various kinds, sometimes they aren't in those scenarios. On the whole, the flexible characters average out with a much broader variety of options per-scenario over the course of an adventure.


But rogue detractors are talking about "winning more"! (which is why we need to talk about how a rogue could have the Observant feat, Skulker feature, rogues that are 3 levels higher than their cleric counterparts, etc): As far as I can tell, I have not used the term "winning more". I am not planning on using the term "winning more". The way you use it, I can hardly tell me what it means. These various rogue detractors you are angry about are not me. I am not making their arguments. The sick dub you are scoring against them has no relevance to the conversation you're having with me, wherein you quote my posts and reply to them.

Now if this weird "winning more" thing is the only reason you brought up the quantum rogue build with observant, skulker, blindsense, etc, then it sounds like we're agreed that it's not actually relevant to the comment at the start of our back-and-forth, or to the examples I provided to help showcase it. LMK if that understanding is wrong.

RE: inferences about JTB's words. Again, I think the problem here is that you've invented a position for me to hold. Best I can tell, I have never said "[I] don't want to have to accommodate the rogue but the game forces [me] to because it's so weak." Even if I believed that, it doesn't follow that I must also believe "characters have to have answers all the time for every encounter, or else its bad."

Hopefully that helps clear this up. I don't believe either of the things you're telling me I must believe. If my constant veering to correct you is bothersome, you and I can solve that by not making up opinions that I don't hold.

You are not satisfied that wall spells can be cast blindly. I've actually explicit addressed the skepticism argument as well. See "RE: Skepticism." (p24). I think this may just be a play experience issue.

How do we highlight a rogue? I think your list is good, but I think we add some important notes. It's not actually enough to have secret / locked doors, traps, and stealth, because as I've noted, my goal is to " highlight someone inflexible like the party rogue, without allowing a more flexible caster to obviate the challenge." A locked door is a great example, because it actually needs to be included in an environment that prevent someone from knocking it open to save time, or charming a denizen into helping them, or it should be in a dungeon dangerous enough that a caster can't afford to passwall through it, or sometimes a locked door isn't an option because the bard & rogue are within +1 of each other on thieves' tools! I've frequently included locked doors that my rogue never unlocked, because a more flexible character found an alternate way to get past the problem.

Like you noted, things like locked doors are "the game", which is why so many spells and features interface with all of these options. That makes it harder to design scenarios for inflexible classes like the rogue!

If the DM runs encounters that are different, that means the DM is letting the caster shine! / To highlight versatility, you need to make encounters that require versatility. I'm combining what appear to be the same argument at start & end of your post. These statements are true in a tautalogical sense, but not in a way that matters to that original comment. To quote, "it's very easy to highlight someone flexible like a caster", because I can just cook up an idea and throw it at them. In contrast, an inflexible character needs that intentional, targeting design I keep talking about.

You've mentioned that I would need to "make sure every encounter guarantees the wizards and clerics can use their spells in different ways", but I've actually shown why this isn't the case by grabbing a spell list at random and showing you how it could bring several approaches to quite a few scenarios without any targeting, intentional design, or guarantees of any kind on my part. Flexible characters can just do that.

The Gauntlet is proof! The Gauntlet wasn't straightforward! Looking at the original comment here, the gauntlet wasn't created to highlight anybody (check). The gauntlet just put a goal in front of somebody (kill the monsters while staying alive; check). The gauntlet threw in tools that weren't targeted towards anybody (frankly basic ones too: sightlines in dungeons, basic elevation, gaps between some platforms, some simple lighting, a flooding room; check). Aaaaaand the caster figured out stuff to do. Whatever "straightforward" means, this actually fits pretty well within the parameters of what I'm describing.

I will admit I am not a big fan of the Gauntlet in specific to this conversation, I mean, in the opening of the monk video it was stated the Gauntlet isn't intended to provide direct comparisons between Classes and Builds. And it doesn't do a great job of its intended purpose of showing off the strengths and weaknesses of different classes, at least in my opinion.

I agree, it's a little odd to me Dr. Samurai has focused so much on it. I mostly brought it up because JellyPooga claimed folks like ludic and I were just playing D&D on easy mode, fire-and-forget, no consequence rests, etc etc. I think the gauntlet is a great rebuttal to that specific argument, because (1) it has really hard fights, (2) with limited rests, (3) it's an actual game, not a hypothetical, and (4) one of the accused (ludic) has played in it and can attest to its difficulty. It blows the "casters are only strong on easy mode" argument out of the water, and (IMO) that's basically all we should use it for. I brought that up twice, once per time I noticed Jelly mention it (here and here.)

Unfortunately, Dr. Samurai decided that the gauntlet is also evidence that "optimizer DMs and optimizer players just vibe and make the game work to the players' favor." (here), used it as an example of "vibing" because he disagreed with a tactical choice (here), and recently has said the gauntlet is "non-straightforward" which is evidence that it was designed to highlight casters I think (here). Some folks want to gauntlet it to demonstrate the truth about classes and there's not much we can do about that.

[Psyren]

Assassin
Level 3: Tools of the Trade
You gain proficiency in two tools and two languages of your choice.

I'd specify two here (e.g. Disguise + Forgery) and allow them to float if the rogue already has them.

Level 3: Assassinate
When you make a Sneak Attack you can Rogue level to the extra damage you deal.
In addition, you gain advantage on attack rolls against any creature that has not taken a turn in combat yet.

A flat +level to every SA skyrockets this rogue from one of the worst to one of the best, especially when you consider off-turn SA. This feels overtuned without some kind of limiter like "on the first round" or "PB/LR".

Level 6: Infiltration Expertise
You gain advantage on ability checks to pass yourself off as someone else.
In addition you cannot be detected by magical sensors, and you are immune to magic that reads your thoughts or determines if you are lying.

I assume your version gets the subclass stuff at different intervals?

The first part is redundant if you have Disguise + Deception/Performance, so it needs something more. The second part is good, but you should give the DM guidance on what happens instead. (Getting a reading of "no thoughts" or even "no lies detected" on an obvious lie can be equally suspicious if not moreso.)

Level 10: Misdirection
When you use your Uncanny Dodge feature, you can choose one creature adjacent to you to receive the damage that you avoid.

This is a bad idea as it's uncapped - you can actually deal more damage with your reaction this way than with your Attack action depending on the hit you're reflecting. There's a reason the monk's deflect is anchored to the Martial Arts die rather than simply letting you redirect a ballista or a meteor.

Level 14: Death Strike
If you have advantage on an attack roll and both rolls would hit, that attack is treated as a critical hit.

I'm fine with this one.

[LudicSavant]

As far as I can tell, I have not used the term "winning more". I am not planning on using the term "winning more". The way you use it, I can hardly tell me what it means.

I will further add that as someone who does occasionally use that term, I am not sure what it means when Dr. Samurai uses it either. Or why he appears to be talking about it with regard to... detecting a Gelatinous Cube?

I would consider something like Assassinate to be a bit of a "win more" feature, because in order to even use that crit at all you need to be in a highly advantageous board state that often is sufficient to enable a win for a dedicated ambusher, whether they're an Assassin Rogue or not. But that has nothing to do with detecting gelationous cubes.

Contrast this with the 2024 Playtest 6 version (is there a more recent playtest version of the Rogue than this? I haven't kept up with the updates):

Initiative. You have Advantage on Initiative
rolls.

Surprising Strikes. During the first round of
each combat, you have Advantage on attack
rolls against any creature that hasn’t taken a
turn. If your Sneak Attack hits any target
during that round, the target takes extra
damage of the weapon’s type equal to your
Rogue level.

This is a lot more broadly useful. You not only get a bonus for going first, you also get an increased ability to do so (very useful in and of itself) which can then be stacked up to nearly ensure that you trigger Surprising Strikes frequently.

It isn't even dependent on the sneak attack's damage dice, so it has no problem working with the new cunning strikes.

[Kane0]

I'd specify two here (e.g. Disguise + Forgery) and allow them to float if the rogue already has them.

A flat +level to every SA skyrockets this rogue from one of the worst to one of the best, especially when you consider off-turn SA. This feels overtuned without some kind of limiter like "on the first round" or "PB/LR".

I assume your version gets the subclass stuff at different intervals?

The first part is redundant if you have Disguise + Deception/Performance, so it needs something more. The second part is good, but you should give the DM guidance on what happens instead. (Getting a reading of "no thoughts" or even "no lies detected" on an obvious lie can be equally suspicious if not moreso.)

This is a bad idea as it's uncapped - you can actually deal more damage with your reaction this way than with your Attack action depending on the hit you're reflecting. There's a reason the monk's deflect is anchored to the Martial Arts die rather than simply letting you redirect a ballista or a meteor.

I'm fine with this one.

Appreciate the feedback! Full class is on page 25 so yes subclass breaks at 3, 6, 10, 14 for all classes (I only have three classes fully drafted at this stage, the rest still need subclasses filled in)

Assassin wont get extra attack like a few others do (at least 3 of 7) so thats where the +level sneak attack damage fits in.

Advantage on passing yourself off mirrors the thiefs advantage on stealth/thievery which stacks with expertise and reliable.
Oh yeah, should specify you can choose to provide null or false results.

Haha for the record i'm in favor of monks redirecting boulders if they manage to reduce it to 0. Youre still taking the other half though.

Again appreciated

[Psyren]

This is a lot more broadly useful. You not only get a bonus for going first, you also get an increased ability to do so (very useful in and of itself) which can then be stacked up to nearly ensure that you trigger Surprising Strikes frequently.

It isn't even dependent on the sneak attack's damage dice, so it has no problem working with the new cunning strikes.

1) Yes, that's the latest text for those features. (Assuming they stick with Assassin at all, that is - SOMETHING got bumped to make room for Soulknife, and keep the subclass count at 48.)

2) Note that the bonus damage doesn't need you to hit someone who hasn't acted yet that round either. That gives you automatic advantage, sure, but if you can get advantage another way (e.g. Steady Aim) you still get the damage boost.

3) I actually wouldn't mind if it gave extra damage dice, i.e. letting you choose more costly CS options effectively for free, like Blinding a caster as part of your opener. But a static damage boost is still nice, since you can trade in more dice for CS and still deal okay damage that round.

[LudicSavant]

1) Yes, that's the latest text for those features. (Assuming they stick with Assassin at all, that is - SOMETHING got bumped to make room for Soulknife, and keep the subclass count at 48.)

2) Note that the bonus damage doesn't need you to hit someone who hasn't acted yet that round either. That gives you automatic advantage, sure, but if you can get advantage another way (e.g. Steady Aim) you still get the damage boost.

3) I actually wouldn't mind if it gave extra damage dice, i.e. letting you choose more costly CS options effectively for free, like Blinding a caster as part of your opener. But a static damage boost is still nice, since you can trade in more dice for CS and still deal okay damage that round.

You're right, it's even more of an improvement than I initially thought -- any Sneak Attack that lands during that round gains bonus damage.

[Just to Browse]

I will further add that as someone who does occasionally use that term, I am not sure what it means when Dr. Samurai uses it either. Or why he appears to be talking about it with regard to... detecting a Gelatinous Cube?

I do think that's the meaning they're getting at. From staring at that paragraph for 2 minutes, I think what happened was this:

1. Someone mentioned expertise being a win-more feature at some point in this thread (I am not sure who, fairly confident it wasn't me)
2. Dr. Samurai has determined that is an opinion all, or at least many, "rogue detractors" share.
3. Dr. Samurai's argument is that rogue with expertise in perception could have seen a gelatinous cube during a rescue mission that I ran in my ravenloft campaign which I wrote about in my 5th example here. Expertise would increase the chance they would see the ooze, thus increasing the likelihood they could run the mission solo instead of the ranger player who actually did, thus proving that expertise is not a win-more mechanic.

There's a whole tangled knot made of conditionals inherent in that #3, but I don't think it's worth untangling. I don't really think expertise is a win-more mechanic so he doesn't need to tell me. If the point is important enough, it should be said in a reply to... whoever else it's meant for, idk.

[Dr.Samurai]

I do think that's the meaning they're getting at. From staring at that paragraph for 2 minutes, I think what happened was this:

1. Someone mentioned expertise being a win-more feature at some point in this thread (I am not sure who, fairly confident it wasn't me)
2. Dr. Samurai has determined that is an opinion all, or at least many, "rogue detractors" share.
3. Dr. Samurai's argument is that rogue with expertise in perception could have seen a gelatinous cube during a rescue mission that I ran in my ravenloft campaign which I wrote about in my 5th example here. Expertise would increase the chance they would see the ooze, thus increasing the likelihood they could run the mission solo instead of the ranger player who actually did, thus proving that expertise is not a win-more mechanic.

There's a whole tangled knot made of conditionals inherent in that #3, but I don't think it's worth untangling. My rebuttal is that I don't really think expertise is a win-more mechanic so you don't need to tell me and could we please stop assuming that JTB believes things that he doesn't believe just to win an internet argument pleaaaaaaaase?

JTB, it's obvious to me that you're interpreting my replies in the worst light, and so I think the best thing to do is sort of leave the conversation where it is, as I'm trying to explain and untangle the confusion in these back and forths, and you keep claiming I'm making things up and don't have experience playing the game.

With regards to this particular bit, I never made the claim that you used "win more" as an argument. I clarified to you that you are making a claim, and I want to understand where it is coming from. You said: I'm glad someone got to do a solo op, but this session really left me scratching my head; "how the hell am I going to highlight the stealthy rogue when the ranger can do their job even more flexibly?" Never solved this one before the campaign fizzled out.

I said, since I had the opportunity, I want to highlight a point I had been making in the thread. Which is that specialists should specialize and focus on their craft, and that "win more" was a theoretical argument but in actual play that's exactly what you want to do because it makes your skills consistent and lets you succeed at what you're supposed to be good at.

You keep interpreting this as me strawmanning you, when I was just taking the opportunity to explain my position with your example. You literally said you're scratching your head wondering how to help a rogue out, and I'm saying rogues should specialize in their craft and not worry about taking Expertise and having Advantage on their skills as "overkill", which is what others have said in this thread. I didn't say "you said this, haha I've got you". I've made claims about incoherence in the thread previously, and I want to point this out as the side arguing against the rogue holds differing opinions. Some people are saying the rogue skills are overkill, but here is a clear example someone else is highlighting where a higher bonus might have made a difference. That was the point, it wasn't a gotcha, and it wasn't a strawman.

RE: inferences about JTB's words. Again, I think the problem here is that you've invented a position for me to hold. Best I can tell, I have never said "[I] don't want to have to accommodate the rogue but the game forces [me] to because it's so weak." Even if I believed that, it doesn't follow that I must also believe "characters have to have answers all the time for every encounter, or else its bad."

Hopefully that helps clear this up. I don't believe either of the things you're telling me I must believe. If my constant veering to correct you is bothersome, you and I can solve that by not making up opinions that I don't hold.

What is bothersome is that you think you're correcting me, instead of giving me some benefit of the doubt because we're having a conversation. This is another case where you're choosing to accuse me of acting in bad faith. I explained where I was coming from, and you insisted that I'm inventing a position for you to hold. You said the below:

Like, I've talked about adapting encounters to the rogue, but want to emphasize that I don't actually want to do that! It's just that the rogue is so narrow that I have to choose beween tailoring my combats to the rogue's narrow set of strengths, or not running a high-consequence, real-risk-of-failure game at all. I'm not forcing my playstyle on the the rogue, the rogue's weakness is what forces me to do this!

I've explained what I inferred from that and other comments. Now, if my inference is wrong, you can explain that, instead of denying you ever said it, or accusing me of strawmanning you.

Re: The Gauntlet

I don't want to rehash the Gauntlet in this thread as it can easily take over the conversation, but when it was originally showcased here, it was criticized for being easy. And this is part of my asking exactly how challenging are these "deadly+" encounters. You think the golem was optimal play; I don't think I'd call a golem starting all the way on the opposite side of the map and walking over for the entire encounter and granting free OAs and only making 1 turn of attacks before dying "optimal play". Similarly, there was a nice Iron Golem placed at the beginning of the next map, but the map was so wide that everyone was able to race right past it without a care. And so it lumbered on for several turns before ever reaching anyone. So claims can be made of "deadly+", and they may be technically accurate according to the DMG, but pressing your Spell button as mobs of melee enemies lumber towards you from the other side of the map does not evoke "challenging" to me.

Anyways, it was fun until it wasn't lol. I consider this particular side conversation as over, at least on my end. Hopefully we can reengage when we're doing more than just reminding each other what was said four pages ago.

[Just to Browse]

JTB, stop being uncharitable! / Why isn't JTB giving me the benefit of the doubt? I actually think I'm being pretty charitable. Every once in a while (once per post?) I am told that I believe a thing that I do not believe, or that I do a thing I don't do, or that my PCs do something they don't actually do, etc. When I see that, I inform you it's not true and ask you to stop doing that. In my history on this forum, I've seen quite a few people find one example of an uncharitable post and call someone else a troll, intellectual dishonest, strawman, linking yourlogicalfallacy is, etc etc. I don't see any value in escalating a conversation needlessly like that.

Now when I'm told that I believe "non-casters are going to fail or die or can't proceed", or in my games "casters always run out of resources at the end of the day", or whatnot, I do correct those things. But I'm not doing that because I'm uncharitable! I'm correcting those things because they're not real opinions I told, or not real things I do! I'm sorry you're having a tough time sorting who said what (that's why I use headers in my comments, actually), but if elements of your argument hinge on fake info, I'm gonna call them out!

I'm not talking to JTB about win-more stuff, I'm talking to someone else. Sounds great! Unfortunately, I cannot tell the difference between "Dr. Samurai thinks I said something I never said again" and "Dr. Samurai is talking to a person who isn't me, directly beneath a quote from me, while referring to a vague group he could potentially consider me a part of". The solution here is a quick one: Instead of quoting me and assuming this person (I am still not sure who they are) will read your comment, which comes potentially a dozen+ pages after anything they wrote, just tell them you're talking to them! "Hey [username], I think expertise argument is wrong: here's an example from JTB's ravenloft campaign to prove it".

JTB, explain this quote about being forced to do stuff. Sure! And thank you for asking me if something is true instead of just telling me I believe something / do something. That way we don't go through the whole song and dance of you saying "this is true" and me saying "it literally is not" and then something about strawmen etc etc.

Let's go back to the original comment here. Your quote comes from a time I directly replied to JellyPooga, where Jelly said "Players/GMs have adapted their playstyle to appreciate the always-succeed, fire-and-forget, free-from-consequence-rest style of play that the original design team did not intend". I countered by talking about the games I've run that didn't just have tense saves, but had "more stakes for failure, more punishments for fire & forget play, more consequences for bad play", which featured stuff that never showed up in any of my previous examples like "far sides of chasms". I've also noted that I don't usually play that way. Within just this context of running a game with high risks of failure, punishments for fire-and-forget play, and and deadly consequences for rests, the rogue makes running the game hard because their narrowness becomes a pretty noticeable weakness!

But in the normal games where I just think up scenarios and throw them at players (the ones I have written examples for), I run with narrow characters all the time. I actually gave an example of a narrow caster character in the linked post. These are part of my normal weekly games. If you'd like, I could also talk about the 4x Deadly encounter against a demonic war party in a room barred with a wall of force where 2/3 of the enemies had death throes, and how the party rogue had a bad time there too, but I've avoided mentioning it because I don't think it's related to my point. That's why I kept that particular topic relegated to a single post; I brought it up just to counter JellyPooga's point about re:casters look strong only if you play ezmode, and I've deigned not to bring it up again in unrelated discussion.

But in the Gauntlet, a golem was placed far away, and another was placed in a big hallway. That's not really challenging! Nuke was just pressing his spell button. For not wanting to rehash the Gauntlet, my man sure is rehashing the Gauntlet. I actually think low-mobility, high-threat enemies are actually great, because in wide areas they discourage standing still (e.g. iron golem), and in long hallways they discourage infinite kiting (e.g. clay golem). Nuke and his party actually played around both golems pretty well.

The golem in the gauntlet took opportunity attacks! That's not optimal play! Already addressed (and pretty definitively, I think). See "Remember that one time in the gauntlet?" (p25).

Since this intersects with the bit on optimal play, it's also worth pointing out that enemy starting position is not related to optimal play, because it's set in the scenario. If the DM were to move his golems before anyone noticed Nuke, that would violate the whole spirit of the scenario! Given our clay golem's position, it's optimal for it to dash towards its enemies! That's simply true!

Stop saying I don't have play experience. You've told me you think I believe casters are strong because of a "DM issue", you've met the actual play experience of blind casters predicting where their allies locations with a sarcastic "... you know, spellcasters are smart and stuff", you've told me a clay golem within Berserk range should hit the dodging guy in front of them and suggested that doing otherwise was not "optimal play". These statements end up getting refuted honestly very quickly at the table, and I know that because I play with rogues, blinded casters, and clay golems! I can't give a more substantive answer to a skeptical shrug or sarcastic one-liner, aside from "you should try it", because it sounds only one of us has tried it.

Hopefully we can reengage when we're doing more than just reminding each other what was said four pages ago.

Believe me I would love nothing more! I've got 5 example scenarios for the rogue that seem pretty relevant and prove my argument pretty solidly. If you're interested, I think it could be good to evaluate the approaches listed in there and propose some alternative approaches our hypothetical lv11 stealth rogue could take. Alternatively, we could take a look at more examples scenarios from games you've run, and apply our hypothetical cleric's & rogue's respective toolkits to them!

[JellyPooga]

Let's go back to the original comment here. Your quote comes from a time I directly replied to JellyPooga, where Jelly said "Players/GMs have adapted their playstyle to appreciate the always-succeed, fire-and-forget, free-from-consequence-rest style of play that the original design team did not intend". I countered by talking about the games I've run that didn't just have tense saves, but had "more stakes for failure, more punishments for fire & forget play, more consequences for bad play", which featured stuff that never showed up in any of my previous examples like "far sides of chasms". I've also noted that I don't usually play that way. Within just this context of running a game with high risks of failure, punishments for fire-and-forget play, and and deadly consequences for rests, the rogue makes running the game hard because their narrowness becomes a pretty noticeable weakness!

I think there's a distinction to be made between what might be seen as "difficult". Given that it was mentioned and not having been familiar with The Gauntlet, specifically, I took the time to go look it out, so my apologies for not really responding to the rebuttals to my post you call back to here earlier. In relation specifically to The Gauntlet, I think that it very much fits into exactly the style of play that I talk about; it's a win-or-die scenario designed around almost solely combat with little opportunity to explore the options that an RPG offers beyond the features and abilities on your character sheet. Is it a fun scenario? Yeah, I'm sure it's a blast to play through as a time-locked challenge to see if you can make your resources last and defeat the bad guy before the doom clock ticks its last or you drop dead. Is it representative of it's claim that it showcases character builds in actual play? No. I don't think it does and if anyone is playing the game in that style of "ramp up the difficulty with more bags of meat and tougher NPCs", then I think that's not really showcasing what D&D, let alone high-level D&D, really is or should be, or how a given character performs in actual play.

To move away from The Gauntlet a little and to demonstrate, by way of a simple analogy, why that kind of gameplay isn't what I'm talking about; you don't fight The Devil using a pointy stick. Yes, in D&D the devil has a statblock and with the right equipment, a high enough level and by pushing all the right buttons (spells/features/etc.), yes, you can indeed fight the devil with a pointy stick and kill them. That's the "easy-mode", at least the one I'm talking about. It might be a difficult fight. It might be under time constraints or difficult circumstances or whatever, but it's just a grind; you fight the mooks and gather the loot until your powerful enough to beat the boss at the end of the level, computer game style. There's not actually any challenge to that. It's just numbers and the same gameplay loop you were playing at level 1 fighting Goblins until you're powerful enough to beat the Bugbear Chief as it is at level 14 fighting Bone Devils and Erinyes until you're powerful enough to beat the Pit Fiend.

No. You don't beat the Devil with a stick, you do it by being the best fiddler there's ever been, or by self-sacrifice, or by saving the maiden from the clutches of his cult. You might not even meet the Devil in order to beat him, but you foil his plans nonetheless. It's not about how hard the combat is, it's about how hard the campaign is and that is a much more complex question than how many spell slots you're able to bring to bear against a series of Deadly+++ encounters. To touch back on The Gauntlet, it's basically just 4 tough encounters in a row that showcase combat in it's most basic form; it fails to represent information gathering for the mission or any other social aspect of a campaign, gathering supplies, equipment or MacGuffins that might be relevant to completing the mission, exploration and travel to or even within the "final challenge" itself (beyond the simplest of abstraction) or basically any actual roleplaying or strategy beyond "Charge!". Any of those parts of play can be entire adventure arcs, taking multiple sessions of table-time, in and of themselves. It also fails to represent time pressure of longer than a single day, which can be a far greater limitation to classes that depend on Long Rests than it is to those that don't. The Gauntlet itself is not apologetic about missing those aspects out, but I do think it's an oversight on the part of its creators if the goal is to demonstrate overall build capability.

If short-form combat is all you consider D&D to be, then like I said, all power to you and have a blast with it, but don't fool yourself into thinking it's all to the game there is; there are some parts of the game in which having the biggest gun with the most ammo is irrelevant to having the actual tool you need. In a different Gauntlet, in which the difficulty of encounters varies a great deal more, or that involves scenarios that aren't combat but are more complex than "I make a Persuasion check", in which the Druid or Wizard has to weigh whether they're going to burn spell slots or Wild Shape on passing this encounter...in other words, in the endurance game when endurance is an actual part of the challenge (note that I do not consider endurance an aspect of The Gauntlet's challenge, in the sense that getting to the final encounter with spell slots and resources intact was never really in question; that Ludic managed to beat it with 100% HP on their Gunk run demonstrates that quite succinctly), that's when a Class that is clearly designed to do well under those circumstances is going to shine brighter.

Fighting against easier encounters of Mook Squads that the Wizard could easily hand-wave away with a Fireball might be uninteresting compared to a more complex encounter with funky monsters and spellcasters, but the question of "does the Wizard spend that resource?" could be the difference between casting it then, when it didn't matter, or casting it later when it does. On the same foot, it's worth bearing in mind that it's not only combat that can be hard or require/benefit from resource use and further that if a social or exploration encounter can easily or negligibly be bypassed by a single, easily replenished/facilitated spell slot or dice roll then that encounter is as pointless and unchallenging as any combat that can boast the same. Crossing a rotten rope bridge that drops you into lava and instant death, for example, might be a daunting challenge, but it's not a challenge at all if the party has no reason to reserve spell slots and has a Wizard that can cast Fly. Nor is it a challenge to a character with unlimited time, enough rope and a degree in civil engineering. Those are not even challenges for those characters, to the point that you wouldn't even bother playing out those scenarios; they're more appropriately narrated to add colour to the scene, or perhaps to foreshadow future events e.g. that rope bridge being cut later, when the party is being pursued and do have to deal with it as a challenge when time is of essence and spell slots are limited. Under such circumstances, where a skill check performed under duress when you might not have time to ritually cast Phantom Steed for that speed bonus, or have an ogre breathing down your neck and need to keep them at bay while the door is opened, or there are enemy spellcasters ready to counterspell your Fly spell...that's when the Rogue and their "just good enough" really comes in clutch. At least that's been my experience and what I see on paper; Rogues are good enough when it matters, at a sufficiently wide variety of challenges, whilst everyone else always seems to be either entirely useless (e.g. the Cha-dump Barbarian in the Kings Court) or so extra it's surplus to requirements (e.g. Pass Without Trace when you only need a single scout). D&D doesn't really reward "getting change", so anything above and beyond "good enough" is a waste.

[Gignere]

Coming to this thread pretty late but I’ve played 3 rogues or at least multi class with significant rogue levels. Not sure if anyone cover this but I found on all 3 rogues I either had Elven accuracy or really wanted to get elven accuracy when I wasn’t playing an elf. IMO rogues should get Elven Accuracy baked into the class and not just for attack rolls, I think they should have it for anytime they get advantage on any roll, be it saves, skill checks, initiative, and attack rolls.

I think this can be the new reliable talent feature for rogues in general. Triple advantage is almost as good as dual wielding, using a single attack, and getting advantage on both attacks.

I also second the dirty trick / combat trick by sacrificing sneak attack dice changes I think proposed in 5.5. I think that opens up to new group dynamics.

I also think some kind of burst feature maybe limited like what phantom rogue gets like maybe 1/2 PB times per day they can add another 1/2 of sneak attack damage into an attack after the roll. Maybe a high level upgrade of steady aim would be appropriate.

Anyway coming to this thread way late and might be covering ideas covered by others anyway.

[Theodoxus]

If short-form combat is all you consider D&D to be, then like I said, all power to you and have a blast with it, but don't fool yourself into thinking it's all to the game there is;

Except, that is expressly all that D&D is. It's a combat simulator that has some bolted on, not particularly nuanced or in-depth systems (and if I'm being honest, really only 1 - skills) that deal with non-combat issues.

Everything else is roleplay. 100%. You're playing a role with your fellow players to tell a story. You might roll a d20 from time to time to determine just how much information you glean or how much knowledge you have about some esoteric subject - but it's literally word vomit and honestly doesn't need to be codified within the game. (Sorry Pex, I know you want DCs spelled out, but they're pretty meaningless in the grand scheme of things.)

I've been listening to a game podcast, 25 episodes in, each episode between 1.5 and 2 hours, so, conservatively a day and a half of game time - very minimal amount of OOC talk. They've had 2 combats. And both were against single opponents, and over in 2 rounds. I'd hazard, maybe 15 minutes of real time out of those 36 hours or so. ALL the rest of the pod cast time is dedicated to roleplaying. Rolling ability checks from time to time, but it's really just 4 friends assuming their characters personalities and jawing at each other - you know, like every home game ever. The system doesn't even matter - D&D is just used, IDK, for familiarity's sake?

No game have I ever played where it couldn't have been ported into a different system, and the only difference is how combat works. Because talking to townsfolk or the king, or the kidnapping ogre... it's just talking. Sometimes in goofy voices or accents, sometimes Bob the Guard sounds exactly like Sally the Barmaid... Moving the characters from D&D to Pathfinder to Starfinder to Mage the Ascension to Dragon's AGE to Traveler to Rifts... if you were listening to a podcast that never announced what system they were using, and just used generic descriptions "I'm Joran, I use a sword when fighting." "I'm Kaliflax, I like to cast spells like Fire and Lightning." "I'm Jae Sung, I'm kinda spiritual and like to keep my friends alive." - would not knowing the actual game affect your enjoyment of the podcast (if you're into listening to professional voice actors and whatnot)?

The game system matters in the fact that everyone needs to be playing the same one for it to not descend into chaos. But which specific one matters a lot less for roleplaying; unless it doesn't support your character concept... D&D is pretty poor at letting you play the combat styles of Wolverine and Superman.

[JellyPooga]

Except, that is expressly all that D&D is. It's a combat simulator that has some bolted on, not particularly nuanced or in-depth systems (and if I'm being honest, really only 1 - skills) that deal with non-combat issues.

Everything else is roleplay. 100%.

While I agree that the non-combat rules that are present in D&D lack the depth of complexity that combat does, that's a far cry from your statement that everything but combat is roleplay only.

Plenty of the game engages with non-combat aspects, draining resources, presenting challenges, etc. Just because they don't all risk death, doesn't mean they're of less impact to the narrative. Heck, even combat shouldn't always be a life-or-death situation in many cases and the consequences of failure should absolutely not be TPK, roll-a-new-character. Flight, stealth, teleportation, charm, domination, fear, locks, traps, environmental resistances and considerations (e.g. breathing), food, drink, even flavour are all things that are addressed, if not codified in features, abilities and spells and that's just in the PHB. The vast majority of the DMG does not concern itself with combat; NPC's, adventure design, environments (planar and mundane), social interaction, downtime...this is the meat and bones of what the Dungeon Master should be familiar with because those are the mechanics that make the game an RPG, not the combat. I can understand looking at the PHB and the MM and thinking D&D is a combat simulator, but it really isn't. The rules in the DMG might be a bit loosey-goosey and that's intentional, because there's so many different style of game that can be run and it wants to be more inclusive than only to allow for combat heavy dungeon-run style games, but that doesn't mean there isn't significant ink spent on those non-combat aspect of play.

[LudicSavant]

On the same foot, it's worth bearing in mind that it's not only combat that can be hard or require/benefit from resource use

Indeed, noncombat challenges can be hard or require/benefit from resource use. I've played in a lot of campaigns where difficult, complex, and highly consequential noncombat challenges are a thing, so performance out of combat is something I value highly.

Now someone may read that and think, "well if that's the case, then why don't you rate a Rogue higher compared to those guys that need to use resources? Don't the Rogues save you resources because they're 'resourceless'?" And the answer to that is: Usually no. I've talked about this before -- being 'resourceless' doesn't actually stop me from needing to worry about resource-efficiency and opportunity costs, and this principle applies both in and out of combat.

Let me put it this way. If I'm playing a Rogue (particularly one of the 'resourceless' ones rather than a Soulknife or AT), then my noncombat effectiveness drops to roughly the level of a Bard that has blown all their slots before the day even started.

A Rogue certainly blows the poor Barbarian out of the water at non-combat stuff, but so does the modern Ranger, Artificer, Paladin, Sorcerer, Warlock, Wizard, Druid, Cleric, Shadow Monks, and Rune Knights. Poor Barbarians

I'll also note (since your sig says that you don't have more recent supplements) that a lot of classes have received large noncombat buffs in recent supplements, while the Rogue hasn't (unless they are specifically a Soulknife Rogue).

[Xervous]

As a GM I know in a vacuum if a task is rogue valid or not. Either the numbers work out, a passive checks the box, or the resourceless rogue doesn’t measure up. Putting tasks before other classes brings in the context of the rest of the adventuring day and the question of how much the player values the outcome of the scene. The rogue gets a take it or leave it deal, while other classes may continue bidding on a scene with their resources. Unable to nudge the task beyond its GM declared parameters, it’s obvious to me that such rogues shine only when graced by the GM.

The task needs to fall in a narrow band where it’s uncomfortably beyond the passive reach of other characters, not so far as to also hedge out the rogue, and the value of the task is lower than the resource cost it would take other classes to bridge the gap. Failing to adequately tune for any of those three points either yields a task that nobody completes, a task you didn’t need a rogue to complete, or a task it’s not worth risking the rogue making an attempt on.

You absolutely can supply these sorts of tasks in a rigidly defined module, but the more your game wanders towards a living world driven by player choice and what makes sense for the setting, the higher the chance is for the party to seize upon tasks which aren’t teed up for the rogue.

[LudicSavant]

As a GM I know in a vacuum if a task is rogue valid or not. Either the numbers work out, a passive checks the box, or the resourceless rogue doesn’t measure up. Putting tasks before other classes brings in the context of the rest of the adventuring day and the question of how much the player values the outcome of the scene. The rogue gets a take it or leave it deal, while other classes may continue bidding on a scene with their resources. Unable to nudge the task beyond its GM declared parameters, it’s obvious to me that such rogues shine only when graced by the GM.

The task needs to fall in a narrow band where it’s uncomfortably beyond the passive reach of other characters, not so far as to also hedge out the rogue, and the value of the task is lower than the resource cost it would take other classes to bridge the gap. Failing to adequately tune for any of those three points either yields a task that nobody completes, a task you didn’t need a rogue to complete, or a task it’s not worth risking the rogue making an attempt on.

You absolutely can supply these sorts of tasks in a rigidly defined module, but the more your game wanders towards a living world driven by player choice and what makes sense for the setting, the higher the chance is for the party to seize upon tasks which aren’t teed up for the rogue.

I think this is spot on, especially the middle paragraph. Well put.

[Skrum]

To move away from The Gauntlet a little and to demonstrate, by way of a simple analogy, why that kind of gameplay isn't what I'm talking about; you don't fight The Devil using a pointy stick. Yes, in D&D the devil has a statblock and with the right equipment, a high enough level and by pushing all the right buttons (spells/features/etc.), yes, you can indeed fight the devil with a pointy stick and kill them. That's the "easy-mode", at least the one I'm talking about. It might be a difficult fight. It might be under time constraints or difficult circumstances or whatever, but it's just a grind; you fight the mooks and gather the loot until your powerful enough to beat the boss at the end of the level, computer game style. There's not actually any challenge to that. It's just numbers and the same gameplay loop you were playing at level 1 fighting Goblins until you're powerful enough to beat the Bugbear Chief as it is at level 14 fighting Bone Devils and Erinyes until you're powerful enough to beat the Pit Fiend.

I know what you're getting at with difficulty - the table I play at would be considered by many/any to be High Op. Almost all of the players are super experienced, they know the rules really well, magic items are plentiful and potent, and combats are rated Deadly at a minimum - the tough fights would probably be like Deadly +++. We're capped at level 10, but we've faced Balors w/ crazy legendary actions and spellcasting, dracolichs, multiple adult dragons, like crazy stuff.

But the players always win! Out of, no exaggeration hundreds of games, the PC's have lost (like, failed to meet the objective, had to run, something like that) less than 10 times. About 7 characters have died, give or take (there's some special circumstances to a few that make me hesitate to characterize them as "death in battle").

In one sense, the game is hard - take one of these combats and slot in less powerful characters and yeah, they'd get stomped. One of the DM's who runs another game talks about how much he has to tone back the encounters in comparison. And yet, in the long arc of the game, if the PC's almost never fail and rarely die...can it really be called difficult?

I often feel that the True Art of DMing is knowing how to push the players to the brink where they think or feel they might lose, but never pushing them over it. Like that's what players actually want; to sweat, but not to actually lose or even worse see their character die. I personally have a bit of masochistic desire to see my character die gloriously and fail, but I'm learning more and more that I'm in the minority lol. And even I...like would I enjoy a truly difficult, "realistic" type game where failing a couple of survival checks can send the party into a series of grinding, overtuned encounters that will likely kill them? Or fail a single perception check and get nailed by a disintegration trap? No, I don't think I would lol. Or hell, face a party of spellcasters that use scry and die tactics, or blanket the field in hypnotic patterns and immediately run away (to try again later) if the entire party isn't caught? There's a lot of things the DM could do that make perfect in-game sense that would definitely not be fun. When we get down to it, part of Player Agency is having plot armor - that there's some way to win, or put another way, some way to influence the world and not just get ganked.

=============

That said, do I believe that rogues' real value is in these Actually Difficult games, and they only seem lackluster because the games people play are insufficiently realistic and punishing, thus spellcasters can always cast their way to victory. No. I don't believe that for a second. Flexibility is flexibility; if players were optimizing for a hyper-deadly, realistic, "unfair" game, I think the best party would look exactly like the current meta's best party: something like a twilight cleric, a shepherd druid, a nuke wizard, and a hexasorcadin. Strategy might change, it would probably behoove the cleric or druid (or both) to pick up skill expert for expertise in Perception, but power is power, and these classes have more of it than any rogue could ever dream of having.

[Just to Browse]

Trying to synthesize your points, Jelly, let me know if I missed any.

The Gauntlet is exactly what Jelly described. I'm gonna strongly disagree:

• "always-succeed": definitionally no, we can see people failing more frequently than succeeding even!
• "fire-and-forget": unless I'm misunderstand this word, I vehemently disagree. The scenarios are constantly moving, and the consequences of decisions can easily come back to bit a player.
• "free-from-consequence-rests": definitely not!

If this is the style of play you're describing, none of the adjectives you originally used to describe it really apply. "Win-or-die" is not the same as "always-succeed": one of those explicitly accounts for not succeeding!

Actually the Gauntlet isn't hard, Ludic ended at 100% HP after all. There are two responses to this, one is about as succinct as your argument, while the other is more helpful. I feel compelled to give both.

• Succinct: Ah yes, but in another run, Nuke ended at 0% HP without accomplishing their goal, which by our HP-means-difficulty metric means the Gauntlet is actually super difficult and impossible! Or more likely, 1 character's %HP at the end of a fight is a poor measurement of difficulty.
• Helpful: HP is not the only resource used in D&D. Monks have a resource called ki, and some players have consumable equipment. Companions in this dungeon (the Gauntlet is played with 2 companion characters!) also have their own resources, including their own HP pool, and possibly their own spell slots. Resources can also be exchanged for one another. For example, a potion of healing is a consumable that provides healing, and in TCE the Monk got an optional feature called Quickened Healing that allows them to trade their ki resource for increased HP. It's important to actually view what happened in the Gauntlet to determine how difficult it was: how hard did the enemies hit, what risks did the PCs take, how many near-death experiences were there, who died along the way, and of course what resources got expended aside from HP. This goes for any session or campaign, actually! A long rest restores characters to full HP, which makes it outright impossible to assess difficulty based on HP total at the end of a campaign!

JTB, Ludic, etc think the rogue is weak because they only play short-form combats. Actually this is why I was only using the Gauntlet to disprove the "casters strong on ezmode" argument. I don't actually play like this! Best I can tell, this is not the only way ludic plays either. I play games where class strengths are evaluated based on how hard the campaign is. I play entire adventure arcs, taking multiple sessions of table-time in and of themselves. I play with time pressure longer than a single day. In those games, the rogue's narrow strengths still require tailoring to highlight, while the strengths or more flexible characters don't. Ironically, time pressures greater than a single day hurt the inflexible characters even more!

Resources expenditure is only meaningful if there's opportunity cost: I agree with you on this, and I actually think your example of a rotten rope bridge over a lava-filled chasm is a good one. I don't run these kinds of scenarios without additional pressure, because like you noted, any character with unlimited time & enough rope can get across it. But in scenarios with scant time? Without enough rope? Well, hopefully we have some flexible characters who can apply their broad set of tools to the challenge!

If we have multiple flexible characters, that could even create some interesting decisions: which is better for the party in a chase scene? the wizard casting fly on an ally who carries everyone across, or the cleric casting summon celestial and the summon carries everyone across? Do we need both to halve the time? What other spells could apply here? Flexible characters open up decision spaces in so many ways, it's awesome.

But what about these circumstances? Then the rogue is a good fallback! The scenarios you've described, with additional pressures on the flexible classes, could totally be contrived to highlight the rogue! I'd actually love to go through them:

• You need to move fast, but you can't ritually cast phantom steed: since phantom steed can also be non-ritually-cast, we need to shrink the time further. We also need to make sure the party doesn't have stuff like expeditious retreat which gives +30' speed and only needs 1 bA, or fly since 60' speed is going to match the rogue with 1 action. Maybe we could combine this scenario with the counterspelling caster scenario?
• There's an ogre behind you and you need to hold them off while you open a door. Hopefully the party doesn't have knock because its usual downside is that it ruins stealth missions and, well, clearly stealth has already failed here so there's no reason not to use it given the time pressure. We'll want to make sure there's no hold monster in the caster's pockets, or any kind of particularly powerful control like entangle or solid walls like wall of force, wall of stone, and so on. The doorway should probably be large enough that a caster can't pop a summon in there if they have one. So if the casters have none of these spells, or if the ogre has some legendary resistance and at high levels some kind of object-destruction ability, this seems doable.
• You need to move quickly, but there's a caster with counterspell within 60 feet: We'll need to make sure there's no way to get out of the 60' range, but also make sure the party can't just turn around and gib the caster with any existing summons, buffs, etc, but fundamentally anti-magic is one of the best ways of highlighting non-magic dudes, so this is the easiest scenario to set up as a DM by far.

Those are all scenarios you can put some effort into in order to highlight the rogue, but hopefully it's clear that those scenarios do require effort. To get to the rogue's "just good enough" toolset, a DM will need to get a confluence of factors: enemy casters nearby with counterspell, identifying spells a caster hasn't prepared and designing around them, a bespoke power that break walls, etc. These scenarios aren't just a goal plus a few tools, they require targeted, intentional design to make the rogue feel like they're coming in clutch!

JTB you missed something: rogues are good when everyone else is entirely useless I'm gonna strongly disagree with this, and I think your example showcases it very well. A cha-dump barbarian is not flexible! A flexible character is like a wizard who picks up Persuasion for the lulz a dozen sessions ago and so comes out roughly at the rogue's level. It could be a sorcerer who just naturally has high Cha. It could be even someone like a bard, who has high Cha and may well have put their own expertise into social skills! And god help us if any of these casters can get away with quietly casting guidance somewhere or charming someone for long enough to get their way, making them invaluable instead of just "good enough", shattering the preconceptions of this argument entirely. I think this is a perfect example of how the flexible classes are not "entirely useless". It's the inflexible classes that end up useless here.

JTB you missed something: rogues are good when everyone else's tools would overdo it. I disagree with this even more strongly, and I'm going to use your example again. Group stealth is massively more valuable than solo stealth if you can do it without risking your rolls (which pass without trace unique enables). Solo stealth missions are frankly extremely dangerous, a fact that has actually come up in my own scenarios. I think this is actually the quintessential example to show how valuable it is when classes go beyond "good enough".

On paper, it might look like going above and beyond is waste, but at the table, there are actually a lot of ways that can pay off. In my experience, the best ways to go above & beyond are qualitative, like applying skill boosts to multiple people, using features that reduce time pressure, using abilities reliably under duress. These show up a lot in the playbooks of flexible characters, but unfortunately rarely appear in the playbooks of less-flexible characters like the rogue.

As a GM I know in a vacuum if a task is rogue valid or not. Either the numbers work out, a passive checks the box, or the resourceless rogue doesn’t measure up. Putting tasks before other classes brings in the context of the rest of the adventuring day and the question of how much the player values the outcome of the scene. The rogue gets a take it or leave it deal, while other classes may continue bidding on a scene with their resources. Unable to nudge the task beyond its GM declared parameters, it’s obvious to me that such rogues shine only when graced by the GM.

The task needs to fall in a narrow band where it’s uncomfortably beyond the passive reach of other characters, not so far as to also hedge out the rogue, and the value of the task is lower than the resource cost it would take other classes to bridge the gap. Failing to adequately tune for any of those three points either yields a task that nobody completes, a task you didn’t need a rogue to complete, or a task it’s not worth risking the rogue making an attempt on.

You absolutely can supply these sorts of tasks in a rigidly defined module, but the more your game wanders towards a living world driven by player choice and what makes sense for the setting, the higher the chance is for the party to seize upon tasks which aren’t teed up for the rogue.

This is a great way to put it. Also, much appreciation for having more DM-side voices talking about their experience at the table.

[Psyren]

As a GM I know in a vacuum if a task is rogue valid or not. Either the numbers work out, a passive checks the box, or the resourceless rogue doesn’t measure up. Putting tasks before other classes brings in the context of the rest of the adventuring day and the question of how much the player values the outcome of the scene. The rogue gets a take it or leave it deal, while other classes may continue bidding on a scene with their resources. Unable to nudge the task beyond its GM declared parameters, it’s obvious to me that such rogues shine only when graced by the GM.

The task needs to fall in a narrow band where it’s uncomfortably beyond the passive reach of other characters, not so far as to also hedge out the rogue, and the value of the task is lower than the resource cost it would take other classes to bridge the gap. Failing to adequately tune for any of those three points either yields a task that nobody completes, a task you didn’t need a rogue to complete, or a task it’s not worth risking the rogue making an attempt on.

You absolutely can supply these sorts of tasks in a rigidly defined module, but the more your game wanders towards a living world driven by player choice and what makes sense for the setting, the higher the chance is for the party to seize upon tasks which aren’t teed up for the rogue.

I think looking at this at the individual task level misses something vital. The rogue being both 'resourceless' and reliable doesn't just mean that they shine at finely tuned obstacles, it also means they shine at a high or unknown volume of repetitive obstacles. When you're going on a heist or a prison break, you bring a rogue not because you expect there to be an alarm and a locked door between you and your objective; you bring them along because there might be many alarms (and/or other traps) and many locked doors between you and your objective - especially when there's no way of being certain how many. And that is a pretty reasonable challenge to expect in such a scenario.

Any wizard or bard or ranger can deal with one lock and one trap and one guard patrol - but a rogue can much more consistently deal with 20, and thanks to things like Reliable Talent and Expertise, they get to bypass or counter the the effects of bounded accuracy on the dice (and in doing so, make it much more likely that the DM doesn't call for a roll at all.)

[Blatant Beast]

A Rogue certainly blows the poor Barbarian out of the water at non-combat stuff, but so does the modern Ranger, Artificer, Paladin, Sorcerer, Warlock, Wizard, Druid, Cleric, Shadow Monks, and Rune Knights. Poor Barbarians

In a game that allows Feats, even the Barbarian can do well in Out of Combat stuff.
I had a situation a few years ago, where I was DM-ing a 1st level Barbarian with the Actor Feat through a solo mini-adventure, infiltrating a city prison rife with corruption, in the dead of night.

The player was clever, and took advantage of an opportunity to listen to a minutes long conversation between the subaltern officer of the watch and their subordinate, (the Barbarian was hiding under a desk, and had no choice but to listen or initiate combat).

The player picked up on some crucial information that was presented casually in the conversation, (it could have easily been missed or misinterpreted by a player as the conversation was en media res, and had no context provided), cunningly impersonated the subaltern officer's voice, and had a string of luck with good dice rolls due to the Advantage granted by the Actor Feat, that enabled them to infiltrate much farther than I had expected, before the jig was up.

If the game solution requires clever play, then the solution depends more upon the player than the PC involved.

The whole scenario of the Devil Went Down to Georgia, (defeating the devil through a contest of fiddle playing skill), is not one that favors a Rogue in the first place. A Rogue, by RAW, can have Expertise with Thieves Tools, but not musical instruments. A Rogue would need to have taken Expertise in Performance, to be the greatest fiddle player. A 6th level Artificer would have Expertise with any musical instruments since musical instruments technically count as tools in 5e.

[Dr.Samurai]

JTB, stop being uncharitable! / Why isn't JTB giving me the benefit of the doubt? I actually think I'm being pretty charitable.

Begs the question what you're like when you're being adversarial.

In my history on this forum, I've seen quite a few people find one example of an uncharitable post and call someone else a troll, intellectual dishonest, strawman, linking yourlogicalfallacy is, etc etc. I don't see any value in escalating a conversation needlessly like that.

I'm not calling you any of those things, I've explained my reasoning for why I've said things you have disagreed with or feel were unfair characterizations, but you're not taking the opportunity to move on.

Now when I'm told that I believe "non-casters are going to fail or die or can't proceed", or in my games "casters always run out of resources at the end of the day", or whatnot, I do correct those things. But I'm not doing that because I'm uncharitable! I'm correcting those things because they're not real opinions I told, or not real things I do! I'm sorry you're having a tough time sorting who said what (that's why I use headers in my comments, actually), but if elements of your argument hinge on fake info, I'm gonna call them out!

No, you are absolutely being uncharitable. What's happening is this; you either agree with someone or imply something, and then cry out "I never said that", and on the flip side, I in turn say "it seems like" or "I feel like" and you cry out that I'm putting words in your mouth. You accused me of strawmanning you, outright said you never said something, I showed the evidence that you actually said that exact thing, and you didn't bother to address it directly and concede that I wasn't strawmanning you. Our conversation, which I thought started out well, has devolved into basically the same nuisance that occurred previously, where I had to provide two dozen quotes to prove the "I never said that!" people wrong.

I'm not talking to JTB about win-more stuff, I'm talking to someone else. Sounds great! Unfortunately, I cannot tell the difference between "Dr. Samurai thinks I said something I never said again" and "Dr. Samurai is talking to a person who isn't me, directly beneath a quote from me, while referring to a vague group he could potentially consider me a part of". The solution here is a quick one: Instead of quoting me and assuming this person (I am still not sure who they are) will read your comment, which comes potentially a dozen+ pages after anything they wrote, just tell them you're talking to them! "Hey [username], I think expertise argument is wrong: here's an example from JTB's ravenloft campaign to prove it".

Couple of points.

1. I don't need to do this, because the remark is not specifically for that person. I'm making a point that anyone still engaged and following our conversation (if any lol) can see the point being made. People who are following along and see comments about how rogue features are overkill can see an example where that is not the case. You taking my comment as putting words in your mouth, when I didn't, is a you problem.

2. Given your conduct, I don't think you're in a position to provide advice on how to reply to people. Instead of quoting me, you paraphrase my replies to you, complete with exclamation points to make it seem like I'm just announcing things into the ether without context. This makes it hard to track what exactly you're replying to. You also insist on making accusations, and when I explain to clear it up, and show you that you (charitably) have forgotten that you said something, you double down.

JTB, explain this quote about being forced to do stuff. Sure! And thank you for asking me if something is true instead of just telling me I believe something / do something. That way we don't go through the whole song and dance of you saying "this is true" and me saying "it literally is not" and then something about strawmen etc etc.

This is an example of you being uncharitable again. I never said "you believe this". I said "it seems like we have this expectation". To which you replied something like "I never said that! Don't put words in my mouth". I explained that I inferred it from several remarks you made, including one about feeling forced to accommodate rogues. You AGAIN replied that you never said that and I was putting words in your mouth. I showed that you said EXACTLY that thing. And this is how you respond, by accusing me of putting words in your mouth again.

But in the Gauntlet, a golem was placed far away, and another was placed in a big hallway. That's not really challenging! Nuke was just pressing his spell button. For not wanting to rehash the Gauntlet, my man sure is rehashing the Gauntlet.

I actually just want to rebut your points. That's the point of making the comment. I don't want to rehash the Gauntlet, because I know what lies down that path lol, been there done that. But you are referring to it. And, as JellyPooga shows in his post, the Gauntlet is a funny example because both sides feel strongly that it demonstrates what they are talking about.

I actually think low-mobility, high-threat enemies are actually great, because in wide areas they discourage standing still (e.g. iron golem), and in long hallways they discourage infinite kiting (e.g. clay golem). Nuke and his party actually played around both golems pretty well.

The golem in the gauntlet took opportunity attacks! That's not optimal play! Already addressed (and pretty definitively, I think). See "Remember that one time in the gauntlet?" (p25).

How Nuke played is irrelevant; this is about the DM and the encounter.

The anti-kiting argument would make more sense to me if the result was that the Golem put actual pressure on Nuke. But it didn't. The idea that this was a 4d-chess galaxy brain move to place the Golem all the way at the other end of this giant map and have it dash forward for the entire encounter until it made 1 multiattack and then died doesn't cut the mustard because not only did the golem lose, it lost badly, without doing anything.

These claims have to be evaluated in this way. It's like when people claim that the smart move is to blitz past the frontline against the caster, and take OAs from the martials because who cares, the galaxy brain move is to attack the super powerful spellcaster. The problem that no one mentions is that this galaxy brain move ALSO gets the bad guys killed anyways. If your wizard pops up Shield, avoids all the attacks, and Misty Steps away on their turn, then your baddies just took those OAs, wasted their attacks, and bunched up together for no reason. And now they will die.

Point being that if no matter what you're doing will wind up in the PCs winning every time, you're not really doing anything. Yeah, you can say "sorry Dr. Samurai, you obviously don't play D&D very much and can't recognize genius intellect world-pro elite DMing skills". I'll look at the unscathed Nuke, the lump of clay smoldering on the ground, and shrug and say "sure, if you say so lol".

Oh, if the DM hadn't done this, Nuke would have kited the bad guys around and then killed them and won. Oh ok, so instead Nuke barely moved from his starting position, and... killed the bad guys and won. Got it.

Since this intersects with the bit on optimal play, it's also worth pointing out that enemy starting position is not related to optimal play, because it's set in the scenario. If the DM were to move his golems before anyone noticed Nuke, that would violate the whole spirit of the scenario! Given our clay golem's position, it's optimal for it to dash towards its enemies! That's simply true!

Obviously we're talking about the original placement to begin with. The golem moves forward because it is meant to attack intruders. Seems weird to place it all the way at the other end of the map, where it can't put pressure on anyone for the entire encounter before the very last round, when it is destroyed.

Stop saying I don't have play experience. You've told me you think I believe casters are strong because of a "DM issue", you've met the actual play experience of blind casters predicting where their allies locations with a sarcastic "... you know, spellcasters are smart and stuff", you've told me a clay golem within Berserk range should hit the dodging guy in front of them and suggested that doing otherwise was not "optimal play". These statements end up getting refuted honestly very quickly at the table, and I know that because I play with rogues, blinded casters, and clay golems! I can't give a more substantive answer to a skeptical shrug or sarcastic one-liner, aside from "you should try it", because it sounds only one of us has tried it.

Again, your paraphrased headlines are rude and uncharitable, as I'm not making demands of you. And assuming I don't have play experience is also uncharitable, especially when one of my points has been that playstyles are different. If your experience is that golems lumber towards you from far away and try to get to the squishiest target before their Berserk gets triggered, that's fine. But that's not my experience with golems. Hopefully it's easy to see that having different experiences is not the same as having no experiences.

I also play on a VTT, which is why I asked you if the casting-in-the-dark happened on a VTT. My fighter, when blinded/in darkness, moves around to ping someone on his Blindsight so he can make attacks, and the fact that right before I got blinded I knew where enemies were makes that easier. So I understand that just because the lighting has been blacked out, you can still sort of know where people were. But I recognize that this is a function of the VTT and player attention/memory, not an intrinsic feature that casters have. Unless the sides are separated out well enough, an AOE might still catch allies. A wall spell has to be more precise, and even then isn't winning the encounter by itself, and everyone is presumably still blinded. Then there is how DMs handle this: one of my DMs doesn't mind the players going by memory and effectively osboleting the Blinded condition, one of my DMs makes players roll a die to see which direction they will move in, and I bet he'd balk at the idea that you're going to thread a wall spell while blinded.

Given that you earnestly think I'm strawmanning you, and I earnestly think you're being uncharitable and not interested in moving past these confusions, I'll reiterate that I don't see the point in moving forward. Hopefully I can pass my wisdom saving throw to not defend myself again next time .

While I agree that the non-combat rules that are present in D&D lack the depth of complexity that combat does, that's a far cry from your statement that everything but combat is roleplay only.

Plenty of the game engages with non-combat aspects, draining resources, presenting challenges, etc. Just because they don't all risk death, doesn't mean they're of less impact to the narrative. Heck, even combat shouldn't always be a life-or-death situation in many cases and the consequences of failure should absolutely not be TPK, roll-a-new-character. Flight, stealth, teleportation, charm, domination, fear, locks, traps, environmental resistances and considerations (e.g. breathing), food, drink, even flavour are all things that are addressed, if not codified in features, abilities and spells and that's just in the PHB. The vast majority of the DMG does not concern itself with combat; NPC's, adventure design, environments (planar and mundane), social interaction, downtime...this is the meat and bones of what the Dungeon Master should be familiar with because those are the mechanics that make the game an RPG, not the combat. I can understand looking at the PHB and the MM and thinking D&D is a combat simulator, but it really isn't. The rules in the DMG might be a bit loosey-goosey and that's intentional, because there's so many different style of game that can be run and it wants to be more inclusive than only to allow for combat heavy dungeon-run style games, but that doesn't mean there isn't significant ink spent on those non-combat aspect of play.

I think the open-endedness of the skill system is basically making it count for nothing in these conversations, and/or heavily influencing the types of games people play. I've certainly argued this point before with some of the experiences I have had with some of my DMs, so I do get where Skrum is coming from. But we can't assume for these conversations that only combat matters.

I know what you're getting at with difficulty - the table I play at would be considered by many/any to be High Op. Almost all of the players are super experienced, they know the rules really well, magic items are plentiful and potent, and combats are rated Deadly at a minimum - the tough fights would probably be like Deadly +++. We're capped at level 10, but we've faced Balors w/ crazy legendary actions and spellcasting, dracolichs, multiple adult dragons, like crazy stuff.

But the players always win! Out of, no exaggeration hundreds of games, the PC's have lost (like, failed to meet the objective, had to run, something like that) less than 10 times. About 7 characters have died, give or take (there's some special circumstances to a few that make me hesitate to characterize them as "death in battle").

In one sense, the game is hard - take one of these combats and slot in less powerful characters and yeah, they'd get stomped. One of the DM's who runs another game talks about how much he has to tone back the encounters in comparison. And yet, in the long arc of the game, if the PC's almost never fail and rarely die...can it really be called difficult?

Yes, this is correct.

[Psyren]

This is another reason why I think limiting the conversation to 2014 D&D is pointless. Even if you conclude that Barbarians have too few mechanical interactions with the exploration and social pillars today - which I agree with - that's something the designers are actively working to address. The big item they added is Primal Knowledge, which is further bolstered by expanding rage to last 10 minutes so you can roll right from the combat pillar to one of the other two and possibly even back again on the same use, and enhancing rage so that you can recover uses on a short rest as well as effectively doubling your uses via Persistent Rage, and lastly boosting everyone with the starting feat so that your Barbarian can grab Skilled right at level 1. And all of that is before any subclass tweaks which boost them in the other pillars further (Wild Heart and World Tree especially.)

[Xervous]

I think looking at this at the individual task level misses something vital. The rogue being both 'resourceless' and reliable doesn't just mean that they shine at finely tuned obstacles, it also means they shine at a high or unknown volume of repetitive obstacles. When you're going on a heist or a prison break, you bring a rogue not because you expect there to be an alarm and a locked door between you and your objective; you bring them along because there might be many alarms (and/or other traps) and many locked doors between you and your objective - especially when there's no way of being certain how many. And that is a pretty reasonable challenge to expect in such a scenario.

Any wizard or bard or ranger can deal with one lock and one trap and one guard patrol - but a rogue can much more consistently deal with 20, and thanks to things like Reliable Talent and Expertise, they get to bypass or counter the the effects of bounded accuracy on the dice (and in doing so, make it much more likely that the DM doesn't call for a roll at all.)

For a singular check or a set of checks the middle paragraph still holds. The combination of DCs on the locks, risk:reward ratio for the rolls, and investment:return on resource using options all needs to line up. As you’ve observed the GM still has the final word on the matter. First there’s the GM decision of whether or not the rogue gets to auto pass the DCs. If the answer to that is no, the obstacle assessment now turns towards the risk:reward curve to pick a point or region that will leave the rogue reliable enough while preventing other classes from achieving satisfactory resource free chances. Finally the task(s) need to be armored against resource using classes achieving massive or even simply noteworthy value in their reliability and/or speed.

For a module that professes to be appropriate for a party of X level this is wonderful, it’s clearly accessible to and successfully empowers the rogue to take the spotlight. For a world wherein the players decided they want to heist Y location, it’s anywhere from somewhat to horribly contrived to be serving this exact arrangement up to the party. The DCs may be low enough and/or the cost of failure may be sufficiently low that the rogue is a negligible value add. The DC and/or the cost of failure may be so high that the rogue is taking a losing gamble. There might be that one loophole that lets another class grab the spotlight. The system provides no guidance or imperatives on this topic (few systems tend to), so it’s on me to decide if the task is actually a rogue spotlight or not.

[Pex]

Except, that is expressly all that D&D is. It's a combat simulator that has some bolted on, not particularly nuanced or in-depth systems (and if I'm being honest, really only 1 - skills) that deal with non-combat issues.

Everything else is roleplay. 100%. You're playing a role with your fellow players to tell a story. You might roll a d20 from time to time to determine just how much information you glean or how much knowledge you have about some esoteric subject - but it's literally word vomit and honestly doesn't need to be codified within the game. (Sorry Pex, I know you want DCs spelled out, but they're pretty meaningless in the grand scheme of things.)

I've been listening to a game podcast, 25 episodes in, each episode between 1.5 and 2 hours, so, conservatively a day and a half of game time - very minimal amount of OOC talk. They've had 2 combats. And both were against single opponents, and over in 2 rounds. I'd hazard, maybe 15 minutes of real time out of those 36 hours or so. ALL the rest of the pod cast time is dedicated to roleplaying. Rolling ability checks from time to time, but it's really just 4 friends assuming their characters personalities and jawing at each other - you know, like every home game ever. The system doesn't even matter - D&D is just used, IDK, for familiarity's sake?

No game have I ever played where it couldn't have been ported into a different system, and the only difference is how combat works. Because talking to townsfolk or the king, or the kidnapping ogre... it's just talking. Sometimes in goofy voices or accents, sometimes Bob the Guard sounds exactly like Sally the Barmaid... Moving the characters from D&D to Pathfinder to Starfinder to Mage the Ascension to Dragon's AGE to Traveler to Rifts... if you were listening to a podcast that never announced what system they were using, and just used generic descriptions "I'm Joran, I use a sword when fighting." "I'm Kaliflax, I like to cast spells like Fire and Lightning." "I'm Jae Sung, I'm kinda spiritual and like to keep my friends alive." - would not knowing the actual game affect your enjoyment of the podcast (if you're into listening to professional voice actors and whatnot)?

The game system matters in the fact that everyone needs to be playing the same one for it to not descend into chaos. But which specific one matters a lot less for roleplaying; unless it doesn't support your character concept... D&D is pretty poor at letting you play the combat styles of Wolverine and Superman.

Your games, maybe, but not everyone's. Social interactions happen but depending on scenario resources are still used up, more so when doing Exploration. Especially in Exploration resources are used up because they're needed to accomplish something. Social interactions will use resources for Advantages or bonuses when dice are rolled because players need to convince the NPC not the DM and a die roll is used to keep DM bias out of it. PCs convince the shopkeeper for a discount or the Duke to help the village, not the DM to like a player's eloquence of verbiage. Those resources used means not having them for when combat does happen. Social interaction, exploration, combat are all important to the RPG experience. Individual players may prefer or dislike one over the others, but individual players are not everyone. For the players who like social interaction and/or exploration, independent of whether they like combat or not, they enjoy their characters having buttons to push or have an always on ability that help to succeed in those situations.

[Just to Browse]

RE: Dr. Samurai

Stop saying "I never said that" / you're being uncharitable again Even when you put "seems" at the start of "it seems like [thing that isn't true]", I am still going to tell you that thing is not true! It seeming true does not make it immune to me saying "no that is not true". I am sorry that seems adversarial and that at some point you talked to some other guy who made you quote them, but I'm not sure what I can do aside from keep saying "[thing you wrote that is not true] is not true" over and over.

Should I change my vocabulary? How about "That inference is incorrect" or "The statement referred to herein, whether declarative, inferred, or issued with an alternative level of confidence, is not reflective of things that JTB believes or does, or things that happen at his table"? If the verbiage change will resolve the complaints about uncharitable strawman etc, it makes zero difference to me.

Why won't you move on? Contrary to your comments, I do move on after calling out statements that aren't true. My process has been: (1) note that I don't say / do whatever it is, (2) ask you to stop assuming I say / do things I don't say / do, (3) make a joke about it because darn does it happen a lot, and then I just move on. The only reason we're still on any of this conversation is because you told me that I'm making strawman accusations! Just don't write those things and we won't have to talk about them!

I don't need to address the guy I'm talking to, because I'm talking to a group of people, not you though. Cool, but unfortunately you're still addressing this group (whoever they are, I still do not know!) directly under a quote from me while using words that definitely make it sound like I'm a member. For example, "rogue detractors" is not gonna be specific enough when talking about expertise being "win more", since it apparently doesn't include me. Maybe you could call that group "expertise-is-a-win-more-mechanic-ers"?

JTB, your bold summaries are rude / uncharitable / bad representations. Sorry man, but this is how I organize conversations to stay sane. You'll notice I use this format to reference old arguments that have already been addressed, and to collate long paragraphs of arguments (sometimes spread across multiple spots in a post) so I can address them coherently. I actually find the multi-quote format to be a nightmare, because I have to spend quite a lot of time reading through your comments to make sure I actually understand every rebuttal.

Now if you find a summary of my point uncharitable, you can tell me and I will change my headers! For Pelor's sake, I am summarizing you so I can accurately reply to you, so of course I want those summaries to be accurate. If you think exclamation points make you sound bad, or a summary is missing details, or whatever, you can say "this is a more accurate summary" or even "I've never said that" (!!!!). I only ask that when you do this, do it without making all the lamenting about uncharitable strawmen etc etc.

Apparently exclamation points in summaries bother you. This is the first I've heard of it, but I'll try to remember not to put exclamation points in my summaries. Damn me, damn me and my uncharitability!

Jellypooga's comment on the Gauntlet shows that it's not deadly. Already addressed. See "Actually the Gauntlet isn't hard, Ludic ended at 100% HP after all" (p27).

But in the Gauntlet, a golem did not pressure nuke at all. This is incorrect. The golem's presence at the end of a hallway discouraged infinite kiting down that hallway.

But the golem in the Gauntlet dashed for 4 turns then made 1 multiattack and then died Already addressed, see "Remember that one time in the gauntlet?" (p25) and "The golem in the gauntlet took opportunity attacks. that's not optimal play." (p27).

In that golem fight with Nuke in the Gauntlet, Nuke would have just shielded/misty stepped/kited. Therefore the golem did not make a galaxy brain move. Shield and misty step require spell slots, so yes, the golem would have expended some of Nuke's resources (either HP or spell slots), reducing the chance that he can threaten the final boss's ritual. That's literally the whole point! I don't know why this would be considered "galaxy brain", it's just a simple, optimal play.

No matter what the golem does in the Gauntlet, the PCs would win the day. This is incorrect. Losing spell slots increases the chance of loss later on. Worth noting that Nuke's lack of spell slots contribute directly to him losing at the end.

It's weird that the golem was placed on the far edge of the map. I personally think it's pretty smart on the gauntlet designer's part (see "But in the Gauntlet, a golem was placed far away [...]" (p27)), but it sounds like you agree this was unrelated to the DM "vibing" with their player so \shrug.

AOE control effects are only placed well b/c players remember stuff, not because casters are special. Correct, and I haven't stated otherwise. A caster is a player, and as such they can use their vague memory of where their allies are, an assumption of where they would be, and any senses still available to them (like hearing) to throw down controlling AOE effects with decent accuracy. Specifically RE: the risk of hitting allies, I actually addressed in that in "RE: Skepticism" (p24). TLDR: Contrary to the assumption that "a wall has to be precise", the risk is just frequently worth it.

RE: A houserule about walking while blind. I can definitely see how that one guy's houseruled blindness rules would make firing blind AOEs more dangerous, but I don't think that's relevant to the larger conversation.

You're rude so don't give me advice / this is a you problem / begs the question of jtb being adversarial / etc. I've been ignoring the various snippy comments in your replies to me previously because I don't see any value in them and they don't bug me, but for others' sake I think I should mention that this is not a one-way street. As my consolidation indicates, your most recent comment has a much higher incidence of uncharitable digs and snippy one-liners, despite the fact that a large part of it is decrying uncharitability! Let's make sure we treat others with the respect we want, yeah?

[JNAProductions]

General comment: I like Rogues. When I've played them, I had fun!

However, the big game I played a Rogue in had a DM who was a much more narrative guy than a mechanics guy. So it wasn't exactly a rigorously challenging game. Fun, but not pushing the party to their limits.

This thread has certainly given me ideas on how to modify the Rogue, should I desire to do so, but it also doesn't stop me from having fun with the class as-is.

[Blatant Beast]

To make it clear, as the thread is quite long, it has been stated multiple times, by multiple participants, that people are not exclaiming that the Rogue class is unfun, nor unplayable, nor even quite good at times.

Some people, myself included, are indicating that vis a vis the original post, we just feel that some of the other classes offer more to an adventuring group than a Rogue.

Even the coldest hearted optimizer, is going to be fine with an Arcane Trickster in the party.

[Dr.Samurai]

Stop saying "I never said that" / you're being uncharitable again Even when you put "seems" at the start of "it seems like [thing that isn't true]", I am still going to tell you that thing is not true! It seeming true does not make it immune to me saying "no that is not true".

Saying "that's not true" is fine, obviously. Saying "I never said that you're putting words in my mouth" is entirely different. If saying "it seems like" makes no difference to you and you're going to accuse me of strawmanning you, even after I provide your quotes and say that I'm inferring from them, then essentially I can never broach the topic of trying to understand what you're saying without being accused of a fallacy. Which I guess is a win for you.

Why won't you move on? Contrary to your comments, I do move on after calling out statements that aren't true. My process has been: (1) note that I don't say / do whatever it is, (2) ask you to stop assuming I say / do things I don't say / do, (3) make a joke about it because darn does it happen a lot, and then I just move on. The only reason we're still on any of this conversation is because you told me that I'm making strawman accusations! Just don't write those things and we won't have to talk about them!

LMAO this is obviously beyond silly JTB.

You want me to stop complaining that you're falsely accusing me of strawmanning? Here is the exchange again:

Spoiler

Show

I'm not sure where we veered off that you appear to be taking everything I say in this way but... I'm inferring these things from what you've said. You have said that you're thankful a rogue wasn't in the party, because you would have to dial down the encounter, or if a rogue was in the encounter, you'd have to change it because it would have crushed them. And you don't want to have to accommodate the rogue but the game forces you to because it's so weak.

This seems to me like you don't want to run encounters where a rogue might have a difficult time. If a rogue is in the party, you HAVE TO make changes so that it can shine or not suck. That was why I gave my example of Mobile+Charger, because it was an example of me not being at pique efficiency. If you don't feel this way, then I am not sure why you are saying these things.

Again, I think the problem here is that you've invented a position for me to hold. Best I can tell, I have never said "[I] don't want to have to accommodate the rogue but the game forces [me] to because it's so weak." Even if I believed that, it doesn't follow that I must also believe "characters have to have answers all the time for every encounter, or else its bad."

Hopefully that helps clear this up. I don't believe either of the things you're telling me I must believe. If my constant veering to correct you is bothersome, you and I can solve that by not making up opinions that I don't hold.

So here we go, you said I'm inventing positions for you to hold, said that you never said those things, and told me again not to make stuff up. Here is my reply to your position, which is clearly not true:

What is bothersome is that you think you're correcting me, instead of giving me some benefit of the doubt because we're having a conversation. This is another case where you're choosing to accuse me of acting in bad faith. I explained where I was coming from, and you insisted that I'm inventing a position for you to hold. You said the below:

Like, I've talked about adapting encounters to the rogue, but want to emphasize that I don't actually want to do that! It's just that the rogue is so narrow that I have to choose beween tailoring my combats to the rogue's narrow set of strengths, or not running a high-consequence, real-risk-of-failure game at all. I'm not forcing my playstyle on the the rogue, the rogue's weakness is what forces me to do this!

I've explained what I inferred from that and other comments. Now, if my inference is wrong, you can explain that, instead of denying you ever said it, or accusing me of strawmanning you.

You literally said the very thing you claimed you didn't say. And you said the other parts too that I mentioned but didn't quote, about being glad there wasn't a rogue in the party, etc. So clear as day there are your words, the ones I said I was making an inference from, so I wasn't making stuff up or strawmanning you. And note as well that I didn't post this as a giant gotcha or try to dunk on your or anything. Just clearing it up. And how did you respond in your charitable way?

I'm correcting those things because they're not real opinions I told, or not real things I do! I'm sorry you're having a tough time sorting who said what (that's why I use headers in my comments, actually), but if elements of your argument hinge on fake info, I'm gonna call them out!

........

And thank you for asking me if something is true instead of just telling me I believe something / do something. That way we don't go through the whole song and dance of you saying "this is true" and me saying "it literally is not" and then something about strawmen etc etc.

All this from a comment about it being okay if a rogue doesn't have the right answer for every encounter, or isn't always at pique efficiency. Me saying this required all of this back and forth and confusion, that could have easily been cleared up if you weren't hellbent on accusing people of fallacious reasoning (despite claiming you're not interested in doing that).

JTB, your bold summaries are rude / uncharitable / bad representations. Sorry man, but this is how I organize conversations to stay sane. You'll notice I use this format to reference old arguments that have already been addressed, and to collate long paragraphs of arguments (sometimes spread across multiple spots in a post) so I can address them coherently. I actually find the multi-quote format to be a nightmare, because I have to spend quite a lot of time reading through your comments to make sure I actually understand every rebuttal.

Now if you find a summary of my point uncharitable, you can tell me and I will change my headers! For Pelor's sake, I am summarizing you so I can accurately reply to you, so of course I want those summaries to be accurate. If you think exclamation points make you sound bad, or a summary is missing details, or whatever, you can say "this is a more accurate summary" or even "I've never said that" (!!!!). I only ask that when you do this, do it without making all the lamenting about uncharitable strawmen etc etc.

Apparently exclamation points in summaries bother you. This is the first I've heard of it, but I'll try to remember not to put exclamation points in my summaries. Damn me, damn me and my uncharitability!

I don't think I'll add "complaining about headers" to this cumbersome and, ultimately pointless, back and forth. But for someone that feels the need to explain to me how to reply to threads, I figured I'd point it out to you that it's jarring and comes across as rude, because you're replying to your own words instead of what I've actually said. And having a header like "Stop saying XYZ!" comes across as whiny, when in reality I never said it and my post contains context and quotes that explain my position.

Jellypooga's comment on the Gauntlet shows that it's not deadly. Already addressed. See "Actually the Gauntlet isn't hard, Ludic ended at 100% HP after all" (p27).

But in the Gauntlet, a golem did not pressure nuke at all. This is incorrect. The golem's presence at the end of a hallway discouraged infinite kiting down that hallway.

But the golem in the Gauntlet dashed for 4 turns then made 1 multiattack and then died Already addressed, see "Remember that one time in the gauntlet?" (p25) and "The golem in the gauntlet took opportunity attacks. that's not optimal play." (p27).

In that golem fight with Nuke in the Gauntlet, Nuke would have just shielded/misty stepped/kited. Therefore the golem did not make a galaxy brain move. Shield and misty step require spell slots, so yes, the golem would have expended some of Nuke's resources (either HP or spell slots), reducing the chance that he can threaten the final boss's ritual. That's literally the whole point! I don't know why this would be considered "galaxy brain", it's just a simple, optimal play.

No matter what the golem does in the Gauntlet, the PCs would win the day. This is incorrect. Losing spell slots increases the chance of loss later on. Worth noting that Nuke's lack of spell slots contribute directly to him losing at the end.

It's weird that the golem was placed on the far edge of the map. I personally think it's pretty smart on the gauntlet designer's part (see "But in the Gauntlet, a golem was placed far away [...]" (p27)), but it sounds like you agree this was unrelated to the DM "vibing" with their player so \shrug.

You can keep referring to your previous remarks but they're not actually addressing the points being raised.

What spell slots did Nuke lose to the galaxy brain golem strategy?? That's actually MY point lol. Had the golem been closer to put pressure on Nuke, he may have had to use some spells. Had the golem tried to hit the sidekick, it may have caused some damage. It didn't do either of those things. There was no pressure at all. Kiting was not necessary, as evidenced by the fact that he curb-stomped the encounter despite not being able to theoretically "infinite-kite" down this long hallway. So no, in fact, the golem did not do anything. And this IS vibing. There's no reason for the golem to engage in these tactics in-game because it can't think for itself. There's no reason to place the defender, that has to engage in melee, aaaaaaalllllll the way at the other end of the map. But for you, and the DM, and the players, this all makes perfect optimal sense and the strategy is top tier. And the result is... it was inconsequential for the entire encounter, and dealt 0 damage before dying, no extra spell slots needed. It all gelled together very nicely. You're all playing from the same playbook, which you characterize as simply optimal play, that is so obvious you would have never thought it could be misconstrued, and the result is the player won the day easily.

What also contributed to Nuke losing was enemies that can actually harm him. As opposed to enemies that are just walking around the whole time.

You're rude so don't give me advice / this is a you problem / begs the question of jtb being adversarial / etc. I've been ignoring the various snippy comments in your replies to me previously because I don't see any value in them and they don't bug me, but for others' sake I think I should mention that this is not a one-way street. As my consolidation indicates, your most recent comment has a much higher incidence of uncharitable digs and snippy one-liners, despite the fact that a large part of it is decrying uncharitability! Let's make sure we treat others with the respect we want, yeah?

I've tried to untangle the conversation and reset the tone, but when faced with the fact that you're wrong in your accusations, you've just kept doubling down, and it's frustrating. Not sure why you're bringing Ludic back up (I haven't mentioned him, and that was your reasoning last time ), but I don't consider Ludic an authority on forum discourse either lol, far from it. Strange way to defend your position though.

[Psyren]

For a singular check or a set of checks the middle paragraph still holds. The combination of DCs on the locks, risk:reward ratio for the rolls, and investment:return on resource using options all needs to line up.

Sure, and for rogues they do. They have the most DC reliability across multiple checks due to Reliable Talent, for both static an changing DCs, and the best return on their 'resources' since they generally don't use any. For them, the d20 eventually has a range of 10-20 instead of 1-20, that's huge in a Bounded Accuracy system even without the big Expertise bonus they also get, or easily repeatable Advantage they also get.

As you’ve observed the GM still has the final word on the matter. First there’s the GM decision of whether or not the rogue gets to auto pass the DCs. If the answer to that is no, the obstacle assessment now turns towards the risk:reward curve to pick a point or region that will leave the rogue reliable enough while preventing other classes from achieving satisfactory resource free chances. Finally the task(s) need to be armored against resource using classes achieving massive or even simply noteworthy value in their reliability and/or speed.

If the answer to autosuccess is "no" (which again, the rogue has a better chance of that being a "yes" than just about any other class due to genre convention if nothing else, but for the sake of argument), then as per above, their chances of failure across multiple checks is lower than that of others. And it doesn't matter how many of these checks there are, how spaced out they are, how unexpected they are, the rogue's consistency is unmatched.

I agree with you that for an individual task, "teeing one up for the rogue" and their sweet spot might feel contrived. But multiple checks in succession plays to their strengths pretty well, and again, it's pretty organic to have situations that call for that. Take BG3 for example - there are places like the Sharlympics, the Bank Vault, Lorroakan's Tower or the Temple of Bhaal that are absolutely lousy with traps and other skill challenges, all of which you would rationally expect to be designed that way in-universe. I've met tons of new players that absolutely despise Astarion yet keep him around anyway (perhaps not realizing that Withers can make anyone a rogue) purely so they can more easily bypass such things. That's a significant class fantasy rogue players are drawn to the class for, and it delivers.